The Touch (22 page)

“If you’re implying that I’m not paying Miss Jenkins, Ruby, you’re wrong!” Alexander snapped, nettled. “She’d saved a bit for a holiday in London, so I gave her the rest as well as a comfortable stipend. I am not stingy!”

“No, you’re not stingy! You’re just a prick!”

Alexander had thrown his hands in the air and given up. No matter what a man did, he couldn’t please a woman.

Ruby arrived dressed in ruby velvet and wearing a fortune in rubies; she looked magnificent, deliberately so. If Elizabeth had been forced to meet her amid a crowd of strangers, some of whom knew that Alexander still consorted with her, then she would at least show Elizabeth that she wasn’t the common alley trollop Elizabeth’s imagination no doubt pictured. The gesture was as much to salve Elizabeth’s pride as her own; though, she thought wryly as she walked up the steps on Sung’s arm, Alexander’s wife probably wouldn’t get the message.

Her own curiosity was piqued, of course. Gossip said that Mrs. Kinross was quite lovely in an understated way—understated because she was terribly quiet and reserved. But the truth was, as Ruby well knew, that no one in Kinross had seen her at all. Mrs. Summers was everyone’s source of information, and in Ruby’s opinion Maggie Summers was a spiteful bitch.

So when Ruby set eyes on Elizabeth she saw a great deal more than Alexander, for one, would have wanted. Her lack of height was a handicap, but she held herself very well, and she was indeed beautiful. The skin was white as milk and unsullied by rouge or powder, the lips naturally red, the brows and lashes too black to need enhancing. But in the very dark blue eyes there lurked a panicked sadness that Ruby instinctively knew was not on her account. Alexander took her hand to draw her forward, and those eyes flared distress, that mouth formed itself into an almost invisible moue of distaste. Oh, Jesus! thought Ruby, her heart melting. Physically she loathes him! Alexander, Alexander, what did you do when you chose a bride you’d never seen, didn’t know? Sixteen is such a sensitive age, it makes or breaks.

Elizabeth saw the dragon woman on the arm of a man clothed in dragons, both of them tall and majestic. Sung in royal red and yellow, Ruby in ruby. But Sung she knew; her gaze moved to Ruby and assimilated those extraordinary eyes, so incredibly green, so incredibly kind. That, she had not expected. That, she had not wanted. Ruby pitied her as woman to woman. Nor could she be dismissed as a trollop, from garb to manners to a deep and slightly husky voice. Her speech, Elizabeth noticed, was surprisingly well rounded for someone from New South Wales—especially someone from her background. She didn’t flaunt her voluptuous body, but moved it in a queenly fashion, as if she owned the world.

“So good of you to come, Miss Costevan,” Elizabeth whispered.

“So good of you to receive me, Mrs. Kinross.”

As this was the last pair of guests, Alexander moved away from the door on the horns of a hideous dilemma: should he give his arm to his mistress, his wife, or his best friend? Custom said that it ought not to be his wife, but custom also said that it could not be his mistress. Yet how could he leave his wife and his mistress to walk together behind him and Sung?

Ruby solved it by giving Sung a shove between the shoulder blades that propelled him toward Alexander. “Go on, gentlemen!” she said cheerfully. Then, sotto voce to Elizabeth: “What an interesting situation!”

Elizabeth found herself smiling back. “Yes, isn’t it? But I thank you for making it easier.”

“My poor child, you’re a Christian thrown to the lions. Let us demonstrate that it’s Alexander thrown to the lions,” Ruby said, linking her arm through Elizabeth’s. “We’ll shine him down, the bast—reprobate.”

So they entered the large drawing room arm in arm, smiling and looking well aware that every other woman in the room was cast into permanent shade, even Constance Dewy.

Dinner was announced almost immediately, much to the hired French chef’s horror; he had counted on thirty minutes, so the spinach soufflés weren’t anything like ready. He was obliged to fling cold prawns on small plates and slop a dollop of pedestrian mayonnaise on each—merde, merde, merde, what a culinary fiasco!

This was Alexander’s ruse to separate his mistress from his wife, as they were, naturally, seated far apart. Elizabeth sat at one end with the Governor, Sir Hercules Robinson, on her right, and the Premier, Mr. John Robertson, on her left. Because Sir Hercules governed too autocratically, he wasn’t getting on with the Premier, so it fell to Elizabeth to maintain the social decencies. A task made harder by Mr. Robertson’s cleft palate and speech defect, not to mention the rate at which he consumed wine, and the tendency of his hand to stray on to her knee.

Alexander sat at the other end of the table with Lady Robinson on his right and Mrs. Robertson on his left. Though a notorious womanizer and drinker, John Robertson was a nominal Presbyterian; his extremely retiring Presbyterian wife was ordinarily never present at any public function, so to get her to Kinross was a mark of Alexander’s standing in the State.

What, wondered Alexander as he stared at his cold prawns, am I going to say to this sophisticated addlepate and this kirk-bound martyr? I am not cut out for this.

Midway down the table, Ruby had Mr. Henry Parkes on her right and Mr. William Dalley on her left, and discreetly flirted with both men, to their high delight. So well done was it that the women in her vicinity felt more eclipsed than outraged. Parkes was Robertson’s political foe and the state premiership had a habit of oscillating between them; if Robertson was up at the moment, Parkes would likely be up the moment after. It was as necessary to separate Parkes and Robertson as it was to keep Elizabeth and Ruby apart. Of course Sung was his usual charming self; no one made the mistake of deeming him a heathen Chinee, even though he was. Immense wealth could gild far less promising lilies than Sung.

The spinach soufflés when they finally appeared were worth waiting for; so too the sorbet, made from pineapples shipped by refrigerated van from Queensland, where such delicacies grew. Poached coral cod followed, then roast rack of baby lamb; the repast ended with a salad of tropical fruits arising from whipped cream like volcano peaks from a bed of cloud.

All this took three hours to eat, three hours during which Elizabeth grew more and more at ease with her duties as hostess. They might be disgruntled with each other, but Sir Hercules and Mr. Robertson responded to their beautiful companion like bees to a flower laden with nectar, and if Mr. Robertson was dismayed at so much Presbyterianism in this delectable woman, he wisely obliged her fancy—after all, he had one at home.

Whereas Alexander floundered, trying to make harmless chitchat with two women who weren’t in the least interested in steam engines, dynamos, dynamite or gold mining. Compounded by the fact that he was anticipating a verbal drubbing from Premier John Robertson, and was looking forward to slapping Robertson down. This verbal drubbing would take place as soon as the ladies left the room, to the tune of: Why wasn’t there land for a Presbyterian church in Kinross? How had the Catholics got enough land to build a school on as well as a church without paying a penny, while the Presbyterians were quoted an astronomical price for a postage stamp–sized piece of urban Kinross? Well, if Robertson thought that Alexander was going to back down, then Robertson could think again! Most of Kinross was either Church of England or Catholic, its Presbyterian element amounting to four families. So he shut out the women talking children across him, and dreamed of how he was going to tell John Robertson that he was going to donate land to the Congregationalists and the Anabaptists.

It went the way all formal dinners did; the moment the port decanters appeared, the ladies rose as one and retired to the large drawing room, there to wait a minimum of an hour for the men to join them. This was a custom designed to afford the ladies time to empty their bladders without the embarrassment of having men watch them come and go; as most of the ladies were dying to come and go, a procession began.

“Just as well there are two water closets downstairs,” said Elizabeth to Ruby, “but if you’d like to come with me, we can go upstairs to my bathroom.”

“Lead the way,” said Ruby, grinning.

“I never thought for one moment that I’d like you,” Elizabeth said as they prinked in front of a plethora of mirrors.

“There, that looks better,” said Ruby, twitching the feathers springing from her ruby and diamond aigrette. “Well, I thought I’d detest you—tit for tat. But the moment I saw you, I just wanted us to be friends. You’ve no friends, and you need them if you’re going to survive Alexander. He’s a locomotive, rolls over all opposition.”

“Do you love him?” Elizabeth asked curiously.

“To death and beyond, I suspect,” said Ruby honestly. Her face changed, became defiant, but Elizabeth fancied that her eyes held pain.

“But my loving him wouldn’t make a marriage with him work, even if I wasn’t a glorified tart, which I am. You’ve been raised properly to be a wife. I wasn’t brought up, I was dragged up. To be Alexander’s mistress is more than I expected out of my life, so I’m happy. Very happy.”

We are at exactly opposite ends, thought Elizabeth with newfound wisdom; I am his wife and would be free of him if I could, whereas she is his mistress and would be tied closer to him if she could. It isn’t fair.

“We’d better go down,” she said with a sigh.

“Provided that we can find a sofa for two. I want to know all about you, Elizabeth. Are you well, for instance?”

“Quite well, though my feet and legs are swollen.”

“Are they? Here, let me look.” Down went Ruby on her knees at the top of the staircase to lift Elizabeth’s hem and probe the puffy flesh that bulged above her shoes. “You’re very dropsical, sweetheart. Hasn’t he had a doctor to see you? Not that old Doc Burton in Kinross is any expert—a typical country quack. You need a specialist from Sydney.”

They proceeded downward. “I’ll ask Alexander.”

“No, I’ll tell Alexander,” Ruby said with a dragonish snort.

Elizabeth giggled. “I’d love to see it,” she said.

“It would offend your lovely little shell ears. I’m on my very best behavior tonight,” Ruby announced as they walked into the drawing room. “Under ordinary circumstances I have what’s called a salty tongue. Happens when you run a whorehouse.”

“I was so disgusted when I found that out.”

“But not so disgusted now, eh?”

“Definitely not so disgusted. Actually I’m dying of curiosity—how does one run a whorehouse?”

“With a bloody sight more efficiency than a government runs a country. A horsewhip helps.”

They settled together on a sofa, oblivious to the stares of the lady visitors; Mrs. Euphronia Wilkins, wife of the Reverend Peter Wilkins of Kinross’s Church of England, had seized the opportunity offered by their absence to acquaint Lady Robinson, Mrs. Robertson and others with Ruby’s past and present history. These made Mrs. Robertson feel faint enough to ask for smelling salts, whereas Lady Robinson was highly intrigued and amused.

Burdened with a very dreary woman who was espoused to a cabinet minister, Constance Dewy eyed the pair with envy. Who could ever have predicted this? she asked herself, nodding and smiling at the litany of woes beside her. Elizabeth and Ruby have decided to be bosom chums, and oh, won’t that make dear Alexander hopping mad? Serves him right, isolating that poor child up here without companionship!

When the men arrived from the dining room surrounded by a miasma of cigar smoke and vintage port, Elizabeth rose to her feet, some small corner of her mind wondering why Alexander looked so smug, and Premier Robertson so put out.

“I’ve heard, Ruby, that you play and sing beautifully,” she said. “Would you honor us tonight?”

“Certainly,” said Ruby, displaying none of the obligatory bashful modesty. “How about Beethoven and some Gluck arias, then Stephen Foster for dessert?”

Elizabeth led her to the grand piano and drew up a chair for herself beside it.

Eyes hooded, Alexander chose a seat next to Constance, who had ejected the dreary lady when the men came in. Charles sat on Constance’s other side.

“They have taken to each other like ducks to water,” said Constance rather loudly as Ruby launched into the “Appassionata.” “Fortunate that Elizabeth’s so obviously with child, Alexander—otherwise people might think you were running a ménage à trois.”

“Constance!” Charles squeaked, horrified.

“Sssssssh!” hissed Constance.

Alexander flashed Constance an appreciative smile, his eyes twinkling, and settled to hear the bravura performance, enhanced for him by the stunned looks on some of the women’s faces. They would hear no better musician in London or Paris.

Sonata and arias ended, Ruby began to play and sing popular songs, while Elizabeth sat raptly watching and listening. How grossly unfair are the accidents of fate! she was thinking. This woman ought to be a duchess at least. How often I have thought about an eleven-year-old girl raped by her own brother, and been distressed by it despite my bigotry. But now I truly understand how cruel life can be. Oh, Ruby, I am so sorry!

Having noticed that Elizabeth was in considerable pain from those swollen feet inside pinching shoes, Ruby suddenly stopped.

“I need a cheroot,” she said, and lit up.

Gasps from a dozen pairs of female lungs accompanied this, yet, noted a tickled Constance, Ruby somehow managed to make a woman’s smoking a little black cigar look absolutely the done thing. Ruby, I have to know you better! No more avoiding you at Apocalypse receptions.

An imperious gesture of the cheroot brought Alexander to the piano, his expression informing the guests that every man’s wife and mistress ought to be on the best of terms with each other.

“Time Elizabeth was in bed, Alexander,” said Ruby. “Take her upstairs and tuck her in.”

Elizabeth leaned to kiss Ruby’s cheek, then left the room on her husband’s arm while Ruby resumed her recital.

“Why didn’t you tell me how nice she is?”

“Would you have believed me, Elizabeth?”

“No.”