The Touch (37 page)

“Oh, I know all about it,” said Nell nonchalantly. “You and Daddy have sex together because Daddy doesn’t have sex with Mum.”

“Doesn’t that strike you as peculiar?” asked Ruby, eyeing Nell in fascination.

“Is it?”

“Yes, very.”

“Then you’d better tell me why, Auntie Ruby.”

“For one thing, because married people aren’t supposed to have sex with other people, just between themselves. Sex,” said Ruby thoughtfully. “You’re very explicit, Nell.”

“That’s what the books call it.”

“I’m sure they do. However, your mother is forbidden to have more children, so she cannot fulfill her sexual duties.”

“I know that. So you help out,” said Nell with aplomb.

“Jesus! Why should I have to help out?”

Nell frowned. “Actually, Auntie Ruby, I have no idea.”

“Then I’ll tell you. Men cannot be continent—that is, men find it impossible to do without sex. The Catholics delude themselves that men can keep a vow of what they call celibacy, but I doubt that very much. In fact, if a man could be celibate, I’d say he was crazy—you know, mad.”

“So Daddy needs to have sex.”

“Precisely. Which is where I come in. But your father and I are not a vulgar expedient, though most people think of us that way. There is love between Alexander and me, there has been since before he met your mother. But he couldn’t marry me because I was already sexually experienced with other men.”

“That doesn’t seem logical,” said Nell.

“I couldn’t agree more,” said Ruby a trifle grimly. “However, what it really boils down to is that women who are sexually experienced are deemed incapable of being faithful to one man, even to a husband. And men want to be sure beyond a shadow of a doubt that the children they have are in fact their children. So they want to marry women who are virgins.”

“My mother was a virgin when she married Daddy?”

“Yes.”

“But he loves you, not her.”

“I’d rather say that he loves both of us, Nell,” Ruby labored, wishing Elizabeth to perdition for inflicting this task on her.

“He loves her for his children, and you for the sex.”

“It’s not quite that cold-blooded, dear, honestly! The three of us are a bit of a muddle, and that’s as close to the truth as I can get. The most important thing is that we get along together, we like each other, and we—well, we sort of share out the duties.”

“Auntie Ruby, why are you telling me this?” asked Nell, face a study in concentration. “Is it because outsiders don’t approve?”

“Exactly!” Ruby cried, beaming.

“Frankly, I don’t see that it’s any of their business.”

“The one thing you can always be sure of, Nell, is that outsiders love to make everything their business. For that reason, you can’t speak of this to outsiders. Understand?”

“Yes.” Nell got to her feet. “I have to go to classes.” She kissed Ruby on the cheek, a smacking salute. “Thanks for the lesson.”

“Just don’t mention our conversation to your father!”

“I won’t. It’s our secret,” said Nell, and bounced off.

Bugger! she said to herself as she boarded the cable car. I know that Daddy loves Auntie Ruby and that Auntie Ruby loves him, but the one thing I forgot to ask is who Mum loves. Daddy? She might if she can’t have sex, but Daddy needs it.

Better equipped to investigate, Nell set out to discover if her mother loved her father. And saw very quickly that Mum loved no one, even herself. If Daddy touched her, even accidentally, she acted like a snail withdrawing into its shell, a flicker of disaste in her eyes that said her reaction was not due to being forbidden to have intercourse. And Daddy knew! Mum’s reaction made him angry, so he would lash out with one of his biting remarks, recollect himself, and disappear elsewhere. Nell wondered if, in fact, Mum even loved her children.

“Oh, yes,” said Ruby, applied to a second time.

“If she does, she certainly doesn’t know how to show it,” Nell said. “I’m beginning to think Mum’s a tragedy.”

“If to bottle everything up constitutes a tragedy, then you are quite right,” Ruby said, tears in her eyes. “Don’t give up on her, Nell, please. Take it from me, if your mother saw someone point a gun at you and shoot, she’d step in front of the bullet.”

BY THE TIME she turned ten, Anna had grown into a beautiful replica of her mother; an anguish for everyone, especially Jade, who was thirty-three. Tall and graceful, Anna walked effortlessly now and could speak in simple sentences. She also stopped wetting herself, but then transformed this victory into an omen of early maturity by developing breasts.

On her eleventh birthday her courses appeared, a nightmare. Like many poorly mentated children, Anna was overly terrified of blood, which she seemed to view as a depletion of self, be that self Anna or someone else. Perhaps the fear arose out of an experience she had had in Sam Wong’s kitchen at the Kinross Hotel, when one of his helpers cut himself down to the bone of an arm, spraying blood everywhere as the arteries spurted, and screaming shrilly in a panic that made it difficult to get hold of him to apply a tourniquet. No one remembered that the nine-year-old Anna was standing there until it was all over and her shrieks were finally heard above the cook’s.

So when her courses appeared, Anna screeched in terror, had to be held down while she was fitted with a towel. And no amount of time or repetition managed to lessen her terror. The only way that Jade and Elizabeth could get Anna through those five days of bleeding was to sedate her heavily with chloral hydrate and, if that didn’t work, with laudanum.

If all of Anna’s life had been a torment, that was as nothing compared to the ravages her menarche wrought on her, for there was just no way anyone could explain to her that the bleeding was normal and natural, that it would get itself over, that all she had to do was accept its monthly recurrence. Anna couldn’t accept it because of the horror it inspired in her and the shortness of her attention span. Nor was she regular, which meant she couldn’t be prepared for each episode ahead of time.

Between her periods she was quite happy unless she saw blood, when she would scream and blunder about in a panic. If the blood were her own, titanic struggles took place.

Finally, after a year that saw eight periods, Anna had taken in enough about her courses to start fighting the moment someone tried to undress her—she equated being undressed with bleeding. Which led to one benefit; Anna suddenly learned to undress herself, and to wash herself. Once Elizabeth and Jade were satisfied that her ablutions were adequate, they left her alone in that one respect.

“Perhaps her courses are a blessing,” said Elizabeth to Nell. “I didn’t think we’d ever teach her to wash and change.”

OF COURSE the maturation of both her daughters made Elizabeth feel very old; a curious sensation given her actual youth. But here she was at thirty years of age with two budding young women on her hands, and no real idea of how to handle either of them. If she had known more, had wider experience, they would have helped overcome the difficulties; as it was, she had to fumble along as best she could and resort to Ruby when necessary. Not that Ruby was able to help her with Anna; no one could help with Anna save Jade, loving and patient, unflagging in her devotion.

Fourteen years into her marriage in March of 1889, Elizabeth had taught herself not to feel, and thereby attained a measure of content. In many ways, she reasoned, the life she led so far from home was not unlike the one she would have led caring for her father and then as maiden aunt to nieces and nephews; though a vital necessity, she was not the center of anyone’s existence. Nor did she wish to be the center of anyone’s existence. Alexander had Ruby and Nell, Nell had Alexander, and Anna had Jade. The years were flying, and nothing changed between her and Alexander. As long as he didn’t touch her, she could keep up the façade for the sake of her one observant child, Nell.

Oh, there were nice moments! A laugh shared with Nell over Chang the cook; some point on which she and Alexander were in complete agreement; delightful chats with Ruby; Constance’s visits to ease the loneliness of her widowhood; riding into the wonderland of the bush; some book that held her enthralled; a duet with Nell on the piano; privacy when she wanted it, which was often. And if she thought of The Pool, if the image of Lee at The Pool still haunted her, at least it had lost its sharp edges as time mellowed it, smearing the golden haze of the sun and his skin together with the inexorable thumb of an unrepeated memory. Time had even permitted her to return to The Pool, to enjoy it without really dwelling upon Lee.

TO ALEXANDER, his house had suddenly become cloyingly feminine, for though he nobly continued to take Nell with him on his rounds whenever she wasn’t in the schoolroom, he had to admit to himself that it wasn’t quite the same as it used to be. Not her fault, but his—and Elizabeth’s fault too, with her oft-reiterated remarks about Nell’s being a young woman now, and the target of men. So try as he would, he found himself checking his employees to make sure they weren’t gazing at Nell in lust, or—worse, as Elizabeth kept saying—dangling after her with a mind on how much money she was worth. Common sense said that Nell was not a femme fatale nor was likely to turn into one, but the possessive father in him was sufficiently shaken to, for instance, suddenly decree that Nell might not go off alone with Summers, or with any other man of mine or workshops. He even visited the schoolroom to ascertain what the relationships were there—that was when he apostrophised himself a fool! Nell was obviously no more and no less than one of the boys. The three white Kinross girls who had begun with her had departed when they and Nell had turned ten, for reasons that varied from boarding school in Sydney to being needed at home.

It was Anna’s maturation tipped the scales, made him yearn to flee. Even Ruby couldn’t impart enough sanity to his life while he was tied to Kinross. Getting away was more difficult than of yore, thanks to Charles Dewy’s death and Sung’s slow slide into purely Chinese matters. Yet what had once been a gold mine was now an empire requiring his personal attention all over the world; Apocalypse Enterprises had expanded into industries and areas far removed from the mining of gold. It had interests in other minerals from silver-lead-zinc to copper, aluminum, nickel, manganese and trace elements; interests in sugar, wheat, cattle and sheep; factories that made steam engines, locomotives, rolling stock and agricultural machinery. There were tea plantations and a gold mine in Ceylon, coffee plantations in Central and South America, an emerald mine in Brazil, and shares in half a hundred thriving industries in the U.S.A., England, Scotland and Germany. Since the company was still privately owned, no one save its board of directors knew quite what Apocalypse Enterprises was worth. Even the Bank of England had to hazard a guess.

Having realized that he had an unerring eye for antiquities and art, Alexander had gotten into the habit of combining business trips abroad with the acquisition of paintings, sculpture, objets d’art, furniture and rare books. The two icons he had given to Sir Edward Wyler had been replaced and added to; the Giotto had been joined by two Titians, a Rubens and a Botticelli before he fell in love with the nonrepresentational works of modern painters based in Paris, and bought Matisse, Manet, Van Gogh, Degas, Monet, Suerat; he had a Velásquez and two Goyas, a Van Dyke, a Hals, a Vermeer and a Bruegel. The guides at Pompeii would sell a priceless Roman mosaic floor for five gold sovereigns; in fact, the guides anywhere would sell anything for a few pieces of gold. Instead of putting them in Kinross House, Alexander occupied himself for a few short months in building an annex on to the house where all but a few favorite works hung or stood or loomed inside glass cases. It was an interest, something to alleviate his boredom.

Travel was another, yet he was tied to Kinross. In one part of Alexander’s mind he was still following in the footsteps of Alexander the Great, curious to see everything the world had to offer. And now he was stuck in a house redolent with the sounds and smells of women. Never more so than after Anna joined the feminine club with a cacophony of shrieks and screams.

“Pack your trunks!” he barked at Ruby in June of 1889.

“What?” she asked blankly.

“Pack your trunks! You and I are going abroad.”

“Alexander, I’d love to, but how can I? Or you, for that matter? There’d be no one to look after things.”

“There will be in a few days,” said Alexander. “Lee’s coming home. He docks in Sydney in a week.”

“Then I’m not going anywhere,” said Ruby, looking mutinous.

“Oh, you’ll see him!” Alexander snapped. “We’ll meet him in Sydney, you can have your reunion, then we’re off to America.”

“Take Elizabeth.”

“I’m damned if I will! I want to enjoy myself, Ruby.”

The green eyes regarded him with something bordering on dislike. “You know, Alexander, you’re growing very preoccupied with yourself,” said Ruby. “Not to mention arrogant. I’m not your lackey yet, good sir, so don’t growl at me to pack my trunks just because you’re fed up with Kinross! I’m not. I want to be here if my son is coming home.”

“You’ll see him in Sydney.”

“For five minutes, if you have anything to do with it.”

“For five days, if you like.”

“For five years, I would like! You seem to forget, my friend, that I’ve hardly seen my son in donkey’s years. If he really is coming home, then home is the only place I want to be.”

No mistaking the iron in her voice; Alexander abandoned his imperiousness and managed to look both contrite and beguiling. “Please, Ruby, don’t desert me!” he begged. “We won’t be away forever, just for long enough to shake the cobwebs out of my mind and off my shoes. Please, come with me! Then I promise you and I will come home and home you can stay.”

She softened. “Well…”

“Good girl! We’ll spend as long as you like in Sydney with Lee before we sail—anything, Ruby, as long as I’m out of here and with you! I’ve never taken you abroad—wouldn’t you love to see the Alhambra and the Taj Mahal, the pyramids and the Parthenon? With Lee here, we’ll be free. Who knows what the future holds? This might be our last chance, my dearest darling! Say yes!”