The Touch (53 page)

But perhaps Professor Warren and his lecturers sensed how far this dreadful girl was prepared to go, or perhaps they longed for large donations from her father; whatever pushed them, pushed them to mark her fairly. Which, in a discipline like engineering, where the answers were mostly either right or wrong, meant that Nell topped her class with a frightening margin between her and Chan Min, who came second just ahead of Wo Ching. Donny Wilkins topped civil engineering and architecture, and Lo Chee topped mechanical engineering. Total victory for the Kinross students.

Nell wrote to Bede at his home address and said that she was free to have dinner at his house if he still wanted to entertain her. Bede wrote back with the day and the time.

One of the things about Nell that puzzled Bede was her reluctance to show off her wealth; when she turned up promptly at six o’clock two Saturdays later, she had caught the tram and then walked the several blocks from the shopping center. Yet she could have hailed a hackney outside her door and been driven to Arncliffe in comfort. Her dress was another grey cotton thing without shape, its hem a good four inches above her ankles—very daring had the dress been a scarlet one or even festive in a less damning color. No hat on her head—another solecism—no jewelry, and her habitual big leather hold-all that rested on a strap over her left shoulder.

“Why are your dresses so short?” he asked, meeting her at the front gate.

Nell was too busy looking at the acre of ground in delight. “Bede, you’ve weeded it properly! And do I see a vegetable plot in the backyard?”

“Yes. I also hope you see that the pot belly has gone,” he answered. “You were right, I needed exercise. But why are your dresses so short?”

“Because I can’t abide dresses that sweep the dirt,” she said with a grimace. “Soiling the bottom of one’s shoes is bad enough. Soiling something that one can’t wash every time it’s worn is even worse.”

“Does that mean you wash the soles of your shoes?”

“Of course, if I’ve been somewhere nasty. Think of what gets on them! The streets are slimed with spittle—mucus from some fellow blowing his nose with his fingers—disgusting! Not to mention vomit, dog turds and rotten garbage.”

“I understand the spittle. We’ve had to introduce a fine for spitting in tramcars and train carriages,” he said, walking her down the path to the front door.

“The curtains are clean, so are the windows,” she said, sounding pleased.

Ushering her into the house wasn’t something he did with pride, as he hadn’t any furniture to speak of: one old sofa with herniating springs visible between its bottom and the floor, a bureau, and a big, battered old desk with a chair drawn up to it. The kitchen table, however, now boasted two wooden chairs, and the orange case had gone. The floors were either bare boards or cheap linoleum, but someone had scrubbed the fly dirt off the walls and there were no rat or mouse pebbles to be seen. Or any cockroach droppings.

“Though I haven’t gotten rid of the wretched things yet,” he said, sitting her at the kitchen table. “They’re immortal.”

“Try saucers of red wine,” said Nell. “They can’t resist it, and they drown in it.” She chuckled. “That would please the Temperance League, wouldn’t it?” A polite cough. “I presume you rent rather than own?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Then try to persuade the landlord to fence the property with six-foot palings. Then you could keep a dozen chooks, have eggs from them, and at the same time have outer defenses against cockroaches. Chooks love to eat cockroaches.”

“How do you know all these things?”

“Well, we live in the Glebe, which is full of cockroaches. Butterfly Wing eliminates them with saucers of red wine and a backyard full of wandering chooks.”

“Why don’t you wear a hat?” he asked, opening the oven door and peering inside.

“Smells delicious,” she said. “I just hate hats, that’s all. They’re of no earthly use, and every year they’re getting uglier. If I’m out in the sun for long periods, I wear a Chinese coolie hat—it’s sensible.”

“And, I noticed at Constantine Drills, overalls on the shop floor. It’s no wonder old Angus objected to you.”

“The last thing any factory or workshop needs is some fool woman getting her skirt caught in a fly wheel. The overalls are not exactly come-hither, so what does it matter?”

“True,” he admitted, tending pots on top of the stove.

“What’s for dinner?” she asked.

“Roast leg of lamb, potatoes and pumpkin roasted around the joint, some nice little butternut squashes, and murdered beans.”

“Murdered beans?”

“Cut into thin shreds. Oh, and gravy, of course.”

“Bring it on! I could eat a horse.”

The food was traditionally British, but very good; Bede had not exaggerated when he said he could cook. Even the murdered beans weren’t overdone. Nell tucked in and ate quite as much as her host did.

“Do I have to save room for pudden, or can I have a second helping?” she asked, wiping the last of the gravy off her plate with a piece of bread.

“I have to watch that pot belly, so it’s a second helping,” he said, smiling. “Judging from your appetite, you don’t suffer from a tendency to fatness.”

“No, I’m like my father—on the skinny side.”

After the meal was done and cleared away—he refused to let her wash or dry the dishes, said they weren’t going anywhere until he felt like doing them—he produced a good pot of tea and two porcelain cups and saucers with silver spoons. The sugar bowl was spotless and the milk chilly from incarceration in the new ice chest. Whereupon, with a plate of Mrs. Charlton the cleaning lady’s oatmeal cookies between them, they settled to talk about many things that always returned to his passion, socialism and the workingman. Nell often didn’t see eye to eye with him, and gave him good arguments, particularly about the Chinese. Time flew by unnoticed, for both of them were people who lived inside their minds, had suppressed what he would have called his carnal urges and she her romantic dreams.

Finally, when he at least became aware that it was very late, he dared to bring up a subject he felt—the why eluded him—entitled to know about.

“How is your sister?” he asked.

“Very well, according to my mother,” Nell said, her face darkening. “You won’t know this, but Anna has taken against me, so I haven’t bothered going home during the vacations, I’ve done practical work on the shop floor instead.”

“Why should she take against you?”

“That’s a mystery. You must understand that her thought processes are extremely limited and unpredictable. The newspapers at the time said that she’s slightly simple, but the truth is that she’s very mentally retarded. Her vocabulary consists of about fifty words, mostly nouns, an occasional adjective, a rare verb. That fellow could manipulate her as easily as he did his dog. Anna is very good-natured in almost all circumstances.”

“So you believe it was Sam O’Donnell?”

“Absolutely,” she said emphatically.

“And the baby?”

“Dolly. That’s what Anna called her, thinking her a doll. So my father registered her name as Dolly. She’s eighteen months old now, and—isn’t it ironic?—very bright. She walked early, talked early, and, my mother says, is beginning to be a trouble.” The darkness in Nell’s face grew more somber still. “I must go home on Monday, because something is going on that my mother isn’t willing to discuss in her letters.”

“It’s a difficult burden to carry, isn’t it?”

“An unusual one, at any rate. So far I haven’t been called upon to carry an ounce of it, but that isn’t right. Nor are other things I feel, but can’t tell you about because they aren’t facts, just instincts. I loathe instincts!” said Nell savagely.

Its greenish glow enhanced by one of the new ceramic mantles, the gas light on the wall played on his thick, unruly mass of hair and turned its copper hue to old bronze. His eyes, as black as Alexander’s, were deeply set in their orbits and rather narrow; unfathomable, thought Nell, suddenly intrigued. One only knows what he is from what he says, never from how he looks, especially those enigmatic eyes.

“You’ll grow more respectful of instincts as you get older,” he said, and smiled at her with white, even teeth. “You’ve built your world on facts—not unusual in a mathematician. But the great philosophers have all been mathematicians, so they have the kind of brain can conceive abstract ideas. Instincts are abstract emotions, but not entirely thoughtless. I always think of mine as based on events or experiences I haven’t consciously valued, yet somewhere deep down another part of me values them.”

“I didn’t think Karl Marx was a mathematician,” she said.

“He’s not a philosopher either. He’s more akin to some researcher into human behavior. Mind, not soul.”

“That bit about instincts—are you telling me that I should go home as soon as possible?” she asked, a tinge of regret in her voice. “That you have an instinct about it?”

“I’m not sure. However, I’ll be sorry to see you go. It’s been a great pleasure to cook for an appreciative eater, and I was looking forward to doing it again.”

Yet he wasn’t signaling her with any man-woman stuff, for which she was grateful.

“I’ve enjoyed the evening,” she said, sounding stilted.

“But you’ve had enough.” He rose to his feet. “Come on, I’ll walk you up to the main road and find you a hackney.”

“I can catch the tram.”

He withdrew his watch from a pocket, flipped its lid open and consulted it. “Not at this hour, you won’t. Do you have money for a hackney?”

“Oh, lord, yes!” Her eyes danced. “It’s just that hackneys are like instincts—I dislike being cooped up in such a small, smelly place. One never knows who was in there before one.”

“Let me pay your fare.”

“Indeed you will not! With a cleaning lady and a new ice chest to add to my sins? How much is a block of ice twice a week, threepence? Sixpence?”

“Fourpence, actually. But I am quite well off these days—members of parliament, including the Labor ones, tend to dispense salaries and privileges liberally. So I’ve saved a lot.” He drew a breath, put his hand under her elbow to guide her to the front door. “As a matter of fact, I’m seriously thinking of finding out how much the owner wants for this property. If it’s anything like a reasonable price, I’d like to buy it.”

Alexander Kinross’s daughter considered the statement with half-shut eyes and a pursed mouth. “You should be able to beat him down to under two hundred. It’s a full-acre block, yes, but in an industrial area that’s encroaching on it. Unsewered. He’d not get much for it from someone intending to build a factory on it, and the speculators interested in housing have moved closer to the coast. Terraces are out, brick semi-detached are in, and this is the wrong shape to stick half a dozen semis on. Offer him a hundred and fifty and see what he says.”

Bede burst out laughing. “Easy for you to say, impossible for me to do! I don’t have a haggling bone in my body.”

“Nor did I, I thought,” she said in a surprised tone. “But I like you, Bede, so I’d haggle for you.”

“That’s nice to hear. I like you too, Nell.”

“Good,” she said, flapping a hand at a hackney. “What luck! I hope he’ll take me to the Glebe.”

“Tip him threepence and he’ll take you anywhere. And don’t be tempted to let him go at Parramatta Road. There are gangs of larrikins about.”

“A symptom of hard times, my father would say. Jobless youths in need of some outlet for their energies. Therefore a good time to offer for property.” She climbed into the tiny conveyance. “I’ll write from Kinross.”

“Do,” he said, then stood until the tired horse geed up and the carriage rattled away. “But you won’t write,” he said to himself, sighed and turned to walk the few yards home again. It wouldn’t be any good anyway: a Welsh coal miner’s socialist son and the daughter of Australia’s richest capitalist. A child not yet seventeen. On the verge of life, not riding its crest. A man of principle—and he was that—would let her get on with her life far from his ken. So be it. Goodbye, Nell Kinross.

BUT NELL didn’t get home to Kinross until after the New Year and her seventeenth birthday. Her father and Auntie Ruby appeared in Sydney to “do the town,” as he put it: theater, museums, art galleries, exhibitions, even the pantomime. Thoroughly enjoying herself, Nell forgot her—and Bede Talgarth’s—instincts.

“I COULDN’T VERY well ignore Daddy’s wishes,” Nell said to her mother defensively.

“Of course you couldn’t,” Elizabeth answered, apparently not aggrieved. “In fact, it was probably for the best. Looking back on it, I think I made too much of things.”

“What things?”

“Anna got annoyed with Dolly, and hurt her.”

Nell lost color. “Mum, no!”

“It was only the once, about six weeks ago.”

“How did it happen? Why?”

“I honestly don’t know. We never leave Anna alone with the baby, but Peony wasn’t actually watching them, she was busy with some mending. Then Dolly gave a shriek of pain and began to cry really hard. When Peony got up to see what was wrong, Anna just wouldn’t let her near. ‘Bad Dolly! Bad Dolly!’ she kept saying.” Elizabeth looked at Nell helplessly, a plea in her eyes that Nell had never seen. “She had hold of Dolly’s arm, and she was pinching it, screwing it. The poor child was struggling and howling—I was coming down the hall and heard her, which was just as well. Anna wouldn’t let her go, kept on pinching and calling Dolly bad. It took Peony and I combined to make her let go, and ages to calm Dolly, who developed a nasty bruise and wouldn’t go near Anna for days. That put Anna in a bad temper. You know Anna, she’s never bad-tempered! Just unmanageable when she has her courses. Anyway, eventually we decided to give Dolly back to her for a little while, and the bad temper disappeared at once. Luckily Dolly didn’t protest—I think she’d gotten to the stage where the memory of being hurt didn’t matter as much as being kept away from Anna.”

“Which one is Peony?” asked Nell, frowning.

“A Wong girl. Ruby sent her when Dolly began to walk and talk. Not exactly to replace Jade, more to give me some help.”