Bittersweet (24 page)

Apart from Charles Burdum, no one in Corunda was much bothered by the immediate aftermath of Wall Street. The townsfolk read what was going on in the nation’s big cities and tiny, raw, ivory-towered Canberra; the district was weathering the first convulsions of the Great Depression
almost
unaffected. What jobs were lost belonged to men employed long-distance by Sydney or Melbourne. Within weeks, however, some unknown local put up a sign at the T-junction where the Corunda road met the Sydney–Melbourne highway; it said, in bold and professional letters,
NO WORK IN CORUNDA
.

Of far greater interest was the relationship between Charles Burdum and Kitty Latimer. If Kitty had known her own mind,
it would have been settled one way or the other long since; the trouble was that she didn’t know it, and she blamed her bewilderment on a combination of elements, including the fact that no man had ever pursued her so persistently. And he both attracted yet repelled her, tugged her in a curiously oblique way rather than head-on. So what she felt as ominous in him was merely sensed, never witnessed, and what she clearly saw without distortion was admirable, worthy of love, tremendously stable, rock-firm. And how could she explain that what she searched for was his pain? If once she could find that, she would
know
. Her own childhood had been one long pain grounded in something she couldn’t change: her appearance. Instinct said his childhood must have had similarities as all the boys of his own age grew in height, and he did not. Grounded in appearance! The pain
must
be there! Why then wouldn’t he show it to her, why wouldn’t he consent to share it? Only by sharing would he admit her into the very heart of him. Hungering to heal his pain, she felt herself forever relegated to a distance.

So when they met, which they did often, she was prickly and defensive, strung up for battle, and never relaxed. They fought like cat and dog, at arm’s length or through a fence, for when he said something she took exception to, she lashed back fiercely.

More exposed to them than Grace, Edda and Tufts watched their struggles in helpless dismay.

“They’ll each bleed the other to death,” Tufts said to Edda.

“But why, when they’re made for each other?” Edda asked.

“It’s Kitty. I thought perhaps Maude had irritated her by pushing, but Daddy assures me she’s behaving quite well. Charlie
has some qualities that Kitty can’t understand, and she hates the feeling.”

“That’s shrewd, Tufty.” Edda shrugged. “Well, I for one refuse to interfere. I’m just sorry for Charlie.”

Though Corunda wasn’t to know it, the Great Depression moved faster than Charlie Burdum’s siege of Kitty Latimer. He hadn’t yet found the courage to kiss her lips when a few Sydney-based shops closed and threw a few more Corunda residents out of a job minus severance pay or benefits of any kind. Nor could the local unemployed find new work; no one was hiring, even the hospital. The federal government announced that a million pounds would be given to the states to dole out to unemployed men, then left it to each state to cut up its portion as it saw fit, as well as distribute the money. This led to municipal fiddling and furious outcries availing no one. South Australia, shockingly beset, was gifted disproportionately because of it, which provoked no anger. However, Western Australia was also disproportionately gifted for a less well-founded reason: the state wanted badly to secede from the Commonwealth, so Canberra deliberately wooed its government with an unduly large portion; Canberra was determined to keep the whole continent within the Commonwealth.

“Two hundred and seventy-six thousand pounds is a lot of money,” Kitty said to Charles over a cup of tea in the cottage, “and I imagine that Sydney will get most of it. But will Corunda get any at all?”

“Probably not. Joblessness is low here compared to other country districts, even with the recent closures. No job — what a Christmas present!”

“Father is concentrating on the orphanage. He seems to feel it will inherit child victims of this horrible crisis. But surely no one will take a child from its mother?”

“Suicide, Kitty. It’s risen appallingly among men, now some women are taking their lives too. Besides, some mothers feel that if they abandon their children, their children will at least be fed, clothed and sheltered in an orphanage.”

Kitty shivered. “How cruel the world can be!” Her eyes went to his in anxious query. “I can’t bear to talk about mothers deciding to abandon their children, but the subject has given me a little courage. Charlie, don’t you carry any pain?”

He stared at her in genuine astonishment. “
Pain?
Why?”

“From your childhood? Not having a mother and father?” Her voice sank to a whisper. “Being — different from the rest?”

His laughter was too spontaneous to doubt. “Oh, Kitty, what a romantic you are! How could I miss two people I never knew? My childhood was splendid, honestly. My aunt and uncle — she was my mother’s sister — brought me up to want for nothing. Nothing, Kitty, absolutely nothing! I was loved and well treated.”

“But surely your differences?” she persisted, unconvinced.

“My want of height, you imply?”

“Yes, and anything else that gave you pain.”

He shifted his chair and took her hands in his, which felt warm, dry, strong. “My uncle was shorter than I, and brought me up to regard lack of height as a challenge, not a cross to bear. I vindicated his faith and his trust in me — what more can I say? As to
pain
— romantic twaddle! Greek tragedies aren’t rooted in
the physical, but in human nature. I am Charles Henry Burdum, and one day I’ll be
Sir
Charles. Women may get a kick out of high drama, it’s permissible for women. But not for men. There was no pain as you mean it. I simply rose to combat challenges.”

“I don’t see it,” she said. “Not to suffer is inhuman.”

“Nonsense!” he snapped, tired of this conversation. “What would be inhuman would be to feel no sorrow, no grief, no fear. I’ve soaked my pillow with tears over a dead dog, to this very day grieve at the deaths of my aunt and uncle, and I can assure you that when a thug pointed a revolver at my chest one day, I knew fear.” The eyes, gone bronze, looked at her with puzzlement. “You’ve been a nurse for three and a half years now, my dear, and I have reason to believe you’re a very good one. Children are your great love — in which case, why aren’t you having your own rather than peering at them through a cloudy window?”

Her breath caught, she stiffened. How brilliantly he could do that, snatch the advantage away from her and use it to crush her! Her quest for his pain derided and belittled, she stared at him in wonder.

“Yes, you’re right,” she said slowly. “It is a nonsense.”

The charm flashed to the surface, together with a wonderful smile. “I’m very sorry,” he said gently, “I didn’t mean to cut you down so brutally. Oh, but you ask for it! If I had my wishes, I’d choose a soft wooing, full of tenderness and kindness, but you have an unerring instinct for the kill that makes you turn in the doorway of your boudoir and transform like lightning from the world’s most seductive woman into a hissing, snarling wildcat. Every time you do it, I have to tame the wildcat all over again,
and I am not by nature a hunter.” The face changed, became ugly. “What I have to think about, I now understand, is whether I love you enough to put up with more of this. Frankly, I don’t know.”

“Perhaps,” she said, “it’s that I sense Corunda is too small for you, that you’ll move on, and I don’t want to live anywhere in the world except Corunda.”

“I do have grand ambitions,” he conceded, “but it isn’t necessary to leave Corunda to achieve them. I want to enter the political arena, preferably on a federal level, and Corunda is perfect for that. It’s a mere two-hour drive from Canberra.”

Her face lightened. “I see! Yes, that makes sense.”

“So if you married me, my darling Kitty, there would be no need to give up Corunda.”

Her eye fell on the clock; she jumped. “I’m late!”

“I’ll walk you to Children’s, then no one can object.”

Even so, he left it until the very last moment to ask her if she would have dinner with him. As always, she accepted.

Kitty didn’t like to ask if the chef was still in the Burdum House kitchen, since dinner was meatloaf with gravy and mashed potatoes, but she suspected he was, since the meatloaf was minced lamb with a touch of cumin and no tendency to crumble, the gravy tasted like a sauce, and the mashed potatoes were pureed. She sent the potatoes back as too sloppy, not buttery enough, and devoid of pepper. Charles considered he did well to get two out of three correct, and had asked the chef to have fried potatoes in reserve. Since the chef was an Australian despite his Cordon Bleu
training, he was seriously considering asking Con Decopoulos at the Parthenon if the man could observe Corunda-style cuisine.

“I liked the meatloaf,” she said artlessly over coffee in the sitting room. “It was a little springy in texture, and it didn’t break into chunks. Whatever it was flavoured with has a delicious taste, but why turn good old spuds into milky mush?”

“If you marry me, I’ll probably lose my chef,” he said.

“Definitely! There are heaps of women in this town who can cook brilliantly, according to the natives. For, Charlie, if I marry you, we eat Corunda food, not bleeding meat and milky mush. And on that point there is absolutely no negotiation.”

“You actually said, if!”

“So I did. If, not yes.”

“It’s a huge leap forward. You must love me a little.”

“Love isn’t really the stumbling block. Do I
like
you?”

“Let me kiss you,” he said, coming to kneel before her. “Liking can only come from a degree of ease and companionship you won’t permit, and that’s my fault for telling you I loved you before I so much as knew your name. I’m not sure I like you, for that matter. What I do know is that we’re destined to marry and spend our lives together. Here in Corunda, eating Corunda food. Let your guard down, please! Don’t turn at the boudoir door and become a wildcat. Until you let your guard down, we rotate around each other on a fixed orbit.”

She smiled. “You follow the ninth planet debate.”

“I believe in the laws of Nature, and I also believe that human beings are a part of Nature,” he said seriously.

Kitty leaned forward. “Kiss me, Charlie.”

Her first consciousness of him was his smell, finding it heady, unexpected: some very expensive soap, a smooth and boyish tang, no hint of sweat. His embrace was enveloping but not alarming, for he had pushed her knees together off to his left, meaning he couldn’t grind his groin against her; nor did he when he stood up and brought her with him. She hadn’t realised how comfortable it would be to stand at much the same height as his; no stretching and straining. Either he was clever, or his respect was genuine, for he kept his hands above her waist at her back. Oh, Charlie, why do you always have two faces? Lucifer one moment, Satan the next. But both aspects of the Lord of Hell.

He didn’t fumble his way across her cheek to her mouth, he hovered near enough to make her close her eyes by reflex, then put his lips on hers slightly at an angle, their pressure feather-light, their skin silky. Oh, yes, it
was
nice! Her body relaxed, nothing thus far having repelled her, especially a thrusting dominance that would have had her breaking free in a second. As if he were content to leave the response to her in her own time, a highly seductive lure for Kitty. When she parted her lips a little, he followed; her arms crept up around his neck.

The kiss went on as if she floated unanchored in a space of air and light until his left hand moved from her back to her side and sank into her flesh so suddenly that, against all reason, her body arched on a moan and fitted itself against him. In the same moment the kiss changed, deepened, became a turmoil of dark and velvety emotions that had her as much his prey as he was hers.

Then she was free; Charles was on the other side of the room, turned away from her and gazing out a window.

“Time to go home,” he said after what seemed a long while. She found her gloves and purse and walked out ahead of him.

Grace didn’t look at all surprised when Kitty confided in her the next morning.

“Well, you love him, so what are you waiting for?” Grace asked, giving a bowl of green jelly to Brian, then popping the teat of a bottle in John’s mouth.

“Why do children love jelly so much?” Kitty asked. “It costs a tenth what baked custard does and has no nourishment except sugar to rot their teeth, but kiddies grab for the jelly and turn their noses up at the baked custard. Insane!”

The mother looked at the children’s nurse in scorn. “Honestly, Kits, sometimes you’re plain thick! Jelly is sensuous, it’s cool rather than cloying — kiddies prefer cool to cloying — and they adore sucking it through their teeth, feel it melt on the tongue. Besides which, the sun shines through jelly yet it’s brightly coloured. And
don’t
try to change the subject, which is whether you intend to marry Charlie Burdum or not. I say, stop all this maidenly quivering and do it.”

Kitty departed feeling she had learned more about jelly than marriage — which had its funny side, but didn’t help. The one thing she didn’t doubt was that Charlie loved her; what she doubted was whether she loved him, and nothing so far had given her the utter conviction that she couldn’t live without him.
Grace felt it for Bear, and it sustained silly Grace through all her mistakes.

The kiss had opened Kitty’s eyes to pleasures she hadn’t experienced when other men had kissed her, and seemed to promise the kind of lover a woman yearned for.

But there was far more to marriage than that, and her father’s plight preyed on her. Never once had Daddy spoken of it, but it was there for his daughters to see and sorrow about. A quarter of a century irrevocably tied to a woman he couldn’t esteem, whose actions often embarrassed or shamed him, without once coming into the open and admitting it was the unhappiest of unions. To Daddy, his vows were sacred, and could she enter into her marriage on less demanding terms than his? It wasn’t a simple question of weakness, it was a horror of taking those vows and waking up to find herself plighted to a man whose charm and outward qualities had fooled her.