Bittersweet (27 page)

Astonished, Kitty stared at her. The whining complaints and constant self-pity seemed to have disappeared in the face of this terrible catastrophe. The path to martyrdom she had visualised as Grace’s future just wasn’t the route she was going to take. “I wish you’d stayed in nursing longer,” Kitty said. “You’d have a better chance at finding part-time work.”

Grace smiled, shook her head. “No, that was never an option for me. Once I met Bear, I knew where my life was going. I’d have walked on my knees to China to be with Bear. I watched you vacillate for months about Charlie, but I never experienced one twinge of doubt about Bear. Something in me recognised my fate.”

A shaft of bitter envy struck Kitty’s heart with the force of a warrior’s spear — why had silly, empty-headed Grace known her mate so surely, while she, far more intelligent and grounded, had been so blind to Charlie? Did it mean that the love between Grace and Bear was far greater than hers for Charlie? Charlie had known at once. What was the matter with her, that her feelings had needed so much pushing and shoving before they surfaced?

Kitty joined him in the car not long after he had left the Olsen house, her face in the Packard’s dim interior light looking oddly pinched. Well, a shock. No denying Grace could be a burden.

“You’ll have trouble persuading Bear to take a job,” she said.

“A poor man’s pride is always hard to overcome.”

“Is it wrong to decline to pull strings?”

Charles gave a snort of laughter. “The world capers and cavorts on denser meshes of pulled strings than you’ll ever know, Kitty, starting with the politicians. Poor Bear is too proud to pull strings, so he’ll never accumulate the power to set up his sons in plum jobs, and I’ll be too busy setting up my own sons to help. Now’s his chance.”

Something in Kitty twisted; she let out a mew of distress. “Oh, Charlie, don’t tempt fate!” she cried.

“What is it, my dear?”

“When we get home,” she said.

But first there was dinner to be eaten, and Kitty’s tongue was anchored as if by leaden weights; she tried to find the mood of the morning vainly, crushed by Grace’s news. At a loss, she prattled about the change in Grace without noticing Charlie’s increasing exasperation — all this grief over a
half
sister?

“She’s talking about growing her own vegetables, and so happy that she planted an apple and a pear two years ago. Huh! Jack Thurlow planted them, she meant — dearest Grace! She also says she’s going to keep chooks — Grace, keeping chooks?”

“Keeping what?” he asked blankly, getting a word in.

“Chooks — hens, Charlie! Chickens too old to be chicks.”

“Chook. To rhyme with book and hook?”

“The very same.”

“I am forever learning.”

A silence fell, thick as treacle.

“Charles?”

“Did you just call me by my proper name?”

“Yes, I did.”

Eyes sparkling, he sat up straight. “I answer to Charles.”

“I’m going to have a baby.”

Her words literally knocked all thought out of his brain; he gaped at her, jaw dropped, mouth working, one emotion after another crossing his face, his eyes gone now to pure fire. Suddenly, convulsively, he jumped up, seized her and held her in a hard embrace. “Kitty, my Kitty! A child? Our child? When, my love?”

“Ned Mason thinks December. I saw him this morning for final confirmation, and he says I’m four months gone.” Her laugh sounded. To Charles, it was a victory paean. “A decently respectable interval after our marriage, yet, as Daddy would say, we are a fruitful pair.”

Still shaking, he sat with his wife on his knee and put one reverent hand on her belly. “He’s in there, growing — four months already! Are you well? Is Ned pleased?”

“Delighted. My pelvis is nice and wide, everything is as it ought to be, my basal metabolism is ideal — in short, Charlie dear, I’m bright eyed, bushy tailed, and my nose is moist.”

“It’s a boy,” he said positively.

“Latimer statistics favour a girl.”

“Grace has boys.”

“That’s what I mean. Daddy had four girls, so perhaps Grace has used up the Latimer boy credits already.”

“I’ll love a girl just as much. I married one.”

“True.” A shudder ran through her. “Still, today hasn’t been auspicious. Bear losing his job — pray it’s not an omen!”

“Any omens concern Bear and Grace, not us, Kitty.”

Grace decided to be frank about her activities, so when Bear woke next morning, she made him toast for breakfast and confessed that she had confided in Kitty.

“In the old days it would have been Edda, but circumstances have changed, Bear. Kitty is the one with the influence these days, so I asked her to see me last night, and she came here. No, no, I didn’t beg for a job, that’s not my business, any more than it’s Kitty’s business to beg one from Charlie. I simply wanted to tell my sister what’s happened, and ask her to send Charlie to see you here this morning. He’ll be here soon. I don’t care what you talk about or what you decide. I’ve done my bit in getting you together.”

He was staring at her, puzzled, not understanding how much Grace had changed over the past eight months, a change he had initiated by reducing her housekeeping allowance. The old, moaning Grace was nowhere to be found; instead, Bear encountered a firm and purposeful woman who completely understood her situation.

“What happened to you?” he asked her, confused.

The old Grace would have tried to play dumb; this new Grace didn’t. “I grew up in a hurry,” she said, pouring him more tea. “No more locomotive puff-puffs, Bear. Our sons can be excused that behaviour, but we’re adults. We’re parents and providers.”

“Don’t rub it in,” he whispered, wincing.

She stroked his bent back. “Bear, I’m not rubbing it in. What’s happened to us isn’t of our making, though we must do the sufffering. More, I’d bet, than the people who created this mess will ever suffer. I’m trying to make you see that we used to have the prosperity to cherish illusions, but that now the illusions are forbidden. Including pride, which Daddy calls a sin. Take the work Charlie Burdum offers you, for the sake of your sons.”

Badly wounded in spirit as well as in mind, adrift in an ocean of unknowns, Bear hardly heard this alien Grace, and failed utterly to grasp what she said about pride. Well, she was sheltered, how could she even begin to know what it had been like in Sydney, watching the crawlers and boot-lickers swarm to get the jobs other men were more entitled to, except they wouldn’t beg and grovel. He wanted his sons to grow up
men
, not boot-licking crawlers.

In the meantime, Grace rattled on about Charles Burdum and how he, Bear Olsen, should be very civil …

And then the next it seemed second later he was overwhelmed by this charming, dapper, smooth little man in the proper Corunda clothes, with his grand gestures and his carefree manner — not to worry, Bear, it would all be over in no time!

“Meanwhile, Bear,” Charles continued, full of enthusiasm, “I have an ideal job for you! I swear, ideal! There’s a new field opening up for men with exactly your kind of skills — the gift of the gab, shall we say? The field is called public relations, and it’s
fascinating
! As population grows and governments and other kinds of public institutions grow ever more faceless, it’s
becoming necessary to teach the general populace what’s going on. If the general populace isn’t educated about the faceless men in real authority or owning real power, trouble will erupt due to ignorance and misinterpretation.” The khaki eyes dwelled on Bear’s face. “Are you following me?” Charles asked.

“Yes,” said Bear.

Warming to his theme, Charles rushed on. “What I’m offering you, in effect,” he said, “is a selling job. But instead of selling goods, you’ll be selling ideas and services people don’t see, can’t touch the way they do a tin of ointment or bottle of liniment. Head up the new Corunda Public Relations Enterprise and sell Corunda!”

“Oh!” from Grace, awed.

“Sorry, I can’t take a job like that,” Bear said.

Charles looked stunned. “What?”

“It’s not for me.”

“Nonsense! You’re a brilliant salesman, it’s ideal.”

“I’m near enough to illiterate,” Bear said.

“Literate enough to have written good reports — I’ve seen them,” said Charles, betraying that he had already been thinking of Bear Olsen for his public relations enterprise.

“Sorry, no. Public relations? Confidence trickstering, more like,” Bear said. “I don’t want the job, it’s a swindle. We’d better get things straight now, Charlie. I don’t want
any
job from you because it would mean some poor blighter whose turn it really is would be passed over in favour of your brother-in-law. I’m the lowest man on Corunda’s job list, so I’ll go to the Town Hall and register for available work, take my proper turn. But I
will not
shame my origins by taking a dole for no work!”

With a sound like a rubber cushion suddenly emptied of air, Grace flopped down and gazed at Bear with tears in her eyes.

Charles swivelled to her. “Grace, make your husband see sense!”

Then Grace surprised Charles and Bear, though not nearly as much as she surprised herself. “No, Charlie, I won’t do that,” she said. “If Bear prefers not to be helped up the ladder a few rungs, then that’s all right by me. He’s the head of the household.”

“You’re cutting off your noses to spite your faces!”

“Then at least we won’t be stickybeaks,” said Grace valiantly.

Charles Burdum flung his hands in the air and stalked out.

So, head up, hat in hand, Bear Olsen registered for available work at the Town Hall, simultaneously declining the money doled out. Word ran like a blue flash of electric current around the district that Bear Olsen had principles, refused to take help from his powerful brother-in-law. There were those who roundly condemned him for his stupidity, but many more who praised him for his working man’s integrity.

His mood flattened into a dreary plain of hopelessness and he drifted around his house on Trelawney Way like a ghost, moving out of the way of wife or children when he encountered them as if he couldn’t stand being in their company. A kind of self-hatred forced him to cling to tattered pride as to a buoyant spar in a sea so thin it was more vapour than fluid.

“You can at least build Grace a decent chook run,” said Jack Thurlow on an infrequent visit; Grace had asked him to limit
his calls after his first one caused Bear’s mood to sink noticeably lower.

For Jack too the Olsen tragedy had come as a series of rude shocks, not the least of which was Grace’s newfound strength. Very bewildered, he was thankful to be asked to stay away, and obeyed, yet when Grace did request a visit, he was there immediately, all else thrust aside. He understood Bear’s reaction to Charlie’s offers of help, which kept coming as fast as Bear’s refusals. That Charlie didn’t understand lay in his ignorance of the working man who would choose to starve rather than take charity.

“It’s Bear’s business if he won’t take work from Charlie,” said Grace to Jack one day, “but he needs a good kick up the bum to do some work around
this
house. I want to keep good egg-layer chooks, but that means a far better run, and I want to grow the vegetables in season — chokos if I can’t grow anything else.”

Chokos! Jack visibly gagged. Oh, they grew like weeds and you could bake them, boil them, fry them, make jam or chutney out of them, but —! They were awful, awful, awful! As much taste as weak urine, and no nutritional merit anyone had found.

She was continuing, heedless of dropping dynamite like chokos. “But I can’t do everything myself, Jack, and the boys are too little to be much help. Bear should take over the garden and the chooks.”

By dint of providing the materials and a strict supervision, Jack saw that a good stout chook run was erected and some of Maude’s Rhode Island Red chooks installed, together with a daily bucket of his own homestead pickings. As Bear had no
idea how to cultivate potatoes or carrots or turnips, let alone cabbages or green beans or lettuces, Jack had perforce to show him, only to discover that his sons were more apt pupils. The best anyone could hope for from Bear was that he made sure he didn’t forget to shut the chook run door or tramp through a row of newly planted vegetables. He couldn’t stick with anything; the work devolved upon others while he remained flat and drifting, refusing the hard labour dole because to take it was unfair when he couldn’t labour.

The two little boys were made of sterner stuff. After Grace took them aside to explain to them how sick in the soul Daddy was, Brian and John were very good to him. Grace was rising to all sorts of occasions these days, but painting a picture to tiny children that they could grasp about being “sick in the soul” taxed all her descriptive powers. However, what she said sufficed; the boys’ conduct toward their father bore that out. They were gentle and unfailingly patient with Bear; it was, thought the awed Jack, as if they were the parent, Bear the child.

And in 1930, that frightful year, no one understood the myriad ways in which a mind could crash, or crack, or splinter, though Bear was luckier than most men in his wife and children, who never flew at him in rage, and rarely reproached him. Feeling it his duty, since no one else would, Charles Burdum railed at him several times; but Bear’s only reponse was to stand, face bewildered, and repeat that he was not going to pull strings.

“But this isn’t about pulling strings!” Charles cried. “It’s about caring for your family. You’re no help, Bear, no help!”

A statement that didn’t seem to impinge.

Kitty’s reaction was more practical. She donated a treadle Singer sewing machine that Grace accepted gladly. With Edda as instructor, she set out to become a dressmaker, making jackets and trousers for the boys from Liam’s and Charlie’s old suits, as well as all her own clothes. Cast-off dresses from Edda and Kitty were accepted too. And if her life were impossibly busy, at least that meant that when night came she could sleep like the dead. Her marital relations with Bear had gone after John was born, and now seemed remote as the dreams she was too tired to remember.