Bittersweet (46 page)

“How many children did he father?”

“That’s the oddest thing,” said Dorcas, musing. “Just Andrew.”

“How old is Andrew now?”

“Fourteen. He goes to the public school in Katoomba.”

“So nearly all your fat salary goes to your parents, son, and a blackmailing turd. My dressmaker must have saved your bacon.”

Dorcas licked her lips. “How did you know?”

The laugh was victorious, merry. “Darling, you walk like a woman who has borne a child, and you’re too worldly to be a virgin. That your secret was an illegitimate child was manifest. What else could so blight the job of a lifetime?” The violet died out of Kitty’s eyes. “It’s not too late to rescue Andrew. Bring him to live with you in Corunda at once — it’s not December yet, and when school starts in February, he’ll go to Corunda Grammar for a private education. By the time he matriculates, he’ll be a part of Corunda, well polished and cosily tucked under Charlie’s wing.”

A trembling Dorcas stared at her, aghast. “I can’t possibly tell Charles!” she cried. “He’d sack me in an instant —
the scandal!
”

Kitty blew a rude noise. “Rubbish! You silly woman, how could you work so long and closely with Charlie, yet know him so little? This is meat and drink to him! Charlie, the champion of lost causes, unmoved by your plight? The father of your son a putrid parasite feeding off the boy’s mother, draining her dry for fourteen years? My husband both esteems and likes you — it’s his answer! Is Andrew an attractive boy?”

“He’s handsome, but he has something better —
character
.”

“Tell Charlie!” Kitty urged. “Tell him right now — today, this minute. He’s down at the other end of this great echoing cathedral, a few yards away. Get up, get up!
Get up, woman!
Go and tell him just as you’ve told me, and ask him to rid you
of Andrew’s father. Oh, he’ll love that! It’s been so long since Charlie donned his armour that the shine has worn off, and his warhorse is creaking in every joint. This will put the spring back in his step! Go, go!”

Intimidated by Kitty’s bullying, Dorcas fled to bare her sins.

Kitty went to put a trunk-line call through to Lady Schiller II in Melbourne. Christmas of 1933, she had resolved, would be a reunion in Corunda for all four Latimer sisters. Ten days, Christmas through to New Year … The only affairs left unsettled were her own.

That thought glowing like blown-on coals, coming on sunset Kitty drove to
Corundoobar
to find Jack in from the paddocks. She knew because his petrol-drum mailbox by the cattle-guard was empty. Leaving her car at the bottom of the hill, she strolled up through the blooming gardens, pausing to admire a single glorious rose, a bush of weeping Geraldton wax, sweetpeas rioting across a trellis.
Where does he find the time?
Yes, he was in; Alf and Daisy came to greet her, a business of grins and tail wags — Jack’s dogs were too well-behaved to leap and lick. Then he came out onto the front verandah, hair still damp from the shower, and waited for her.

On the top step, now reduced to smallness by his height, she tilted her chin to look up.

“I’m moving in with you,” she said, “right this minute.”

“Not before time,” he said gravely. “I won’t say I was fed up with waiting, but I have grown a few grey hairs on moonless
nights.” His hand described a wide circle in the air. “Here we are, Kitty. All yours, from me to mine.”

“I’ll be your mistress, but I can’t be your wife. Charlie would never consent to a divorce.”

“We live to please ourselves on
Corundoobar
. We’ll take you on any terms with nary a shadow of regret.”

No scrap of doubt assailed her, even now the moment was a reality. The embraces, the kisses, the love-making would come, but for some little while Kitty felt in no need of them, too exalted by the surge of peace and comfort invading her spirit.

And, understanding what she felt, he stood with her to watch the crimsoned sun swallowed by the messengers of night.

Then he slipped an arm about her and turned her to the door.

“Come inside, it’s chilly.”

“I have a suitcase in the car, but the car has to be returned to Charlie,” she said, one nagging barb. “I want nothing from him, nothing!”

“I know. Don’t worry yourself, and don’t talk of him.”

Bert the cat, filling Jack’s chair, was tipped off it so quickly that he landed, half-asleep and hugely indignant, in a heap on the floor. Jack sat down with Kitty on his lap.

When she leaned against him she could feel the steady rhythm of Jack’s heart, and nothing else mattered. Would ever matter. Oh, dear God, grant him the gift of a long life! The only fear that will dog me now is the thought of existing without him. Her head went down on his shoulder, her eyes closed on wet lashes. I have come home at last.

A
s Deputy Superintendent of a hospital whose Superintendent was in the throes of handing his duties over to her, Tufts offered Edda and Rawson a staff cottage on hospital grounds when they came for Christmas of 1933, then did the same for Grace and her boys. As a Member of Parliament, Charles Burdum couldn’t run Corunda Base; Tufts was assured and confirmed in her position. She and Liam had bought adjacent houses on Ferguson Street and torn down the dividing fence; they shared meals, garden, leisure, two dogs and three cats, the animals neutered. The Rector thought them the only couple he had ever encountered who in mental attitude went straight from youth to old age; uplifted by some things, moved by all things, defeated by no things.

All Corunda was still reeling from the shock that ripped the district’s fabric asunder when Kitty Burdum, without a moment’s notice or a by-your-leave, left Charles Burdum and his many millions to move out to
Corundoobar
, there to live in flagrantly open sin as Jack Thurlow’s mistress. No hiding, no skulking, no shrinking from any or all the populace. She had
taken nothing with her from Burdum House — none of her jewels, furs, clothes — none of her furniture or ornaments — not even (said she, rather strangely) a cheese grater. With her went her books, papers, letters and snapshot albums.

What floored everybody was that she looked so
shamelessly
happy! As for Jack — well, he wasn’t the sort to make a fuss about anything, including his adulterous union. However, people did notice that there were rather fewer lines on his face than of yore, and that sometimes, when he didn’t realise he was under observation, he wore a look of slightly catlike complacence. Like his famously massive grey cat, Bert.

Charles Burdum had been absolutely the first to know. A note from Kitty to Dorcas had asked her to make sure that he was left severely alone until he indicated that he wanted company. An instinct told Dorcas to obey it implicitly.

So on Friday he came alone to breakfast and found a parchment letter lying on his service plate, Kitty’s wedding and engagement rings atop it like glittering garnish on a pastry packet. The sight of the rings said it all; chest and belly filled with lead weights, he tore the envelope apart in a frenzy.

As sheer incredulity gave gradual way to certainty, Charles’s first thoughts were of Sybil, daughter of a duke, and his humiliation then; except that this was way, way down time’s road and mattered far, far more. A roaring rage overwhelmed him, a fury that had him retching, the sterling silver fork in one hand a twisted mockery, the howl from his gaping mouth too high and shrill for any ear. He, Charles Burdum, had been dumped like a carcass left too long in the meat safe.

He hungered and thirsted to hurt her — hurt her so badly he all but killed her, spared her by a sliver to exist in a living hell hotter than fire yet colder than ice, crushed and mangled by teeth, barbs, claws, fangs, talons, her beauty obliterated. Hating her, he cursed her, wondering in the abysses of his mind why there wasn’t some emotion greater than hate to feed his rage.

The moving picture of hate went on and on, hissing and slithering through his brain until even he could think of no new horrors to inflict upon her. That was when he reached the very bottom of his pit, to sprawl there lifeless, no sensations left, just the vacuum of a terrible loss that would never heal, no matter how many splints and bandages he applied.

Crawling up out of the pit was worse, done as it was through sorrow and despair, spasms of grief, a monstrous sadness that saw the tears fall until he felt he bled them, a life force quitting
him whom she had found unworthy, inadequate. The love of my life, my Kitty, my Kitty!

On a waste of featureless plain above the pit he waited for animation with no idea in him what form it might assume, wondering if this were death and he transfigured, or if it were life and he blasted to a crisp in the furnaces of the soul. But then he remembered he had crashed, and died yet hadn’t died, simply risen from the flames like a phoenix, newborn and alive amid the ashes.

He was Charles Burdum, though not the man existed before this day. Say it, Charles!
Say it!
Before Kitty dumped you. Yes, a new Charles Burdum. A different Charles Burdum. Who would carry the mark of the pit within him, forever branded; but no one —
no one!
— would ever suspect it. His path was clear, found among the tempests that had consumed him. Oh, Kitty, how I love you! And you dumped me. You dumped
me
! Charles Burdum.

Fortitude, understanding, forgiveness, kindness, generosity — I will radiate all those virtues and many more, because a benign, cheerful, perpetually unself-conscious Charles Burdum will tell the world that his adulterous slut of a wife doesn’t have the power to injure such a man in any way. What,
that
? Poof! A nothing, truly — would
I
lie?

An immediate divorce from Kitty, as quiet and unremarked upon as his influence could make it, freeing her to go to her tall, lusty, oafish, bucolic Prince Charming and legitimise their (many, no doubt) children. Not too proud to take her sister’s leavings — did they compare notes about how well he performed in bed? For that matter, how many of the four had he bedded?

As for himself, that was easy. The new Charles Burdum was divorced but respectable, an Independent M.P. who kept his feminine relationships light and used his horse-faced political adviser on the few occasions when he needed a hostess — no breath of scandal would linger there! Odd, that she should turn out to have a son. Well, Burdum House was about to undergo yet more rebuilding — a spacious flat for him, and another for Dorcas and Andrew Chandler. Perhaps the lad would turn out to be a greater consolation than a son of his own body might have proved? Certainly were that son of Latimer stock. Vulgar, common sluts — but that’s your
private
opinion, Charles! In public? Merely misguided, poor things.

I fell down because I mistook a slut for a lady, he thought, but I have been raised up again, a phoenix. I still have a life.

The Rector had a hard tussle with his conscience that love for his child and a character big enough to admit his own failings saw him come out in public support of Kitty’s socially damned action. To live in open adultery made her many enemies, though few condemned Jack, seen as her dupe. Feeling strangely freed, the Reverend Thomas Latimer doffed surplice and stole to retire; within two days of the scandal’s breaking he had packed up what he needed of his property from the Rectory and moved into Grace’s cream-and-green cottage on Trelawney Way. His reasoning was straightforward: if God had not made Man and Woman with failings, of the flesh and other, worse kinds, there would be no need for men of religion any more than there would
be a need for police. Therefore to abandon them when they cried out for help was as big a sin as theirs.

Unsanctioned it might now be, but his work at the orphanage, the asylum, the hospital and relief for those suffering from the Great Depression went on, and was gratefully received. Life in the Trelawneys, he soon discovered, was rich, varied, and stuffed with sin. Just his kind of place, really. Of course he paid Grace rent, grew vegetables, and cosseted the chooks into laying.

His daughters were now a larger part of his life than they had been, but when he was in Corunda he never let a day go by without visiting Maude. It kept him humble, in mind of God’s mysteries.

Her sisters were wholeheartedly glad for Kitty. Their guilt at pushing her into marrying Charlie had weighed on them more heavily as time went on. So to see her settled with the right man was as much a relief as a pleasure. Perhaps only Edda understood how long and painful Kitty’s journey had been, but Edda was the sister slew the demons, and had been there to slay all of Kitty’s save Charles, the last and most terrible. Him, she had to slay alone.

Even though scant time had elapsed between Kitty’s leaving and this gathering of the four sisters and their men, Charles Burdum’s attitude was being made plain to all and sundry: he was going to be a martyr heroically enduring the stigma of a cuckold. What,
that
? Poof! A nothing, truly — would
I
lie?

They congregated for Christmas dinner at
Corundoobar
, including the Rector, who read Charles aright.

“Very shrewd,” he said to Rawson, whom he liked far more as a person than he had Charles. “No sign of sour grapes, certainly nothing that would turn his political supporters against him. I rejoice for Kitty’s sake. Some, of course, will never forgive her.”

“It’s also meant that the major newspapers can’t dig up enough sordid details to create a widely publicised scandal out of it,” said Rawson, loving the Rector as a person who wouldn’t turn away in disgust if he knew Rawson’s secret. “The inhabitants of Corunda are reluctant to discuss the matter with outsiders.”

Liam Finucan laughed. “Corundites may love Charlie, but they also love Jack Thurlow, little as Charlie likes to hear it.”

Jack didn’t hear it because he was cooking the dinner, and had his head over a baking dish in which reposed a magnificent haunch of baby porker, its skin crackled to perfection. He lifted his head, smiling. “Dinner’s not far off,” he announced.

“Do you keep your own pigs?” Rawson asked.

The fair brows rose. “I’d not eat butcher’s pork. Mine is free, the little blighters run everywhere. Keeps the fat down and the flesh tender. The only thing keeps them in their sty is their swimming pool. They lie in it with their snouts out, blowing bubbles. And right when they’re old enough to become a nuisance, it’s time to cook roast pork with trimmings.”

“Are you going to let Kitty cook?” Liam asked.

“I’m teaching her, but she’s such a midget I’ll always have to deal with a haunch of pork.”

Tufts sat sipping her sherry and enjoying listening to Grace on the subject of living in a posh part of Sydney. Who would
ever have guessed that the Widow Olsen would take to it like a bee to an ocean of nectary flowers?

“I make no secret of my Depression troubles,” she said, waving her glass around without spilling a drop. “One has to have an aura of glamour, and a husband who suicided over the Depression is exactly right. Not for the boys, though. They love the life!” Her eyes went a darker grey. “When Kitty jumped the fence into a new paddock I did worry a bit that Charlie would go sour, which would have been a shame. Still, I had Rawson up my sleeve, so I didn’t stew the way I would have were there no Rawson.”

“Would you have traded your new life for Kitty’s jump at freedom from Charlie?” Tufts asked.

Grace looked scornful. “That’s an unworthy question, and you know it. To see Kitty happy, I’d gladly go back to life on Trelawney Way.”

“Put your hackles down, Grace,” Tufts said, grinning. “I’m only playing devil’s advocate.”

Edda and Kitty sat together on the homestead verandah gazing across the three-quarter-circle bend in the river that embraced the house and gardens. From inside came the murmur of voices rising and falling as Tufts caught up with Grace’s doings and the men provided a resonant background rumble.

“Are you happy?” Kitty asked Edda, an honest question.

The porcelain face turned in respectful surprise. “You were worth saving, to ask me that.”

“Yes, I realise it. But you haven’t answered me.”

“I
am
happy. Just not ecstatically happy, like you,” Edda said. “I’m doing the work I was born to do, and my husband loves me.” She sighed, a sound more wistful than sad. “I suppose I wish he loved me more.”

“Then it’s as well you have your work. Nothing is so sweet that there’s no tinge of bitter in it.”

Edda laughed. “That’s life you mean, Kitty. Bittersweet.”