The Touch (21 page)

“Yes,” she said, “go down to Kinross and disturb Ruby.”

I wonder, went her last conscious thought, what Ruby’s son by Prince Sung is like? What an exotic combination. Eleven years old, and in a school for swells in England. I suppose his mother sent him to school so far away in order to conceal his far-from-swell origins. Clever of her.

But Alexander didn’t go straight down to Kinross to disturb Ruby; first he went out on to the terrace where the light from the house spread golden bars across the lawn.

Tonight has been a bitter blow, he thought. Elizabeth does not love me. Until tonight I had believed, running my hands gently and lusciously across the body she now bares for me, that my day would come. That she would awake to my touch, arch her back, moan and murmur, use her own hands and lips to explore my body, caress the parts of it that she recoils from if I try to guide her there. But tonight has shown me beyond all shadow of a doubt that my wife will always recoil. What did you do to her, Dr. Unspeakable Murray? You poisoned her for life. She equates sex with corruption, so what sort of fellow would she fall in love with, if she ever did? God help him if he tried to touch her!

“I TOLD YOU, she’s frozen” was Ruby’s verdict when he ended his tale of the exchange between himself and Elizabeth. “There are some women whom nothing on earth can arouse. She is one. An iceberg. You’re an adept at the art of love—if you can’t provoke her into a response, no one can. Take what you need where you can find it, Alexander.” A throaty laugh erupted. “She’s up there in heaven, I’m down here in hell. I always knew that hell had to be more exciting than heaven—must be, holding such a motley lot. You’re just going to have to make do with two women. Oh, what a terrible prospect!”

A COOLNESS entered Alexander’s attitude toward Elizabeth from that confrontation on, though if anything he came home for dinner more often, and spent the evenings in her company. Her skill on the piano was increasing as she developed a love for music, but, said Alexander, who had begun to enjoy needling her,

“You play the same way as you make love. Without passion. Indeed, one might almost say, without expression of any kind. The technique is a credit to Miss Jenkins, who must have to work very hard. It’s a pity you’re not prepared to give a little of your inner self away, but you like to keep your secrets, don’t you?”

That hurt, but if Alexander had become coolly cruel, Elizabeth had become extremely controlled.

“Does Ruby play?” she asked politely.

“Like a concert pianist, with the whole range of emotions.”

“How nice for you. Does she sing too?”

“Like an operatic diva, except that she’s a contralto—not a great many principal parts are written for contraltos.”

“I’m afraid I don’t know the word.”

“Her voice is deep. I haven’t heard you sing yet.”

“Miss Jenkins doesn’t think I ought to sing.”

“I’m sure she knows best.”

Since there was no one to whom she could confide these short exchanges, Elizabeth got into the habit of discussing them with herself—an unproductive business, yes, but at least some kind of relief.

“It’s better to have Ruby out in the open, don’t you agree?” asked Elizabeth One.

“She’s certainly something to talk about—nothing ever happens that’s worth talking about,” said Elizabeth Two.

“I’ve stopped even liking Alexander,” said Elizabeth One.

“With good reason,” said Elizabeth Two. “He torments.”

“But I am carrying his child. Does that mean I won’t like his child? Does it?”

“I don’t think so. After all, look at his contribution—heave, grunt and groan for about a minute, that’s all. The rest is you, and you like yourself, don’t you?” asked Elizabeth Two.

“No,” said Elizabeth One sadly. “I want a girl to like.”

“So do I. He doesn’t want a girl,” said Elizabeth Two.

THE SINGLE track of standard-gauge rail line between Lithgow and Kinross left Lithgow traveling west-west-south for 25 miles before turning south-south-east to run its last 70 miles home. The speed of its construction stood in triumphant contrast to the sluggish progress of the Government railway between Lithgow and Bathurst, its mere 50 miles started in 1868 and still uncompleted.

At 1 in 100, the average gradient was excellent; Alexander had engineered the line himself, choosing to set it in the flanks of the mountains a hundred feet above the valley floors to keep it as level as possible. The track traversed ten stout, high wooden bridges over flood-prone creeks, and went through two 300-yard tunnels as well as nine cuttings. Because he used Chinese labor, he had no work problems; they were, he thought, consumed with admiration, like engines made of living tissue, just kept on going as if there was no word for exhaustion in Mandarin.

It had been costed at £8,000 per mile and it came in at £841,000—an enormous sum of money that Apocalypse Enterprises condescended to borrow from Sydney banks rather than the Bank of England—in return for concessions on the tax it paid to export gold to the Bank of England, which went guarantor. No surprise; the Bank of England already held more Apocalypse gold than that as collateral, and Mr. Walter Maudling confidently informed his directors that the gold would keep coming for many years yet. Alexander and Ruby were its customers. Charles Dewy preferred to bank in Sydney, Sung Chow to bank in Hong Kong, the up-and-coming new entrepôt in eastern Asia.

Alexander bought two similar but superseded locomotives from the Great Northern Railway in England, now doing well from amortizing its older stock, still in excellent condition and a great deal cheaper for a colonial railway company to buy than factory-new models.

Rolling stock came from a different English source. One car was a refrigerated van, as Mr. Samuel Mort’s freezing works in Lithgow and Sydney were now fully operational; Apocalypse Rail could rent the van out to the Government railway when it wasn’t needed, which would be most of the time. All rolling stock were fitted with spring-buffers at each end and spring draw-bar connections. Alexander’s greatest worry was the braking system, that of Fay and Newall: a continuous rod that passed under the train had to be triggered by several men at different parts of the train, which meant it could not be halted much short of a mile, and that men had to ride the train for no other reason than to apply the brakes if necessary. When he read of Mr. Westinghouse’s compressed air brake, he put in an order for Westinghouse air brakes, to be shipped from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, as soon as possible.

The single passenger car was a new one, thirty feet long and eight feet wide, mounted on bogied wheels. It had a private compartment for the Apocalypse directors, and well-padded seating on either side of a central aisle for other passengers, who would pay a second-class fare. It also had something absolutely revolutionary: a lavatory cubicle, thanks to Ruby’s nagging.

“You can witter on all you like about bogies, locomotives and brakes that work by air,” she said at a very early meeting of the board, “but it’sa disgrace that the men who design and own and run trains do not provide a lavatory for passengers. Oh, just lovely for you men! You nip out the carriage door on to the plate and pee to your heart’s content! You can even drop your trou and take a shit if you’re caught short. While we women sit in agony for nine hours between Sydney and Bowenfels unless the train stops, when there’s a stampede for the station lav. Well, I can’t do anything to boot the Government railway up the arse, but I can definitely boot the Apocalypse railway up the arse! I’m warning you, Alexander, put in a lavatory! Otherwise your life won’t be worth living.”

By the time the line was opened that late October of 1875, the bill stood at £1,119,000. That sum included the locomotives, the rolling stock, passenger car (with lavatory), refrigerated van, locomotive turntables, loading facilities at the Apocalypse coal mine and unloading facilities at Kinross, locomotive sheds, points systems and dozens of minor necessities. Despite this gargantuan expenditure, none of the Apocalypse directors deemed the railway a silly mistake; in the years to come it would pay for itself ten times over in the cost of shipping coal alone. For gold continued to come out of the mountain in ever-greater amounts, some of the ore so rich that whole chunks were lifted out hardly adulterated by quartz or slate, and the original vein had been joined by several more of equal quality.

The residents of Kinross town scarcely believed their luck. With the exhaustion of the placer fields its population had dwindled to 2,000 souls, all of whose work force was employed by Apocalypse in one way or another. Though Alexander chose not to sit on the town council, Ruby and Sung did, and one of Sung’s nephews, Sung Po, was the town clerk. He had been educated at a private school in Sydney, spoke English with a clipped Anglo-Australian accent, and was remarkably efficient. The miners and workshop hands were mostly white, the council employees Chinese, who were happier digging and hoeing than underground or whanging away at machines. Sung Po’s job, as spelled out by Alexander, was to dismantle the ugly relics of alluvial mining days, macadamize the streets with rock excavated from the mine and specially crushed, see to the erection of a town hall and offices, and badger the New South Wales Government for contributions toward a school and a hospital. A school for the 300 children of the town was already in place, but housed in a wattle-and-daub hall, while the hospital was still a wooden cottage next door to Doc Burton’s residence. There was to be a park in a central square around which the town hall, the Kinross Hotel, the post office, the police station and an assortment of shops would stand.

Of course the arrival of coal by train meant gas lighting for Kinross’s streets; Po hoped to find the funds to pipe gas into private dwellings within two years, though (of course) the Kinross Hotel piped it in immediately, much to Sam Wong’s delight; cooking on gas stoves was wonderful.

The only rumbles about the high Chinese population came from transients like commercial travelers, who soon learned to button their lips; the white Kinrossians knew well that the real power in the town, Alexander Kinross, would not tolerate anti-Chinese attitudes. For which reason, probably, it was the Chinese segment that grew in numbers, especially among Mandarins, in far fewer numbers than Cantonese throughout Australia. Here in Kinross they could live peacefully, go about their business without the risk of being arrested by the police, or beaten up in some alley. Like the white children, Chinese children went to school from the age of five to the age of twelve. One day Alexander hoped to see a high school come into being, but be they white Kinrossians or Chinese Kinrossians, the adults of the town saw no virtue in keeping their children at school for years and years. The best that Alexander could do was to offer scholarships to schools in Sydney for the very few children with educational aspirations. Even this was sometimes opposed by parents who didn’t want their sons or (horrors!) daughters talking down to them. Such feelings of inferiority appalled Alexander, who came from a country that prized education above all else; Australians, he had noted, were not on the whole enamored of educating their children to a higher level than they were themselves. And the Chinese felt the same. Time, he thought; that’s all it will take. One day they’ll all prize education the way we Scots do. It’s a ticket out of poverty and ignominy. Look at my poor little wife, with her two years of reading and not much writing or arithmetic. She may say that she would have preferred not to marry me, but her education has resumed since she has married me. Better words, better expressions—look at how well she attacked me over Ruby! She couldn’t have done that in Scottish Kinross!

BY LATE OCTOBER, when the Apocalypse railway opened, pregnant Elizabeth was too uncomfortable to attend, though she was able to be hostess at a dinner for the various dignitaries who came from Sydney, some of them red-faced because Kinross had a train before Bathurst did. In Lithgow, citizens of Bathurst picketed.

And finally Elizabeth met Ruby Costevan, who couldn’t possibly be omitted from the guest list. The only invitees who actually stayed in Kinross House were the Dewys; everybody else was at the Kinross Hotel.

The guests arrived on top of the mountain breathless and exclaiming; the ride up on the cable car was so novel that the ladies especially were as enthralled as frightened by it. Elizabeth wore an artfully cut dress of steel-blue satin and a new suite of jewelry Alexander had given her for the occasion: sapphires and diamonds set in white gold, the sapphires paler and more translucent than those inky stones tended to be. And, of course, her diamond ring on one hand and her tourmaline on the other.

Pregnancy had enhanced her beauty, and her slowly stiffening pride meant that she held her lovely head high on its graceful neck, her black hair piled up in rolls surmounted by a sapphire and diamond ornament. Be regal, Elizabeth! Stand beside your unfaithful husband at the door and smile, smile, smile.

Though naturally she didn’t credit Ruby with tact, Ruby did possess tact when she felt it called for, so she came up on the last car in the last place, escorted by Sung in full Mandarin glory. She had pleaded with Alexander to be excused, to no avail.

“In which case,” she had said, “you really ought to have offered your wife the opportunity to meet me in private before this pretentious affair. It’s hard enough for the poor little bitch to have to deal with this train-load of toffee-nosed swells without her having to deal with me as well.”

“I prefer that your first meeting with Elizabeth be among a crowd of strangers,” said Alexander in the voice that brooked no arguments. “She’s a trifle fey.”

“Fey?”

“Away with the fairies. Talks to herself a lot, so Summers tells me—Mrs. Summers is quite afraid of her. It wasn’t as bad when she could sit at the piano for music lessons, but once Miss Jenkins ceased her visits, she went downhill.”

“Then why,” Ruby had asked, exasperated, “didn’t you keep Theodora coming, even if she can’t teach the girl piano? Your poor little wife must be desperately lonely.”