Bittersweet

by Colleen McCullough

  “Not this time. Too boringly masculine. The Depression has rather put the kybosh on festivities, I notice from the agenda I was sent. What I want to know is why these confabs always take place in Melbourne?” he demanded, packing white tie and tails on top of his dinner suit.

  “You must know why the chin-wags always take place in Melbourne, Charlie,” she said, taking over the packing. “Think! There are always lots of big-wigs from England present, and they have to sail from England to Australia — ten thousand miles by sea. Perth is out of the question as a meeting venue, and the next port of call is Melbourne. To stay aboard for Sydney means another thousand miles at sea, when they’re absolutely dying to disembark. Now if the aviators flew planes holding hundreds of people, then Sydney would be closer to London than Melbourne. Melbourne would decline. While people have to sail to Australia, Melbourne wins.”

  “You’re quite right,” Charles said ruefully. “Melbourne is the first important port of call, which is why Sir Otto Niemeyer will stagger down the gangplank to kiss Melbourne soil rather than sail another thousand miles to Sydney. Clever Kitty!”

  She waved a pile of handkerchiefs under his nose. “I may be a bit swollen around the middle, but I can still help you pack. Your suits, however, I dare not touch. You should be using one of those stand-up cabin trunks that open out and have little sets of drawers in them as well as space to hang suits.”

  “I’d look a fool to arrive with a cabin trunk.”

  “Rubbish. Sir Otto Thingummy will have several, I imagine.” Kitty drew a breath. “In fact, Charlie, you need a valet.”

  “Yes, I do, but classless Corunda would condemn me.”

  “It’s another job, though not for a Corundite, alas, even poor Bear. Hire a valet in Melbourne, Charlie, and bugger Corunda!”

  “I suppose I could put a cabin trunk in the guard’s van.”

  “You could indeed. Where are you staying?”

  “Menzies, as usual.”

  “Good, it has valets who unpack. Why you, Charlie? You’re not in any parliament.”

  “Men in my position always have important enough political friends to linger in the immediate vicinity of conferences, though that’s not why I’m going. I’m personally invited by Sir Otto.”

  Kitty sat on the edge of his dressing room chair. “Just who is this Sir Otto? He sounds like a German sausage maker.”

  “Sir Otto Niemeyer is one of the governors of the Bank of England, and an old friend of mine from City of London days. More than that I do not know, my glorious Kitty, but I’m dying to find out why he’s made that dreadful voyage.”

  “Yes, I see why you’re curious. He’s an extremely important man, so whatever he’s come for must be vital back in England — I mean, four or five weeks in a stiflingly hot cabin, seasickness and boredom? I’m sure he’ll be on the highest deck where the wind blows through his cabin, but home it’s not. Of course, he will be port out and starboard home, but the sun is relentless.”

  Charles eyed her in amusement. “Anyone would think you’d done the voyage, Kitty. Port out and starboard home?”

  “The sun, silly!” she said, dimples showing. “It shines on the starboard side of the ship going to Australia and the port side going home to England, so those in the know always book a cabin on the shadier side. It’s where the word ‘posh’ comes from.”

  “My dear, you are a positive mine of information!”

  “I don’t know about that, but Sir Otto is a worried man.”

  Every good hotel in Melbourne was jam-packed with politicians and the small army of hangers-on they seemed to drag with them like a comet its tail, Charles Burdum thought as he moved into his usual two-room suite at the Menzies Hotel. He liked its clubby atmosphere, the staff who sported touches of red-and-white Menzies tartan, the existence of valets and ladies’ maids, and the excellent cuisine. His prized Miss Cynthia Norman had nipped in ahead of the pack and secured him a Rolls-Royce car and chauffeur for his visit, and Kitty had been right, the cabin trunk worked. It didn’t go against him, either, that he was a generous tipper; Australians, he had discovered very early on, were notoriously grudging tippers.

  Dropping Sir Otto’s name as his patron, Charles found himself invited to all kinds of meetings, but that all paled compared to the fact that he dined alone with Sir Otto on his first evening ashore. It seemed Sir Otto had some bones to pick, and had chosen Charles as his primary confidant — not illogical, given the two things Sir Otto had in common with Charles and no one else in Melbourne: their long City of London ties and their Englishness.

  “My dear Charles, the City hasn’t been the same since you packed your traps and emigrated,” the Bank of England man said over pre-dinner drinks. Both men wore black tie.

  “You exaggerate,” said Charles, smiling. “I was based more in Manchester than in London.”

  “Perhaps, but you were close enough to answer our call when needed, as in sticky or intriguing situations. You surely didn’t emigrate over Sybil, my dear fellow?”

  “Lord, no!” Charles cried, astonished. “Frankly, I was bored, and it seemed a good moment to take up my antipodean inheritance. How amazing! It seems a lifetime, but it’s really not yet two years ago.” The face went gargoyle. “On the bottom of the globe, Otto, I am convinced the world — and time — turn faster. I am married to a woman who eclipses Sybil as the Hope Diamond does a chunk of glass.”

  “You didn’t bring her to Melbourne?”

  “No. She’s expecting our child.”

  “How splendid!” Sir Otto leaned back in his chair. “Do you know why I’m here, Charles?”

  “Certainly because of the Depression, but on whose behalf I do not know. I hadn’t thought these bumbling fools intelligent enough to call for expert opinion.”

  “As to their being bumbling fools, it seems all governments are comprised of those in the face of this disaster, but no, you are right. They did not summon me. I came at the Bank’s behest.”

  “What are the Bank of England’s intentions?”

  “To persuade the various governments of this continent that they cannot default on their loan repayments, particularly on the repayment of interest.”

  The gargoyle look increased; Charles whistled softly. “I have heard the fringe lunatics muttering behind their hands about denying international debt, and some fairly responsible men have muttered about postponing loan interest repayments until local suffering abates, but I didn’t give any of it credence. You’re implying, I think, that a large part of the political establishment is restive about loan repayments?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  The first course arrived; they ceased to speak of vital subjects while the waiters hovered, then ate in a pleasurable silence that persisted, save for small talk, until the ruby port and Stilton cheese arrived, when the battery of servitors retired, leaving them to private discussion.

  “It is clear,” said Sir Otto, “that federation and self-government went to Australian heads. Without the strong veto powers of British governors, and flushed by the demand for wool as well as the continued production of gold, both the federal and various state governments went on a spending spree. Do you realise how much Australian wool was gobbled up by the Great War? Home on the sheep’s back! I daresay no one saw an end to the prosperity back in 1925, whereas all save fools should have.”

  “I see,” said Charles slowly. “Pray continue, Otto.”

  “The various state governments have done much of the spending over the last decade, mostly, I believe, because the federal government wanted the glory without the administrative work. Taking the gold and other reported mineral deposits into account, it was decided in Canberra that Western Australia should not be permitted to secede, despite its clamourings. This led to Western Australia’s being disproportionately gifted when the federal government disbursed funds.”

  Sir Otto put the tips of his fingers together and looked solemnly across them at his intent listener; he was enjoying himself. “By far
the biggest spender was the most populous state, New South Wales, which, due to huge financial pressures in Perth and Melbourne, was always short-changed in Canberra. So New South Wales took out massive loans in the City of London markets to finance an ambitious program of public works. The state is now dangerously close to defaulting. Other states, though less parlous, are also on thin ice, and my colleagues in the Bank fear the federal government could default.”

  “You know, Otto, so tell me — how much has been borrowed?” Charles asked, heart sinking.

  “Upward of thirty million pounds a year.”

  “Ye gods! A crippling interest.”

  “But agreed to when the money was borrowed.”

  “Yes, of course. Go on, please.”

  Sir Otto shrugged. “That’s why I’m here — what a frightful journey to have to make! Months wasted by the time I get back, though I hope to terrify the politicians into behaving. If I can, then my time will have been well spent.”

  “What do you think of the country, if you can make any sort of assumption on such short acquaintance? I know some federal people boarded in Fremantle to start the ball rolling.”

  Sir Otto’s mouth went down. “I think Australia has an inflated idea of its own importance, first and foremost. Then, it has a living standard for the general populace that is disgracefully high. The working man lives far too well! His wages are too high and his expectations from life unrealistic. In short, he doesn’t know his proper place.”

  “I see. What measures will you recommend?”

  “Imperatively, that there can be no defaulting on repayment of foreign debt, particularly interest. Absolute retrenchment. Every government down to municipal level must immediately cease all spending on public works — cut its civil service to the bone — reduce the wages and salaries it does pay — and decrease all social benefits, from monetary doles to pensions. The Australian pound is in the throes of devaluation and will eventually, we feel, sit at around thirty per cent less than the pound Sterling. If there must be defaults on interest payments, then let them be on a government’s own bonds, which I understand pay Australian owners nine per cent. Local debt is not at issue, just foreign.”

  For a long moment Charles said nothing, just sat frowning at Sir Otto’s fingertips; suddenly he gave a shudder, like a dog shaking off an icy bath. “Oh, Otto! Of smiles there will be none save to speed your passage home, I fear. You are the harbinger of apocalyptic suffering, since it’s already clear that the Great Depression has hit Australia hardest anyway.”

  “No, only second hardest,” said Sir Otto. “The Germans are doing it the worst. Their war reparations have bankrupted them. The French want their pound of flesh.”

  “Well, the French and the Germans have been snarling at each other across the Rhine for two thousand years, but what has poor Australia ever done except try to make life kinder for the working man? Not, in City of London eyes, a laudable aspiration.”

  Disillusioned and depressed, Charles didn’t linger in Melbourne. Next morning in darkness he took the day train for Sydney, his mind seething with so many unpalatable facts that he hardly noticed having to change trains at Albury–Wodonga, on the state border. Victorian and New South Wales rail gauges were different. Federation or no, the Australian colonies all behaved like autonomous nations. In fact, thought Charles, detraining at Corunda, the only way the Australian nation could have made its mark was to own a population as vast as its land area, like the United States of America. Whereas its tiny populace was jammed into six cities on a near-illimitable coast, leaving three million square miles of nothingness inside. Corunda was a very big city-town, but had only 50,000 people all told. After the six cities, one of the biggest towns in Australia.

  But I am learning, he thought, finding Corunda still under a glaze of snow, and a fresh fall threatening.

  “I can’t make head or tail of it,” he said to Kitty, very surprised and pleased to see him back so soon. His cabin trunk was hardly disturbed, but with him came a suave, impassive individual named Coates; Charles had hired a valet by the simple expedient of poaching one from Menzies Hotel. “Coates can have a staff cottage on Burdum Row and the use of one of the flivvers,” he went on, changing the subject. “He seemed delighted at the chance to join me.”

  “I should think so, dear. It’s a private post, he’ll live like a lord,” said Kitty. “Tell me about Sir Otto Sausage-maker.”

  “According to Sir Otto, Coates shouldn’t be allowed to live like a lord,” said Charles, burying his lips gratefully in his Scotch. “Sir Otto is going to insist upon absolute retrenchment at every level of government, though, since Corunda Base has its own money, no government can order me to stop building it. Nor can they cut my state funds discriminately. I’ll get whatever the other hospitals get, as health has to be funded.”

  “But government money comes from taxes, and if no one has a job, no one’s paying taxes,” Kitty objected.

  “Oh, some people will pay taxes. Retrenchment is just a way of using every single penny that comes in to send out of the country in loan repayments. Borrow too much, and you’re bankrupt. Retrenchment is a euphemism, Kitty, for bankruptcy. The people of the country won’t benefit, the foreign moneylenders will.”

  “Sometimes, Charlie, you’re hard to understand.”

  “Oh, I’m smarting, that’s all. I came away from Melbourne with this image in my mind of Otto and me in the Menzies dining room, sipping the finest wines and eating the finest foods, clad in black tie, waited on by obsequious servants — and I know that Otto believes with heart, intellect and soul that he deserves to live better than some little Jewish tailor sitting cross-legged on a table getting a penny a pair. No matter that they both share the blood of Abraham — class is class. Otto believes in keeping the working class down, he genuinely thinks it criminal to offer them a decent life. To him the social strata are fixed in stone. Well, I don’t believe in the rule of the proletariat because it’s devoid of individualism and encourages civil servants to think they can run anything when the truth is they can run nothing — but I’m damned if I like Sir Otto Niemeyer’s world either!”

  “There must be a happy medium somewhere,” said Kitty, out of her depth. “Jack Lang won’t favour Sir Otto’s measures, will he?”

  “Jack Lang is in opposition, he doesn’t have executive clout. He has no power, darling, no power. All I see is a huge increase in suffering,” said Charles. “Here’s hoping the Scullin government isn’t completely cowed by Sir Otto.”

  “Jimmy Scullin,” said Kitty scornfully, “can be cowed by a cabbage moth. He’s a shallow opportunist.”

  Yes, it was balm to the soul to have an ardently supportive wife, but it couldn’t solve Charles Burdum’s political dilemma. Torn between his situation in life, which inclined him to Tory ideals, his innate conviction that the working man was a creature deserving of respect, which inclined him to Socialist views, he kept on wavering, neither one thing nor the other.

  What was basically wrong with all the existing political parties, he concluded, was that they had been formulated for the Old World — for tired and war-torn, resource-exhausted Europe.

  So it dawned on Charles that what he had to do was create a political party engineered to meet Australia’s needs, a credo that wasn’t shackled to Old World political ideas and systems. His credo would have to see both Capital and Labour in new and different terms, and above all work to diminish artificial barriers between men. For instance, why, why, why had Bear Olsen thrown the public relations job in his face? What was wrong with the man’s social attitudes, that he could dismiss public relations as a swindle? What lay at the base of these inexplicable contradictions? Until he found out, he couldn’t possibly run for parliament, for he saw himself as an ignoramus and Bear Olsen as a kind of riddling oracle. Well, no more meetings and conferences! Research instead.

  He thought, and he wrote. A child’s school exercise book, he discovered, was an ideal repository for his observations, d
eductions and theories, especially since one could be closed like a filing cabinet, however many necessary could be used at the same time, and they stored upright on a shelf in labelled rows.

  But all that was for the future. He began, was all.

  “Are you with me, Kitty?” he asked on his return from Melbourne. “Will you be here for me?”

  The eyes flashed violet with love and pride. “Always and forever, Charlie.”

  At first, she spoke the absolute truth. Had Charles continued in the direction of hospital, orphanage and purely Corunda projects, Kitty’s “always” would have endured. But as winter blew itself out, as spring came and went in a perfumed glory of flowers, conversation at the dinner table and wherever else it happened turned more and more inexorably to one sole subject — politics. And Kitty found in herself a rapidly growing dislike of politics, politicians, and Charlie’s political aspirations.

  18

  At the end of October, fully seven months gone, Kitty Burdum suffered a miscarriage; the child was beautifully formed and male, but dead on birth, and had been since before contractions started.

  “I don’t understand,” she whispered from her hospital bed, face and pillow drenched with tears. “Everything was perfect, I was so well! Then — this!”

  Though he was deeply affected, Charles Burdum hid his own devastation better, especially from his wife; his tears, equally bitter, were shed at home, alone in the night. Had he realised it, he would have been wiser to weep with Kitty, a grieving couple united by their loss and each a witness of the other’s pain. As it was, Kitty deemed her sorrow far greater than his, and, loving him, laid what she saw as remote self-control at the door of his maleness. After all, a father had no contact with his child in utero, so how could he be expected to feel what she, the custodian, felt?

  “It’s not unheard of,” said Dr. Ned Mason, “to lose a first baby, Kitty, though this late is unusual. Possibly you’re a wee bit anaemic, so eat plenty of spinach, even if you detest it.”