Bittersweet

by Colleen McCullough

  Edda was a harlot — an easy, loose woman who gave her sexual favours to men outside of marriage, men like Jack Thurlow. And Kitty knew! How could she possibly condone it without admitting Edda was a harlot? Did it mean Kitty was only a virgin by accident when she married? Was she practised in all sex short of the ultimate act?

  Twenty minutes later the Rector rang: Kitty was with him and would be home later, no need to worry.

  “I won’t go back!” she cried to her father. “Daddy, he called Edda a harlot for marrying Rawson Schiller! As if she’d concocted a plot!”

  “Yes, yes, my dear, and quite unfounded, I know. But from what Charlie said when he came back from Melbourne, I gathered that on meeting Schiller he behaved like a small and aggressive dog setting eyes on a large and particularly complacent cat. Think about it, Kitty dear. Under the skin they’re so alike, despite the political differences — and those can be assumed or discarded in a trice — we see examples every day. Politics has to be played like a game, and those who throw themselves into it wholeheartedly are bound to be cruelly disillusioned. For it isn’t a fair or a clean game. It’s a tissue of lies — deceptions — personal ambitions — false hopes. It’s devoid of ethics or morality and designed to give victory to the unprincipled. A man with true aspirations to serve Mankind will be in social work or medicine or something with visible positive gains.” He gulped and looked confused. “Oh, dear! Oh, dear! I’m supposed to be pointing out their likenesses, aren’t I? Take it from an old man, they are veritable brothers poles apart.”

  An astonished Kitty stared at her father. “Daddy, you’re a cynic! I had no idea.”

  The Rector bridled. “I am not a cynic, I’m a realist!”

  “Yes, of course. I’m sorry.”

  “Kitty, our brain is the most remarkable instrument God ever gifted on living creatures. It flowers to greatest glory in human beings, and we are supposed to use it, not suffocate it in frivolities and rubbish. So think! Charlie and my new son-in-law have few real differences compared to what they have in common. My instincts say that Charlie isn’t as left as Rawson believes, and Rawson isn’t as right as Charlie believes. But there is one difference.”

  “And I have another, more important difference,” said Kitty, calming down. “Rawson is nearly a foot taller than Charlie.” She sighed. “His inferiority over his height will ruin Charlie.”

  “Get him into parliament. It’s an ideal career for short men.”

  “Nothing can excuse his attitude to Edda,” Kitty muttered.

  “Oh, Kitty, it was said to hurt you, not Edda! He doesn’t think her a trollop, even when he spoke his feelings aloud.” Thomas Latimer put the kettle on for a pot of tea. “Have a cuppa.”

  She stifled a giggle. “I fear I’ve blackened both his eyes.”

  “My goodness! Someone was annoyed! I’m very happy that my girls have so much love and loyalty for each other, but you must remember that your first love and loyalty is to your husband.”

  The back screen door banged, and Grace erupted into the old kitchen, clutching her letter and press release.

  “Oh, Kitty, you beat me here!” The Queen of the Trelawneys sat down. “A cuppa would be lovely, Daddy. What a shock, eh? My twin sister is now Lady Schiller.”

  “Miffed, Grace?” Kitty asked, lips twitching.

  “Miffed? Why ever would I be miffed?” Grace asked, astonished. “I can quite see why they did it secretly, though — imagine trying to plan a wedding that size! Half of upper-crust Melbourne would have to be invited, and Daddy could never afford the expense. It’s such poor form if the groom has to pay, I always think. Lady Schiller! Good for Edda! And she’s going to do Medicine at last!”

  “Yes, it’s wonderful,” Kitty said warmly. “I’m very happy.”

  “I bet Charlie isn’t,” Grace said shrewdly. “Cast in the shade.”

  “If you can’t say something pleasant, Grace, kindly do not say anything at all,” the Rector said sternly.

  “Oh, pooh, Daddy! He is miffed, Kits, isn’t he?”

  “Not exactly miffed, Grace, just a little sad that Edda will be moving out of Corunda’s ken.” The two faces looking at Kitty fell.

  “Oh, I hadn’t stopped to realise that,” said Grace.

  “Nor I,” said the Rector.

  But Tufts had, as she confided to Liam Finucan over morning tea in her office the next day.

  “One can’t replace Edda, that’s the saddest part. So steady and logical, so — oh, I don’t know, straight. I understand why she’s married him, it means a medical degree, and she must like him a great deal as well.”

  “You imply that love isn’t in the equation?” Liam asked.

  “Oh, yes. I don’t think Edda can love. At least not in the way Kitty and Grace do. She’s a scientist, not a romantic.”

  “That’s pretty sweeping. What about him, Heather?”

  She frowned. “Good question, you old wet-blanket. I daresay he must love her tremendously, to marry her. After all, he’s a man of forty, far wealthier than Charlie, significantly taller than Edda, and famous within the British Empire. Oh, how much I hope it works out! I pray it does! Because she didn’t marry him to be Lady Schiller or a social butterfly. Edda is Edda, a law unto herself. I must meet him, Liam! I’ll not rest until I do.”

  The Rector’s feelings were akin to Tufts’s, though they did not discuss the matter between themselves. All through Kitty’s stormy childhood it had been Edda spotted the warning signs, Edda rescued the hapless girl from her mother’s idiocies, Edda provided the strength; and all that said Edda was extremely perceptive, sensitive, loving and protective. But how would she cope with a Rawson Schiller? Why had she tied herself to his star in such an irrevocable way? Naturally Mr. Latimer knew about Jack Thurlow; he wasn’t blind, and he certainly wasn’t deaf to gossip. Contrary to God’s precepts it might be, but to Mr. Latimer the relationship was far preferable to an unhappy marriage, not to be broken asunder. Now here she was, a ladyship, and one day to be a doctor. And try though he did, he couldn’t smother his misgivings.

  For Maude Latimer the news came too late. Three times she had boiled the kettle dry and set the Rectory kitchen on fire, the last time badly. After a bitter struggle with himself, the Rector had been forced to put her in the old people’s hospice, a place she bumbled around, apparently happy, regaling everyone about her gloriously beautiful baby daughter, Kitty. Told of Edda’s marriage, it failed utterly to impinge. It was Kitty who would grow up to make a brilliant marriage. Edda? A nobody-nothing.

  It appeared that Charles Burdum was never going to climb down from his high horse. True to his word, the Rector sent Kitty home two hours after she had left, but her nose was in the air and she wasn’t sure she could forgive him, though for her father’s sake she was prepared to try. But she discovered an icy husband who declined dinner, then slept in his dressing room, where he instructed Coates to set up a bed. Face impassive, the man did as he was told, but Kitty knew the tale would be all over Corunda tomorrow — Charlie’s valet was superb at his job and a born gossip. The pubs might be shut and most people asleep, but Coates would find a way. There had been times when Kitty had slept alone for “health reasons” but it had always been her to move out of the master’s bed. This was very different — the master had done the moving. Sensational news!

  Kitty interpreted it as evidence that harlotry was contagious and she had caught it from Edda. In the air as well as in the blood. No doubt, thought the fulminating Kitty, Tufts and Grace also wore scarlet As on their foreheads. How dared Charlie carry on like a bourgeois evangelist! On which thought she fell fast asleep.

  In the morning she woke to find she’d had the most peaceful sleep in many moons, and leaped out of bed vibrating with energy. She hurried to breakfast. To find no Charlie. He was already at the hospital, said her trusty domestic help, Mrs. Simmons.

  “Splendid!” said Kitty cheerfully. “He and I have had the most ding-dong row, Mrs. Simmons, and I’m moving o
ut of our bedroom. I’d appreciate it if you and Beatrix — oh, and Coates! — would put my stuff in the lilac suite. Charlie hates the lilac suite!”

  Mrs. Simmons ostentatiously closed her mouth by putting her hand on her sagging lower jaw and shoving it upward. “Jeez, Kitty, that’s a bit drastic, ain’t it?” she asked, with a typical Corundite’s attitude toward her boss — no “ma’am”s for Mrs. Simmons!

  Accepting Mrs. Simmons’s reaction as the norm, Kitty was unfazed. “Yes, it is drastic, but at least it isn’t boring,” she said. “Do you know what the little twirp did? Called my sister Edda a harlot for marrying a rich man with a knighthood!”

  “Stiffen the snakes and use ’em as broom handles! The mauve rooms you mean, Kitty?”

  “Yes, the mauve rooms.”

  Leaving her removal in the capable hands of Mrs. Simmons, Kitty went to the orphanage and volunteered for nursing work there.

  “Kitty, you’re manna from heaven,” said Matron Ida Dervish, the head of an institution that had mushroomed in just two years. “A trained children’s nurse! My dear, we can work you nigh to death, but can you spare the time? Dr. Burdum must keep you busy.”

  “Time,” said Kitty, “is something I have acres and acres of, and no wretched government will allow me to utilise my training by giving me a job because I’m married. Well, the latter is debatable. I have had a right royal bust-up with Dr. Charles Burdum, who finds me surplus to his requirements. One glance around as I came in here, Ida, said that here at least I’m really needed. Charlie can rot!”

  “Kitty!” Matron Dervish exclaimed. “Say things like that, and it will be all over town in a second.”

  “It already is. Coates, Ida, don’t forget Coates,” said the indignant wife with a grin. “Oh, he’s hurt me, and I’ll have his guts for garters!”

  “Who, Coates?”

  “No, idiot! Charlie. Have you anything I can wear until I can have some plain uniforms sent down from Sydney? A pity our local shops have closed their doors in such numbers.” She sighed, sobering, her mood beginning to slide. “At heart I’m very hurt, but I’d sooner die than let Charlie see that. Calling Edda, of all people, a harlot!”

  “Is that what he did?”

  “Yes.”

  “The man’s touched in the head. Not to mention jealous.”

  A judgement many Corundites made as the news flew around, but not a universal one by any means. Charles Burdum had devoted and faithful followers in all walks, and they had no trouble in seeing the justice behind Charles’s comment about Edda Latimer, who might be a stuck-up bitch, but was definitely very shady when it came to morals. Though the cause of the Burdum quarrel was irrelevant; its piquancy lay in its participants, until now considered bound as closely as — well, twins.

  For a week Charles ignored Kitty, the public nature of his dilemma, and the fact that his wife was now inhabiting an ugly suite of rooms at the far end of his house. The gauntlet he had thrown down so thoughtlessly she had picked up with indecent eagerness, and was busy whacking his face with it. Not helped by the fact that he was sporting two black eyes no one would believe were the result of walking into a door.

  At the end of a week he was prepared to climb down a little, and seized his opportunity when he heard the front door shut at six in the evening: his wife had returned from her ridiculous job at the orphanage.

  “May I have a word, Kitty?” he asked courteously, appearing in the doorway of the small sitting room adjacent to his study.

  By rights she should be looking tired, for her work was no sinecure — hard, heavy, remorseless. His spy network had informed him that she was going through every head of hair for lice and nits, scrubbing every orifice mercilessly, all the jobs the understaffed and overcrowded orphanage staff hadn’t had time to do properly.

  Yet she was blooming, more beautiful than she had been in many months; the lilac-blue eyes blazed with life, the exquisite mouth was set contentedly, and her skin absolutely glowed with good health. This woman, bear stillborn babies? Never!

  “Certainly,” she said.

  “A drink?”

  “Cold beer would be lovely, thank you.”

  Having served her and watched her settle in a chair, he sat. “This has got to stop,” he said.

  “What’s got to stop?” she asked, sipping luxuriously.

  “The shenanigans. Proclaiming that you and I have been rowing, that you’re bored, that you dislike my attitude to your family.”

  “My goodness, what a litany of peccadilloes!” she said.

  “They have to stop.”

  “On your say-so, by your order?”

  “Yes, of course. I’m your husband.”

  “And what if I refuse to stop my shenanigans?”

  “Then I should be compelled to take steps.”

  “Steps… Do explain, please.”

  “I can cut off your allowance, decline to honour your debts, use my influence to make it impossible for you to do any kind of unpaid work. You are my wife, Kitty,” Charles said, strongly and with unflinching authority.

  If he had hoped to see her lose her temper, he was disappointed. Kitty stared at him as if he were a new, rather repulsive kind of insect. Then her upper lip curled. “Oh, Charlie, really!” she cried, exasperated but not angered. “Don’t be a bigger fool than God made you! Corunda is my home town, not yours. Try to beggar me in Corunda, and you’ll reap a whirlwind. I can ruin you in next to no time. Kitty Latimer, sister of that harlot Edda, both much beloved of the locals? It can’t happen. What’s more, you know it can’t happen. This is all a bluff, your last-ditch stand to acquire an obedient and subordinate wife. Well, eat shit!”

  “You have a harlot’s vocabulary,” he said, needing to say something yet having no comeback anywhere in the recesses of his mind. How much he loved her! Why were things going so wrong for him? Those wretched sisters of hers, always her sisters… It came hard to admit his jealousy, his possessiveness, for he had never experienced their like before Kitty entered his world, and now he realised that, loving her, he would never be free of the Latimer sisters.

  “Yes, I was always the salty-tongued twin,” she said with a smile, liking the idea. “When one grows up from infancy being hailed as the most beautiful child in creation, it becomes very necessary to develop a quality that can shock, disillusion people. I make no apologies for it, and I have no intention of apologising to you, Charlie, for having to suffer an insufferable insult. My sister Edda is a woman of total integrity and strong character, always intelligent, always unswerving in her loyalties. You dislike her because you sense a quality in her that declines to be owned. It’s a quality I don’t have, unfortunately for me. But this much I do know: that Edda would never sell herself, even for the chance to be a doctor. Which means Rawson Schiller must have wanted something from Edda that cancelled out any element of a sale. It’s a union of equals, Charlie, whereas our poor effort gives me nothing.”

  For a long while he made no answer, just sat and stared at his wife, whom he loved but couldn’t plumb. Finally he sighed. “Will you come back to my bed?” he asked.

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  A huge and empty pit engulfed his belly. “It’s over?”

  “I didn’t exactly say that. Like the Tsarina Alexandra, I love my mauve boudoir. To have my own little realm within your palace is greatly to my liking, I’ve discovered. I’m happy to admit you to my bed for sex, Charlie, if you ask and you’ll come to me, but I won’t sleep with you. Nor do I want your touch on my realm. It’s mine. I’m twenty-four years old, and it’s high time I had some genuine privacy. I yearn to have children. But I insist on a life of my own, and that means — for the present, at any rate — that I continue at the orphanage.”

  “You’re hard, very hard,” he muttered.

  “All women are, when it comes down to it,” said Kitty, her composure undented. “Men force us to be. Do we have a pact?”

  Not knowing whether he loved her more than he hated her
, he nodded. “When I want sexual congress with you, I ask, but that does not include sleeping together. How much of living together does it permit?”

  “As much or as little as you want. I will run your house, act as your hostess, eat meals with you, sit and talk with you of the day’s events or family doings, be a good mother to your children when God pleases to let them live. Have I missed anything, Charlie? If I have, do tell me,” said this new Kitty.

  “Is there a chance that the magic can come back?”

  Kitty laughed, a sound as brittle and sharp-edged as crystal. “For me, Charlie, I don’t think it was ever there. But you wanted it — or me — and you pushed until I crumbled. As for throwing my cap over the windmill — no! A harlot I was not.” A gleeful look entered her face, she grinned. “You’d better hope, husband dear, that I continue not to be a harlot. According to you, it may well run in the family.”

  And so much for indiscreet remarks, thought Charles Burdum, retiring to his solitary bed. Until he had married into Clan Latimer, he had never experienced the emotions of siblings, for he had none. How could an only child have known the strength and depth of the ties between sisters, especially twins?

  And she had implied that he pushed her too hard — what had she said, that she crumbled? Ground down, eaten away, undermined. But that was ridiculous! To think like that was to demean herself, to have a low opinion of herself. Then, out of nowhere, memories of his talk with Edda when he had first arrived in Corunda came back to him. She had said Kitty had a poor opinion of herself, that the mother had all but ruined her. Why did confidences like that seem to have so little significance at the time of telling? He hadn’t taken it in as he ought — overwhelmed, probably, by the wealth of information Edda fed to him in one sitting.

  No, be fair, Charles, he told himself now; you genuinely heard only what was grist to your mill, and that mill was intent upon winning Kitty. Nothing else. Kitty the perfect partner, whom Edda was trying to make you see — correctly — as imperfect. No one is perfect! Least of all you, Charles Henry Burdum. Now you’ve stuffed it up a treat. Your wife is damaged through no fault of her own, and you’re not the right person to cure her. In effect, she has closed the door on her marriage without shirking its duties, but duties are all they can ever be to her. Is that why she miscarries?