24
As 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.
Charles, husband,
The rings have already told you, but you will need words to back them up, and I find I am too much the coward to voice them in person. You would hector and harangue me into the old confusion, and things would be delayed. Not avoided, Charlie. The axe is in my hands and I am determined to bring it down hard and clean.
I do not love you. I don’t think I ever did, but you bluffed me into belief. Then, once you had me, you never thought of me save as a possession. No, that’s not quite right. You thought of the person you needed me to be, but you never stopped to wonder if I really was her, or someone different. You can manage huge enterprises and you can make money, but you can’t read character, and you’re blind to people’s souls. The woman you married was never me, Kitty. I thank God that our children miscarried. Whatever their natures dictated, you would have forced them to be what you wanted, and you would have ruined them. Benevolent you may be, but you’re an autocrat just the same.
I say such cruel things because that is the only way you will ever believe I mean it is over. It is over. The woman you want should look like me, but have the brain of a Dorcas. You were tricked by my cover, you had no idea of the contents. I am not a suitable wife for a politician. Politics bore me to screaming point. Marry the brain half, Dorcas. But you won’t. You’re too thin-skinned to bear the amusement the sight of such an incongruous couple would provoke.
I’m going to live in adultery with Jack Thurlow, who says I am a farm missus. With Jack, I can disappear into the woodwork and run happily to seed. Please do not forgive me!
Kitty.
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, t
here 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.”
We hope you enjoyed this book.
To find out about Colleen McCullough, click here.
To discover more books by Colleen McCullough, click here.
For an invitation from the publisher, click here.
About this Book
From author of The Thorn Birds, one of the biggest-selling books of all time, comes this epic saga of love, betrayal, ambition and redemption in 1920s Australia.
The four Latimer sisters are famous throughout New South Wales for their beauty, wit and ambition. They have always been close; always happy. They thought this would never change.
But then they left home to train as nurses, swapping the feather beds of their father’s townhouse for the spartan bunks of nursing accommodation. And now, as the Depression casts its shadow across Australia, they must confront their own secret desires as the world changes around them. Will they find the independence they crave? Or is life – like love – always bittersweet?
Reviews
The Thorn Birds
“McCullough is terrific… Her characters quiver with life”
The New York Times Book Review
‘One of the biggest-selling, most widely read books in the history of fiction’
Observer
‘Excellent’
Daily Telegraph
“I simply could not put it down. If it hadn’t been wrenched away from me at mealtimes, I’d have starved”
Daily Mail
‘A true epic… It’s easy to see why this stunning tale has been called the Australian Gone With The Wind’
Observer
“One of those books that well be read as long as women love and men care”
Daily Mirror
Tim
“Explores unplumbed areas of sensibility with a delightful freshness”
New York Times
“A master storyteller”
Los Angeles Times
Indecent Obsession
“A second bestseller”
The Times
“Leaves one’s pulse racing”
New York Times
“More intriguing, more provoking than The Thorn Birds”
Washington Post
Also by this Author
The Thorn Birds
In the rugged Australian Outback, three generations of Cleary’s live through joy and sadness, bitter defeat and magnificent triumph. Driven by their dreams, sustained by remarkable strength of character… and torn by dark passions, violence and a scandalous family legacy of forbidden love.
It is a poignant love story, a powerful epic of struggle and sacrifice, a celebration of individuality and spirit. Most of all, it is the story of the Clearys’ only daughter, Meggie, who can never possess the man she so desperately adores –Ralph de Bricassart. Ralph will rise from parish priest to the inner circles of the Vatican... but his passion for Meggie will follow him all the days of his life.
The Thorn Birds is available here.
Tim
&n
bsp; Forty-three-year-old Mary Horton lives in a quiet, middle-class suburb on Sydney’s North Shore. A straight-laced, emotionally distant spinster, Mary has worked hard to make a life for herself, but her idea of ‘life’ does not include personal relationships. With no partner and no friends, Mary has no plans to let anybody into her solitary life.
Tim Melville is a twenty-five-year-old labourer with the body and face of a Greek god, but the mind of a child. A gentle outcast in a cruel, unbending world, Tim has a loving family, but is often derided and taken advantage of by his so-called friends.
By chance, one summer morning Tim meets Mary and what begins as a day’s labour for the kind-hearted young man becomes a life-changing relationship for both of them.
Tim is available here.
An Indecent Obsession
The Second World War has just ended and Sister Honour Langtree, a caring and conscientious Army nurse, cares for a striking mixture of five battle-broken soldiers being treated in the psychiatric care ward of a hospital in the South Pacific. To the soldiers, Honour is a precious, adored reminder of the world before war – they are as devoted to her as she is to them.
Then Sergeant Michael Wilson arrives, disrupting her ward’s precarious harmony. A damaged and decorated hero, Wilson is a man of secrets and silent pain, and as Honour finds herself inexorably drawn to this tortured man, she discovers a love that will leave her torn between her duty to all her patients – and her love for one of them…
An Indecent Obsession is available here.
About the Author
COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH was born in Wellington, New South Wales in 1937. A neuroscientist by training, she worked in hospitals in Sydney and the UK before settling into ten years of research and teaching in the Department of Neurology at the Yale Medical School in the USA.
Bittersweet Page 42