In a way, she’d been right. Better the cherished mistress than the humdrum wife who’s always monumentally there. B had yielded to Cynthia’s superior claims; guessed she would not be accepted as mistress of Arcadia – she, a mere diary farmer’s daughter. He’d tried to sway her decision but to no avail. Eventually, he’d gone along with the scheme Cynthia had cooked up to conceal the mess he’d made of all three lives. How weak of him!
Their pact at least allowed Bonnie to help raise their son as his and Cynthia’s. Bonnie had naïvely accepted Cyn’s claim to have become pregnant first, a furphy as it turned out. The enormity of the lie rankles with him still.
Cynthia’s pregnancy had resulted from a night of awkward fumbling in the bedroom upstairs.
She had initiated the encounter at 2.00 am after a party, on the pretext of botting a Craven A from him.
But Cynthia, the silly not-so-young filly, had never smoked; hers was a ploy to endear her to the most eligible bachelor present – Hal! He should have been partnering B but she’d had a family emergency.
Cynthia had been invited by his sister Eudora – a friend from PLC; Eudora had known of his attachment to Bonnie and of their engagement; nevertheless, Cynthia had set her cap at him. Two dutiful dances with her host had convinced her he was available.
But that night in the bedroom! What a fiasco! After her first attempt at the drawback, Cyn had erupted in an almighty coughing fit, and Hal had invited her to sit on his bed while she caught her breath. Her stole had dropped, unveiling a pair of plump pink shoulders.
He’d sat beside her, patting her back in an avuncular way. But poor dear C, more an ocean-going vessel than vestal virgin, had taken his kindness for lust; she’d lain on the bed, her arms wide open as if crucified, her eyes closed against untoward views of the masculine anatomy, and waited for him to ravish her.
He pitied this clumsy, desperate girl – all she had was her pluck, so he’d obliged her, confident that his dear B, once she knew the circumstances, wouldn’t mind too much; that indeed she would regard his behaviour as an act of punctilious kindness on his part. And, so she had done.
Today he’s sad to see so many fine trees destined for the woodpile, but, hell’s bells, what a fuel bonanza! Nothing lifts the spirits like a fire ablaze from one’s own gleanings. These off-cuts were pruned by Mother Nature – a cosy winter is now guaranteed. But are they plugging the dyke with a cotton bud, he wonders.
Knowing how much Hal loves these cedars planted by his Four Bears – a family joke – Alex hates to see his father eager to sign the death warrant of the oldest of them all. Sad that its death has turned into a firewood windfall. Finances must be worse than Alex had imagined.
How he’d love to help them while letting them maintain their pride. He could always beg racing tips from loquacious windbags in the pub, who ingratiate themselves with punters for a jar or two. Invest his savings, all $3,000 of it, at the racecourse. He’d probably lose it. Better that he should give the cash directly to Hal, pretending to have invested it on his behalf and made a tidy sum on a long shot. Now that’d do the trick although he wouldn’t be able to produce a betting slip if asked.
But fancy letting Da find him tucked up in bed with Claire! Hal will have had his suspicions but today wasn’t the day. He could have said nothing happened. It was true. Yet also in a way a lie.
Such a wallop love gives you! It fills Alex with awe. Now he knows why men are fools for love.
Why Antony put the Roman Empire in jeopardy for Cleopatra. Love is all-consuming, awe-full, or is it just awful? So far, he’s got through life content with daily pleasures: a day’s work done well, a natter with a mate, a carpentry problem solved; now all he wants belongs to his own brother.
He wants Claire desperately, desires her infinitely, lusts after her basely. Such love is death to one’s peace of mind. But would he go back to where he was two months ago? Never.
Chapter 51
Bonnie Back
Bonnie spends her time off in Koroit with her brothers. However, Friday night’s visit was an unscheduled one. Her brother Kevin, trudging back from the milking shed, had fallen and aggravated an old injury. The boys had insisted she come home to help with his care. Young Mary had driven her through the storm to Koroit and had then gone on to Port Fairy to stay with relatives.
The boys neglect their health. Emmett has diabetes, curse of the affluent, although they’re no longer well off, with milk prices falling. They eat only junk food! As soon as she gets home, Bonnie’s first chore is to empty their only vegs – potato crisps – into the pigswill.
She knows she’s meant to revel in her time off but given her brothers’ neuralgia, arthritis and nary a wife between them, though they’ve had others’ wives aplenty in their day, she’s guilted into looking after them more often than she should be. But these days, with everything oozing neglect, they’re campaigning for her to move in back home. Become their housemaid! Good luck with that!
Mud-caked boots dry by the fire; the liniment pong in the parlour smells like a footy change room of a night. Their vinyl recliners circle the telly like it’s a holy shrine. Bonnie gets it all – the drinking, the arguments, the winner-take-all card games – it’s quite common, these are symptoms of primary producer’s malaise.
The truth is her real family needs her. She fits into the Sins’ lives like a piece of plain blue sky fits into an intricate jigsaw puzzle – she’s the insignificant bit that’s essential to complete the picture.
It’s too late to make a life in Koroit. She’s prepared to see the boys once a month for the stories they provide. She returns from her downtime bearing anecdotes for the Sins. Her tales of hoary dairy farmers battling to survive against the odds entertain the Sins. She exaggerates to give the Sins a better perspective on their own lives. She laughs along with them, delighting in her own inventiveness, though feeling somewhat guilty for having made her brothers’ misfortune a source of merriment. The Sins’ glam-shabby manor house offers a certain amount of job security, and mainly pleasant, if eccentric employers. She embarks upon her time-off reluctantly even though the Sins haven’t paid her in a while.
Cyn has started insisting she’s family now that they’re almost broke, hoping that Bonnie, flattered, will forgo her pay. Hal, as usual, deals with things by pretending they’re not happening.
On Sunday Emmett drives her back to Arcadia. Kevin’s crisis is over and he’s grudgingly agreed to shell out for some home help.
Although the winter landscape unfolds before her appreciative eyes, they snag uncomfortably on the yellowed paddocks and the bloody Scotch thistles. Idiot who introduced them here needs whipping! Bonnie thinks, shaking her head. They need Brett in to spray. But now that Cynthia’s a born-again conservationist, she deals with weeds like Hal deals with lack of funds – by wishing the problem away.
As the ute clanks over the familiar cattle grid, Bonnie relaxes. To anyone else the noise would sound like a prison door clanking shut. And certainly, it brackets Bonnie’s down time from her reality.
But returning home, her spirits lift. Here, she’s valued, however lowly paid. She has a role in a drama.
It’s more a long-running soap opera than Shakespeare, though some of its plot lines are reminiscent of Macbeth.
At Arcadia she never questions whether she’s spending her life well or badly. Koroit seems a dank swamp. Despite all its draughts and drawbacks, at Arcadia she feels she inhabits a gothic fairy-tale castle.
This time however she returns to find the cedars brutalised and the emotional landscape altered too.
They pull up at the front door. “Glad to be back with your toffs, eh?” Emmett says. He gives Bonnie’s cheek a sandpapery buzz. The stench of roll-your-owns and the residue of stale saliva make her want to retch. She’d wipe off his kiss with her lawn handkerchief but she controls herself.
“Get with it, Sis,” Emmett says. “You look like a Latin teacher. All the barmaids I know have gone blonde with age.”
“I’ll bet you’ve known more than a few,” she retorts.
“You can talk! See ya, Bon! And do think hard about coming home.” Emmett drives off.
She doesn’t exhale until he’s well away, having sprayed gravel over the yews. “Phew!” She sighs, shakes her head at the storm damage. The cedars have been restyled to resemble short back and sides’ haircuts.
As she picks up her case, she senses something untoward. Hardheaded countrywoman Bonnie may be, but when the front door of Arcadia groans open, to the sight of Bertie’s permanently worried dial she picks up a change in the vibe even before knowing of anyone’s distress. She doesn’t hold with supernatural tosh but moving through the portico it feels like someone’s walking over her grave.
Bertie comes at a run instead of simply materialising as usual. He takes her case indoors and leaves it near the library annexe. “Someone in trouble,” he says, pointing upwards. Bonnie can hear a soughing sob. Drawn to its source, she leaves her handbag and hurries up the stairs.
She finds Claire crawling backwards up the staircase using two arms, one bottom, and her good leg, which leaves her bad leg waving in the air like an insect’s antenna. “What is it, love?”
Claire wails histrionically.
“Come on, Hon, nothing’s that bad. Where are you going?”
“…tower…pregnant…”
“Ah! I see you’re in a spot of bother but why the tower? Can you get unpregnant in a tower?”
“No, I just felt like being dead, I guess. The tower seemed…My period is late.”
“Oh, well. At least you’re being careful not to break your leg again. Your orthopaedist will be glad you took good care of it, despite you being dead,” Bonnie says, drawing her lips in.
Claire wails, then starts to laugh manically.
“Quite sure, you’re pregnant, dear?”
“Yes! I’m never late!”
“Get tested. An’ if you are, then pregnant is good, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know whose…?”
“Surely, it’s Clive’s child?”
Not necessarily.
“Crumbs. Then come and help me get lunch. Don’t despair until you’ve had a pregnancy test. You like babies, don’t you?”
“I think so.”
“Good. Can you peel Jerusalem artichokes?”
“Are they an abortifacient?”
“Not unless you eat them in a hot bath with gin and a knitting needle.” Bonnie gives a tentative giggle at her own witticism. Claire looks at her wide eyed and then joins in.
Chapter 52
Cooking
Downstairs in the kitchen Bonnie dries her tears and sets Claire to work slicing vegetables.
She chops away at the Jerusalem artichokes, the vegetable Bonnie calls ‘old men’s testicles’.
Claire, amused, asks her, “Is chopping always so therapeutic, Bonnie?”
“Sure,” says Bonnie. “For me it is. I take a zucchini. ‘Hi there, you big Long Worry’. It’s the aboriginal name of a town around here Longwarre. Chop! You’re halved. Chop! Quartered. Eighthed. It’s like homeopathy. Reduces worry to negligible levels.”
Bonnie gives Claire a chopping board and a vegetable knife and seats her at the kitchen table with a footstool for her leg.
Alex bustles in with kindling. “Hey, girls, look at the wood we cut today. Died of natural causes. One day a windbreak. Next day a windfall.”
“Hi, Alex.” Claire smiles at him wanly, hoping he won’t notice her puffy eyes.
“Hi, Claire. Good night’s sleep?” he asks warily.
“No, I had a strange dream,” she says.
“The one about the boy with the kite?”
“Yes, that one. I think I know what it means. That I’m ready for a disastrous fall.”
Bonnie, busying herself with the stock, stirs on but it’s clear she’s listening in.
“Claire, don’t get all worked up over last night’s dream again. It was a bit ambiguous is all. If you took all your dreams seriously you’d never sleep.”
“Find some watercress, Alex, dear,” she says.
“It’s not Cressmas.”
“Then something green for the table.”
“The spinach coloured tablecloth? Some lichen?”
Alex’s witticisms provoke a weak smile in Claire.
Bonnie quirks up the corner of her mouth mirthlessly. “How are the Marconis’ squash today?”
“Seemed well enough when I fixed the post-and-rail fence their stallion leaned on earlier.”
“That’s their eldest son, dear,” says Bonnie, with a wicked grin.
“Both sons are of stallionic proportions,” Alex says.
“Go and borrow our shears back. And ask nicely after their squash. It’ll look lovely on the Wedgewood.”
“Soggy excuse for a vegetable. Whom are we expecting?”
“How should I know? I just serve up. I fake a wide-eyed interest in their busy lives. How I hate pretending…”
“Pretending what?” asks Alex.
“That I’m thrilled to play Cinderella in your mother’s Cuban heels when I’d rather be flipping through Margaret Fulton for new recipes, or checking race results.”
“Sorry, Bon. They ask too much of you. Please tell me who it is so I can escape.”
Bonnie shrugs. “I don’t know and once everything is prepared, I’m going to my room as a protest. They don’t pay me. So, I’ll work for nix, but I won’t socialise in your ma’s paisley print frocks that weren’t fashionable even when they were.”
“I’ll support you in that, Bonnie. At least tell me how to win at gambling,” Alex pleads.
“Read the Form Guide. Though it’s never helped me. Anyway I only pretend to gamble. Since when were you into the gee-gees?”
“I need a few quid. I’m in a tightish spot,” he says.
“Ask me if it’s a loan you need. I’ll give you what little I’ve got.”
“Oh, I get it. You can gamble, but I can’t?”
“My system involves matchsticks. I add the winnings to my pot for next race day.”
“How’s it going?”
“I’ve saved a thousand matches recently.”
“When will you convert to actual currency?”
“Probably never. Now, Alex, do stay to lunch! We need your cheek and liveliness.”
“I’ll stay if you go and rest, Bon. You’re not paid enough to sit through Ma’s excruciating lunches.”
Alex hesitates. “They’re still paying you?”
“Ye-es, of course.”
“There’s no of course about it.”
“I’ve had a brainwave. I intend hanging around colourful racing identities in the bar of The Royal until they spill the beans.”
“Crooks?”
“Probably. Then off to the TAB to cash in.”
“Never!”
“I’m off gambling on the olds’ behalf. Better keep that under your hat. But if I win, at least they’ll have to pay you.”
“I’m not their most importunate debtee. Times are hard…”
“Importunate? Big word. Jot it down, Claire. How’s the list?”
“Growing.”
“Bonnie, I’d rob my piggy bank to keep you here, pretending to be my friend.”
“I’ve never had to pretend with you, love.”
Alex takes Bonnie in his arms, frying pan and all, and waltzes her around the room. “Ta da-da-da Dum…”
“You are very sweet, Alex,” Bonnie says, pushing him away and tucking loose wisps of hair behind her ears. “Anyhow, it’s no one special coming or Cyn would have ordered from the fancy shmancy deli in Warrnambool. She said, ‘Use whatever isn’t mouldy yet.’”
“So, it’s someone we must use up before they go off. Who deserves to eat squash Marconi’s cats peed on?”
“And what do you smell of, Claire?”
“Gin and garlic.”
“An abortifacient?”
Claire hangs her head over t
he peelings.
“What’s up, honey pie? Da girl missing’ her fee-on-say?”
“Squash please, Alex.” Bonnie’s voice emerges with an edge to cut glass.
Alex’s gaze moves from Bonnie to Claire and back. “Mm. A brace?” Unanswered, he leaves.
Hal enters. He sits on the doorstep, drags his gumboots off and throws them into the mudroom.
“Where did Alex go?”
“Off for squash.”
“Thought he’d given it up.”
“What?”
“Squash!”
“He’s not playing…”
“Just practising, is he?”
Bonnie sighs. Claire giggles.
“What are you girls on?” Hal says, heading to the pantry.
He returns with shot glasses and Scotch. “So, here’s to a lovely warm winter,” he says, pouring.
“Phew! That avenue of cedars. Never protected us from gales. Now there’ll be heat all winter long. Cheers. Heat, sunlight and tucker,” he sighs. “All humans need, well almost all,” he amends, glancing Bonnie’s way. “But we mustn’t get too warm and cosy or Cyn won’t want to warm her tootsies on the Methodist’s foot-rail on Sunday.” He winks and flicks his tongue to mitigate any impression of disloyalty.
“Good on you, Hal, for shooting those lapins for me,” says Bonnie. “They’ve been marinated in plonk. Oh heck, the spuds.”
“Poor bunnies. Still stunned from the storm,” says Hal. “Not a fair fight. I fired a warning shot but then I thought it fair to science to let Darwinism win. Too dumb to breed. Like most humans.”
“We all ought to be certified fit for breeding,” says Claire, “but who’d be wise enough to administer the test?” There’s a bitter edge to her voice.
“You all right, my dear?” asks Hal.
“Just a cold!” she says. “Okay Bonnie, the artichokes are done! Carrots now?”
“Yes. And set the table, please Hal.”
“Certainly, my dear. Where’s the cloth?”
“Here. We’re expecting nine, three courses. Here’s cutlery.”
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