by Judy Nunn
Terence rose to refill his glass, quelling his anger. He’d say no more to her about the sale of Bullalalla, but he’d go ahead with his plans. By the end of the year they’d be moving to Darwin. Perhaps then, when she discovered she was married to one of the most successful businessmen in town, she might finally be impressed.
It was the end of first term. At long last. School holidays and the boys were home. And how had they managed to grow so much in only a few months! Malcolm was sixteen soon and he’d filled out, he’d have the body of his father soon, deep-chested and broad-shouldered. And Kit, at the gangly age of thirteen, had grown at least an inch taller. Henrietta blossomed in the company of her children.
The fact that she did so irked Terence. Her listlessness and indifference had annoyed him, and now that she’d returned to her old vibrant self, he was doubly annoyed. Why couldn’t she be animated and engaging with him? Terence would never admit it, but he was jealous of his sons.
Malcolm did his best to appease his father’s ill humour. He was the star goal kicker for the A-grade school football team and he eagerly demonstrated his skills to Terence, setting up goal sticks down by the stable yards and belting about with seemingly inexhaustible energy throughout the heat of the afternoons.
It helped. Terence was mollified by the fact that his elder son sought his approbation. If only his wife would do the same, he thought.
Kit loved boarding school. Henrietta was delighted. She had worried a little about how he’d fit in. For several years Malcolm’s stories of camaraderie had all related to football, which she knew held little interest for Kit. Would he find friends to relate to, she’d wondered. But it was the study which Kit loved, particularly English literature, and he’d brought home some of his essays.
‘I got the top mark in my class for this one,’ he said proudly. ‘It’s about the bushfire we had two seasons ago, remember?’
She did. The fire had sprung up in the late afternoon, no-one knew how, but it had been kept well under control and had done no damage, burning off several square miles of bushland which would quickly regenerate. The boys had watched from the sidelines, well into the night, as the men contained the blaze. It had been an impressive spectacle, flames licking at silhouetted trees, sparks jumping like fireworks up into the blackness.
The following morning when they’d surveyed the bushland, blackened and still smouldering, Kit had been fascinated. ‘It looked like a fairyland last night,’ he’d said.
The bushfire and its aftermath had made a great impression on the eleven-year-old. Now, two years later, he’d written about it.
‘You see this part here, Mum,’ he said excitedly when she’d finished reading the essay, it was remarkably good, ‘this part where she corrected me,’ he was talking about his teacher, ‘well, I don’t agree with that.’
‘“The hypocrite, night, had cloaked the devastation …”,’ she read. The teacher had crossed out ‘hypocrite’ and neatly printed ‘hypocritical’, her handwritten correction in the margin read ‘adjective, not noun’, and she’d given him nineteen out of twenty.
‘Would you have got twenty out of twenty if it hadn’t been for that?’ Henrietta asked in all innocence.
‘It’s not the mark, Mum!’ he said, impatient in his excitement. ‘I knew that I was putting two nouns together, and that you’re not supposed to do that, but it was the effect I wanted. And she turned it into an adjective, “hypocritical”, you see?’ He stabbed his finger at the word. ‘But that’s not what I wanted, and I think she’s wrong.’
Henrietta wanted to laugh and cry at the same time. It could have been Paul Trewinnard speaking. Paul had always been impatient and pedantic in his love of the English language and its usage.
‘I didn’t tell her I thought she was wrong,’ Kit continued, ‘I just copped it, and it didn’t matter about the mark. But if you’re going to develop a personal style then you have to be allowed to take liberties. “Poetic licence”, that’s what Paul called it. “English is a living language, and the rules are there to be broken, so long as you make it work”, that’s what he said.’
She resisted the urge to hug him. ‘I agree with you, Kit,’ she said instead. And she did. ‘I prefer it your way, it’s more dramatic.’
‘Yep.’ He grinned, happy that she’d grasped his point. ‘That’s exactly what I thought.’
Terence was impatient when she and Kit huddled together with their books, reading their favourite passages out loud to each other. The Snow Goose featured quite often. He once again accused her of favouritism.
It was late afternoon on a Sunday. He and Malcolm had been kicking the football around and, when Terence walked in the front door, hot and sweaty, he was intensely irritated to see them poring over their books together just where he’d left them an hour and a half previously.
He said nothing, but went upstairs to shower and change for the evening. When he came back down the boys had gone out riding together, as they often did around dusk.
‘Jesus, Henrietta, you’re ruining that kid,’ he growled as he poured himself a Scotch.
‘How? He’d read with or without me, you know that, he’s passionate about books.’
Aware she was right, Terence changed tactics.
‘It’s not that at all,’ he said, although it had been. ‘You’re making it quite obvious he’s your favourite and it’s not fair on Malcolm.’
But this time Henrietta was not prepared to accept his argument and to allow herself to be riddled with doubt. This time she knew she was in the right.
‘I can’t talk to Malcolm about football,’ she said, ‘and Malcolm understands that. So if you can’t talk to Kit about literature, then surely it’s permissible for me to do so. Malcolm certainly doesn’t mind.’
Her argument was irrefutable and Terence felt his anger grow. He put down his Scotch and walked over to the coffee table by the sofa where she sat. He picked up the book which rested on top of the pile and opened it. The Snow Goose, he read and, beneath the title the inscription, ‘To Kit Galloway, from his friend Paul Trewinnard’.
Henrietta watched as his eyes deadened. It was always the first sign of his madness, and she prepared herself for the fit of rage which she knew he’d been resisting for so long.
But Terence didn’t explode. He opened the book at its centre and methodically tore it in two through its binding. Then he dropped the pieces to the floor and picked up the next book. He opened it to the title page. The Coral Island, by R.M. Ballantyne, but there was no personal inscription. He tossed it back on the coffee table and picked up the next. Dombey and Son, by Charles Dickens. No personal inscription.
‘Are there any others from Paul bloody Trewinnard?’ he asked as he dumped it on the table and picked up the next. How dare that scrawny dead bloody Englishman have such an influence upon his son!
She shook her head, not daring to speak. But he systematically inspected the title page of each book, and there must have been a dozen, before he silently gathered his Scotch and left the room.
Henrietta got down on her knees and picked up the two halves of The Snow Goose. She could mend the binding with sticky tape, but the book must now be kept hidden from Terence at all times, she must tell Kit that.
It was the final straw for Henrietta. Less than eight years to go, she thought. She would start counting now.
1660
As the son of Gitjil, Yundjerra Djandamurra had inherited the locket. His father had died and Yundjerra had long since split from the clan, as many men did with their wives and grown children, to travel in his own family group. Yundjerra’s family included not only his wife, his two sons and their children, but his sister and brother-in-law, their children and grandchildren. The group numbered twenty in all.
Koo-ee-lung and Yundjerra, now in their fifties, were as close as if they had been true brothers. And indeed they were, for not only had Koo-ee-lung married Yundjerra’s sister, but Gitjil himself had adopted Koo-ee-lung.
Dirck no lon
ger thought of his previous life. And on the past occasions when he had, it had not been with longing. In fact, if he were ever to lay eyes on a white man again, he doubted he would be able to communicate, either socially or even in a common language. It had been thirty years since he’d spoken his mother tongue, having quickly given up his arrogant attempt to teach the Aborigines Dutch; they’d simply laughed at him.
Stocky and thickset, with his vivid green eyes and wild reddish beard, Dirck looked completely at odds with the group, even with his own pale-skinned children, each having deep brown eyes, and the blackest of hair. But the latest grandchild had surprised them all. A boy, with ginger hair, green eyes and the whitest of skin. Yundjerra had found the child a source of great amusement.
The locket continued to hold a place of importance amongst the group. Like his father and the elders of the clan, Yundjerra treated it with great reverence and, like his father, he called it minya yindi, which meant ‘small sun’, and he painted pictures of it in caves they inhabited, just as his father had done before him. In the wealth of their combined travels, they had recorded drawings of the locket as far inland as the Great Sandy Desert.
At no time did minya yindi leave its place, resting against Yundjerra’s naked chest, unless his brother wished to hold it, then Yundjerra would untie the twine from about his neck and pass minya yindi to Koo-ee-lung. But it had been many years since Koo-ee-lung had expressed a desire to hold minya yindi.
When Dirck had occasionally thought of the old days, he had requested the locket from Yundjerra as they sat by the fire of an evening. And he had opened it and looked at the initials within. He had thought of Lucretia van den Mylen and wondered if she had lived. But the old days were gone now and the memories too. He no longer thought and he no longer wondered. He no longer even remembered.
As his grandchildren played in the river, and his strong young sons returned with their catch of turtle and black bream; as his sons’ wives prepared the cooking fire and his wife cuddled his latest grandchild to her breast, there was nothing to remember. The man who had once been Dirck Liebensz no longer existed.
The situation between Terence and Henrietta had gone from bad to worse. The moment the boys returned to boarding school she was once again disinterested and he was once again annoyed by her lack of vitality. Where was the ready smile and the vivacity she displayed with her sons? Terence felt excluded, frustrated and powerless.
A week or so after the boys had left, he decided to woo her.
Henrietta had taken to sleeping in one of the guest rooms most nights, to escape his snoring, she said. She hadn’t dared suggest that they have separate bedrooms, and he’d accepted the situation. In truth, Terence snored very little, but he wasn’t to know that and it was the perfect excuse.
‘Stay here tonight, Henrietta,’ he said, as she sat in front of the dressing table brushing her hair. She looked very beautiful in her beige silk chemise.
She agreed, knowing that he wanted to have sex, she never denied him his conjugal rights. She’d stay, it would be over quickly, he’d soon be asleep and she’d retire to the other room. In the morning she’d tell him, quite amiably, that his snoring had kept her awake, and he wouldn’t question her.
She slipped between the sheets. It was a pleasant night, warm but not too humid, and the ceiling fan wafted an agreeable breeze against her face as she lay waiting for him.
He pulled the sheet back and looked at her. He wanted to rip the flimsy chemise from her body, he enjoyed rough sex, but he resisted the urge, lying beside her instead, kissing her gently and caressing her breast.
She accepted the kiss. It was unlike him, Terence rarely kissed, and when he did it was brutal. He’d grind his mouth against hers, and bite at her lips, and her skin would be abraded from the stubble of his chin. This kiss was different. She felt his lips gently force hers apart, his tongue entering her mouth, exploring it tenderly, tracing the line of her teeth, flickering against her palate, as his fingers found her nipple and teased it erect.
Henrietta was powerless against her body’s response. She was unable to stop her nipple from hardening, which she knew was exciting him as his mouth left hers to wander down her neck towards her breast. But emotionally she was unable to respond to his lovemaking. It sickened her. As she felt his mouth engulf her nipple, and his hand ease her thighs apart with all the tenderness of a true lover, she wanted to push him away. But she didn’t. She lay there accepting his caresses, not daring to move as his fingers found their mark.
By now it was costing Terence every shred of willpower he possessed not to force himself into her. He could feel her juices, she wanted him he knew it. He wished she would caress him in turn. He wished she would make animal noises and moan her desire. But then Henrietta never behaved that way. It was her middle-class British upbringing, he’d always supposed, and he’d come to accept the fact that she didn’t display her sexual craving. But as she lay there, acquiescent, her body responding to his stimulation, he knew that she wanted him as desperately as he wanted her.
He could stand it no longer. Ripping her legs apart, he forced his entry.
Henrietta was thankful. She preferred it this way, accustomed as she was to his brutality. Nothing was required of her, she was simply a vessel.
Soon it was over and, when he’d grunted his satisfaction and rolled on his side, he said, ‘I do love you, Henrietta, you know that don’t you?’
‘Yes,’ she said. She had known for many years that he loved her, in his own strange way, but the fact that he did was no comfort to her. The possessiveness of his love was rather something to fear.
As Terence drifted off to sleep, he thought of Bella. Bella was far more exciting than Henrietta in bed.
Since the men had left for the muster Terence had been regularly visiting Bella at the camp. Bella wasn’t her real name. Her real name was unpronounceable so Terence had christened her Bella, telling her it meant ‘beautiful’, she’d liked that. And Bella was beautiful. The way only an eighteen-year-old black could be, he thought, with pert breasts and a firm round bottom and a slit between her legs of the brightest pink, like a wound in the centre of her blackness. She wouldn’t age well, it was true, but in the meantime Terence couldn’t get enough of Bella. And she loved being taken, she was like a tigress. Terence dreamed of Bella as he slept.
Henrietta rose quietly and left the room. It had been several months since he’d made any demands on her. She knew that he sated his sexual appetite down at the camp and she wished he would confine his activity to whichever woman there had won his favour. Perhaps his attempt at lovemaking had been a bid to gain her attention, she had certainly been remote since the boys had left. She couldn’t help it, her life seemed so empty without them.
The following morning, Terence was affectionate. He apologised for the fact that he’d snored and she’d been forced to go to the guest room. ‘But it was fun wasn’t it?’ he said as he kissed her. She smiled and kissed him back. She’d play the game, she decided, anything that curbed his irritability was to her advantage.
A week later Michael rang. Terence had gone into Darwin for several days, Henrietta told him, and she chatted on for a while before sending her best to the family and asking if Michael would like Terence to ring him back.
‘You mean you don’t know?’ Michael asked, having listened, amazed, to Henrietta’s innocent conversation. The solicitors had informed him of Terence’s demands and he had presumed she was party to her husband’s plans.
Henrietta was initially shocked when Michael told her, although everything now fell into place. Terence’s visit to the Galloway stud after Jock’s funeral, his ensuing trips to Adelaide.
‘We’ll have to sell,’ Michael sounded sick with worry, ‘James and I can’t afford to buy him out.’
She confronted Terence when he returned three days later, but he obviously felt no guilt at forcing the sale.
‘We can do with the money,’ he said. ‘And it’s ours, after all.’ He ref
used to be drawn into any further conversation.
Terence had said nothing to Henrietta about the impending sale of Bullalalla, which would be finalised at the end of the muster when a full account had been taken of the live-stock. He had told Buff Nelson, swearing him to secrecy, and Vesteys would no doubt keep Buff on as manager, but he had seen no purpose in informing anyone else.
In the meantime, he was investigating some exciting property purchases, principally two large blocks on either side of Mitchell Street, cornering onto Knuckey, in the centre of town.
Now that the sale was definite and his plans were set in motion, Terence couldn’t wait to move on. He’d been struggling long enough on the land, for little remuneration and even less recognition. He wanted to be rich and he wanted to be powerful, but above all else, he wanted to be admired. He would forge a dynasty, he’d decided. Galloway and Sons. He could just see it. Galloway and Sons would become the very hub of Darwin. One day when his boys left the army they would inherit a family empire which would be handed down to their sons, and to the sons of their sons, Terence had it all planned. And the new family home, the designs of which were currently being drawn up by a prominent architect, would be on the point at Larrakeyah. A grand house overlooking the water, it would be the envy of all.
Terence had decided he would make his announcement to the family in September, when the muster was over and the boys had returned for the holidays.
As the weeks progressed, Henrietta had no idea why Terence was spending so much time in Darwin. He seemed to take little interest in Bullalalla these days, leaving the station business to her and Buff Nelson. She didn’t mind, she preferred it that way, and as he had made no further calls upon her sexually, she presumed he had a mistress in town. She was thankful and made an effort to be pleasant in his company, but she was once again marking time until the boys came home.
They all stared at him in dumb amazement. Terence had dropped his bombshell. He’d called a household meeting, Henrietta and the boys, Jackie and Nellie, and they’d gathered around the kitchen table. He’d considerately chosen the kitchen in deference to Jackie, who would not have been comfortable in the lounge room.