The Scandalous Life of Sasha Torte

by Lesley Truffle

  He reckoned, ‘It was a rite of passage for young men to pit themselves against seasoned boxers in the boxing tents. And that’s how I started before turning professional. Ah, possum, the beatings I sustained while I fought my way up the ladder. It’s surprising I didn’t end up with a damaged brain.’

  Later he’d fought at Zeehan, a silver mining town where they took their boxing seriously and prize fighters were generously rewarded and idolised for their prowess.

  Grandpa could still balance enormous logs on each shoulder and run up hills. This was the man who’d been known to eat two roast chickens with all the trimmings in one sitting. His thighs were so wide and muscular that Lil got Tim to make him a dining chair that would accommodate him in comfort.

  Grandpa was still dining out on the story of getting wedged in his seat during the opening night of the Hobart opera season. The stage carpenter had been summoned to cut him free during interval. Grandpa had then taken a bow and received warm applause from the audience. He’d discreetly given the carpenter a monetary reward for extracting him from his dire predicament. A lesser man would have been mortified but Brendan Kane had turned it into a comedic interlude to amuse others.

  I took Grandpa through to the conservatory and he tried out his new throne with great satisfaction. It was truly magnificent. Tim had padded the wide seat with goose down and the remains of the dining room curtains. Then he’d polished the old oak until it turned a rich warm brown.

  ‘Tim O’Flaherty, eh, Lil? May just have to pay him a few bob to whip up a couple more of these. He’s a great bloke. But I was surprised to hear that Tim’s no longer servicing half the goddamn females in the district. Perhaps he’s fallen in love with some lucky lass, eh? The word is out that he roots like a rattlesnake. If Tim charged a stud fee he’d make a goddamn killing.’

  ‘Father, please! Not in front of Sasha.’

  ‘Calm down, my girl. I’m only jesting. Have one of the servants fetch me a pint of something frothy, will you? And then I’ll be as good as gold and charm the pants right off your guests. But just don’t sit me anywhere near that viper.’

  ‘Who do you mean?’

  ‘Come on, Lil, you know bloody well who I mean. Tonight the Widow Darling will be on the lookout for wealthy husband number three. That woman is voracious. But watch out if the poor sod knocks her back because she just might produce a tiger snake to finish him off.’

  Lily hid her smile as she went off to have a word with Charlie in the kitchen.

  As luck would have it the Widow Darling was the first guest to arrive; she wore green-gold silk embellished with a copious quantity of gold baubles. She really did look like she was going in for the kill. Grandpa stood up, pulled out a chair and showed her every courtesy. ‘Good evening, Mrs Darling. And what a splendid evening it will be. Charlie O’Rourke – former French restaurateur – is about to tickle our palates with his sublime cuisine.’

  Widow Darling nodded. ‘So I heard. It’s the only thing the ladies could talk about at my sewing circle today. They’re dying to hear about tonight’s goings on.’

  No doubt. They and the rest of Wolfftown.

  I was hoping Widow Darling would pounce on Grandpa or at the very least produce a tiger snake from her glittering evening purse. She moved her chair closer to his. He smiled grimly, sat down and placed his hat firmly over his genitalia.

  Brendan Kane was well aware that women of all ages fancied him something rotten. ‘Still got my own teeth and a full head of hair. Not like that bloody young lawyer that’s courting our Lil. Milton Freebank’s going to be as bald as a bloody billiard ball and not half as clever.’

  Grandpa winked at me when Milton walked in the door and turned bright red when Lil greeted him. In Lil’s presence Milton had a tendency to get tongue-tied. But she was used to that and she treated him kindly by pretending not to notice.

  As more guests arrived, it was apparent our dinner was already a success. Everyone was putting on the dog. We had twenty-seven guests and everyone was determined to impress with their sartorial splendour. The women were airing their décolletage and the men their black tuxedos.

  Even though it was a warm evening, Lady Dasher arrived wrapped in an opera-length fur coat. Lily whispered, ‘Clare just can’t help herself. Remember, Sasha, fur is only acceptable in arctic conditions.’

  There were five eligible bachelors vying for Lil’s attention. I ran my mind over her list of Men worth seducing and quickly realised that she’d invited three of the young men listed. Wicked, wicked Lily.

  The Widow Darling kept right on chattering and appeared to be trawling for her next husband. She put tiny amounts of food on her fork and nibbled daintily but I noticed she was tucking away vast amounts of food and liberally washing it down with claret. Lil had restocked Appletorte’s wine cellar at great expense and our guests were demonstrating their appreciation by imbibing everything on offer.

  Charlie’s inaugural dinner was beyond impressive. He presented kangaroo steamer, galahs baked with fresh tarragon, a dazzling array of trifles and flambéed peaches with the most luscious ice cream. Mountainous vegetables, stoved potatoes, gullen pies and bread baskets dominated the sideboard. And just in case everyone wasn’t fully stuffed, there were enormous platters of imported cheeses and fresh fruits.

  Widow Darling swallowed her third potato and leant across the table conspiratorially. A python digesting a canary. ‘So, Lily dear, do you miss the bright lights of gay Paree?’

  ‘Sometimes. But when Sasha is of age, I shall take her on a grand tour of the Continent.’

  ‘How simply wonderful. I daresay you’ll present her in the Paris Season?’

  ‘I doubt it. We’ll be too busy visiting all the galleries of Europe and steeping ourselves in the history of the great European cities.’

  Widow Darling sighed. ‘How terribly dreary. I mean how could all that dusty history be interesting to a vivacious young girl like Sasha?’

  Lily’s chin went up and she narrowed her eyes. ‘With all due respect Mrs Darling, Brendan and I intend that Sasha will receive the same fine education bestowed on the sons of the ruling class. After that she can choose to pursue any damn career she chooses.’

  The two young graziers seated either side of Lily cheered her volubly. They were competing for her attention and had become red-faced from all the wine. But Lily by sheer dint of will was keeping her head clear. No doubt memories of Rose passing out before second course made her determined to play the hostess to the end.

  Lily was the captain of our ship and come hell or high water, she’d ensure we were redeemed socially.

  Grandpa was regaling Major Smith’s buxom wife, Matilda, with tall tales of blood-sucking vampires and squeezing her thunder thighs under the table. She laughed uproariously and at one stage was practically sitting in his lap. Grandpa preferred jolly women with meat on their bones as opposed to the lean Widow Darling type. Matilda seemed to be enjoying the attention and her grim-faced husband was getting angrier by the minute. Even his moustache was outraged.

  There were so many candles burning that the room was heating up. We had gas lighting at Appletorte but Lily insisted, ‘Candlelight and white pearls render women luminous, Sasha. They give our complexions a deceptively opalescent appearance. One should always seize the opportunity to improve on Mother Nature. She can be quite a bitch once we lose the natural bloom of youth.’

  By second course the ladies were fanning themselves and the gentlemen were discreetly easing their collars. It was a novel experience seeing grown-ups behaving as though they liked each other.

  I went to sleep that night to the sound of mosquitoes buzzing, our guests laughing, crystal glasses clinking and the taste of Charlie’s flambéed peaches on my lips.

  When I went to wake Lily the next morning, I found her bedroom door locked and the servants whispering on the stairs. Milton Freebank’s stallion was still in our stable.

  The night before, Grandpa had delivered a stern lecture to Lily
before our guests arrived. ‘Milton is an extremely gifted lawyer but he’s made his pile courtesy of his avaricious forebears. Those tossers invested their money in war machinery and mines.’ He paused to top up his beer glass. ‘They were well known for brutal treatment of their workers. Milton’s British ancestors were among the first to slaughter Tasmania’s indigenous population. They hunted them down for sport using foxhounds and trackers. Meantime the American side of his family massacred the Sioux.’

  I interrupted. ‘Who are the Sues?’

  ‘Possum, it’s pronounced Sue but spelt S-i-o-u-x and they’re a magnificent warrior nation. They retaliated and ambushed those Freebank opportunists whenever and wherever they could. It’s a damned shame the Sioux didn’t wipe out the whole fucking lot of them.’

  Milton had built a mansion on what was known locally as Wankers Hill and he’d imported expensive European furnishings and fittings. After Milton installed bidets in each of his bathing rooms he became the talk of the town. Grandpa murmured darkly, ‘Only a penny-pinching Freebank would think of dipping his bum, instead of having a manly scrub up in the bathtub.’

  Lily appeared in the conservatory much later that morning. In high spirits she ravenously ate four eggs, five slices of toast, three tomatoes and seven rashers of bacon. You’re right, I was counting. When she downed her third cup of sweetened coffee and dabbed her lips with her napkin, I worried that Milton’s wooing would ruin her trim figure. I need not have concerned myself. For despite his continued entreaties, monstrous bouquets of flowers and the gift of a fancy American double-barrelled, breech-loading shotgun, Lily stuck fast to her belief that Milton was not marriage material. ‘I simply can’t abide the fact that his whole fortune has been built on spilt blood.’

  ‘Thank God for that,’ retorted Grandpa. ‘It’s enough that your sister married that fucker Torte. It’d be the last bloody straw to have those Freebanks bringing their flim-flam ideas into the family. Goddammit, Lil, it would be nothing but French bidets morning, noon and bloody night.’

  Milton ended up marrying Miss Chloe Parkinson and fathering seven children. Over the years churchgoing Chloe sucked the vigour from Milton’s limbs and the humour from his face. She spurned his bidets by turning them into tree fern planting pots. According to those in the know, the ferns did very well.

  Milton Freebank represented me in court. He fought hard and skilfully protested my innocence but he was up against Algernon Wolff. Milton is the type of lawyer who believes in unswerving logic, truth and fairness. He insists that one must always appeal to the best in people. In Milton’s world most folk possess innate goodness. Whereas Algernon goes for the throat and cunningly appeals to the average punter’s base instincts. I became aware during my trial that Algernon never strays from his firm belief that everyone manipulates their fellow man from a position of supreme self-interest. His attitude has contributed greatly to his success as Tasmania’s most ferocious lawyer.

  In my court case there was the added complication of Roger Dasher having successfully bribed the key players of the jury. I’ve had an excessive amount of time to dwell upon Algernon Wolff’s role in my conviction and in all fairness I should admit that I do not believe Algernon was involved in corrupting the jury. It just wouldn’t be his style; he tends to do his dirty work in broad daylight. Besides, he’s so tight with money that given half a chance he’d bite the head off a shilling.

  Having said that, I’ve learnt a lot from Mr Wolff. He bought home the wisdom Grandpa had tried to impress on me when I was a child: ‘It’s a wonderful but treacherous world out there, Sasha my girl. And if I succeed in making you a free thinker you’re going to have to keep your wits about you. Beware of silver-tongued charlatans, pay attention to the unspoken and be on guard at all times. A worthy adversary can teach you a lot more than a loyal friend.’

  He was right.

  To be sure Algernon Wolff is a misogynist and a dangerous individual but the true villain of the piece is Roger Dasher. I only wish I could bring myself to exterminate the bastard.

  8

  STOKING THE DEVIL’S OVEN

  My belief was that Alain Torte would rise up from the dead and mercilessly hunt me down. Many a night Lily would allow me into the warmth of her large bed. She wasn’t much of a sleeper herself, so we would stay up most of the night. Lily sang risqué French songs and demonstrated the high kicks and back flips which had earned her the Parisian sobriquet of fièvre étrangère; foreign fever. She cast the same spell on our local blokes and you’d swear they’d succumbed to some sort of madness. The sight of yet another suitor, pleading marriage on his knees, no longer aroused any curiosity in our household.

  Grandpa was damned pleased when Lily rejected them. ‘They’re all tossers. The landed gentry have nothing to offer you, my girl. They’re inbred and inconsequential and there’s not a strong chin amongst them. Why can’t you go for a real bloke, one who gets his hands dirty, eh Lil?’

  Lily made no response, she just smiled enigmatically.

  Nothing eluded Brendan Kane. He rarely gossiped himself but he knew everything that went on in the district. ‘Ah Lil, me heartless girl, is that a bare patch I see on the parlour rug? Those suitors of yours sure have bony knees.’

  Lily shrugged. ‘It’s not my fault we Kanes are irresistible. Indeed, I have it on good authority that the Widow Darling has been besieging you at every turn.’

  Grandpa pretended he hadn’t heard. ‘Sasha, never marry a man who has a pointy moustache. A pointy-moustached bloke has a pointy mind, he’ll poke holes in the bedclothes and poke around your most secret thoughts. It goes without saying that the cur your mother married cultivated a pointy moustache.’

  When I was found guilty of murder, Grandpa’s heart broke. Needless to say, the judge had a pointy, mean little moustache.

  After Rose ran away from home, my father rewrote his will to negate her. Accordingly Papa made me the sole beneficiary of his will. He also named Brendan Kane as my legal guardian should anything happen to him. This had more to do with Alain Torte’s deep loathing of his own family and a desire to wound Rose, than concern for his only child.

  Being an astute businessman Brendan Kane managed to turn the Torte fortune around. By careful reinvestment he repaired the fiscal damage caused by my father. He then promoted Tim to the position of estate manager, greatly increased his salary and gave him outright ownership of a small homestead on our property. It had been the original homestead before Alain Torte built the mansion of his dreams.

  Lily and I steered well clear of the study when we heard Grandpa losing his temper over Papa’s gross mismanagement of funds. Tim would stand at the window calmly smoking as Grandpa raged over the stocktake.

  ‘I didn’t realise the extent of the damage. That bloody idiot razed all Rose’s rare apple trees in the western orchard in one night! And they reckon never trust a woman scorned! Ha. Talk about self-sabotage. No wonder Torte’s valet reckoned he couldn’t organise a fuck in a brothel.’

  Having installed myself in the bushes under the window for a spot of eavesdropping, I heard Tim reply, ‘Brendan, you need to have a look at page forty-five in the accounts ledger. Torte invested thousands of pounds in a failed expedition to Africa.’

  ‘Bloody hell, I missed that one. What was that about?’

  ‘Henry Blatherwick was an old Etonian chum of Torte’s. He wanted to retrace the steps of his hero, the explorer Richard Burton, and investigate the source of the Nile. Blatherwick was a useless prick and knew bugger all about Africa. They copped mosquito-infested swamps, parasites, fevers, ulcers and delirium. Blatherwick went mad, several of his men died and Torte’s money was either lost or embezzled.’

  ‘Useless git. I can’t believe Rose fell for him. Torte would’ve had more chance of making money if he’d stood buck naked in the town square and rubbed his arse with a brick.’

  Tim peered out the window, looked directly at me and winked. He must have known I was there all the time.

&nb
sp; On my fourteenth birthday I was finally allowed full access to the kitchen. It had been agreed I could undertake formal instruction from Charlie in the art of pastry making. The agreement I’d reached with Grandpa was that in return I’d make a more concerted effort with my schooling and there’d be no more nicking off or further complaints from my tutors. The proviso was that if I failed to uphold my end of the bargain I’d be banned from Charlie’s kitchen. Brendan Kane certainly knew how to strike a deal.

  On waking I found two new starched aprons made by Lily, with Sasha in flaming red embroidery across the pockets. I was so excited I left my other presents unopened and rushed downstairs.

  The kitchen was dominated by a wood-burning oven with a massive iron top for cooking. Special doors and vents could be left open to warm the whole room. A butcher’s block dominated one wall and scrubbed pine and marble benches the other. The cool room and walk-in pantry were separate and well-worn stone steps led down to the wine cellar. The kitchen cat had a fondness for sherry. Often I’d find Minnie down in the cellar, patiently waiting for drops to form under the oak casks. If I left her unsupervised, she’d be half-cut by lunchtime. I was an anxious adolescent and worried a lot about Minnie.

  The kitchen had always been one of the few places I felt safe. When my late father got drunk and went on a rampage, Cook would hide me in the coal bin, the pantry or the larder. It had been Cook who’d first introduced me to baking and we’d made simple biscuits and baked bread together. If I’d been having a rough time with Papa she would invite me into the kitchen for a session of baking and I’d forget my troubles as I measured flour, kneaded dough and followed Cook’s directives. To this day, the smell of warm bread fresh from the oven induces a feeling of happiness and security.