“So this is your plan.”
“Yes. You’ll have all day alone with her. You’ll be able to ogle her without me watching you.”
“You’ve got a poor opinion of me, haven’t you?”
She looked at him. “Not you.” Her expression softened. “You know how I feel about you. It’s the biological pull of lust I have a poor opinion of. But it’s a curse that especially afflicts men. You feel it and put everything at risk because of it. Henry the Eighth risked his crown and his immortal soul because of it. Edward the Eighth gave up his crown because of it. All you risk is a marriage that you don’t value much.”
“Don’t, Tree.”
She turned over the page. “Goodbye, Stefan.”
He left.
They had arranged to meet Fiona at eleven o’clock in Myers, the largest department store in Melbourne. Stefan was thirty minutes late and he hurried through the crowds to the book department with a comforting feeling of anonymity. In Whittlesea the friendliness of everyone was becoming claustrophobic. Before the wedding he had found it refreshing. As soon as he had arrived in the district he had been welcomed as Catriona’s fiancé and was overwhelmed by their interest in him. They knew where he lived, what he taught and which classes.
Now, surrounded by strangers, he felt he could be himself. He would be served by people he didn’t know. No one would ask him about Catriona or Kim or their family. No one would care. He would buy what he wanted and walk away. Shopping trips in Whittlesea took longer than necessary because people stopped and chatted. Yesterday when someone in the newsagent asked about Catriona he had been tempted to tell them to mind their own business. His animosity had appalled him.
In spite of his guilt and his anger toward Catriona, he felt a pleasurable sense of anticipation. He saw Fiona looking at a book. She was wearing a simple pink linen dress, short enough to reveal a great deal of her slender legs. Normally Stefan detested pink and felt it should be worn by baby girls only, but on Fiona, who had teamed it with grey shoes and hosiery, it was stylish. He thrust his hands into the pockets of his jacket and strolled over. “Hi, Fiona.”
“Hello, Stefan.” She put the book back on the shelf. “Where’s Tree?”
“She’s got the flu. She’ll see you at the weekend.”
“We could have made it another day. I’ve done a lot of my shopping already. It helps working in the city, I can do bits at lunchtime and after work.”
“When she checked her diary we realized there was no other day.”
“Well you can help me with her present. What do you reckon about this?”
He followed her over to a display where she selected a book about the relationship between humans and horses. He flicked through the illustrated pages. “She’d love it.”
“Good.” She took it over to the cashier and paid for it with her account card. “Right, now what about you? Have you got a list?”
“Yes.” He pulled it out of his pocket.
Stefan noticed that she shopped in the same efficient way as Catriona, consulting her list and going straight to the department she wanted without stopping to browse.
“I booked a table in a restaurant,” she said when he had bought everything. “Shall we cancel it or are you hungry?”
Although gratified by her willingness to have lunch with him, he pondered the wisdom of accepting her offer. ‘Now Tree and I are married, she believes I’m safe,’ he thought. “Can you put up with my company for longer?”
She nodded.
“You’re not just being polite, are you?”
She looked at him quizzically. “Polite? You know me better than that.”
He laughed. “Okay.”
The restaurant she had chosen was, he thought, her type of place. Elegant, with white tablecloths, it would have been fashionable eighty years ago, still was, and would be into the next century. There was a vase containing a red carnation and a wisp of maidenhair fern on every table. After the waiter had taken their orders he felt disconcerted. They were alone without the prop of a menu. Every time he saw her he loathed the way Catriona and Kim had depicted her. A marcasite pendant in the shape of a spider’s web spangled with dew, hung round her neck, so delicately wrought that it looked like a miniature of the real thing. She wore pearl earrings and her watch was white gold with a bracelet strap.
“Happy about the election?” she asked.
He nodded. “Tree, Kim and I snuck back to our place and drank champagne.”
“Uncle David said that university corrupted them politically.”
“Did it?”
She smiled. “Depends what you mean by corruption. They did think like their parents until they went.”
“What about you?” he asked, hoping that she would tell him she supported the Liberals. ‘Come on,’ he thought. ‘Give me a reason to despise you. Tell me you agree with the genocide of the aboriginals or the White Australia policy.’
“To my parents’ distress I was against conscription and the Vietnam War – and that was without a university education. They say that Labor will be bad for the economy, but I don’t understand economics so I can’t dispute that. Inflation, recession and depression, and how they’re caused are a mystery to me. I hated arithmetic at school. The only subjects I was good at were English and History – that’s what you teach, isn’t it?”
Seeing that her interest was sincere he told her about the Imagine If essays he made his students write.
“Brilliant,” she said. “How interesting to speculate how the world have been today if Hitler had become an architect?”
Her knowledge surprised him, but he regretted his change of expression when she glared at him.
“Why are you flabbergasted?” Her tone was challenging.
“Well – it’s just ...”
“That you think I’m stupid.”
“Not many people know history that well. And I don’t think you’re stupid.”
“Kim and Tree do.” She frowned. “When I was in Europe they didn’t answer my letters. When I came back they didn’t ask me one single thing about my travels. I was invited to Kingower and I was so excited, but they put up with my presence and that was all. I had so much to tell them. I’d seen and experienced lots of fascinating things – Russia, the Berlin Wall, AnzacBeach – they didn’t want to know.” She sighed. “Ah well. How’s Devil?”
“Obnoxious.”
“I would have thought Kim could have tamed him. They should put him down.”
“Kim and Tree want to give him more time. It’s only been three days.”
“She usually only needs three seconds.”
He wanted to tell her that her loyalty was wasted on Kim, but he said, “He’s not as aggressive toward her as he is to everyone else, but he’s unpredictable. He lashed out at her yesterday and she had to jump out of the way. But she’s confident she can master him.” He wanted to get the conversation to a point where he could ask her why she had returned to Melbourne. “How’s your job?”
“All right.” Her apathetic shrug was unsurprising.
“Why did you leave Queensland?”
“I was almost bitten by a snake.” She blushed.
“You wouldn’t run away from something like that.”
The pink in her cheeks intensified. “It was extremely venomous.”
“Why did you really leave?”
She looked down at the tablecloth. “Don’t, Stefan. Let’s talk about something safe.”
“There are no safe topics. And I need to talk to you. Unfortunately, it’s far from safe.”
“Go on.”
“You know Kim’s psychic?”
She nodded. “Do you take it seriously? Men usually scoff at that sort of thing.”
“I did at first, most of me still does. But in April Kim had a premonition that Ruth was going to die soon. It was more precise than that. She said it would be within the year or in a year.”
Her eyes widened and she stared at him. Right into his eyes. He stared
back unable to look away. When she looked down he studied her, noticing her thick dark lashes and the curve of her dark eyebrows against her fair skin and silver-blonde hair. He saw that her nose was slightly crooked. “She had another one at the same time,” he continued. “About you. You’re going to tear the family apart.”
“No. The one about Aunty Ruth was right, but she dreamt this one or made it up. We’re coming together now. I feel sad for Aunty Margot and so does Mum. We’re not divided any more.”
“I was there,” he said. “She couldn’t understand it. In her premonition the person who was going to tear the family apart was May.”
Fiona shut her eyes. “No.”
“She didn’t know who May was, but when she told her parents and Margot they reacted drastically. I thought it might have been the month. Then David told me who May was. That’s why I came to see you.”
Fiona, whose earlier blush had just faded, went red again.
‘She’s mortified because she thinks she misunderstood me,’ he thought.
“I was so rude to you,” she said. “You must have thought I was off my rocker.”
The waiter arrived with their food and Fiona concentrated on eating her fillet steak. He was pleased that his disclosure had not spoilt her appetite. They ate in silence and Stefan let his mind roam. He imagined being married to Fiona.
‘What does she wear in bed?’ He pictured her in black silk pyjamas, then a white Victorian nightdress. He was sure that, like Catriona, Fiona was not the type to sit in front of the television all night. ‘We’d go out once a week to candle-lit restaurants. What would we talk about? Politics. History. She can ride so we’d go horse-riding at weekends. And play tennis. She skis too. We would ski in winter. And go to Europe in January ... Austria and Switzerland.’
“Stefan.” Her eyes were wide with consternation. “I’ve just remembered something Eleanor – she’s my real mother, told me. When Juju and I were a year old she couldn’t tell us apart. She wanted us to have our own identity so she cut my hair in a fringe. The one with the fringe was May. The one without the fringe was June. That would be all right if our names had been Sue and Mary or something. But it was different with Juju and me. The one born first was May – because she was born in May. The one who was born second was June because she was born in June.”
“So what?”
She put down her knife and fork. “Don’t you understand? I might be June and she might be May. And Kim’s going out with our brother. When she goes to Eumeralla she sees June who might really be May.”
He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter who was born first. You were known to be May, not your sister. No one knows so it can’t matter.”
“It does, Stefan. Because the fates know which of us was born first.”
CHAPTER 23
Catriona was still up when Stefan arrived home at nine. Once she would have gone to the door when she heard his car, but now she stayed on the sofa and continued to read.
“Still up?” he asked coldly. “Waiting for a detailed account?” Faced with his enmity her neutral expression crumpled. He put the bags on the floor. “We did our Christmas shopping, then we went to a restaurant for lunch. I feel the same about her as I did. No, I feel more strongly.”
With a cry Catriona leapt off the sofa.
Stefan caught her before she could leave the room. “You instigated it so you’re going to listen to the outcome. While I’m at it, I got a confession to make. Today’s not the first time I’ve visited her. I went once before – the Monday after Kim had her premonition. You know what she did? She was aggressive and told me to get out. I was there when her twin turned up. So I knew all about it before you did. Today she was nice to me. Probably because I’m married to you. Hilarious, isn’t it? Ha, ha, ha. I don’t know what we can do about this mess that’s our marriage. I’ll sleep in the guest room tonight.”
Ignoring the agony on Catriona’s face he stalked out of the lounge. He collected his dressing gown from their bedroom and went and had a shower. He stood under the stream of water wondering what Catriona had expected when he returned from Melbourne. ‘A kiss? Affection? A denial of my feelings for Fiona? A new beginning for our marriage? Had she imagined her strategy had worked?’ He dried himself and cleaned his teeth.
On his way to the guest room he heard Catriona sobbing. He paused. The light was still on in the lounge. He pushed open the door. She was curled up on the sofa with her face buried in a cushion. Shame hit him like a tidal wave. It was his fault that the once strong, humorous and independent woman had become an insecure wreck. As it was out of character for Catriona to cry, it was out of character for him to hurt people. Feeling drained, he sat beside her. “Oh, Tree. What are we going to do?”
Catriona arrived at work the following morning pale and exhausted. She had bathed her eyes in cold water, but they were still bloodshot. Until lunchtime, when she went to the chemist and bought some eye drops which worked within minutes, she parried Kim’s questions. In the afternoon Kim was manifestly pleased by the improvement in Catriona’s appearance and her expression of disquiet changed to comprehension.
When they were settling the animals down for the night, Kim took her arm. “You’re pregnant aren’t you?” she asked gleefully.
Catriona shook her head as she checked the plaster on a cat’s leg.
“Come on, Tree, tell me – am I going to be an aunty?”
She put him back in the cage and closed it. “No.”
“Then what’s wrong?”
Catriona turned away.
“Tree, tell me – I might be able to help.”
“I doubt it. Stefan’s in love with Fiona.” Seeing Kim’s lack of surprise, she said, “You knew, didn’t you?”
Kim put her hand on Catriona’s shoulder. “I suspected. How did you find out?”
Catriona went to the desk and put her head in her arms. Tears made her voice choke as she told Kim everything, beginning with the honeymoon and ending with last night.
The following evening Kim took advantage of Catriona’s late duty at the surgery to visit Stefan. Struck by the normality of their attractive house, which had been painted white with a red front door and was surrounded by trees, shrubs and flowers, she went up the path and lifted the horseshoe-shaped knocker. ‘It looks so cheerful,’ she thought. To Kim everything about their house suggested it was occupied by people who anticipated the future with pleasure, not a couple locked in a conflict they did not deserve and had not caused.
“Tree doesn’t know I’m here,” she said the moment Stefan opened the door.
“Hello, Kim, come in.”
“You’re a swine.”
He did not react, but turned and walked down the carpeted hallway into the kitchen where the scent of mown grass wafted through the open windows.
She saw that he looked as unhappy as Catriona, and tried to sound less accusing. “She hasn’t been telling me tales about you – I got it out of her. It wasn’t hard.”
He poured boiling water from a saucepan containing two eggs and turned on the cold tap.
Riled by his silence, she hovered beside him. “I’ve suspected for a long time that you’re infatuated with Fiona. You lack the subtlety to conceal it.”
“And I’ve suspected for a long time that you’re a fake. You’re no more psychic than I am, but you make thing up so you’ll have power over people.” He walked to the other side of the kitchen.
To look at him she had to shade her eyes from the reflection of the sun which struck the glass front of the cabinets. “I’ve never threatened anyone, I’ve only used ... whatever it is I’ve got ... for the good,” she said, stunned by his accusation. “I swear to you that Oliver told me Aunty Ruth was going to die. How do you account for that?”
“Yes, that’s buffeted even my scepticism,” he conceded, rolling an egg on the worktop to crack the shell. “But I bet you knew what Fiona’s name was before she was adopted and you used it to blacken her. Maybe the thing about Ruth wa
s an accurate guess – she’s a heavy smoker. You’re trained to look for the cause of illness in animals, that would make you more astute when it comes to humans. You might have seen symptoms that no one else did.”
“Then how come Tree didn’t see them too?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know.”
Instinct told her that Stefan was determined not to face her and when he shelled the egg his concentration was so intense he could have been performing surgery.
“Fiona’s manipulated you, Stefan. She knows men. Did she tell you about our boyfriends lusting after her – while she stood innocently doing nothing to invite their attentions? Did she hypnotize you with those beguiling turquoise eyes, and declare her puzzlement? Did it never occur to you that she came to Kingower just after you and Tree got engaged? She didn’t flirt with you, but she caused a memorable scene. Since then she’s been on your mind, hasn’t she?” Her voice rose. “Hasn’t she?”
“Yes. Which gives you plenty of reasons to make out that she’s going to tear your family apart. If there’s a malign influence among the Lancasters it’s you – not her.”
“How can an intelligent man like you be such a moron? You don’t know Fiona’s cunning ways. At school she was a dunce and she was jealous that Tree and I did so well – jealous because we went to uni while she had a monotonous office job. She couldn’t ride, and we could and she was jealous about that too.”
“And were you never jealous of her?”
“Yes, Stefan, we were. But only when she took our boyfriends. What would you have done if you’d found Tree and your best man kissing before the wedding, and Tree’s shirt was pulled up and if they hadn’t been interrupted it would have gone further?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never thought about it.”
“Think about it now.”
He looked at the clock on the wall. “I’m trying to get dinner ready so that when Tree gets home she’ll have something to eat. I’m too busy to hypothesize. And if you’re going to stay here pestering me, do something useful.” He gave her a knife.
Eumeralla - Secrets, Tragedy and Love Page 31