by Gil Hogg
The men for the most part were in early middle-age and although wrought from hard work, were over-ripe; their faces were mottled; their bellies pressed against or slopped over their belts. An exception was the head stockman whom Ellen had already met in the Village. He was much the same colouring as John, but leaner and more weathered. The wives were a spectacle, squeezed into garish frocks, faces painted. One younger one was Betty Fallon, wife of a cattle buyer from Tennant’s Creek. She was a little bottle blonde with a cheeky face and a black mini-frock which revealed her tanned thighs. Betty seemed to attach herself to John.
Ellen felt like a cattle drover herself as she tried to get the party moving down to the barn dance at around eleven o’clock, or, as she could see, the New Year would come in at the Big House. When the lounge had been emptied, she had walked down to the shed with the company but alone. She lost sight of John in the crowd. She was astonished at the transformation of the shed; there were lights, ribbons and balloons inside and outside. The male members of the band were stripped to the waist except for their bow ties; they drank as they played. The music brayed out from a piano, a piano-accordion, drums, a clarinet player who doubled on a trumpet and a bass player who doubled on guitar. The group was led by a short, fat girl in a bowler hat who belted out a few verses of the songs, but most of the time rubbed herself rhythmically against the microphone pole. Ellen was momentarily lost in an ocean of people she had never seen before, most of whom were sozzled. The head stockman saw her and pushed in front of her.
“Ted Travis,” he said.
“Yes, I remember. I’d like to find John.”
“Can’t find anybody in this scrum. Come and dance.”
She accepted because it would give her an opportunity to look around the shed as they moved across the floor. She could see that there were three main activities: eating from a buffet laid out on three long trestle tables at one end, which was constantly replenished; the wrestling match which passed for dancing in the centre; and at the other end of the shed, the engine which fuelled the show, the bar. Here, the crowd gathered three or so deep. Three barmen only rested to drink themselves, as they hosed lager beer into any available glass. Ted Travis pointed out to her the contests for speed-drinking and forfeits as though this was a delight.
It was a deafening orgy and Ellen had a sense of the drunken instability which was vaguely frightening. She didn’t see John. She soon excused herself from Ted Travis and went outside.
Ellen stood on the steps at the entrance. She wanted to observe the decency of staying until twelve, but she felt like putting her hands over her ears and running up to the house. Beyond the bedlam in which she was involved, the night was warm and still and strewn with stars.
She didn’t think John was in the shed. She eyed the half-darkness outside, lit by floodlights. A crowd had gathered around a silver Holden sedan; cars were carelessly parked everywhere. She threaded her way curiously toward the gathering. She saw Betty Fallon was sitting in the back seat of the car. Bert Fallon tore open the back door and dragged her out. She fell at his feet.
John stepped out of the crowd and pulled Fallon away. Fallon swiped John across the face with the back of his hand.
“Wrong bloke, Bert,” somebody said.
John hit back and Fallon fell down.
“Meddling bloody pom!” Fallon said, propping himself up in the dirt.
“Keep your fists off the woman,” John said. He helped Betty Fallon to her feet and then left her. He did not see Ellen and pushed through the spectators in the direction of the Big House.
Ellen was confused and she retreated into the darkness too. Her first instinct was to run after John but she had to move with the herd, in and out of the light, shaking off groping hands, pushing inebriates out of the way, stumbling over insensible bodies. She heard the sounds of whistling and shouting rise to a crescendo in the shed. It was midnight. She could bear this no longer and turned up the slope herself.
When she let herself in, John was already in bed reading, his hair wet from the shower. “Ellen, I couldn’t find you. Come to bed, sweetheart!”
He never mentioned the Fallon incident and when Ellen cuddled up beside him, she tried to shut out the Fallons and the alarming turbulence of the crowd.
*
And so Ellen passed her time, until the day when the letter in the pale blue envelope arrived.
PART 3
THE CLASH
17
After Ellen’s revelations to him, Paul Travis knew that he would have to visit his mother’s birthplace in Norfolk, England and meet her brothers and sisters if possible, but he was apprehensive; it might arouse uncomfortable memories for them and shock him. He had an inner compulsion to make the visit, despite the fact that it would probably expose him to disparaging views of his mother. Ellen’s account of her life before his birth, recounted to him as she lay dying was, he accepted, only her perception of the story. However vehement her views, however impossible she had found it to gain understanding from her family, there was another angle of her life seen from the viewpoint of her family, which lay uneasily in shadow.
Paul retained his intention to visit but put off the event, year by year after Ellen’s death, always with the promise to himself that it would be ‘soon’. He finally made the journey in 1989, armed with an invitation to stay at the Grange.
Marchmont had given Paul an open invitation in a surprise personal letter some years before. Paul took this to be a genuine gesture toward the son of a woman he had cared for, who had been brought up on Mirabilly; it had nothing to do with biological connection, more with the lord of the manor being liberal with a serf who had turned into a successful businessman. Paul reckoned that despite his mother’s relationship with Marchmont, if he had remained a worker on Mirabilly, he would never have been likely to be invited. Sophie Ryland, whom Paul had met briefly a number of times when he was in New York, knew of the invitation and occasionally tried to persuade him to accept it. With her as intermediary, the visit was eventually arranged and Marchmont re-confirmed it with another welcoming note.
Other than to cross and re-cross the Australian continent and visit New York and London on business, Paul had not travelled widely. He felt the compulsion of his business responsibilities and spent only two days in London after his direct flight; then he travelled north to King’s Lynn. He took a cab to the Grange from the railway station at King’s Lynn. The cabbie offered to drop him at the tradesman’s entrance on the main road, but he elected to be let out at the main gate. He hitched up his canvas travel bag and walked through the ornate arch into the walled grounds. Now, he was able to see across the meadows of a shallow valley sprinkled with wild flowers. The Grange itself was on a rise beyond a lake, about half a mile away. The turrets were sharp against the blue sky and the sun shone on tall windows. To him, it was a scene out of Austen or Trollope.
At the house, an old butler showed him inside the iron-studded doors. He stood in the entrance hall blinking in the gloom at the faces of Marchmont ancestors; they stared from the canvases which lined the walls and the stairs. Grayson, as the butler said he was called, pointed to the doors of the library where Mr Marchmont would be waiting to greet him after he had settled in his room.
A girl in a sweaty shirt, jodhpurs and riding boots was also waiting for him. He expected and was warmed to see Sophie Ryland. He remembered the irritation he had caused Marchmont when he took her on a flight over Mirabilly. They had a rapport which had survived his crass handling of the aircraft, their night in the outback and the appalling embarrassment and shame of meeting Ellen. Sophie would be about twenty-three now, he calculated.
“It’s something, huh?” She indicated the grandiose hall as though it was as new to her as to him. “I’ll show you to your room.”
She led him up the curving marble staircase. They went along a hall to a room overlooking a wood and a river, the Nar according to Sophie. The room had a shabby elegance, chipped gilt chairs, a frayed tapestry
on the wall, marquetry cabinets and heavy red drapes shot with gold threads. The bed was a canopied four-poster. He went into the bathroom. The marble tub stood in the middle of a tiled space.
“The bath is big enough for a bullock. Haven’t they heard of showers in this part of the world?”
“We thought you’d appreciate one of the original rooms, Paul. There are more modern ones.”
“It’s fine. Some home.”
“I wouldn’t call it home. That’s my apartment in Greenwich Village.”
“This is the summer place, right?” He pulled his shirt off and began to remove his crumpled clothes from his bag.
“I’ll see you downstairs,” Sophie said.
He bathed in near-cold water, dressed in a crumpled jacket and took his time on the stairs peering at the smoky portraits, some dating back to Elizabethan times. The Marchmont ancestors were pale and pink and fair, as he was dark-haired and sallow like his mother. He worked his way down to the library and pushed in through the heavy swing doors. The room was high and light, stacked with tiers of books almost to the frescoed ceiling. A gallery with carved mahogany rails ran around the walls to give access to the higher levels.
He was beginning to look around when a golden Labrador ran past him and started to make plaintive sounds to somebody hidden from view in one of the high-backed Regency chairs. The golden halo of Sophie’s hair came into view. She too had changed quickly into a summer dress.
“Hi, again,” she said, making a fuss of the dog.
The dog barked and Marchmont burst through the doors. “Well, well, Paul Travis no less!” He offered his hand. “Delighted to see you my boy!”
Marchmont was a youthfully jaunty fifty-six. His figure was solid and his smooth face would have fitted a number of the portraits on the stairs; it testified to a lot of ease and satisfaction. Paul sensed the same atmosphere about Marchmont as he had when he met him as a youth. The cornflower blue eyes made him feel, momentarily, like an iron filing in a magnetic field. Marchmont stood back and assessed Paul like an item of prime stock.
“And an entrepreneur…” he mused.
“I’m here to meet some of my mother’s folks.”
Marchmont relaxed on a leather couch and waved him to an opposite chair. Grayson appeared and served drinks. Sophie joined them.
“This is a historic first,” Marchmont said, holding his gin and tonic aloft. “A man of Mirabilly sitting in this room! I’m glad you wrote, Paul, glad you were able to accept my invitation. And I think that there is a little business we could talk about later.”
“Sure.” He saw Sophie, out of Marchmont’s view, press her lips together and raise her eyebrows.
“How did you become involved in this… thing… Paul?” Marchmont asked, as though the thing was something despicable.
Marchmont’s manner was quiet and friendly; he was smiling, but clearly very curious.
“You mean the boundary issue? I became involved because I had visited the native land as a boy and I flew over it many times in my teens, when the station was checking or mustering stock.”
“Then you must have seen that it was Mirabilly land. Worked for generations by the station.”
“The local belief always was that it was Aborigine Trust land. I had an opportunity to join the mining syndicate which had an agreement with the trustees to mine.”
“I know that. And I know you’ve been clearing a road, that’s why I’m suing you and your friends for trespass.”
Wanting to fight Marchmont was instinctive and it was difficult for Paul to explain why to himself. In the silence that followed Marchmont must have realised that he was suddenly exhuding an un-hostly chill.
“Anyway, we’ll have an opportunity to talk later. Drink up, my boy.”
*
The evening was warm and Sophie, neatly groomed in a long summer dress, was on the glass covered terrace when Paul arrived; here he would meet the family before supper. The sky was purpling. Chairs and a table with a white cloth had been placed overlooking the gardens. On the table, a magnum of Bollinger rested in a silver ice-bucket with champagne flutes and jugs of orange juice.
“John seems keen to talk business,” Sophie said.
He didn’t answer. He was surveying the scene and trying to imagine what it would be like to own this stately house and land, thoughts that his mother as a servant here might have had.
“Was it tough to come here?” Sophie persisted.
“Yeah, tough. I had to come, but part of me didn’t want to come.”
“What about you and John? I mean, about him being your father?”
“You ask the damnedest questions, Sophie. Forget it. It’s not a subject that can be taken any further.”
He didn’t say that his mother had confirmed the rumour before she died. He couldn’t tell Sophie. She was close to Marchmont. She would surely tell him and what would be the repercussions of that? Marchmont would think he was sucking up, crawling for recognition. And Marchmont would oppose him.
“Oh, shit!” Sophie said. Just at that moment, Grayson presented a tray of fizzing glasses to her and by a slight flicker of his eyelids seemed to signal his despair of the modern woman. “I just happen to think it should be resolved,” Sophie added.
Before Paul could reply, Alex Rainham Marchmont, the son of Marchmont’s deceased wife, sauntered on to the terrace. When Sophie introduced them, Alex gave a supercilious smile. “Ah, yes, the wild colonial boy. We’ve met.”
Paul remembered the pallid kid he’d pumped full of champagne at the celebratory dinner at Mirabilly years ago. Once again, he saw that from an appearance point of view, Alex could easily have passed for Marchmont’s natural son.
Marchmont appeared in a maroon velvet jacket with Linda Ryland on his arm. She was a ripely attractive woman in her late forties in a cream-coloured cocktail frock with emeralds at her throat. Nothing in her appearance squared with the tough times of former years which Sophie had once explained to him. She was elegantly at home in this luxury.
They talked on the terrace until it was cool and nearly dark and Marchmont suggested they go inside to dine. At that point, Emma, Alex’s sister, arrived. She snatched a glass of champagne, made a fuss of one of the Labradors and then gave Paul a kiss on the cheek. He hadn’t seen her since he was a teenager caught in her bedroom with his shorts at his knees; although it was another occasion of shame, Emma had remained in his mind as a symbol of exquisite but forbidden sex. She had blossomed into a voluptuous, rather over-weight woman.
In the dining room, under the chandeliers, the meal was served by uniformed girls on silver platters, while Grayson supervised with his eyebrows and dispensed the claret. The spaces between the diners around the table were wide and there tended to be only one conversation, but it never flagged or touched family matters. Paul didn’t press his opinions too far, saving the Marchmont family from too much exposure to his squashed vowels. The meal indeed was a salad of accents, Paul’s, the clipped rapidity of Emma and Alex’s English public school tones; the more stately, throaty version of the same from Marchmont, Sophie’s soft eastern seaboard drawl and the resonating, nasal New Yorkese of Linda Ryland.
At the conclusion of the dinner, Marchmont asked Paul to join him in the library. “We may get a chance to talk,” he said, in a jocular way.
When Paul went into the library Marchmont was already in a wing-back chair by the fireplace. The drapes were open. The moon was up over the lawns. The trees on the rise were in sharp outline, with the summer-house folly like an Indian temple. Grayson put a cup of Turkish coffee beside Marchmont. He had a large cigar which sent up cords of smoke. Sophie was there. Paul refused the cigars and brandy, but not because he didn’t use them occasionally.
“So, there’s gold, copper and uranium on Mirabilly,” Marchmont said with a cat-like smile.
“Not as far as I know. It’s on the trust land next door,” Paul smiled.
“No, on my land,” Marchmont said dimissively.
“I know your claim,” Paul said airily as though it would hardly bear inspection.
“And we’ll win, and you and your friends’ll lose a lot of money.” Marchmont had a confident grin.
“I don’t think so. The legal advice sounds conclusive to me,” Paul replied woodenly.
“Ah, legal advice, Paul. There’s nothing more uncertain. The law is a quagmire.”
“I know what you mean. Do you want to settle the claim?” Paul asked, trying to be as unemotional as possible.
“What are you offering?” Marchmont looked at him haughtily.
“I can’t make you an offer, but I can tell you what I would recommend to my partners: that you join the syndicate on the same terms as us.”
It was a weakness if Paul disclosed his position so early, but again for reasons he couldn’t articulate clearly, he didn’t want to haggle with this man. He wanted to get it done. He anticipated Marchmont’s rejection.
“Why make that suggestion, Paul, if you’re so sure of yourself? It’ll only dilute your payout, assuming there is one.”
“We don’t want the syndicate to be bogged down in court proceedings.”
“I’ll think about it. There would be a lot of small print to be worked out.”
“Sure. And one piece of it would be that you return the stone in the Big House with the cave drawings on it.”
Marchmont looked surprised. “What an extraordinary request! It’s been at the house since Heron’s days. We’re talking about mining rights worth millions and you’re concerned about a bit of painted stone.”