by Fiona Lowe
‘Mannering love of the land?’
‘Precisely.’ Edwina walked toward the stile. ‘Coming?’
Harriet watched her climb the three steps, knowing that Edwina would take the walk whether she accompanied her or not. In some ways her mother was oddly determined and in other ways totally flaky. But at sixty-five, Edwina had become a force to be reckoned with. Harriet also knew that Edwina had baited her with the mention of her father.
She called out, ‘Is this going to be some sort of an apology to Dad and me?’
Her mother looked thoughtful. ‘I suppose it is. In a way.’
‘In that case …’ As far as she was concerned, Edwina owed her father a long overdue apology. As he wasn’t here to accept it, she’d listen on his behalf. Clambering over the stile, she joined her mother on the other side of the barbed-wire fence.
Edwina’s expression changed from anxiety to relief and with a quick nod Harriet accepted as thanks, she struck out sure-footedly across the familiar paddocks of her childhood. Harriet kept pace. She’d grown up hearing how when Edwina was a young child her uncle had owned the smaller farm of Miligili. Back then the expansive Murrumbeet had abutted one of Miligili’s boundaries and the cousins had considered the combined lands to be their private playground. They’d ranged far and wide, camping, picnicking and generally exploring.
‘So, Sydney?’ Edwina finally broke the silence, her words caught by the breeze.
Harriet tensed. ‘I didn’t come to talk about Sydney.’
‘No.’ Edwina skirted a large slab of granite. ‘I’ll just launch into it then, shall I?’
‘That’s why we’re here.’
‘Right,’ Edwina said as if she was about to start a CWA meeting. ‘I know you feel the loss of your father keenly. And we both know you think I’m a poor second. In some respects, I understand that. I can’t offer you the same professional mentoring Richard did, but Harriet, you’re my daughter and I love you. I think there’ve been times in your life when you’ve doubted that. Especially recently, with everything that’s happened. But I’ve always loved you and I’ll continue to love you and your sisters. Nothing changes that. Not even our disapproval of each other’s choices.’
Edwina paused as if she was giving Harriet space to speak but Harriet wasn’t prepared to say anything until she’d worked out where her mother was going with all of this.
‘And I did love your father. Granted, at the start I didn’t have the same depth of feeling for him that I’d felt for Doug, but when I married him, I committed to doing my best by him.’
‘You learned to love him? Lucky Dad. God, Edwina, it sounds like you’re talking about an arranged marriage.’
‘That’s exactly what it was.’
The quietness of her mother’s voice chilled her—the words at odds with what Harriet had always believed about her parents’ marriage. ‘Growing up, whenever we asked either you or Dad, we were always told the story of how your eyes met over the champagne fountain at the Young Liberals ball. How Dad danced with you all night before whisking you off in his yellow Triumph Spitfire.’ Icy cold anger burned her. ‘Was it a lie?’
Edwina’s gaze met her with sincerity in their depths. ‘No. All of that’s true. It’s how we met, but unbeknown to me, your grandfather had already met Richard and paid for his ticket to the ball specifically to meet me. I quickly became the solution to two problems.’ The corners of her mouth turned down. ‘When I returned to Murrumbeet after Michelle, your grandfather wanted to marry me off quicksmart before I risked the family name a second time. Richard needed my name and connections to establish his practice. In your father’s defence, he didn’t pressure me at all. He was actually quite chivalrous and romantic at the start. The pressure to marry came from your grandfather. What Fraser Mannering wanted, he invariably got.’
Harriet’s disbelieving laugh came back to her on the wind. ‘For God’s sake, Edwina. It was 1969 not 1869. I can’t believe you were forced to marry Dad.’
‘Exactly,’ her mother said simply, ‘it was 1969. The social mores in the country hadn’t travelled so very far from those of the turn of the century. In the Mannerings’ circles, women were still defined by their virginity and their social standing. Although no one knew about the baby, your grandfather considered me tainted goods and a liability. The sooner he could offload me onto a husband and reduce the risk of his political reputation being sullied, the better.’
Edwina’s voice suddenly took on an acrimonious edge. ‘The fact he’d had affairs for years and his bullying was likely the reason my mother took refuge in a gin bottle was the double standard he chose to overlook.’
Surprise made Harriet blink. ‘Grandma drank?’ Her memories of her grandmother were rather beige in comparison to her larger-than-life grandfather.
‘Like a fish,’ Edwina said pragmatically. ‘And while we’re talking family foibles and secrets, I think it’s time you knew that the Mannerings were not the paragons of virtue they’ve moulded history to reflect. Your great uncle gambled far too much on the horses. Your great-great-grandfather had a thing for showgirls, and my great-great-grandmother’s sister ran off with an impoverished artist. Of course the family disowned her and she ended up contracting TB and dying destitute. That story was trotted out and told to all Mannering women for generations to keep us in line. Oh, and your great-uncle on my mother’s side spent far too much time in the stables with the horses.’
‘I didn’t need to hear that. God, I want to bleach my brain.’
‘Those stories are the ones I know. I’m sure you’d find a veritable treasure trove of scandal if you went digging.’
Harriet didn’t want to. She pushed away the hint at bestiality and replaced it with images of the old sepia and black and white photos she’d recently wrapped lovingly in bubble wrap and placed in packing boxes. There were photos of rich men in white tie with their starched shirts and waxed moustaches—serious and stern upstanding members of the community. Pictures of young women in white muslin dresses, older matriarchs dressed in neck-to-toe widow’s weeds as well as debutante, ball and wedding photographs. They projected the image of a life of privilege lived with appropriate entitlement.
Her grandfather used to sit her on his knee and tell her stories about the photos. Tell her how special it was to be a Mannering and how the family had played their part in not only shaping the district but in shaping the state of Victoria. She was struggling to align all those generational stories of great things and personal sacrifice with what her mother was telling her.
‘How do you know Grandpa had affairs?’
Edwina tucked her hair behind her ears to keep it from blowing into her eyes. ‘All of us who keep secrets eventually let something slip.’
She thought about James. ‘But the rest of us have to have suspicions to interpret those slips.’
‘Not always, but in this instance you’re right. I was probably on the lookout for something because of the way he treated my mother. Unlike his constituents, I didn’t hold your grandfather in quite so high regard.’
The words barrelled into Harriet. With a jolt, she realised that all her life she’d never heard her mother say ‘Dad’ in reference to her own father. It was always your grandfather or my father.
Edwina continued, ‘He was a conniving, scheming bastard who used people. All in all, over the generations, the Mannerings have hidden a great deal of dirty little secrets behind their pillars of respectability and the façade of a spotless life.’
‘They’ve done a bloody good job,’ Harriet said, feeling slightly rattled. ‘None of those stories have turned up in the official family history.’
‘No,’ Edwina said tightly, biting her lip. ‘And I was co-opted into the secret keeping. In hindsight, I should have resisted.’
‘When Dad proposed, he didn’t know you’d had a baby, did he?’
‘No.’
Despite the unsettling information about her ancestors she knew her father and was confident in her
assumptions about him. ‘I thought so. He wouldn’t have married you if he’d known.’
‘Richard would have been torn between the social standing I offered him and the stigma of being with a woman who’d had a child out of wedlock.’
The practical words grazed her. ‘That’s unfair.’
‘Actually, I think it’s very fair,’ Edwina said calmly. ‘Richard’s family didn’t have the same level of wealth or respectability as we did and he craved it. He loved the social prestige I gave him and coupled with an esteemed career as a surgeon, he thrived more successfully than he would have without me. Why do you think he threw so many parties?’
‘For you,’ Harriet said hotly, trying to block out Xara’s thoughts on their father’s parties. ‘To keep you happy.’
Edwina sighed. ‘The last thing to make or keep me happy is a party. But parties and socialising were exactly what made Richard happy. They make you happy too. Xara and I not so much and Georgie—’ She looked thoughtful. ‘To be honest, I’m not really sure where Georgie sits on the socialising fence. There’s a lot I don’t know about Georgie. From now on, I intend to do a much better job at finding out.’
Harriet wasn’t interested in her mother’s plans for Georgie. She was here for her father. Her resentment spilled over. ‘Dad was just trying to find ways to help you out of your blue funks. He might have been able to help you more, even been a little more understanding if he’d known the reason for them.’
‘He knew.’
Harriet’s heart lurched at the quiet but penetrating words. ‘What do you mean he knew? You just told me he didn’t know about Michelle.’
‘He found out when you were six.’
The years rolled back. She clearly remembered sharing the private eye rolling and amused despair about Edwina with her father. All of it had said how could Edwina, who was the wife of a loving man, mother of three girls, living in a beautiful home with plenty of outside help with the house and garden, keep having episodes of the ‘can’t copes’?
Buck up, Edwina. Worse things have happened.
She suddenly felt a bit sick. No! There had to be another reason for his behaviour. Her father was a caring man. Only, over the years Harriet had seen and heard many examples of his cavalier approach—accepted it even, because at the time she’d thought there was no good reason for Edwina to be sad. But Edwina was telling her he knew there was a reason. He’d known since she was six.
‘You eventually told him?’
Edwina shook her head. ‘No. I didn’t tell him. I’ve often wondered if things may have been different if I had.’
Harriet wasn’t interested in musings. She wanted the facts. Needed the facts. ‘How did he find out?’
‘I promise I’ll get to that but first I need to tell you about the early years of our marriage. We both worked hard to establish his practice. Obviously, he was talented and good at his job and I introduced him to the—’ her fingers formed quotation marks ‘—“right” people. I kept busy with my volunteering but I craved a baby and Richard was keen to start a family too.
‘For whatever reason, it took me well over a year to fall pregnant with you. I’d almost given up when old Doctor Leonard gave me the good news. I was over the moon and so was your father. The six months before you were born were some of the happiest times we ever shared. We were so excited about starting our family. Neither of us expected me to get severe post-natal depression.
‘Nothing prepares you for that. All I’d wanted was to be your mother, hold you close and love you. Instead, my body was invaded by a suffocating, choking darkness. I was numb to what was going on around me but at the same time I felt pain and sadness down to my soul.’ Her voice quavered. ‘It made me feel worthless. Defective. An utter failure.’
Edwina cleared her throat and when she spoke again her voice was firmer. ‘I spent time in a clinic and when I’d recovered enough and was able to be a mother to you, you were almost one.’
Disbelief stopped Harriet’s feet and she stared at her mother. ‘You spent almost a year in a clinic?’
‘No. I was there for a few weeks and then your father insisted I come home. He was worried about what people would think. He employed a nurse as well as the indomitable Mrs Abercrombie. She always managed to make me feel more even more useless than I already believed I was. But she adored you and your world revolved around her and your father. I was a stranger.’ Edwina gave a strained laugh. ‘Of course, like every mother, I blamed myself. I was being punished for giving up Michelle.’
‘If you’d kept Michelle, then Xara and Georgie and I wouldn’t exist,’ Harriet said tightly, still trying to absorb the news that Edwina had virtually missed her first year. As a doctor, she knew the theory about bonding and the development of trust that occurred in the first year of life. As a mother, she’d watched it evolve between Charlotte and herself: Charlotte’s bright-eyed gaze fixed on her face while she breastfed; the wide smile and gurgly laugh that lit up her baby’s face when Harriet walked into the room and Charlotte recognised her. Every time it happened, Harriet had got a high from the rush of love that consumed her. Edwina had missed out on all of that.
I missed out too.
A spurt of anger made her stride out. ‘I clearly remember your PND after Georgie. Why didn’t you ever tell us it had happened before with Xara and me?’
‘Shame. Guilt. All the usual suspects.’ Edwina shoved her hands in the pockets of her jacket as the late spring chill nipped at exposed skin. The sun was now low in the sky, threading its wide fingers of orange and crimson through the clouds in a vivid display of hectic colour. ‘My depression embarrassed your father. He refused to discuss it and he didn’t want people talking about it or us.’ Her mouth tightened. ‘After all, just like the Mannerings before us, we were an exemplary family with the world at our feet. No chinks in perfection allowed.’
The words buffeted Harriet, their bitterness stinging. She wished she could ask her father about all of this. He’d cared for thousands of people as a doctor, and as a father, he’d loved and cared for her. Had he really put public perception ahead of his wife? No. He wouldn’t do that.
James’s voice, which had thankfully become fainter in recent weeks, suddenly roared back like dragon fire. With you, everything has to be fucking perfect.
She remembered yelling back at him that it wasn’t true. And it wasn’t; she’d believed it then and she believed it still. Hadn’t her father always told her that life was all about hard work? What was it he’d said to her at her graduation? Remember who you are and where you come from. Keep your guard up and know that success is the result of perfection.
She felt herself frown. For years she’d remembered that speech quite differently. She’d have staked her life he’d said success was the result of hard work. She pictured him as she always chose to remember him: sitting by the fire in Glenora’s library with a book in one hand and a glass of top-shelf whiskey in the other. She always felt close to him in that room with its scent of leather and his favourite paintings. He loved the Arthur Streeton oil of Mount Elephant that hung behind his desk not only because it was a quintessential piece of Australian art but also because he’d managed to outbid Geoffrey Gunderson, who’d also coveted it.
She saw him raise his glass to her. Surround yourself with perfection, Harry and everything else follows.
She choked on a breath.
‘Are you all right?’
‘Breathed in an insect.’ She coughed and cleared her throat again to add gravitas to the fib.
Edwina passed her water bottle. ‘The reason there’s almost five years between you and Xara is because after PND with you, I was too scared to have another baby. I was terrified of tumbling into that black morass of despair again. Initially, your father felt the same way but you were such an engaging child that by the time you were three, Richard was very keen to try again. I had a lot more confidence in being your mother and thought I could cope. I saw my doctor and told him my concerns about getti
ng sick again. He brushed them aside, saying the depression was a one-off thing probably caused by fear of the unknown. Now that I knew all about being a mother I’d have to be really unlucky for it to happen twice.’ Edwina gave another short, sharp laugh. ‘I proved him wrong.’
For the first time in her life, Harriet caught a hint of the anguish Edwina had experienced. ‘I have a vague memory of wearing my red coat and visiting you somewhere after Xara was born.’
‘You loved that coat. Richard bought it for you from the Georges children’s department.’ Edwina smiled. ‘Your father always had exceptional taste in clothes.’
‘He did.’ She’d loved the way her father had carried himself, the smart way he dressed and the way he and Edwina had always turned heads when they walked into a room. When he’d died, Harriet had asked Edwina for one of his cashmere jumpers. It was one of only a few possessions that would be going to Sydney with her. Apartments, she was discovering, did not come with a surfeit of storage.
‘Unlike the old-school psychiatrist I saw after you were born, the young doctor who treated me with Xara had studied in America. He asked me if I’d ever suffered any trauma in my childhood or my adult life. I almost told him about Susan—I mean Michelle—being stolen from me.’
‘Why didn’t you?’
‘It was 1976.’
A raft of irritation zipped through Harriet. ‘So? I need more information than that.’
‘It means I was a woman with less rights than a man. Added to that, I was married to a doctor. All Richard had to do was ask to read my file and no one would say no to him. He probably didn’t even need to ask.’ She gave herself a shake as if pushing herself back on track. ‘Anyway, the psychiatrist’s question about trauma stayed with me and I promised myself that when I was well, I’d try to get information about my lost daughter. I knew it would be a hard task because back then they changed the birth certificate. But I thought if I could find out that she was alive, healthy and happy, perhaps that would free me of the debilitating depression.’