The Touch

by Colleen McCullough

  “He must be—what? Twelve? Thirteen?”

  “Changing the subject, Alexander? He’ll be thirteen on the sixth of June. A winter baby. Easier to carry through autumn, though God knows Hill End was hot enough.”

  “He’ll be my major heir,” said Alexander, sipping his drink.

  “Alexander!” Ruby sat up straight, eyes wide. “But you have two heirs now!”

  “Girls. Who, as Charles says, may well end in bringing far better men into the family than my own sons might have been, men who would even be willing to change their names to Kinross. But I think I’ve always known that Lee would end in being more to me than simply the son of my most beloved mistress.”

  “And which horse is he going to ride?” asked Ruby bitterly.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “It doesn’t matter.” Ruby buried her nose in her snifter. “I love you, Alexander, I always will. Yet we shouldn’t be saying these things with your wife at death’s door. It’s not—right.”

  “I disagree. So, I think, would Elizabeth. We’ve all admitted that my marriage was a mistake, but I brought it on myself. I am to blame, no one else. My pride was mortally injured. I wanted to show two terrible old men that Alexander Kinross was king of the world.” He smiled, looked suddenly very much at peace. “And, for all the misery my marriage has caused, I can’t help but think that I rescued Elizabeth from worse misery back in Scottish Kinross. She wouldn’t see that, but it’s a truth. Now that I’m out of her bed for good, she’ll do better. I’ll accord her all honor and respect, but my heart belongs to you.”

  “Who,” she asked, seeing her chance, “is Honoria Brown?”

  He looked blank, then laughed. “My first woman. She had a hundred acres of good Indiana farmland and she gave me shelter for the night. Her husband had been killed in the American Civil War. She offered me not only herself, but everything she had if I would stay, marry her, and farm her land. I took what I wanted—her body—but declined the rest.” He sighed, closed his eyes. “I haven’t changed, Ruby. I doubt I can change. What I told her was that it wasn’t my destiny to be an Indiana farmer. And rode off in the morning with my fifty-five pounds of gold.”

  The green eyes glistened with tears. “Alexander, Alexander, the pain you bring upon yourself!” she cried. “Oh, and the pain you bring upon your women! What happened to her?”

  “I have no idea.” He put the empty balloon down. “May I see my wife and my new daughter?”

  “Of course,” said Ruby, climbing wearily to her feet. “I should warn you that neither will know you’re there. The baby came out the color of Elizabeth in a fit—blue-black. It took Margaret Wyler and I five minutes to make her breathe. She’s a month early into the bargain, so she’s very small and frail.”

  “Will she die?”

  “I don’t think so, but she’s no Nell.”

  “And no more marital duty for Elizabeth?”

  “Lady Wyler says that. The risk is too high.”

  “Oh, yes, far too high. I must content myself with two daughters,” said Alexander.

  “Nell is very gifted, you know that.”

  “Of course. But her mind is slanted toward living things.”

  Ruby walked up the stairs slowly. “At fifteen months of age, Alexander, it’s astonishing that she’s slanted toward any sort of thing. Lee was a bit the same, though, come to think of it. I daresay what it really means is that Nell is permanently ahead of her years, just as Lee is. As to what her slant might be later on, you don’t know. Children have fits of enthusiasm.”

  “I intend her to marry Lee,” he said.

  Ruby propped at Elizabeth’s bedroom door, face like thunder, and took Alexander’s hair in both hands so fiercely that he flinched. “Listen to me, Alexander Kinross!” she hissed. “I’ll hear no more of this! No more of this, ever! You can’t plan people’s lives as if they were mines or railways! Leave my son and your daughter to find their own mates!”

  For answer, he opened the door and went in.

  Elizabeth had regained consciousness, turned her head on the pillow to see them, and smiled. “I’ve done it again,” she said. “But I thought it was an end, and it isn’t. Margaret says we have a new daughter, Alexander.”

  He leaned to kiss her brow tenderly, take her hand. “Yes, my dear, Ruby told me. That’s wonderful. Do you feel strong enough to think of a name for her?”

  Came a faint frown; Elizabeth’s lips worked in and out. “A name,” she said, as if puzzled. “A name…I can’t think.”

  “Then we can leave it.”

  “No, she should have a name. Tell me some.”

  “How about Catherine? Or Janet? Elizabeth, after you? Anna? Or perhaps Mary? Flora?”

  “Anna,” she said with satisfaction. “Yes, I like Anna.” Her hand lifted his to her cheek. “I’m afraid we’ll have to find another wet nurse. I don’t seem to have any milk again.”

  “Mrs. Summers has found someone, I believe,” Alexander said, gently disengaging his hand; hers felt like a vulture’s. “An Irishwoman named Biddy Kelly. Her child died of the croup the day before yesterday, and she mentioned to Mrs. Summers that she would nurse our child if her milk lasted. Well, our Anna has come very early, so she’ll still have milk. Shall I hire her, Elizabeth? Or would you rather I asked Sung to find a Chinese wet nurse?”

  “No. Biddy Kelly sounds ideal.”

  Only Ruby frowned; Maggie Summers had found a way to wriggle back into the center of things. This Biddy Kelly was undoubtedly a crony from the Catholic church who would tattle every morsel she overheard. A snooper in the house for at least six months. Many cups of tea in the kitchen, many whispered secrets. What Kinross didn’t already know, it soon would.

  Six

  Revelations

  IF JADE HAD begged in vain to be let become a nurserymaid before Nell was born, the advent of baby Anna granted her most ardent wish. Biddy Kelly did her duty and nursed the child efficiently for seven months, at which point Anna was put on cow’s milk without any adverse reaction. A disappointment for Mrs. Summers in losing her crony, perhaps, but a relief for Jade and Ruby. It pleased Ruby to see the housekeeper deprived of her principal source of upstairs information, but Ruby’s emotions were mild compared to Jade’s. Anna now belonged entirely to her.

  Elizabeth recovered slowly but without setbacks; by the time her second daughter was six months old, she was able to behave as a healthy young woman ought. The piano lessons resumed, she took trips down into Kinross, and Alexander found her a trustworthy man to teach her equestrian skills as well as how to drive an elegant trap drawn by two high-stepping creamy ponies. She also had a white Arabian mare with floating mane and tail which she named Crystal, and developed a passion for grooming the beast until its coat was like satin. While she spent hours in the stables ministering to Crystal, she spent no time at all ministering to Anna. A large part of her neglect of the child’s welfare stemmed out of Jade’s possessiveness, for Jade made it very plain that she regarded Anna’s mama as a rival. Still, Elizabeth was honest enough to admit that this state of affairs in the nursery suited her very well.

  Alexander had caused a macadamized road to be excavated down into Kinross; though it wound back and forth and covered five miles before it reached the town, it freed Elizabeth from the cable car. To use that, she had to inform Summers or one of his sullen lackeys to have the car brought up from the poppet heads to the house, whereas she could ride off on Crystal or gee up her trap by asking at the stables, not in Summers’s control. A huge bonus! In fact, life for Elizabeth had suddenly opened up, especially because her own body had liberated her from all save a distant relationship with her husband.

  When Ruby, deputed to be the bearer of the tidings, broke the news to her that Sir Edward Wyler and his wife did not think it wise for her to continue her conjugal duties, Elizabeth had to suppress a cheer and keep her eyelids lowered. Ruby seemed to think she would miss the Act, but Elizabeth knew she wouldn’t.

 
Horseback was her favorite mode of escape, since riding the mare meant she didn’t have to adhere to the road, could push and poke into the forest wherever the undergrowth permitted. That in turn led to the discovery of nooks and dells whose beauty overwhelmed her; she took to spending hours sitting on some natural rock chair watching the passing parade of myriad creatures from lyre birds to wallabies to amazing insects. Or else she brought a book and read without fear of disturbance, ceasing occasionally to lift her head and dream of true freedom, the kind of existence these gorgeous birds, animals and insects surely regarded as their right.

  Then she came upon The Pool. Quite a long way up the river, she found it during a stubborn mood by persuading Crystal to walk in the creek bed whenever the banks prohibited negotiation; a worse than usual attack of wanting desperately to fly away from all constraints. From the moment she encountered The Pool, she went nowhere else if riding.

  It occupied a small subsidence that gave it considerable depth, and was filled by a little cascade that tumbled over big boulders amid native maidenhair ferns and thick long mosses of a kind Scotland did not possess. Its water was so clear that every stone on the pool bottom leaped into sight, and it held fish as well as minute shrimps transparent as the finest glass, their pinhead red hearts frantically beating. Though trees shaded it, around noon the sun streamed down in rays dancing with motes that touched The Pool’s surface and struck it to pure molten gold. Every kind of life came there to drink; Elizabeth found a comfortable spot for Crystal far enough away from The Pool to pose no audible threat to its winged, walking and crawling visitors, then found a comfortable rock seat for herself, there to let her soul fly away.

  The Pool was hers, entirely hers. The forest of the mountaintop was forbidden to all save Mr. and Mrs. Kinross, but even if a trespasser were to gain access to it, he would never find The Pool. Too far upstream, too difficult to reach.

  WHAT ALEXANDER thought was impossible for others to tell. He had, it seemed to the occupants of the house, decided upon a courteous and civilized communion with his wife, one that went no further than the table and postprandial chats about the mine, the time of year, some new project of Alexander’s, what the papers said, Sir Henry Parkes’s rise to head the floundering government, or the elevation of Mr. John Robertson to the rank of a Knight Commander of the Order of St. Michael and St. George.

  “Sir John Robertson,” said Elizabeth thoughtfully. “I am a little surprised at the Queen’s awarding him a knighthood. He isn’t Church of England, nor is his reputation with women good. That usually sinks a man very low in her estimation.”

  “I doubt she’s been informed of his womanizing,” Alexander said dryly. “However, his knighthood doesn’t surprise me.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Because John Robertson has outlived his political usefulness. The moment a man does that, they petition the Queen to knight him. It’s the signal that he must retire from the electoral arena, you might say.”

  “Indeed?”

  “Oh, yes, my dear. You can’t have failed to notice that the all too frequent governments-in-the-plural are utterly devoid of real objectives. Mark my words, Robertson will retire from the Legislative Assembly shortly. They’ll probably appoint him to the upper house for life and keep him on the Executive Council. Parkes will be left to king it in the lower house.” Alexander snorted. “Pah!”

  “But Parkes is also a knight now,” Elizabeth objected, “and I see no sign that he intends to retire.”

  “That’s because Parkes’s head is too swollen.” Alexander grinned. “His eyes can’t see for all that puffed-up flesh around them. Metaphorically speaking, of course. He’s puffed up, is Sir Henry. Always was, always will be. He also lives too high—dangerous in a politician with no personal wealth to fall back on. Robertson is a rich man, Parkes is a relative pauper. On the face of it there’s no money to be made as a member of parliament, but there are investment tips, perquisites for a premier—” He shrugged. “Ways and means, Elizabeth.”

  “I quite liked him, that night he came to dinner.”

  “Yes, he’s charming. And I applaud his attitude toward the education of the State’s children. What I don’t trust is his willowy nature. Sir Henry bends with whatever wind blows.”

  AT THE END of January of 1878, when Anna was ten months old, Nell sought out her father in his library.

  “Dadda,” she said, climbing on to Alexander’s knee, “what is wrong with Anna?”

  Arrested, Alexander turned the two-year-old mite toward him and stared at her. His daughter’s face was becoming more and more like his own, had the same pointed black brows and long, lean look to it; not becoming in a small child, but perhaps unusual and interestingly attractive in a grown woman. The eyes, startlingly blue, were steady of gaze and, at the moment, looked worried and anxious in a way not appropriate to a toddler.

  “What do you think is wrong with Anna?” he asked, suddenly very aware that he hardly saw his second daughter.

  “Something,” Nell said positively. “At her age, I remember that I could talk, because I remember everything you said to me and I said to you, Dadda. Everything! Yet Anna can’t even sit up. Jade cheats, she holds her up whenever I come in to say hello, but I see it. Anna’s eyes don’t work properly, they roll around. She dribbles a lot. I was sitting on a potty to do poohs, but Anna can’t. Oh, Dadda, she’s such a dear little thing, and she’s my baby sister! But something is wrong with her, truly.”

  His mouth was dry; Alexander licked his lips and tried to seem—not unconcerned, more as if this wasn’t such a shock. “What time is it?” he asked.

  This was a game; he had taught Nell to read the hands of the grandfather clock that lived in one corner of the library. She was never mistaken, nor was she now.

  “Six o’clock, Dadda. Butterfly Wing will be coming for me”—she giggled—“any old tick of the clock.”

  “Then why don’t you find Butterfly Wing for once and surprise her?” Alexander asked, tipping Nell on to the floor. “If it’s six, I must find your mother. Auntie Ruby is coming to dinner in an hour.”

  “Oh, I wish I could stay up!” cried Nell. “I love Auntie Ruby almost as much as I love Butterfly Wing.”

  “And is that more than Mumma? More than me?”

  “No, no, of course not!” Nell produced a new concept. “It is all relative, Dadda, you know that.”

  “Off with you, wee pedant,” said her father with a chuckle and a gentle push.

  BEFORE HE sought out Elizabeth he went to the nursery, to which room Nell had never returned after Anna’s birth, as Lady Wyler had felt that a noisy toddler would interfere with the demanding care a sickly premature baby needed. Butterfly Wing kept Nell with her, but of late Nell had been pressing to be given a room all to herself.

  Now that he thought about it, Jade hardly left the nursery night or day; she had handed the maiding of Elizabeth over to Pearl and Silken Flower, devoted herself entirely to baby Anna. It was so subtle, so invisible—what father, he asked himself, is consumed with interest in a baby, even one he has sired? Especially when the baby is another girl? Nell was different—vital, intelligent, curious, busy, intrusive. Nell wouldn’t let him ignore her existence, never had, even when she was newborn. The fingers curled around one of his, the fixed and cognitive regard, the bubbles, smirks, gurgles, coos. Whereas Anna had disappeared from sight, sound, presence. There always seemed to be a reason why he wasn’t welcome in the nursery.

  Tonight he didn’t knock, didn’t ask Jade’s permission; he simply walked in. Jade was sitting with Anna on her knees, one hand supporting the child’s neck, feeding her some kind of mush from a spoon. A startled face lifted; Jade jumped.

  “Mr. Kinross!” she said, gasping. “Mr. Kinross, you can’t see Anna now, I’m feeding her!”

  For answer Alexander walked to a wooden kitchen chair, took it by its back and positioned it in front of his child and her nurserymaid. He sat on it, face stony.

  “Give m
e the baby, Jade.”

  “I can’t do that, Mr. Kinross! Her nappy’s dirty, she’ll make you all smelly!”

  “I’ve been smelly before, I’ll be smelly again. Give her to me, Jade. Now.”

  Transferring Anna was difficult; the child lolled like a rag doll and was unable to support her own head, but it was done at last. Bereft, Jade stood trembling, her delicately lovely features frozen into a mask of fear.

  Alexander looked at his second daughter properly for the first time, and saw at once how right Nell was, despite the fact that at ten months Anna was a prettier baby than Nell, chubby and well cared for. Black hair, black brows and lashes, grey-blue eyes that didn’t focus, couldn’t seem to focus. That some thought processes lay within her skull was obvious in the way she recognized that the hands holding her were alien, the lap on which she sat not Jade’s. Wriggling and flopping in this awkward grasp, she began to wail.

  “Thank you, Jade, you can take her,” Alexander said, alert to see how quickly Anna’s sense of disorientation faded. Almost immediately; the moment Jade held her, she stopped crying and opened her mouth for more mush.

  “Now,” he said quietly, “I want the truth, Jade. How long have you known that Anna isn’t what she ought to be mentally?”

  The tears rolled down Jade’s cheeks unchecked; she needed both hands to manage the baby. “Almost at once, Mr. Kinross,” she sobbed. “Biddy Kelly knew too. So does Mrs. Summers. Oh, how they laughed about it in the kitchen! But I got out my dagger and told them I’d cut their throats if they ever breathed a word about Anna to anyone in Kinross.”

  “Did they believe you?”

  “Oh, yes. They knew I meant it. I’m a heathen Chinee.”

  “What can Anna do?”

  “She has improved, Mr. Kinross, honestly! But everything takes a long, long time. She can eat off a spoon now—see? It wasn’t easy, but she can learn. I talked to Hung Chee in the medicine shop and he showed me how to help Anna exercise her neck so that one day she will be able to hold up her head.” Down went Jade’s cheek to rest against the black curls. “I love looking after Anna, sir, I swear it! Anna is my baby, she doesn’t belong to Pearl or Butterfly Wing or anyone except me. Oh, please, oh, please don’t send me away from her!” The weeping broke out afresh.