The Touch

by Colleen McCullough

  “Can’t you rekindle the spark?”

  “No! Especially not with Dad’s passing. I’d be a traitor.”

  “How so?”

  “The bloke happens to be a Labor member of the New South Wales parliament. Head as far up socialism’s arse as Dad’s was up capitalism’s.” She sighed and actually looked a little misty. “Oh, but I did like him! A lot shorter than you, but he’d give you a run for your money in the ring, I’d bet.”

  “Only,” said Lee, grinning, “if he knew all those Chinese tricks you learned to defend yourself.”

  ALEXANDER’S LAST will and testament was a new one, made two days after Anna’s death—well before Lee’s confession, a great relief. Lee couldn’t blame himself for anything it contained, though he did wonder why Alexander hadn’t changed it once he had been apprised of Lee’s conduct with his wife. Six of Alexander’s seven shares in Apocalypse Enterprises were left outright to Lee; the seventh was left to Ruby, which meant that the thirteen shares totaling the Company’s whole were now seven for Lee, two for Ruby, two for Sung, and two for Constance Dewy. Lee was the major shareholder and indisputably the boss.

  Elizabeth, Nell and Dolly were each left an income of £50,000 a year to be paid out of profits or from trusts, as the board saw fit to decide.

  Jim Summers got £100,000, the Wong sisters £100,000 each, and Chang £50,000. Alexander expressed a wish that Sung Po should continue as town clerk, and bequeathed him £50,000. Theodora Jenkins received £20,000 and the deeds of her old house.

  The 10,000 acres of Mount Kinross were the property of the Company, but Elizabeth was to have tenure of them until her death, after which they would return to the board. All the cash bequests were to be free and clear of legacy duty, to be picked up out of Alexander’s own funds.

  His private fortune, his art collection, his rare books and all properties in his name were left for any children Elizabeth might have after his death, a clause that no one understood, even Lee. What had Alexander sensed, for know about them he did not when he made that will? Was it his way of telling Elizabeth that he was sorry, that she was free to marry again?

  “I’m so glad it’s you copped the burden, Lee,” said Nell.

  “I’m not. I really didn’t expect to.”

  “You’re tied hand and foot to Apocalypse Enterprises now. I suppose when I did medicine he washed his hands of me.”

  “As the custodian of his achievements, yes, but I wouldn’t call fifty thousand pounds a year washing his hands of you.”

  “You don’t know about my hopes that he’d endow a hospital for the mentally disturbed.”

  Lee forced a smile. “If you told him you wanted to do that, it’s reason enough to deprive you of the opportunity. Alexander would deem that tilting at windmills, Anna or no Anna.”

  “Yes, he would, wouldn’t he? A total pragmatist.”

  “Oh, I don’t know—look at his bequest to Theodora.”

  “I’m glad he remembered her.”

  “So am I.”

  “How big is his private fortune, Lee?”

  “Enormous. The bequests and legacy duty won’t even dent it.”

  “To any children Mum might have after his death…But he knew—we all know!—that she can’t have any children! So what happens to his fortune if she doesn’t have more children?”

  “A nice point. Since it’s in the Bank of England, it will probably go into chancery after her death, there to stay for years while lawyers wrangle and feed off its corpse like vultures,” Lee said. “If you have children, you could sue for it on their behalf, I imagine.”

  “Mum, to start having children at her age?” Nell looked as if she expected the world to end before that happened. “Though I do admit,” she went on thoughtfully, “that eclampsia probably wouldn’t be a danger.”

  “Why not?” asked Lee, clutching at straws.

  “I suspect she’s in much better health than she was then.”

  “Even at her age?” he asked, tongue in cheek.

  “Well, yes, theoretically she’s still fertile, I suppose.”

  And there Lee left it.

  AT LEAST HE left it as far as Nell was concerned, but Lee soon discovered that he was perpetually caught in Alexander’s web. Ruby was the next one.

  “He must have known about Elizabeth and you before he made his will,” said Ruby when they returned to the hotel.

  “Believe me, Mum,” he said very earnestly, holding her hands, “Alexander did not know about Elizabeth and me when he made his will. If he had, he would never have left me the major share, and you know it.”

  “Then why—?”

  “All I can put it down to is a premonition, or perhaps to a feeling that with his death, Elizabeth’s life would take a new turn. That more children wouldn’t harm her,” Lee said, unable to express what he only sensed.

  “But he was set to live forever! How could he know that—that within a week of drawing up the wretched thing, he’d be dead in a mine cave-in?” she demanded, pacing.

  Lee sighed. “He always called Elizabeth fey, but he was as much a Scot as she. His instincts were uncanny. Truly, I believe that he had a strong premonition.”

  “I suppose it can’t have been anything else, but it leaves so much unanswered!” Suddenly she laughed, not hysterically, but in genuine amusement. “Bugger the man! He made that will for a purpose. Just because he’s gone doesn’t necessarily mean that he’s going to stop tormenting us.”

  “Sit down, Mum, have a cognac and a cheroot.”

  She lifted her balloon to him; he lifted his to her. “Here’s to Alexander,” she said, and tossed the spirit down.

  “Alexander. May he never stop tormenting us.”

  Not until after dinner did Ruby return to the subjects that were chewing at her.

  “My dearest jade kitten, what about Elizabeth?”

  “I shall marry her at the appropriate time.”

  “Do you swear to me that he didn’t know?”

  “No, I won’t! What an idiotic request, Mum! Use your common sense,” he said sharply. “Can we please leave this subject alone?”

  She took the rebuke with equanimity, then said, “He must have been down in old Brumford’s office making the draft of the will while Elizabeth was still sleeping, and he signed the final draft straight after breakfast on that second day, Brumford told me. And Alexander said that Nell was sticking to her mother like glue.” Ruby huffed. “He hadn’t seen you, so he couldn’t have known.”

  “Oh, please, Mum, change the subject!”

  “Nell is going to hit the ceiling when she finds out about you and Elizabeth.”

  “As long as you understand, I don’t care about Nell.”

  “Oh, I understand! I can’t blame either of you.” And off she went again. “That’s all sustains me over this will business—if he had known, he’d not have made you his major heir. That’s inarguable, even to Nell. Alexander didn’t love Elizabeth, but he wouldn’t have tolerated anyone poaching on his preserves.”

  “Mum, I love you, but I’m going to murder you.”

  “I know you love me, and I love you too, jade kitten.” The tears began to run down her face, but she managed to smile. “I miss Alexander desperately, but I’m so happy for you. With any luck, I might have some horribly rich grandchildren. She won’t have any trouble having them, I know it in my bones.”

  “She says the same thing. So does Nell.”

  The phone rang. Lee got up to answer it, the look on his face telling Ruby who the caller was.

  “Certainly, Elizabeth. I’ll get her,” he said for Aggie’s benefit. “Mum, Elizabeth would like to speak to you.”

  “Is everything all right?” Ruby asked the receiver.

  “Yes, Nell and I are fine. But I wasn’t sure how fast Lee was planning to move on Alexander’s statue, so I thought I’d best ring now and tell you what I think,” said the disembodied voice.

  “Alexander’s statue?” Ruby asked blankly.


  “Not in bronze, Ruby. Please, not in bronze. Tell Lee that I want it in granite. Granite is Alexander’s stone.”

  “I’ll tell him.”

  Ruby hung up. “She wants Alexander’s statue to be made in granite, not in bronze. It’s his stone, she says. Jesus!”

  Indeed it is, thought Lee. He’s entombed under thousands of tons of it. There’s a dimple in the mountain now right over the end of number one tunnel, just as I told the Coroner. He hit a fault—a big one. And he knew it was there. He even teased me by dragging me up there to finish our talk, and stamped on the ground. Hollow. But I was too beside myself to listen. I am the only person who can ask what he can never tell me: Was he planning his suicide before he knew that Elizabeth was unfaithful with me? Did her disappearance provoke more than a natural fear and anxiety? Did he think that he should give her her freedom while she was still young enough to bear more children? Usually he discussed every aspect of a blast with me, but not this one.

  ELIZABETH HAD taken to sitting in the library with only the desk lamp switched on; her chair was far from it, shadowed, of no use for any purpose save thinking.

  A month since Alexander’s death. It had dragged. With the inquest verdict in, the memorial service over and the will read, the life of Sir Alexander Kinross had finally come to its end. In an odd way Lee seemed to have retreated, not of himself, but inside her own mind. The time was split as with a wedge between Alexander alive and Alexander dead. Her future and her freedom were assured, yet she couldn’t get beyond thoughts of Alexander. Who had, she knew as surely as if he materialized before her and told her, committed suicide. As deliberately, thoughtfully as he did everything. Since she didn’t know that Lee had told Alexander about them, she presumed he hadn’t known about her and Lee, which meant that some other reason lay at the root of it. But what that reason was, she had no idea.

  “Mum, you shouldn’t sit here alone in the dark,” said Nell, coming in. “Dinner’s in half an hour. Can I get you one of your enormous sherries?”

  “Thank you,” Elizabeth said, blinking in the dazzle as Nell went around switching on more lights.

  “Can you eat? Should I have Hung Chee make you up a tonic?”

  “I can eat.” Elizabeth took the glass and sipped. “But a tonic from Hung Chee? Hasn’t modern medicine got something more effective? From Hung Chee, it might have anything in it from powdered beetles to dried dung to shivery grass seeds.”

  “Chinese medicine is brilliant,” said Nell, sitting opposite her mother with her own enormous sherry. “We tend to go to the chemistry lab and manufacture something, whereas they go to Mother Nature. Oh, a lot of what we manufacture is excellent, can do things no Chinese medicine can. But especially for minor or chronic complaints, Nature has a wonderful pharmacopoeia. After I graduate, I intend to collect old wives’ remedies, cure-alls of custom and tradition, and Hung Chee’s recipes for gout, dizzy spells, rashes, bilious attacks and God knows what else.”

  “Does that mean you’re not going into research anymore?”

  Nell scowled. “There won’t be a post for me in research, Mum, that much I’ve learned. But I’m not brokenhearted about it—and that’s rather surprised me. I want to go into general practice in some desperately poor part of Sydney.”

  Elizabeth smiled. “Oh, Nell, that pleases me!”

  “I have to go back to Sydney tomorrow, Mum, or I’ll have to repeat Med IV, but it worries me to leave you here alone.”

  “I won’t be alone for long,” said Elizabeth placidly.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “I’m going away for a while.”

  “With Dolly? Where?”

  “No, I’m sending Dolly to Constance at Dunleigh. Sophia’s children are there, so are Maria’s, and it’s time Dolly learned to mix with children around her age. The Dewy girls haven’t discussed Dolly’s parentage, and Dunleigh is a long way from here. They have an excellent governess. Constance suggested it.”

  “That’s splendid, Mum. It really is. And you?”

  “I’m going to the Italian lakes. I used to dream of them,” Elizabeth said in a slightly eerie voice, “whenever I planned to run away. But I never could run away. First there was Anna, then came Dolly. Do you remember them, Nell? The Italian lakes?”

  “Only that they were beautiful,” Nell said through a choked throat. “Did you plan to run away often?”

  “Whenever I found life here unbearable.”

  “Was that often?”

  “Very often.”

  “Did you hate Dad that much?”

  “No, I never hated him. I didn’t love him, and that grew into dislike. Hatred says that you can never find a reason for what you feel, it’s too blind, but I was always able to see the truth. I was even able to see Alexander’s point of view. The trouble was that it lay a world away from mine.”

  “He did love you, Mum.”

  “I know that now that he’s dead. But it doesn’t change anything. He loved Ruby more.”

  “Bugger Ruby Costevan!” Nell snapped.

  “Don’t say that!” cried Elizabeth, so loudly and sternly that Nell jumped. “If it weren’t for Ruby, I don’t honestly know what I might have done. You’ve always loved her, Nell, so you mustn’t start blaming her now. I won’t hear a word against her.”

  Nell was trembling. Passion in her mother’s voice! And for the one person society said she should detest! “I’m sorry, Mum. I was wrong.”

  “Just promise me that when you marry—you will!—you marry for the right reasons. Liking, most of all. Love, of course. But also for the pleasures of the body. It isn’t supposed to be mentioned, as if it were something the Devil invented rather than God. But I cannot tell you how important it is. If you can share your private life with your husband wholeheartedly, nothing else will matter. You have a career of your own that’s cost far too much to abandon, and you mustn’t. If he wants you to abandon it, don’t marry him. You’ll always have sufficient income to live comfortably, so you can be married and still continue to practice your career.”

  “Good advice,” said Nell gruffly, beginning to see many things about her mother and father.

  “No one can give better advice than someone who has failed.”

  A silence fell; Nell studied her mother through different eyes, with a wisdom that had grown since her father died. Always Dad’s partisan, always exasperated with Mum’s passivity, that air of being somewhere else. What she had loathed about her mother was the martyr element, but now Nell saw that Elizabeth was not, nor ever had been, a martyr.

  “Poor Mum! You just never had the luck, did you?”

  “No, I didn’t. But I hope to have some luck in the future.”

  Nell put down her glass and rose, went to kiss her mother on the lips—a first. “I hope you do too.” She held out her hand. “Come, dinner will be ready. We’ve laid the bogeys to rest, haven’t we?”

  “Bogeys? I’d rather call them demons,” said Elizabeth.

  LEE ACCOMPANIED Elizabeth back to the house after she saw Nell off on the train and followed her into the library feeling a little lost. The only physical contact they had had since Alexander’s death was that passionless, pathetic interlude in Anna’s temporary prison bed. Not that he condemned her for this withdrawal; on the contrary, he understood it very well. But to him it was Alexander’s presence that hovered between them, and he couldn’t find the right incantation to banish it. What frightened him was that he might lose her yet, for though he loved her and believed that she loved him, their relationship was thus far built on sand, and Alexander’s death had shifted that sand in many ways—his inheritance—his ignorance of how her mind worked. If Alexander didn’t know after so long, how could he? Through his love for her, said his instincts—but logic and good sense were not so sure.

  Even now, with the library door firmly closed and the dark curtains drawn, she gave him no sign that she wanted him to come to her, take her into his arms, love her. Instead she stood pulling her bla
ck kid gloves through her fingers as if to torture these inanimate reminders of bereavement. Head bent, watching what she did with total absorption. Alexander is right, she goes away and leaves no key to the maze she wanders.

  Minutes went by. Finally word burst from him: “Elizabeth, what do you want to do?”

  “Do?” She lifted her head to gaze at him, and smiled. “I would like the fire lit. It’s cold.”

  Perhaps that’s it, he thought, kneeling with a taper at the grate to touch it to the carefully laid paper and kindling. Yes, perhaps that’s it. No one has ever fussed over her, considered her comfort and well-being. The fire lit, he took her gloves from her, unpinned her hat, led her to a comfortable chair drawn up to the hearth, smoothed her hair where the hat had disarranged it, gave her a sherry and a cigarette. Her eyes, black in the gloom, reflected the leaping flames when they turned in the direction of the fire, but only if he was there. Otherwise they followed his movements until he settled on the carpet beside her knee and leaned his head against it. She picked up his pigtail and wound it around her arm, though he couldn’t see what her face said. It was enough to be here with her like this.

  “ ‘How do I love thee? Let me count the ways,’ ” he said.

  She picked it up. “ ‘I love thee to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach.’ ”

  “ ‘I love thee to the level of every day’s most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.’ ”

  “ ‘I love thee with the breath, smiles, tears, of all my life!’ ”

  “ ‘And, if God choose,’ ” he ended, “ ‘I shall but love thee better after death.’ ”

  They didn’t speak again; the small sticks were glowing, so he rose to put dry old logs upon them, then sat on the floor between her knees, his head back to rest upon her stomach, his eyes closed to savor the feel of her hands stroking his face. The sherry stood undrunk, the cigarette burned itself to ashes.

  “I’m going away,” she said a long time later.

  His eyes opened. “With me, or without me?”