A House Divided

by Sulari Gentill

  Wilfred stepped toward him again, his eyes incensed. Rowland instinctively stepped backwards.

  “Yes, civil war! Perhaps it’s time you behaved like a man and decided on which side you will fight.” Wilfred leant forward and poked Rowland in the chest, ignoring his wound. “If I find out you are indiscreet with anything you’ve learned here, I will let them bloody well shoot you!”

  “They already shot me.” Rowland refused to be drawn into his brother’s madness.

  The comment seemed to startle Wilfred. “Well, next time, you may not be so lucky.”

  Rowland moved his hand to the wound. Lucky? It hurt like blazes. “Who in their right mind shoots out of a window into the darkness? It might have been anyone out there. Doesn’t that strike you as even a little bit crazy, Wil?”

  Wilfred’s face hardened again. “It wasn’t anyone. It was you. You’d better bloody well hope that Maguire trusts me enough to keep his mouth shut!”

  Chapter Eleven

  COMMUNISM—

  NEW REGULATIONS AGAINST

  SEDITIOUS LITERATURE FIRST STEP IN POLICY

  CANBERRA, Saturday

  The first step taken by the newly elected Lyons Government against the threat of Communism is likely to be the tightening of regulations covering the importation of literature and propaganda.

  —The Canberra Times, December 20, 1931

  * * *

  Rowland leant against the wall, observing the celebrations in the ballroom at Oaklea. The newly formed United Australia Party was now in control of the Federal Parliament under the leadership of J. A. Lyons. Wilfred and Kate were hosting an election party—an elegant and formal affair, befitting the glorious restoration of the nation to the conservative forces. Elisabeth Sinclair had made a brief appearance at the start of the evening, but had long since retired.

  The ballroom glittered with the rural establishment. Rowland wondered idly if this change in Federal government would do anything to lessen the rampant paranoia of a Communist revolution.

  He sipped his champagne, enjoying a brief respite from the rigours of eligibility. Kate seemed determined to introduce him to every unmarried graduate of finishing school west of the Divide. He had done his best to be gracious and conceal his lack of enthusiasm. The effort had left him a little weary.

  Wilfred, he’d noticed, had spent the evening moving between tight furtive circles, in a series of earnest conversations with stalwarts of the Right. He had barely spoken to Rowland since the meeting in the library.

  Rowland saw Lucy Bennett moving in his direction and slipped away. Regrettably, Miss Bennett had recovered from her shock at the scandalous sketches in his notebook. Back in the sunroom, which had become his studio for painting Kate, he removed his dinner jacket and resumed work on her portrait. The new hostility between him and Wilfred had seen him seek refuge in front of the canvas, and the work had progressed quickly as a result. He stretched gingerly. Maguire had removed the stitches that morning, but he was still a little tender.

  He lost himself in painting. For a while he forgot where he was, consumed by pigment and stroke.

  It was morning when Wilfred walked in. “My God, Rowly, have you been here all night? You’re getting a bit fanatical…”

  Rowland laughed. Wilfred, who was raising a secret army, was calling him a fanatic. “Everyone’s gone then?”

  “You’re not hiding, are you, Rowly?”

  “Your wife’s rallied every spinster in the State to Oaklea. What else could I do?”

  Wilfred smiled. “Kate does get a bit carried away… But there are worse things than settling down—you’ve been sowing your wild oats for years now.”

  “Wish that were true, Wil,” Rowland mumbled as he cleaned his brushes. “Haven’t we already had this conversation?”

  “Probably,” Wilfred admitted. He looked toward the canvas, which was faced away from him. “Are you finished?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “May I look?”

  Rowland stepped back so his brother could come behind the easel. Wilfred gazed at the painting for some time.

  Rowland became a little nervous in the extended silence. “Well, what do you think?” he asked, tentatively.

  For a further moment, Wilfred said nothing. Then, when he spoke his voice was thick, plainly emotional. “I didn’t know you were painting Ernest as well.”

  Rowland was surprised, but gladly so. He’d never really hoped to reach Wilfred. “You have a beautiful family, Wil.”

  Wilfred nodded.

  Rowland returned to cleaning his brushes while his brother continued to stare at the painting.

  “I have a meeting,” Wilfred said eventually. “I’ll be back tomorrow.”

  “Cootamundra?” Rowland remembered the discussion in the library about amalgamating the Old and the New Guards.

  Wilfred nodded, warily.

  Rowland didn’t know quite what to say next.

  Wilfred spoke first. “Rowly, I don’t like leaving Oaklea at this time… God knows what might happen…”

  “It’s only one night, Wil.”

  “It could start at any time… We right-thinking men need to be ready.” Wilfred reached into his jacket and extracted a revolver.

  “Oh, for God’s sake!” Rowland recoiled from the gun.

  “Rowly, I’m leaving my family in your care… The threat is real and it is imminent! The Communists are armed—and we must be too.”

  Rowland shook his head. “Wilfred, the Communists are not about to do anything.”

  Wilfred pointed at his brother. “That is exactly why they are so dangerous! They lull the complacent into thinking they’re harmless—poets, painters, clerks, labourers, even accountants and lawyers—they infiltrate every level of society, all arms of government.” Wilfred grabbed Rowland’s hand and pressed the revolver into it. “Rowly, it’s time you stood up and took some responsibility. This country needs men like us to stand against the Red tide!”

  Rowland met his brother’s eyes. Wilfred was absolute and sincere in his conviction that revolution was at their doorstep. “Wil…this is insane… I’m not shooting anyone!”

  “Bloody hell, Rowly! You’re a Sinclair. How about you give something back to this family for once?”

  “So you want me to sit on the verandah, with a gun, in case Trotsky drops by!”

  “Just bloody well take the gun and be watchful. As you said, it’s only one night!” Wilfred stalked out of the room, leaving his brother staring after him with a revolver in his hand.

  Rowland knew how to use a gun. Paramilitary training had been part of the curriculum for boys who had gone to school in the shadow of war. Even so, he had no intention of shooting anyone in the streets of Yass. He wondered uneasily how widespread this lunacy was. He really had to get back to Sydney.

  He placed the firearm in his paint box, burying it beneath tubes of paint and colour-stained rags. He closed the lid and secured the latch, and decided to forget about it.

  Refusing to concede a single thing to Wilfred’s call for vigilance, he showered, changed, and slept for a couple of hours. By the early afternoon, he was ready to accompany his mother for a walk in the gardens. Despite the dense shade of the oaks and claret ashes, it was oppressively warm. In the absence of Wilfred, Rowland walked in the relative comfort of unjacketed shirtsleeves.

  Elisabeth Sinclair chatted happily, to Aubrey, chastising him gently for coming home so infrequently. Occasionally she referred to “the baby,” but that was the closest she came to remembering her youngest son.

  As Rowland listened to his mother, his conscience was pricked with vague feelings of guilt. It seemed that his entire family was mad—his mother conspicuously and his brother secretly. Kate was lucid, but she believed unquestioningly in her husband’s paranoid ramblings. Rowland wondered if he might have abated their slip i
nto insanity if he had not absconded to Sydney. He thought of his nephew—the aptly named Ernest—and resolved to visit more often, if only to give the boy some link to reality.

  At about three o’clock, Rowland took tea with his mother and Kate on the verandah. It was the elevation that allowed him to see over the hedges and make out the car parked outside the entrance to Oaklea. A black Oldsmobile. He wondered if it had broken down; it had been there for the entire hour they had been enjoying their tea and cake. Wilfred’s misgivings came back to him, but he put them firmly aside. This was silly. “I’m just going to walk down and see if that car needs help,” he told Kate as he stood.

  “McNair can go. I’ll call him…”

  “No, it won’t take a minute. I know a bit about engines.”

  He grabbed his hat and set off down the driveway. It was a good quarter mile to the gate. As he approached, he could see there were two men in the Oldsmobile looking at him. As he raised his arm in a greeting, the engine gunned and the car pulled away. Rowland watched it disappear, wondering whether it was odd or whether he was just succumbing to Wilfred’s suspicions.

  Chapter Twelve

  Rowland’s eyes went again to the sitting room window. The impulse to check repeatedly for the black Oldsmobile was making it difficult to read. The road remained clear, and he smiled at his own folly—Wilfred was infecting him with his paranoia.

  His restlessness diverted to brooding over the brutality of his uncle’s murder. He had long ago dismissed Inspector Bicuit’s suspicion of Mrs. Donelly. Still, Rowland could not imagine who would want to hurt the harmless old man. His uncle had been, as far as he could see, inoffensive. He was not aligned particularly with anything, politically, religiously, or even socially. The elder Rowland Sinclair had many friends, but had never bothered with enemies. He’d had no real passions beyond food and entertainment, though Rowland did now wonder about the mysterious fishnet stockings. There was no conceivable way that the assault could have been precipitated by debts… No Sinclair was short of funds.

  Rowland played with idea of Mrs. Donelly’s “dark ghosts,” drawing shadowy figures repeatedly into his notebook in the hope that something would trigger…but he came no closer to any earthly explanation for what she might have seen.

  Toward the end of the day, two men came to the gate, hats in hand, asking for work. It was not unusual. With so many unemployed, these hopeful, hopeless appeals were a daily occurrence. There were no vacancies at Oaklea, but Mrs. Kendall always fed them in the servants’ quarters before sending them on their way; it was a long walk to the next property, and the men were invariably hungry.

  Not long after they’d gone, Wilfred returned from Cootamundra, buoyed, and Rowland guessed that the proposal to amalgamate with the New Guard had failed. He was relieved. He had no wish to find himself at war with his brother, but he could see himself standing against the belligerent excesses of Eric Campbell’s men. He was glad that doing so would not pit him against Wilfred. With any luck he could remain outside whatever it was that his brother’s group was planning—as long as they didn’t start shooting again.

  * * *

  Days at Oaklea fell into an indulgent pace and pattern—a series of dinner parties, graceful entertainments, and refined company. Evenings with the wireless, often spent listening to the rousing broadcasts of the Sane Democracy League. Tennis parties at the courts behind the homestead. For most of the time, Rowland felt only half awake.

  Kate was both delighted and embarrassed by Rowland’s painting. It was only when she saw the completed work that she realised how closely her brother-in-law looked at the world, how much he saw and understood. It disconcerted her, but the finished portrait was arresting. Rowland had painted Kate as a mother, but he had not lost her in that role. He had found a girlish dreaminess in her eyes, a gentle strength in the way she held her son. Wilfred had it framed and hung proudly in the main drawing room. Rowland was unexpectedly gratified. He had not known that his brother’s approval meant anything to him.

  There were no more meetings at Oaklea, although Wilfred often left the property on the pretext of business. Rowland had decided to avoid the topic of revolutions and insurgents, and simply hope that the head of the Sinclair family would come to his senses.

  Christmas was a private affair at Oaklea, but Boxing Day was different. On this day Oaklea was festooned with bunting and marquees for the annual Sinclair garden party in the aid of the Australian Red Cross. The garden parties had been held at Oaklea since the war and were usually very successful fundraisers. Rowland’s mother played the hostess with surprising ease, though it was Kate, as the new Mrs. Sinclair, who had organised the day.

  Rowland surveyed the celebrations with a kind of distant interest as he listened to Lucy Bennett enthuse about the extraordinary philanthropy of his family. Rowland had, for the past couple of years, allowed Clyde to guide his own charitable works, relying on his friend to point out those who did not otherwise enter his world. In the days before Clyde had moved into Woodlands House, he had himself eaten often at the soup kitchens which fed hundreds of desperate, hungry people around the city. He had not forgotten those days, and so, at his suggestion, Rowland Sinclair had become a benefactor. It was a stark contrast to the champagne that accompanied charity at Oaklea. It was not that Rowland found the excess uncomfortable; it was just that now he noticed it.

  Even before the year turned, the summer became more intense. The northerlies blew in strong gusts bringing the fire season in earnest. Grass fires had to be dealt with quickly. If they were permitted to grow, it would be too late do anything but allow the blazes to burn themselves, and whatever lay in their paths, out.

  There were many men who lived and worked on Oaklea, but at the first signs of fire, all hands manned pumps and beat flames. Rowland fell in wherever needed and took orders from the farmworkers, who knew better than he how to control a blaze and protect the property. Wilfred approved. While he didn’t feel it was appropriate or necessary that he, as head of the family, participate in such a direct manner, he thought Rowland’s involvement a good thing. If nothing else, he hoped that his brother was finally showing an interest in the property to which the Sinclairs owed so much.

  Having spent so little time on the property in recent years, Rowland was much less identifiable than Wilfred. The smoke, grime, and panic in fighting the fires helped him keep a sort of anonymity. There was no time for chatter under the circumstances, so the telltale British plum of his speech was barely heard. In any case, Edna had so often ribbed what she called his pretentious accent, that he had learned to adjust it to the company he kept. He did it subconsciously, and quite well now. Indeed, Wilfred often complained about the common manner in which he used the King’s English.

  The grassfires cracked the languid pace of life at Oaklea, giving Rowland some purpose now that Kate’s portrait was hung. The small blazes were more a nuisance than a potential disaster, though the season was a dangerous one. Much further west, bushfires were gathering force and forming massive fronts. Here, they were mere skirmishes by comparison, but even so, they couldn’t be allowed to get out of control.

  At times, Rowland wondered if Wilfred’s involvement with the mysterious Old Guard was his brother’s attempt to break the luxuriant and frivolous monotony of the landed gentry. If so, he could understand it.

  On New Year’s Day 1932, Wilfred called Rowland into the library, shutting the door behind them. Rowland took a seat. By Wilfred’s manner, it was a matter of some gravity. The older Sinclair poured two glasses of whisky, placed one in front of Rowland, then sat and lit a cigarette. “Rowly, I want to talk to you about our responsibility to this land.”

  Rowland groaned. “I’m not coming back to Oaklea, Wil.”

  Wilfred sighed. “I don’t care where you live—just listen. I would not have thought to bring you into this, but since it seems you have stumbled into things, I can only hope you hav
e enough common sense and love of country to work with, rather than in opposition to, us.”

  Rowland toyed with his glass wordlessly. Obviously, Wilfred was about to make a speech.

  “Rowly, we have undeniably been raised in a privileged world, exposed to the best education, society, and morality that the British Empire can offer. With that, comes an obligation to guide and lead men who are not so well equipped to grasp the intricacies of politics and good government.”

  Rowland relaxed a little. This was going to be another of Wilfred’s “ruling class” speeches, which always finished with him demanding that his brother find a more fitting occupation.

  “The world is on a precipice,” Wilfred continued. “The Communists have Russia, and they seek to extend their power much further. Europe is in flux. Both Germany and Italy have sought to stand against the influence of the Bolsheviks with men who know that Communism must not be treated gently.”

  This, Rowland could not let lie. “I’ve met men who have not been treated gently by Germany.” Artists and writers had already started fleeing the increasingly Fascist regimes of Europe, where dissent was dealt with brutally.

  Wilfred ignored him. “There are patriots, organisations of men, ready to defend His Majesty’s peace against the enemy—prepared to lead this country out of the destruction and terror to which Russia has succumbed.”

  Rowland let him carry on, hoping Wilfred would get to the point soon.

  “Rowly, I must admit that given your tendency to associate with lesser elements, I would not have normally thought to ask you this.” Wilfred stubbed out his cigarette. “I am hoping that your behaviour is simply a manifestation of your age…”

  “For heaven’s sake Wil, I’m nearly twenty-seven, not ten!”

  “The other evening, you saw a meeting of the Old Guard. We are a membership of right-thinking men from all over the state. Our men are loyal to both King and Country and are committed to turning the Red Army from our shores.”

  Rowland exhaled impatiently.