She couldn’t ask about his empty days. She couldn’t talk about how much she hated working at Quinn’s, either, because that would seem like a reproach. She put a brave face on it, but it was awful. Everyone pitied her for having a husband who couldn’t support her.
He came home one day with a bounce in his step and she thought he must finally have landed a case, but it was a different kind of triumph: he’d had a story published in the Mirror. There it was on page ten: ‘China-man’s Cave’, by Kenneth Gray. Oh, nothing much, he said. A rattling good yarn, that’s all.
The story was about a man who steals jewels from a Chinese hermit but then fears that he’s caught leprosy from him.
For peace of mind, for relief from the fear that never leaves me, I would gladly give up every penny I possess. I am worth perhaps fifty thousand pounds, in addition to the many coins and golden ornaments that I have not yet sold. That was my share of the find; Wilson took the rest.
I’ve got you to thank for the idea, Ken said. You know, the Coast Hospital.
Oh, those poor old lepers! She hoped they didn’t read the Mirror.
He had to write under a nom de plume, he told her, because barristers weren’t allowed to advertise, and publishing a story was a kind of advertising. But she thought it was really the lure of secrecy, of going through the world unrecognised, a man no one looked at twice, but who carried in his brain the seeds of grand things.
He was paid two pounds twelve and six for ‘China-man’s Cave’. She wondered if he thought it was a career, the journalist dream from his young days made real. Two more stories were published in quick succession and he wrote others. She glimpsed the scribbled-over typescripts. But there were no more triumphant copies of the Mirror and no more cheques for two pounds twelve and six.
She was surprised at how gentle she felt, how careful not to ask. It’s the same way I am with the boys, she thought. Saving his pride. Ken seemed strong, but in protecting him she recognised what she’d always known: she was stronger than he was.
Halfway through 1949 the coalminers went on strike. Nance sympathised. Imagine spending your life underground! The least you could ask for was decent pay. Ken brushed that aside. The strike was just a tactic, he said, by the communists who ran the union. They wanted to bring down the government. Why, she asked, when it’s a Labor government? Ken explained that the communists hated Labor, because Labor held out the possibility of reform without revolution. He knew their tricks, he said. When he was a Trotskyite he’d done the same. It was a cold surprise to Nance to hear him laugh at the poor miners for being nothing more than the dupes of the reds.
When Chifley sent the army in to break the strike, Ken cheered. Labor had finally found its spine. But Nance was horrified. A Labor government sending in soldiers against working men! It was the first time she was willing to take Ken on about politics. Some things you could be sure about, just because you were human.
You are a cold fish, Ken, she shouted. A cold bloody fish with no proper feelings! The accusation surprised him, but she could see that it confirmed his view that, under her competence and intelligence, his wife was just another emoting woman.
Now that Labor had come to its senses Ken rejoined and started going to meetings again. One night he came home and told her the party had asked him to stand at the next election. He was now the Labor candidate for the newly created seat of Bradfield.
She found it hard to believe. Bradfield? It would be the safest Liberal seat in the country, part of the upper North Shore, where all those years ago her father had sold sugar and biscuits to the born-to-rule lot. Not only that, but Ken would be up against the grand old man of conservative politics, Billy Hughes. Ken Gee standing against the Little Digger: it was the quixotic gesture again, the perverse glamour of the lost cause.
He doorknocked, spoke at public meetings, wrote letters to the paper, stayed in town late into the evenings at the Trades Hall. Nance went on working at Quinn’s. That gave her a good excuse not to help him with the doorknocking. Two weeks before the election, though, he talked her into coming with him to a public meeting. You’re a great asset to me, Nance, he said. You know, the human face of the candidate.
When they arrived at the meeting someone gave her a huge bouquet and everyone clapped. She met Ken’s eye around the flowers. He was smiling, proud of her. The human face of the candidate. The flowers were a nuisance, she didn’t know whether you were supposed to go on holding them. She hadn’t realised she’d be sitting up on the stage with the speakers and started to worry that she’d be asked to do something, pick the raffle or cut a cake. Wished she’d worn her good shoes. She’d come straight from work and her shabby old shoes were right on the level of the audience. Well, she thought, perhaps it’s best, I never trusted Guido because of his expensive Italian footwear.
She tucked her feet under the chair and tried to listen to the speeches, but she was tired. Whatever you do, don’t fall asleep, she told herself. And she should have put the f lowers down somewhere straight away. That’s what Queen Mary did when someone gave her flowers, passed them straight back to one of the flunkies. When Ken got up to speak he was forceful and lively, made some witty remarks that got everyone laughing. If she didn’t know that he could just as easily turn all his lawyer’s tricks to arguing for the other side, she might have believed he was a man of real conviction.
By eight in the morning on election day she was standing at the gate of St Ives Public School with a stack of how-to-vote cards. She’d brought a basket with a big thermos of tea and sandwiches. Ken said, It’s not a picnic, Nance! But she knew she’d be stuck there all day while he was running around putting in an appearance at the polling places. Beside her was a man handing out Liberal Party cards for Billy Hughes and further along a woman was handing them out for an independent called Edward Price. She made sure she said good morning, to show there was nothing personal. The Price woman looked haughty, as if it was a trap, but the Liberal man smiled and let her have first go at people as they came along.
It was peculiar, handing out your husband’s face to strangers. He looked intense, reserved, glancing sideways. He’d made sure that the photo only showed his face, not his bald crown. If she didn’t know him, would she vote for him? Some voters brushed past her as if they were offended to be offered the card. Others looked solemn, taking their democratic duty seriously, accepting a card for each of the candidates. When the first flurry thinned out the Liberal man met her eye. Funny, aren’t they, he said. They want to keep us guessing!
By eleven o’clock she was gasping for a cup of tea, got the thermos out of the basket. From the corner of her eye she saw the Liberal man glance at her and then glance away. You’ll have to use the same cup, she said. But you look as if you could do with a hot drink.
He said no, but she could tell he was dying for it. Finally he took the cup and when she unwrapped the egg and lettuce sandwiches he let himself be persuaded to have one of those too. I came without anything, he kept saying. I never thought. She’d brought plenty. She’d often found she was the only one who’d thought of the practicalities. He was a cheerful pleasant man and obviously thought the same of her because after he’d thanked her he said, How can a nice woman like you be mixed up with the Labor Party?
I’m a working woman, she said. I believe in what the Labor Party stands for. She knew about missing out, about people having no choices and no chances and no proper education to give them any. She knew how people were cheated and hoodwinked by the ones with the power. Perhaps it was naïve to think like that. The Hughes man wasn’t impressed. But it was what she believed, what she’d learned from life.
Still, she couldn’t pretend it was why she was here. She glanced at Ken’s face in her hand. Well, she said, and he’s my husband.
Eight thousand, six hundred and forty-five people chose to vote for Ken Gee against the man he called the Little Bugger. She heard him on the phone: I got a quarter of the votes! He didn’t seem dispirited not to have won.
But there was no talk of Labor setting him up next time with a seat he had a chance of winning. Nance thought it was the Trotsky business. They’d never really trust him.
He didn’t talk about what he was going to do next. But he came back from town one day and she saw straight away that something had changed again. He’d heard around the traps that the Chief Crown Prosecutor was being sent to Manus Island to do the war-crimes trials. That left a gap among the Crown Prosecutors. The long and short of it was, Ken had the job: Acting Crown Prosecutor.
In her heart she thanked Frank. Those men being tried at Manus were the ones who’d killed him. If they hadn’t been so cruel, he wouldn’t be dead. But if they hadn’t been so cruel, there’d be no job for Ken.
She went on working, but a few months later one of the other prosecutors dropped dead and Ken was taken on as a permanent Crown Prosecutor. To go to Quinn and tell him she was resigning was the best half-hour she’d had for a long time. Not that he was impressed. Remember, Mrs Gee, there’s always a spot for you here, he said, and she had to smile and thank him. After all, what Quinn so obviously thought might be right: Ken would get some other idea into his head and they’d need the twelve pounds ten again.
Being a Crown Prosecutor was a comedown for a man who’d thought he could be Australia’s Lenin, who’d given Billy Hughes a run for his money, who’d seen himself striding the stage of the Sydney Bar. This was a job, you were a public servant, you got a salary like any pen-pushing bureaucrat. She feared Ken would become mean and silent, forced to inhabit a small life.
No, he was elated. You’d have thought his highest ambition had always been to be a Crown Prosecutor. She thought of the pain of her own thwarted schemes, the shop in Newport that she still couldn’t pass without a pang. She was strong enough to let herself feel the pang and suffer it, but Ken’s way was to change his colour like a chameleon, forget that he’d ever wanted something and not been able to have it. She envied his ability never to look back, never regret.
Ken threw himself into the job. It took him away from home five days a week on the country circuit. Grafton, Goulburn, Bathurst, Broken Hill. He was stimulated by the world of the bizarre that the job plunged him into. Husbands running amok with shotguns. Wives putting rat poison in the pumpkin scones. Men who did unthinkable things with sheep. As prosecutor it was his job always to find the worst, to probe and tease and trick until every last degrading detail was out in the light. All men are animals, he said, and he didn’t mean they were loyal or affectionate like a dog. He meant they were driven by dark dreadful cravings.
There was a relish in the way he told her the worst things, pride in the way he felt he was seeing the authentic ugly underbelly of the world, while everyone else lived with cosy illusions. Once again he was the man who knew things that everyone else didn’t.
Nance was on her own all week. She and the boys had their routines and their jokes and when Ken was home at the weekend he was like a visitor. The jokes had to be explained. But being away so much suited Ken. The part of him that was comfortable on his own was given free rein. Nance had to admit that it suited her too. She often thought about Dolly running Beach House at Newport while Bert was at the shop all week. There was something depressing about repeating your parents’ pattern: a marriage in which you were just as happy apart as together. Still, it was a kind of freedom too.
In the end it wasn’t lipstick on Ken’s collar but the scent of some other woman’s perfume through his clothes when he came back from Grafton. Yes, the pyjamas too. She stood in the laundry with them in her hand, the garden a rectangle of brightness through the doorway. A woman in Grafton. There was no surprise, only a bleak sort of satisfaction. Something clicking into place.
I ought to be upset, she thought. But how can I be, when really I’ve known all along?
Yet she noticed she was crankier with the children that afternoon. Burned the potatoes and swore at them smoking in the pan. The boys were so surprised they stopped and stared. She didn’t say anything to Ken when he got home. She wasn’t sure what to do. In the meantime, the secret knowing was a small revenge.
She didn’t think she’d given him any sign that she knew. But why else did he turn to her in bed that night and say, Nance, there’s something I’ve got to tell you. It’s all over now, but I was seeing a woman.
He told her everything. Not that she asked or even wanted to know. It was that he wanted to tell her. The woman had thrown herself at him, he said. Desperate for a man, poor thing, and Nance, I’m a week reed. He actually laughed. She was nothing but a passing whim, he said. He promised that it was all over, that it would never happen again, that it had meant nothing. Begged her to forgive him. She waited for him to say it, and he did: All men are animals, after all.
She listened to the fluent confessions, the fluent regrets, the fluent promises. Even in the remorse and the apologies she could hear something that was almost a boast.
Why are you telling me, Ken, she wondered. If you’ve found someone else the way I did, to keep yourself alive, you don’t need to tell. If you have to tell, it must be a kind of performance.
She thought, I’ll know it’s serious when he doesn’t confess.
She didn’t cry. There was a stoniness where the tears should have been. She’d lived for a long time with the pain of having a husband who didn’t love her. That sting was old and dull. There was a certain dignity in going along as if you had no suspicion. But once you were told, you became a character in the other person’s drama. You could be the wife who forgave, or the wife who didn’t forgive, but either way you were part of a drama that belonged to him.
And what if she didn’t forgive? She’d have to get out of bed, the heartbroken wife full of righteous anger. Spend the night on the couch, and next day dismantle the life they had together. A broken home. How could you tell the children? How could it not be terrible for them?
She felt no need to tell him about Louis or Charlie. She didn’t want to play the game of tit for tat. Still, the woman in Grafton and all that she represented made her glad she’d known that painful love for Charlie. It was life, that pain. And she was glad she’d seized the day with Louis. That pleasure was life, too.
For a while Ken was different. Talking with her, making her laugh, showing interest in all her little doings. She didn’t believe he’d really changed. You’ll have to woo me properly, she thought. After a week he dropped the effort and withdrew again. She was glad she hadn’t been too quick to believe him.
She asked herself whether she still loved Ken And she had to admit that, in spite of everything, the answer was yes. No one had ever engaged her heart and mind the way he did when he laid himself out to please. No one could pain her the way he did when he turned away.
During the long afternoons in the empty house she’d put a record on the gramophone. There were others she liked, but ‘Smoke Gets in Your Eyes’ was still her favourite. Alone except for the dog staring in amazement, she’d sing, pretending that deep lush voice, with the little catch on the final words, was her own.
It had been a lovely flame, what she’d felt for Ken. Now it was only smoke and the tears in her eyes. She’d let the flame fade into an ember because there was too much pain in trying to interest a man who didn’t want to be interested. If he truly turned his attention on her again, she knew the flame would burn as bright as the night they’d met. But she knew that wasn’t going to happen. Whatever she could offer a man, it wasn’t what Ken wanted.
But they’d made something solid together. They had a marriage and all the tendrils of social connection that went with being husband and wife. They had the children they’d made together, and it wasn’t too late to have another. On both sides there was admiration and esteem. There was the affection that springs from knowing another person day and night for ten years. These were not nothing.
She thought Ken must see it in the same way. And if you had a passing thing with a woman in Grafton it could be useful to have a wife in the backgr
ound. She and Ken would go on, she thought. He’d have other women and confess, and she’d accept the confessions. It would be what they called a modus vivendi. Far from perfect, but workable. And with space for each of them to find meaning somewhere else.
She’d like another child. It wasn’t too late, and Ken wouldn’t care much one way or the other. He loved his children, but they were just the background to his days, whereas for her they filled the foreground, the middle and the background. Without them, the frame of her life would be empty.
When she knew she was pregnant for the third time she felt a great f lush of joy. One last child, she thought. In spite of everything, what a lucky woman I am.
Sarah and Thomas Maunder, about 1890. In her memoirs Nance says, ‘Grandfather was a dreadful old martinet I believe and Grandma was very severe. I suppose she’d had a rotten life. It was probably one of those terrible marriages where there was no compatibility and just a lot of hard work, and children, and not much money.’
Nance’s mother, Dolly, about 1908. ‘Mum had a friend in Dorrigo called Minnie Devine and was invited to stay. She saw another world up there and didn’t want to come home. She and Minnie Devine thought they could go school-teaching, but Grandfather said over his dead body she’d be a teacher! She never forgot that. No wonder she was always so frustrated.’
Dolly and Bert Russell on their wedding day, 1910. ‘Her mother wrote and said that she had to come home from Dorrigo and marry Dad and in the end she couldn’t get out of it. That’s why she looks so cranky in her wedding photo. What chance did any of those people have? It’s really good to remember how dreadful those times were. For men and women, but much worse for women because they had no redress.’
One Life Page 17