Palace of Tears

by Julian Leatherdale

  Angie laughed out loud and clapped her hands at what now appeared on the terrace. Mr Fox had ordered an ice-carving of the number ‘13’, flanked by translucent statues of an emu and kangaroo in imitation of the national coat-of-arms. She watched Freddie anxiously ushering his boys as they bore the heavy carving down the stairs and across the lawn into the marquee. Its glassy surface caught every surrounding detail, twisting them into ribbons of colour like the insides of marbles. The heat would gnaw this comical sculpture into a puddle in no time.

  What a show-off!

  The ringmaster. That was Freya’s nickname for Adam Fox when she was feeling uncharitable, describing the hotel as his ‘big top’ and the guests as his ‘menagerie’. Fox certainly had something of P.T. Barnum’s aptitude for publicity and shared his predilection for the bizarre and novel. Apart from his business trips to Europe and the United States, Fox loved to travel for adventure and sent home crates of curiosities from Siam, Malaya, the Dutch East Indies, Japan, British East Africa and Madagascar which filled the cabinets and crowded the walls in his hotel.

  Strangest of all was Fox’s prize purchase last year from a crew of Arab fishermen in Libya. COME SEE THE REAL MERMAID trumpeted the advertisement in the local papers. Angie’s father was responsible for unpacking the seven-foot-long corpse, dyed mahogany brown from being pickled in a tank of formaldehyde on the boat out from Africa. Laid out on a bed of wood shavings in the shed at the back of the Palace garages, this mythic monster attracted huge crowds. Freddie gave Angie a quick private viewing before the doors were opened to the public. Angie recoiled at the sight of the bare-breasted mermaid with her hollow eyes, flaccid flesh and sliced-open belly. She had been gutted like a fish, with her spinal column placed alongside her in the manner of a scientific specimen. A sob rose in Angie’s throat. Whether this magnificent creature was real or not, there was no denying the pathos of this tawdry display.

  The ringmaster, the showman, the impresario, Adam Fox also liked to collect people. The Palace soon became a mandatory destination for famous and wealthy foreigners on the Australian leg of their world tours as well as a mecca for a clique of home-grown celebrities. Fox’s Folly was the place to see and be seen. From her hole in the hedge that separated her family’s cottage and the hotel grounds, Angie had spent hours of her childhood admiring this fantasy world of wealth and sophistication. It held an overwhelming fascination for the young girl and filled her with a compelling, almost dizzying sense of entitlement.

  From her hiding place among the leaves, she loved to spy on the guests as they arrived in coaches and cars or took the short walk from Meadow Springs railway station over the road, always with that same look of gawping wonder at the sight of the Palace. Swathed in heavy jackets and travelling cloaks, they crunched their way up the gravel driveway, accompanied by the porters’ trolleys of valises and steamer trunks.

  On hot summer afternoons, she watched the ladies in their puffy white dresses and enormous gauzy hats playing croquet on the front lawn to the tuneful clack of the wooden balls. Their husbands, meanwhile, lounged on the terrace smoking cigars or took the waters in the pool outside Dr Liebermeister’s clinic. On crisp autumn mornings she smiled to see the excited honeymooners climbing into the hotel’s natty Panhard et Levassor motor with a hamper to go on a daytrip to the limestone wonderland of the Jenolan Caves further west. In the winter evenings, when snow fell like icing sugar sifted over the wedding-cake frosted hotel, snatches of music and laughter drifted towards the cottage and Angie kept vigil at her bedroom window on the distant lights visible through the trees.

  Sure, her father, Freddie, was the king of his domain in the hotel’s sheds and vast cellars where all the machinery and supplies were stored. He loved it when his daughter visited him at work and he would show her the latest barrels of German beer stacked in the dark or the new American lawnmower he had just unpacked from its casing. But she yearned for more.

  She yearned to enter the forbidden realm of the hotel itself.

  It was Robbie who knew every secret corner and passageway of the Palace so intimately that he and Angie could creep about undetected by Hawthorne or Wells – though of course half the thrill was the danger of almost being found out. It was Robbie who had discovered the perfect hiding places for them both behind the marble statuary in the gallery or the huge leather Chesterfield in the billiard room. How Angie treasured the memories of those secret excursions. They afforded her even more confidential glimpses of this other world’s plush, glittering life.

  Most unforgettable and coveted of all was the night of the Coronation Ball held in honour of King George V’s ascension to the throne. It was the year Angie turned seven. Squeezed in next to Robbie in the storage area behind the main stage beneath the frescoed dome of the casino ballroom, Angie watched spellbound as the hotel’s palm court orchestra played waltzes and mazurkas, a storm of music only inches from her face. At this distance, she could even read the polished plaque screwed to the glossy black haunch of the Bechstein grand: ‘In gratitude to the Palace staff – Baroness Bertha Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach, December 1908.’ The brief visit of the German armaments heiress – one of the richest women in the world – had made quite an impression in Meadow Springs.

  The casino was garlanded with bunting and flags and all manner of patriotic paraphernalia for the occasion of the Coronation Ball, including a large triumphal oil painting of the Relief of Mafeking. The gold and blue dome echoed with the cacophony of swooning violins, squeaking shoes, the tinkling peals of female merriment and trumpet blasts of male laughter.

  For months afterwards Angie’s feverish dreams were inhabited by beautiful, poised women in silk chiffon gowns – orange, cerise and jade – whirling in the arms of bright-eyed, clean-shaven men, their lustrous black hair matching their spotless black swallow-tail coats, all under the brilliance of the casino’s three-tiered crystal chandelier.

  There was only one way she could gain the keys to this fairytale kingdom. She would have to make Robbie fall in love with her and propose marriage. Was it wrong for her to want to marry Robbie out of love for his family’s hotel? It was not a cruel plan. She had every intention of making him happy. There were worse reasons for a marriage. Just look at Robbie’s parents.

  A wasp hovered menacingly in front of her face before being blown out of sight. She stretched out her left leg to ease a cramp in her calf muscle. When was this ridiculous party going to start? Her plan was to slip through the hedge when the festivities began and mingle with the guests before they were seated for lunch. It was possible the White Witch would make one of her rare public appearances as a special effort for her son. ‘Nobody will challenge you,’ promised Freya, ‘I know the Foxes and the last thing they can stand is a scene. Carson will be made to fetch you a chair and set you another place at the table. You’ll see.’

  It was almost certain that Adelina had guessed Angie’s intentions. The White Witch knew she must strike now before Angie’s power over her son grew any stronger. Did Mr Fox know too? He was aware of Angela’s existence, of course, but in all the years she had played with Robbie, Angela doubted if Mr Fox had looked at her more than once or twice and even then without close attention. Children were to be seen and not heard in his book. A quick glance and a nod were the only acknowledgement she had ever received as far as she could remember.

  Angela knew how much Mr Fox respected her father, Freddie, who had been head storeman from the day the hotel opened. His attitude to Freya was more mysterious. From the first, so the stories went, Mr Fox had taken a keen interest in her talent as a painter. He had even bought one of her landscapes for his picture collection in the gallery and commissioned a mural of plump auburn-haired mermaids like the sea maidens in Mr Arnold Böcklin’s paintings for the lobby of the spa. For a while Freya taught watercolour classes on the terrace to artistically inclined female guests. Mr Fox would drop by her studio to admire a work in progress. But that all stopped years ago and Freya had not had a good word
to say about Mr Fox or his wife since.

  Angie hoped her mother would not come into the garden to make sure she had joined the party and find her still hiding here in the hedge. She was considering abandoning the plan altogether when she spotted Robbie sauntering across the lawn with his latest toy: a hunter’s shooting stick, complete with a single-legged fold-up stool. He had been promised his first kangaroo hunt this autumn. Spoilt little rich boy, not a care in the world! The thought spilled out of her, unchecked.

  Today she was angry with Robbie, and not just because he had not stood up to his mother about the birthday party. It was because this was the final proof that this summer he had changed. It had started with an unusual awkwardness the last time they had spoken, with Robbie fidgeting and avoiding her eyes the whole time. It continued with him finding any excuse to avoid her when he came to the hotel, which he did less and less, and ended with him deliberately ignoring her whistles and calls from the hedge and ducking away inside whenever she appeared.

  What had changed?

  It was not something she could ask her mother; over time Angie had come to realise how much Freya’s view of the world diverged from reality. Angie also suspected her mother’s praise of her cleverness and beauty had given her false hope. She loved and hated her mother for that. Certainly Freya’s strangeness was well known. It was the reason the hotel staff took pity on her and Freddie. It was the reason Robbie rarely came to the cottage, even though he knew what it was like to have a mother everyone thought was mad. Her family was not normal, there was no doubt about that. Apart from Freya’s regular outbursts of anger there were also her parents’ frequent unexplained silences, their furtive glances, their covert and pained expressions of guilt. Angie noted them all. Urgent whispered conversations at night were impossible to understand though she strained to hear the muffled words through the bedroom wall. What were they hiding? For as long as Angie could remember, the atmosphere in the cottage was thick with secrets and her mother was the keeper of them all.

  So Angie had to work out life’s puzzles all by herself and come up with answers different from Freya’s. What she had started to understand was that Robbie’s friendship with Angie had been tolerated when he was a naughty little boy, but Robbie was now a young man, the only son of a respected businessman and lone heir to the Fox fortune. The innocent days of childhood were dwindling fast. No doubt Adelina had insisted that this childish friendship be brought to a natural end before more complicated adult feelings surfaced.

  What hurt Angie most of all was how Robbie seemed to take this all in his stride. Maybe he understood the rules better than she did. Maybe he had always known their friendship was just another childhood toy to be put on the shelf when the time came. She had told herself she would never love Robbie, so why did this knowledge hurt her so much? It was partly because she felt so foolish for thinking she could ever have made him her husband. She was the daughter of the humble storeman and the crazy painter in the cottage. Girls like Angie Wood did not become Mrs Fox.

  ‘Hey, you! Look what I’ve got!’

  Angie stepped out onto the lawn and shouted, staring defiantly at Robbie as he ambled towards her, swinging his stick in lazy circles like a child’s hoop. Startled for a moment, he came to a halt several yards from the hedge. With a flick of his hair, he looked back quickly over his shoulder to make sure his governess was not watching. But it seemed Miss Blunt was distracted today, possibly by her recently discovered interest in Mr de Witte, the new front office manager.

  Robbie did not meet Angie’s stare. It was what she was holding in her hand that caught his attention. Just as Angie had intended.

  Her mother’s anger on her behalf had given Angie the courage – and the excuse – to defy the White Witch for now and make an appearance at today’s party. In fact, Angie had decided to go one step further. As she studied her own reflection in the bedroom mirror while her mother brushed and plaited her long black hair and buttoned her into her white linen dress, Angie knew what she must do. She feared she had only one more chance to win back Robbie’s interest. He needed an irresistible reason to defy his parents.

  ‘When did you get that?’ asked Robbie. His eyes glistened and colour flushed his cheeks. He looked over his shoulder again and jabbed the sharp end of the shooting stick into the lawn, where it remained upright. Angie laughed and waggled the small object in her hand invitingly. She was teasing him. Robbie took a step forward like a sleepwalker. He licked his lips nervously.

  ‘It’s your birthday present, Robbie Fox,’ she said. ‘From me. Even though you couldn’t be bothered to invite me to your party.’ ‘I’m sorry, Angie. I didn’t . . . I couldn’t . . .’ His eyes flicked to hers for a moment and she thought she could detect a spark of real regret there. Or maybe it was just the hot, dry wind making Robbie’s eyes water. He took another step towards her.

  ‘Like to take a look?’

  There was no doubt that Robbie very much wanted to take a look. The object in her hand was a secret that she and Robbie had discovered months ago. While Robbie had been the guide to adventures on the other side of the cottage hedge, she had repaid this debt with an adventure of her own. Treasures of a different kind were to be found on her side of the hedge: inside her mother’s studio.

  One day last spring, Freya had left the studio unlocked by accident when she went off on one of her sketching trips into the bush, and Angie had trespassed into this inner sanctum with her fellow adventurer. There, amid the chaos of half-finished canvases, dried-out paint tubes and jars of cloudy turpentine, they found Freya’s collection of erotic French postcards.

  They had both laughed at the photographs of nude women posing theatrically in exotic, usually oriental, settings. But Angie heard the quickening of Robbie’s breath, saw how his fingers trembled a little as he held them. These cards excited him. Today she held one of the postcards in her hand: a curvaceous, broad-hipped, snake charmer wearing nothing but a necklace at her throat and bangles at her wrists.

  Robbie took another glimpse over his shoulder towards the marquee and hotel. Without a word, he lunged towards his childhood friend.

  She was ready for him and retreated a few feet to maintain the distance between them. ‘Oh, no you don’t, Robert Fox. You’ll have to catch me first.’

  Robbie’s face, stuck in a kind of blissful torment and confusion, relaxed a little. He smiled. This was a game. Just like when they were children – but also very different. ‘Alright then.’

  Angie had always been the faster runner. Her legs were longer for a start. And Robbie suffered from asthma so he could only manage short bursts before struggling for breath. Hitching her linen skirt to her knees, Angie turned and bolted down the stone steps from the hotel lawn to the lower terrace.

  Out of the protection of the hedge, she could feel the full force of the wind, gusts slapping her face and clawing at her dress and hat. Robbie sweated in his dark morning coat and blue necktie, the perfect little gent; this birthday party marked his passage to adulthood, his parents were making no secret of that. His mouse-grey homburg was snatched off his head by the wind and bowled across the terrace, coming to rest against the stone balustrade. He let it go as he chased Angie down the second flight of steps to the cliff track below.

  Angie hesitated for a moment at the bottom of the grassy slope that led to the cliff top. Which way should she go? The valley shimmered brightly before her. To her left was Sunbath Road, leading to the hotel’s flying fox, a steel pulley and overhead cable that hauled fresh produce up the cliff face three times a day from Mr Fox’s farm in the valley. To her right was the cliff-top bush track to Sensation Point. She turned right.

  Later Angie would agonise over that single moment: how her whole life might have been different if she had chosen the other path. Or had destiny already decided how this day would end?

  Fine dust was kicked up by her shoes as she ran along the bare, rocky path. To her left was the glorious view of the valley that tourists flocked from
far and wide to see: grey-green forested ridges, sheer cliff faces, banded and mottled in orange, yellow and purple-grey, all filtered through a smoke-blue haze. When she was younger these fissured precipices made Angie think of ancient ruins, fashioned by long-dead giants out of massive, crudely cut blocks. Now scarred and weathered, these blocks were tumbling slowly back into the quarry from which they had once been dragged.

  When the creaking of branches and thrashing of leaves in the canopy overhead quietened for a moment, she could hear Robbie scrambling along the track behind her. She glanced back to see him making his way around the silver-white pylon of a Blue Mountains ash, tripping over its ragged skirt of bark. His black trousers and morning coat were covered in a film of chalky dust and his face was glossy with sweat. She could hear him beginning to wheeze.

  ‘Come on, Angie! Please!’

  For one fleeting instant, she pitied him. But then she remembered how easily he had let go of their friendship, their seven years of secrets and memories. Why had he betrayed her like that? What prizes had Mr and Mrs Fox dangled in front of Robbie to make him forget her? What picture of misery had they painted for him if he chose her for his future? Or was it his own feelings he was most afraid of?

  She let Robbie catch his breath a little and then she took off again. Dodging under a sandstone overhang as she came around the next bend in the track, she saw Sensation Point less than a hundred yards away. When she could hear nothing but the sound of the wind in the trees, she wondered, with a brief twinge of panic, if her pursuer had given up and turned back. Then she heard Robbie wail miserably, ‘Angie! Angie! Wait!’

  She knew what she was doing. She wanted to punish him for his betrayal. But she wanted to forgive him too. To take him in her arms and let him discover a new sweetness between them. The warmth of his chest pressed against hers. Her heart beating fiercely next to his. The taste of his lips, of her lips on his.

  What would that be like?