by JH Fletcher
‘I have a duty to Dougie.’
‘Nonsense.’
‘I swore —’
‘A form of words.’ So Dorrie dismissed it. ‘Love is real. You mustn’t turn your back on it.’
How can I do what she says? Ruth asked herself as they drove back down the hill to their hotel. I have made the commitment. I can’t just walk away from it. You mustn’t turn your back on love, she thought, remembering Dorrie’s words. Dear God, it sounds like the title of a trash novel. She despised the words, despised Dorrie for uttering them. Herself, for listening. For wanting. For knowing, trashy words or not, that they were true.
I must make myself anew, she thought. It was the only way.
And Boyd? she thought. What of him?
But for the moment could think of him no more.
They went into the hotel together. The man and the woman. Nothing had been said but both of them knew. It was a mock-Tudor palace, with beams. Parchment-shaded lamps cast a warm glow upon plastered walls from which hunting prints sounded the view-halloo of another time.
In a sense they weren’t there at all; they passed through the rooms like purposeful ghosts, every particle of their beings focused on their joint but unacknowledged destiny. They climbed the stairs, came to the corridor at the top, walked down it. The man and the woman. They had booked adjoining rooms as though to signal their lack of commitment to each other. No longer. He opened the first door, key fumbling. They were moving more urgently, breath coming faster in their throats. Ruth’s room. She went in, seeing it as though for the first time, the suitcase in the corner, make-up on the dressing table, a discarded wrap thrown across the bed. Her own scent upon the air. Yet it was a new place, a new resolve, a new life. Suddenly she was afraid.
Her hands trembled, her throat ached, she could not speak. She turned mutely to him, arms imploring. Let us be sure.
He stared back and she saw that he, too, was afraid. The knowledge made her brave. This man was not a chimera to use love like a weapon and then to go. He was real. They both were real. What bound them was real. She went to him, slowly, put up her hands to his face. I am here. She felt his hands touch her hair, gently, closed her eyes at their touch. Her senses swirled. She fell into the welcoming pit. Was not alone. Would never be alone again.
‘You want to eat in the room?’
Ruth was in the bath. ‘Come and talk to me.’
He hovered at the door, wearing a bathrobe, awkward despite everything that had passed. Ruth shy no longer, happy to flaunt herself before him. See this? And this? See?
‘Come and sit down.’
He did so, fumble-footed, smiling like a schoolboy, eyes still not totally at ease before her nudity.
‘What did you say?’
‘You want to eat here or downstairs?’
‘Not here.’ She wanted to run through the wind, under the trees. She felt she could burst with energy, with happiness. With love. ‘Let’s go for a walk first. We can eat later.’
‘I’ll book a table.’
He went to rise but she was in no mood for the nuts and bolts of living. Not now. ‘Don’t go. If they’re fully booked we’ll go somewhere else.’ Or nowhere; what did it matter? ‘Get in the bath with me.’
He did so, less shy now. Visibly. She admired him. ‘You are beautiful,’ she said. Moved her foot.
‘Careful!’
She laughed, did it again. This new Ruth.
They went into the fresh spring air. More rhododendrons here and the air, even this late in the season, stung deliciously as the dusk came down over the hills. Ruth was filled with delight. She unwound her fingers from his, ran and ran. She was filled, overflowing, she thought, I have written about this but have never known it until now. The holiness of living. Of being alive. Of being. She repeated the thought under her breath, tasting the sensation on her tongue. The holiness and the wonder of life. I could die now, she thought. It would not matter. I have known the peak of living.
That night, cradled close, feeling the comfort of his arm about her, Ruth was filled again with wonder at the release and pleasure of being stripped of self-consciousness and inhibition. To be was all. To be, without pretence, without prevarication, at one with the natural self, the body that functioned without thought or shame. The greatest of all freedoms.
Just before sleep they were disturbed by a sudden clatter against the window glass.
‘What is it?’
It was hail, brief and unseasonal, quickly past.
‘That makes it perfect,’ Richard said. ‘The hail clashing against the window and us together here.’
‘Together,’ she agreed.
Forever.
She slept deeply, awoke once to the happiness of his presence beside her. She turned, kissed his shoulder. It was hard and strong and she wanted him with an intensity that made her gasp. He did not waken. She turned on her side and fell deeply asleep once more, no dreams, woke in a grey dawn light to think, So this is real. I am home at last.
She slipped out of the bed, moving quietly so as not to disturb him, went to the window. Through the parted curtains she saw the lane in front of the hotel, rags of mist clinging to the branches of the trees, the roofs of cars grey with dew below the window. The sky was clear, a purity of light that brightened steadily as she watched. We have all this, she thought.
She went back to the bed, slipped into the warmth beneath the covers, lay still. She did not think any longer about what she had to do. All that had been taken care of by the events of the previous day and night.
Dorrie said, ‘So you’ve made up your mind.’
Ruth smiled. ‘I didn’t do anything. It just happened.’
‘Will you stay with him?’
‘We haven’t talked about it. Not yet, anyway. He has to go back to London and there are things I must do first.’
‘Don’t talk yourself out of it. Don’t let anyone else do it, either.’
Ruth made light of it, laughing. ‘He may not want me.’
‘He worships you.’
To Richard, as the week came to an end, she said, ‘What do we do?’
‘What do you want to do?’
‘To be with you.’
‘You have a son to consider.’
To say nothing of a husband. Who has done you no harm, within the limits of what is possible for him. I should feel guilt. But do not. Cannot.
‘I have a life to consider.’
It was selfish; she did not care. She knew already that the only way she could progress in her art was repeatedly and deliberately to break the mould of her being. To reinvent herself, to become new. Again and again. It seemed that love required the same thing.
Yet on her return to South Australia was less certain. If I betray him I betray myself. She had said that in her letter to Richard, eighteen months earlier in London. What had changed was the intensity of her feelings, the conviction that only with Richard could her life have fulfilment or feeling. The question of loyalty and betrayal had not changed. The memory of an oath willingly taken had not changed, either.
Don’t I owe loyalty to myself? she cried, alone in a wilderness of doubt.
The response was iron-hard. Yes; but not only to yourself.
Dougie knew.
How, she could not have said. She had been away any number of times since her career had taken off. To the outsider — her own husband an outsider? — this time should have appeared no different from all the others. Yet did.
Not that he said anything. Not in words. But in the way he looked at her, in the intervals between the words, there it showed. What he did not say, above all the sight of Boyd struggling on unsteady legs to greet her, brought guilt.
I will not allow myself to feel guilty.
She denied it as in the sixteenth century the church had denied that the earth went round the sun; the denial made no difference to the reality.
She no longer knew what she should do; to compensate for her own feelings she tried once again t
o reach her husband, without success. He fended her away, did not touch her physically, yet on several occasions she caught him looking at her; his eyes bruised.
She thought to say something to him about it but did not know how to begin. She thought to ignore it but could not; in any case, it took two to ignore what they both knew. The reproach lingered silently between them until Ruth thought it would drive her mad.
Then came something to compel a reckoning. When things were beyond doubt Ruth wrote to Richard.
I am having a baby. You must be the first to know since it is unquestionably yours. I would have phoned but don’t trust the phone. You never know who may be listening at this end. I shall have to tell people here, I suppose. It may cause problems; I don’t know.
I shall not be penitent about it, she thought. I did it gladly, would do it again if I could. I have never felt more fulfilled in my life. I refuse to accept that what I did was wrong.
Wrong or not, it could destroy lives; her own, others.
She drove into town, posted the letter. All the way home she was conscious of the paddocks green on either side of the gravel road, the puddles from the latest rain shining earth-brown in the sun, the muddle-headed flocks grazing, the rich fecundity of the land that had been her family’s heritage for generations. If she left in such circumstances it was hard to see how she could ever come back.
She parked at the back of the house, went to look for Dougie. Found him in the shearing shed, playing around with odds and ends.
He watched her silently.
She said, ‘We must talk.’
His eyes flashed. He did not speak. His body was tense in the shadowed shed.
She took a deep breath. ‘I’m having a baby.’
She said no more, waiting. She kept her eyes fixed steadily on him. He watched her, as still as rock. She saw the jagged gulp of the Adam’s apple in his throat.
‘Whose?’ he managed.
‘Richard’s.’
He had heard her speak of Richard. Her war hero companion, her publisher. Her lover.
He lifted his shoulders, wordlessly. She believed he would not fight, would not compete with a man who outgunned him so completely. ‘Yeh, well …’
Won’t you fight? The question hammered behind her silence. Aren’t I worth the trouble?
Apparently not.
‘What you going to do?’ he asked her. It was hard to tell if he was angry or even hurt.
‘That depends on you.’
‘Yeh. Well.’
He turned his back, wandered off. She watched him go out into the steep slant of the sun’s rays. Hands in pockets, shoulders bowed, he shambled along. She stared after him. She felt bereft, uncertain, as though his reaction — or lack of it — had stripped the skin from her body. She could not tell what, if anything, he intended to do.
Perhaps he would say nothing, pretend that nothing had been said. She would be unable to bear that. To leave things floating … Unthinkable. One way or another, the matter had to be resolved.
Later, he came to her. ‘Do you want to stay?’
A hundred times she had asked herself the same question. She stared past him at the line of the distant range, the sweet fall of paddock and scrub into the valley. ‘If you’ll have me.’
I will not cry.
‘It’s your place.’
‘Our place.’
‘What about Richard?’ He chewed the words, the question difficult for him. ‘You love him?’
She must not lie. ‘Yes.’
His nostrils flared momentarily; the only sign. ‘A bloke’s got his pride,’ he said.
It touched her as until now nothing had. She was a prisoner awaiting sentence. She watched him.
‘Back in England, is he?’
‘For now.’
‘Does he know?’
‘I’ve written to him.’
‘What will he do?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘’Cause I wouldn’t want him popping in to see you every now and then. Know what I mean?’ He stared at her, eyes flushed. For the first time he looked angry. ‘I wouldn’t stand for that.’
‘That wouldn’t happen.’
‘Better be sure. I wouldn’t want anyone to know. It’ll be brought up as mine, see?’
It was strange to hear him laying the law down; a measure of how she had wounded him, perhaps.
‘Of course.’
He wanted nothing that was unreasonable. She should feel grateful to him for the way he had taken it but could not. His reasonableness terrified her. It bound them to each other as never before in their lives.
‘You agree, then? My kid, and if you want to mess about with Richard or anyone else you do it so no one round here knows anything about it. Okay?’
His contempt bruised her. She had put herself in his hands; now she had to live with it. But if they were going to bargain there were things she needed, too.
‘As long as in public you treat me as your wife. No putting me down.’
His pale eyes watched her. ‘I wouldn’t. For my own sake, not your’s.’
‘And my writing. You won’t try and interfere with that.’
‘I won’t touch it. Or you. Not ever.’ Something of what she felt must have shown in her face. ‘Take it or leave it,’ he said.
TWENTY-FIVE
‘Take it or leave it,’ Andrew told his parents. ‘You think I’m going to hang around if the farm’s not in my name you’re kidding yourselves.’
Boyd fidgeted with a pencil, rolling it to and fro across the surface of the scarred desk. He said nothing.
‘That’s why we bought the run over at Coonalpyn.’ Sally stared angrily at her son. Through the open window of what Boyd called his office came the sounds and scents of summer, the bawling of sheep in a nearby paddock, a fly banging against the screen, the scent of sun-warmed dust. ‘So you’d have a place of your own.’
‘Coonalpyn?’ Andrew’s lip curled derisively. ‘What’s over there?’
‘Hundred thousand dollars’ worth of grazing land, that’s what,’ Boyd said.
Andrew shrugged. ‘You go there, then. Face it, Dad, farming’s never been your scene. Nothing but hassle and heartbreak. Always worrying about drought, barley prices, wheat prices … Who needs it?’
‘Then why are you so keen to have the farm? If it’s such a hassle?’ Sally wished she liked her son better; wished she trusted him, come to that.
‘I’m young,’ Andrew told her, grinning. ‘I can handle that sort of challenge. You go to Coonalpyn, run a few sheep, I’ll look after things this end.’
The inference stung Boyd. ‘We’re not in our graves, you know. Not yet.’
‘In any case it’s not our farm to give you,’ Sally told him. ‘As you know very well. It belongs to your grandmother.’
‘The old bat’s coming to lunch, isn’t she? You want your only son to stick around here, tell her to leave me Mindowie in her will. Then I’ll stay. Otherwise … I got a life to lead, too, you know.’ And went off, whistling.
‘He has a point,’ Boyd said.
Sally could have shaken her husband. Not for the first time. ‘He just wants to get his hands on Mindowie. What’ll he do when he’s got it, eh?’
Boyd disliked that sort of question; it raised implications he would rather not face. ‘Farm it, of course. Same as we do.’
‘I wouldn’t bet on it.’
‘Mother will never agree, in any case.’
‘Let me get this straight,’ Ruth said. ‘You want me to put money into Mindowie so you can move to Coonalpyn?’
‘Andrew doesn’t want to go there but I think he should.’ Sally believed in standing by her family but there were limits; she didn’t want to move to Coonalpyn, either. ‘He says it’s too far from the bright lights.’
‘Not many of those around here, either,’ Ruth pointed out. But it was nearer the city which Andrew would no doubt consider a bonus. ‘So I pay off the bank, you move to Coonalpyn and Andrew runs Mi
ndowie.’ She sensed she was being manipulated, which she disliked. But could live with it, she supposed, if that was what Boyd wanted. ‘That is what you’re saying?’
Boyd coughed uneasily. ‘That’s part of it.’
She listened with mounting outrage as he explained.
‘You want me to change my will to leave Mindowie to Andrew? Why?’
‘He’s got to consider his future,’ Boyd said.
‘Then let him go to Coonalpyn. That’s what you bought it for.’
Boyd avoided her gaze, staring sulkily at the table top.
Look at me, she demanded silently. But he would not, had never faced a challenge in his life. What is the matter with you? she wondered. Your dad had a hundred times your spunk. Why should you have lost yours? But Boyd had never had any spunk to lose. I might as well leave Mindowie to Andrew, she thought. He’ll have it off you in a week once I’m gone.
Yet something about the proposal stuck in her throat. ‘Why does Andrew want me to leave it to him? He’ll inherit it anyway, eventually. If he’s running it, what difference will it make?’
Unless his idea was not to run the farm but sell it.
I’ll bet that’s it, she thought. Conniving little bastard.
‘I’ll think about it,’ she said.
Boyd’s face cleared. Like all weaklings, he hated a row. ‘Take as much time as you like.’ He hesitated. ‘Andrew will want to know. I can tell him it’s okay, can I?’
‘No, you can’t. I’ll speak to him myself.’
First, though, she had to deal with the bank.
She had arranged to meet her accountant in town. She drove in, found a parking place, walked to his office. It was unseasonably hot, the streets were crowded, the air filled with a blare of traffic. She sat in Gilbert Culpepper’s air-conditioned reception room, the back of her head leaning against the wall. She thought, I am too old for this.
Gilbert came, precise, fastidious, eyes and fingertips just so. An accountant’s accountant. But good at his job, which was what mattered. He ushered her into his sanctum, organised coffee, studied her from behind his polished desk. ‘Tell me the problem.’