A Dangerous Language

by Sulari Gentill

  As much as he’d always believed that he was not interested in the public recognition of his work, Rowland was vaguely wounded by the ostracism of the artistic hierarchy.

  “Give them a couple more months, Rowly,” Edna said quietly as he tossed the letters one by one back onto the tray. “They’ll be sick of punishing you by then.”

  “I suspect it might take a little longer than that.” Rowland was irritated that it bothered him.

  The last letter had been delivered only that morning. It had been sealed with wax and smelled of eucalyptus. The writing on the envelope was florid. Rowland opened it.

  Inside a sprig of gum leaves had been folded into the paper and, as he read, he smiled.

  “Who’s sending you leaves, Rowly?” Milton asked.

  “Jemima… Mrs. Roche.”

  “From the tennis party?” Edna asked, surprised.

  “She and Rowly are old flames,” Milton said.

  “Really? I don’t remember—”

  “Older than that. Childhood sweethearts.”

  “Oh, that’s lovely! She’s so very beautiful.” Edna put down her knife and fork. “Why the leaves?”

  Inwardly, Rowland flinched. He really wished Edna would not be quite so enthusiastic about the other women that crossed his path. “There’s a gum tree on the Fairweathers’ property with our initials carved into its trunk.” He continued reading the letter. “Apparently it’s still there.”

  “You carved your initials into a tree.” Clyde laughed at the youthful sentimentality of it all.

  “Actually, that was Miss Fairweather, as she was then. She’s quite handy with a knife. I was just a fellow traveller for the most part.”

  “What do you mean?” Edna asked.

  “Jemima told me what she wanted, and I did it.”

  “Really? I can’t imagine you so easily persuaded.”

  “Nonsense!” Clyde said. “Rowly’s too polite to refuse a lady. How many times has it got him into trouble already?”

  Rowland smiled. “I was not quite fifteen. I expect I was too surprised Jemima had actually selected me for the role to put up much of a resistance.”

  “Young love,” Milton sighed. “Tell me, did she break your heart, old mate?”

  “Not specifically. We both went back to our respective boarding schools in February. As you know my father died in March of that year and I was shipped off to England. I haven’t seen Jemima since.”

  “Oh, that’s so sad.” Edna heaped sugar into her tea. “Dragged apart by the most horrible circumstances. Perhaps now…”

  Rowland folded the letter back into its envelope. “It was a youthful attachment, Ed, not Romeo and Juliet. But we were good friends. I didn’t realise that I’d missed her till I saw her again.” He tapped the envelope absently. “She writes that she needs my help.”

  “With what exactly?”

  “She doesn’t say… which is so very much like Jemima. She’s summoning me.”

  “Will you go?” Edna kept her eyes on her cup.

  “I could duck across to Yass while we’re in Canberra, I suppose… Wilfred will probably be expecting me to call in and pay homage at some stage.”

  Wilfred Sinclair presided over the family’s pastoral interests and the family itself from the Sinclairs’ main holding near Yass. Personally mortified by Rowland’s last exhibition, Wilfred’s anger had not yet receded. Exchanges between the Sinclair brothers had been terse and bitter, if not blatantly hostile. As much as he regretted that Wilfred and his wife had been embarrassed, Rowland did believe the reaction disproportionate, and he was becoming fed up with Wilfred’s need to repeatedly rebuke him.

  Milton grinned. “I’m looking forward to seeing what Wilfred makes of the Airflow.”

  They were greeted in the morning with ongoing newspaper stories of the young woman’s body found in a culvert. The murder was described as either shocking or gruesome, its victim as beautiful. The Sydney Morning Herald was calling it the Albury Crime. The Truth was calling her the Pyjama Girl. She had not yet been identified.

  Edna seemed particularly moved by the story. Perhaps it was because for a time it might have been her. “No one misses her enough to give her name… how very lonely she must be.”

  Rowland noted that his sketches had been amended a little before publication. The victim was given a fuller head of hair in a fashionable bob, her face made more angular. The body had now been embalmed and would be moved to Sydney in a specially designed coffin. Additional senior policemen had been assigned to the case.

  Rowland’s mother, who now resided in her own wing of Woodlands House, and who had of late acquired a taste for the Truth’s lurid style, devoured its account of a body mutilated by a hammer. As she read, she made notes in a small notebook.

  “What are you doing, Mother?” Rowland asked when he found her thus.

  “Good morning, Aubrey dear. I’m making notes to remind myself of the details,” she said. “I’m so busy these days it’s the only way I know what I’m up to.”

  “You need to remember the details of this?” Rowland was perplexed. His mother had forgotten him entirely, addressing him only by his late brother’s name for years. She’d selectively forgotten a great deal of the past twenty years, including the manner in which her husband had died and the man he was when he was alive. In recent months, she seemed to have also forgotten her own age, convincing herself that she was in her mid-thirties, despite the fact that her eldest son was forty-three. It seemed odd that the details of a murder would be the one thing she thought important enough to write down so she didn’t forget.

  “Everybody at my club is talking about it and you know I don’t like speculation. I want to make sure I have the facts somewhere when I need them.”

  “I’m not sure the Truth shares your fondness for the facts, Mother.”

  “Oh, you’re becoming as stuffy as your brother!” Elisabeth made a note of the colour of the pyjamas in which the young woman’s body had been found.

  “Mother, I was just speaking with Aunt Mildred. She’s about to take the SS Marella to Singapore next week. She wonders if you might like to join her.” In fact Elisabeth Sinclair had agreed to the trip months before, but the arrangement was one of those things she was predisposed to forget. As the date of departure drew closer, Rowland had taken to broaching the subject more regularly, obtaining her agreement all over again each time. Experience told him that this was the best way to handle any change in his mother’s routine.

  “I know, she already asked me. I told her I couldn’t possibly leave you on your own for three months. Whatever would people think?”

  Rowland smiled. His parents had taken a tour of the Continent when he was three, leaving him and his brothers in the care of a nanny and the housekeeper for nearly a year. “I won’t be alone, Mother. There’s Mr. Isaacs and Mr. Watson Jones not to mention Miss Higgins. And I am a grown man.”

  “I’m not sure it’s becoming for a woman in my position to take a cruise unescorted.”

  “Aunt Mildred will be there to chaperone you. It couldn’t possibly be more proper.”

  Still Elisabeth was reluctant. “It’s not just you, Aubrey. Mr. Isaacs and I are reading ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ together. We’ve only just finished the preludes. I couldn’t possibly leave now.”

  Rowland was aware that his mother was besotted with Milton. The poet, who’d been raised by his own grandmother, had a way with old ladies and was unfailingly kind to Elisabeth. And, of course, Elisabeth believed she was thirty-five.

  “To be honest, Mother, Mr. Isaacs, all of us in fact, find we must go to Canberra for a while.”

  “My Lord! Canberra? Whatever for?”

  “Milt has some business there.”

  Elisabeth leant towards Rowland and whispered, “Poetry?”

  Rowland wondered what exactly his mother thought the business of poetry entailed, but he nodded.

  “I see.” Elisabeth sighed. “Well I suppose I’d better
sail to Singapore then. We’ll be the first that ever burst into that silent sea.”

  Rowland kissed his mother’s cheek, a little alarmed that she, too, had taken to robbing the romantic poets. “I’ll let Aunt Mildred know and make the arrangements.”

  Milton walked in then, a thick volume of Coleridge’s extended rime under his arm.

  “Mr. Isaacs.” Elisabeth’s face lifted. “Aubrey tells me you’re going to Canberra!”

  “I’m afraid so, Mrs. Sinclair. And I hear you’re going cruising.”

  Elisabeth’s smile was coy. “I am sailing for Singapore, Mr. Isaacs.”

  “Are you indeed? Well, I guess Coleridge has never been more relevant.”

  In the following week Rowland booked suites at the Hotel Canberra and ensured his mother and her entourage of private nurses would be adequately accommodated on the SS Marella. He made several telephone calls and sent telegrams in his search for a suitable craft in which to make the proposed trek to Fremantle. Aviation was an expensive business and so he was reasonably confident of borrowing an aeroplane in return for investment, or sponsorship, or some other form of cash flow. He would use the Gipsy Moth if he could get nothing else.

  Since he could not possibly install his greyhound in a hotel, even one in Canberra, he spent many guilty hours with his dog to compensate. Lenin took his master’s attention, as he did Rowland’s absences, in his stride. Woodlands House, with its doting servants and several cats was, after all, a comfortable place to wait.

  Finally, Rowland drove out to Tudor House near Bowral where his nephew was a boarder so he could take the boy for a ride in the new Airflow. With Lenin in the back seat, Rowland put the motorcar through her paces.

  Seven-year-old Ernest Sinclair seemed quite overwhelmed by the Chrysler.

  “What do you think, mate? Do you like her?”

  “You can’t put the top down,” Wilfred’s eldest son noted disapprovingly. Ernest’s small face pulled into one of his father’s more severe expressions.

  “No… but look, there’s a sunroof. You could pop your head through there if you really wanted to feel the breeze.” Rowland retracted the roof hatch so Ernest could satisfy himself that indeed one could.

  “What’s that?” Ernest jumped at the crackling static.

  “It’s the radio.” Rowland showed his nephew how to tune in a station, smiling as he watched the boy thaw and become enthralled.

  “You’re not going to race this motorcar, are you, Uncle Rowly?” Ernest wound open the windscreen. He had been watching when Rowland’s Mercedes flew off the Maroubra Speedway and collided with a light pole. As much as he was his father’s son, responsible, well-brought-up Ernest loved his wayward uncle.

  “No, Ernie, I don’t think I’ll be racing again.”

  “I think that’s best.”

  8

  PEACE FORCE

  Special Police At Canberra

  TO PATROL CAPITAL ONLY DOZEN MEN ON DUTY NOW

  CANBERRA, Tuesday

  Immediate steps are being taken by the Commonwealth Government through the Chiefs of Commonwealth Police, Major Jones, to recruit a special body of Commonwealth peace officers to protect Canberra, in the event of any civil disturbances. Special officers will be appointed under the provisions of the Peace Officers’ Act, 1925, which may be invoked by the Government this week. The vulnerability of Canberra at the present time is recognised by the Ministry, as Canberra’s police force consists of only about a dozen men who, in the event of serious trouble, would easily be outnumbered. Further, the Federal capital is extremely isolated. While no actual threat of trouble has been made, it is recognised no time should be lost in view of the present state of affairs in seeing the capital is adequately safeguarded. For this reason some hundreds of Canberra residents will be called on to act as volunteers. They will be armed with batons. Major Jones has already begun a canvass for special men and his first approaches have been made to ex-students of the Royal Military College, Duntroon, who were given employment in the Commonwealth public service when Duntroon College closed at Canberra 18 months ago.

  TROUBLE NOT CONTEMPLATED

  While the possibility of invasion by members of a lawless organisation is not contemplated, strategists nevertheless point out just how easily Canberra could be taken by force, even if only for a few hours. But in that few hours much could be done to create endless confusion and possibly irretrievable damage to valuable records and documents in Government departments, and at Federal Parliament House. It would be possible for an invading force to reach Canberra in five hours by fast motor cars from Sydney and for them to take possession of Parliament House before the alarm could be given. Their exit could be made before Canberra officials were aware of what had taken place. Already the Prime Minister, Mr. Lyons, has taken the precaution of having a police guard at his residence every night, but this is dispensed with during the day.

  LIFE THREATENED

  It was disclosed that Mr. Lyons has received letters recently threatening his life. One letter, signed by “Gunman”, declared that the writer had “shot better_____than you and Bruce. I’ll get you too,” he added.

  Daily Examiner, 11 May 1932

  At Woodlands House servants packed trunks and sent them on ahead by rail to avoid overloading the Airflow. Clyde and Rowland also despatched travelling kits of paints and brushes and the various tools of their trade. Edna packed her camera and developing chemicals. If they were to spend the next weeks in the fledging capital, they would need something to keep them occupied besides vague notions of skulduggery. Founded some twenty years earlier, Canberra’s population was small and for the most part transient. Though she now housed the Federal Legislature, the city was not much more than an interim Parliament House.

  Clyde, who’d always been particularly interested in architecture, looked forward to inspecting Walter Burley Griffin’s designed city in the middle of the bush. He hoped the contrast of structure against isolation would provide much potential for the composition of landscapes. For Rowland, a portrait artist, the city also offered subjects. Those who walked the halls of power, and those who built them. Edna was keen to capture both the structures and people on film. Indeed, as much as the decision that they all go to Canberra had been a whim, they were finding themselves increasingly and unexpectedly enthused about the possibilities for their art.

  Rowland had received another letter and two telephone calls from Jemima Roche while they were in Sydney, each demanding he come to see her as soon as possible. She would say nothing more about the matter with which she needed his help, but her letter and conversation were so cheerful that Rowland was not particularly concerned by the plea.

  “Shouldn’t you go now?” Edna asked. “Perhaps she’s in danger of some sort.”

  Rowland laughed. “Jemima screams ‘help’ if she needs a cup of tea, Ed. I expect she’s simply bored in Yass.”

  “But still…”

  “If it was urgent, she’d tell me. She knows I’d come immediately.”

  They waved Elisabeth Sinclair bon voyage from the dock. By the time the Marella set sail, she was excited to go. Milton had brought her the works of William Somerset Maugham, Rudyard Kipling and other former residents of Raffles—where she would spend her time in Singapore—and had somehow ignited a passion for the tropics.

  While Rowland did wonder if the cruise was an independence too far, he was comforted by the knowledge that Elisabeth would be accompanied by three nurses and his formidable Aunt Mildred. She would not be alone, uncared for, or misunderstood. And though Elisabeth would probably not remember the details of the trip for long, while she was on it, she would feel as youthful as she believed she was.

  The United Australia Party under Lyons was returned to government on the 15th of September 1934, albeit in coalition with Earle Page’s Country Party. While the result was not celebrated at Woodlands House, it was not unexpected, and they danced and toasted the new term regardless. On the 19th of September the NSW police c
ontinued their campaign to establish the identity of the Pyjama Girl by embarking on the massive task of tracing every woman under forty who had not voted in the election.

  Woodlands House was left in the sure hands of Mary Brown as its residents headed west of the Great Dividing Range. On the long road to Canberra, Rowland became better acquainted with the various sounds of the Airflow’s engine. She did not roar like the supercharged Mercedes but she had her own song.

  The Hotel Canberra had been designed to accommodate parliamentarians, the odd visiting dignitary and the most senior public servants. As Canberra became more established, its initial clientele found more permanent accommodation and the hotel was now open to casual guests.

  Rowland had booked a suite for Edna and double bedrooms for himself, Clyde, and Milton, each with their own bathroom. Appointed in the style of a First Class hotel, it was, as a base, quite adequate. Luxurious enough, indeed, to quite distress Clyde.

  “They’re double bedrooms, Rowly. We could share.”

  “Yes, but I’d rather not.” Rowland appreciated Clyde’s attempts at thrift on his behalf, but he had no intention of implementing such extreme measures. “Wil tells me our wool clip was excellent this year. I may yet squander my fortune but it will not be with a hotel bill.”

  Rowland had also taken an additional private sitting room which he’d had cleared of furniture for use as a studio. This too Clyde thought an extravagance.

  “It would be an extravagance to spend a month in Canberra doing nothing,” Rowland replied firmly. “At least this way we can work.”

  “Terrific… the not quite idle rich!” Clyde muttered.

  Edna laughed and Milton told him to quit being such an old woman. The poet had always been more comfortable with what he called the redistribution of Rowland’s wealth.