by Joy Dettman
May was also thinking about Sam, her mind wandering forbidden places as she watched the land glide by. Liza and Sam. Sam and Liza. Nightmare day of screaming and madness.
Sam had raped his seven-year-old niece. Had she called in the police, a jury may very well have found Jack innocent of his brother’s murder. Perhaps his name might have one day been on the title to Narrawee. What father would not have done what Jack had done that day? What madness had taken possession of her mind, and why, in God’s name, had she not seen that dark side of her husband?
But her marriage had not been as most. Nine hours after she’d walked down the aisle to her handsome Sam, she’d learned that he had no desire to share her bed, though he’d sat on it for hours attempting to explain his feelings.
‘You’re my little sister, a cherished sister, May. I can’t . . .’
Nineteen at the time, and an innocent nineteen, her wedding night spent at a Melbourne hotel, a slow boat waiting to take the happy couple to England in the morning. What was she supposed to do? What was she supposed to feel? Her mother dead for five years, her father in his seventies, her friends envious – no one in the world with whom she could discuss sex, or the lack of it.
She hadn’t wept or argued. She’d sat on the bed beside him, looking at her new wedding band. Hadn’t asked why he had married her. She knew why. Two power-crazed old men had wanted that marriage for years. It would join not only the two oldest families, but the properties, Narrawee and Hargraves Park.
And what a property to own.
Since her eighth birthday she’d wanted to live in that white stone mansion, to be the queen of Narrawee. At ten she’d planned to marry both Burton boys. At thirteen she’d decided to marry Jack, but he hadn’t waited around for her to grow up. Sam had waited.
That day of magic. That wedding gown. That magic night of dancing in her new husband’s arms. Sam had been a wonderful dancer. And the drive to the hotel and her white virginal nightgown with its blue ribbon threaded through lace and her fearful expectations unrealised. Perhaps she felt relief.
‘That’s okay,’ she had said to him. ‘I feel a bit the same way tonight.’
‘We can have a wonderful life, May.’
‘Yes. Yes. We will.’
What else could she say? She certainly wasn’t going to run home to her father, face her friends and the town and Sam’s father, who Jack had always named John the Bastard, and rightly so. Her pride, fear of her father-in-law, would not allow it. Anyway, Sam would probably change his mind once they were far from that domineering old man.
Of course he would.
So they’d steamed away on what was to become the most wonderful holiday of her life. The sights she’d seen, the places she had been, dancing each night with Sam, so close to him. But when they returned to their cabin, Sam slipped into the top bunk and she into her own. He was the most handsome man on the boat, good company, intelligent; what more did she want? As the months passed she found she did want more, and found herself remembering Jack’s vindictive words on the morning of her wedding: ‘He’s a perverted bastard, May. Run while you still can.’
On their return to Narrawee, she and Sam had slept in separate rooms; John the bastard had his say about that. May claimed it was her choice and Sam had shown such gratitude.
He was a thoughtful partner during those first years. They’d travelled and both loved the theatre; he’d bought her extravagant gifts and when they were in public, he’d introduced her as his queen of Camelot, but in private he suggested they have separate relationships.
‘No,’ she’d said. She’d begun to watch him then. Watching his every move became her obsession. She watched him when he was with other women – and with men.
A child of the thirties, a teenager of the forties, May had certainly heard the words applied to men who were assumed to be less than men; in what way they were less, she did not know. Sex, natural or perverted, was not discussed in respectable circles, and she dared not visit the local library and ask to borrow a book on the subject.
She hadn’t seen Jack in three years, then one afternoon he’d turned up in a taxi, with no money to pay the driver. John, the bastard, had refused to pay, but May had her own money, her own property too; she’d buried her father that Christmas. She had paid for the taxi, made lunch for Jack, so pleased to see him, so much to talk about.
‘No kids yet, May?’ he’d said.
‘Sam isn’t ready.’ That was her stock answer for those who asked that question.
‘He was ready for kids at sixteen,’ Jack had stated, his eyes holding her own.
She hadn’t understood his words, but she’d looked away from those all-seeing eyes, and down to her wedding ring. For no logical reason her eyes had spilled over. And he’d kissed her, not a brotherly kiss either. It had set free a flood of emotions and a torrent of tears and words. She’d told him that she was a married woman only in name.
‘You must have known what you were getting yourself into, you silly little bugger. He’s a bent bastard and always has been. The only reason he wanted you was for a cover. May Hargraves, proof of Saint Sam’s unquestionable respectability. That’s all you are to him, May, a pretty little cover. I warned you.’
‘Stop it, Jack. He’s not like that. He’s not . . . not – ’
‘The old man might be a bastard but he’s not stupid. Go and tell him you’re a virgin, three years wed. See what he thinks his precious son is.’
Should have. But she hadn’t. Why?
Because the golden band Sam had placed on her finger had made her mistress of Narrawee. It had given her freedom. Mrs Sam Burton could work in the paddocks with the men. Mrs Sam Burton could learn all there was to know about this land. She lived a life unknown to her married friends. Many were the nights she slept in her old room, and many the days spent at the side of the man she had hired to manage her land.
Mrs Sam Burton dealt with the Narrawee workers too – sacked one on the spot one day because he had dared to put his hand on her.
Twenty-three at the time, and he a handsome thirty. Robin Crane. She would never forget his name. Too attractive, and she had been attracted; Sam had employed him. In hindsight May believed he’d handpicked Robin to father a child. Sam wanted her to bear a child if only to silence his father’s questions.
‘Get your things and get off my land,’ she’d said to Robin Crane that morning.
‘Sam might have something to say about that, May.’
‘My name is Mrs Burton to you. Now get off my land.’
He’d gone, and thereafter not one of the workers had called her May. She’d shown them all that day. She’d shown Sam too that she was more than Narrawee breeding stock put to stud with a passing bull. And when John, the bastard, desperate to see a child of the marriage, called in his own doctor to examine her, she’d refused to submit.
‘Look to your precious son,’ she’d said – and suffered for that remark until the womanising old swine had died in 1960.
That was when the rot had set in. She’d believed that Jack and his shy Ellie would move back to Narrawee with their children – children she might share – but the old man had got in his last hit from the grave. He’d altered his will, left the property to Sam.
‘I want a divorce – or an annulment, Sam. He’s dead, and I’ll no longer continue with this farce. I want a normal marriage. I want children.’
‘As I’ve said many times, May, your children will be my children. They’ll inherit this land.’
‘No,’ she’d said. ‘No. My children will be my husband’s. I want a divorce.’
He’d gone to the solicitors that day and he’d put the property into joint names. She’d considered it a bribe, and told him so.
Time proved it a necessity. With access to unlimited cash, Sam purchased the flat in Toorak; he’d spent weeks there, leaving May and his new manager to run the property, leaving May to sign the cheques. He’d flown overseas alone, spent months in Queensland.
; May assumed he’d gone off to be with other women. Then, on a rare trip to Toorak, she’d finally met one of his male friends, a vile creature who had raised the hackles on her neck. And a girl, a waif of nine or ten. Her eyes had made May’s heart ache.
‘The child,’ she said when the two had driven away. ‘Who was that child, Sam?’
‘Dennis’s wife’s niece. She adores him.’
‘Does she?’
‘Dennis is like a father to her. What are you suggesting now, May?’
‘God knows,’ she said. ‘God only knows. The little girl looked so afraid.’
‘Her mother died recently. Dennis and his wife are considering adoption. We should consider it, May. You know I want a family.’
‘I don’t . . . no,’ she’d said. ‘No.’
‘We have so much love to give, we have the money. We could give a child a wonderful life.’
‘I don’t know.’
It was not until Ann and Liza had come to stay that May had begun to see Sam as a father. He’d taken the girls riding, he’d bought them a pony, spent his days with them, read them stories each night in bed.
He was a good man, and so gentle with the girls. Liza loved him, she followed him around like a little puppy.
Then came that night, Ann and Liza tucked into their bed, when May had raised the subject of children. ‘You would make a wonderful father, Sam. We could have our own. There are . . . there are . . . ways. There are doctors who could . . . help us conceive our own child. I don’t want to raise some little stranger. I want a little girl who looks like Ann Elizabeth, a son like Johnny; Burtons, Sam, Burtons for Narrawee. If I were to make an appointment in Melbourne, would you at least consider it?’
What a fool. What a gullible fool she had been. Not until the day of his death had she known the brand of Sam’s love of children. Not until after his death had she understood fully.
Ann comatose in hospital, May and Jack had made their base in Toorak and spent hours each day beside Ann’s bed. May had been alone at the flat when the innocuous brown envelope was delivered. She had opened it and removed a magazine.
Pages of children and unspeakable perversions.
She’d vomited on the page, and the guilt she’d felt at the part she’d played in concealing her husband’s death had been washed clean away by the vomit. She forgave herself that day, and forgave Jack his every past sin, his every future sin, and she’d begged for his forgiveness. That night she had crawled into his bed. In her mid-thirties, he was her first and not so gentle lover, but she forgave him that too, and she held him inside her praying that a child might come out of desperation.
They made love often after that night, gaining courage from each other to face the new day of questions.
Jack had been born for the stage. He’d screamed abuse at her in front of the children’s hospital one day while television cameras rolled. He’d threatened to kill his brother, naming him a protector of perverts. He’d cursed May for employing the Englishman they’d accused of stealing Liza away. The next day he’d played the gentle Sam in his greying wig and moustache, seated at her side, his hand on her shoulder, protecting her while they spoke to the same television crew.
None had questioned his performance. And why should they? These two faces of Jack were opposite sides of the same coin. It was as if he had become Sam as he’d donned his clothing. His voice, his mannerisms had altered. He was Sam, her husband, and a better man.
The city had been an easy place for one man to become two. A month of fear, of lies and tears, then Jack, and the now silent Ann, had returned to Mallawindy, and May had returned to Narrawee; the double bed she had never shared was suddenly cold and wide.
She learned to lie so well that first year. Sam could not live with his guilt, she said. He could not stand to be at Narrawee at the moment so he’d gone away for a few months.
In the years after his father had died, he’d spent months away from Narrawee. May and the manager had managed. ‘Sam is looking at properties in Queensland, or in Tasmania. Sam has flown over to New Zealand.’ What fine stories she had concocted; what a fine lie she had lived.
But when she’d needed Sam in the flesh, she’d sent a letter to Jack:
Dear Jack, Ellie and family,
I hope you are all keeping well, and that Ann has improved. The weather here has been delightful these last weeks. Sam has been spending his days in the garden. It is looking a picture. He said to tell you that he would like to see you on the 14th, Jack. He has some business he wishes to discuss with you.
Love, May and Sam
The world so much larger in the sixties, Mallawindy so far away. For years she and Jack had kept up the charade while making plans that would see Jack’s name on the title to Narrawee. Perhaps Sam would go overseas and disappear. But how would Jack get home?
Perhaps Sam should drive into the desert, lose himself forever in the immensity of this land. May would follow, a day behind. She’d drive Jack home.
Too many cars on the road, or not enough. Too much fear of discovery.
Or a motorbike, perhaps. Yes, buy a motorbike and Sam could carry it on a covered trailer, then Sam disappears and a leatherclad helmeted rider returns. Who would know?
Bike licence. What if there was an accident? What if the rider began drinking? What if the police stopped the rider? And who buys the bike? And who registers it?
So get a fake licence. Set up a fake address.
Desperation had given them nerve enough to hide the deaths of Liza and Sam. Years on, neither one had sufficient nerve to apply for a dead man’s birth certificate, to approach a police station and apply for a bike licence.
So many plans had been made, spoken of in great detail, but always a problem emerged, with no way across it to a solution. All too difficult.
‘Let it slide, May. Let it slide,’ he’d said. ‘Give it another twelve months.’
So they’d let it slide while the years had slid on by – until Ann had taken their fate into her hands that night and Jack had been the one who had to die.
Now it was too late. He was destined to sign Sam’s name forever.
‘Forty-odd kilometres from Albury,’ he said.
‘We might stop for a coffee, or an early lunch, then drive straight through.’
‘Did you tell them about your will?’
‘No need for them to know,’ she said. ‘They get on well, Jack. You have two beautiful daughters and I envy them their closeness. We made the right decision.’
They’d made a new will, a joint will, leaving May’s property to Bronwyn and Narrawee to Ann. May had given the instructions and Jack had signed on the dotted line.
‘Poor bloody Jack,’ he said. ‘Couldn’t even sign his own will, have a say in where his money, which isn’t his money, will go to when he croaks.’
‘Who else would we have left it to?’
‘Your cousin,’ he said, and he smiled that same old boyish smile that could once have charmed the drawers off a nun.
‘Him! He’d sell it for hobby farms as quick as look at it.’ They drove on in silence, May’s mind again wandering, but this time to Ann’s children.
‘Bethany was smiling today. She’s barely two months old and tiny, but a bright little button if ever I saw one. Her big black eyes followed everything. Matthew, the second oldest, has got the blond curls. He’s a little like Mandy. Just a little. I took some photographs.’
‘She was the image of Liza, you know.’
‘There was a definite similarity. Certainly the hair.’
‘I saw her once. “Is you a bad man?” she said. She was her mother’s daughter. She could pick ’em, May.’
‘A delightful little girl with a beautiful nature. Fate is cruel, Jack. She’d be going on ten now. Young Benjamin is six years old already, and growing into a fine looking boy. He’s very tall for his age. He has the dark hair and the Burtons’ dark eyes, but oddly enough they wear David’s expression, and he’s definitely David around th
e mouth. A very interesting mixture, that little boy.’
‘Benjamin. After Ellie’s old man. I notice she didn’t name one of them Jack.’
She knew how to divert his moods. ‘Oh, and I meant to tell you, Ellie’s sister and her daughter-in-law called in for a cup of tea. They’d been shopping in Warran.’
‘Bloody Bessy? I bet she had a rare old time running me down.’
‘Not at all. Not a bad word was spoken about you, except to tell me that Ellie is having Jack’s . . . your name added to the children’s tombstone after Christmas.’
Since the birth of Bethany, May had been telephoning weekly, and three times now they’d driven up. Jack drove no further than Daree, remaining in the motel room, watching daytime television until May returned. He didn’t go near Mallawindy.
This time they’d slept one night at the motel, and with the trip up too fresh in his mind, the return journey seemed long. He knew every curve, every tree, every hill. Too many years spent travelling this road. But he drove easily, keeping to the limit. May didn’t like speed. Didn’t like a lot of things he liked.
So come Christmas, he’d have a tombstone. Maybe he’d feel better for it. Give it another two months and the seven years would be up. The courts would declare him dead. Dead and buried.
He’d be Sam then, and Sam could have his hair cut. It wasn’t much to look forward to, but it was something.
They stopped for coffee and a light meal in Albury, then May took the wheel for the last lap home. Jack sat back, pleased to be going home. He was growing accustomed to being dead, and the closer December came the fitter he got.
He hadn’t had a drink since April. It had been a bloody torment anyway. When he’d had it, he always wanted more. It wasn’t worth the brawls it caused, and a bottle of Diet Coke felt much the same in his head as a stubby of VB. He drank a lot of Diet Coke.
Never a walker if he could drive, May had got him walking again. Each night now, she dragged him out for their constitutional, and though he might complain out of habit, he walked with her, walked for kilometres. He felt fitter than he had ten years ago, and today his sixty-seven years were not weighing on him so heavily. They’d shared a water bed at the motel last night and one thing had led to another. Sex had been pretty much a once-a-month exercise these last few years, but it always left him feeling younger, stronger, and it was bloody good exercise for the heart, better than wearing out shoe leather, he’d told May last night.