Four Respectable Ladies Seek Part-time Husband

by Barbara Toner

  He visited every day and every day she steeled herself to say they had no future together, but there he was, so loving, so gentle, so steeped in the business of the O’Connell land that she hadn’t the heart. He had gone to war to prove to her he was a man, he said. ‘Just like Frank O’Connell, who couldn’t face his children alive or dead unless he’d found them justice.’ Then, as if that caused a comparison to enter his head as it had to hers, he added, ‘Joe Fletcher seemed very surprised to hear we were engaged.’

  ‘Why did you tell him?’ she asked.

  ‘Why wouldn’t I tell him? I’m proud of you. Who wouldn’t be proud of a wife who risked everything for you?’

  Joe Fletcher sent his respects via his brother Harry, who called in on his way to Goulburn, where he would deliver his report on the suspicion, investigation, pursuit and arrest of Archibald Brian Stokes, Frances Elizabeth Murdoch née Worthington and Laurence Linus Murdoch. He said in passing that he couldn’t have managed without Daniel and what a good bloke he was. He hoped he would be invited to the wedding. If this was Pearl’s chance to say there would be no wedding, not to Daniel anyway, she missed it. She didn’t miss it by accident. She rejected it.

  She had great respect for Sergeant Fletcher and she knew he had time for her. He was in wonder at the bravery of advertising for a part-time husband, a post he now freely admitted to having applied for. He’d been tipped off by the girl on the telegraph at Cooma who’d been asked to keep an eye out for anything odd in the way of messages from anywhere in the district. ‘I thought it might have been a code,’ he said.

  ‘It was in a way,’ Pearl replied.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. He was a man of few words. Had she confided her reluctance to commit herself to a life with Daniel, he would have said, Oh. Sergeant Fletcher had only scorn for Martin Duffy. ‘Goose of a man,’ he said.

  This goose wrote to Pearl a letter so ludicrously deluded she could scarcely bring herself to read it to the end. He admitted to having consulted with Annie McGuire, who had encouraged him to write by hinting Pearl had doubts about Daniel Flannagan. It was a confession Annie had tried to retract the minute it was uttered, but it had given him hope.

  ‘I said I couldn’t marry Louisa or be more than a friend to Maggie because I loved someone else. I know you won’t be surprised to hear that it’s you. Well you might be. I was shocked to realise it myself. I am not a man given to commitment as a rule but you are exceptional. I love you with all my heart.’

  Surely such a letter deserved a considered reply. But Pearl was so disgusted with her failure to address either Daniel or Joe, that her reply to poor Martin was franker, blunter – well, crueller – than it ever needed to be. She couldn’t even entertain the idea (she wrote to him). Sorry Mr Duffy (not even Martin) but it’s too silly for words. I know you’ll agree in a week or two. She was sorry she couldn’t return his feelings and she really was alarmed to learn he was harbouring them even if the harbouring had surfaced only lately. Had she even the slightest inkling, she’d have told him at once to forget them. It was a horrible letter to receive and when Martin read it, he thought he might never recover. It took him days to decide he should invite the girl in the fruit shop to the flicks.

  That he might be suffering at all did not even vaguely occur to Pearl. The part-time husband had claimed such a very small place in her affections that she could hardly imagine she had the place in his that he claimed she did. She put him out of her head because she had more important things to worry about. But no matter how much she fretted, still she didn’t speak her mind to Daniel. In an agony of conscience, she told herself that maybe she could marry a man who so badly wanted to marry her and that she could make the best of it.

  It was an argument that cut no ice with Maggie O’Connell, who saw through the shillyshallying and half-truths. She visited Pearl often, and, shrewd little piece that she was, had known at once there was something playing on the housekeeper’s mind beyond boredom and a sore arm. So well versed was she in matters of the heart as described in serials such as Oh Bitter Love and Deception, that she remarked point blank, ‘You don’t want to marry him, do you? You can’t marry a man you don’t love. You know that, don’t you?’

  They were looking out across the Nightingales’ orchard, where lemons were still on the trees and oranges were only now beginning to ripen. ‘I do love him but he isn’t the man for me,’ Pearl eventually admitted.

  ‘In that case,’ said Maggie, ‘you should set him free because he will be the man for someone else.’ If she smiled to herself, good luck to her. Like Louisa, Maggie was beginning to see that alongside other men, Martin Duffy was a charming boy. Alongside Daniel Flannagan, he was a bit stupid. Daniel was a man who would protect and provide. Did she say as much to Pearl? She did not. And nor did Pearl mention Martin Duffy’s declaration of love to her. But Pearl, on being advised that it was selfish not to speak, spoke, at last, very softly, on the bench by the river with the baby in the pram for moral support.

  She said, ‘Daniel.’

  He said, ‘I know.’

  She said, ‘Do you?’ And he nodded.

  ‘Too much time has passed,’ he said. ‘And I think you might love someone else.’ He kissed her on the cheek (not revolting), held her hand for the briefest of minutes (soothing) and said he would love her always, and then he left.

  Joe Fletcher arrived at the Nightingale back door via the gate in the lane the very next morning, when Adelaide and Marcus were out inspecting the progress of the shop with Maggie. He was delivering eggs, he said, because he’d heard the Nightingale hens had stopped laying. ‘Morning, Miss McCleary,’ he said lazily. ‘Want me to make us a cup of tea?’

  ‘I can manage,’ she said but he insisted she shouldn’t try, and in this slight exchange by the stove they brushed against each other, which so electrified their limbs they fused, as bodies do when a very strong current shoots from one to the other. He asked if he could kiss her, and she said he could.

  Over tea he asked her advice. ‘I’ve been offered Somerset Station. Young Mr Bluett wants to sell now he knows the O’Connells own a chunk of it. He doesn’t want the fuss. He wants to get shot of it. And I might buy it. Just not sure.’

  ‘Not sure of what?’ she asked.

  ‘You,’ he said.

  ‘You can be sure of me,’ she replied, so he lifted her gently off her feet and kissed her for a very long time.

  Epilogue

  Three months have passed and all the ladies whose need for a part-time husband had caused them to confront what they wanted from a full-time one have taken stock and reached conclusions in as much as anything can be concluded in a lifetime.

  The engagement of Miss Pearl McCleary, beloved ward of Mrs John McGuire of Sydney, to Trooper Joseph Fletcher (12th Light Horse Regiment), formerly of Dalgetty, son of the late Mr Ernest Fletcher and the late Mrs Ernest G Fletcher, much loved brother of Sergeant Harold Fletcher (12th Light Horse Regiment), was announced in the Sydney Morning Herald and The Prospect Gazette.

  Mr and Mrs Marcus Nightingale were delighted to tell only their nearest and dearest that they were expecting a brother or sister for Freddie and that Nightingales, Famous Purveyor of Fine Food, would be open for business within the month. Its restoration had been miraculously fast because men from the railway, whose progress had been halted through lack of money and no Mayor with any energy to push it on, had moved into the town to supply the labour.

  Maggie O’Connell, a single woman with a promising career, wondered if she were in love with Daniel Flannagan or Ginger Albright, who had visited every day since the fire and made it plain that he’d admired her all his life. Certainly he was a boy like Martin Duffy when compared to Daniel, who was a man, but look at him, working his heart out on the property, sifting through the disgusting shed in a way Martin could never have done and Daniel probably would never think to do.

  Back in Sydney, Mrs Louisa Worthington wondered what kind of an idiot would let a man like Daniel Flanna
gan slip through her fingers. He’d already worked out she was entitled to her late husband’s share of Upsand Downs, left to Jimmy on the death of his parents but taken by Baby Worthington who said it was owed to her along with the holiday house in Pambula to compensate for all the money their parents had lavished on Jimmy but not her. The very great joy of Daniel was that he knew she was pregnant and passed no judgement at all on her. He wouldn’t mind who the father was, which would be a great help since she wasn’t sure herself.

  The Mayor and his wife returned to Prospect once he judged enough time had passed. ‘The town will be back on its feet in no time,’ he observed in the coach on the way home. ‘I’m still Mayor, and you are still my wife.’ If she didn’t respond to the gentle dig in the ribs that accompanied this remark it can only be because the honour was somehow less than he thought it was.

  After three months, did anyone spare a thought for the discarded part-time husband, now the amour of Mrs Elsie Patterson of Manly, other than to find him wanting compared to others? Now and then. He wrote to Maggie proposing the visit he’d promised young Al – or was it Ed – but she said they were actually very busy at the moment though she was pleased he’d kept his promise. The truth was that he’d served his purpose and now was surplus to requirements. His purpose, as things panned out, had been not to do what the ladies couldn’t, but to show the ladies what they might achieve on their own.

  Acknowledgements

  I would like to thank my agent, Fiona Inglis of Curtis Brown Australia, for her loyalty, patience and encouragement, and Beverley Cousins at Penguin Random House for her clever and tactful editorial suggestions. I would also like to acknowledge the town of Bombala for its late railway, whose arrival inspired the landscape for this novel but whose population, neither current nor historic, are not in any way represented here; Carol Badewitz, who generously lent me her books on the town’s history for guidance; the gallant Walers, 130,000 of which left Australia to serve in the First World War, though none returned; and the ladies of Nethercote, whose conversation led me to wonder what good could possibly come of a part-time husband.

  © Lorrie Graham

  Barbara Toner is an acclaimed author and columnist who has written extensively about the lot of women in all its manifestations, with all its glorious and less glorious intricacies, both in fiction and non-fiction. She is married and has three daughters, and divides her time between England and the far south coast of New South Wales.

  www.barbaratoner.com

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by any person or entity, including internet search engines or retailers, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including printing, photocopying (except under the statutory exceptions provisions of the Australian Copyright Act 1968), recording, scanning or by any information storage and retrieval system without the prior written permission of Penguin Random House Australia. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  Version 1.0

  Four Respectable Ladies Seek Part-time Husband

  ePub ISBN – 9780143787563

  First published by Bantam in 2018

  Copyright © Barbara Toner 2018

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  A Bantam book

  Published by Penguin Random House Australia Pty Ltd

  Level 3, 100 Pacific Highway, North Sydney NSW 2060

  www.penguin.com.au

  Addresses for the Penguin Random House group of companies can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com/offices.

  Cover design by www.blacksheep-uk.com

  Cover illustrations from Depositphotos

  Ebook by Firstsource