"No, thank you." She got out of the car.
"I'll be waiting," he said again.
"It will be late." It was her turn to repeat herself.
"It doesn't matter what time it is." He did not move the car until she entered the building.
When she heard him leave . . . she did not look around to see . . . she knew a sudden devastating emptiness. She had never enjoyed coming to this apartment, Adele had not welcomed her, Robin had looked more ill each time she saw him. And now . . . and now...
She went into the lift and pressed the button to Robin's .. . Adele's floor.
Adele opened the door to her. She looked pale and shocked; at least Verity had to credit her with that. She led the way into the lounge.
"I knew it was going to come," the girl said as she lit a cigarette, "but I didn't expect it this soon. Also, when it happens, you're still not prepared, are you?"
"Was he in pain?" Robin always had been a bad sufferer, Verity thought tenderly; as a little boy he had cried over a cut knee, created over a stubbed toe. There had to be heaps of love administered as well as salve and Bandages.
"No, he was sedated. Poor Rob ! " Adele exhaled.
"I suppose," she said presently, "I come out of this as the archdemoness of all times, or whatever a female demon is. I know I'm an unrewarding character ... your word, Verity ... but I haven't had the most rewarding of experiences." — She had said this before, recalled Verity.
For a few moments the girl brooded, presumably over her unrewarded past, and, suddenly, unbidden, Bart came flashing into Verity's mind, Bart who had known "Dellie" very well. Yet still never married her. Had that been the less-than-reward she spoke of now?
"But with favourable circumstances I would have stuck with Rob," went on Adele. "He was the same type as I am, really. You mightn't like that, but we suited. Anyway" ... a shrug
. "it's all over now." She looked at Verity. "Anything you want? Sentimental section, naturally, working with the Princes you would never lack anything monetarily." She gave a short laugh.
Working with the Princes . . . So Adele did not know about them. Priscilla did not know either. No one knew. We could be — not married, Verity thought.
"I want nothing, thank you, Adele." All she needed of Robin, Verity knew, was imprinted on her heart.
She wondered when she should break it to Adele that Robbie had not died the rich man his wife had thought. Not yet ... though already Adele looked much more composed than she had been when she had opened the door.
"When is the —" Verity began quietly.
Adele understood. "Tomorrow. Early." She gave a little shiver. "I hate these things."
Impulsively Verity said : "Would you like me to stop tonight?"
"Would you?" rushed Adele. "Bart brought you, didn't he? I saw his car pull up. I'll ring and tell him what's what. No" ... as Verity moved forward ... "I know the number I should." She crossed to the phone.
I know the number. I should. As she listened to Adele dialling Bart's apartment, Verity could not help herself wondering how many times Adele had done this before. Bart had never denied he had known Adele "very well". What had been between them?
She moved sensitively away again ... but she could not move away from her own nagging thoughts.
Had Adele's failure to tie Bart up been the incentive for Adele to marry Robin so promptly, for it had been all over by the time she had arrived from England. This was the painful trend of the thoughts.
Then ... following fast, following compulsively : Had that marriage been the "other" reason to Bart's frankly admitted one of "status", the one that had really urged him to force along his own marriage, to her, that reason as old as society itself; that retaliatory what you did, I can do, too, Adele.
He could have called on Priscilla, Verity thought abstractedly, sweet, loving Cilla, but his Cilla would be such an accustomed figure she would probably never occur to him for that. Possibly only his mother ... and Priscilla herself . . . had dreamed in such a strain. But Verity Tyler was unaccustomed, so she did occur. She was also immediately available, because she was at her wits' end. Bart had known it. He had known he could make that fit-for-tat move at once. So he had married her. She was Mrs. Bartley Prince. She was Bart's wife for two
reasons. Achievement. Repayment. But not for ... never for
She felt a throbbing in her head as she tried to work it all out, but in spite of her vagueness, and the distance she had put between herself and the phone, she still heard Adele.
"It's Dellie, Bart ... Thank you, my dear ... No, so far I'm holding up well. Verity will stay with me tonight, you know me of old, how I go to pieces. Yes . . . Yes, Bart, I'll be here . . . I'll be waiting."
The phone went down.
Thank you, my dear . . . You know me of old.
Verity was still mulling over Adele's conversation long after she had put Adele to bed, then gone herself. She had finished her tears for Robin, she had accepted with final resignation the futility of grief. But she could not accept Adele's soft words, she found. Even when she pulled the pillow over her ears she still listened in retrospect. My dear. You know me of old. There had been something else, she recalled dully. It had been : "I'll be here." Then : "I'll be waiting."
Why had Adele said that?
The funeral service was short. Only Robin's wife and sister attended. When it was over, Adele said, "Thank you, Verity," and got in her car and left at once. A little confused, for she had believed Adele would need her longer, Verity called a taxi and went out to Balmain.
Once there she moved around the rooms, picking up things, putting them down again, oddly restless. She remembered to ring the agent to cancel the flat, she remembered to stop the milk, the bread — then that was that, she thought. Now she could leave. Go — home, as Bart had said. But all at once she knew she could not go without a previous word from Bart. Kind, or otherwise, but he had to tell her first. She dialled the
number that Adele had dialled so much more expertly last night. She listened to the bell ring at Bart's end. There was no answer. She tried again, but still no answer. She put the phone down, feeling inexplicably hollow and very alone.
She knew she needed somebody, some human contact. She rang Woman's Castle, but either Priscilla had not come in, or was busy, but again there. was no response.
She decided to ring Adele, ask her how she was feeling. The girl had made it obvious that she was finished with her, that she needed her no longer, but all at once all Verity cared about was to hold the phone to her ear and hear a voice.
It rang several times, and she had just begun to wonder whether anyone was answering telephones today, when the other end was taken up.
"Hullo." It was a male voice . . . and she recognized it at once as Bart's.
"Hullo," he called impatiently again.
... "Yes," Verity was remembering from Adele last night, "I'll be here. I'll be waiting."
Bart's voice called a final Hullo, then the phone went down. But — "I'll be here. I'll be waiting." Verity still heard those words.
An hour afterwards she was still sitting there at the phone staring blankly into space. She had not thought she was so prone to pain, that is pain apart from Robbie. She had not thought, anyway, that she could feel pain because of Bart. Bart, whom, whether she had liked him or not, she had instinctively trusted, for at no time since she had entered the Prince world had she not trusted and believed Bart Prince, but now —
Clumsily, probably ineptly, since her hurt made her inept, she pieced her story together.
Adele and Bart had been close friends ... hadn't they
known each other "very well"? ... but Adele like all women had presumably wanted marriage. Reward, she had expressed it. Bart, like all men, had wanted freedom; either that or his accident had left him with an uncertainty that had delayed any matrimonial move.
So Adele, probably in frustration, for there had certainly not been love, had married Robin, and that had prompted Bart to
retaliate later in the same way. With her. He had explained it as a status gesture, and she had believed that that embittered man could be capable of such an action. She had not cared for the idea ... what woman would care to be only an achievement symbol? ... but now she knew she liked her present position much less. For as well as being a feather in Bart's cap as he would have her believe, she was a substitute for the girl he really had wanted, but not got around to. Not until it was too late. If he had waited another day, waited another hour, he could have rectified that hideous mistake. — And I, Verity knew hollowly, would not have made mine.
This comedy of errors that was no comedy at all she knew she could have put aside, or at least passed over, but never, never, could she forgive Bart seeking out Adele so soon ... going to her at once.
What was he saying to her now in her apartment? Were there recriminations? Regrets? Plans? Hopes? Schemes like: "Wait a while." Agreements like : "Very soon." Arrangements like : "Give it time." Anticipations like : "After that . . ."
"Oh, no !" Verity said aloud. I'm not really married to Bartley Prince, she was thinking wildly, not really. There's a signature on a form, but we're not man and wife. When I go round to Bart's apartment tonight ... home, he had said, she recalled with a thin little smile ... it will be to hear him tell me all this, tell me that as well as my misfortune, he has a misfortune on his own hands.
The indignity of it all gripped fiercely at her. I can't go on, the knew, not now, nor tomorrow. Not ever.
But what do women do in a situation like this? They go sway, I would know that, but where can they go? What do they live on? How do they exist? I can work like anyone else works, but if I work as I'm working now, on what I've been trained for, Bart will be sure to find me, there is a closeness in businesses like his ... and we would have that reckoning. It has to come, my common sense tells me that, but not now, not yet, not — not with Bart answering this soon from Adele's phone.
She tried desperately to think, to reason . . . to plan, but she found she could get no further than that ... than Bart's voice on Adele's wire.
She had been nervously pleating a sheet of old newspaper, and, looking down, she read absently ... then not so absently ... the few lines of the advertisement in the middle column that somehow had caught her attention.
"Young Australian woman for conversation in English with two boys of eleven and thirteen years. Remote country home but every amenity and consideration. Telephone .. ."
The edition, she saw, was a week old. She was not Australian. But that "remote country home", remote from the turmoil in which she now found herself, the further turmoil in which she knew she would be placed, suddenly prompted her to take up the phone. She checked the given number.
She was aware she could not indefinitely run away from Bart, but just to remove herself from the scene for days, weeks . . . perhaps a month ... Just to get away...
Verity put her finger on the first digit. The advertiser would have left by now, left with the young Australian, not English, woman; no one waited for an answer to an ad a week after. She turned round the final figure and heard a bell, and for the first
time today there was a prompt reply. A young boy's voice, sh judged. A pleasantly foreign voice.
"Yes?" he asked.
"I'm Verity Tyler." No, she was Verity Prince, she though dully. "I've just read an advertisement in a week-old news paper."
"Oh, yes," said the boy. "Will you come?"
Will you come? It seemed incredible . . . it was incredible. She listened again.
"It's a long way away," the boy went on. "All the others said too far away. It's called Tetaparilly, and that means — Oh, Mother, why can't I try this time? You did no good, and she sounds nice."
"Gunnar !" A woman's voice now came across the wire. "My sons !" she apologized to Verity with a laugh.
"This one sounded in little need of English conversation," praised Verity sincerely.
"He is the better," admitted his mother. "Ulf, the younger boy, is quite bad, I fear. It would be wonderful if you could come."
"I'm English," Verity told her.
"Better still for English conversation. We have been delayed from leaving Sydney earlier because of a throat condition in Ulf, but all is well now and the doctor says we can go at once. You could come at your convenience, of course, if you will only agree. We are a Swedish family, and have settled in the north-west. My husband and I went some years ago, then, when we could bring them over, our two young sons. It is an isolated farm, so the boys must have school by correspondence. Ordinarily they would have picked up English quite easily if they had been able to mix, but with only parents to converse with —"
"You, anyway, are very fluent," said Verity.
"Yes, we both, Big Gunnar and I, can speak English. But assist my husband a great deal on the farm, we are little more than beginners so can afford only a minimum of help, Thus I have not the time for encouraging my sons as I would e. But our place is comfortable, as the advertisement says, et" . . . ruefully . . . "also, I must admit, remote."
"The important thing to me," Verity broke in, "is — is it till available ?"
"Is it — Why, yes. Why, yes!" There were delighted noises it the other end. "Does this mean —"
"I want to come," Verity said.
"Then — how soon? We could forward you the plane ticket to the nearest field, and we would pick you up."
"When are you leaving ?"
"As early as an hour from now," said the voice. "I am driving the car, and my husband, who has been concluding a deal at Bathurst, will meet us there. But if you could tell me when —"
There was a moment's pause from Verity, during which
time she could hear the Swedish woman breathing more
quickly, probably fearing she had not gained her prize after all. Then Verity said : "Could I come with you?"
"Come with us ?"
"I'm sorry, perhaps your car is not big enough —"
"Our car is very big, as well as very clumsy, the boys call it the Tank. But this is wonderful."
"You may not think so," Verity laughed.
"I do think so. I think, like Gunnar did, that you sound nice. You are serious ?"
"Very serious. When and where ?"
"Within the hour that I told you." After some consideration the woman gave Verity a meeting place that even a newcomer would have no trouble in finding. Excited, she rang off.
More slowly, Verity put down her end of the phone. She knew that what she was about to do was immature, unreasonable, quite abominable ... but also that it was essential, essential to her own peace of mind. She could not face Bart yet. In time she could, and must, face him, but she had to have this breathing space.
She had already placed her things in her bag, so she had no packing now. She knew, though, she must leave some kind of note, otherwise Bart could think all sorts of fates for her, possibly raise an alarm.
She took out pen and paper, cursing her dullness as the clock hand went half way round the face before she could find any words to write. Then they could not have been sparser, less illuminating, though illumination was the last thing she wanted, she thought.
She wrote barely : "I have gone away. V." Then left it at that.
As she ran down the stairs, she heard her telephone ring ... but she did not turn back.
CHAPTER X
TETAPARILLY was far north-west, and, in spite of what Grete Dahlquist had said, a well-established little station. The reason that Grete was needed to help her husband so much was a new crop they had gone in for, one that reacted favourably in most instances to a woman's hands. It was herbs.
"Our parents went in for herbs in Europe," the Swedish couple explained, "and now the demand is growing out here."
They had come originally to Australia because of an inheritance. An uncle had left Gunnar the property.
"Yes, a Swede, of course," Grete had laughed. "Just look at that furniture !"
It was very old and ve
ry beautiful, Verity saw at once. The Chelsea house had handled such stuff. It was not seen much in Australia.
"No, Uncle Bent had it shipped out," Grete said when Verity remarked on this. "You find it good; we find it cumbersome. We both, my husband and I, incline to the modern pieces that our Nordic countries are now doing so beautifully. In fact we incline so much that we have already been doing some shipping out ourselves." She showed Verity the slim functional pieces that had arrived with much pride. "You do not like them?" she laughed.
"I do. Yet not so much in comparison. But perhaps I'm the old-fashioned type. What I definitely do not like is seeing them mixed up together."
"Neither do we, but slowly ... slowly ..." Grete Dahlquist spread her capable hands.
"You will sell the old stuff ?"
"We have been selling ever since Big Gunnar and I started here." Grete often called her husband Big Gunnar. "As we gain a new piece, we sell Uncle Bent's old things. I'm sorry we disappoint you" ... another laugh ... "but it is balanced because you never disappoint us. We still can't believe our good fortune."
"You don't really disappoint me," refused Verity. "Your selections are in excellent taste, it's just that I like old things." "In a new country?"
"It is old, too."
"Oh, yes, we have learned about that, also, but not old furniture old, at least not for us." Grete put her arm round Verity and they walked down to the herb section that was the Swedish woman's dream.
"I love it," she had confessed. "Do you think badly of me for preferring to raise a bed of rue to teaching my boys to enunciate more properly?"
"I think it shows your love of them to pay for me to do so."
"Not much, I'm afraid." Grete had looked worried. The salary was not large, but out here Verity did not need a large salary. She had everything she wanted. Most of all, a less troubled heart.
She liked the young couple very much, for they were still that in spite of their tall sons. "We were married early," Grete had said.
They had left the boys with her parents at the ages of seven and nine, Grete returning several times in the intervening years to see them, then at the end of that period bringing them out with her.
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