Bittersweet (31 page)

Charles and Edda inherited Grace, whose extraordinary spurt of practical good sense began to flag soon after the ambulance left and she could hear her boys chattering to Tufts from their bed. The worst was over.

“The worst is over,” she said.

“You did superbly well,” said Edda, holding Grace’s hands. “I’m so proud of you I could burst.”

“I was taken out of myself,” Grace said, face pinched, white, terrified. “How could I let my children see their father like that? Now they have no father, but at least they won’t have any nightmares either. Having children changes everything, Edda.” Her eyes filled. “Oh, and we were having such an interesting tea for a change! Curried sausages flavoured with your raisins. The boys ate every scrap, so I gave them Bear’s share as well, and they ate that. Which means I’m not keeping up with their growth or their appetites. I’ll have to keep on cooking Bear’s share.” An eerie chuckle sounded. “No food where he’s gone now!”

“Was there any warning?” Charles asked.

“None at all, though I did read him bits of the suicide article in today’s
Post
. But he doesn’t ever hear what I say, honestly!” she cried, a proffered handkerchief taken, used. “Did I give him the idea, Edda? I was only trying to get him interested in something, anything! I read him the papers
every
day, truly!”

“You mustn’t blame yourself, Grace,” Charles said strongly.

She turned her wide eyes upon him, their depths displaying wonder. “I don’t blame myself, Charlie. Why should I? Giving him the idea isn’t blaming myself. That’s like saying the only way not to get stung by a bee is not to wear perfume. Honestly, you Pommies are a weird mob! You read too much into things. No, the only one to blame is Bear. How much I love him! Even when his stupid pride made me want to cut his throat, I still loved him. Oh, the children! I need Daddy’s help with them.”

“Tomorrow, Grace, not tonight,” Charles said. “Thanks to your magnificent handling of things, they won’t suffer repercussions of the kind they might have, and they’re too far off school age to be tormented by other children.”

“The things you think of!” Edda exclaimed. “The important thing, Grace, is that they’ll grieve in a natural way for a daddy who isn’t here any more.
You
did that for your boys, no one else.”

“But how am I to live?” Grace asked. “I’m going to have to depend on charity.” That broke her as nothing else so far had; she bent over and wept desolately.

I hardly know my twin, Edda was thinking: the most bizarre mixture of hard-headed pragmatism and utter lack of foresight! While I have existed insulated from reality, my sister has coped with increasing reality. When life was easy, she was a selfish, empty-headed
Little Miss Dainty. Since times grew hard, she’s become a downright heroine on a level with other women. The two Graces shift and slide within each other like warring men shut up together in the same cell. But it’s this new, tough Grace has won.

Charles opened his black bag, produced an ampoule and hypodermic equipment, and pushed a needle into Grace’s arm before she could object. “What you need most of all, Grace, is a dreamless sleep, and I’ve just ensured that. Edda, get her into bed.”

“That was sensible, Charlie,” Edda said, returning. “Tufts is reading the boys a story, she said to start without her.”

“Well, the only thing we have to discuss is Grace,” Charles said with a sigh that became a wince. “I have to tell Kitty — she’ll be a cot-case! And I have to tell your father.”

“I can’t stop your telling Kitty, but
I
will tell Daddy,” Edda said, lip lifting in a snarl. “Nor should you tell Kitty on your own. She’ll need Tufts.”

Even at this time he could feel anger; Charles rounded on Edda fiercely. “Sisters be damned! Kitty does not need a sister there! She is my wife, a mature woman, in no need of sisters!”

The back door banged, and Jack Thurlow walked in. “Is what I heard true?” he demanded. “The party lines are buzzing with it.”

Saved by an outsider from a gargantuan fight with that selfish little dictator Charlie Burdum! Edda thought, making a pot of tea while Charles explained — emphasising his own importance, of course.

But Jack’s patience was thinner than Edda’s, nor was he prepared to take a back seat of no importance or relevance. His
fist thumped the table. “Grace has no need to worry you, Charlie. I intend to look after her and her boys. As soon as they can pack, I’m moving them in with me at
Corundoobar
. Oh, I’m going to marry her, but not to please the old chooks who run Corunda’s morals — she needs a husband right now, or she’ll never handle those growing boys. My own silly mother ruined our lives when our dad died, and she a Burdum and all! The minister was one of those real God-botherers, not a bit like Tom Latimer. And he bullied and badgered her into living for what other people were saying. Since when should flapping tongues dictate how a lone woman with children lives her life? So Grace comes to me
now
, you hear? I won’t see her go wanting a minute longer! And I’ll educate Bear’s boys, word of a Thurlow on that. My dad mightn’t have been the husband old Tom Burdum wanted for his daughter, but he was a good husband and a good dad. I’ll board this place up until times are better, then Grace can sell it to have her own bit of money —”

He gave a great sob and stopped, aghast at his own spate of words, as if the man speaking them were someone he didn’t know. His eyes went suddenly to Charles, then flew to Edda; both his shoulders hunched up as if he took an actual weight on them.

Charles was so staggered he simply stood and stared.

Things crawled through Edda’s jaws and cheeks, a wormy army on the move: is this the real Jack Thurlow, the man for whose sake I have delayed leaving this town for years? If it were me in Grace’s shoes, would he have come rushing to my rescue like Sir Galahad with the Grail in his sights? Jack doesn’t love me
or
Grace, he’s in love with duty, and at this moment he sees his duty as if God had written it in flaming letters across the sky. For months he’s been yearning to take up Bear’s burdens and tend Bear’s responsibilities as if they belonged to him. He’s grabbing at Grace like a madman after the moon’s reflection in a pool.

“My dear chap,” Charles was saying, rattled into Pommyness, “is all this really necessary right now? I assure you that I am very happy to fund Grace and her children. It is my
duty
to do so, Jack, not yours.”

“Bear and I were mates, good mates,” Jack answered in hard tones. “You seem to have taken responsibility for all of Corunda — isn’t that enough? I have time
and
room for Grace.”

Tufts found a spluttering, confounded Charles Burdum when she entered the kitchen; Edda was wrapped in making the tea, as if her segment of the kitchen were on a different continent.

“Sit down, Edda, I’ll finish that,” Tufts said.

“Jack says he’s taking Grace and the boys to
Corundoobar
.”

“Interesting. Sit, Edda, sit! I’ll come with you to break the news to Kitty, Charlie,” Tufts said. “Edda, I presume you’ll tell Daddy? Good! And shut your mouth, Charlie, you’re catching a fine crop of flies. They carry germs, you know.”

There were other cases of suicide in Corunda too; things weren’t getting better, they were steadily worsening Australia-wide, and that went for Corunda as a part of the nation. As 1930 slipped away, ever-increasing unemployment combined with lower and lower wages for those who did have work. If bank directors
and chairmen of boards somehow managed not to suffer from retrenchment, that was simply the way of the world, whose governments everywhere protected the fat cats, even Stalin’s U.S.S.R. Though it had held out well early on, Corunda’s prosperity was rapidly disintegrating, despite the new hospital. The spectre of retrenchment grew more visible as all the factors creating good economic health occupied more and more space in newspapers and magazines; terms a working man would never have known before 29th October 1929 were now bandied about in pubs and soup kitchens as the Great Depression ground on — and on.

Having connections to the Burdums and the Treadbys, Bear Olsen’s death provided a more public forum in which to air a growing problem, even in Corunda: the burial of suicides in consecrated ground. A vocal minority of Corundites wanted to carry the curse of suicide physically into the grave by denying suicides a funeral blessing or hallowed soil. Old Monsignor O’Flaherty could be expected to oppose, argue though his curates did for a kinder interpretation of God’s laws, but he was by no means the only Christian minister of religion so inclined. Some Protestant ministers were equally intransigent on the subject. The arguments were heated and nasty, and produced a new array of cracks in Christian institutions: two Corrigan suicides in the West End saw a huge exodus from Catholic St. Anthony’s when the Reverend Thomas Latimer offered the Corrigans assurance that the God of Henry VIII was not as inflexible as the Vatican about the state of grace of the dead, though one of the Rector’s own curates felt quite as strongly as Monsignor O’Flaherty
that self-murder was the only crime God would not forgive. A formidable force in Corunda, Thomas Latimer was generally felt to be in the right of it when he thundered from his pulpit in a memorable sermon that no man or woman or child who took their own life under such conditions as these prevailing at the present time could be deemed sound of mind: madness too was in God’s gift, and carried self-murder with it as part of the package. His learned yet intensely emotional opinion seemed reasonable, logical, and, as 1931 loomed closer, one people could live with, if not wholeheartedly accept.

Walking behind Grace and her sons, a black-clad Edda turned her head to assess the size of the crowd following the coffin out of St. Mark’s and into the small cemetery next door, where families of the rectors were buried alongside Burdums and Treadbys. Black, black, black, a bobbing flow of black. No one in this trying time lacked black clothes for funerals.

Far more people are dying than being born, for the life force is flickering low, and if people don’t know of any other way to avoid conceiving a child than to avoid the sexual act entirely, then that is what they do. Who would wish this world on a child? Things just go from bad to worse.

What is happening to us Latimer sisters? What must still happen?

That
fool
, Jack Thurlow! Thanks to Jack’s indiscreet, oft-repeated vows to shelter Grace, people are already gossiping that my twin sister has her next husband picked out before she’s seen
this one put into his grave. How cruel a weapon, the tongue! Look at her, you stupid people! She’s devastated by her loss!
No one can help her
, not even bloody Jack Thurlow! A man without a purpose who thinks he’s found one. But unless we three can stiffen her backbone, she’ll knuckle under to Jack and do as he says. She’s a submissive woman who knows no other way to live than lean on someone. Death in life, fear in love, solace in belonging.

We are a legion of black crows. Kitty has come. I knew she would. I drive in the spike, Kitty lops off the head. Each of us is necessary, with Tufts to provide the earth and Grace the water.

It’s hard to get Kitty on her own since she married Charlie Burdum — a very possessive man. But then, all men are possessive; it is the nature of the beast. Her isolation atop Catholic Hill is deliberate. Without a car, a difficult place to reach, and I for one can’t afford a car. Nor has he taught Kitty to drive. How much marriage changes things! An unknown man enters the equation and the four sisters are fragmented — I
miss
Kitty!

Poor little Brian. Two years old. This plod is about as far as his tiny legs can carry him — trousers hemmed to knee-length because they’re turned up to the crutch, coat buttoned to keep it on, it’s so big, tie knotted. Black armband, Edda, black armband! His left sock has fallen down, there’s a juicy chunk of snot in his right nostril that he’s itching to pick out, and his silvery hair is sticking up in a cocky’s comb on his crown. Oh,
adorable
! A bit of their blood is me, I am in Brian and John, even if I have no children of my own. The smell of stocks and
carnations! Bittersweet. I will always link the perfume of stocks and carnations with this awful funeral.

Though wakes were deemed Papist, the Reverend Thomas Latimer had been moved by an instinct he didn’t quite understand to hold a reception after the graveside ceremony was over; about a hundred people gathered inside St. Mark’s Parish Hall to partake of the tipple of their choice as well as plenty of finger-food. Charles Burdum had insisted on footing the bill.

Tufts got the job of buttonholing Charles while Edda pounced on Kitty and smuggled her to a little room only those from the Rectory knew. Bear’s death had blighted Kitty, but not with crushing impact despite the relative recency of her own loss; she would not sink any lower because of it, Edda saw in profound relief. Physically she looked very well.

“Your dress sense has improved, Kits,” Edda said, choosing a chair opposite her sister’s. “The hat is delicious — where did you find it?”

“I didn’t,” said Kitty’s low, honeyed voice. “Charlie enjoys prowling the better shops looking for things he’d like to see me wear.” The voice dropped even lower. “He’s a woman’s sort of shopper, Edda, and his taste is much better than mine. I have too much frilly Maude in me.” She sighed, giggled a true Kitty giggle — how wonderful to hear it! “He’s possessive, so much so that he finds it hard to accept the love I feel for my sisters.” She shrugged. “Well, how could he comprehend it? He’s an only child, and while he was brought up in a family environment, he
knew neither mother nor father. The result is that he tends to think my love for my sisters short-changes my love for him, and I can’t seem to get it through his head that they’re two different kinds of love, in two separate compartments. How I hate being on top of that wretched hill! With the Depression worsening, there are no more taxis in Corunda, I have to offer someone with a car a sum of money that’s actually an illegal transaction.”