Give the Devil His Due (5 page)

“And her parents objected?” Edna pre-empted.

“They didn't really have a chance,” Milton replied. “Miriam confided in me but she kept it from them… poor wretch was delirious about Weissen and, because he was Jewish too, she thought…” He stood, pacing now. “My aunt and uncle kept such a close eye on her, God knows how they managed it, but he got her in trouble.”

Rowland flinched. It was unlikely this story was going to end well.

“Miriam came to me distraught, hysterical—God, she was terrified. She'd not heard from Weissen since she told him.”

“The mongrel!” Clyde blurted in disgust.

“I hunted the swine down. At first he said he didn't want to marry a Jewish girl, work for her father and have his life decided for him. He thought he had some great literary destiny. I belted the… I wanted to kill him then, to be honest, but he talked me round…”

“Talked you round to what?” Edna asked softly.

“He broke down… cried like a child. Amongst all the blubbering he convinced me that I had convinced him. I was such a bloody fool!” Milton rubbed his face, still angry with himself. “Weissen said that he loved Miriam and that he was deeply ashamed of the way he'd behaved. He said he'd speak to her father the next day, asked me to tell Miriam that he would do right by her. I believed him. I went home and told Miriam to start organising her glory box. The following morning the police arrested me for assaulting Crispin Weissen and by the time they'd figured out he wasn't going to pursue the complaint and released me, the bastard had disappeared completely.”

“But what about Miriam…?” Edna asked, horrified. Though she often seemed indifferent to the expectations and restrictions of society, Edna was perfectly aware of what its judgement could mean.

“What did you do?”

“What could I do, Ed? She's my cousin, or I would have married her myself. She found a doctor who was willing to—”

“No!” Clyde interjected. “You didn't let her?”

“I was afraid she'd harm herself!” Milton flared immediately. “She was going to be condemned by moral hypocrites no matter what she did!”

Clyde bit his lip. “I'm sorry, Milt. I just…”

“I helped her keep it from her parents… from everybody,” Milton continued without looking at Clyde. “For a long time, I thought it would destroy her completely. The family thought she was pining because Weissen had lost interest. They talked of committing her to a sanatorium.”

“But they didn't?” Edna's voice was tentative, hopeful.

“No… now she's married, has four children. She's happy and thoroughly respectable. I don't want the fact that Weissen—or whatever he's calling himself now—has gotten himself killed to raise it all again. It just wouldn't be fair.”

For a moment there was nothing as they absorbed the weight of what Milton had told them.

“If you're arrested for this, she'll find out,” Edna said gently.

“And if I tell Delaney exactly why I know White, it's not going to make me any less a suspect.”

“What were you and White talking about for so long?” Clyde asked.

Milton shrugged. “Miriam. And what happened. He cried again. In the end he said that he was young and he panicked and he'd been regretting it ever since. He wanted to write to her, to apologise. I said no.”

“In the end? What did he say in the beginning?” Edna was adept at recognising when Milton was omitting something.

“We may have gone at it a bit first,” Milton confessed. “Until I realised he was too drunk to put up a fight. Don't worry Rowly, we weren't in your motorcar at the time,” Milton added, as if the fact would matter to Rowland, which it didn't.

“Oh Milt,” Edna said. “This doesn't look good.”

“Who else knows about this?” Rowland asked. “Other than the four of us.”

“Now that Crispin is dead, just Miriam.”

“Bloody oath, mate, that sounds like a motive,” Clyde groaned. “I can't believe I'm saying this, but perhaps it's best that you don't tell Delaney the whole story.”

“He's suspicious,” Edna said. “He'll find out eventually. Presumably there's a police record of the fact that White accused you of assault.”

“Hopefully the real killer will have presented himself by then,” Rowland said, uneasily. He understood Milton's need to protect his cousin. He would respect it. But Edna was right. It didn't look good.

“And if he hasn't presented himself?” Clyde asked.

Rowland contemplated that inconvenient possibility. “We might have to find him ourselves,” he said.

“Rowly, aren't you ready yet? Oh—” Edna screamed and ducked as the lavish stroke of Rowland's brush splattered ochre paint in her direction.

“Ed…” He grimaced as they both looked at her now speckled evening gown. “Oh blast… I'm so sorry. You have something else you can wear, haven't you?”

“Yes,” she said crossly. “But I had wanted to wear this!”

Rowland apologised again. “You look smashing by the way,” he added sheepishly.

Edna sighed. “I ought to know, by now, not to surprise you while you're painting, I suppose… What are you working on?” She peered around his easel at the large wet canvas. The painting was still in its very early stages but she recognised the Königplatz in Munich. Rowland had blocked in the square, somehow rendering the buildings recognisable with only a few brushed details. There was the shape of a crowd and, in the foreground, the Brownshirts against a background of flames. Edna knew immediately the scene he was painting—the book burning they'd witnessed in the square. She frowned. She had hoped that Rowland was finished with the dark images with which he had left Germany. “Why are you painting this, Rowly?”

He put down his brush and handed Edna his handkerchief, pointing to the drop of paint on her nose, before he answered her question. “I'm contemplating an exhibition. Inspired by Germany. I've been trying to tell people what we saw with no effect… it occurred to me that words are probably not my best medium. Perhaps they just need to see what we saw.”

Edna studied the canvas. Already there was a menace in the composition, a kind of hard manic energy in the figures. Even now, nowhere near finished, it was disturbing. She stood back, shivering suddenly.

“Are you cold?” he asked, moving to close the windows.

“No, it isn't that,” Edna said beckoning him back. She took a seat on the settee and, reaching out for his hand, she pulled him down beside her. “You've had such a beastly year, Rowly—Germany, then England, not to mention that terrible business in Yass. Would it be such a bad idea to give yourself a chance to recover?”

“Recover? I'm fighting fit, Ed. Really.”

“It doesn't mean you have to fight again straight away. Even in boxing the players get to rest between sets.”

“Fighters return to their corners between rounds,” Rowland said smiling.

“You just seem a little lost, lately.”

Rowland blinked, surprised, first by the observation, and then by the realisation that it wasn't entirely unwarranted.

“We all understand how you feel about what happened… what's happening in Germany,” Edna went on gently, her eyes searching as they fixed on his.

Rowland looked down at her hand still in his own. It wasn't so much what he felt about Germany and the Nazis as what he should do about it. He tried to explain. “Clyde and Milt know what they're doing,” he said. “They're Communists, they're organised—on some level, anyway. Thanks to Marx, they know exactly how they ought to be fighting. I'm not a Communist, Ed… I'm not sure what I should be doing but I can't escape the feeling that I should be doing something.”

“Are you saying you want to join the Australian Communist Party?”

“No, not at all.” He tried to make sense of the restlessness, to articulate the nagging disquiet. “A couple of years ago, I didn't care at all about politics… I just wanted to paint.”

“Well, there isn't anything wrong with that.”

“I'm not so sure that's true, anymore. What was it Burke said about evil triumphing when good men do nothing?”

“We could ask Milt,” Edna suggested wryly. “He'll remember word for word, though he'll claim he said it first.”

“Doubtless.” Rowland paused. “I do care now, Ed. But, as much as Milt and Clyde are two of the best men I've ever known, I'm not a Communist.”

“You're going to join the Country Party?” Edna asked a little fearfully.

Rowland made a face. “Good Lord, no! I'd sooner join the circus.”

Edna relaxed. “I'm not a Communist either, Rowly. I really do understand… and it is a good idea—an exhibition about the horrible reality of what's happening to Germany under Hitler's Fascists.”

“I'll have to make it sound like a collection of mountain landscapes painted on a walking holiday through the Pyrenees, of course.”

“Whatever for?”

“I was considering putting my family connections to good use for once.”

“I'm not sure I—”

“I don't need to convince the Socialists and trade unions that the Nazis are dangerous, Ed. They know. And even if they didn't, Milt and Clyde will tell them. But if I play my cards carefully, every influential conservative in New South Wales will attend the opening of Wilfred Sinclair's little brother's exhibition.”

Edna's eyes widened. “That's brilliant! You're brilliant.”

“I like to think so,” he said gravely.

She shoved him, laughing now.

“I do wonder if I ought to put this off for the time being, though,” he added pensively.

“Why?”

“Milt… this issue with White's murder. Maybe it's not the time to be preoccupied with another fight… or a car race, for that matter.”

Edna shook her head. “Milt knows you'd drop everything to help him if it came to that. But he'll tell you himself that we have to do whatever we can to make sure people realise how truly dangerous the Nazis are.”

“You don't think I should return to my corner after all, then?” His eyes glinted.

Poking him playfully, Edna conceded the inconsistency of her advice. “It's not polite to hold a lady to what she's said nearly an entire conversation ago!”

“Evidently. I do beg your pardon.” In truth, he was comforted by her change of heart—it made his own uncertainty seem less culpable.

She continued airily. “The world doesn't stop so we can deal with one thing at a time. Life's more an all-in brawl than one of your very proper boxing matches.”

“You might have to explain that,” Rowland said, laughing.

“A single identifiable opponent is an unrealistic luxury,” she replied with conviction. “As is an umpire to make sure everything's sporting, that you all shake hands, adjust your ties and have a cup of tea afterwards.”

“Referee.”

“What?”

“They're called referees. And I believe you'll find that pugilism is not quite so genteel.”

Edna rolled her eyes. “Milt's already spoken about what we saw in Germany at Trades Hall and Speakers' Corner. He'll be delighted you're doing the same with an audience of toffs. This isn't just a Communist fight.”

Rowland kissed the sculptress' hand. “I'd best weigh in then.”

“Shall we make ourselves presentable for this party?” she asked as she stood.

Rowland glanced at his watch. “As I said, you look smashing.”

“Well you look like you're wearing a drop sheet!” She ran her eyes archly over the variety of colours on his waistcoat and the streak of green in his hair. “Go and make yourself look dashing, while I round up the others.”

Rowland did as she directed, returning half an hour later in a dinner suit and with his hair free of paint. Edna had also changed into a gown she had not planned to wear that night, but which, at least, was not the worse for Rowland's brush. Clyde was waiting with her.

“Milt's gone on ahead with your mother, Rowly,” he said, shifting uncomfortably in his dinner jacket. Clyde had never become accustomed to what he considered polite society's obsession with dress-ups. “She was getting anxious that we were running late—Milt thought it best…”

“Yes. That's good of him,” Rowland agreed. Milton seemed to bring out the best in his mother. She was almost girlish in the poet's company and Milton, having been brought up by his grandmother, was particularly kind to Elisabeth Sinclair.

Smiling, Rowland wondered what his conservative brother would think of their mother's friendship with the disreputable Communist. Still, Wilfred was no longer quite as censorious of his brother's set as he once had been.

The venue for the evening's event was the Maroubra Speedway itself. A grand marquee had been erected on the grassed area at the centre of the concave track, the acoustics of the graded cement bowl proving ideal for a twenty-piece orchestra. Rowland parked the Mercedes within the cordonned area reserved for vehicles taking part in the invitational. Running slightly late, theirs was the last car to arrive and so the gaggle of newspaper photographers had no other distraction.