One Sunday (22 page)

He'd blamed everyone – the Johnsons, Arthur's companion, Olivia too – and why blame her? Raymond was her living, laughing proof that she'd done her duty: produced a son for the estate, who in turn had produced a son. Sons were important. Sons were gods. From the day Raymond was born, Nicholas had planned the future of this unblemished Squire. He'd inherit the estate. Jennifer hadn't given a damn for the estate, or for Nicholas's money. Four years ago she'd crept away in the night and taken Raymond with her.

Rachael, only fourteen, decided she'd leave home too, go to live with Aunt Bertha and study music in Melbourne. She didn't get far.

At thirteen, Helen had first dreamed of escape to become a schoolteacher like Aunt Bertha. She made the mistake of telling Father Ryan at the dinner table one night. Nicholas gave the governess a month's wages and put her on the train, and she'd been one of the good ones. Without lessons to fill the long days, Helen found other means of filling them. She began borrowing her father's books, and discovered why Squire daughters must never aspire to higher education.

It was in
The Home Doctor.
Educated girls didn't breed. In America, where heaps of girls went to university and even became doctors, it almost totally stopped them having families. It said in that book that by 1939, girls with university educations would not be able to have babies at all. That was the day she realised she was Nicholas's breeding stock. That was the day she realised why Percy Cochran was spending so much time up here. Nicholas had been grooming him to sire his stock. That was the day Helen decided to educate herself to a non-breeding level.

She read everything, even the old books Molly had crated in as decoration for her library, though she preferred
Frankenstein
, which Rachael had bought for her in Melbourne. It was written by a nineteen year old girl, but they'd had to smuggle it home then hide it, because it was one of those books classified as unsuitable reading material for Nicholas's breeding stock. He owned hundreds of books on every subject from wars to poetry, from farm books to medicine. Helen had grown selective and an expert in never leaving behind a giveaway gap – if you spread fifty books just a little on the library shelf, you could easily fill up a one book gap.

‘You'll wear out your eyes and addle your brain with all of that reading, Miss Helen,' Mrs Johnson always said if she caught her reading in the laundry. ‘Out of here now, Miss, and put that book back. What on earth would your father say if he caught you in here, sitting like that? Remember, you're a young lady now, not a child.'

Rule: A Squire never sits, ankles crossed, knees up, perched on a pile of soiled sheets in the laundry. A Squire never darkens the door of the laundry.

Rachael got mad at Nicholas once because she wasn't allowed to leave the house for a week. She went to the laundry with a roll of pink crepe paper which she prodded into the boiling copper. All of the tablecloths and serviettes had come out pink.

Too sad to think about that. Too sad to sit at this table and know that never again would Rachael sit beside her, never again would she nudge her with an elbow when Father Ryan was sermonising. Just too sad. And she was bawling again, loudly, uncontrollably, her forearms on the table, her head down on her arms, her shoulders heaving, and that hair, still hanging loose, dragging in the gravy.

‘Sit up, Missie. Sit up!'

There must have been a rule that said a Squire daughter never allowed her hair to fall in the gravy. If there wasn't, Nicholas would write a new rule today and slot it in.

‘Sit back. Breathe deeply, and control yourself.'

Great gob of gravy congealed in her hair, too thick to drip. She sniffed, wiped her face with her serviette, wiped at the gravy.

‘How can you sit there? How can you make me sit here? I want to go to my room!'

‘Control yourself, Missie!'

Helen Squire had lost control. Helen Squire was a muck-up. Today her addled brain had forgotten all the rules. She wept while her meal was removed, hot tears rolling, blurring the world. Blur of Arthur's blue ringed bowl. Blur of his spoon. Blur of Arthur's face. When he was brought home from hospital the first time and Helen saw his face, she hadn't controlled herself. She'd run to her room and crawled into the wardrobe. Rachael found her rocking there. She crawled in with her, cuddled her.

‘Remember the liquorice, Heli? Remember when he and Freddy used to feed it to us and turn our teeth black?' she said. ‘Remember Freddy's cackleberry mush? You must remember. Every morning for a week he and Arthur cooked us scrambled eggs on toast and we ate it in the kitchen. It was only weeks before Freddy left. Remember when Mrs Johnson was so sick after one of the Johnsons was born. You must remember.'

Must or not, Helen had no memory of Freddy, or of Arthur before the war. She knew only this Arthur, and for months after he first came home she screamed when the lamp was blown out at night and the black dark entered her room, his face riding it.

Jennifer had been afraid of the dark, she'd been afraid of the Australian bush, afraid of spiders and bees, of the screaming owls and the wind storms that roared through the trees, and of Nicholas, but she'd gotten over being afraid when Arthur kept coming back from the hospital looking worse, not better, because she'd been more afraid of being married to him for the rest of her life and having more of his babies to hold her here.

She hadn't set a foot out of place, though. For six months after her tiny daughter died, she'd gone about the house in the same way, played with Raymond, combed Arthur's hair. Then one dark night while thunder rolled and lightning flashed, when only a mad person would even have considered stepping outside that door, refined, fearful Jennifer did more than step outside; she walked through that storm to the station, where she and little Raymond caught the morning train to Melbourne before anyone knew they'd gone. When there is worse within than without, who's afraid of storms and dark roads?

Helen Squire, that's who.

‘Arthur has expressed his desire to go to the site, Olivia. I've asked Johnson to pick some roses. We'll take them out later.'

Johnson? They were all ‘Johnson' to Nicholas, the males and females, the old, the young and everyone in between.

Olivia sipped her wine, nodded.

What site did he want to go to? They took flowers to Grandma Lorna's grave on her birthday. At Christmastime they put flowers on all of the graves, even Great-grandmother Molly's and that row of dead babies' graves. Did he want to take flowers there for Rachael? She wasn't with the dead yet. Two o'clock on Tuesday would be time enough for his flowers.

All day Nicholas had been making telephone calls to his friends in the city. They'd all come up here for the funeral, the judge, his wife and Percy, the Owens and despicably sweet Veronica, who actually liked Percy. Aunt Bertha, who never came up here, would come for Rachael. Tuesday, only two days away.

Jeanne Johnson would have to put on a uniform and play serving maid. The third Johnson son would hang up his working clothes and play his manservant role. And he'd complain to his mother in the kitchen again, tell her he was clearing out, going to live at the Greens' with Willie, that he wasn't Squire's lapdog, and that one day he'd tell Squire where to shove his bloody butler's suit. But he never would; he liked his fancy suit, spent a lot of time preening and admiring himself in the mirrors when he played manservant.

Stuck at home all day looking for things to do, Helen saw and heard much that she shouldn't have. She'd known of Ruby's trouble, had known exactly how she got into trouble. She heard Nicholas's guests bickering, heard Percy's mother commenting on Nicholas's favourite guest room one morning. ‘Seriously,' she'd said. ‘You would think he'd do something about that ceiling. I mean, cherubs – in this day and age, Hubert.'

All of the guest rooms would be in use on Tuesday. Percy would be peacocking around, acting so concerned for his almost fiancée, pretending he was seriously interested in her and not in Nicholas's money. Strangers would fill the church's front pews, and those who had known and loved Rachael would sit or stand at the back, flinching while Mrs Cochran screeched a hymn. Then everyone would go out to the cemetery, place their flowers on Rachael's grave and come back here for a party while the flowers shrivelled up and died.

Brimful of life, Rachael, overflowing with living and breaking every rule. She couldn't be dead. This was just another nightmare, except Helen hadn't been allowed to let the scream out and wake herself.

‘Rachael passed away this morning at the Willama hospital,' Nicholas said when he and Olivia returned this morning. He offered his hand to Helen, a fine-boned hand, freezing cold on a day when the whole world was burning up. ‘Father Ryan was driving behind us. He'll be here shortly. Dress suitably, and do something with that hair.'

That was self-control. A stone cold white face, tight thin lips, but still giving orders. Helen had no self-control. She'd felt a disconnection, a hazy non-seeing, non-being, until his cold hand brought her back to reality with a stinging whack. That's when the scream had become trapped inside her like a heavy lump of raw meat.

If Rachael had been a boy and old enough to go to war, she would have gone, just like Freddy, and she would have flown the skies in the wildest storms. She probably wouldn't have come back. Australia sent over three hundred thousand soldiers to that war; sixty thousand had died and more than one hundred and sixty thousand were wounded or gassed, which meant that about sixty percent of Australia's soldiers had been either killed or wounded.

Helen would never have gone to war. People could have sent her a whole mattress full of white feathers and she wouldn't have gone. Olivia wouldn't have gone. Arthur shouldn't have. Nicholas would have been there in his uniform, telling everyone what to do. He liked guns and uniforms. He'd asked Dave to wear his lieutenant's uniform for the wedding. He'd chosen Rachael's frock too, a beautiful white frock with beaded shoulders. Rachael loved it on sight when she saw it in the city shop window. She had to buy it. After that wedding, she'd despised it. It looked almost like a wedding dress in the photographs; Rachael looked like a bride – until you noticed her eyes. Faraway eyes, lost eyes, as if they had finally realised escape from Nicholas was impossible.

Arthur's spoon worked hard on his sweet bowl seeking out the last of his pie. He loved sweets. Rachael bought him a big bag of liquorice as a coming home present, and he'd hugged her, then almost choked on a piece. She continued buying him liquorice, but only if it was fresh. Until she married and had no spending money, she bought him liquorice. Now Helen bought it, when she could wheedle sixpence from Olivia, though her reasons for buying it differed from Rachael's.

She glanced from Arthur's empty bowl to the tablecloth. A food artist, Arthur. He didn't eat with the family when they had guests, or even if Father Ryan was here. He made too much mess. Much of his main meal was spread onto that white cloth, and now he'd added touches of pink apple and rhubarb pie, smears of yellow custard. Through blurred eyes it looked like one of those modern paintings of nothing, though it needed more gravy for contrast, and perhaps a splash or two of Olivia's red wine.

Aunt Bertha used to take Helen into the city to study the old masters' paintings. She'd bought her oil paints and canvases, encouraged her to paint.

Mustn't think of paintings today. Not today. On Tuesday she would think, when Aunt Bertha was here. Just get this meal done, then she could go to her room.

‘How do we go on, Nicholas?' Olivia asked, her sweet plate empty, her wineglass empty. ‘How do we go on?'

‘Time heals all,' he said.

‘Time doesn't heal scars, Father. That's all we are now, stained bandages wrapped around scars.'

Whack! Helen sprang from her chair, knocking it to the floor, leaving it where it fell as she stepped out of his reach. Olivia was up at the sideboard, pouring wine.

Shouldn't have said that.

Rule: Squires did not see Arthur's scars, nor mention scars in Arthur's presence.

‘Never you forget, Missie, not as long as you live, what the Germans did to this family. They will pay, and this I pledge.' A deep breath, a calming count to ten, a sip of wine. ‘And never you forget, if your sister had possessed one iota of family loyalty, one jot of self-control, she would have stayed away from that scum, and she'd be seated here today, with her husband and her family.'

‘Do you want my pie, Arthur?' He nodded and she passed it to him.

‘Leave the room,' Nicholas said, reaching for the pie, his expression one he might wear when studying a diseased sheep. His gaze turned to Olivia, perhaps wishing her to mash it, then, his expression unchanged, he set to with his fork and spoon, breaking the crust, sinking it in custard then scraping the mess into Arthur's heavy bowl.

‘People will be coming by,' he said. ‘Keep drinking, Olivia, and you'll be in no fit state to speak to them. And you, Missie, I told you to leave this room. Now! And get that petticoat off your back, clad yourself in something presentable and, for the love of God, do something with that hair.'

Her frock had no sleeves, no collar, no waist, and the rich gold brought out the golden lights in her hair – that's what Rachael had said when she'd bought the fabric.

‘Rachael made it for me.'

‘You will not leave the house in that rag today!'

‘I won't be leaving the house today, Father.'

‘We are a family. We will leave at three, call on Dave, then go to the site, and we will go there together!'

Why didn't he say cemetery? Why couldn't he say
Rachael died
, instead of
passed away
. Euphemisms didn't change what was into what wasn't. Anyway, why leave flowers at cemeteries? They were not repositories for people's souls. Rachael's soul was already in heaven, making friends with the angels, absorbing every sight and sound up there.