Tiger Men (55 page)

‘Good on you, lad,’ Col beamed his approval, ‘well done.’

Like father like son, Eileen thought and she wondered wryly whether it was something in the O’Callaghan blood. There seemed to be a recurring pattern that the O’Callaghans produced smart girls with enquiring minds and boys with no academic interest whatsoever. Mick had said as much himself all those years ago. ‘
What good are boys
’, he’d said, ‘
wastrels every one of them.
’ It seemed he was right when it came to the O’Callaghans.

‘Did you learn anything of particular value today, Oscar?’ she asked, just a little archly.

Thirteen-year-old Oscar, aware he was being put to the test, was not in the least daunted. He had his grandmother’s measure and knew exactly how to get around her. ‘I learnt that the Duke of Wellington commanded the allied army that defeated Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo,’ he said looking her boldly in the eye, ‘and I learnt that that’s who Mount Wellington is named after.’

Col gave a hoot of laughter, and Eileen herself could not resist a smile. Oscar might grow up a wastrel like his father and his grandfather, but like his father and his grandfather, Oscar was not stupid. He had a ready wit and cheeky charm that could take him anywhere.

The only one who didn’t join in the joke was Caitie who, as bold as her brother, was determined to have the last word.

‘
Kunanyi
’s much prettier,’ she said.

Eleven-year-old Hugh Stanford was also enjoying school, although he missed the company of his older brother. Rupert was tutored privately at home while, each day, Hugh walked to the Hutchins School, which was barely a block away.

‘Rupert can’t go with you, darling,’ his mother had explained several years previously when he’d first been enrolled. ‘Rupert needs a special sort of teacher. But you’ll be able to discuss your lessons when you get home,’ she’d added brightly. ‘That’ll be fun, won’t it?’

Reginald had fumed as he’d heard Evelyn say that. Fun? It would be disastrous. Indeed it was just as he’d feared. The simpleton would retard Hugh’s development.

So far, however, Reginald had been wrong. If anything, the relationship between the boys had strengthened his younger son. Hugh had learnt that his brother was different, that even though Rupert was the older, he was somehow younger in the head. The knowledge brought out a caring instinct in Hugh that lent him a maturity unusual in one of his age.

‘You don’t do it that way, Rupert,’ he would say very patiently when Rupert forgot his table manners and picked up his knife or fork incorrectly. ‘You do it like this,’ he’d say and he’d demonstrate. Rupert would then imitate his younger brother, and he’d imitate not just the way Hugh held the utensil, but his instruction and the very way he spoke.

‘You do it like this, Rupert,’ he would say, sounding exactly like Hugh – he was a clever mimic – and Hugh would laugh. Rupert loved making his brother laugh. ‘You write a “b” this way, Rupert,’ he would say, painstakingly copying the way Hugh had written it down on the notepad for him, ‘and a “d” goes this way.’

‘That’s right, you’re always getting them mixed up.’

‘That’s right, I’m always getting them mixed up.’ So eager was Rupert to please his younger brother that he learnt more from Hugh than he did from his tutor and his parents together.

According to medical opinion, Rupert was not expected to make any further progress intellectually. At twelve years of age he could read and write a little, but his skills were unlikely to improve for his powers of concentration were minimal. It was considered worthwhile continuing with a tutor, though, in order to keep him stimulated and mentally active. He could dress himself and take responsibility for his personal hygiene, his ability to communicate was more than adequate and although his vocabulary was limited his speech was coherent, particularly when he imitated others, as he often did. He would never support himself, however, and would require a lifetime of care. His intellectual capacity would remain that of an eight- or nine-year-old, Evelyn was informed, and his emotional responses would continue to be extremely childlike; he would crave and give affection at all times. By now the diagnosis came as no surprise to either Evelyn or Reginald.

Hugh was not only caring of Rupert, he was strongly protective, and it was at school that his protective instincts came most strongly to the fore.

‘What’s wrong with your brother?’ his classmates would ask when there was a school fete or an intra-school football match that families attended. Evelyn always took Rupert along on such occasions; she considered it good for him to socialise with other children. Reginald never attended, saying he would go to the football matches when Hugh was older and playing on the school team.

‘Rupert’s just different, that’s all,’ Hugh would reply. His young classmates happily accepted the explanation, but some of the older boys, particularly those of Rupert’s own age, would snigger and point; and when he laughed his donkey laugh they’d openly jeer. That was when Hugh would fix his icy gaze upon them. He would simply stare them down until they felt uncomfortable and looked away. The expression may well have been one he’d learnt from his father, but Hugh had made it his own and it proved very effective.

It wasn’t long before Rupert lost his curiosity value. The older boys ignored him and the younger ones found they liked him. They thought his laugh was funny just as Hugh always had and there was no malice when they laughed along with him, which Rupert himself always enjoyed for he liked to see people happy. Strangely enough, Hugh’s young school friends even learnt things from Rupert, discovering through him a whole new tactile world. When Rupert focused upon the silky surface of a cricket bat, stroking it with infinite care, or when he slowly and tenderly ran the tips of his fingers over the petals of the roses that grew in the school’s front garden, they were compelled to do the same.

Reginald Stanford found his son’s obsession with the tactile unbelievably irksome, particularly when it was practised upon him.

‘Don’t do that,’ he’d snapped the first time when, as an eight-year-old, Rupert had quietly approached him and, standing beside his armchair, had started stroking his face.

He’d slammed down the newspaper he’d been reading, his reaction startling the child, who’d stepped back alarmed, looking from his mother to his brother and back to his father, wondering what he’d done wrong.

‘He’s only trying to make you happy, dear,’ Evelyn had said. Distracted from her petit point, she’d been watching the boy’s concern for his father, and she’d been touched by the tenderness of his action.

‘I’m perfectly happy, thank you.’

‘You didn’t look it. You were frowning.’

‘I was reading the newspaper. I was distracted.’

‘It
looked
as if you were unhappy. Rupert was just trying to make you smile. Isn’t that right, darling,’ she’d said comfortingly to the child, ‘you were trying to make Daddy smile.’

Rupert had nodded, his wary eyes not once leaving his father.

Dear God, Reginald thought, can’t a man frown in his own house? But he’d smiled obligingly nonetheless. Evelyn was pregnant again at long last and he daren’t upset her.

‘There you are, Rupert, a great big smile, see? Daddy’s very, very happy.’

The boy had grinned inanely back and rejoined his brother on the sitting room floor where they’d been playing with their toy train.

‘He’s such a sweet-natured child, Reginald,’ Evelyn had said quietly, ‘he’s always concerned for the feelings of others. And we must remember that the doctor –’

‘I know, my dear,’ he’d replied, stemming his irritation, aware of the gentle reprimand. ‘The doctor says that he will respond well to affection, and we have certainly observed this to be true; he just took me by surprise, that’s all. I’m sorry, do please forgive me.’

‘Of course, dear.’ Evelyn had smiled her wholehearted forgiveness and returned to her petit point.

Five minutes later, Reginald had retired upstairs. ‘I must get an hour or so’s paperwork in before dinner,’ he’d said as he stood.

‘On a Sunday?’ she’d queried. ‘You work altogether too hard, Reginald.’

‘I know.’ He’d kissed her on the forehead and retreated to the sanctity of his study.

Given the fact that his wife was in her fifth month of pregnancy at the age of thirty-eight, Reginald had determined to do all in his power to maintain a harmonious household, but to his mind having to put up with the caresses of his cretinous son was pushing things altogether too far.

Evelyn had not kept the baby. She had miscarried just a month later. It was her second miscarriage since Hugh’s birth, and of all the miscarriages she’d had over the years it was the one that had very nearly killed her. Reginald had been warned by the doctor that any further attempt by his wife to bear a child would most certainly cost her her life.

‘Evelyn is in a very weakened state, Mr Stanford,’ Doctor Harvey had said rather severely, as if it were somehow Reginald’s fault. ‘She is nearly thirty-nine years of age, and yet she tells me she wishes to bear you another son. I’m afraid you must both accept the fact that this is not possible. There will be no more children.’

It had been a bitter blow for Reginald and the following year he’d taken himself off to Europe on a business trip to escape the gloom that had enveloped him.

He’d bought a car while he was there, and not just any car. He had planned for some time now to join the motoring era in a grand manner, his intention being to lead the way and show Hobart’s men of industry just who had the greatest style. Upon visiting the British International Motor Show in London he had discovered the perfect vehicle. There it was on display, the brand new Rolls Royce 40/50.

Reginald had never seen such magnificence. An open-topped vehicle with front and rear leather-upholstered seats and graceful lines that featured broad, sweeping mudguards and running boards, the bodywork shone brilliant silver and the fittings were of highly polished brass. The effect was dazzling. This was a car designed for a man with style, flair and money, and Reginald had all three, although the expense, he had discovered, was prohibitive. Eight hundred pounds and a further one hundred in shipping costs had been more than he had reckoned upon paying, but not for one minute had he wavered in his decision. Such a show of wealth was irresistible. Why the Joneses and the Peacocks and the Lyttletons and the Dimblebys and all those other barons of commerce had nothing like this. They’d be green with envy, every one of them.

After placing an order for the vehicle, which was as yet not even on the market, he’d had to wait a whole two years before it had finally been delivered. But on the day when he’d first driven his Rolls Royce through the streets of Hobart, Reginald had considered the wait worth every minute. With Evelyn seated beside him in her pretty straw hat and motoring veil, and the boys perched behind them in the rear seat, he’d felt like a king, and he’d known that he looked like one as every head had turned and people had stopped to stare and point. We are royalty on parade, he’d thought, and he hadn’t even minded the donkey brays he could hear coming from the back. Royal families after all were renowned for having their share of demented offspring.

The car had proved a great salve, and having now resigned himself to the fact that there would be no more sons, Reginald’s domestic life settled into a comfortably acceptable pattern. Evelyn and Hugh protected him from Rupert’s constant desire for physicality, although in doing so they were no doubt protecting Rupert from any adverse reaction.

‘Father doesn’t like to be cuddled, Rupert,’ Hugh would say when Rupert would occasionally forget his instructions and try to snuggle up against his father.

Rupert would back away immediately. ‘Father doesn’t like to be cuddled, Rupert,’ he would remind himself. Then he would look at Reginald with infinite compassion. ‘Poor Father,’ he would say.

Reginald would smile at the boy, a smile that was not even forced. ‘Yes, poor Father,’ he would say. With the rules laid down, he found it quite easy these days to be pleasant to the child.

The following year, however, the harmony of Reginald’s personal life was shattered by the shock of his mother’s death. Mathilda Stanford, always a strong, capable woman, had shown no sign of illness and her death came as a surprise to all those who knew her.

‘She had a good innings, Reginald,’ Amy said, intending in her practical fashion to offer comfort to her brother. ‘Mathilda was four years older than me, which would put her well over the three score years and ten that one hopes for, and she felt no pain. There’s little to grieve over, really.’

Amy Stanford-Balfour had come into town for the funeral, her son Edwin accompanying her on the train. Amy had considered it a show of respect to her father’s memory that she should attend his wife’s service and burial, and so, it appeared, had others. Mathilda’s funeral, although hardly the tribute to a life of prominence that Silas’s had been seven years previously, was well-attended, and by a number of Hobart’s most eminent citizens. Reginald, following the same plan he’d adopted at his father’s funeral, had invited everyone back to Stanford House for the wake.

‘But it was so unexpected, Amy,’ he said as they sat together in a corner sipping at their glasses of fruit punch, while the servants milled among the guests with cups of tea and drinks and trays of sandwiches and cake. ‘My mother never had a day’s illness in her life.’

‘I think she’d simply lost the desire to live,’ Amy said. ‘Our father had been her entire existence – she really did love him, you know. With no purpose in her life, she just faded away. At least that’s my opinion.’

Reginald took umbrage. ‘What about me and my family?’ he said indignantly. ‘Surely we were purpose enough.’ He’d nearly said ‘me and my son’, but he’d managed to stop himself in time.

‘That’s just it, Reginald,’ Amy tempered her reply, realising how deeply affected he’d been by the shock of his mother’s death. ‘You have a family,’ she said gently. ‘Much as you loved your mother, you didn’t really
need
her, and Mathilda needed to be needed, that’s all I’m saying.’