The Big Fellow, page 23
Kitty’s face was still clouded.
“Then what’s the need for a Royal Commission to prove that?”
“Because,” said Donovan, “a lie may have no legs to stand on but it’s got damnably long wings. This one might settle our chance at the next election if it’s not scotched. If it is, it’s likely to kill a lot of loose talk about other things.”
There was a hint of cynicism in his last words, but only a hint.
Kitty was silent awhile and then she broke out with a little burst of feeling, “All this prying into other people’s affairs on the chance of digging up something! Suppose the Floretta Company did get rid of its holdings to the Government for more than they were worth—wasn’t that business?”
“Yes,” said Donovan dryly, “the sort Brian’s made his money at. And if he comes out of this affair with a bit more dirt sticking to him I’m not going to lose any sleep.”
He pushed his chair back and rose from the table.
“Not even if it affects me?”
Swinging round he fixed his eyes on her. Immediately he recognized that it was not suspicion of his private entanglement that had been the source of her emotional vibrations all evening.
“How could it affect you?”
“I had some shares in the Floretta Company,” she admitted. “Brian gave them to me. Is that the sort of thing, Macy, that’s going to be dug up by this Royal Commission of yours?”
Darkness came to Donovan’s eyes and he stood transfixed, his unlit cigarette half-way to his mouth.
After a moment he sat down at the table again and said quietly, “And how the hell is it I’m only hearing of this now?”
“Was there any reason you should have?” she fended. “At the time I didn’t take it as a matter of great importance. A handful of shares in one of Brian’s companies wasn’t anything to make a song about: there didn’t seem Buckley’s chance they’d ever pay dividends. And you and I, Macy, have always kept our money affairs separate from the beginning. It was you insisted on that.”
She was beginning to go into the whole history of their financial relations, but Donovan stopped her.
“Let’s get this clear, Kitty. Brian gave you the shares, did he, before the company made its deal with the Government? What d’you think he did it for? Brotherly generosity, was it?”
“Why not? Brian’s got as much of that as most men. But I took it as a return for the money I’d spent on him since he was a boy in short trousers—a return for that and the loan I made him when he first went north.”
“Ten years before he comes true with this gift of his, eh?”
“Well, you know well enough how hard up he’d been till then. There were times when Vern and he had nothing but the swags they were carrying out there in the dry country—the two of them sweating it out amongst the spinifex and the township storekeeper holding a two-yard bill against the time they made a strike. A bit of a mica-show that no man with capital will take up doesn’t keep a couple of young fellows in clover. You ought to know what a struggle they had.”
Donovan’s face was hard as granite.
“Listen, Kitty. If Brian gave you those shares it was because he thought they’d work the trick with me when it came to making a deal. And it’s all hell to a ha’penny he believes to this day that they did.”
She turned her innocent round-eyed gaze on him.
“How could they when you didn’t know about them?”
“Did you tell him that? You didn’t. And so when I meet him he’s all chuckles and back-slapping as if we were both in the game together. I didn’t know why he thought he could be so cocky with me. I do now; but before long he’ll find out I couldn’t be bought for a few shares in a shyster company.”
She stretched out her hand to him impulsively across the table.
“Macy, you’re not going on with this notion of a Commission?”
For answer he asked abruptly, “How many shares were you holding, Kitty?”
“I don’t know,” she told him. “My name wasn’t on the share-register. Brian handled them for me.”
“My God, and you didn’t suspect there was anything crooked about that?”
“Why should I? You know well enough, Macy, I’ve never had anything to do with mining. All I ever learnt about it could be written on the back of a postage-stamp.”
“Nonsense!” he said roughly. “Your knowledge of mining doesn’t come into the matter. You’re a woman with a shrewd business-head, Kitty, and you’ve been finding your own way about since you were sixteen. Who handled the old man’s affairs, after he died, if you didn’t?”
“That was all in the air,” she said. “I was working in with a lawyer. This affair of Brian’s—I tell you I thought no more of it than if it was the gift of a couple of tickets in the Casket. No money came in until after the Government sale was made, and then only in instalments.”
“A few hundred, was it?”
“I suppose it amounted to a couple of thousand in all. I know it came in handy when I had to pay off the mortgage on this house we’re living in.”
Though she spoke quietly there was a gleam in her eye, a triumphant assertion in the lift of her chin.
Donovan went cold as stone. So that was where she thought she had him! He remembered the little cottage on the south side of the river they had lived in when they were first married, the strip of lawn in front, the couple of stringy papaws in the backyard, the fowls scratching in the dust behind their wire-netting. How she had itched to get away from it! How she had pined for a home like Flo’s or Sandra’s, giving him no peace till he had agreed to move to this place at the Hamilton. “Don’t say you can’t afford it, Macy,” she had said. “It’s my notion and my responsibility. I’ll manage to find at least two-thirds of the money.”
And for all his fine resolves not to touch a penny of hers he had let her have her way.
He sat heavily in his chair, watching her trace figures on the polished wood with a coffee-spoon, a hard hostility gathering in him and bringing an ugly look to his eyes. It seemed to him he was looking at a strange woman. What did he know of the secret springs that moved her? When he thought back it seemed as if a hundred little incidents leapt to his mind in which he had found her sly, evasive, so full of blarney that she hardly knew herself when she was speaking the truth.
After a long silence now she said emotionally, “If I’ve made trouble for you, Macy, I’m sorry for it. God knows there wasn’t a thought of anything shady or underhand in my mind—not in mine or in Brian’s either. But now there’s a chance of this little private matter being dragged out into the daylight—a call for cheque-butts and bank statements, and all that kind of flummery—now that you see what trouble it’ll make for all of us, you’ll drop this notion of a public inquiry?”
Donovan’s face was like granite.
“The hell I will! Nothing I’ve heard tonight is likely to make me turn back in my tracks. It’s only made me more set on pushing it through.”
“Even if it means losing the position you’ve won and spattering the name of your own family with mud?”
“There’s nothing I care a damn about,” he said, “except the charge of being a squib—facing up to an attack and then turning for cover when I find the odds against me.”
Kitty rose from the table dramatically.
“You’re being cantankerous, Macy. I declare to God I don’t know what’s come over you since Sheila and Peter left. You’re shut in on yourself and your own pride. Not a word I say can get through the guard you’ve thrown around yourself: it’s just gravel against a tin wall. You’d wreck your own career and bring trouble on your whole family rather than back down on anything.”
He stood up, too, and faced her, the banked-up exasperation that had been working in him all evening breaking out.
“Yes, that’s so—in this matter, anyway. I’ve told others what I’m doing and I’m going to see it through. But don’t forget, if I’m brought down it was you put the skids under me. Waiting till I was well on the move and then springing this news about your dealings with Brian. It’s no good your trying to make out you thought it was a matter of no importance. I haven’t lived with you all these years without being able to tell the difference between what you say and what’s in your mind. You weren’t a baby-faced innocent in this business. You knew damned well what you were doing or you wouldn’t be in such a hell of a flutter now!”
He strode off to his room, closing the door behind him with the snap of a pistol-shot. There was such an effect of violence in the sound that he was pulled up with a jerk and stood for a while staring dumbly at his image in the long glass of his bedroom, at the massive figure, the smouldering eyes, the heavy face with its bluish-dark jowl. Something in the way his hair was rumpled gave him a murderous look. He hardly recognized himself.
Yet one part of his mind remained cold and unaffected. It was as if, after struggling up a mountainside through a mist, he suddenly came upon a clear view. He was well aware of what Kitty’s confession meant. It was unlikely now she would escape being dragged into the inquiry and having her connection with the Floretta Company exposed. There would be a demand for the production of her pass-books, haughty attempts at evasion on her part, questions about the cheques she had received from Brian, about his reasons for making her a free gift of shares. He himself would be closely questioned. And what derisive laughter would be roused if he swore that he knew nothing of such transactions?
She’s made a monkey of me, he thought. Made me a joke for the whole country. After this … hell, does she herself believe we could go on living together?
It was this last thought he fastened upon: it gave him a secret sense of release. He was surprised, as he lay staring into the dark, how little he was affected by the prospect of coming downfall. A quiet elation was making itself felt in him: he was a parachutist with his equipment ready, mentally prepared for the plunge. All the last few weeks, moving about on his official duties, he had inwardly been living on fantasies, building up a new future for himself in a world quite different from that of his past experience. He had shed not only his political but his family responsibilities: he was a free agent, brimming with vitality, ready for any adventure. A dozen careers lay open to him in this bright region of his underground mind: now he was a land-agent, using his drive and imagination to reclaim fresh areas for settlement, now an operator on the Stock Exchange, turning his inside knowledge of money to account, again the head of a federal amalgamation of unions, who could lay down plans for taking over the complete industry of the country. And always beside him, quietly occupied with her own work, was the one woman who could draw out all that was vital in him and give him a sense of fulfilment.
But disturbing such fantasies was the recurring image of Kitty. Even now, with the evidence of her perfidy fresh before him, he could not face the notion of breaking from her abruptly without a flicker of uneasiness. It was not a matter of the legal bond that united them; he could push that aside without compunction; but of certain memories and associations that might prove to have cut deeper than he guessed. Until then he had had nothing much against Kitty; he had never felt passionately drawn to her, even in the beginning, but she had been a good companion, responding to whatever demands he made on her and helping him to build up this figure that might or might not be himself—the Big Fellow, the man who knew just what he wanted and went straight for it. Lying awake, calling to mind her distracted face across the table, he was conscious of two voices arguing inside him:
She knew well enough what she was doing. This was something she held over you.
Rot! She had no notion it was more than a casual gift that had come good.
A gift from Brian! The man you shut out of your house. Not a gift. Just the return of a loan.
An old fairytale, that. Telling you nothing about it till it was too late to turn back.
It’s not too late even yet.
It’s a damned long sight too late. You’ve come to a dead-end. And she’s decided that—not you.
This was the last voice he heard before sleep overtook him.
Chapter XXIII
A few mornings later Kitty went into Donovan’s room to find that his bed had not been slept in and that the suitcase he used for travelling was missing from its place under the dressing-table. For a while she stood transfixed near the door, fearing the end had come, unwilling to believe it. She was trying to remember his parting shot of the night before, but it seemed to have nothing to do with the smooth pillow and the undisturbed bedspread. Only when she recalled his eyes and their smoky darkness did it seem credible that he could make a decisive break with her.
My God! she thought. Does he mean to destroy me altogether?
For the last three days she had been trying to penetrate Macy’s silence and get back to the old easy relationship with him. The public fuss and flutter since his announcement that he was retiring till the Royal Commission had given its verdict had all gone on over her head. She had not looked at the papers; her eyes had instinctively shied away from them. It was only when Macy had come in late and she was preparing the coffee that the storm had broken.
She had said lightly, but with a hint of seriousness, “What you really need, Macy, is a let-up from all this. We both do, God knows, and now there seems a chance for it. Why not leave all this clatter behind and go away together? Right away—somewhere overseas. Even a flying trip to see Sheila in Japan wouldn’t be impossible.”
How was it the careless suggestion had roused such a devil in him that she herself felt transformed? How was it that within a few minutes they were standing on opposite sides of the table eyeing one another as enemies, dredging their minds for taunts that would hurt? She could not understand how, in a flash, grudges she thought she had forgotten had come shooting to the surface. Even his bullying of Kevin, even doubts she had never really entertained about his friendship with Peter’s mother. She had lain awake half the night cursing the bitterness of her tongue inveighing against the old Irish biddy in herself:
Why in the name of God did I let a word start me off! There was a time when I could meet anything with a laugh and a toss of the head.
Yet where had all the trouble started except with Macy himself? He must have been waiting for a chance to unload all the bile he felt against her.
It had not been what he said so much as the steely hardness of his eyes. For the first time she was aware of the strangeness in this man she had lived with for twenty years, lived with in such complete acceptance of their oneness that his mind as well as his body seemed part of her. They had had quarrels enough in the past; they could come to sharp exchanges over the pattern of a stair-carpet or the boiling of an egg; but until lately all their differences could be settled on the pillow. And afterwards there would be a spell of complete harmony. The only time she had felt so separate from him that the smell of one of his old coats in the cupboard could rouse a sort of repulsion in her was when, years ago, he had suggested bringing young Mahony into the home; and she could admit quite freely she had been the unreasonable one then. It had caught her at a bad time. She had not recovered from the doctor’s verdict, after the birth of Kevin, that there could be no more children; any reminder of it was enough to touch a hysterical streak in her, for it had seemed as if life had dealt her a treacherous blow. No more children! It had sounded like a death-sentence. She had lived so happily till then in the idea of her own fertility and her capacity as a mother.
Yet that difficult period had not lasted long, and Macy had been the one to seek appeasement. Now it was different. She felt there was no longer any link between their bodies, and the workings of his mind were hidden from her. She could hardly imagine talking to him with an easy tongue again; he had become an alien being, hedged in mystery.
She was plunged in gloom, having breakfast with Kevin, when Flo rang up, asking her to dinner.
“Frank’s eager for a long talk with Macy,” Flo said brightly. “Frank feels he’s been left out in the cold. Why has Macy become so edgy lately? Is the newspaper talk getting on his nerves? Frank has something to tell him about Fallon, who’s acting for the Government.”
“Sorry,” said Kitty lightly, “Macy’s gone away.”
“Away? Where?”
“Oh, just for a few days. It’s those friends of his, the Hallorans, up on the Downs—they wanted him to look at their herd of crossbred zebus. It’s an experiment. He couldn’t go before when they asked him.”
The lie, like all her little lies, had slipped out easily, but as soon as she heard the words come from her mouth she winced with humiliation. That was what Macy had charged her with, an incapacity for truth. And why in the name of all the saints should she have felt the necessity for deceiving Flo? A desire to talk the whole situation over with Flo was beginning to rise in her; she was embarrassed to find Kevin’s slow, lethargic eyes on her when she returned to the table. He had overheard the conversation; he was puzzled.
“The Hallorans—they’re away in Sydney, mum. Didn’t you know? Rick—he was going home for the long week-end; he had to stay at school.”
“I know,” she said.
“But …?”
“It was just an impulse to take cover. I didn’t want anyone to find out where your father was. Not even your Aunt Flo. He’s entitled to a few days’ quiet.”
