The Big Fellow, page 9
“Oh, well,” Kitty said airily, “isn’t that enough?”
“It’s enough,” he rapped out, “to make the girl feel that she’s dead right to turn her back on the whole crowd of them … And that reminds me of something I wanted to say the other night. Brian’s not coming here again.”
She was as perturbed as if he had lifted his hand to her.
“And why, in the name of God, not?”
“There are plenty of good reasons,” he said. “You know them as well as I do. The show he made of himself the other evening’s enough, though. All that boozy talk about the rackets he’s been in, and me with him.”
She said defensively that Brian could not help letting himself go sometimes.
“No one takes him seriously when he’s in that mood. Surely a man can play the fool a bit at a party without having it all charged up against him? You’re growing pigheaded, Macy. Work yourself up over little things and let the important ones go by without a word. Am I to turn my own brother away from the door when he’s not down here more than once in three months? And what about Adela and the children? Joyce comes down nearly every Saturday to play tennis with Kevin.”
“Adela’s all right,” he said shortly. “I’ve nothing against Adela.”
But he was deaf to all her protests against his decision about Brian. Once more, since he had ceased sleeping with her, she was made aware of how little she understood this man she had lived with for twenty years. They had had plenty of quarrels in the old days, but these could always be made up on the pillow; now he was growing more and more inclined to shut her out of his life. Why should he suddenly have grown touchy about the fact that she had relations? Except for Brian, and Vern, he got along quite well with her people. He had really nothing against Flo and Sandra; he was friendly with the McCoy brothers, particularly with Hugh. As for Judy, hadn’t he been more upset than any of them when, in the stress that came from the threat of Japanese invasion, she had married Dinny Blake, whom he thought a waster? Yet there was this continual suggestion that she had hemmed him in with a crowd of people who were all alike, people from whom he could never get free, people who were always meeting in secret conclave to discuss their common affairs and then acting in concert. It was a crazy notion, really. Were there two men on God’s earth less alike than Brian and Hugh McCoy, or two women than Judy and Sandra?
And had she herself (she had gone over this a hundred times) shown any exaggerated family sense when he had brought Peter Mahony into the home because of his friendship with the boy’s dead parents? She was proud of the way she had kept her feelings under control then, for both Flo and Sandra had let her know the whispers going round that the boy was a by-blow of Macy’s. No one could say she had treated Peter Mahony any differently from Kevin. She had even hidden her resentment when Macy had put his foot down about having the boy prepared for confirmation with Sheila.
A partial release of tension came when, rising from the breakfast table where they had been sitting alone, he put his hand affectionately on her shoulder.
“Don’t worry, Kitty old girl. I’ve talked it out with Sheila: got a notion of how it looks to her. If I could stop her I wouldn’t—that’s the way I’ve come to feel. Sheila knows her way about; she was born with her eyes open. And she’s got to find out what the world’s like, if she doesn’t know it already.”
It was as near to agreement on the matter as they were ever likely to get. There was even a suggestion in Macy’s look, in the tones of his voice, that they were moved by a common feeling. This did not often happen, and Kitty had ceased to worry about it: men were as God made them. It was enough for her that since she had married him she had never been tempted to look on any other man with a curious eye, and Macy had never troubled her by running after other women.
“Late, aren’t you?” she said, as Sheila came in, bringing a breath of cigarette smoke with her. “Your father’s just gone.”
Sheila slumped down in a chair and helped herself to some cold toast.
“I’ve seen him. We’re meeting for lunch.”
“Then, for the love of God, don’t start eating till I get you something hot from the kitchen,” said Kitty, springing up.
Sheila restrained her with a gesture.
“No, don’t, mother, please. I smelt it coming through. Liver and bacon on a morning like this! G-r-r!”
Her smooth, arrogant little nose wrinkled with disgust. Kitty felt herself included in the repulsion.
“You smoke too much, Sheila, dear,” she said gently. “It’s destroying what little appetite you ever had.”
“Perhaps it is,” Sheila admitted indifferently.
“And I’m sure it’s that brings your cough on in the mornings. I could hear it racking you this morning well before daylight.”
“Really? I must put on a silencer … Now we come to the nicotine stain on my fingers.”
“Sheila, you’re just guying me.”
“Well, mother, do relax for a while, please, and don’t nag.”
It was the word that, thrown out lightly, blocked all communication between them. Kitty felt it like a cup of icy water poured on her head, trickling down her spine. There were half a hundred questions on the tip of her tongue to ask Sheila. She knew nothing of the girl’s plans really; she did not even know if she had got her passport yet or made her final arrangements. And there was the question of clothes; apparently Sheila did not want to discuss them. Sitting there munching her brittle toast, a removed look in her eyes, she seemed as little concerned as if she were merely going away for a week-end. The emotional part of her was steel-cased and impenetrable.
No use talking her troubles over with Flo, Kitty felt. In their long exchanges over the phone of a morning, Flo was all sympathy for a while, but her little chuckle always broke through in the end, as if she had been holding it in check with difficulty from the beginning. She was conscious of the way the women journalists had been already making much of Kitty’s family life, emphasizing the importance she had always placed on the home.
“They’ve got you tabbed, Kitty, old girl. No sporting new frocks at the races from now on or giving bridge parties at Wannan’s. Your role is to be the good wife and mother. You’ll have to mug up recipes and talk as if you’d always looked at the world through the kitchen window.”
Flo’s own role, though she had as strong a family sense as any of them, was to find the comedy aspect of every situation that arose. A robust woman, with a hard, metallic laugh, Flo had no problems of her own that taxed her capacities or drew upon her emotions. Since she had married Frank McCoy her life had gone with the smoothness of a car running on bitumen. They had a big comfortable house at New Farm; although she had three boys, the war had finished before it could entangle Mark, the eldest of them; they were all, including Frank, as healthy and free from inner eruptions as she was herself. And Frank’s only concern was that now he had made enough money to take a seat on the Bench he could not decently accept the appointment from Macy.
“The only resource left me,” he said ruefully, “is to work for Macy’s downfall. A task he’d set himself with gusto if our situations were reversed.”
Flo could take even this predicament as a joke. She had in her mind a trip abroad, and was trying to persuade Frank that the hold-up had been providentially arranged. Why not take the chance now to idle away a year or two in Europe? She had even been suggesting to Sheila, with a sly air of innocence, that it might be worth her while to shelve her other plans and come with them. Think of the plays they would see together, she urged her, think of the opera at Milan!
It was enough, Kitty knew, to make Sheila’s lips curl in derision as she stood at the telephone, responding in a dry, clipped voice and letting the smoke of her cigarette trickle through her nostrils. Sheila had always suspected the family of discussing her behind her back, and resented it with the same fierceness that her father would. Once, Kitty remembered, the girl had had a flapperish attachment to Flo and had taken delight in going to the theatre with her and drawing her out about the parts she had played. All that was over and done with: she was no longer interested in the theatre, and to her Flo was just another aunt.
Kitty could never discuss her intimate problems with Flo; she felt that Flo had no confidences to give her in return, nothing but the breezy little cynicisms that made her such a good companion at the races or on holidays at Coulter’s Headland, but that left you unwarmed. It was different with Sandra, who had always lived on her personal emotions. Though they were not temperamentally alike they had been faced with similar situations. From the beginning Sandra had found it hard to adjust herself to Hugh, and had largely given up the effort, being content to live for her garden and her handful of musical friends. They had kept up an appearance of harmony, Sandra and Hugh, but that was all.
There was Hugh’s natural gallantry. “The old hypocrite,” Sheila had once said. “He holds the chair out for her at table as if she was some beautiful young girl he adored. And the way he springs to open a door for her! Pure cinema!”
But none of her relatives was safe from Sheila’s sharp tongue.
Kitty herself felt guilty because of the mixed nature of her feelings towards this daughter of hers. There had been a time, not so long ago, when she had dreamed of being the mother of a large and growing brood; she had seen herself as an abundant goddess with generous loins and full breasts; but there had come an end to such fantasies. With what acute humiliation she had listened to the doctor’s verdict after the birth of Kevin: it seemed as if the greatest blow she could suffer was that limitation on her fertility. Sheila had divined this frustrated mother-instinct, only to mock at it; and lately (she had to admit it) there had been hours when she had lain awake thinking what a relief it would be to be free from the scrutiny of those cold, critical eyes. Eyes that fastened ruthlessly on any woolliness in her talk or any lack of taste in her dress! For all her robustness she was never herself with Sheila: the girl had a gift for deflating her, taking away her assurance. Yet there was her sense of responsibility as a parent: how could she rest easy with her conscience if she took that as lightly as Macy did?
“I don’t know what’s come over the man,” she found herself saying to Sandra. “He passes this decision of Sheila’s off as if it was no more to him than a pound or two lost at the races. Of course there’s the new load he’s carrying, but that sort of load was never a great burden to Macy. And you know how it was with him and Sheila. He was crazy about that girl ever since she could put two words together. There was nothing he could make up his mind to deny her: he’d give in to any absurd notion that came into her head.”
“Well,” said Sandra absently, “isn’t that what he’s doing?”
“It’s not just that he’s giving way to her,” persisted Kitty. “It’s that he doesn’t seem to care. Not a word out of him that would show it means anything to him. Your life’s your own to do what you like with, he seems to be telling her, and God knows that’s the one thing she wants to hear.”
They had met, as they did weekly, to go to a film together, but found they were in no mood for light entertainment. It was more satisfying to sit in the cool seclusion of the lounge at Wannan’s and let their personal grievances come to the surface. Kitty, with a sense of something silent and unresponsive about the atmosphere of her own home, was in need of a sympathetic ear. It was not merely that Sheila was breaking loose and going after a man who could never be any good to her: it was (she came back to it again and again) that Macy was reacting in a way that was inexplicable. And if she could not count on him in this particular crisis, what had they left in common?
“Macy and I never talked things over very much, even when we were first married. He’s had his own interests and I’ve had mine. You know, Sandra, that I’ve always looked at marriage in a common-sense way; a man who’s ready to trail along with a woman everywhere she goes isn’t worth calling a man. But when it came to big matters affecting the family Macy’s always been with me till now.”
Sitting with her large, luminous eyes fixed on her sister, Sandra seemed to be making an effort to emerge from the misty cave of her inner world and find some word of comfort. A faint pucker formed on her alabaster forehead, which was crowned with a froth of short greying curls. She said, in the tentative way in which she approached problems not her own, “It may be he’s got something else on his mind. Probably there are people trying to make things difficult. You know what poisonous creatures there are in politics. What’s all this about Mount Clutha?”
Kitty flushed slightly.
“Oh, that,” she said, with a touch of impatience. “That was all settled years ago.”
“I don’t know anything about it,” said Sandra, “but they seem to be bringing it up again.”
“Who do?”
“Perhaps I got it all wrong,” said Sandra. “You know how I never listen when it comes to politics. But Judy was in the other evening, and she and Hugh were talking—mostly Judy, of course. Hugh cares as little as I do about politics. But he’s as sensitive as a girl about those connected with him being accused of anything that isn’t perfectly above board. His reputation! The McCoy name! They’ve taken the place of religion with him. There was that woman, you remember, who came into St Monica’s after an operation—”
“It was all settled years ago,” Kitty cut across her. “Judy oughtn’t to have forgotten that after the way she let herself get worked up about it at the time. There were questions in Parliament and everything was explained. Anyhow, it had nothing in the world to do with Macy.”
For some inscrutable reason she began to turn on Judy. Why was the girl still bothering her head about politics when she had her hands full as matron of St Monica’s, and always gave that as an excuse for not coming to family gatherings? Why should she want to repeat the silly rumours that might be cropping up about Mount Clutha? The image of Judy never failed to rouse her feelings. It was bad enough for her to have brought Dinny Blake into the family: it was worse still to have broken with him and to treat the marriage as if it was no more than a casual slip she had made on a holiday week-end.
Her resentment against Judy almost took her mind, for the time being, from Sheila.
Chapter IX
They had got hold of nothing that really concerned him, Donovan was assuring himself as he sat in his office glancing over the newspaper McNally, the Attorney-General, had thrust into his hand coming up in the lift. The story, as far as it was yet unfolded, had mainly to do with the early development of Mount Clutha and the Acts giving the Government power to purchase or lease any mining land provided the sanction of Parliament was obtained for expenditures in excess of £100,000. There had been a knowing little quirk in McNally’s eyes as he handed him the rag, a suggestion that whatever shady transactions members of the Government might have been involved in at that time he was not implicated, since this was his first term of office.
“Better run your eye over it, Chief,” he had said. “You’ll know how much there is in it better than I can. Those fellows are raking over old mullock-heaps in the hope of finding something payable.”
But Donovan could not give it his full attention. As he sat there, his eyes continually strayed to a map on the opposite wall, with its faint outlines and its landing-stations marked in red, and his mind’s eye saw a smaller silver shape moving over the vast space, fading into infinity. That morning it must have started out from Darwin: now it would have crossed the Timor Sea. He still carried the memory of Sheila’s face as he had last seen it, pale but transfigured, the eyes unnaturally bright, the lips parted in a little flickering smile, just as when she had achieved some triumph in the face of opposition as a youngster.
What disturbed him was the sense of emptiness he had been carrying about since she left. It was absurd; he had more than enough things to occupy him, yet the night before he had found himself mooning about the garden like an old bull shut off from the herd. No drive left, no power of concentration.
And there had been Kitty at breakfast, picking out juicy bits from her morning mail for him, plainly determined not to bring Sheila’s departure up in any direct way, yet letting her eyes say whenever a silence fell on them: Well, she’s got her way. And it was your notion that not a word should be said against her going.
It was strange that talk should flow less easily now that Sheila had gone; Sheila had never set herself to act as a link between them.
He took up the paper again and concentrated on the article. Nothing sensational in the tone. It was mainly concerned with the way those early Acts had provided a base for the revival of mining at Mount Clutha. One of the chief factors in the revival had been the subsidies granted under the Mining Advances Act to men who might reopen old mines and provide a steady supply of ore for the State smelters. But the Beacon was claiming that it would demonstrate the unscrupulous manner in which such subsidies had been handed out, and hinting at bribery and corruption. There was the £6000, for instance, that had been advanced to Brian Hegarty’s syndicate for the dewatering of the Sunbeam; Donovan knew that, as Minister for Mines, he had been responsible for this: he had recommended it to Cabinet. It had been the beginning of Hegarty’s rise in the mining world, for though the mine had never really produced any ore Hegarty’s crowd had later sold out profitably to a southern company, and bought into more promising ventures. They would try to skin him for that blunder, Donovan felt, make out it was something more sinister than an error of judgment.
The hell it was, he was thinking. Hadn’t I begun to suspect the sort of shyster Brian was, even then? But I was feeling my feet those days, leaving most things to the experts. And I acted on Gundersen’s report.
There was no reference to Gundersen in the article, but there were hints of revelations to come. Donovan had no doubt they would soon be digging up Gundersen’s bones and holding an inquest on them. Perhaps there was an excuse for it. Gundersen had been a central figure in the northern mining world of those days, the Government’s chief expert and trusted adviser; yet what a number of bloomers he had made! In the end he had died by his own hand, poor devil, at a seaside hotel near Cairns, and it was taken for granted that a woman was at the bottom of his trouble. But what did this mean? Being dumped for another fellow, or being landed in money difficulties because of her demands? Donovan did not know how it was with Gundersen. He recalled the last time he had met him, on the balcony of a hotel in Townsville—a lean, wiry fellow with cropped grizzled hair and faded blue eyes that always seemed to be looking over your head to some object on the skyline. The sort of man you might expect to find lecturing to students in a university classroom; not the type to hold his own among a tough-minded crowd in mining circles. He had a thin, querulous wife, Donovan remembered, and they said he had been glad to stay in the north to get away from her. Or was it to keep in touch with the other woman?
