Silver Wattle (31 page)

Thunder cracked. A wind that came from nowhere whipped against my face. The heat dissipated from my skin and goose bumps rose on its surface.

Philip turned when he heard my step behind him. His eyes were pinched and had no lustre to them. The expression on his face was one of such sorrow that I instantly stiffened.

‘Good God,’ he said, tugging off his jacket and wrapping it around me. ‘You must be frozen.’

His concern for me did nothing to quell the terror rising in my heart. A man in love with a woman does not look at her that way unless he has terrible news. Scenarios raced through my mind: Beatrice had refused to break off the engagement; she had threatened suicide; Philip had realised he was in love with her, not me.

‘What is it?’ I asked.

Philip drew me to the centre of the summerhouse but the position gave us little protection from the rain, which blew horizontally.

Tears welled in his eyes. ‘Beatrice is going to have a baby,’ he said.

I swallowed but I could not get rid of the lump in my throat. Beatrice could not be pregnant even though Philip had just told me so. No, I refused to believe it. Nothing as awful as that could have happened to us. Philip fumbled for my hand.

‘Are you sure?’ I asked.

‘My father examined her.’

My legs turned leaden. I wanted to make for the bench to sit down but could not move.

Philip buried his face in his hands. ‘It’s like some terrible nightmare,’ he said. ‘Until my father said that Beatrice wanted lots of babies, I wasn’t sure that she wanted any. We were careful.’ He looked at me with tear-stained eyes. ‘After Wattamolla beach…well, I made excuses to Beatrice and during her mourning I told her that it was better to abstain. But it was too late. It must have happened in that month you and I agreed not to see each other.’

The shock of the truth dawned on me and the joy of a few minutes before extinguished. If Beatrice was pregnant, Philip was going to have to marry her. He had no choice. He would have to be father to her child. The future I had pictured for us rolled away like a film spinning off a reel.

I shook my head. ‘No.’

Philip placed his hands on my shoulders. He was trembling. ‘I wanted it to be you. I wanted to have children with you.’

Yes, I had wanted that too, but I was not pregnant. It was Beatrice who was going to be mother to Philip’s children. I moved away from him. He was not the same man. He was going to be someone else’s husband. I was going to be shut out, like a tramp looking in the window of a cosy home.

‘Well, now she is pregnant, maybe she will settle down,’ I said.

Philip grabbed my arm. ‘Don’t say that! I wanted to marry you!’

I found myself imagining terrible things. Perhaps Beatrice would miscarry; it was still early. Or perhaps she would die in childbirth. But if any of those things happened I should hate myself, and it would not bring happiness to Philip or me. No, the hand of fate had given us its verdict.

I sank down to the floor and Philip knelt down and put his arms around me. Tears burned the back of my throat but I was too shocked to cry. I felt tired. I wished I could fall asleep, to have some reprieve from the torment in my heart.

‘What will you do?’ I asked Philip. ‘I don’t think…I don’t think I could bear to see you with Beatrice.’

He shuddered and held me closer. His heart was racing. He did not answer at once, but after a few moments he stroked my hair then said, ‘I will take Beatrice to London. She wanted to live in Europe and I will work at the hospital there.’

He lifted my face in his hands and kissed me. I realised that he was saying goodbye. But I could not withdraw my heart now that I had given it. I would love him forever even if I never saw him again.

The rain calmed for a moment. A ray of light shone through the clouds but disappeared when the skies grew darker still. I wished that we could be frozen in our embrace and stay that way forever. But when the day began to fade, the futility of lingering became apparent. There was no future for us now.

Philip helped me to my feet. ‘I will never forget you, Adela.’

I nodded, my heart too full to answer him. I took off his jacket and held it out for him. ‘Keep it,’ he said.

He turned and ran down the steps of the summerhouse. I watched him rush past the pond and over the bridge. Before he disappeared into the grove he stopped and turned back to me. Then, an instant later, he was lost from my sight.

I wanted to sink to my knees, but I somehow remained upright, standing in the summerhouse with my dreams in tatters around me. I had no home in Prague to go to and Philip was to marry someone else. The rain fell harder and the wind grew fiercer, blowing the droplets in my face. But I did not turn away.

‘Goodbye, Philip. I won’t forget you either,’ I whispered.

P
hilip and Beatrice married and left for England a few weeks after that miserable day in the garden at Broughton Hall. As Beatrice was just out of mourning, and because she knew she was pregnant, the wedding was a small family affair and I was relieved not to be invited. For Philip’s sake, and to quell any doubts that may arise, I sent a Belgian lace tablecloth as a wedding gift.

The day the ship departed it was as if my life had been washed away and I was left with only a faint imprint. I was sure my love for Philip would not die but what about his for me? Would I meet him in the street one day and receive only a friendly smile or a platonic kiss? It would be better that way and yet…I could not bear to imagine it.

‘He will return one day,’ I told Klara. ‘His father is here, and Beatrice’s aunt and uncle are too.’

‘Don’t worry about the future,’ she said. ‘Think about how you can find happiness now.’

Uncle Ota kept his eye on me, although I did my best to hide my broken heart. I had never told him or Ranjana about my feelings for Philip, but they had guessed. Ranjana showed her sympathy by yelling at me whenever she found me slouching about the house. ‘Get off your posterior, young lady, and help Esther with the garden! I don’t want to look at your long face!’ It sounded cruel, but she meant well. She did not want me to shut down and stop moving. Esther had done that and we knew the results too well.

Uncle Ota was softer. ‘Adela, come with me into the garden,’ he said to me one day. I sat next to him on the bench under the Japanese maple.

‘I know you’re sad and that you won’t tell us why,’ he said. ‘I remember how life wounds the young.’

I rested my head against his shoulder. He stroked my hair and continued. ‘Long before I met Ranjana there was somebody…somebody I loved very much. But circumstances were against us and we had to part.’

He stumbled on the word ‘circumstances’ and I was sure that he had meant to say ‘people’. I knew he was talking about Aunt Emilie but who were the ‘people’ he referred to?

‘I’m not going to give you platitudes about time healing all wounds. It doesn’t. Life leaves its scars. But it’s not without its beauty and order either. I’ll never forget the woman I gave my youthful heart to and lost tragically, but I am deeply happy with Ranjana. Sometimes your true companion turns up in a surprising place. Mine did. I found her on a funeral pyre.’

I had to smile. You’re not the scoundrel who ruined Emilie’s life, I thought, snuggling closer to him. I would have asked Uncle Ota about what happened all those years ago, for at that moment I sensed he was strong enough to remember it. But I was not strong enough to hear it. I was in too much pain myself to bear another’s sorrow. But one day I would ask him for the story…when we were both ready.

Summer passed slowly and I did nothing more than clean the house, work in the garden and take a few portraits. I tried not to think of Philip and Beatrice in England together. In March the following year, Freddy sent a note that he would like to see us. The last I had heard of him was the night of the premiere and I thought it strange that Freddy should ask beforehand what day and time was convenient for us: I had assumed if he wanted to see someone then he simply showed up. He arrived at the appointed time in a new car: an Opel Sportwagen with a red trim. He brushed off his orange suit and followed us into the house.

‘There’s an old cinema for sale in Thirroul,’ he told us, when we sat down in the parlour with a glass of Ranjana’s lemonade. ‘Thirroul is the untapped entertainment centre of the south coast. It draws crowds in summer as a resort and has a railway and colliery too. It’s a golden opportunity.’

‘What are you proposing?’ asked Uncle Ota.

‘As a representative of Galaxy Pictures, I can’t be seen to be investing in the local industry,’ Freddy answered, with a smile in my direction. ‘I make a lot of money for the company but no one becomes rich working for somebody else, do they?’

Freddy looked from me to Uncle Ota. ‘I want you to go buy that place for me then work the same magic you did with Tilly’s Cinema. If you do that, I won’t just appoint you its manager, I will make you my partner.’

Uncle Ota was not one to turn down a challenge. I could see his mind ticking over. He had transformed Tilly’s Cinema into a successful business, but it had not made him wealthy. It occurred to me that he and Freddy would make a good team. Uncle Ota had the imagination and flair; Freddy had the nerve and the financial shrewdness.

‘All right,’ Uncle Ota said. ‘I’ll look it over and tell you what I think.’

Freddy shook his head.

‘Surely you want me to inspect it before you buy it?’ said Uncle Ota. ‘What if it’s a wreck? How do you know it will work?’

‘I don’t care
if
it will work,’ Freddy answered. ‘I want you to go there and
make
it work.’

Uncle Ota considered the matter for a few moments before answering. ‘I’d have to live there with my wife and son while I was setting it up,’ he said.

‘I’ll pay your rent,’ said Freddy, rising from his chair. ‘Think about it and give me a call tomorrow morning. Before ten.’

I showed Freddy to the door.

‘Good afternoon, Adela,’ he said, taking his coat and hat from me. ‘I’m still receiving compliments on the portrait you took.’

‘I’m glad,’ I said.

‘Do you like jazz?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know. I haven’t listened to it much.’

Freddy raised his eyebrows. ‘What century are you living in? There are a couple of good places in this city. I’ll take you there some time. Bring Klara and Robert, and Esther if she wants to come too. Then you and I can discuss that funny little film of yours.’

Freddy honked the horn of his Sportwagen before pulling out from the kerb. Our neighbours looked out their windows to see what was going on. The McManus children from two doors away chased the car down the street.

I smiled. Freddy was abrasive but he had cheered me up too. His social and business personas were the same: pushy. But I had a sense that he did things other people were afraid to do, and I admired him for that.

I returned to the parlour to find Uncle Ota making notes on the borders of the newspaper.

‘So you will move to the south coast?’ I asked him.

‘I’ll talk to Ranjana about it,’ he said. Then, looking at me, he smiled. ‘Would you like to come too?’

‘Why are you refusing to go?’ Klara asked me when she heard about Freddy’s offer. ‘You need a change from Sydney for a while.’

‘Who is going to look after you?’ I said.

‘I am fourteen years old, Adelka, and Esther is here. We can come down on the weekends. Thirroul is not so far away.’

She was right, but Uncle Ota had received word from Doctor Holub that Milosh had returned to Prague. He had married paní Benova. Uncle Ota thought that meant that they had given up on pursuing us. But he had never seen paní Benova’s covetous eyes as Mother had described them in her letter to Aunt Josephine. Nor had he been witness to her single-minded ambition as I had. I could not believe she had married Milosh without being sure that she would one day reside in our town house and country manor. No, she must be more confident than ever of gaining them. But why?

‘Adelka, you could take photographs of the seaside towns,’ Klara said, waking me from my dream. ‘I have heard the coast is ruggedly beautiful.’

‘No,’ I said, shaking my head. ‘I am not leaving you.’

Klara’s jaw set, the way it used to as a child when she was determined to get her way. But her calm voice was that of an adult. ‘Philip is in London studying to be a children’s doctor. Beatrice is his wife. What about
your
dreams, Adelka? I am not going to let you waste your life over things you can’t change. I am not going to watch you despair until you end up in hospital like I did.’

Beatrice had once described me as her friend but we could never have shared the bond I had with Klara. It hurt to hear the truth, but my sister’s words had been spoken with love. I would be of no use to anyone if I did not pick up my spirits again. In my present state, I could not protect her. I would have to trust Esther for that.

Uncle Ota trained another manager for Tilly’s Cinema, and took Ranjana, Thomas and me to Thirroul with him in June. The train rattled through miles of untouched bushland. The angular rocks with ferns in the crevices, the giant gums and their massive limbs, and the cabbage tree palms were different from any forest I had seen in Europe. The dappled light and the golden flowers of the undergrowth presented a photograph worth taking at every bend in the tracks. The train burst from the bush and we saw endless bays and undulating hills rolling out before us. Dozens of bungalows, with plumes of smoke rising from their chimneys, dotted the landscape. On the inland side, mountains towered over the train line and the fields.

The book I had been reading fell from my lap. I thought of Philip. It was strange, considering the way Beatrice had treated me as though I were her bosom friend, that she had not written to me since her arrival in London or informed me of the birth of her child. It saved me from being a hypocrite, but it was disconcerting too. I could not help but think that she knew about Philip and me. Perhaps Freddy had told her? Or Philip himself? Perhaps she had simply guessed.

By the time the train stopped at the station in Thirroul, the weather had changed and it was drizzling with rain. Uncle Ota pulled the directions to the house Freddy had rented for us from his pocket and squinted against the droplets slipping from his hat into his eyes. The skies opened and rain splashed down with Pacific fury. There was no taxi or bus service available. We left our luggage with the stationmaster, to be collected later, and walked down the sandy road in the direction of the coast. The sea was hissing and rumbling but I could not see it. Everything was a waterfall of rain and I was soaked through to the skin. Our shoes filled with water and squelched when we ran.