Bettany's Book (90 page)

Bernard began to spend some time by my father’s hearth, talking to Aldread. It was a friendship in which I presumed I should not interfere. Bernard also had food taken to my father and Aldread from the homestead by Maggie Tume, O’Dallow’s wife. Bernard explained to me, ‘She
coughs up all her heart’s blood, and cannot cook for herself.’ And so, even as I rode to the out-stations, I retained in my mind an image of my rubicund father sitting by a blazing hearth with brittle Aldread on the nights when the wind turned south-east and grew unexpectedly chill. Aldread was, even in my view, fading a grain at a time, her cheeks blazing, her breath, as anyone could tell, so short that her pretty little mouth was always slightly agape.

‘My little blazing girl,’ my father would say.

In the late summer, before the first snows could bring down any peril or criminality on the scene, I made with O’Dallow and other of my men one more droving journey to Simon’s place. We took some 400 head of cattle with us. I was aware of being trailed on the far side of the mountains by anthracite natives, whom Simon would later tell me belonged to a tribe named Jaitmatchang. They had greater power to frighten my men than the Moth people – they moved quickly and silently ahead of us, and it needed four armed men on horseback to guard the flock at night, and large bonfires to persuade them we would not be taken by surprise.

Apart from that, the descent on the far side, which I had once thought breakneck, and could be if taken at speed, seemed a mere amble now. It was as if the gods had decided, after all, that I should never be surprised again. Neither by virtue nor by glory, neither by malice nor by storms.

Riding down to Simon’s homestead on the Broken River, I found him restored to his wife. Elizabeth sat at the fire with us, and chatted in a lively manner. She had won back her house from my father. And I knew by now, with whatever surcharges of guilt, how delightful that must be.

When Elizabeth went to bed, retreating from her husband’s gloomy predictions of the livestock prices to be had in Port Phillip, I told Simon about Aldread and my father. I told him about myself and Bernard. He took it in a very worldly manner. He said, however, with filial hopefulness, ‘Perhaps he feels towards this Aldread exactly as you feel towards Bernard.’

‘Perhaps,’ I painfully admitted. ‘But is he of a mind to make a sane choice?’

Simon laughed harshly. ‘Are any of us? But no, I see what you mean. Poor you. Have you told Mother?’

‘I wrote her one plain letter,’ I admitted. ‘But how do you say it? I began by telling her that Father’s behaviour on my station – were she to
hear of it through rumours – was not condoned by me. And then it struck me that not to specify what the offending behaviour was would leave the poor woman in torment. And so I specified what it was, and told her to forget him forever. I also promised that within two years I would leave the property in the care of an overseer and go and visit her.’

Simon frowned. I asked him why.

‘You will need to confess your own situation, Jonathan. That would hurt her too if she were to know.’

‘My God, Simon,’ I argued. ‘The woman saved me from all manner of crazed options after Phoebe died. I intend to marry this woman, Bernard. She is a woman of strong qualities, and my mother herself chose to marry a felon.’

‘Ah, but he was not a felon at the time of the wedding.’

‘Well, at least,’ I said, driving the stakes of irony as high as I could, ‘at least she is not a Papist. Her mother and father were Jewish!’

‘Oh my dear Lord,’ said Simon, with such boyish forlornness that I could not, with the best intentions to do so, drive my anger higher.

‘Do not judge me, Simon,’ I said, gently. ‘I am living the only life I can, and by the time I see Mother, I shall be a married man.’

‘Do you think there is something wrong with our family?’ asked Simon. His face was so fretted that again I could not dismiss the silliness of this question. ‘Is it in the blood, in the heart, the brain?’

‘Charlie Batchelor thinks so. But damn him. May I remind you that the first adulterer was not a convict.’

‘Who was the first adulterer?’

‘I don’t know. But it can’t have been long after Adam.’

‘That is the moral cynicism which pervades all the colonial regions. I have sworn to live my life not as you and Father, but to take my grief without madness, like a simple man. If you should ask my ambition, then it is to live my life in such a way that whatever happens to me, I shall not react with mad displays. I shall not write books, nor dance with convict women. Whatever small sins will be left to my record, they will be so average as to vanish into it.’

I found myself shivering and understood it was anger. ‘You speak of small sins,’ I said, ‘yet you arm your shepherds with carbines.’

‘And so do you.’

‘Yes, and how closely after a time do we inquire into the murders?’

‘I have no guilt about deaths on my property,’ said Simon. ‘Am I to let my shepherds and my livestock be impaled and clubbed? By a race
so sunk in cunning and aimlessness that one might think them the first creation of the Fall? I shall not be inhumane to them, but equally I shall not weep when they are gone. They are in this region impertinent and aggressive.’

‘It is a sign of advancing age,’ I said with a relenting smile, ‘to use the word “impertinent”.’

‘Then so be it. If I have the wisdom of age before my time, I shall not complain.’

And he had at least achieved this – in his desire to fit the norm of goodness, he had achieved the normal concept of the native people.

‘If Father gives you his crazy book to send to London or Edinburgh,’ Simon continued, ‘drop it in a deep passage of the Murrumbidgee, so that we can live free from shame.’

‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘He is becoming more and more exorbitant. His book will not be published.’

H
ELENE SAID, DESPITE EVERYTHING
, Prim had got off easy from her demonstration, and that it had even seemed to bear fruit. Her picture with the placard had appeared in the international press – the lean, fair-featured woman in long-sleeved shirt and floral skirt holding her plea aloft must have appealed to picture editors. She was the Page 3 girl of the oppressed, said Helene.

Dimp faxed. She said she was on her way, making airline bookings to stand by her sister in Khartoum. She would bring Benedetto, who knew his international law. Prim called and dissuaded her.

She was tortured by the thought that her trip to free slaves in Lokichokio might have contributed to whatever isolation and pain Sherif was now suffering. Nothing happened to ease that concern. Yet in the punishing weeks in which she waited for a call about Sherif, she took guilty comfort from the account of Jonathan Bettany, which had accumulated during her absence in Alingaz, and from tales of Dimp and her problems which seemed like the dilemmas of someone fantastical, of a character in a soap opera which, like all good soap operas, dealt only in lives of privilege. But Prim had a particular hope for how it would end. Surely scales would fall from Dimp’s eyes and she would return to Bren and they would adopt a child.

Dimp had told her how when Bren returned from America, he was
justifiably offended to find his paintings gone, and had instituted civil proceedings to recover them. To disabuse him, Dimp had a set of divorce documents drawn up and delivered, in which she offered in return for the withdrawal of his writ concerning the paintings – which both he and she knew to be only of nuisance value – to relinquish all further claim on him.

Though she distantly disapproved, and in the darkest of all dark hours suspected a connection between Dimp’s Sydney chaos and the disorder of the republic which was toying with and devouring its child, Sherif, Prim thus felt subtly cheated when a definitive instalment, dated July 2 1990, arrived.

Dearest Prim

I’ve been talking to that miserable lean character Whitloaf, who says he’s watching Khartoum and has a replacement or an aide ready to send. I just hope you’re okay, and that Sherif’s okay too. I called the Department of Foreign Affairs, but we don’t have an embassy in Khartoum. They told me they’ve instructed the Brits and the Americans to represent you if anything bad happens. I really am very worried, and ready to leave the moment you tell me you need me.

Everything’s settled here anyway. The terms of the settlement are engraved in legal jargon. My lawyer, Pynsent, a family law whizz, went to see Bren by appointment at his office a few weeks back, and said, ‘Look, it doesn’t make sense. My client is willing to waive all claim on you if you drop all charges and give her indemnity from any possible prosecution.’ And the worst thing is, Bren stood up by his big picture window, with the whole reach of the harbour behind him, and began to weep, in front of Pynsent. Then he said what a bloody silly thing that was to do, in front of a lawyer, and started sobbing again. When Pynsent told me this I thought, What have you done, Dimp, you flippant bitch? Pynsent himself was embarrassed for these tears, and it must have been awful for Bren. You see, he is complex – he’s willing to sacrifice his dignity. I have to remember that that’s as far as it goes. He’s not willing to sacrifice his soul. But when Pynsent told me … I was weeping too, at the idea of Bren being so stricken. And he told me Bren said, like a man who couldn’t be bothered to hide anything anyhow, ‘If I drop the charges I’ll lose contact with her.’

It sounds so plaintive. I did consider turning back for his sake and growing old unhappily with him. I’d be the forgiven spouse. I think Bren
would go for it. A small matter of course: I’d lose Benedetto, and the universe would be a cold place. But love’s more than a gesture. Though this was quite a gesture. He was suing me above all to keep contact. He was willing to be mocked in the press and whispered about amongst his peers just to keep a claim on me. And that’s a very cunning instinct in its own right: they talk about suing for someone’s hand – at least that’s an old-fashioned phrase. Well, he was suing for mine, if he can be believed. I feel guilty for the way I must have mystified the poor sod.

And he’s suing for heaven too, at the same time. I asked him once in an argument what redemption would be like, what pictures of it he carried in his head. It’s ineffable, he says. It can’t be talked about or defined. But I say, if it can’t be discussed, why be so driven by it? There are enough things on earth which can be discussed, I told him, which can be defined by us poor suffering bastards. Including the price of molybdenum and the death of love. So let’s stick with them. But then, you wouldn’t believe it, he broke down. It was all a huge stress to him. This venture conquistador! He rarely shed a tear, but as with Pynsent, he wept then, trying to imagine heaven or deal with my agnostic mockery. And at that stage I was still simple-minded enough to think that sobbing – particularly in men – is love. But I’ve never seen anyone crying at the prospect of hell, have you? Bawling for salvation?

All this added up – willingness to weep before a lawyer, willingness to be thought foolish – instead of causing me to feel regret, caused me to feel even more relief, even more conviction. I did the right thing. I had the right instincts. How can I regret my removal – theft it is not! – of pictures, when that was the finest way to get my earnestness across to Bren?

Anyhow, Bren told Pynsent that he needed time to think about the proposal, and he was going to San Francisco to speak to commodity dealers at some big seminar, and he hoped that would clear his head, and he would talk when he got back.

Well, he came back yesterday, and this morning he called Pynsent and told him that yes, he would drop the case, but he insisted on making a proper settlement with me, minus half the cost of the paintings. What a generous, miserable thing! Half the cost! Though he didn’t express the idea, he doesn’t want people saying he was too mean or vengeful to give me anything. So he comes up, no doubt on lawyers’ advice, with this 50 per cent forgiveness. For me, that was the finish! I told Pynsent, No. Not a chance! No maintenance, no cash. Remind him that the paintings
were all in my name. And so to save Bren’s self-esteem a clause had to be put into the agreement saying that the arrangement was confidential and no one would reveal the details under threat of legal sanction. Bren’s lawyers made Pynsent and me turn up at their offices, and we all signed. To his credit, Bren signed without any reproach. I was sheathed in cloth covered in rainbow lorikeets, and he said to me with a lenient smile, ‘You’re still dressing in the old style,’ and I forgave him for sicking Cara Motley onto me once to try to teach me haute couture. He was dry-eyed when it was his turn to sign.

And, with a hush and a nod and the scrape of a ballpoint against paper, my sole marriage as good as reaches its end – not quite yet in the technical sense. There’s still the automatic and uncontested process to go through, but I think this agreement document is the real separator.

But then I found that there was a reason Bren might have been dry-eyed at the signing. Benedetto and I saw him at some Sydney Theatre Company bash at Walsh Bay and he had an American with him, a stylish woman who clearly understood how to dress and was enviably made-up. She looked an utter Venus, although slightly sharp-featured in a way which won’t become marked for decades yet. She looked credible beside him. I was almost proud of him! I laughed all the way home – not in mockery at all, but in utter delight. Benedetto tells me she was saying at the party that she was arranging a tour of duty in Bren’s office here and praising his chutzpah in running an international headquarters from Sydney. His tears have been wiped away by her admiration!