A Cry from the Dark (6 page)

That was very easy with Oliver. He had certainly gained a lot of weight since she saw him last: though by no means short, he was by now distinctly roly-poly, and with his good-humored, tolerant expression he looked almost Pickwickian. She hugged him with real warmth, and then shook hands with his companion.

“It's so good of you to come,” she said.

“Not good at all,” said her daughter. “It's wonderful to be able to visit Europe with a companion to take some of the strain. Lucky it suits both of us.”

She was spectacled, graying, but with a trim figure she had not let go to seed. Her stance was not exactly prim, but there was something of the schoolteacher in it—something that spoke of simple codes, firmly adhered to. Bettina felt she could probably respect what she saw, but reserved her judgment on whether she would like it. She was just sitting them down and preparing to get them drinks when Katie let herself in with her old key and bustled through. She was dressed in a dreadful old black dress, too short and tight, that she had used when, long ago, she had used to “help out” in grander houses than this one.

“I'll do the drinks,” she announced to Bettina. “This'll be your brother, will it? What will it be?”

“A beer will be fine.”

“And you're—?”

“Just a family friend,” said Sylvia firmly. “I think I'll have a medium sherry.”

“Can see you're not family,” said Katie, whose eyesight had always been poor. “And you'll have a g and t, will you, Bettina?”

“Thank you, Katie,” said Bettina, smiling with her eyebrows slightly raised in her guests' direction. When Katie had gone through to the kitchen she said, “Katie is an old friend.”

She had thought it was the right tone to adopt, but she sensed uneasily that it had not gone down well with her guests. “Not really a servant, but a friend who helps out now and then” should, surely, have been acceptable to democratic Australians, and it was nothing but the truth. She had the idea, however, that her daughter had diagnosed hypocrisy—thought that it was better if you paid anybody to do things for you that you spoke of them, thought of them, and treated them, as servants.

Talk about theater and concerts lasted them until dinner. Bettina told them what she'd got tickets for, and got them the theater pages of the
Times
to show them what else was on. As they went to table Bettina realized she hadn't asked them about their flight over.

“Well, I'm real glad we decided to stop over a night,” said Ollie. “If we'd just had the normal half hour or so in Singapore airport I think they'd've had to drag me back onto the plane.”

Bettina sympathized.

“Yes, people tell me it
sounds
like a good idea to do it all in one go, but that really it
isn't.
I always went back to Australia by sea, but I do remember one long-distance flight long ago—I think it must have been to California, or maybe Rio—and on that you had bunk beds for sleeping.”

“Things have got worse rather than better, then?” asked Sylvia.

“Oh much. Take food. Now you get tiny little pieces of this and that on a plastic tray. Then you had proper meals served from salvers. The only thing that I can think of that's got better is the air hostesses. You do get real women now, often older ones, not overpainted dummies.”

“Going by sea must have been wonderfully different,” said Sylvia.

“It was. Three weeks was fine, but if it took five that was too much of a good thing. I wished I'd got off at Perth and taken the train—dry, very dry, land instead of water would have been a nice change.”

“Did you go back to Australia often?”

“Deaths,” said Bettina briefly. “Mum had cancer, but I had plenty of warning and got there in time. Dad had a minor heart attack, then another three days after I arrived. That hurt. I would have so liked to have had plenty of time with him before…before it happened. I loved them both, but Dad believed in me so much.”

“He was always talking about you,” said Oliver.

“Yes—I'm sorry about that.”

“No, not at all. It was always interesting, learning what you were like. In fact, I knew you from what Dad told me, rather than from my memories. Those ended when war came…or at least when you came to Europe.”

“That's right. I did that at nineteen. We'd been talking about war so long I'd already made up my mind: I knew that being part of it was the right thing. Then quite soon it was war correspondent in Europe, then the army, and that was my fate sealed.”

Or not quite, she thought, as perhaps Sylvia thought too. That summary missed out one or two important developments.

“Here's the stew,” said Katie, coming in and plonking it down on the table. “Smells horrible rich.”

“That's the brown ale it's cooked in,” said Bettina.

“Hmmm. Personally I think alcohol is for drinking,” said Katie, “or using for a rub.”

“Well, I'll drink to drinking alcohol,” said Bettina, raising her glass. Her thoughts were on the track of old times, as they were every day as she wrote, and she said, “Perhaps it was best that I didn't see too much of Dad before he died. I have the feeling that he was putting on a last show for me, that he must have been broken, defeated.”

Oliver shook his head vigorously.

“No—not Dad. Why did you think that? Because of the drought, and having to sell the property?”

“Yes, I suppose so. And Mum dying. I knew that hit him hard because I was there, and I thought maybe he wouldn't ever really recover. Because though he pretended to be happy, working out at Wilgandra—”

“He was happy,” insisted Ollie. “I never saw him so contented as when he was managing for Bill Cheveley. And you know what? I don't think he'd ever really believed in running his own property. I think he saw through those soldier-settler schemes early on. They were too timid, too penny-pinching. None of the properties was really viable, not when the crunch came. And that drought was the crunch for a lot of them.” There was the sound of the phone ringing, but Bettina was fascinated and let Katie answer it. “He was happy with Bill because they worshiped each other, and because it was a weight off his own shoulders. Dad had faith in himself, but he couldn't carry through a project he never really believed in.”

Katie's head appeared around the door, and she looked at Oliver.

“It's for you,” she said. Oliver appeared mystified and hurried out to the hall. Bettina looked at Sylvia.

“Who on earth knows he's here, apart from Mark?” she asked.

“I can't think,” Sylvia replied, wrinkling her forehead. “We've both been fast asleep all day. Though I suppose Judy could have guessed, particularly if she tried Mark's number first.”

“Oh, that'll be it,” said Bettina. But as she spoke Oliver came back into the room, still looking bewildered.

“It was the police,” he said.

“The police!” both women said.

“I don't understand. They say they've got Mark in custody…Can you be arrested for driving too slowly in this country?”

“Well, not as a rule,” said Bettina. “What exactly did they say?”

“It was a phrase I didn't really understand. They said he'd been arrested on suspicion of curb-crawling.”

The next half hour was quite hectic. Bettina rang Peter Seddon, made sure he hadn't been drinking, then asked him if he would drive her brother to the West Kensington Police Station, where Mark was being detained, and offer support and know-how while Oliver went through the necessary formalities to get his son released on bail. While they waited for him she explained to Ollie what curb-crawling consisted of: pestering women to have sex in the car. He was quiet for a time, trying to take it in.

“I expect he was just trying to be friendly,” he said at last. “Chatting them up and that.”

“Yes, that's what curb-crawlers do for starters,” said Bettina. Then, not wanting her brother's first evening to be more spoiled than it already was, she added, “But you could save Mark's face by saying you're sure that that's all it was, and that he doesn't understand the British laws.”

“Yes…Yes, that might help…I'm sure he didn't mean any harm. Mark's always been a bit of a problem—the comedian of the family—but there's no harm in him.”

“No, no, I'm sure there isn't,” said Bettina, speaking against her better judgment. “Ah, that'll be Peter.”

When they had got Ollie off, Bettina came back into the flat and raised her eyebrows at Sylvia.

“Well, I don't know what you'd feel about a sorbet. Maybe we do need cooling down a bit.”

“No, that's Mark,” said Sylvia, and they both laughed. When Katie brought it in it was clear she had been listening.

“Well, I won't say a word about what's going on—” she began.

“Good,” said Bettina.

“—but Mr. Mark is the last person I'd've thought would need to go curb-crawling for a woman.”

“Then obviously you're wrong, aren't you?”

“I'm not wrong so often as others that think themselves a lot cleverer than I am,” said Katie complacently.

When they were alone again, Sylvia said, “You don't like Mark, do you?”

“Not much. Well, not at all, frankly. I can't think of many women who would, in spite of Katie, even ones who go for brawn. He's so obviously in love with himself, completely taken up with it. There's no room in Mark for any other passion.”

Sylvia didn't entirely go along with that.

“As Oliver said, he's regarded as a bit of a comedian at home.”

“I can't remember him ever having the company in stitches at his droll witticisms.”

“I meant unconsciously. You weren't supposed to laugh, but you did.”

“Well, yes, I can imagine that. But I didn't laugh.”

“You found him—what—threatening?”

Bettina answered without hesitation.

“Yes, that was pretty much it. Any young man who walks around an old lady's flat in a jockstrap has either no sense of what nudity implies or he assumes he's God's gift to any and every woman.”

“He's certainly got no idea of the fitness of things,” said Sylvia. She opened her mouth to say something else, then thought better of it.

“What were you going to say?” Bettina asked.

“Oh, nothing…It would have sounded as if I thought you overreacted to Mark's blokeishness, which wasn't at all what I meant…To tell you the truth, I was going to ask if you thought you were still scarred by…that early experience.”

“Yes,” said Bettina at once. She let Katie bring in the coffee, then go out to resume noisily the washing up. “Not in the obvious way, maybe. Horrible experiences like that affect different people in different ways. I took a while to recover, but recover I did. But, like any other experience, it leaves a sort of residue. You
are
changed, you are not what you would have been if you had never gone through it…I'm talking awful clichés, aren't I? All the men in my life—and that's another cliché, isn't it, but what I meant was all the men I've loved or just gone to bed with—have either been gentle types, real
lovers
in the best sense, or men who just took sex as a matter of course, something to be enjoyed in a nonguilty way. Peter Seddon, whom you just met, was like that, the latter type. But what I've always shrunk from has been the aggressive type or the—I don't quite know how to put it best—the self-advertising type. Swaggerers.”

“Don't you think Mark may be just that? He swaggers. Having to go curb-crawling shows how empty the swagger is. I've never thought of him as posing a threat.”

Bettina shook herself.

“I expect you're right. But I do think that the one thing is very close to the other. For example, if Mark's vanity was under attack—and he's one mass of vanity—I believe he could well turn aggressive. He couldn't bear not to preen himself at the very thought of how wonderful he was.”

“You're the novelist, the people person. Look, I think I'd better be going. I still need to catch up on sleep. Such a pity your lovely dinner party has been disturbed—I was really enjoying myself.”

“There'll be others. Will you be all right in Mark's flat? You'll probably be disturbed when he and Ollie come home. There'll be all sorts of ructions and recriminations.”

“Do you think so? For all we know being arrested for curb-crawling may be all in a day's work for Mark.” The two of them giggled.

“Well, it may be for Mark, but it won't be for Ollie. He'll surely want to chew it over, give fatherly advice or whatever.”

Sylvia looked at her.

“You don't really know Ollie, do you?”

“No, hardly at all. Ollie was an afterthought, or rather a mistake, I suspect. When I left home to go to Armidale he was only four.”

“Right. Well, nothing fazes Oliver. He accepts whatever fate throws at him. If Mark has been pestering women, Ollie will say he's just been silly and he'll learn from his mistakes. There certainly won't be any rows and ructions.”

Bettina thought as she rang for a taxi that this was carrying nonchalance too far. Still, Mark was well out of swaddling clothes, and as unlikely to take good advice from his father as from anyone else. He was his own man, in the worst possible sense. And she herself, having never had a child that she would take responsibility for, was the last person to pass judgment.

When Peter rang her on his mobile after dropping Ollie and Mark off, he said, with a complacency that annoyed Bettina, “You wouldn't think a bloke like that would have to pay for his pleasure, would you?”

“No. You believe in getting paid, don't you, Peter?”

“Come off it, Bettina,” he protested. “I've always stood my round.”

“That was the fig leaf. I always paid for the food and booze while you were living here.”

She regretted saying it as she went to bed. She didn't want to become one of those women who were congenitally sour about men.

When she came to sit down at her tape recorder the next day, Bettina remembered the conversation with Sylvia about male aggressive sexuality, and she began her reminiscences with a tiny incident that she had had no intention of including in those gleanings of her past, something so minor that it had no significance beyond the fact of the man that it dealt with. And that was very significant indeed.

 

The message was given them on Saturday morning in the general store run by Phil Pollard, a shop generally referred to as “Phil's.” Everyone went into Phil's on a Saturday morning, so he was often the bearer of messages. When he told Betty's mother that he had one for her she knew at once—and Betty did too—that it must be from Wilgandra. And that it was for Jack, rather than for either of them. The doctor who served Bundaroo, Corunna, and two other small townships had recommended to Bill Cheveley that he get hold of a new tablet that he thought would be beneficial in Mrs. Cheveley's illness. When she heard this Betty vaguely wondered what Mrs. Cheveley's illness
was,
and if anybody really knew. Bill had phoned the chemist in Walgett and they had it in stock, so he wondered if Jack Whitelaw would drive him there. Both women knew Jack would do anything for Bill.

“You go to Grafton's and get your father,” said Betty's mother. “I've got to go and have a word with the vicar about the Christmas party in the church hall.”

“Oh, Mum! Do I have to?”

“Now don't whinge, Betty. No harm can come to you. I've got Oliver, and all you've got to do is ask someone to bring him out to talk to you.”

That was precisely what Betty hated doing.

To make matters worse, when she approached the main door of Grafton's Hotel, Sam Battersby emerged from it to take a breather in the sun during a lull in customers' orders. There he stood, fat and leering, and Betty had come so close to the entrance that she couldn't change course and go around to the back.

“Well, well, young lady. This is an unexpected pleasure.”

“I've got to speak to my dad.” The request came out, as intended, more rude than merely businesslike.

Sam Battersby's leer broadened.

“No problem about that. When I've just finished my smoke I'll go in and get him for you.”

“Please, it's urgent.”

“Now what could be urgent on a lovely Saturday morning when everyone's enjoying the sunshine buying little things for Christmas? Let you and me just have a little chat and—”

“It's a message from Wilgandra. Dad's got to drive Bill to Walgett to get some medicine urgently needed for Mrs. Cheveley.”

He scanned her face to see whether she was lying.

“Oh well…Bill's a good mate…We'll just have to postpone our little chat, young lady.” And he lumbered off into the smoky, dark, male-filled saloon bar behind him.

“Anything wrong?” asked Jack Whitelaw when he came out.

“Bill Cheveley wants you to drive into Walgett to get some new medicine for Mrs. Cheveley,” said Betty, this time not having to stretch the truth.

“Oh, right…What I meant was, anything wrong with you? You looked sort of…upset, like.”

“I don't like the way he calls me ‘young lady,' or the way he thinks he and I should have a ‘little chat.' ”

He walked on for a bit.

“It's not much, is it, Betty?”

“No, not when I say it out…But it's not just what he says, it's how he looks at me.”

“Yes, I can see that. Well, I'll wait here for Bill and the car. That could be them in the distance. Look after your mother. We should be back by sundown.”

But Betty did not go at once to join up with her mother and Oliver at the vicarage. From the edge of the little township where she had left her father she walked back along the strip of bitumen greeting schoolfriends, some with parents, usually mothers—the fathers were in Grafton's, asserting their superiority to such concerns as shopping—some in little knots by Phil's or Bob's Café, or even by the little shack at the far end where Mr. Blackfeller swapped stories with anyone who passed. Betty walked quickly past the hotel, then went up to a group of about her own age outside Bob's.

“I haven't seen Hughie, have you?” she asked. One or two boys gave exaggerated shrugs.

“His mother was in Bundaroo yesterday, I think,” contributed one of the girls. “Her Ladyship probably did the family shopping then.”

“What do you want with a mardarse like Hughie Naismyth?” asked Herbie Cox. Herbie was born in Nottingham, and his father had never lost his native dialect in the twelve years the family had been in Australia. Herbie picked up the words from back home and liked spreading those words of contempt as an alternative to the Australian ones.

“Hughie's not a mardarse,” said Betty. “He taught you lot soccer.”

The shrugs came again, still more exaggerated.

“Soccer's a game for sissy boys anyway,” said one of the others. “You don't want to go with that Hughie. He's useless.”

“He's a sight more use than thickies like you,” said Betty, and she walked away quickly.

Immediately she kicked herself. She was not going to help Hughie by abusing his classmates. She had been thrown by what she had just heard, which was what she had been dreading. The suspicion of Hughie, momentarily lightened by the boys' interest in the new game, had softened first to indifference, but was now hardening again into disdain and dislike. Soon there could be one of those minor school vendettas—not frequent things, but always a danger where incomers were concerned. Bundaroo was a small town with a very small-town dislike of anything unfamiliar, unknown.