Rosetta (21 page)

SYDNEY, 1918

War changes everything and nothing. After the fighting has ended and despite the senseless sacrifice of tens of thousands of young lives, Australia continues to be fiercely loyal to the British Crown. Though jobs are often hard to come by, most men don't want their wives to work; they think it shaming. The White Australia policy remains as well. The country may be part of a vast empire that includes the peoples of a number of African and Asian nations, but Australia's politicians continue, steadfastly, to turn all such individuals away. They are found lacking, unacceptable.

The Great War has not only deprived Australia of the flower of its manhood; among those who return home, damage is commonplace. More than one hundred and fifty thousand men have been injured or taken prisoner. Many are without a hand or arm, some have lost a leg or cannot see; the mines and mortars have maimed indiscriminately. Others, their lungs scarred by poisoned gas, struggle for each gasp of breath. Most terrible of all
is the devastation that lies within, the wounds that no one sees but which impose savage consequences; the awful screaming in the night that wives and children hear but know not to remark upon; the sudden anger; the drinking that is done in a new, determined way that seeks only oblivion; the violence.

The war's horrors – worse, the appalling decisions that so often led to misfortune and disaster – are rarely acknowledged. Gallipoli, Gaba Tepe and Lone Pine, Fromelles, Villers-Bretonneux and Passchendaele; the men who come home from these places are changed forever. They have seen and done unimaginable things, had the unimaginable done to them in return. They do not speak of it. Their experience binds them to one another, separates them from their wives and children.

This war has also altered Carl. Communing with the dead no longer holds the same fascination as before. In fact, the practice fills him with distaste. He is well aware of the irony; now, more than ever, sweethearts, wives and mothers will do almost anything to establish contact with their lost lovers, husbands, sons. Carl considers this lucrative new market of grieving clients and finds that his heart is no longer in his old profession. There are too many unquiet spirits among the dead, too much sorrow among the living. It is unbearable.

Then there is the matter of his visions. The fire-filled, awful scenes of war that occupied his dreams still sometimes pass before his eyes. He wonders if perhaps it is the fault of opium. In London, faced with the prospect of another turbulent night, he frequently succumbed to the poppy's soporific spell. He thinks now that perhaps it may have done more harm than good; promising heaven, it has imposed a kind of hell.

Carl sits in his study late one evening and turns the matter over in his mind, then finds himself considering another substance, this one capable of undreamt-of effects. Once he claimed that radium had ‘revolutionised the modern methods of healing'. But is it possible that the same material he had so enthusiastically
endorsed has undiscovered properties that have contributed to his distressed mental and physical state? He doesn't know. No one does.

Most disturbing is the knowledge that his visions did not remain, as could reasonably be expected, merely the products of his fertile mind. Too many predictions came to pass. War of unparalleled scope and terror has waged across the world, just as he forecast. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Sir Oliver Lodge have both lost a son; he saw these things quite clearly.

The two distinguished men write to him and tell him of their tragedies. Briefly, he slips into the role of Professor Zeno once again. The famous author and the leading scientist are prepared to try anything, risk ridicule and humiliation, if there seems any prospect (no matter how absurd) of achieving contact with their beloved boys. In desperation, the two engage the services of seers and mediums. They beseech the Professor to return to England though, wisely, he declines their invitations.

Not so long ago, when alone with his Rosetta, Carl would have scoffed at those gullible souls who believed his visions and prognostications to be as true as the gospels. Since then, it has occurred to him that his own ability to separate illusion from delusion, imagination from reality, truth from fiction, is less certain. Even worse, Carl has the disturbing thought that, in calling forth his visions, he has been in some way instrumental in conjuring them into existence, making them concrete.

He doesn't tell Rosetta of his fears. She will not like it, will look at him with doubt flickering in her eyes. In any case, Carl knows that to travel down this path can bring nothing but torment, even madness. There can be only one way forward. He must put such thoughts aside and, with them, his long-standing practice of the art of magic.

Carl makes an exchange. The black arts for the black market. He has not told his wife about his fears; now he omits to confess the solution he's found. He makes sure that transactions are
conducted discreetly, far from home. If Rosetta suspects, she doesn't say a word.

They are wealthy now; it's not a matter of the money, but of sensation. Spirits (though not the ethereal kind), cigarettes and, increasingly, art of unspecified provenance fly through his hands. Life is once more dangerous and thrilling. Yet, despite this promising beginning, the satisfaction doesn't last. When all is said and done, it's commerce. He misses sorcery.

Long ago, when Rosetta was still married to Louis, she'd claimed she visited Zeno's Swanston Street premises for instruction in watercolours. Much later, favourite clients were touched when he sent them small examples of his work. In a letter penned from her Cannes villa, La Fôret, on 20 December 1913, Princess Charlotte wrote:

Now he turns to these artistic pursuits with renewed pleasure. In the careful preparation of white surfaces and the blending of concentrated colours, in the dipping of his brush into singing oranges and yellows, deep blues and greens and brilliant reds and, finally, in the application of pigment onto canvas, his equilibrium is recovered. He paints his way back to tranquillity, to happiness.

Carl spends his time with those engaged in similar pursuits. Artists, writers and poets are much like seers and magicians. Unbothered by the unconventional, they accept not only his unusual domestic arrangements and his distinctly chequered past but seem not to mind his oriental origins. He finds he is at home with them.

 

My great-grandmother, at thirty-eight, finds fulfilment in other ways.

‘You understand,' she tells her husband, ‘I can't be confined. You have your painting and your artist friends, but I still need something more.'

Rosetta seeks adventure. Why not cross Russia one day, take the Trans-Siberian railway from frozen Vladivostok to Moscow? Or go to the floating lakeside palaces of Rajasthan, or the ancient temples of Peru? Perhaps she will. But first, she thinks, she'll sail for London.

Taking tea at The Ritz and drinking cocktails at The Savoy, viewing the paintings at the Royal Academy and watching Nellie Melba sing at the Albert Hall – Rosetta realises just how much she has missed these diverting pastimes. Paris, too, she must go there, see the divine new clothes designed by Jean Patou and Madame Paquin. Then there is racing at Longchamp and the ballet at the Palais Garnier before the quick dash to catch the train from Gare de Lyon and the journey south to the Riviera.

All these things remain, yet Rosetta knows that much else can never be the same. So many men, dashing and elegant, have perished on the battlefields and her dear friends, Baroness Stern, Princess Charlotte and the Empress Eugenie, are not long for this world. As for the Russian grand dukes and princes, there are no more sumptuous villas and winter palaces. In fact, she's heard that one of the late Czarina's godsons is now employed on the
Côte
as a hotel concierge. It seems incredible.

When Rosetta reflects upon the heady life she knew so well, the ravishing women wrapped in ermine and sable, the private railway carriages lined like jewel boxes in plush ruby velvet, the glittering balls attended by countesses who wore diamonds in their hair and, around their throats, ropes of glistening pearls; when she thinks back upon the sheer self-indulgence of an
existence where each whim was treated by a fleet of servants with urgent diligence … well, it might have been a fairytale, except that she was there and knows that, for a brief time at least, this fantastic, hedonistic world was real.

How much has changed, or disappeared? She's curious to know.

Florence and Winifred go to Sydney Cove and wave farewell to their glamorous sister. ‘I don't know how she does it – and all alone,' one says to the other. ‘How brave Rosetta is, how fearless.'

They see her, high above them on the great ocean liner, veiled by nets of coloured paper ribbons. Rosetta raises one hand, waves in return. With the other she holds on to her new summer hat, gay with blood-red poppies. Just for a moment, a single streamer becomes entangled with the blooms before a wanton gust of wind sends it spiralling into the sky. The sudden movement catches the eye of a fellow passenger. Gesturing, he says, ‘I saw flowers like that in Flanders,' as the ship slips from its moorings, begins to pull away.

Rosetta travels widely. She has a taste for exploration, seeks out ships sailing for Bombay or Cairo or Rio de Janeiro. But, after each expedition comes to an end, she returns to her gabled Bronte home in Sydney.

Ever since her first visit in 1905, during the final, turbulent months of her marriage to Louis, Rosetta has been attracted to this inviting city. Her desire to stay near its sparkling waters remains a constant throughout her life, whether by the harbour where sailing boats and ferries are enveloped by soft azure serenity, or near the ocean and the rolling blue-green tides that rise and fall in endless, rhythmic waves.

An abundance of seductive physicality is not the only reason for the city's enduring appeal. War has come and gone, but Melbourne continues to be more self-consciously aware of origins, of what distinguishes a person and their family. Sydney remains a different kind of metropolis; perhaps it is to do with being a great sea port. It is more forgiving. In Sydney, reinvention – Rosetta and Zeno's stock in trade – is still a distinct possibility.

Snapshots. It is in this way that Rosetta's four remaining decades are revealed. Her life does not present in a continuous, unfolding flow of events, but as fleeting images constructed from anecdotes and reminiscences, from possibilities and hints. My father continued to play the reporter's role, still chased leads and asked questions. On occasion, he recorded an opinion, sometimes he would speculate, or set down his dilemmas, perhaps write a brief vignette. Now it is these fragments that shape my understanding of the next forty years of my great-grandmother's life, together with my own memories. They are not of Rosetta, of course, but of my mother and grandmother, the lived experience of them.

Although Rosetta's child was named Frances Catherine at birth, for most of her life no one called her that. I remember Nana being very pretty, not tall but shapely, with that shape invariably enhanced by the wearing of a corset and a belt buckled at her waist. Perhaps it was a legacy of living in the convent: she was always particular about her appearance. In a way, I suppose that was how her change of name came about.

‘I couldn't wait to have my hair bobbed after the Great War,' she told me once when I was in her sitting room and she was drinking brandy and soda. It must have been five o'clock, because you could set your watch by her nightly consumption of the cocktail. The procedure was unchanging, as much ritual as habit.

‘It was the modern thing to do.'

My grandmother put her drink down and smiled, the coquette in her remembering, before she pursed her mouth into her customary ‘O' and drew back on a cigarette. Nana would have been in her late sixties then and smoking had already etched deep lines that fanned out from her upper lip. Her flat reflected a liking for watercolours, pastel-coloured porcelain shepherdesses and other tasteful ornaments, though, such was her addiction to nicotine, the wallpaper always had a faintly sallow tint.

‘This was when I lived at home in Melbourne, of course,' she said. ‘I was stepping out with a young man and when he came to the house to collect me he had the biggest shock. I'll never forget it. He walked in, took one look at me and said, “You look just like a boy – I'm going to call you Billie!”'

In that carefree moment, her final link to her mother, the very name Rosetta gave her, was effaced. No one ever called her Frances again. She would be known as Billie for the rest of her life.

 

Billie marries my tall, blue-eyed grandfather Frederick Mitchell Jacobs on 30 December 1921. He has served his country. Now he is making his way in the commercial world. Fred's smile is disarming. Billie finds him charming.

He has no intention of keeping his wedding vows.

Fred is a complicated man. His mother (she requires him to call her ‘Mater') has always doted on Hubert, his brilliant elder brother. Fred, the lesser, second son, is resentful. He has acquired a cruel streak, at least as far as women are concerned. Desperate
for their attention and devotion, at the same time he seems to hate women, hate his needing of them.

Rosetta is not aware that her twenty-one-year-old daughter has married, that Frances Raphael is Billie Jacobs now. She doesn't know that her only, unhappy child has moved to Sydney, or what further misfortunes will befall her there.

My mother, Sybil, is born three years later, in 1924. After Billie brings her infant daughter home from hospital, Fred sets about seducing her nurse. But faithlessness is not Fred's only flaw.

‘I have a memory.' My mother's voice catches. ‘The picture in my mind is of my mother on her knees, my father's hands upon her, forcing her towards the floor.'