Swords and Crowns and Rings (60 page)

‘She said I would require a man's assistance and intelligence,' Dorothy said. ‘All women need a man to lean on, she said.'

‘Hell!' said Australia, laughing. ‘My brother Titus isn't a man, he's a bandit. That mother of mine! She never ceased seeing Titus as the pitiful little twelve-year-old that Papa sent off to England to be educated to be the century's most accomplished editor. Poor Papa, that was
his
dream.'

‘He says I owe it to him because he's given a home to Mother and Olwyn all these years,' said Dorothy, pursuing her own train of thought.

‘What a hide he has!' exploded Australia. ‘I don't doubt that your mother has kept the seductive devil in comfort from her own purse, not to mention the trust my father established for Olwyn.'

‘And mine,' thought Dorothy, who upon gaining control of her capital at twenty-four had found it greatly diminished.

‘Look,' said Australia, ‘you're not in any way bound by Mother's will. You don't have to feel guilty if you consider you aren't equal to the responsibility. The whole thing's at your own desire and discretion, if I remember the wording of the will. Titus can't force you into one decision or the other; but it's to be expected that he'd try to pressure you into the one which brings him money.'

‘But I want to do as Granny asked,' said the girl. ‘She trusted me. That's why she asked me, and not someone else.'

‘Oh, my dear,' said Australia, ‘and that's why the old puss sidled off to that shabby little solicitor to make her will. She knew very well that Jackaman and Jackaman would argue her out of something so quixotic and sentimental.'

‘But why shouldn't Granny have what she wanted?' asked Dorothy. ‘Even if no one thinks it sensible?'

‘If that's how you feel about it, then tell Titus to go to blazes.'

‘The family think he's right,' admitted Dorothy. ‘My mother writes letters...and Uncle Titus is very persuasive. I get—upset.' She added despairingly, ‘I'm not like you, Aunt Australia. You're so firm about everything. You aren't tempted to give in just so all the fuss and argument will stop.'

‘Damned nonsense!' said Australia. ‘Take a stand and stick to it. What does it matter what any of them say? Sod them!'

It occurred to her then that there was something soft and humid about this niece of hers; something old-fashioned and last-century. Maybe her shrewd old mother had been right—here was one girl who needed a man to lean on. But not, for God's sake, Titus.

Dorothy, thinking she read disapproval, even contempt, on Australia's face, jumped up and said nervously, ‘I shouldn't have taken up your time, Aunt. I do know how busy you are. I was inconsiderate. Of course I'll work it out some way, I have to, I do see that. But I seem so—stupid.'

She was a pretty creature, Australia thought, melting as she gave the girl a hug. The fragility of youth's form and appearance gave the woman a pang. Still, the girl would have to shoulder her own temperamental disability; she was no longer a child.

Australia's head felt empty, and at the same time achingly crammed. There were so many things to think about, critical aspects of her trip to the United States. Beside them a charitable old woman's romantic bequest seemed both ludicrous and trivial.

She realised she was sitting there remembering the day she had left her father's home. Why had she left? To flee from the domination that was driving her mad, from an opposition that afflicted her so much it would have been easier by far to concede. The vehemence and despairs of the young girl she had been! Her terror of her mother's tears and loving pleas, lest they disarm her! Who could have thought that such violence of emotion could ever be extinguished, almost forgotten?

It seemed to her now that she had been extraordinarily like Dorothy, conditioned to terror of disapproval, feet and hands chopped off so that she'd fit into some Procrustean bed designed for her by loving and well-intentioned parents.

‘Poor little beast,' she said mournfully, referring not to Dorothy but to the girl she herself had once been.

When Dorothy returned home, she heard Uncle Titus's voice in the drawing-room, talking to Aunt Adela. There was another letter from her mother on the tray in the hall. She could not make herself even pick it up. It would be another demand, couched in playful, affectionate words, that she be sensible, co-operative with Uncle Titus, whose judgment was so good, relinquish dearest Grandmama's idealistic scheme. Olwyn would be presented soon...long to see you...darling Dorothy...

The young woman could almost hear her mother's endearments following her as she went to the door of the drawing-room. Uncle Titus must be getting desperate, she thought: calling up reinforcements. He sat there smoking, smiling his enigmatic smile while Adela talked at her. She found that by tensing her shoulders, compressing her knees, squeezing herself into a rigid defensive bundle, she could bear it. At last she looked at Uncle Titus and muttered, ‘Next week, say Thursday or Friday. I'll have made up my mind by then.'

‘Dearest child,' he protested, ‘you're such a tease. It isn't fair to me, is it, Adela? You know how important it is for me to get back to London. Can't you decide before Thursday or Friday?'

He came forward to take her hands, put his arm about her shoulders in the careless manner he had. She rose quickly and moved towards the door. He made her flesh cold. When as a young girl she had shied away from him she had been wiser than she knew. Who and what was he? She had no idea. He had no observable qualities except his formidable zeal for getting his own way. Amusing, bland, sweet-tempered, he applied relentless pressure, overwhelming all in his path like a ton of ice cream.

She escaped through the door, hearing Aunt Adela fizz: ‘I might as well talk to the air. She's nothing but a flapper. Flighty. As much brains as...'

Dorothy reached her bedroom as though it were a rabbit-hole, gasping with anger and fright. She had seen the fleeting expression on Uncle Titus's face. She knew what she was doing. She was withholding safety from him, and he hated her for it.

She felt sullen anger at their insolent assumption that she could be coaxed and bullied at their will. Not one of them, not even Australia Jackaman, had inquired what Clara had really wanted to achieve. Without honest investigation, they had inferred that their mother had been virtuous but a little feeble-minded, sentimental, and ignorant of the world. Not one of them remembered that Clara knew the hardest aspects of the world better than any of them. She had wanted to rescue the helpless and manipulated from their fate, as James had rescued her. And as her knowledge of humankind had grown, Clara had wished also to assist incompetents, drunkards—those who had built their own wretched fate.

Dorothy knew, because Clara had told her, that the old woman had loved her children just because they had been her children. She didn't care at all for the people they were now, but forgave them for the phantom child's face she could still see in each one of theirs. She said that Britannia and Adela had been such impetuous, loving little rogues.

Dorothy understood her grief. It was terrible to think that two loving little rogues had turned into a pair of she-bigwigs with grey wire wool coiffures, blancoed noses and discreetly red geisha mouths.

Only Titus had not changed for Clara. Australia had been right. Even though the old mother had seen her adult son from time to time throughout the years, she had always continued to regard him as the delicate-featured child, standing at the ship's rail in the cold wind, trying not to cry. Clara had been guilty. She knew she should have put up a fight to keep him at home till he was older.

Dorothy went down the back stairs and took the key of the go-downs from the board in the back porch. Mrs Marion appeared, wiping her hands, saying, ‘Everything all right, Miss Dorothy?'

The woman was afraid for her job, as Robert and the others were. Rag Castle had been their home so long. The weight of responsibility for these familiar people, and for all the strangers that would pass through the Jackaman Shelters if they ever came to reality, pressed upon the girl crushingly. Her face must have shown something of this, for Mrs Marion took a step forward: ‘Miss Dorothy...has something happened?'

Dorothy shook her head and continued on her way through the chestnuts and beeches.

The go-downs were immense forsaken caverns; the hardwood beams that bridged their derelict vacancy were like fire-blackened trees. They were full of anomalous shadows, like men hanging. Amongst the many odours of mice and decay, there was an Oriental smell—musty tea, sandalwood, stiffly dressed madras and calico.

It was a place for lizards and cockroaches, and tree roots insinuating themselves through wall cracks like slim white serpents.

Clara had taken years to work out her plan to convert the old storehouses into a refuge for destitute men. She said: ‘There's always someone to look after little babies, but people think there's something low and disgusting about homeless men...

‘It seems to me, dotie,' she explained to Cushie, ‘that to love the unlovable is very hard; but it's what the Lord requires of us.

‘Dormitories here,' she pointed out, ‘and there cubicles for washing and shaving. Kitchens here, and a place where they can wash their clothes and hang them out to dry. Clean clothes are very important, especially for a man who has been used to them. It's a scalding shame for a decent man to have to go and look for work when his collar is black with dirt and grease.

‘What a blessing it is, pet,' she had said to her granddaughter, ‘that Balmain and Birchgrove are running down so fast. There'll be more and more workless and pensioners coming here. They automatically go to the bottom, you know.'

All Clara's plans, sketches, and notes were with the solicitor with whom she had made her final will. Undoubtedly the whole scheme would eventually be taken over by a competent committee; but the entire mechanism had to be set in motion by Dorothy Moy.

Dorothy had never guessed that Clara had intended to designate her. She had thought the plan for the Jackaman Shelters was just an old lady's benign fancy, something to keep herself busy. It was obvious that Clara intended her granddaughter to be the superior partner. Titus had been brought into it as adviser and protector for a young woman who looked as if she would never marry.

The terms of the bequest were simple. If Dorothy did not choose to proceed with the project, Jackaman Court and its estate was to be hers unconditionally. The fund Clara had provided to maintain the shelters was to be divided at once, three-quarters to go to Titus Jackaman, and the remaining quarter to Dorothy Moy.

When the girl had first learnt the contents of the will, she thought that Clara had conceived this plan as a gift to her, Dorothy Moy, as a means of filling absorbingly what Clara foresaw as a barren future for an unmarried woman. Probably she had believed the Emporium occupied such a place in Australia's life. Her nineteenth-century thinking followed such simple paths.

Now that she had had so much opposition from Titus and the Jackaman aunts, Dorothy thought she understood Clara better. Clara, like Jackie, had never asked her to be anything but what she was. The bequest was not for her benefit, but for the benefit of the unlovable and destitute, as Clara had plainly said. She had involved Dorothy only because she took it for granted that trusting love would be met by trusting love.

‘But I'm not strong enough. I can't trust myself,' Dorothy thought. The emptiness of her heart was like the emptiness in the go-downs: full of old ghosts, with faint signs of past activities and prosperities, a hollow place where riches once had been. She thought, ‘I don't want to be alone. I want to be with someone to love. But there isn't anyone now.'

She had tried for more than six years to become stable, serene, and mature. She had learnt from them all, Clara, Mrs Marion, the durable, brusque Australia. She had thought that the distraught, foolish Cushie of eighteen had vanished for all time.

Yet, even before Titus arrived, Dorothy had intimations, like the faint queasy tremors of distant earthquakes, that Cushie still lived, baffled, easily intimidated, a person trained from infancy to be an appeaser, one who would abjectly agree to something against her own will, solely to get away from the aggressiveness of others. She wondered whether all infants were as malleable as she had been. Her only defence had been to be submissive. Perhaps Olwyn's had been to develop bronchitis.

She could see now that she had never stood on her own feet. Twice she had made the gesture, when she had left Claudie List's house, and when she had refused to go to London. But she had not done that alone. Each time she had known her grandmother was there, loved her, would stand by her. Perhaps she never would be able to do anything alone. The years with her mother and the conditioning by her mother were too strong.

In her dealings with Uncle Titus she had followed the diagram her childhood training had laid out for her. She explained, listened, placated; she felt that he must be right; it was natural that he should know more than she. She wavered; saw with fright the phantasm of her mother's face looking from those handsome features; heard in Titus's authoritative masculine voice the tones of her father's. He would keep on at her until she was swamped, until at last in sheer fatigue and hopeless detestation of the situation she would concede—and betray old Clara.

Returning slowly to the house, her head bent, she thought, ‘Why do I even think of fighting them? What's the use of it all?'

As she hung the go-down key on its nail, she was submerged in despair. A life without love, what was it?

Mrs Marion came to meet her, saying, ‘Mr Titus and the ladies have gone, Miss Dorothy. They said they couldn't wait any longer. Miss Dorothy, you look tired. Shall I send a tray up to your room, perhaps?'