‘I see,’ he said, his voice grave. ‘Can he talk about it to you?’
He had opened the floodgates for her and it all came tumbling out in a torrent. She didn’t say much about the mechanics of it, only that Ross got to a point when he just froze and cried. Most of what she said centred on her own guilty feelings that it was all her fault. She even told Bruce about the letter from Aunt Angela and her advice.
‘But how long can I go on being patient for?’ she implored him. ‘He works all hours to avoid being with me. Once the house is finished, what will he do then? I feel so wretched and ugly because of it.’
Bruce lifted the baby, who had now dropped off to sleep again, on to the bed. Then, taking Dulcie’s hand, he pulled her up and hugged her tightly.
‘You poor love,’ he murmured by her ear. ‘I never guessed it was that, I just thought you were fighting. But I think your Aunt Angela is living in the last century, you mustn’t take the blame for this.’
‘But what do I do, Bruce? I do love him, we’ve got so much in common, he’s my friend.’
‘I don’t know,’ Bruce said thoughtfully. He sat down on the chair and let her sit on the bed. ‘It’s not anything I’ve come across before. I’ve heard of men not be able to do it when they’re drunk, but that’s different. It strikes me he needs a doctor, one of those who goes into what happens in your head.’
‘A psychiatrist?’ she said in alarm. ‘They only deal with barmy people.’
Bruce half smiled. ‘Well, there’s plenty of men would say he is barmy if he can’t make love to you!’
Dulcie blushed. ‘He had a terrible time at Bindoon, the orphanage he was in,’ she said. ‘Could that be something to do with it?’
‘Maybe,’ Bruce said. ‘But it strikes me that if he really loves you, it should be him who tries to find out what’s wrong with him, not you. No one should have to be responsible for someone’s else’s happiness.’
‘Not even when they are married?’
Bruce shook his head. ‘I agree if one of you is ill or injured the other one should take care of you, that’s part of the deal. But if he won’t talk about this, won’t get help, he isn’t being fair to you.’
‘I can’t leave him, Bruce,’ she said, tears starting up in her eyes. ‘He needs me too much.’
Bruce sighed. ‘You’ve got to make him talk about it then. There’s no other way. Be firm and say unless he does, you have no choice but to end the marriage. It wouldn’t even be divorce, in cases like this the marriage is just annulled.’
‘I can’t threaten him!’
‘Sometimes it’s the only way to deal with certain problems,’ Bruce said sadly. ‘I know he loves you. I don’t think he’d stand by and let you go.’
‘But I might make him worse,’ she argued.
‘He’s got to face whatever demons are inside him some day. But let’s go and have a cup of tea now – put all this aside and enjoy yourself. Who knows, putting the roof on the house might even bring him right!’
Dulcie smiled. Bruce was ever the optimist, that was almost certainly what had brought him through to where he was today.
‘You won’t be tempted to say anything to him?’ she asked.
He tightened his lips together. ‘My lips are sealed,’ he muttered through them.
Dulcie laughed. ‘I’d better take this baby back to her mum.’
‘Just a minute.’ Bruce caught her face between his two hands, and kissed her on the forehead.
‘What’s that for?’ she asked.
‘You’re a special girl, Dulcie. Don’t forget that.’
Chapter Twenty-one
Pale winter sunshine slanted through the end window of the living-room, casting a beam across the part of the floor Dulcie was polishing. She sat back on her heels for a moment, looking at the room with pride.
Ross had finished the house at the end of March, and they’d moved in immediately. With money they had saved, they bought a bed, cooker and refrigerator. But since then they had added other bits and pieces, hand-me-downs from neighbours, including a three-piece suite, and a couple of rugs.
It was like heaven to Dulcie, and she knew it was to Ross too. Everywhere was painted cream, the three-piece suite was mossy green, and one of the neighbours had given them a beautiful old jarrah wood coffee table, which Ross had lovingly sanded down and revarnished. The table and chairs didn’t match and they were poor quality, but Ross had varnished them, and Dulcie had made smart piped cushions for the chair seats. When the sun came in during the late afternoon the small side window, with a view across the paddocks, was a good place to sit. The big window Ross had promised had turned into glazed doors, so they could open them right up in the summer. The view there was of the lake in the distance, and just as Ross had predicted, it was a perfect place from which to view wildlife.
Dulcie had turned to painting and drawing since they moved in, and Ross had framed one of her pictures and hung it on the wall above the fireplace. It was of the lake in winter when the gum trees grew right out of the water. Everyone who had seen it remarked on how she’d captured the eeriness of it. While Dulcie didn’t really think it was as good as they claimed, she was pleased with it.
It was late August now, and a very chilly afternoon. She would have to go over to Bruce’s in a moment and start cooking the supper, but she just wanted to get the floor finished first. Ross had sanded the floorboards, sealed and varnished them. They really didn’t need polishing, only wiping over, but she liked the smell of polish and the feeling she was taking good care of the house.
She and Ross ate with Bruce, John and Bob most nights, because it was easier for her to cook only once. But on Sundays they all came here, and she loved preparing a big roast, with a special pudding too.
The excitement of moving into the house and turning it into a real home had taken Dulcie’s mind off the problem with Ross. At times she could even forget there was one. Yet sadly it
was
still there.
She had taken Bruce’s advice and tried to make Ross talk about it, but it was hopeless, he just walked away from her, or if they were in bed, turned his back on her. The suggestion he spoke to a doctor about it sent him into a dark sullen rage for days. So Dulcie had fallen back on Aunt Angela’s suggestions, remaining calm, passive and non-confrontational. On the rare times Ross instigated love-making and froze half-way through, she found herself resigned rather than tortured. While she hadn’t given up all hope that one day things might change for the better, she tended to look at all the good parts of their marriage, and ignore the rest. They didn’t fight or argue, Ross was appreciative of everything she did for him, and it was he who encouraged her to start painting and to become friends with Doreen, the woman she’d met on the day of the roof-raising. Dulcie often drove over to visit her in the afternoon and played with her children. In the evenings she painted or sewed, and Ross busied himself making something.
He was a marvel, he could make anything. She only had to say she wanted a bedside cabinet, a chest of drawers or some shelves, and he produced it. He worked in the spare bedroom mainly, as they had no furniture to put in there. But he had plans for building a shed on the side of the house next January when there wasn’t so much work to do on the farm.
On finishing the floor, Dulcie set the rugs straight, then slipped on a jumper before going over to Bruce’s. As she walked in, Bruce looked up from the table where he was doing some paperwork.
‘So what choice morsels have you got in store for us tonight?’ he asked. ‘Is it mutton or corned beef?’
This was his favourite joke, based on the time when that was all farmers ate. They could buy almost anything in Esperance now, including, at a price, the ready prepared frozen food which had once seemed a million light years away. Dulcie didn’t buy it, she thought it was too extravagant, and besides, there was a good variety of fresh food available now.
‘Toad-in-the-hole,’ she said. Bruce used to laugh every time she said that name. She supposed sausages baked in a Yorkshire pudding was an English dish, as Granny had often made it. Bruce teased her now by calling it Dingo-in-the-well, or Rabbit-in-the-trap, but whatever it was called, all the men liked it.
‘Beaut,’ he said, rubbing his stomach. ‘I’ve been thinking about food all day. I always do when I’ve got paperwork to catch up on. By the way, there’s a letter for you. John brought the post in a while ago, I didn’t see there was one for you immediately or I’d have brought it over.’
He rummaged under some papers and pulled it out. ‘From someone who doesn’t know you’ve got married, it’s addressed to Miss Taylor.’
The only post Dulcie ever got was from mail order companies, but seeing this envelope was handwritten she almost snatched it from his hand and ripped it open.
The address at the top was from someone in Sydney.
Dear Dulcie,
she read.
I find myself in a difficult predicament, a part of me tells me to mind my own business, but the other keeps telling me I must write to you. This is a difficult letter for me to write, for reasons I will explain as I go along, but finally I decided to follow my hunch, and contact you with regard to your sister May. Firstly please excuse me addressing you as Dulcie alone, but I do not know your married name. Though in fact I saw you once at, your wedding in Kalgoorlie…
‘It’s from someone who knows May, he met me too in Kalgoorlie,’ she burst out to Bruce.
He looked up at her in surprise. ‘Stone the crows,’ he exclaimed. ‘Well, hurry up and read it. Don’t keep me in suspense!’
Dulcie fumbled for a chair as she read on.
I was the man in a cream suit May danced with out on the veranda at the Old Australia.
I didn’t expect at that time to ever see your sister again, but to my surprise when I was waiting for the Sydney train a few days later, there she was complete with luggage. To cut a long story short, we travelled together, and when we arrived in Sydney, I offered her a bed at my house as she hadn’t got anything organized.
She stayed with me for most of that year, during which time she found secretarial work in the city. I have to admit at this point I had fallen in love with her, and would have married her at any time, but in November she disappeared, without any prior warning, not even an explanatory note.
I called where she worked, to find she’d left there some weeks earlier. I went to everyone she knew, but could find no trace of her.
Clearly she didn’t return my affections, so I eventually decided to cut my losses and stop looking for her. But then in July of this year, a friend told me he’d seen her in the King’s Cross area of Sydney. The strangest thing was that he said she was pushing a pram!
I am an artist, and not the most organized, conventional or smart man. But even I could work out that if the baby she was pushing was hers (I have since ascertained it most definitely is), then I could be the father. But at that time, without any proof it was her child, only surprised, and somewhat hopeful because she was still here in the city, I searched around my house looking for anything she might have left behind. I was looking for a diary, an address book, anything that might give me a new lead.
What I did find shocked me to the core. A small bundle of letters fallen behind a chest of drawers, all addressed to May, from you, most to an address in Perth, but a few in her last year at St Vincent’s orphanage.
Their contents turned everything May had told me about herself upside down. She said that you both came from a well-to-do family in Worcestershire, that you’d left first to come to Australia, and May had followed you later once you became engaged to the farmer whom I’d seen in Kalgoorlie. She told me a great deal more too, depicting you as some kind of evil fiend. But as I read your lovely and often poignant letters to May I saw the truth.
Any sensible man would have dismissed her from his mind entirely at that point, but I found I couldn’t. Which is why I checked hospital records to discover if she had given birth. She had, a little boy on 5 May of this year.
It transpires May is far younger than I believed, she is cunning and I suspect more than a little unbalanced. I do not say this to hurt your feelings, Dulcie, but to lay my cards on the table. I hope that you share my conviction that any child should be protected and brought up in a secure and loving home.
Maybe this baby isn’t mine. But that is almost immaterial, because there is still a little mite out there with her in King’s Cross, a dubious place at best, and I fear for its safety. I have recently managed to discover May’s address, and how she is supporting herself, but that leaves me with even more anxiety. I believe that if I go there, it is very likely she will just vanish again. A letter either from me or you will probably have the same effect. The only thing I can think of which would work is for you to take her by surprise and call on her. I believe if she was confronted by you in person, she would not only let you see the baby, but she might be persuaded to think of its future welfare.
I know it is asking a great deal of you to come all the way to Sydney. But the love you show for her in your letters prompts me to ask this, and I am quite certain you have been very anxious about her since the day she left your farm. There is of course a small chance that she has already contacted you, if so please forgive me for spilling out information which you might find distressing. But my hunch is that May is much too ashamed to write to you, just as she is to me.