Rudie nodded, not so much in agreement as acknowledgement that he understood why she had to reply with such bitterness.
‘It seems to me that May, you and Ross have all been badly damaged by your upbringings,’ he said very gently. ‘Each one of you has found a different way to cope with it, and I really don’t know which is the saddest.’
‘There’s nothing sad about me,’ Dulcie said indignantly.
‘Self-sacrifice is sad,’ he said, his hand stealing across the arm of his chair to touch her arm lightly. ‘It’s rather beautiful, it’s good for those on the receiving end of your boundless compassion, but not good for you personally.’
‘You’re as bad as May, she said I was a martyr yesterday, but then I suppose she put this idea into your head.’
‘The only idea she put into my head was that you were a cruel fiend,’ Rudie reminded her. ‘I believed it implicitly until I read those letters from you. I certainly didn’t see a martyr there either, only a young girl who took her role as big sister very seriously. What I think now comes from you, no one else. I think, Dulcie, that you have taken all the blame on to your shoulders for everything that happened to you and May.’
‘I haven’t!’
‘Oh, I think you have, my dear. And when you met Ross you took him on board too. I daresay if I was weak and vulnerable you’d do the same for me.’
‘I wouldn’t,’ she said, getting flushed with indignation. ‘That’s a ridiculous thing to say.’
He smiled. ‘How much of what May said about me have you kept back?’ he asked tauntingly. ‘All you said was
she doesn’t see love in quite the same way as other people.
I wouldn’t mind betting she said I made her skin crawl, but you wouldn’t tell me that, you’d be too afraid of wounding me.’
Dulcie couldn’t answer because she knew he was right in that instance.
‘May’s way of coping with her wounds was with cunning,’ Rudie went on. ‘I suspect Ross’s way is denial. Strangely enough, I suspect that cunning and denial are easier to jettison overboard in the long run than self-sacrifice.’
‘What do you mean by denial?’ Dulcie asked.
Rudie laughed.
‘What’s funny about that?’ Dulcie felt irritated now.
‘Anyone else would want to talk about their own problem.’ He grinned. ‘But not you, shove that to one side, let’s help someone else first.’
Dulcie frowned. ‘I don’t believe I have a problem, but I’m curious about Ross. Is that so extraordinary?’
‘Not for you, it’s all part of your character. By denial I mean he won’t admit to himself there is anything wrong with him, I expect he’s even blanked out whatever it was which started it. But you’ve taken the blame, haven’t you? I bet you feel you aren’t pretty or sexy enough, or maybe too that you are just plain wicked for desiring sex.’
Dulcie blushed to the roots of her hair and Rudie laughed again.
‘Dulcie, you are absolutely delectable, any red-blooded man would want you. Believe that if nothing else. Whatever is wrong with Ross is tucked away in his past, some bad experience he can’t face up to. I expect he does love you, in fact I’m positive he does, but until he accepts that he has a problem, it isn’t going to be cured.’
‘We shouldn’t be talking about Ross like this,’ Dulcie insisted. ‘It’s not right.’
Rudie leaned closer to her and took her hand in his. ‘No, perhaps we shouldn’t,’ he said in a far gentler tone. ‘I’ve embarrassed you, put you on a spot, and I had no right to do that, but believe me, if I have overstepped the mark, it’s only because I want to help.’
Dulcie glanced nervously at him but was moved to see merely tenderness and concern in his dark eyes. ‘I can see that,’ she said. ‘I’m just not used to men who talk about feelings, emotions and such things. Just before Betty died, she tried to warn me off Ross, but I was too stubborn to really take on what she was saying. But we’re all guilty sometimes of only listening to what we want to hear.’
‘There’s nobody worse than me at that,’ Rudie laughed. ‘In the next day or so I’ll have dozens of friends ringing me advising me against trying to keep little Noël. But I won’t listen.’
‘You don’t mean permanently, do you?’ she asked, for there was something in the way he’d made that remark which sounded as if he was thinking long-term.
Rudie leaned back in his chair and smiled at her. ‘Yes, I guess I do, though it’s a bit soon to put my hand on my heart and swear to it. How can I possibly sit back and watch my own son go to a foster-home or be adopted?’
‘But Rudie, a man can’t bring up a child on his own.’
‘Why not?’ he said, giving her a sharp look. ‘Men have to manage when they are widowed or their wife walks out on them. You told me yourself that your father was the more capable parent. Look, I’m thirty-five, Dulcie. I have a decent home, I earn enough from my painting to live very comfortably, I’ve sowed all the wild oats I want to. I didn’t actively ever think I wanted children, I doubt many men do, but when I picked little Noël up in my arms today I felt something special, and it’s grown throughout the day.’
‘Aren’t you getting a bit carried away?’ she said anxiously.
He laughed softly. ‘Maybe I’m being a little idealistic, I have to admit I know absolutely nothing about babies and small children. But I do know how to love, isn’t that enough to be getting along with for now while I learn the rest?’
A vision of Noël in a bleak nursery filled with dozens of other unwanted babies all crying piteously came into her mind, and she knew he was right. She nodded.
He reached out and took her hand, squeezing it tightly. ‘A small really selfish part of me can’t help wishing that you won’t ever want to go home and that we can bring Noël up between us.’
Later that night as Dulcie lay in the guest bedroom, Noël in his carry-cot beside her, she thought about that remark of Rudie’s again. He’d said it lightly and later he’d even apologized and said he was being quixotic, for it seemed to him whichever way the authorities went, one of them was going to be hurt.
She might not have had much experience with men, but she sensed Rudie was attracted to her. It was of course only because of her strong similarity to May, but she reminded herself that in future she must stress how much her marriage to Ross meant to her, and steer conversations away from personal subjects.
Yet she couldn’t help but think a little wistfully how different it would be if she weren’t married. Since arriving in Sydney she’d seen how narrow her life had been so far, so little fun, so much hard work. Just these few days had expanded her horizons enormously, it was good to see crowds of people, to feel the pulse of a big city and it had made her think of the ambition she once had to become a teacher and to travel. She knew she was going to find it hard to accept the limitations of life back in Esperance.
But she couldn’t allow herself to think along those lines. Tomorrow she would have to ring Ross and tell him everything. It was that she should be thinking about, preparing what she was going to say to reassure him, not day-dreaming of something that could never be.
Noël made a funny little squeaky noise and she leaned up on one elbow to look at him. He was sound asleep, thumb in mouth, the covers tucked firmly round him, and the sight brought tears to her eyes. Where was May tonight? Was she thinking of him and regretting her actions? Or did she in fact know Rudie so well that she knew Noël would be here safe in his house?
‘Oh, May,’ Dulcie whispered to herself. ‘Why wasn’t all this enough for you? A good man, a nice home by the sea, it’s so much more than most women get.’
She lay back on the pillow, remembering what Rudie had said about her, May and Ross all being damaged and coping with it in different ways. She didn’t agree, in her opinion she and May had always been much the same way they were now. She had always been a carer, the one that held back, observing and listening. May had always fought for a centre-stage role, whether that was through charm or cunning. As for Ross, she couldn’t for the life of her see what Rudie meant by saying he was in denial, after all he’d told her everything that had happened to him as a child. Besides, surely a child brought up without love and affection would want much more than a normal person? So why would he turn away from her all the time?
Dulcie took the bull by the horns and rang Ross the following morning when she knew he would be in Bruce’s house having breakfast. She had left Rudie upstairs giving Noël his bottle and she had thought until she heard Ross’s voice that she was totally prepared. But his first question, when was she coming home, threw her, not by the content – she had expected that – but by the sullen aggression of his tone.
‘Not for a while,’ she began, then without giving him a chance to say anything more she launched into what had happened.
He didn’t interrupt at all, not until the part where she came here to Rudie’s house, and then he let rip. ‘You can leave there right now and get the train home tonight,’ he barked at her. ‘It’s his kid, let him bloody well look after it.’
‘I can’t do that,’ she said. ‘May asked that I be Noël’s guardian, I have to stay and see it through.’
‘Your sister is a tart, and her little bastard is nothing to you,’ he shouted. ‘I’m your husband, I have rights.’
‘Not to tell me to ignore my own nephew,’ she retorted. ‘I thought you of all people would have a little compassion for Noël. I even hoped you would tell me to bring him home so we could bring him up.’
‘I don’t want another man’s kid in my house,’ he roared at her. ‘Especially the leavings of a slut and a bloody artist.’
She gasped at his cruel words, and her anger flared up and spilled over. ‘Then I may never come home,’ she snapped. ‘Seeing as I’m not likely to ever have a child of my own. Or even a normal marriage.’ To make her point even clearer she slammed the phone down.
Seething with rage, she stamped out of the house and down the road and turned down to the little beach. The sand was damp from a shower during the night, and aside from a couple of fishermen unloading their catch at the far end, there was no one else around.
She stood still for a moment or two taking deep breaths to calm herself. The sun was shining, the sea very calm and blue, and the only sound the gentle swish of the sea over the sand and birds singing in the trees. Sydney Harbour Bridge in the distance looked so graceful, and she was reminded by the many tall buildings near it that there must be hundreds of people there in the city with problems even larger than hers. A squawking noise behind her made her turn, and there on a small tree in one of the gardens of the cottages by the harbour were a couple of sulphur-crested cockatoos.
They were so beautiful and unexpected, both had their beady eyes fixed on her and they sounded as if they were scolding her, that she was forced to smile, and immediately she regretted saying something so cruel to Ross.
‘He’ll come round in a day or two,’ Rudie said encouragingly when she told him about her conversation with Ross. I expect he’ll go down the pub tonight, drink himself senseless and wake up tomorrow morning feeling like hell and missing you. That’s the point when common sense takes over, because he’ll see if he carries on like that he will lose you.’
‘But I’m ashamed that I said that about not having a child of my own,’ she said, blushing furiously.
Rudie shrugged. ‘It’s better said than left to fester,’ he said. ‘He might just think on it enough to try and get some help.’
‘Where would anyone go for help like that?’ she asked, thinking of the time she wrote to the Agony Aunt in a magazine.
‘A psychiatrist,’ he said, then seeing her anxious expression he put his arm around her shoulder and squeezed her. ‘I know from what you’ve told me about him he isn’t likely to go for that, but I’ve got a friend who is one, you could try talking to him while you’re here, he might be able to give you some advice.’
‘I doubt I could bring myself to talk about something like that to anyone,’ she said sadly.
‘You managed to tell me, even if it was more me digging it out,’ he replied. ‘But let’s take Noël for a walk now, and let me show you the sights. We’ll drop in at the doctor’s on the way too and get him to check our little man out.’
Chapter Twenty-three
The next nine days were a time of discovery and joy for both Rudie and Dulcie as they shared caring for Noël. He appeared to them to be an exceptionally placid baby, only crying when hungry, and sleeping solidly from seven in the evening round to eight the next morning. The local doctor had weighed and checked him out, pronouncing him a fine healthy baby, and suggested they started him on some solid food. He was sympathetic and supportive when they explained the predicament they were in, giving them a couple of child care books to study. He had already made a home visit and filed a report with the Child Welfare Department in their favour. His advice to them at that time was just to enjoy Noël and not to worry about the officials.
They had been enjoying everything, even the shared domestic chores. Rudie liked to bath Noël, push the pram and change nappies, and for Dulcie who had never before seen a man doing traditionally female jobs, it was a source of wonder. But then Rudie was happy for her to take over male roles, it was she who put the second-hand cot he’d bought together, and while she was painting it pale blue, he hung the curtains at the window in Noël’s room. When she admitted on her third day there that she liked to draw and paint too, he put a canvas on his easel and said she was to paint something for Noël while he took him out for a walk.
Dulcie was nervous about painting anything when Rudie was such an expert, but inspired by a large white floppy rabbit he had bought for Noël, she painted him propped up on a couple of books on the window-sill. When she finally finished it two days ago, Rudie was genuinely admiring, saying he thought she could easily become a children’s book illustrator. While she didn’t entirely believe this, it had given her a warm glow.
It occurred to Dulcie on around the sixth night, as they bathed Noël together, that this was how married life should be. Togetherness, a great deal of laughter, neither one trying to out-do the other. They discussed what they would eat, and when, for Rudie didn’t have a set timetable. Some days she got up at seven to find he’d been painting since first light, others he was still in bed at nine. Sometimes he ate like a horse, other times he only wanted a sandwich. She found this pleasing, for her life so far had been set in strict lines from which there was no deviation. It was so nice to be asked to go to the beach with him to watch the sun go down, taking turns in carrying Noël. To have her opinion asked about a new plant for the garden, or just to sit over a bottle of wine in the evenings and talk about books, or listen to his records. Rudie loved pop music, he said some of his more dignified friends despaired of him for not listening to classical music or jazz, and he would turn up his radiogram to blast out Del Shannon’s ‘Hey Little Girl’, or Billy Fury’s ‘Last Night Was Made for Love’ and sing along with them too.