‘Nothing’s impossible if you are determined. Use your love for Noël, that indignation you have that anyone could hurt a child, to light a fire under Ross,’ he said with urgency in his voice. ‘Make him see you aren’t prepared to just go on the way you have been. Be strong and forthright.’
‘I’m not good at that,’ she said helplessly.
‘You are, you came here to talk to me didn’t you? You had the courage to take Noël away from May, and the persistence to take care of him. You can do anything, Dulcie. Just believe it.’
‘But what if I fail?’ she said. ‘What then?’
‘You won’t fail, it’s only Ross who can do that. He’s the one who has to face up to his demons and agree to get help. If he won’t, you must walk away.’
‘I can’t do that,’ she gasped. ‘He’s my husband.’
‘Even in the eyes of the law an unconsummated marriage is grounds for annulment,’ he said firmly. ‘In the eyes of God I’d call it a travesty. You deserve happiness, Dulcie, you owe it to yourself to find it.’
Three days after Dulcie’s talk with Stephan, she and Rudie were back in Brisbane for May’s funeral, waiting in a sombre room for the undertakers to arrive.
It had been a very strained three days. They had shared the chores and looked after Noël just as they always had, but there was a distance between them. Dulcie was deeply upset by May’s death, disturbed by the feelings Rudie’s passionate kiss had stirred up, dreading the moment she had to leave Sydney, and Stephan’s advice about Ross kept going round and round in her head until it made her feel dizzy with anxiety.
She guessed that Rudie was feeling just as wretched. Several times in the past couple of days he had shut himself in his studio, or taken Noël out for a walk alone. She guessed he was brooding about May, looking back to the good times with her and perhaps blaming himself for the way things turned out. He was probably anxious about coping with Noël alone once she went home, perhaps regretting that kiss too. Dulcie sensed he was keeping his personal worries to himself in deference to her feelings, but she wished he would speak of them, just to clear the air.
She glanced sideways at him. He looked very severe in a black suit. Even though his face was tanned and he claimed to have put on several pounds in weight in the past few weeks, she thought he looked gaunt and hollow-eyed.
Yet even though they had barely spoken on the plane coming here, now that the time for leaving was so close, she was becoming ever more aware of how much she was going to miss him. He was so comfortable to be with, so interesting and funny. That kiss hadn’t helped either, she had tried to banish it from her mind, but it kept coming back, making her stomach contract and her skin tingle. She supposed it was nothing much to him, he’d kissed so many women in his life, but she wasn’t going to be able to forget it in a hurry.
As for Noël, she could hardly bear the thought of leaving him. A day without his merry chuckles was impossible to contemplate. Even leaving him today with Mrs Curston, knowing they wouldn’t be back until tomorrow night, was a wrench. How could she hope that Ross would come to see what Noël meant to her? She couldn’t even put it into words herself.
The undertaker came to the door to see if they were ready to leave, and they filed out. As there were only the two of them as mourners and a handful of people who had clearly only come out of curiosity because they’d learnt the deceased had been drowned and had been a prostitute, it was fortunate that the church was such a tiny one, but Dulcie was touched that the priest conducted the service with as much reverence as he would have done for a well-loved member of his own congregation.
The smell of the incense took Dulcie right back to the church she went to with her father in London. She could almost feel five-year-old May wriggling in the pew beside her, and see their father giving her a warning look to behave herself. She barely heard the priest’s words, for images of May were coming thick and fast. Pushing her on the swing in the park, May’s thick blonde plaits jumping up and down. Watching her trying to dress herself, getting all her cardigan buttons mixed up. Seeing her little face alight with glee as she carried a goldfish home in a jam jar from the fair on Blackheath.
Her heart ached for her sister, it wasn’t May’s fault she went wrong. She was just an innocent, sweet little girl when their mother died, and it was adults supposed to be caring for her who corrupted her. Dulcie looked up at the priest and remembered how once she truly believed all priests were men of God. Perhaps this one really was, but she knew now that there were more evil people hiding under the protective mantle of the Catholic Church than there were outside it. People like them had stolen May’s childhood, without them she might have been a happy young bride now, on the threshold of a new life.
‘Rest in peace, May,’ she prayed silently, tears streaming down her face. ‘I loved you even if I didn’t fully understand you. Rudie and I will see no harm comes to Noël.’
Four days later, at seven in the morning, Dulcie prepared to bath and dress Noël for the last time. Her train was leaving at ten-thirty and Sarah would be here later to mind him while Rudie took her to the station. She stripped off his little sleep-suit and nappy, holding him on her lap, then took her time soaping his body, impressing everything about him on her mind for all time.
He was plumper now than when she first took him from May. He’d gained five pounds, he had one tooth, and he was far stronger, able to lift his head right up when they’d laid him on his tummy. She noted the two small dimples just above his fat little buttocks, the spare chin, the way his tummy stuck out like a little Buddha’s, and a small brown birthmark on his right ankle. He had Rudie’s dark eyes, and as she looked intently into them he gave her a wide gummy smile which made her laugh.
He loved the water, splashing as though he was born to be a life-saver. She felt a pang of longing at the thought she wouldn’t see him in the sea for the first time, sitting up alone, crawling or taking his first steps. Rudie had said that he’d bring him to Esperance next spring for a holiday, but that was such a long way off.
Her case was packed, waiting downstairs by the front door. It seemed in so many ways that she’d been here for years, not just a couple of months. She didn’t even feel like the same person any more. She’d learnt to cook Italian and French food while she’d been here, drunk wine and brandy, seen elegant dress shops and visited art galleries and museums which had given her such a different perspective on everything she knew before. She knew she wouldn’t be able to share it all with Ross, one word of any of that and he’d be seething with jealousy because another man had introduced her to it all. But as she lifted Noël out of the bath and wrapped him in a towel to dry him, she realized this was the one experience above all which had changed her. She would be wanting a baby of her own more than anything else, and once Ross got wind of that he’d probably shy even further away from her.
‘You’ve got to do what Stephan said,’ she murmured against Noël’s wet hair. ‘Be strong and forthright.’
Noël began pulling at her hair and laughing up at her, and her gloom lifted. She would find a way to get through to Ross, she was determined.
‘Please go,’ Dulcie begged Rudie once he’d escorted to her sleeper compartment on the train. ‘It will just prolong the agony if you stay, the train isn’t going for a while.’
‘Agony is it!’ he said with a smile. ‘A nice thing to say after all this time.’
‘You know what I mean. It was terrible saying goodbye to Noël, and now to have it all over again in slow motion is even worse.’
She thought her heart was breaking as she kissed Noël one last time. She had cried half-way into Sydney and it wouldn’t take much to start her off again. Everything she glimpsed on the journey – the last view of Watson’s Bay, Sydney Harbour Bridge, the Botanical Gardens, the half-built Opera House – all made her choke up. She wanted to hide in this cabin now, cry her heart out alone, and try to put it behind her before she got home.
‘Okay, I’ll go,’ he agreed reluctantly. He rifled through the books and magazines he’d bought for her on the station. ‘Are you sure you’ve got enough to read?’
‘You know I have,’ she said.
‘Well, can I give you a hug then?’
He looked so boyish and unsure of himself she had to smile. She stood up and put her arms around him, leaning her face into his big chest. He hugged her tightly for several minutes, and she sensed he was crying. ‘Always remember I’m your friend,’ he whispered eventually. ‘If anything goes wrong, if you need anything, just pick up the phone and call me. Whatever it is, I’ll help you.’
‘Thank you,’ she murmured into his chest, wishing she dared say how much he meant to her. ‘Ring me sometimes at mid-morning, I’m usually in the house alone then.’
He put his hand under her chin and lifted it. ‘I wish you well with Ross,’ he said with tears rolling down his cheeks. ‘But if it doesn’t go well, come back.’
Dropping a brief kiss on her lips he hurried off, and as she watched him go, half-turned sideways in the narrow passage, she was reminded of Bruce when he’d seen her off at Kalgoorlie, for he had the same despondent slump to his shoulders. She could still feel the warm imprint of his lips on hers, his last words rang in her ears, and in a flash of insight she realized he loved her.
She wavered in the doorway of the cabin, sorely tempted to run after him. But there were other people coming down the corridor now. Besides, what would she say to him?
As the train chugged out through the Blue Mountains she barely saw them through her tears. It was as though her mind was split in two. On one side she could see Rudie with Noël on his knee, her pretty little bedroom, the sights of Sydney. On the other side was Ross, Bruce, the farm, and her house with its polished wood floor and the window overlooking the lake. She knew she had got to let the second part slide over the first and obliterate it, yet it stubbornly stayed there, taunting her.
Looking back on all that had happened in Sydney she could see now that what she had mistaken for friendship was in fact love, on both sides. She could liken it to farming – the ground had already been prepared with their shared anxiety for May, even before she arrived in Sydney. Both being alone and bruised acted as a fertilizer, then the seeds of love were sown when Noël entered their lives. The worry about whether he might be taken from them was like rain, the happiness they shared with him the sunshine. It was hardly surprising that the seeds began to sprout and grow.
It could have escalated into an affair too when Rudie kissed her, for she knew in her own heart she was so needy that night that one more kiss would have torn away all her resistance. Now at last she understood why Rudie had kept his distance since that night, why in the last four days since the funeral he hadn’t put his arms around her the way he used to when she was upset. How honourable he was, how sensitive and strong.
‘You’ve got three days to put him out of your mind,’ she told herself firmly. ‘You can’t have him and Noël. Ross, the farm and Bruce is your life, that’s where you belong.’
Dulcie heard Ross jubilantly shout her name as she stepped down from the train at Kalgoorlie, but in the mêlée of passengers getting off the train and those trying to board it, she couldn’t see him for a moment.
It was ten at night and the four-day journey had seemed interminable. The food on the train had been as good as on the way out, the other passengers probably just as interesting, but she’d found herself unable to eat or talk to anyone. She had tried to read, but the words danced in front of her eyes. She had tried to sleep too, but it had evaded her. Hour after hour of just lying flat on her back staring up at the ceiling and listening to the chugging of the train seemed only to stimulate memories. Her mind clung stubbornly to pictures of Rudie and Noël.
‘Dulcie!’
She turned her head to see Ross pushing his way through the crowd. He was grinning from ear to ear and even though the platform was dimly lit, she could see his eyes shining.
He was upon her before she could even catch her breath, he snatched her up in his arms and spun her round. ‘I thought the bloody train would never get here,’ he said breathlessly. ‘It’s beaut to have you back.’
His excitement was infectious. Dulcie banished her melancholy and hugged him back with equal enthusiasm, suddenly genuinely pleased to be back. He looked so handsome, his forearms and face were deeply tanned, set off with a white open-necked shirt, and his tawny eyes sparkled. His hair had grown considerably in the two and a half months she’d been away, it was now curly and tousled the way she liked it best, glinting pure copper under the station lights.
‘You just wait till you see the surprise I’ve got for you,’ he said as he led her out of the station to Bruce’s car.
‘Are you going to kiss me?’ she said once he’d put her case in the boot.
‘What, out here?’ he said, looking around him at the many people milling around.
‘Yes, out here,’ she insisted, thinking she might as well test the water right now.
He put his arms around her and kissed her lightly on the lips.
‘No, a real one,’ she said, holding him tightly.
To her surprise he didn’t wriggle away, but gave her a lingering kiss which sent tremors down her spine. ‘That’s better,’ she said with a smile once he’d eventually let her go.
She had forgotten how dark the bush was at night, and how scary the rough road to Esperance was. Ross chattered like she’d never known him do before, telling her that the crops were nearly ready now for harvesting, how Bruce had bought a couple of baby pigs, and that lightning had caused a small bush fire. Dulcie listened, but she was on the edge of the seat watching out for kangaroos as Ross didn’t seem to be paying much attention to the road.
There were a great many kangaroos, but fortunately none chose to leap in the path of the car, and finally they came to the track that led up to the farm.
The familiar smell through the open window made her heart suddenly leap with joy. It took her back to when she first came here. On so many evenings she’d gone out on to the porch, and the warm breeze had brought the rich aromas of the animals, the hay and grass to her. She would listen to the sounds of the night, rustlings of small nocturnal animals, cicadas chirruping, the lowing of cows, and feel a peace and happiness she’d never known before.