‘You can’t do that, you bastard.’ Ross tried to get up but fell back.
‘I can and I will. A woman has a right to know if her husband is going with whores. You could be infecting her apart from anything else. You are the bastard, Ross, not me. Dulcie is a good woman, she deserves better than that.’
‘I haven’t infected her.’ Ross was sullen.
‘How do you know? Did you know the symptoms of syphilis can go unnoticed in a woman for a long time? That a child in her womb could be infected too?’
Ross looked at Rudie blankly, his mouth opening and closing. ‘I haven’t been with her, not since I started going up there.’
‘So you prefer whores to Dulcie, do you?’ Rudie asked. ‘How do you think that would make her feel?’
All at once Rudie saw the fight go out of Ross. He sagged visibly and his lips began to tremble. ‘Don’t tell her, please. I won’t go there again. I promise I won’t.’
‘I won’t tell her if you let her go,’ Rudie said quietly. ‘Your marriage is a sham, Ross, you know it and so do I. So be a real man and do the right thing.’
Ross looked up at him and Rudie saw the face of a young, frightened boy. His heart contracted with sympathy for him, yet he knew he had to carry on.
‘I mean it, Ross, you have two choices. Either you tell Dulcie that you know your marriage has failed and you want your freedom, or I tell her what you’ve been doing. If you choose the first, she’ll retain her affection for you. But if it’s to be the second you’ll hurt her so badly you’re going to lose everything she ever felt for you.’
‘You bastard,’ Ross said, but his voice had lost its venom. ‘You just want her for yourself.’
‘Maybe I do want her, but believe it or not, that’s not my reason for confronting you with this. Someone has to step in between you two, if they don’t it’s likely to end in tragedy. It’s no good you saying you’ll stop going to Kalgoorlie to get a woman, you won’t. You need it, they give you something you can’t get with Dulcie. You tell me what she gets out of being married to you.’
‘Same as any other wife, a nice home, enough money,’ Ross said sullenly.
‘No, Ross, she doesn’t get the same as other wives, does she? She might have the nice home and enough money, but then she works just as hard as you do, and her role is only housekeeper. What about love and children?’
Rudie had carefully avoided bringing up the subject of sex, he wanted to push the man, not crush him, and he didn’t want Dulcie or Mary blamed for telling him.
‘I do love her,’ Ross insisted.
‘How much do you love her? Enough to want her happiness above your own? That’s what real love is about. Dulcie is like a caged bird with you, Ross. You think if you feed her, keep her warm and safe, that’s enough. It isn’t, not for someone like her.’
‘We’re the same,’ Ross said, his voice rising. ‘We’ve had terrible things done to us. We need each other.’
Ross shook his head. ‘You don’t, not any more. You both need to put all that behind you and start anew. What caused your breakdown, Ross?’
Ross’s head jerked up and his eyes narrowed. ‘What’s she told you?’
‘There you go, blaming Dulcie,’ Rudie said. ‘Is everything her fault? She didn’t tell me one word, she wouldn’t. She didn’t tell Bruce either. But I can make educated guesses, Ross, I went to an all-boys boarding-school in England, they aren’t places that are noted for their kindness to young boys either.’
‘Nothing in England compares with how it was at Bindoon,’ Ross shouted at Rudie. ‘You got to wear a smart uniform, you got three real meals a day, you had lessons or you wouldn’t be such a smart bastard now. Maybe you got the cane now and then, but that’s all.’
‘That’s all you know,’ Rudie said, remembering how one sixth-former had stripped off his shorts and underpants and held him against the fire in his study until his buttocks were singed. And how on many occasions he was held upside down with his head in the lavatory and the chain pulled. ‘Maybe the things which happened to me weren’t as bad as the things that you had to endure, but to me it was hell.’
There was silence for a moment, Ross sitting there looking at his hands in his lap. ‘Do what I said and let her go, Ross,’ Rudie said after a few minutes. ‘You won’t have to leave the farm, or your house.’
‘D’you really think Bruce would keep me on if Dulcie went?’ Ross snarled again. ‘I’d be out on my ear the next day.’
‘No, you wouldn’t,’ Rudie moved over to Ross and tentatively put his hand on the younger man’s shoulder. ‘Bruce cares as much for you as he does for Dulcie. He is as unhappy about how things are between you as I am. A man like him who had a long and happy marriage senses when something is wrong in other people’s. You are even more indispensable to him than Dulcie, housekeepers are two a penny, good stockmen are rare. Besides, if you do as I said, you will keep Dulcie’s friendship and affection, she’ll stay in touch with you, and Bruce too.’
He paused, letting his words sink in. ‘Do the right thing, Ross. Be a real man and let her go.’
Ross began to cry then, great shuddering sobs which came from deep within him, and Rudie could do nothing but just sit on the arm of his chair with his hand on Ross’s back. He recalled a scene just like this one in his own past. It was him crying then, a twelve-year-old boy pleading with his father not to be sent back to school. He could hear his father’s words still. ‘You can’t run from this, Rudie. If you do you’ll be running all your life.’
His father was right of course, he went back to school and learned to cope with, and rise above, being called ‘Pansy Jamsy’, and the older boys’ cruelty and jibes because he preferred to paint and draw than play rugby. Later, in the airforce, and when he first arrived in Australia he experienced more of the same, but by then he’d learnt to laugh with those who ridiculed him.
He gave Ross some brandy later and urged him not to attempt to drive home, but sleep in the spare bed upstairs. It wasn’t made up, and there were no more sheets anyway, but Ross didn’t appear to notice, just lay down like a beaten dog. Rudie removed his boots for him, covered him up with a blanket and felt ashamed that he’d inflicted this much pain on anyone.
Ross was gone when Rudie woke up the next morning. The blanket he’d covered him with was neatly folded, a poignant remnant of his training at Bindoon.
Dulcie had gone to bed early and fallen asleep straight away, so she didn’t know that Ross hadn’t come home until the following morning when she woke to see his side of the bed unruffled, his pyjamas still on the pillow. She sat up in bed and pulled the curtains back to find it was raining.
She was washing when she heard his motorbike, and a few seconds later he walked in.
‘Where have you been?’ she asked.
‘I stayed at a mate’s place,’ he said. ‘I had too much to drink to drive back.’
He had a closed expression on his face which warned her not to ask questions. So she made them both a cup of tea while he put on his work clothes.
At breakfast he was silent, but that was nothing unusual, especially when he’d been drunk the night before. She got on with her work once the men had gone out again, and she was doing some ironing and listening to the radio when Ross came in again about ten-thirty.
‘Come over to our house,’ he said. ‘I want to talk to you.’
In their entire married life he had never said such a thing. When they had talks they were almost always precipitated by her. She turned off the iron and the radio, grabbed an oilskin to put over her head, and ran through the rain after him.
He told her to sit down, but he remained standing by the fireplace. His face was rigid, but he didn’t look exactly angry. ‘I’ve decided we have to get a divorce,’ he said.
Dulcie could only stare at him in utter shock. ‘A divorce!’ she repeated. ‘But why?’
‘You know why, Dulcie,’ he said. ‘We haven’t got a marriage, have we? It’s not right.’
‘But it’s so sudden,’ she said. ‘Why now?’ Then, remembering he hadn’t come home, ‘Is there someone else?’
‘Don’t be a bloody drongo, Dulc,’ he said. ‘Look, you go, clear off to Sydney if that’s what you want. Just do it quickly.’
She got up from her seat. ‘You can’t just tell me to go like you’re sacking me,’ she said feeling hurt and angry too. ‘You explain what brought this on. Is it because of Noël and Rudie being here?’
‘No. Well, I suppose it is in a way. I’ve seen the way you are with that kid and I can’t give you one.’
Dulcie felt bewildered and stunned that he could go out on Friday night seemingly perfectly happy, then return the following day and insist it was all over. ‘But you could get help,’ she said pleadingly.
‘I don’t want help from some shrink,’ he snapped at her. ‘Look, I want you to be happy and I know you never will be with me.’
She ran to him and put her arms around him, suddenly so afraid. ‘But I love you, Ross, how can you send me away?’
He held her tight against him for a few minutes without speaking, and she could feel a kind of shuddering inside him. ‘I love you too. I always will,’ he said. ‘But it’s not a married love, is it? We’re just two frightened kids clinging together. You’ll be all right in Sydney. You can get a job in an office, make friends there with people like you. You might get to sell your paintings, you can buy nice clothes and all that stuff.’
‘But what about you?’ she cried. ‘What will you do?’
‘I’ll be here, running the farm, same as always. It’s what I like and what I do best. I couldn’t live in a city.’
‘No, Ross,’ she cried out. ‘We married for richer or poorer, better or worse. We’re Catholics, we can’t divorce.’
‘We’re not Catholics any more!’ he shouted. ‘That’s one thing we did manage to chuck overboard. Besides, you once told me you can get a marriage annulled if you haven’t done it. Even the Catholics go along with that one ‘cos it means you don’t get any kids.’
He put one hand on either side of her face and just held it. ‘You’ve got the sweetest face I’ve ever seen. I want it to still be like that in twenty years, but it won’t be if you stay with me. Go, leave me, but stay my friend, that’s all I want.’
He let go of her suddenly and ran into the bedroom. Dulcie ran after him and saw he was pulling open drawers and taking out shirts and socks.
‘Where are you going?’ she said in panic.
‘Away, until you’ve gone on Tuesday,’ he said. His face was hidden from hers. ‘I don’t want you here when I get back. There’s money in the desk drawer. Take all of it. Just write to me and phone me now and then.’
He shoved his things into a bag, grabbed his best jacket from behind the bedroom door, pausing only to pick up his shoes.
‘But what will I tell Bruce?’ she shouted after him as he pulled open the front door and went out.
He turned to look back at her in the doorway, the heavy rain was already soaking his shirt and jeans.
‘That I wanted you to be happy for ever,’ he said, then ran to his motorbike.
He stuffed the bag of clothes into the box on the back of the bike, leaped astride and jumped down hard on the starter, and it roared into life.
She saw him go hurtling down the track, and watched as he finally turned on to the road at the bottom and disappeared out of sight.
Bruce came over later and the door was open so he called through. ‘Are you in there, Dulcie?’ he yelled out. ‘I can’t find Ross. Has he gone into town for something?’
Dulcie had been lying on her bed crying. She sat up and called Bruce in. He came to the doorway of the bedroom, rain running off his oilskin coat.
‘He’s gone,’ she said.
He saw her swollen eyes and the soggy handkerchief clutched in her hand.
‘What do you mean, he’s gone? Gone where? Why are you crying?’
Through her sobs Dulcie blurted out what had happened. ‘He drove off without even a coat on,’ she said. ‘He said he wanted me gone by the time he gets back on Tuesday.’
‘But why?’
‘He said it was because he wanted me to be happy for ever,’ she said, still crying.
Bruce took off his oilskin and hung it by the door, then went back to the bedroom, took her hand and led her into the living-room where he sat her down on the couch. Sitting beside her, he put his arms around her and held her tightly for a few minutes.
‘Tell me again,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t make any sense to me at all.’
She repeated it all, including that Ross had stayed out all night.
‘Well, on the face of it it looks like he’s done the very bravest thing,’ Bruce said after a little thought. ‘You haven’t been happy, Dulcie, we all knew that. He’s given you a chance for a whole new life.’
‘But how can I just leave here?’ she asked. ‘What will I do without you? Who will look after you?’
‘I can get another housekeeper,’ he said. ‘Maybe nowhere near as good as you, but I’ll get by. Ross was right too when he said I’d rather see you happy. I would. So would John and Bob. You’ll be fine without me too. We can write letters and phone each other. I’ll come and visit you on the plane as well. It’s not as if you’ve got to go off to somewhere you don’t know either. Go to Sydney. You’ll have Rudie and Noël and all those other people you met there.’
Dulcie sniffed and wiped her eyes on her handkerchief.
‘I know you never wanted to leave there last year,’ he said gently, stroking her hair. ‘You came back out of duty and because Ross forced your hand. Well, you’ve fulfilled all that duty now. No one could have made more effort than you did, you nursed him through the breakdown, did your very best to make everything right. But you know in your heart it will never come right. I wouldn’t try growing cabbages year after year if they kept failing, would I?’
‘No, I suppose not,’ she said.
‘Well then, you can’t keep trying at a marriage that hasn’t got the right ingredients to start with.’
‘But it had, it had,’ she cried again.
‘Dulcie, you know that’s not true. It’s like Ross himself said, you were just two frightened kids clinging together. You thought because you had miserable childhoods in common that was enough. You’re a battler by nature, Dulcie, but much as I admire that quality in people, there are times when battling alone can’t pull things through. Look at Betty and me! We spent years trying to make our other farm work, but it just couldn’t Be done, so we had to walk away from it.’