It fell to Tufts and Liam Finucan to be the first Corundites who met Sir Rawson and Lady Schiller, docking in Sydney after sailing from San Francisco at the beginning of 1932. Liam had a conference to attend in Sydney and Tufts took leave to go with him; they had adjoining rooms at the Hotel Metropole not far from Circular Quay, spent their days apart, their evenings together, and their nights chastely separated by a hotel wall. Which suited them very well. Then on their very last day, Tufts received a telephone call from Edda.
“Rawson and I are at the Hotel Australia,” she said, “and we would dearly like you and Liam to have dinner with us tonight.”
“Wild horses wouldn’t keep us away!”
Since Liam’s unkempt days were in the past, he was clad in a good suit with a Guy’s Hospital tie, and tiny Tufts was beautiful in a dinner dress of amber chiffon. The couple waiting for them in the lounge, however, took all eyes; Tufts and Liam forgot their manners and stared. The man was impressive, if on the ugly side, but Edda was magnificent in emerald-green silk the exact colour of the ring on the third finger of her left hand, a big square emerald surrounded by small diamonds. Around her neck she wore a simple diamond choker, and in each ear lobe a large first-water diamond.
“Starve the lizards!” said Tufts, on tiptoe to kiss Edda’s cheek. “You look like a million dollars.”
“I nearly cost it,” said Edda, laughing.
Then Tufts met her new brother-in-law’s blue eyes and liked him, which was such a relief she almost buckled at the knees.
One wouldn’t think, Edda mused, listening to Rawson and Liam talk, that a lawyer and a pathologist would have much in common, and perhaps they didn’t, but they weren’t lost for words, which flowed back and forth in an easy comradeship that told Edda this folded-up, precise Irishman approved of her husband.
“You’re happy, Edda,” Tufts said in the Ladies’ Room.
“I am, very, except for the gifts.” Edda grimaced. “The engagement ring I couldn’t avoid, but I fought the diamonds tooth and nail. I may as well have saved my breath.”
“They’re beautiful, Eds, and in perfect taste. Simple.”
“Yes, thank God I don’t have to worry about Rawson’s taste. We mesh together amazingly well.”
“And you start Medicine III in February?”
“Yes, yes, yes! The jewellery goes to the bank for storage then, I refuse to keep it at home.” She stopped, smiled. “Home! The whole top floor of a tall building in the City of Melbourne, isn’t that odd? I have a whole flat one floor down for studying.”
“Lord! It must be like a dream.”
“Yes, it is, and I’m terrified I’ll wake up.”
“The man loves you.”
“Do you think so?”
The amber eyes blinked. “It’s written all over him.”
“He’s moved mountains for me.”
“I suspect,” said Tufts, tucking her arm through her sister’s, “that he’s a man accustomed to moving mountains.” Yet, walking back to the Metropole with Liam at midnight, she voiced some misgivings. “Oh, Liam, pray for her!” she cried.
“Does she need your prayers, Heather?” he asked, surprised.
“I suspect she does. Rawson Schiller is highly likeable, and I like him… But there are many sides to him, and I’m not sure how much Edda knows about all of them.”
“Well, they’ll be on the day train with us tomorrow, so keep your eyes open and your ears tuned. I share your opinion of him.”
“At least he’s not stingy. Such jewels!”
He snorted a laugh. “You don’t fool me, madam! Jewels are not high on your personal list of priorities.”
“Nor on Edda’s, alas. Therein lies the rub.”
“Only if he thinks she values them. I have a feeling he does not think she values them. On the other hand, as his wife she must wear them when the occasion calls for it.”
Grace decided that her own position as Queen of the Trelawneys saw her rank equally with a knight of the realm, and was gracious when they met; this occurred in her own cream-and-green house on Trelawney Way for morning tea, a repast that a widow with little children found easier to furnish than anything from luncheon onward.
It being the height of summer, the boys were shirtless and barefoot, clad in cotton shorts.
“Brian goes to school next year at the East Corunda Public, and John will go the year after that — they were born quite close together,” she said to her visitors, apparently unimpressed by Edda’s clothes or emerald ring.
“It must be very hard, Grace,” Rawson said warmly, “but it isn’t difficult to see that you’re a splendid housekeeper.”
“I manage. No point in whinging or moaning, is there? One must take the bad with the good, I always say.”
“Would you prefer to see your sons privately schooled?”
On the surface nothing rattled Grace, and the shock of Edda’s union was by now old enough to have been incorporated into her scheme of things, considered as a possibility, but then discarded — unless, later, things changed, of course.
“Brian and John know only one world, the Trelawneys,” said Grace to Rawson, charm and nobility showing. “I am assured East Corunda Public can provide satisfactory matriculation standards. I want my boys to matriculate with high distinctions.”
“What great things do you hope for them?” Rawson laboured.
“As a victim of the Great Depression, Rawson, my main hope is that whatever they do, their field of work is more secure than that of selling. Their father was a brilliant salesman, but the moment the Depression crunched down, people just stopped buying. They can’t go on the land because we don’t own any land, but schoolteaching or a career as an army or navy officer would be safe,” said Grace sternly.
Rawson eyed her helplessly, knowing himself totally confounded. This was Edda’s full twin? Extremely alike to look at, but they had nothing in common mentally or spiritually — absolutely nothing!
“If I can ever help, Grace, promise me you’ll come to me,” he said strongly. “I won’t insult you by pressing the matter, but remember what I’ve said.”
“I understand, but we’re all right,” Grace said. “Perhaps life’s greatest lesson is to aim low. Then you’re not disappointed.”
“Rubbish!” Edda snapped, finding her tongue. “Aim low, and you stay low! You have two splendid boys, and I hope you intend to make sure they gain university degrees, not merely matriculate.”
Grace turned to Rawson with a tolerant smile. “Darling Edda!” she cried. “A typical Edda reaction, you know. But how could you know? I’m her twin, I know the lot. Ambitious! Oh, lord, she has enough ambition for some sort of world contest. Though I’m really pleased she’s finally doing Medicine. Not that it will bring her any joy. Women doctors have a very hard time of it.”
“Edda will succeed,” he said mildly.
“Do have another finger of toast, Rawson. The apple jelly on it is home-made from my own Granny Smith tree. So much better for you than that bought stuff. Those of us on a Depression budget may eat more monotonously, but we also eat more healthily. Home-made!”
“The apple jelly is delicious,” he said, meaning it.
“And,” said Edda through her teeth as they drove off in the Rector’s car, “Grace is absolutely insufferable! I thought no one could be worse than the old complaining Grace, but all-conquering Grace, Queen of the Trelawneys, is beyond imagination. Insufferable!”
“But you love her to death,” he said, smiling.
She emitted a sound, half a sob, half a laugh. “Yes, I do.”
“Water finds its own level, Edda, and Grace is the pool at the bottom of the cascades. Not shallow — hidden depths. Whereas you are the falls, always in motion, full of energy, glorious to watch.”
She flushed, loving the unexpected compliment. “Kitty is the cascades — sparkling, dancing, a symphony of sound and rainbows.”
“What about Tufts?”
“The Pacific Ocean,
nothing less.”
“She and Kitty have preserved a strong physical likeness too, yet all of you seem far more different than you are alike,” he said.
“I know what you mean. Each of us has been altered by life.” She sighed. “I was wrong to encourage Kitty to marry Charlie — but she dithered so, Rawson! Tufts and I became convinced that the only thing that held her back was the stigma of being judged a gold-digger. And I genuinely believed she needed a man who idolised her. Charlie did. She struck him like a high voltage wire, he went a little off his head with love for her. What we couldn’t know turned out to be their ruination — Charlie’s jealousy and possessiveness.”
“Yes, he’s the sort who’d like to lock his women up.”
Edda ran the gauntlet of Rawson’s family the night following their arrival back in Melbourne. The only one who had an enjoyable evening was Rawson himself, at liberty to sit back and watch his new wife’s effect on a typical three-generations-of-wealth colonial family. The Schillers, he thought, have forgotten everything except how to maintain their social standing and keep increasing their money. My brothers married out of the stud book, women who labour to write a note — my mother is a snob with her own impeccable family tree — my father is a hard, narrow man who’d keep women in the home — there is only one Schiller with a university degree, me — my three nieces will be allowed to leave school before they matriculate, and my three nephews will matriculate, then not go up to university as a matter of course. But the Schillers are important people.
And here, like a shaft of red lightning, I have thrown down the bolt of my wife to shatter their complacence, split their ignorance asunder. Look at her! Sophisticated is the word I always think of first, because her beauty is suffused with all the qualities experience allied to intelligence can give; pain has expanded her sense of being, an innate need to assume full responsibility has endowed her with strength, and a passion to know will forever drive her beyond home, kitchen and nursery. She has such style! That’s a gift, it cannot be acquired.
Poor, silly Constance, to try to humiliate her by commenting on her unmanicured nails, unworthy of my emerald ring… How charmingly Edda explains that the rubber gloves of a theatre sister wouldn’t tolerate long nails, nor the understatement of a hospital condone red polish on them. And Constance, Gillian, maybe even my mother, sit remembering those awesome women smoothly bullying them into using a bed pan or showing them how to cope with the indignities of that drastic leveller, pain…
My father is baffled, he flounders in a mire of conversational inadequacy because he’s clever enough to understand that my wife outstrips him, could probably outstrip him at making money if such was her desire. Thank God it isn’t! Baby brother Rolf comes closest to liking her — he’s the countryman, nearer the earth and more in tune with the great cycles of Nature. For Edda, he senses, is the Great Goddess who had the power before men wrested it from her.
“How did it go for the fly on the wall?” she asked him after they returned to their own apartment.
“The fly saw you terrified them,” he said, smiling.
“Then if the fly doesn’t mind, I’ll keep it that way.”
“Mind? The fly loves it!”
To inhabit the whole top floor of an office building, even including a roof garden, meant that Sir Rawson Schiller had literal rooms to spare. Nor did losing his erstwhile guest flat to Edda inconvenience him, as the top three floors were subdivided into apartments he kept for family guests and staff on schedules or duties that made living at a distance from him difficult.
A married couple in their late forties, Ivan and Sonia Petrov, had looked after Sir Rawson for twelve years; together with a cook, Daphne, a cook’s offsider, Betty, and a scrub woman known as Wanda, they comprised his domestic staff. The Petrovs and Daphne lived in the building, whereas Betty and Wanda travelled by tram from some other part of Melbourne. Working hours, especially for the Petrovs, seemed to be flexible, but Edda suspected Rawson wasn’t the kind of employer who pinched pennies on matters like wages and perquisites; his staff clearly loved him too much, including his male secretaries, each of whom lived in. It’s like a tiny colony up here, she thought, amused and touched. As for his secret — none of them knew it.
Daphne ruled the kitchen, the Petrovs all else. Privy to Kitty’s struggles with Charlie over a chef, Edda saw the difference in attitude immediately. Charlie saw only a Cordon Bleu man; Rawson took a woman with no formal training and had by far the better, more versatile cook.
Ivan and Sonia had fled the Red Revolution in Russia, but not because they were wealthy aristocrats; they hated Lenin and all he stood for, their reasons too Russian for Edda to comprehend. What she did gather was that Sir Rawson gave them their idea of a worker’s paradise. A week after Edda moved in as Rawson’s wife, Nina appeared to function as her maid. She was the Petrovs’ nineteen-year-old daughter, who lived with them, and had been properly trained as a lady’s maid, at which she had worked since fifteen.
“Maiding you is ideal!” said Nina in a broad Melbourne accent.
“Isn’t it an outmoded sort of career, Nina?” Edda asked. “You could be a teacher, or a nurse, or a secretary — this is servile.”
“Yeah, but,” said Nina, top lip curling. “Proper maids earn terrific wages. Mum trained me. I left Lady Maskell-Turvey to maid you, and she would have doubled my wages to keep me. But maiding you is beaut, even if you’d rather I called you Edda.”
Remembering the pittance a trainee nurse was paid, Edda shut up. If this bright, fair-haired and blue-eyed child of refugees didn’t mind washing underwear and ironing dresses for an apparently enormous wage, why should she, Edda, repine?
Though it was a tremendous relief to discover that all Rawson’s staff seemed genuinely to like her. Very glad to see him married at last to Lady Right, for so they regarded her, that was plain to see.
Edda’s own suite of rooms was at the far end of the apartment, and was ideal. But somehow she never managed to make full use of them apart from sleeping, bathing and dressing. Her leisure soon saw her downstairs in the medical flat, readying it for her study, including keeping the bed made up and towels in the bathroom. No doubt the staff gossiped, but half of it at least did so in rapid Russian. Not much danger there; the Petrovs knew which side their bread was buttered on.
Books, books, and more books filled the wall shelving, always being added to; Edda bought a microscope, a stethoscope, glass slides and cover slips, test tubes, basic surgical instruments in Swedish stainless steel, piles of simple cotton dresses that could be laundered and ironed with a minimum of trouble, short white coats, and sturdy nurses’ shoes. When Medicine III began, she wanted to have every eventuality catered for so that she did not need to waste time rushing off to acquire things she’d forgotten. The precise, managing mind was in full control.
She also enjoyed the time she spent with Rawson, who was true to his word and utilised her social services. It sounded impressive, but the truth was that he loved to listen to her as she enthused about her “medical flat” as she called it, and felt refreshed at the end of an evening in her company. Her youth, beauty and power fascinated him, and he found room to regret that his own sexual inclinations would forever set her on an outer orbit of his life. For wife in the full sense she was not, and he felt no stirrings to make her so; perhaps what he felt for her was more by nature fatherly?
His colleagues in law and politics, sceptical about his sudden union, gradually succumbed to Edda’s spell, though their wives held out far longer, and some wives never did come around at all. The senior Lady Schiller was well known to detest her, it seemed chiefly because she had no money of her own, and was good at spending Rawson’s. That he could afford an expensive wife everybody understood; what nobody understood was that the gowns, the jewels, the furs and the increasing cost of his lifestyle emanated from his, not her, impulses and wishes. It had to be left to time to teach Sir Rawson Schiller’s world that his wife was actually content with
very little beyond a medical degree.
As far as Rawson himself was concerned, marriage to Edda got him all the things so long withheld due to his being a bachelor. In every way he had married the right woman, in that no one ever questioned why such a long-settled bachelor had fallen for this woman and no other. She was incredibly stylish as well as beautiful, obviously well-bred, had a fund of conversation of all kinds, was able to flatter those Rawson needed to flatter, could snub someone with wit and aplomb yet remain a lady — yes, Edda was ideal, and no one blamed him for marrying a fascinating and unusual woman. A medical student, for heaven’s sake!
But she made no friends among the women of his sphere, for no other reason than that her studies didn’t give her the time. On occasion she would meet someone to whom she was strongly drawn, but how could she spare two hours for morning coffee or three hours for lunch? Impossible. The books called like a siren-song, and she was enchanted.
Part 6
Chopping Off
the Head
22
As the Depression went from bad to worse, so too did government, especially the federal government in Canberra. Now Premier of New South Wales, Jack Lang refused to pay the state’s interest on loans, forcing Canberra to pay in his stead. Then, when Canberra demanded to be repaid, Lang refused. Federal Labor was in peril, split into irreconcilable factions; Prime Minister Scullin had reappointed his allegedly crooked Treasurer, and that led Joe Lyons to resign first from his ministry, then, in March of 1931, from the Labor Party. Tottering anyway, the conservative Nationalist Party finally succumbed, and a new political party was born, the United Australia Party, led by none other than Joe Lyons, who favoured the continuance of retrenchment. A new election saw the U.A.P. victorious, and Joe Lyons was Prime Minister of Australia.
Bittersweet Page 36
