Heart of the Cross

by Emily Madden

  Rosie blinked and gave a casual shrug. ‘No reason, I was just … curious.’

  Norris wasn’t buying it. ‘It’s wise to remember, Rosie Hart, that curiosity killed the cat,’ he cautioned by way of goodbye.

  As he left Rosie muttered to herself, ‘But satisfaction brought it back.’

  Twenty-one

  Rosie

  The Cross was a place with many faces. There was the Cross of the day, a crowded square mile where, despite the metropolitan-like feel, everybody knew everybody. On any given Saturday, amongst those rushing about doing their shopping, there were those who would head to Fitzroy Gardens to enjoy the sparkling puffball of the El Alamein Fountain, or simply sit out in the sun and enjoy singing, sometimes operatic, by those eager to lend the Cross a bit of tone.

  But as the afternoon faded and dusk approached, it was almost as if one day finished at sunset and another began as dusk turned to night. The neon lights that lit nocturnal Kings Cross were an incandescent temptress, magical and inviting. With each passing year, Rosie noticed more and more lights. Some saw them as a call to all things wicked and sinful, the promise of illicit excitement and excess, and certainly there was an undeniable sense of that, but the vividness, the kaleidoscope of colour from the innumerable lights that made daylight seem dull, transcended all of that. Rosie saw the neon lights as the pulse of the Cross. Kings Cross was built on top of a hill, a mile or so east of the city. From its heart, you could go about half a mile in any direction before the lights ran out and the darkness of Sydney washed over. A half-mile that glittered with hedonism and hope, dreams and delusions.

  And any given Saturday, the streets were filled with throngs of people, tourists sampling the smorgasbord of delights on offer, those working in the Cross—the dancers, the waiters and so forth—heading either to or from their place of employment, the bohemians, the buskers and all those part of the rich tapestry of the overcrowded honeycomb known as the Cross.

  On a balmy Saturday evening in November, Jack and Rosie walked down the already bustling street towards Macleay Street, where the Chevron-Hilton’s Silver Spade room was.

  The nightclub was named after Conrad Hilton’s biography, and with its opulent French-provincial-inspired chandeliers, mirrored feature wall and lavish silver décor, it was easily the most elegant place in Sydney. When it first opened, the hotel was famous for its gold-plated toilet seats, but people were often making the habit of going in and souveniring them, so they were soon replaced by a far less luxurious alternative.

  Though it had been opened for only twelve months, the establishment was fast building a reputation for attracting big-name international guests. Shirley Bassey, Eartha Kitt and Judy Garland had all performed there, and just last week Wayne Newton had performed, flying in straight from Las Vegas.

  Tonight, they were seeing Ella Fitzgerald. Something Rosie had been looking forward to for weeks, but as their waiter seated them and took their order, Rosie felt her eyes drooping. Ever since the expansion of Rosie’s House, she was run off her feet, tired all the time, and this morning, like the two mornings before, she had woken up with her stomach knotted with anxiety to the point of nausea.

  Sipping her champagne that had not long been placed in front of her, Rosie screwed up her nose. It tasted funny. Jack laughed at her.

  ‘Rosie, it’s French champagne you’ve got there, not some moonshine. In fact, I’m pretty sure it’s the same one you had last time we were here.’

  ‘I know, and I guess it’s because I’m so tired. Perhaps I’m better off having a coffee to help me stay awake.’

  The coffee seemed to do the trick. At least she was able to stay awake and enjoy Ella Fitzgerald’s amazingly soulful voice.

  Later, with her arm looped through Jack’s, as they walked home through the streets that were still teeming after midnight, a wave of fatigue washed over her. It was quite surprising considering the amount of coffee she’d had. Maybe she was much more tired than she’d thought, or perhaps it was because …

  Rosie gasped and stopped in her tracks. The nausea. The tiredness. After waiting for so long, hoping, wishing, praying, wondering if it would happen.

  Could it be?

  ‘Rosie, what is it?’ Jack was looking at her with concern.

  Her body trembled with the excitement as her mind traced the dates, straining to remember the last one she had circled on her calendar.

  ‘Rosie?’ Jack repeated. ‘What’s going on? What’s got you so mystified.’

  ‘I think I’m … pregnant.’ She watched as his face broke out into an ear-splitting grin. He let out a whoop and grabbed her, swinging her around like a rag doll before abruptly stopping.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said sheepishly. ‘I probably shouldn’t manhandle you like that.’ Then gathering her face in his hands, he stared at her with the deepest love she had ever seen. ‘Oh, Rosie, a baby.’

  Rosie’s throat clogged with emotion. Tears welled, blurring her vision. ‘I mean, I’m not entirely sure … but I have a good feeling about this.’

  Rosie felt as if she floated the rest of the way home, Jack insisting that he carry her over the threshold.

  ‘You’re supposed to do that when we get married, silly,’ she said with a laugh.

  ‘I want that, Rosie.’ His voice was soft but steady, his eyes full of resolve. ‘Ever since we spoke the other day, it got me thinking and now …’

  Rosie cupped his cheek, bringing her lips lightly to his. ‘It’s time, Jack. It’s time for us to be a family.’

  He said nothing then, but carried her to their bed and made love to her.

  After, as they lay in a tangle of limbs, Jack splayed his hand over her abdomen where the child they had created out of love grew.

  ‘You’ve made me truly happy, Rosie,’ he whispered against her hair.

  Rosie smiled and snuggled her body close. She was the happiest she had been, ever. Their life was perfection, well almost perfection. But there was just one thing, one thing that was missing that would make it perfection.

  Tomorrow she would talk to Norris, see what he would be willing to do to help her look for Tom, so she could cut the final tie and be done with him, once and for all.

  * * *

  Norris linked his fingers, placed them against his wide girth and sighed. ‘And you’re sure you want this?’ It was a statement more than a question, but Rosie answered with absolute resolve.

  ‘I’ve never been surer of anything in my life, Mr Norris.’

  ‘And Jack, he knows you’re doing this? That you’re asking me for help?’

  ‘Jack’s one of the reasons I’m doing this. I need to find Tom and legally end my marriage.’

  Norris nodded. ‘You’re perhaps the only person in the Cross that I know who doesn’t care to live in sin.’

  ‘It’s not about that, Mr Norris. Jack and I want to marry and we can’t do that while I’m still married to Tom now, can we?’

  Norris cast her a sceptical look. ‘You’re not … in the family way, are you?’ His face flamed, looking uncomfortable asking the question.

  Over the past four years in dealing with him, Rosie had learned a thing or two about managing George Norris. He detested being lied to, that much she knew. When confronted with an unwanted question from Norris, deflection was the only way.

  ‘That’s a personal question, Mr Norris.’ She employed her poker face as she spoke, even though she could feel her heartbeat reverberating in her ears. ‘One that is not your concern.’

  ‘Yes, well …’ Norris spluttered, clearly flustered.

  ‘All you need to know, Mr Norris, is that I need to find Tom, and once I know where he is, I want to be able to serve him with divorce papers.’

  ‘You know that if he finds out about Rosie’s House, he’s going to want a piece of it.’

  ‘It’s a risk I’m willing to take. You said that you’d heard he was working on the Snowy Hydro.’

  Norris exhaled. ‘The information is about a month old,
though. They move them around a fair bit, especially those without families, well seemingly without families. I can use that as a starting point and see how we go from there.’

  ‘I appreciate your assistance, Mr Norris.’

  ‘Yes, well, I still think you’re opening Pandora’s box looking for that piece of scum. How he ever landed a woman like you, Rosie Hart, is beyond me.’

  Rosie was momentarily speechless. She knew Norris wasn’t fond of Tom, but their dealings were always fully businesslike and his somewhat cordial tone took her aback. ‘That’s kind of you to say, Mr Norris.’

  ‘Please, after all this time, surely you can bring yourself to call me George. And as for assistance, I can’t promise you that I’ll be able to find him, but I promise you this. I won’t ask for compensation until I’ve got something concrete for you.’ He smiled and Rosie could almost see the pound signs in his eyes.

  Rosie expected as much. All this buttering up was so he could ask for something significant. ‘Mr … er, George, I’m sure you’re aware that at this point you are my best lead in finding Tom, so I hope you won’t take advantage of that knowledge.’

  Norris held his hands palms up. ‘My terms are simple, Rosie, simple.’

  Rosie narrowed her gaze. ‘Let’s hear them, then.’

  He pursed his lips and traced his moustache with his thumb and forefinger. ‘I want a thirty per cent increase in my share of Rosie’s House for a full year.’

  Rosie scoffed. Why was she not shocked? ‘George, you already make more money from Rosie’s House than Mary and I put together. I can’t let you take more money away from Mary. If it has to come from somewhere, it will be from mine. What I’m prepared to pay you will be a flat fee—one week’s takings—no more, no less, but that’s not all. I’ll not pay you a single penny until you have found Tom.’

  Norris opened his mouth to say something, but Rosie halted him. ‘And before you try to renegotiate, I will remind you that I can easily go to a private investigator. There are three on Darlinghurst Road alone. I’m giving you this courtesy because you seem to know about Tom’s movements and I want this done as swiftly as possible.’

  Norris remained silent, seemingly stupefied by her demands. Rosie’s heart was thumping wildly, but she kept her face calm. ‘And I’ll remind you that payment will only be completed if the job is successful.’

  ‘You mean when the job is successful.’

  Rosie smiled. ‘Your confidence is becoming, George.’

  It seemed that they had a deal, because the next thing she knew, Norris extended his hand.

  They settled on the finer details to be drawn up by Norris’s solicitor. Now all that was left was to wait.

  ‘Just so you know, Rosie Hart, I would’ve done it for a whole lot less.’

  ‘And I would’ve agreed to a whole lot more.’

  ‘Let’s hope you’re this good when negotiating with Tom Fuller. Something tells me that man isn’t going to want to walk away empty-handed.’

  She walked out of Norris’s office not perturbed by the thought. Tom had put her through hell in their marriage. There was nothing he could do that she couldn’t handle.

  Her euphoria lasted for weeks, and then just days before Christmas, Rosie woke feeling something wasn’t quite right. Within an hour she was cramping and by early afternoon her whole world crumbled.

  It wasn’t just losing the baby and the blasé responses that nearly everyone, even the doctors and nurses that had attended to her, displayed.

  Everything happens for a reason.

  She didn’t want to minimise her pain. Her pain was real. It was raw. It seeped to her core, through the marrow.

  This is God’s plan.

  Was it? Just like it was God’s plan for her husband to abuse her, treat her like an animal? And now that she had a man who loved her like she deserved to be loved, did they not deserve to have a child together?

  Her heart was heavy and full of sorrow. Her anger was palpable. But perhaps what saddened her most was that while her grief seemed not to have a timeline, Jack dealt with the loss faster and with seemingly less suffering. Not that she was taking away from his grief, he was hurting, she knew that, but it seemed that he was ready to move on well before she was.

  A few months after she lost her baby, whom she was absolutely certain would’ve been a girl, Jack urged that it was perhaps time for her to let go of her grief.

  ‘You fell pregnant once, it can happen again,’ he reasoned. But Rosie’s heart was not ready to move on and simply forget the baby she lost. Floss and Mary looked at her with bemusement when she referred to her miscarriage as the baby she lost. Mary surprised her. Out of everyone, Rosie had expected, since she had had the same experience, that she would understand better.

  ‘I got over it and you will too. There’ll be other babies.’ Mary shrugged casually as if it was an absolute certainty.

  Rosie wanted to scream that she didn’t want to get over anything. She simply wanted to honour the child that should still be there with her.

  Some days her grief was so palpable, she wondered if the shroud of sadness that encroached her heart would ever lift. Rosie knew that another child right now would be wrong. In fact, until the date that the baby would’ve come had passed, she couldn’t contemplate a ‘replacement’ child.

  And then, the first day of July in 1964, the day that her baby girl should have been in her arms, there came the news that would be the light in her darkest hour.

  Norris walked into Rosie’s House, his brow beading with perspiration, face as red as a fire engine, and uttered the sentence she had long ago lost hope she would hear. ‘We found him, Rosie Hart. We found Tom.’

  It turned out he was in Cooma, a town in the south of the state. It took Rosie a week to get the divorce papers drawn up. Rosie wanted to go to him, but Jack discouraged her, telling her it might be best to have them delivered to the address that Norris had procured. In the end, she listened to Jack and had the papers sent.

  Now, she waited.

  Twenty-two

  Rosie

  June 1967

  It was a frigid winter’s day when Rosie was wiping down a table in the diner and a man walked in and took a seat at the booth. It wasn’t her usual working day, but Cheryl, who normally covered Wednesdays, had a sick child at home.

  It had been a particularly cold and wet June by Sydney standards. Even Jimmy had been home unwell last week. Thankfully, neither she nor Jack had caught it, although she had woken up this morning with her head heavy and her stomach sick. For a split second she had thought that perhaps she was pregnant, but remembered that she’d only just finished her period. Since her miscarriage, she hadn’t been able to fall pregnant. She had seen a doctor, they both had, but it seemed that there was nothing wrong. Not physically anyway. Rosie was starting to think that she and Jack would never have a child together.

  ‘You, Jimmy and me, you’re all the family I need.’ Jack was content as they were, but not Rosie. Each month she held on to the hope that this would be it. But month after month, as soon as she felt that first sickening cramp in her tummy, that hope would fade, like the shedding leaves of the plane trees that guarded the denizens of Victoria Street. But sooner or later, all the leaves would be gone, leaving the tree barren.

  ‘Rosie.’

  The sound of her name pulled her out of her thoughts. It was the man who had taken the booth. Figuring it was one of their regular customers, she walked up but was puzzled. She couldn’t place him …

  And then she did. She gasped, her hand moving to cover her mouth.

  ‘Tom,’ she whispered his name.

  ‘Hello, Rosie. It’s been a long time.’

  Eight years. It had been almost eight years since he had pinned her against the wall and almost killed her. Her hands slowly made their way to the base of her throat. It felt constricted, as if his hands were still wrapped around it, choking her.

  She barely recognised him. His hair was longer. It skimmed his
shoulders, but it was the beard that threw her. He looked completely different. Still, she recognised his steel-blue eyes and it pained her to admit, they were the same as their son’s. She had long ago stopped thinking of Tom as Jimmy’s father. She had told Jimmy the truth, of sorts. That Tom needed to leave for work. For a while, Jimmy would ask about him from time to time, but as he grew closer to Jack, he spoke less and less about Tom till it occurred to Rosie that he had stopped asking about Tom altogether.

  ‘What are you doing here, Tom?’ Rosie felt her heart thumping wildly in her chest. Heard it through her ears.

  Ba boom. Ba boom. Ba boom.

  She took a quick survey of the diner. It was almost empty save for a couple of booths occupied on the opposite far side. Jack wouldn’t be here for hours, but there was Murray out the back in the kitchen and Bert was due to arrive soon to work behind the counter. If she needed help, if Tom tried anything, she could always yell out.

  ‘I’m here about this, Rosie.’ He tipped his head towards the tattered envelope on the table. She recognised it immediately.

  ‘The divorce papers,’ she said, her voice threaded with hope and excitement. Had Tom signed them? Had he come to deliver them in person?

  ‘I s’pose you’re wondering what has taken me so long.’

  It hadn’t immediately been the first thing that had entered her mind, but now he mentioned it, yes, she did. She hadn’t even been certain, despite being told otherwise, that Tom had received them. ‘You’ve had them for quite a while, Tom,’ she said carefully.

  He gave a brief nod. ‘Truth was, they came at a bad time.’

  ‘Oh?’ Rosie regarded him with a raised brow.

  ‘I was about to move towns. The project was wrapping up and we were being moved on. I shoved them in with all my stuff and it was only a few months later that I remembered about them.’