Keepers of the House

by JH Fletcher

  She said as much to Dominic, who dismissed it.

  ‘Dermot’ll lick him one-handed for years yet, if he’s the mind to.’

  If he’s the mind to — exactly. Dermot did not have the mind, whereas Sean had been a fighter from the first. Anneliese watched with pride as her tough little boy set about bruising the world’s face with fists amazingly strong for his years, yet muscle had little to do with how he was. Sean’s greatest strength lay in his head and will. There was no way on God’s earth that Dermot would ever be able to stand up to him. Sean was born to govern and govern he would, like another man who travelled with them always.

  Watching the boy as he grew, Anneliese often found herself wondering what had happened to Jack. It was most unlikely she would ever know, yet something of the man, unprincipled bully though he had been, remained with her. Defiant of logic, she told herself that one day she would find out, knew that until she did so that chapter of her life would remain incomplete.

  Towards the end of 1914, they met Scott Macdonald in the town of Waroola, way up at the top end of the continent. Scott was another man built like a tower, blue eyes as hard as glass and so pale they were almost colourless, a skin burned to leather by the sun. He told them he owned a cattle station three hours out of town. He boasted of it quietly, proud of the place and what he had done to establish it, and Anneliese respected him for it.

  War had broken out in Europe; his son Gavin had enlisted with the AIF and was even then on his way to Europe. Scott Macdonald was desperate for someone to help him on the station. They were a godsend to each other; Dominic would never admit it but Anneliese was convinced that he was as sick of the vagrant life as she was. Godsend or not, Macdonald was a cautious man who liked to know what he was getting for his money, so the three of them talked for a long time in the hotel, sizing each other up.

  ‘Just me and my daughter,’ Macdonald cautioned them. ‘It’s a rough and ready place, ma’am. You know how things are in the bush. It may not suit you at all.’

  ‘Your wife —’

  ‘Dead five years ago, I’m sorry to say.’

  Anneliese saw an opening. ‘Perhaps it needs a woman’s hand. What is your daughter’s name?’

  ‘Sylvia, ma’am. She’s eleven.’

  Anneliese smiled. ‘In which case she may need a woman’s company even more than the house does.’

  ‘As you say, ma’am. As you say.’

  They parted, Macdonald promising to return at six with his decision. Dominic was convinced things had not worked out. It was all she could do to stop him drowning his sorrows there and then. Afterwards, she always remembered the struggle she had to keep him out of the bar. If she had failed all would have been lost, for Dominic would have been roaring drunk by the time Macdonald came back, but desperation gave her strength. At six o’clock that evening Dominic was still sober and Macdonald told them that the job was theirs.

  So at last, after years on the road, their vagrant days were done. Hottentots no longer, Dominic Riordan and Anneliese van der Merwe, with the two boys, came to Paradise Downs, to the Macdonalds and the new life and division and death that is the destiny of every human soul.

  NINETEEN

  Anna saw now that the business in the vineyards had been a mistake. It was not in Mostyn to do such a thing. He knew how to break out but only in what he would have called a civilised way. A break-out with constraints. A country club style of roughing it, strolling around razor-cut golf courses, dunking in swimming pools that shone like sapphires. Unscheduled, glamorous weekends, with breakfast on a terrace over newspapers and coffee, the glint of a safe and civilised sea in the distance. In that setting Mostyn was attentive, considerate, even passionate. He was an inventive lover; surely no one who was totally selfish could be that? They made love regularly, as often as four times a week, yet she always believed that it was on one of those weekends that she fell pregnant.

  Something else that was unscheduled, but welcome, too, at least as far as Anna was concerned. Mostyn was more aware of the disadvantages.

  ‘It won’t help your career …’

  Anna had never seen why she should be only a baby machine, why she couldn’t combine a career and motherhood. They could afford it; help was available. She had always imagined she would hate the discomfort, the intimate examinations, the probing and prodding of her distended flesh. She found that she welcomed all of it. Not that it mattered. Two months into the pregnancy, Anna went down with German measles. Against which she had not thought to be inoculated.

  After the termination life was still, as though something intrinsic to her being had ceased. So still.

  Six months later, when Anna received the offer from United Minerals, she was at first astounded, then cautious.

  ‘It’s so much …’

  Mostyn laughed. ‘Plenty more where that came from.’

  ‘But how?’

  He winked. ‘I’ve known Harry Dann for years. I heard they were looking for someone. I made enquiries, thought it would be a good opening for you. I had a word, got him to agree. Simple, really.’

  It was the way things worked. Took a bit of getting used to, all the same.

  ‘One thing,’ Mostyn said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I had to say we weren’t planning a family, anything like that.’

  She had said it herself a hundred times. No other child would be aborted through her stupidity. It hurt, though, having it formally acknowledged.

  She smiled brightly. ‘No problem.’

  Walking into the boardroom was like entering ambush country. The long glossy table, leather-upholstered chairs, the gilt-framed portraits of past chairmen of the board. Above the table hung a crystal chandelier. At the far end of the room, a large window framed with pale blue drapes surveyed the harbour. The eyes around the table, watching.

  ‘Good morning,’ she said.

  The murmured response. All men, of course.

  The enemy.

  Which was how they would think of her, no doubt. Yet the innocent would have detected nothing but courtesy.

  ‘Ms Riordan,’ Harry Dann introduced her. She had retained the name for business. ‘Good to have you on board.’

  That was it; then down to work. Anna was not deceived. They would all be watching, alert for incompetence, for unwarranted aggression. Error would be judged harshly here. She was here by merit, she reminded herself. Connections might have got her the job, but merit would earn her place.

  She must have done something right. Within a year, she had been invited to join the boards of two other companies. Anna accepted both, went out with Mostyn to celebrate. Was a bit taken aback when he ordered a bottle of Dom Perignon.

  He laughed at her expression. ‘My treat. You’ve arrived, girl, and don’t you forget it.’

  Not only her; Mostyn’s own career was heading into orbit. He, too, had branched out, was picking up directorships like peas out of a pot.

  They decided they could afford a more prestigious address. Found a place on the north shore of the harbour that had been owned by Ruth Ballard, the famous author. Whose work Anna, although not Mostyn, had read much and admired enormously.

  Anna stood on the verandah and looked across the water at the city. ‘How could she bear to leave it?’

  Mostyn neither knew nor cared. It was the right place for them; the past didn’t matter.

  The new address brought them luck. By the time summer came round again, Anna was serving on the boards of six listed companies, one public utility, and had long felt comfortable in her new environment. All the offers had come because of her growing reputation, with Mostyn having nothing to do with any of them.

  No Dom Perignon now. He was put out by the way she was stepping out from his shadow. A wife who was a credit to him was one thing; one determined to make an independent name for herself was something else entirely. Another thing he didn’t like: the way she was getting her views, and herself, reported in the media. Particularly when some of her
opinions were, to put it mildly, controversial. She seemed hell-bent on using her newly acquired position to promote causes that were dear to her heart. Women’s rights, for instance.

  ‘The way we’ve been treated over the years — are still treated — is nothing short of disgraceful.’

  ‘You’re doing all right, aren’t you?’

  ‘That’s got nothing to do with it.’

  ‘If you’re good enough you get to the top, man or woman.’

  It was rubbish, and she said so.

  Mostyn had always been a belligerent man. In the past she had known that side of him only by repute; now he flourished aggression like a sabre. ‘Think what you like. But keep it to yourself. Okay?’

  ‘No. It’s not okay!’

  ‘It won’t do your reputation any good.’

  ‘I’ll worry about that.’

  ‘Maybe you’d better.’

  The infuriating thing was that Mostyn was right.

  Harry Dann had a quiet word with her. ‘The board’s uneasy. Nobody’s denying you the right to your own opinions …’ It was exactly what they were denying but at least Harry said it to her face. There would be others saying the same thing behind her back.

  ‘None of you care what I think,’ she told Mostyn. ‘It’s being a woman that’s the problem.’

  ‘That’s crap. I was the one got you on the bandwagon in the first place.’

  ‘Because I’m your wife.’

  ‘You got a problem with that?’

  ‘I want to be judged by who I am, not by who I married.’

  ‘The world doesn’t work like that.’

  ‘It’s time it did.’

  It was a sniper’s war, each taking pot shots at the other. At last, having fought, and fought again, and again having fought, Anna grew sick of it. She decided to change her tactics. She would give in to him, agree with everything he said, everything he did. Her acquiescence would drive him mad.

  She was delighted with the subtlety of her idea, convinced it would work. It didn’t. At heart Mostyn was a bully. The more she yielded the more aggressive he became. He bludgeoned her unceasingly, voice and mind and will, until she felt as though he had brought a club to her. At times wondered whether he might do that, too.

  She saw that she had made a mistake, that to survive she would have to stand up to him. It would be hard; she would have to fight to win back the ground she’d lost, but it couldn’t be helped.

  The Saturday morning after she’d made her decision, with Mostyn in the office looking over some papers he would need on Monday, she packed a bag and took off into the Blue Mountains. She left no message, no contact number. She stayed at a place a friend had recommended, a small hotel where, for a price, she was treated like the royalty that, at least for a day or two, she had such need to become.

  She sat for hours on a terrace overlooking a wide valley. She watched an infinity of trees, the grey and green crags of mountains, remembering the time after her break-up with Mark when she had also watched the trees. With every minute, she gathered courage, breathing it in with the cool mountain air, honing herself for the confrontation that had to come.

  It would have to be on her own terms.

  Sunday morning she phoned him, fingers crossed that he would be at home. He was.

  ‘Anna? What the hell’s going on?’

  She did not answer, told him where she was. ‘Join me for lunch, why don’t you?’

  Waited, imagining the rage, the smoking tyres burning rubber on every bend.

  He arrived. She received him on the terrace. Graciously. Offered him a drink.

  He bared his teeth at her. ‘What is this bloody nonsense?’

  She smiled. ‘Later

  By his expression he could have hit her but would never provoke a scene here, where neither of them knew whose eyes might be watching, whose tongue might talk.

  He devoured a beer — ferociously. She smiled at him — sweetly.

  ‘Don’t you dare do such a thing again —’

  ‘I shan’t.’

  It sounded like submission, but Mostyn knew her too well. He eyed her uncertainly.

  ‘Because, unless we sort out a few things, I’m not coming back.’

  She had him hog-tied and both of them knew it. He glowered, saying nothing as she spelt things out.

  Freedom. Equality. Dignity.

  Words. He had never taken them seriously. Still did not. ‘You’re my wife —’

  ‘And hope to remain so.’

  He tried to turn her attack, to mock. ‘You sound like a French revolutionary.’

  She would neither lose her temper nor yield. She spelt out what she meant by the words.

  ‘Partners …’

  The concept was alien to him. The world was submissive; he had made it so. He expected her to submit, too. He was lost, confused by these new expectations. She saw that she must help him.

  ‘You remember what you said when I agreed to marry you? You said what a team we would make.’

  Which confused him more than ever. To Mostyn a team was people who did what they were told.

  ‘Not us. We work together. We discuss. We are partners.’

  Lightly she stressed the word. ‘Equals.’

  It took time to persuade him, but she didn’t mind. Hatchet Harcourt was a long way from St Paul; she would never have trusted a sudden conversion.

  At last, dubiously, he agreed. ‘I suppose we can give it a go.’

  The idea of sharing was so foreign to him. Yet he had driven up here, had not walked out as soon as she put her ideas to him. All might not be lost.

  They ate lunch, shared a bottle of chardonnay.

  ‘Did you bring a suitcase?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Never mind.’ She went to reception. ‘My husband is staying …’

  Bore him off to the room that she would graciously permit him to share. She knew by his expression that their fight had made him as randy as a goat. She was the same; could have eaten him where he stood.

  She closed the door, turning to him. ‘Can you think of a better way to spend Sunday afternoon?’

  They devoured each other. If Mostyn knew he was a trophy of war, he gave no sign.

  Our new life, she thought. Hope sang in her veins. Now all things would be possible.

  TWENTY

  Settling to their new life at Paradise Downs created problems.

  Anneliese had persuaded herself that Dominic and Dermot, fourteen by now, wanted to settle down as much as she did. She was wrong; the tinker’s life suited them both down to the ground. Left to themselves, they would have gone on wandering forever. Dermot told her as much.

  ‘No need for you and Sean to come with us, if you don’t want.’

  Spikes in Anneliese’s eyes. ‘So you go your way and we go ours, is that what you’re saying?’

  ‘Why not?’

  Never in a blue fit would she agree to that. She was totally opposed to anything that might divide the family. ‘We’re staying together, no matter what. Your wandering days are over, my seuntjie, let’s be clear about that.’

  ‘And Dominic?’

  ‘Your father will just have to make the best of it, won’t he?’

  That first day, Dermot wouldn’t have pissed on Paradise Downs. Rotten house, never seen a lick of paint in its life; a million miles of nothing; a moon-faced kid called Sylvia.

  He got off on the wrong foot there. Called her Sylvie. She soon put him right.

  ‘Sylvi-er,’ she said. ‘With an a.’

  Stuck-up git.

  Fact was she could have done handstands in the nude and Dermot wouldn’t have wanted a bar of her. Neither of her nor Paradise Downs.

  It was true that until now his life had been nothing special. With Anneliese and Sean so close and Dominic the way he was — at least he’d tried to be friends with him, Dermot had to give him that — he’d been pretty much on his own for years. Yet that first day after their arrival he looked back on their previous lif
e and saw only freedom. By contrast, Paradise Downs gave every sign of being little better than a jail.

  Dermot had never liked being told what to do, yet it was this, ironically, that made things come good for him. He found he was expected to work like a man but was treated like a man, too, which made up for a lot. Hard, dirty work it was; for days on end he was hardly out of the saddle. He would never make a great horseman — nothing like Sean, who might have been born on a horse’s back — but he managed.

  Sean had things a lot better. All his life he’d known how to get away with murder; now they were at Paradise Downs nothing had changed. Dermot expected nothing else — Sean was four years younger, after all — but there were days out in the bush, covered in dust and half-dead with thirst, when he had this picture of Sean fooling around in the creek behind the homestead. It made him feel real crook.

  Anneliese had always said Dermot was jealous of Sean but it wasn’t that, or not entirely. Far more important was the fact that Dermot never knew where he was with him. Sean never let on what he was thinking. That business of the hat …

  Another time, when they were both still kids, Sean had found a pebble Dermot wanted for his collection. It was no use to Sean, but giving was not in his nature. He wanted Dermot to pay for it.

  ‘Tuppence,’ he said.

  Dermot stared. ‘You know I ain’t got no tuppence.’

  ‘Your problem.’

  Dermot tried to snatch it off him but Sean chucked it away to stop him getting it. Dermot searched and searched but never found it.

  Dermot had discovered that he couldn’t trust him, either. The minute he couldn’t get his own way Sean was off, bawling and telling tales.

  ‘You’re his big brother,’ Ma scolded him. ‘Can’t you be more patient with him?’

  Or:

  ‘Dermot, why aren’t you ever happy with Sean?’

  Being patient meant always letting him get his own way and, no, Dermot wasn’t happy about that. Made no difference.

  ‘I’m ashamed of you, being so jealous,’ Anneliese told him. ‘I wish you’d get over it.’