Keepers of the House

by JH Fletcher

‘What I think is you’re getting a three-year jail sentence with no guarantees at the end of it.’

  Dermot wouldn’t have a bar of that but Dominic hadn’t finished. ‘You always said you wanted to fight for Ireland. Whatever happened to that idea?’

  Of course they both knew Dermot had never meant a word of it.

  ‘Ireland’s been waiting eight hundred years.’ Dermot said airily. ‘I daresay it can hang on for another three.’

  Dominic had no patience with such nonsense. ‘So as soon as you’re married you’ll pack up and go to Ireland, is that it? And what happens to Paradise Downs in the meanwhile?’

  ‘One step at a time,’ Dermot told him. ‘Time enough when we’re married to decide what we want to do.’

  ‘You talk as though it’s already settled.’

  ‘Macdonald promised —’

  ‘Promises …’ Dominic dismissed the notion, contemptuously. ‘He doesn’t want to lose a good worker, that’s all his promises mean. A kangaroo’s got as much chance of running Paradise Downs as you have.’

  Knew before he’d said it that he might as well have saved his breath. Sylvia — the breasts and bones and blood that were Sylvia — blinded Dermot to all else. All the same, it pained him to see the boy building such dreams out of nothing. For one last time he tried to make him see sense. ‘If you really believe Macdonald means what he says, you’d best be doing something to stop him changing his mind. I wouldn’t be taking too long about it, either, if I was you.’

  ‘Doing what?’

  You’d think the boy was an imbecile. ‘Put her in the family way, what else?’

  Fury and embarrassment. ‘Why don’t you keep your beak out of my business?’

  ‘Paradise Downs is up for grabs now Gavin is dead. Do you think Sean’s the sort to turn his back on a chance like that?’

  ‘Sean?’ Indulgently, as though Sean would be the last person to do such a thing. ‘He’s not interested, Dad.’

  ‘You don’t think so?’

  ‘Of course not. Besides, he knows how I feel about Sylvia.’

  ‘You’ve lived with him all these years and you think that’ll stop him?’

  ‘He might have tried once but we’re a lot closer than we were. He’d never do it now.’

  ‘Someone tipped Macdonald off. It wasn’t me. It wasn’t you. Who did it?’

  Dermot could be as deaf as deaf, when it suited him. ‘Maybe Sylvia said something …’

  ‘So be it.’ Dominic, sighing and defeated, remained determined to grab the final word. ‘I’ve heard it said, somewhere.’

  ‘Heard what?’ To the last Dermot would lead with his chin.

  ‘Against stupidity even the gods labour in vain.’

  TWENTY-ONE

  Sean waited until he knew Dermot was a day’s ride away on the far side of Paradise Downs.

  ‘Coming for a swim?’

  Sylvia shook her head. ‘No.’

  ‘Walk, then?’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Got something I want to talk to you about.’

  ‘Talk here.’

  He wouldn’t. Later he wandered up to the creek, making sure Sylvia saw him go.

  She came, eventually. Dusk sifted through the branches of the trees. Sean was standing at the edge of the water chucking stones. Plop. Ripples spread like echoes. Plop.

  ‘What did you want to tell me?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  The rhythmic swing of the arm. The stone flying into the dark. Plop.

  ‘You said —’

  ‘I know what I said.’

  She stood beside him, at a loss. ‘I’ll go back, then.’ But did not. ‘That horse you broke. My father says he’s going to sell it.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘It’s not fair. It ought to be yours.’

  ‘It’s not. It’s his. He’s got the right to sell it if he wants.’

  ‘Don’t you care?’

  ‘No.’

  Surely he must? Yet could not be sure; she had never been able to read him.

  ‘Your Dad going to marry again?’ he asked.

  The question shocked her. ‘Course not.’

  ‘Men do.’

  Flinging a stone. ‘Not him.’

  ‘Gavin’s dead. He needs a son.’

  She supposed he was right, but did not like to think about it. Another woman. Another child. She stared at the water. She thought how Dermot had never spoken to her father, for all his promises. He doesn’t want me, she thought. He never wanted me.

  ‘If your Dad doesn’t have a son, who gets Paradise Downs?’ Sean asked.

  ‘I will.’

  ‘You can’t run it by yourself.’

  ‘My husband will help me.’

  He laughed. He had given up on the stones, now stood close beside her in the cicada-singing darkness. ‘Got one lined up, have you?’

  ‘Might have.’

  ‘Long as it’s not me.’

  She tossed her head. ‘Fat chance.’

  ‘Or Dermot.’

  ‘Why not Dermot?’

  So he had been right.

  ‘He’s not game enough. Not for you or Paradise Downs.’

  ‘You don’t know anything about it.’

  ‘I know him.’ He put his hand on her arm. She flinched but did not move away. ‘You saw what he was like with that horse. Wouldn’t get up on him, even. Scared to have a go.’ His voice was very close. ‘You don’t want to chuck yourself away on him.’

  His fingers were warm against her inner arm. She sensed that things might get away from her very quickly if she let them. Resolved to put a stop to it at once.

  ‘Dermot and I are getting married.’

  If she’d thought the news would scare him off she’d made a mistake.

  He laughed. ‘Your old man will never allow that.’

  She wrenched her arm free; could have spat at him.

  ‘He has agreed.’

  ‘When’s the wedding, then?’

  Her face fell. ‘In three years.’

  Again he laughed, mercilessly. ‘He really expects you to wait that long? What about Dermot? Didn’t he have anything to say about it?’

  His hand was back on her arm. How she wished she could flourish Dermot’s defiance in Sean’s face, but the truth was stronger. ‘He told him we’d wait.’

  The burden of the admission was terrible. She wanted to move away from him, to break the contact between Sean’s cruel strength and herself, but could not. Her will was fluttering like a moth trapped in a web. She knew already she was helpless.

  ‘You’ll never marry Dermot.’

  His voice as close as his body in the singing dark.

  ‘Of course I shall.’

  ‘If it had been me, I’d have told him right out. Taken you away altogether, if he’d said no.’

  ‘Would you?’

  She looked at him uncertainly. Words were easy, but she sensed this boy, who was already so much a man, would do whatever was necessary to take what he wanted from life. Including herself, perhaps.

  His hand moved. Her will was dying, dying. Slowly, deliberately, he placed his hand over her breast. He covered her lips with his own.

  She stood motionless, doing nothing to stop him. For the first time she understood that it might be easier to yield to a strong man than manipulate a weak one.

  Stop it, Dermot. No more, Dermot. Speak to him, Dermot. Tell him what we’re going to do.

  With Sean there would be none of that. Whatever had to be done he would do. Perhaps she would be able to hide herself inside her own surrender. Be safe, after all.

  For the first time in her life she did nothing as a man’s hand lifted the hem of her dress.

  Later he smiled down at her. ‘I’ve put my brand on you.’

  It had not been in the least as she had imagined it. In truth she had felt nothing much at all, only his weight grinding her body into the dust, her will into the dust. Yet she was convinced she had been right to let him do it.

/>   By taking me he has made me safe. He will possess only what he wants: the body, the land. Things. He will never have me, because I don’t interest him. In his mind I don’t exist, even. I am safe.

  There would be no more talk of Dermot.

  Macdonald, whose eyes missed nothing, saw what might have happened.

  ‘I’m going to hang on to that stallion, after all,’ he told Sean.

  Sean eased his jeans over his narrow hips. ‘Up to you. It’s your horse.’

  ‘Darn right he’s mine. You can ride him yourself, though, if you want to.’

  Sean gave no sign whether he would want to or not.

  ‘Breaking horses,’ Macdonald said. ‘You’re good at that. Stick to it, I was you. Stick to stallions. Leave the mares alone.’

  Sean threw him an eyebrow. ‘What about the fillies?’

  ‘Them, most of all.’

  There was no tension between them. They both understood that there were times when certain steps were necessary. The land demanded strength. Dermot and Paradise Downs — impossible. And Dermot, after all, had been shut out.

  ‘Three years, I told him. She’ll be nineteen by then.’ Macdonald, eyes contemplating distance, seemed to address the air. ‘Reckon that should be about right.’

  Anneliese, too, saw what was happening, but did not interfere. Sean was fifteen, so young it seemed barely credible he could be playing such games. Yet, in head as well as body, he was as old as anyone she had ever known. Had been born old, it seemed. Already Sean knew what he wanted from life, would take it, use fist and gun to hang on to it when he had made it his. Whereas Dermot …

  Dermot, always, would be the prisoner of dreams.

  TWENTY-TWO

  After several years as a professional company director, Anna discovered that her executive responsibilities were taking over her life to the point where hardly anything of herself remained. Meetings and more meetings consumed her days, formal dinners and only marginally less formal cocktail parties her nights. When she wasn’t at her desk or in a boardroom, she was in a plane. When she wasn’t in a plane she was in a city, one of dozens. Perth, Melbourne, Darwin. Singapore, Paris, London, New York. All of them had been strange to her once, even exotic; now she knew them as well as the reflection of her face in her hand mirror, but — as with the reflection — only in part. She was familiar with Wall Street and Lombard Street, with Kettners, The Ivy, the Tour d’Argent, with the arcaded courtyard of Raffles Hotel, with the Ashoka and Claridge’s. She knew nothing at all of the real cities or of the people who inhabited them.

  One evening at a dinner in Singapore to honour the Premier of South Australia, she found herself talking to Craig Warren, a young and good-looking man who told her he was a journalist.

  She thought his job might bring him closer to the real people. She asked him if this were true, only to discover that he was Adelaide-based, was there only to cover the Premier’s visit. Even the beautiful young woman at his side, whom she had thought to be Singaporean, turned out to be Japanese, Yukiko Fukuda from Osaka, an executive in a finance corporation.

  No help there.

  Why should I know the people of the countries I visit? she thought, when she had a moment to think. I don’t even know myself.

  Or her husband, whose life was as busy as her own. Once they had found time for passion, for moments of sharing, the mutual pleasures of each other’s company. Now they passed like birds in flight, like the strangers they were in fact becoming.

  From time to time, she received offers, as no doubt Mostyn did. The half-wink, the sideways glance, even outright solicitation became standard features of her life, but her hectic pace burned away too much energy for beds — even the one at home — to be anything but places to sleep. If from time to time she heard rumours that her husband’s life was less chaste than her own, what of it? Discretion was essential, but for the rest … Fidelity was for lovers, which they had long since ceased to be.

  Occasionally, in the intervals between meetings, or staring from her hotel balcony at the grey dawn of yet another day in yet another city, she wondered at the gulf that had developed between the life she had originally planned and the way it had turned out.

  What had happened to idealism? To the idea that wealth was a weapon to be used in the service of humanity? That power created its own obligations?

  She remembered what she had told Ben Champion, at uni. Why don’t you get somewhere in industry or politics, somewhere people will listen to you?

  And his response? Once you’ve got your feet in the trough, you’ll end up like the rest of them.

  At the time she had not believed him. Now she looked at her life and knew he had been right.

  It troubled her increasingly. She tried to talk to Mostyn about it. Perplexed, almost offended, he stared at her before laughing away such romantic nonsense. The accumulation of things — and the power that things provided — absorbed him utterly, as it did everyone he knew. Life was simple: to grab and grab. There was no room for ulterior motives.

  ‘What’s your problem? You’re doing all right, aren’t you?’

  It was exactly what he had said to her years ago, when they had first disagreed over women’s rights. As before, it was an answer that answered nothing, but Mostyn had neither the time nor the patience to argue further. Ears alert to the growing growl of the Asian tigers, he flew out to Jakarta and Bangkok.

  Anna, at home in a blessed interval between engagements, walked in her garden, examined beds of flowers planted by hands other than her own, looked out at the harbour’s blue blaze, sunlight gleaming upon the windows of the distant city that was no longer a place of glory, and wondered how she could have let herself be made captive by a life so devoid of meaning or fulfilment.

  Was Mostyn right? Were her feelings no more than sentimental rubbish? Social considerations were the responsibility of government. She — and the companies she commanded — paid such taxes as they could not avoid, observed the law, more or less. Her function was to generate wealth, not spend it on worthy causes.

  And yet.

  Around and around the garden, unresting, until the first blue light of evening came stealing and Mrs Casey called her in to a supper of salmon pie — one of her specialities — and salad.

  Anna swallowed her questions with the fish but later, unlike the fish, they returned. Mrs Casey had gone home. Without any notion of what she was about to do, Anna went into the bedroom. She switched off the lights, leaving only a shadowy gleam from the city across the water. Standing by the open window, she took off her clothes, piece by piece: the handmade Italian shoes, the Armani suit, the lingerie from the Rue de la Paix. Naked except for a plain gold necklace and wedding ring, she went out of the room, down the stairs, across the terrace. Bare feet silent upon cool grass, Anna Riordan walked amid the night air, the errant scent of flowers, the breath of the sea from the water. It was a gesture without risk — no one could see her in the dark — yet remained meaningful, an action both of affirmation and defiance.

  Mostyn was not right. The generation of wealth could be good, certainly, because of the opportunities to do good that it created, but the accumulation of wealth for its own sake was greed.

  She could see it so clearly; heard Mostyn’s response, too, as though he had been standing beside her.

  ‘Idealistic crap …’

  She answered him, throwing her words into the patient night. ‘Idealism, yes. Crap, never. Because without idealism and the people with courage to apply it, regardless of what it may cost them, humanity has no future.’

  It was as well he was not there in the flesh; she could not have borne such devastating proof of their utter incompatibility.

  I have to discard so much of my life, she thought. I have to return to what I know is truth.

  She lay on her back upon the grass. Above her flared the silent stars. Peace came to anoint her mind, her skin puckered by the breeze. She ran her palms down the pale length of her body, re-identifying hersel
f beneath the cool garment of flesh. Afterwards, chilly now, mind empty, she went indoors to lie in the bath surrounded by scented steam. There was a stillness, precious and infinitely fragile.

  She towelled herself dry, brushed her teeth, went to bed like one drugged, conscious of the serenity of life regained.

  She slept. Woke at peace, amid the soft stirrings of a tranquil dawn.

  Life resumed, but at a slight remove. Through the morning’s disciplined frenzy, the meetings and phone calls, the faxes, the deferential bullying of assistants, the stillness that had come to her the previous night remained. The day’s tensions beat upon it but could not break through to her inner peace.

  Yet still she had doubts.

  The world’s practical problems — poverty, injustice — could be addressed only through wealth. Once again she remembered the conversation she had held all those years ago with Ben Champion, her student friend and first lover, how she had dismissed the impracticality of his pure idealism. First generate the wealth, then use it. It had been Mostyn’s argument, precisely. Except that the people with the wealth did not use it, while those who would do so had nothing to use. It seemed impossible to balance the equation, yet Anna knew what she had forgotten for so long, that fulfilment depended upon her finding a way.

  The question continued to nag her, but intermittently, the whirligig of day-to-day decisions claiming priority, as it always did. Then, within a single week, two things happened to bring matters more sharply into focus.

  First came an interview. With half an eye she was watching a current affairs programme on television, a pile of board minutes in her lap, when suddenly it reached out to snatch her absolute attention.

  Mark Forrest. The face, so well-remembered. The familiar athlete’s body. The hand gestures. The past, returning with the force of a blow.

  Mark, it seemed, had written a book. Cry from a Dark Continent was about South Africa, about what he was claiming was the real South Africa. Anna watched the movement of his lips on camera, the mouth that even now could awaken memories.

  ‘We have to get away from the idea that the situation there is simply a political problem,’ he said. ‘It’s much more serious than that. Meaningful change will need change not only of policies but of hearts. On both sides.’