by Judy Nunn
He’d methodically told them of his plans, brooking no interruption, then announced, ‘We’ll be moving at Christmas.’
Henrietta, who had tried to interrupt a number of times, was now rendered speechless. So was everyone else, it seemed. He had confounded them all with the detail and finality of his arrangements.
Jackie and Nellie exchanged a look which Terence noted.
‘I have no doubt that Vesteys will continue to employ you both,’ he said, ‘I shall certainly suggest that they do.’ Then he rose from the table and peremptorily dismissed them. ‘You can go now, I’ll talk to you later, Jackie.’
When Jackie and Nellie had left silently through the back door, Henrietta finally found her voice.
‘Do we have any say at all in this?’ she asked coldly.
‘No.’
Her shock was slowly turning to anger. ‘You turn our lives upside down, you deprive your sons of their birthright, and we’re to quietly accept it without saying a word?’
‘You can say what you like, Henrietta,’ he snapped, ‘but it won’t alter a thing. And I am not “depriving my sons of their birthright”, as you put it, I am creating an empire which they will inherit.’
‘And what if they don’t want to inherit a business? They were brought up on the land.’
‘Shut up, Henrietta!’
She wasn’t about to, but when he added, ‘They’re old enough to speak for themselves,’ Henrietta fell silent. He was right, and she hoped the boys would have the courage to speak their own minds.
Terence turned to Malcolm first. He tried to keep calm, Henrietta’s reaction had infuriated him. ‘You’ll be off to Duntroon in a year or so, Malcolm, and from there God knows where the army will send you. I’m sure, after a fine military career, the last thing you will wish to inherit will be a struggling cattle station.’ The sneer in his voice was intended for Henrietta, but when Malcolm remained silent, Terence demanded a reply. ‘You do get my point, don’t you, boy?’
Malcolm nodded obediently, although it was difficult to encompass his whole life so neatly mapped out before him. ‘Will we be able to keep horses?’ he asked.
Terence grinned, his fury instantly evaporating, he’d known that he could rely on Malcolm. ‘Of course we can, we can keep a whole stable full.’
Malcolm grinned back, pleased that he’d come up with the right answer.
‘And you, Kit,’ Terence turned to his younger son. ‘After you leave the army how would you feel about inheriting an empire? “Galloway and Sons”.’ He painted the sign proudly in the air with his outstretched hand. ‘We’ll own half of Darwin.’
‘I don’t want to go into the army.’
There was a moment’s silence. Henrietta held her breath. She had known the day of confrontation would come, but not quite so soon, the boy was not yet fourteen.
Terence refused to take the declaration seriously. ‘You’ll feel different after you’ve been to Duntroon,’ he said.
‘I don’t want to go to Duntroon.’
There was that look in the boy’s eyes again. That unwavering grey stare. Terence once more felt his anger mount. ‘What exactly would you prefer to do with your life?’ he asked. His voice was ominously calm and Henrietta recognised the danger signs.
Kit apparently didn’t. ‘I want to go to university,’ he said with ingenuous enthusiasm. ‘I want to study English literature and be a writer.’
‘I see. And how do you propose to go about that?’ Terence’s tone was blandly innocent, as if expressing a sincere interest.
Kit looked a little bewildered, ‘University,’ he said, ‘an arts course …’ He thought he’d answered that question.
‘Ah yes,’ Terence said, ‘university, of course, but after university … how do you propose to become “a writer”?’
He was playing a cat and mouse game, Henrietta realised, letting Kit feel he was free to express himself when, any minute, he’d pounce and tear the boy to shreds.
Relieved that his dad didn’t seem mad about his not wanting a military career, Kit missed his mother’s warning glances altogether and rattled on eagerly, presuming his father’s enquiry to be genuine.
‘Oh, I know I can’t become a writer just like that,’ he said. ‘Crikey, maybe I’ll never become a proper writer, you know like writing a book and getting it published and everything, that takes years. And besides, there’s no point in writing until you’ve got something to write about, that’s what Paul always said. “You’ve got to do a bit of living first,” he told me.’
Fury burned white hot in Terence. That bloody Englishman again, he’s influencing my son even from beyond the grave, he thought. Inwardly he cursed Paul Trewinnard. If the bastard was still alive I’d kill him, cancer or no bloody cancer, he thought.
Henrietta watched as Terence’s eyes grew dead, and wondered if he was about to throw one of his fits of rage.
‘But with an arts degree I’d be able to get a job in a newspaper,’ Kit continued, ‘I checked with my English teacher and she thought it was a good idea.’
By now Malcolm too could sense that his father’s silence was not healthy, but Kit, excited and garrulous, still failed to recognise the fact.
‘I don’t care if I start at the bottom,’ he said, ‘just getting people cups of tea and stuff, but I’d work hard to be a journalist. I want to be a travel writer like Paul,’ he eagerly added, ‘and then you get to see all those places that you can write about later …’
‘That’s enough!’ Like steel, Terence’s voice knifed through the boy’s chatter. The fingers of his right hand clenched into a fist which he longed to drive into his son’s face, but he resisted the urge and wheeled on Henrietta instead.
Henrietta instinctively cringed in her chair.
‘This is your doing,’ he snarled. ‘You and that English string of misery have done your best to ruin my son. Well, I’ll have no more of this rubbish, do you hear?’ He smashed his fist down on the table. ‘Not one more word!’ Then he turned again to his younger son, who was staring open-mouthed in bewilderment at his father’s sudden rage.
‘And you, boy,’ Terence growled with utter contempt, ‘you will go to military college when the time is right and you’ll make a man of yourself. You’re a Galloway and it’s high time you started behaving like one.’
Terence strode from the room before his temper got the better of him and he started throwing punches.
The following weeks of the boys’ vacation were not the joyous school holidays which Henrietta normally awaited with eager enthusiasm. Terence was in a constant ill humour and they all trod warily, fearful that the slightest thing might give offence and bring down the force of his wrath. Even the weather seemed to match the mood of the household. The wet season hit early and the days were either clammy and oppressive or beset with violent storms.
For the first time in years Henrietta was thankful when the boys returned to school. She didn’t know which had been worse, the threat of Kit’s rebellion, or Malcolm’s desperate attempts to mollify his father.
Henrietta had promised Kit, privately, the very night after the confrontation, that he would go to university. She had funds of her own, she’d said, but he must be patient and wait. In silence. So Kit had wandered around, sullen, resentful, wanting to speak his mind but obeying his mother’s wishes.
Malcolm, on the other hand, had been overanxious and determined to please his father.
‘I’ve set the goal posts up, Dad, do you want to kick the ball around?’
‘In this weather? Don’t be bloody stupid.’
Time and again Malcolm had been left feeling humiliated and wretched, and each time he’d been spurned, Henrietta’s heart had gone out to him.
She did not attempt to confront Terence herself, she dared not for fear he would take his black rage out upon his sons. She pretended instead that nothing untoward had happened. She was bright and breezy with the boys and pleasant with Terence, and careful every minute of the day that he
should find no chink in their armour. No books appeared during the holidays, there were no discussions about literature, and she breathed a sigh of relief when Kit and Malcolm returned to school.
‘The house won’t be finished until the middle of next year,’ Terence said pleasantly as he sipped at his Scotch in the quiet evening of the lounge room.
He’d been going out of his way to be pleasant since the boys had left, and in ratio to the re-emergence of his good humour, Henrietta had reverted to silence and her books. She had decided there was no point in trying to communicate with him, what was the use, but she was infuriated. He’d made the boys’ holiday hell and now he expected everything to be back on an even keel. Well, bugger him, she thought, as she buried her head in her book.
‘So when we move to Darwin at Christmas we’ll have to stay somewhere else.’ He ignored the fact that she was paying him no attention. She was probably punishing him for his behaviour when the boys were here, he thought. He knew he’d been surly, but what did she expect? He’d worked his guts out organising things to the best possible advantage, ensuring Henrietta’s middle years would be comfortable and his sons would inherit an empire, and what thanks did he get? Terence had been unable to shake off his reaction to such ingratitude for weeks, but now that the boys had gone, particularly Kit, whose presence had been a constant annoyance, he was prepared to let bygones be bygones. The fact that Henrietta was sulking and disappearing once again into her books irked him but he was determined to do his best to pacify her.
‘I thought perhaps the Hotel Darwin,’ he said.
At the mention of the Hotel Darwin, Henrietta looked up.
Good, he had her attention. He’d known that the Hotel Darwin would please her.
‘What?’ she said.
‘The Hotel Darwin, that’s where we’ll stay whilst the house is being finished. I thought you’d be pleased,’ he said, ‘you’ve always liked the Hotel Darwin.’
‘Yes,’ she said. Dear God, no, she thought. ‘But surely when the boys come home for the holidays we’ll need to rent a house for the space.’
‘They might rather like the novelty of the hotel,’ Terence replied, ‘and it would save you a lot of work.’ He was doing his best to be agreeable.
‘Perhaps. But then there are newer places than the Hotel Darwin, maybe we should try somewhere different.’
Why, he wondered? Because she associated the Hotel Darwin with fond memories of her precious friend Trewinnard? Terence pushed for an answer. ‘Why?’ he demanded belligerently.
Henrietta retreated. ‘Oh for heaven’s sake, Terence, no reason whatsoever, we’ll stay wherever you like, let’s discuss it closer to the time, shall we?’ And she returned to her book.
‘I’m going into town tomorrow to see Aggie,’ Henrietta announced the following week, ‘she’s taking her class to a special art exhibition at the old Town Hall and I said I’d join them.’
‘Fine.’
‘I’ll probably stay a few days, I haven’t seen her in months.’
‘Of course,’ he replied pleasantly enough, although he found her peremptory tone irritating. ‘Tomorrow’s Wednesday, I’ll give Nellie the night off, she and Jackie might like to go to the pictures.’
Wednesday was the only night Aborigines were permitted to attend the picture theatre in Darwin, where they sat in the cheap seats up the back. In fact Wednesday was the only night Aborigines were allowed into town at all, ‘between sunset and sunrise’, and even then they needed to queue up for permits.
‘That’d be nice,’ Henrietta said, ‘I’m sure they’d like that.’
Again the coldness of her tone irritated him, but then Terence had been in a constant state of annoyance for the past week. Despite all of his efforts, Henrietta remained remote. It infuriated him.
Nellie and Jackie were indeed delighted at the prospect of an outing to the Star Picture Theatre, and Wednesday night found Terence alone in the house. It also found him brooding and angry. Henrietta had turned her cheek to him when he’d kissed her goodbye that morning. She’d actually avoided his lips and proffered her cheek like a maiden aunt. Her action symbolised the coldness she’d displayed to him over the past fortnight since the boys’ departure, and the more Terence brooded upon it the angrier he became.
The emptiness of the house aggravated his burgeoning ill-temper. The lack of Henrietta’s presence seemed to taunt him, as if it was another gesture of hers intended to humiliate him, and he stalked about the place, Scotch in hand, wishing that she was with him. If she was here now, he thought as he poured himself another drink, he’d put her in her true place. And her true place was upstairs, naked, with her legs spread. He’d rip her clothes off her and he’d drive himself into her with all the force he could muster, and he’d bite her lips and her breasts until he drew blood. If she was here now he’d demand she serve him as a true wife should. Terence was frustrated beyond endurance.
Bella, he thought, he needed Bella. He slammed down his Scotch and left for the Aboriginal camp. But on the way there, he had a better idea.
Half an hour later, Terence returned to the homestead, and he brought Bella with him. The girl was nervous, she didn’t want to come into the big house, and he had to literally drag her through the back door.
‘There’s no-one here, see?’ He dragged her through the kitchen and into the hall. ‘Big house empty. People gone.’
Bella stopped struggling and looked about, her mouth open, her eyes wide in wonderment. She had never seen such grandeur. She gazed up at the high ceilings of the hall, at the wide ornate wooden staircase, she peeked through the open door of the lounge room where the light from the wall brackets illuminated furnishings that she had never known existed. This was a magic place. A palace. She looked at Terence and smiled with childish delight.
The excitement in her eyes, the fullness of her lips and the whiteness of her teeth gleaming in the dim light of the hall intensified Terence’s desire. He grabbed her hand and pulled her towards the stairs. Her nervousness returning, she baulked a little, but once he got her up to the landing, pushed the door of the main bedroom open and turned on the lights, she was once again like a child in fairyland.
Bella had never imagined a bed could be so big. She’d never actually seen a bed before, only an occasional discarded mattress at the camp, put to use during the muster and dumped as the families moved on. And the dressing table! With its huge gilt-edged mirror and silver-topped jars and brushes and combs …
She crossed to it and looked at herself in the mirror. She discovered that, if she stood back from the dressing table a little, she could see her whole body, from the top of her head to her knees. She’d never seen her whole reflection before. She didn’t have long to wonder at the fact, however, Terence was beside her, ordering her to take her clothes off.
There wasn’t much to take off, she wore no underwear beneath her light smock and, as Terence rummaged in the top drawer of the dressing table Bella slipped the smock over her head and admired her nakedness in the mirror.
‘Put these on,’ he told her, and he handed her a pair of white panties and a lacy white brassiere.
Bella giggled as she stepped into the panties, and he had to help her with the brassiere, she had no idea how to fasten it. Then she stood before the mirror admiring herself in the fancy underwear of the white missus. It would be uncomfortable to wear all the time, but it looked very sexy. She cupped her breasts and pulled them up higher into the brassiere; it was too big for her, but its lace looked lovely against her skin. She turned and looked over her shoulder, admiring her bottom in the panties. She liked what she saw.
So did Terence. As he sat on the bed watching Bella admire herself, the sight of his wife’s stark white underwear against the girl’s black skin excited him. He undressed, not taking his eyes from the girl for one instant, and when he was naked he stepped behind her and gazed at their reflections.
‘Bend over,’ he said. Bella knew what was expected of her, and she star
ted to take off the panties. ‘Leave them on,’ he ordered.
Bella leaned her elbows on the dressing table, parted her legs, and arched her back, her rump pointing up invitingly at him.
Terence pulled aside the panties and entered her from behind. He tried to move slowly, to savour the image as he looked down at his groin and thrust himself through his wife’s underwear into Bella’s velvet interior. He looked at their reflections in the mirror. Bella was enjoying herself now. Her head lolled back, her eyes half open, her lips parted, she was making guttural sounds as she met his every thrust.
The sight of the girl’s blackness and her wantonness in Henrietta’s pristine underwear was both erotic and rebellious and Terence was losing control. He tried to slow down but it was impossible. The thought of Henrietta’s debasement was giving him untold pleasure, and the harder and stronger he pumped himself into the girl’s body, the more he was making Henrietta pay for her coldness.
Frigid bitch, he thought as he thrust more and more brutally and, as he reached his climax, the knowledge that he had defiled Henrietta in her absence, in her own bedroom, with her own underwear, afforded him the most exquisite pleasure.
As soon as he was spent, he dismissed the girl. ‘Go home, Bella,’ he said.
Bella was a little disappointed. She’d wanted to explore the grand house, but the boss was in one of his bad moods. He was funny like that. Sometimes after they’d done it he’d laugh and play with her, and sometimes he’d just walk off. Bella slipped her smock back on and disappeared.
The panties were damp and they smelled of his semen. Terence decided to destroy them. It was one thing to humiliate Henrietta in her absence, another entirely to be found out. Faced with the knowledge of his indiscretion she might well leave him, and that was a prospect which, deep down, terrified Terence. But he wondered, as he folded the brassiere and returned it to the drawer, whether she might smell the black woman next time she dressed. A musky smell which she would put down to damp, but the thought pleased Terence.
