The Marquis was unable to assist the police with any information as to the whereabouts of Mrs Alain Torte because he was found dead at his exclusive hotel within four hours of their photograph being taken. Big Dick was naked with a six-inch blade buried deep in his heart. On the bedside table was an empty champagne bottle, a neatly peeled and quartered apple, the remains of a Brie cheese and my mother’s ruby earrings. I still have her earrings and wear them when I’m feeling particularly wicked. According to a newspaper report at the time, my father had been under the erroneous impression that Madam was dining with the Society of Friends, a Quaker organisation in Hobart.
Rose always returned from Hobart with heart-warming tales of a Quaker called George Washington Walker. According to Rose he was father to ten children, a humanist, shop keeper and defender of the underprivileged. It therefore came as something of a shock to my father to discover old George had died before Rose was even born. It would appear that my mother worked on the premise that her dupes were too gullible to ever think of checking up on her.
Following Rose’s disappearance my father’s bitterness evolved into open aggression and increasingly antisocial behaviour. Gradually, over the next two years, he gave up all pretence of merely being a heavy drinker and took to guzzling vast quantities of alcohol in the privacy of his study. Cases of cognac, champagne, rum, sherry, port, gin and assorted fine wines were unloaded on the quay and hauled up to Appletorte. Papa began with French champagne at breakfast, before moving onto white wine mid-morning, claret for lunch and spirits in the afternoon. He’d finish up around three in the morning sloshing down goblets of cognac.
The next day, he’d wake up in a violent mood and our staff would pass the word around that he was on the rampage. Appletorte was an extensive estate with many sheds, cottages and outbuildings. Nanny, Tim, Agnes and Cook usually managed to hide me from Papa. Occasionally he’d track me down and the hatred he bore my mother was transferred to me, a child of ten. ‘Where’s the slut’s brat? Get here this instant Sasha, or you’ll really get a pasting!’
I’d hear his footsteps all over the house while I lay trembling under the stairs, in the linen closet or up in the attic where I hid in an abandoned wooden crate. Once found, he’d pull me out and grip me in a way that left bruises all over my body.
‘Well, well, well. What do we have here, eh? Hiding just like your goddamned mother. You’re looking more like that bitch every day. And like you, she was too bloody lazy to learn to write with her right hand. Stop snivelling for Christ sake!’
Sometimes Papa would be content just to yell in my face and give me a good shaking. Other times he’d give me a sound beating. If Nanny or Cook knew what was happening the maids would be quickly summoned and suddenly they’d all be there. Everyone knew damn well that the master wasn’t going to touch a hair on my head if his maids were watching. Why? Because Alain Torte did his nasty stuff under cover of darkness or when unobserved. But more importantly, he wanted to keep his options open with our more beauteous maids. Believe it or not, some fancied him rotten and had no qualms about taking their turn at warming his bed. I guess it had something to do with his reputation of being bad to the bone. My father had a lot in common with the fictional Heathcliff and girls who were susceptible to brutal but charismatic men found much to admire in Alain Torte. Frankly, I’ve never understood his allure.
By the time I was eleven I’d become adept at giving Papa the slip but I lived in perpetual fear that he’d catch me out and there’d be hell to pay. What was strange was that for weeks at a time he’d be quite amicable. I worked out that those times corresponded with him laying off the booze. There was definitely a direct correlation between his violent moods and his consumption of fine wines. But despite the evidence that Papa was an alcoholic in the making, I still thought it was my fault that Rose had left us. His beatings verified my shame. And so when Papa told me I was worse than my mother, I believed him.
All the staff knew what was going on. As Cook once put it, as she hid me in the coal bin one morning, ‘Your dear old dad is punishing you because you’re so like your mother. She was left handed too. You know, somebody’s going to do Torte in one of these days. Now, poppet, just sit tight and don’t stick your nose out until I come to tell you the coast is clear.’
Tim further enlightened me, ‘Your father seriously doubted you were his and accused Rose of marrying him because she was already with child. They had terrible rows in front of the servants. Torte suspected every bloke in the district of being Rose’s lover and he publicly slandered the family doctor.’
‘Why?’
‘It’s always been bandied around that Dr Dual is a pants man and every ruddy female within a five-hundred-mile radius fancies him rotten. But given the way women throw themselves at him, I reckon he’s a gourmet not a glutton.’
One by one my pets disappeared. I was never told Papa had killed them but I knew. Our staff changed constantly. Papa accused the head housekeeper of employing disloyal menials and took over the hiring and firing of all staff himself. It was no coincidence that every girl he employed was pretty. Anges, Nanny and Cook hung on simply because they couldn’t bear to leave me alone with him.
After Grandpa had a row with my father about the bruises on my arms, Papa’s methods changed. I was still beaten but he now did it in such a way that there were no tell-tale bruises.
On each visit my father would see Grandpa off the premises with a pistol tucked in his belt. They despised each other but Grandpa always made a point of appearing to be unarmed. But Cook reckoned, ‘Appearances can be deceptive, my girl. Brendan’s got a hung pair of pistols under his greatcoat and he’s itching to use them. Your grandad is as good a marksman as our Tim and he draws like greased lightning. And if the master is stupid enough to pull out his pistol, I reckon Brendan will plug him with just one bullet.’
In retrospect I realise Grandpa was amassing evidence to bring Alain Torte to trial. And if Grandpa was going to kill his son-in-law, he’d make damned sure it looked like self-defence.
I remember the two of them, facing off on the veranda. Grandpa could be heard clear to coast, ‘You’re the Bard of Bullshit, Torte! But one way or another, I’ll crucify you. You drove my Rose away but I won’t let you destroy my granddaughter. One dark night, I’m going to hunt you down, gut you and feed your testicles to the crows. A grave is too good for a fucker like you!’
Summer came and went, a full year passed and I turned twelve. One afternoon, as I sat at my desk in the school room, Papa erupted through the door. Agnes cringed back against the blackboard. Papa’s handsome face was contorted with rage and his unwashed dark hair was standing on end. ‘I want to know why the brat is still writing with her left hand. I’ve told you many a time that’s just not permitted in this household.’ He leant down and shouted in my face, ‘Admit it! You’re the spawn of the devil!’
He raised his fist but Agnes jumped in front of him and tried to shield me. ‘Sasha was born that way, Sir. Being left-handed doesn’t mean she’s a child of the devil. It’s just an old wives’ tale.’
He grabbed her by the back of her long plaited hair. ‘Don’t backchat me. You women are all the same. Get out of my sight!’
Papa flung Agnes from the room and locked the door. The combined stench of stale tobacco and alcohol was asphyxiating. He smelt as though he’d been marinated in claret.
‘Now then, Sasha, show me how you write with your right hand. Write your mother’s name.’
My hand shook so much that I only managed to mark the paper illegibly.
‘Just as I thought. There’s only one fucking way to fix this!’
He flung up the heavy lid of the wooden desk, jammed my left hand on the rim and brought the lid down with a thump. The pain was so excruciating I thought I was going to vomit.
‘Stop the blubbering. We’ll try again and keep trying until you learn to do as you’re told.’
I heard feet pounding up the stairs. The door was battered unti
l it gave way and Tim stood there breathing heavily with shaving soap on one cheek.
Papa looked up and sneered, ‘Still playing the fucking hero, Tim? Come on, let’s see if you can take me.’
Before Tim could make a move, Papa grabbed me by the throat and flung me against the marble fireplace. I cracked my head, landed like a rag doll and slipped into blessed unconsciousness.
When I awoke it was night-time and I was tucked up in Nanny’s bed, with a raging headache, a bandaged left hand and a strange taste in my mouth. The room was in shadow and Dr Dual was packing up his medicine bag. Nanny was fussing with my pillows so much that I thought my head might fall off.
Dual nodded sternly at Nanny and she whispered, ‘Sasha dear, there’s something we must tell you. God has taken your father.’
‘What do you mean, Nanny? Why would God want him?’
Nanny gestured helplessly at Dr Dual and I heard her whisper. ‘She’s always had a mind of her own. I blame Alain and Rose, I’ve never seen such self-centred parents in all my life. They neglected the child and let her run wild.’
Dr Dual sat down on the bed and laid cool, cool fingers on my brow. It was a novelty to have everyone’s undivided attention. I liked our doctor, he smelt of eau de toilette and his eyes were kind.
‘Sasha, your father hanged himself in the stables. Jacko found him.’
But even back then I knew it was not suicide.
Alain Torte’s funeral was a strange affair. Nobody made mention of the fact he’d supposedly necked himself. The Church no longer buried suicides at the crossroads in unmarked graves but it was still a socially unacceptable way to die. I thought it decidedly odd that the mourners were all behaving as though Alain Torte had passed away peacefully surrounded by his doting family.
Shirley has a painting in her room titled, Death of the Good Father. It depicts a genteel old man propped up in bed while a priest mumbles the last rites. A nightingale on the windowsill is singing its heart out. Dutifully surrounding the bed are the old bloke’s family, all weeping. One beautiful daughter tears her hair out by the handful. Meantime another beauty savagely claws her own dress to shreds. What a terrible waste of a lovely gown. Perhaps the painter was at a loss as to how he could decently incorporate youthful, succulent flesh with a decaying member of the ruling class.
Shirley is smitten with the painting. When she showed it to me she said, ‘Now, Miss Sasha, that’s what I calls real art. You know exactly what is what. No buggerising around there, eh?’
Indeed.
At Alain Torte’s funeral people strained themselves to speak well of the deceased. The conversations I overheard didn’t augur well for him being welcomed at the pearly gates and accepted into God’s heaven.
On the day Alain Torte was buried, Mother Nature conspired with the gods. The skies erupted and the river flooded, turning Papa’s funeral into a farce. It poured during the church service and hail hammered down on the tin roof. The hypocrites who tried to eulogise Alain Torte were drowned out by the racket. Several mourners had trouble suppressing their amusement at the sight of one of Torte’s cronies standing at the pulpit mimicking a hungry goldfish gobbling up food.
At Wolfftown’s cemetery Alain Torte’s waiting grave filled up with rainwater and the cemetery turned into a muddy quagmire. Tim held a large black umbrella over my head as we stood next to the priest at the gravesite. I silently willed Father Ryan to get on with it before Lucifer put in an appearance. For in my heart of hearts, I believed the devil was tunnelling up from below to snatch away my father’s soul.
Grandpa had told me about the west coast fires hidden below the earth’s surface. The fires were fuelled by underground peat moss and if they managed to reach the surface, they flared up and burnt our forests down. Peering into my father’s open grave I thought about all this, and wondered if the underground fires were really what preachers meant by Hell.
I suppose Hell has always seemed real to me because despite having been raised in a godless family, I’d learnt a lot from the hellfire and damnation preacher who regularly tormented passersby on Main Street. ‘Listen, you heathens! If you haven’t yet thrown yourself on God’s mercy, expect to die a slow, excruciating death on Judgment Day. Your lot will be Hell and a boiling cauldron of oil until the end of time. Repent! Repent right now by making a donation, so I can continue God’s work in this godforsaken town.’
As Father Ryan did his best to present the deceased in a good light to a bunch of shivering mourners, I wondered how Papa was coping downstairs. I dropped my head, so nobody could see my sly smile when I pictured Papa trying to cut a preferential deal with the devil, while contending with the underground fires licking at his long black riding boots. Since that day I’ve never sneered at the concept of hellfire and damnation – because there well might be a burning hell down below.
Papa’s mistress slipped on the wet clay and almost ended up on top of the deceased. She was saved from scandal by Tim who managed to grab her as she was going down. One of the town’s drunks advised her sagely, ‘This ain’t India, luv. No need to throw yarself onto his funeral pyre.’
A few mourners laughed but quickly smothered their hilarity. Wolfftown’s leading gossip, Mrs Adair, turned her snigger into a dignified cough.
I gripped Tim’s hand. I liked his hands, they were big, calloused and never sweaty and when he touched me I felt safe. While the oak coffin was lowered Father Ryan and Tim kept up a muted conversation.
‘The crops certainly need the rain, Father.’
‘Aye, Tim, with enough left over to drown bloody Noah’s Ark.’
It was strangely comforting to hear banal conversation about the weather. It diluted my fear.
Everyone went back to Appletorte Homestead for the wake. Gum trees flung themselves around in a frenzy, lightning cracked the sky and wet dogs shivered on our veranda. Mourners fled up the steps clutching dripping umbrellas. Boots were caked with mud and the women’s waterlogged skirts dragged along the ground. Wet winter coats steamed in the hallway, every fire had been lit and the musty smell of wet wool pervaded the air.
Cook had been up most of the night producing enough food to feed a plague of locusts. In those days wakes were well-stocked affairs and death was something of a social event. Heaven couldn’t help the deceased if their kin didn’t provide enough refreshments for the mourners.
The presence of the Grim Reaper had not diminished the mourners’ appetites. Every available surface groaned under the weight of assorted victuals: ham sandwiches, egg sandwiches, sausage rolls, mince pies, pastries by the pound, almond cakes, sherry trifle, punch, ale, sherry, whisky and a cellar full of the deceased’s wines. All the food was neatly arranged on doilies, with our best Wedgwood china, linen and silverware on display. Crammed amongst the platters was an abundance of hothouse flowers. The atmosphere was over-perfumed and cloying, but to me it smelt of liberation.
From my position on the upper landing, I watched the town’s madwoman cramming mince pies into her bottomless handbag. While she swarmed the feast she surreptitiously drank from a purloined bottle of gin. The mourners turned a benevolent blind eye.
Two matrons – Mrs Wilma Floros and Mrs Mildred Adair – sat together guzzling the deceased’s best Spanish sherry. They gossiped as they popped food into their capacious mouths. Their rouged cheeks laboured like hamsters storing nuts for winter.
‘But my dear, how could you not know? Alain hailed from one of the best Anglo-French families in England.’
‘Wasn’t there something about them disinheriting him? Criminal activity, I believe.’
‘Correct, Mildred. Alain had to flee England. Having gambled away his yearly allowance, he’d forged the signatures of his guardians to gain early access to his inheritance.’
‘Could you pass the curried egg sandwiches, please, Wilma.’
‘Certainly. His family is quite distinguished. Leaders in both the fine arts and the sciences I believe.’
‘Really?’
&nb
sp; Mrs Floros sucked down another sherry, daintily dabbed her lips and continued, ‘Furthermore, Alain was under suspicion of trying to poison his mother.’
‘Oh my God.’
‘It gets worse Mildred, some believe Torte murdered the only person who knew of his crime . . . the family butler.’
‘Lordy, wouldn’t it have been simpler just to buy the butler’s silence? I’ll have another of those delicious ham fancies, dear.’
I slid down the stairs and hid behind a Chinese screen. My pockets concealed two Cornish pasties and a new pet rat given to me by Tim. I’d christened him Harry.
Mrs Floros was savouring every morsel of Papa’s shady past. ‘I heard Torte initially made a living working as a doctor.’
‘Not quite. He’d been a student at the London Medical School and got a job helping out the surgeons at the Colonial Hospital. Torte’s knowledge of Latin and Greek was useful for the prescriptions.’
‘Mildred, with all due respect, working in that slaughterhouse would not a rich man make.’
‘Of course not, dearie. He wisely invested his money in a chop house on the wharf.’
‘Ah, could you pass the mutton sandwiches please?’
The ladies were plump pigeons perched on the ottoman. Mr Denholm, Wolfftown’s most prosperous butcher, eyed them hungrily. He was in trade, but wealth had bought him social status. The ladies willingly made room for him on the ottoman and Mrs Floros got straight to the point, ‘So, Mr Denholm, you must know how Alain Torte made his money, surely lamb chops can’t have been the whole story?’
‘Well now, Torte became a professional gambler and part of the township’s flash set, which was kept orderly by wealthy publicans and sporting butchers like meself. Torte invested his winnings in property: The Sailors Return, The Phoenix and numerous land holdings.’
The Scandalous Life of Sasha Torte Page 5
