by Gil Hogg
Paul told her about growing up on Mirabilly and what he’d learned when his father died about being broke. How it changed his life. How he and Nick Karantis were lucky to survive with their business. He didn’t mention that his mother had come out from England with Marchmont and married Ted Travis later. He couldn’t confide to a sixteen-year-old girl he hardly knew, the issue about his own parentage and the fact that Ellen had once been Marchmont’s mistress. But Sophie surprised him by knowing some of the story.
“Your mom was John’s woman like my mom. Hey, that’s quite a connection between us. That’s right isn’t it?”
“I guess so, as far as I know. My mother doesn’t talk of such things.”
Sophie was amused and then she saw the darker side. “Your mom was jilted. Maybe mine will be.”
“I don’t know anything much about my mother and John Marchmont. She’s never confided in me. I guess the busybodies on Mirabilly think they know it all.”
The last thing Paul remembered was Sophie whispering that they were related and they dozed off, swathed in blankets, slumped together on the chairs.
In the early hours, Paul awakened. The room was bright with moonlight. The insects chorused like a brass band. Sophie stirred too. Paul pointed to the bunk beds and lay down on the nearest. He felt Sophie climb on to the same bed behind him, pressing against his back. His pulse raced until he realised she was sobbing, clinging to him and he could feel her tears on the back of his neck.
*
In the morning when they stirred the sun was up; they began unwrapping themselves from the tangle of blankets, gluey with sleep, dry-mouthed and stiff. Paul put his arms around Sophie and gave her a hug and she responded by pressing her lips against his cheek. Paul thought that they had achieved a peaceful understanding.
It was like an aircraft fighter attack; they hardly heard it coming. The plane approached very low and fast and the roar hit the hut without warning; shook it and rattled the panes of glass. By the time Paul and Sophie had thrown the mess of food wrappers into a garbage sack, scooped up the blankets, returned them to the cupboard and opened the door, the Piper was on the runway wheeling toward them.
Jim Lomas, the station’s second engineer, was at the controls. He looked suspiciously at their sleep-creased and slightly dazed expressions from the window of the plane. Then he got out and without speaking, climbed into the Cessna. After checking for a few moments he found the battery had recovered sufficiently to turn the engine over and it fired into life immediately. He left the engine running and climbed down.
“Nothing wrong with it,” he shouted. “You flooded it last night.”
Paul’s embarrassment was screened by the noise. He saw from his watch that it was 6.30am. At Mirabilly the day was well advanced.
“I guess we sat around the campfire too long,” Sophie laughed.
Jim Lomas was unamused. “You wanta come back with me?” he said to her, “They’re getting excited about this back at the station.”
“Of course not!” Sophie said. “There’s nothing to be excited about. I’ll go with Paul.”
Paul and Sophie hardly spoke as they flew back to Mirabilly. Paul felt that they didn’t need to. Sophie had said that she would like to meet Ellen and he agreed without thinking; it seemed to complete the ‘relationship’ circle which intrigued her. Sophie appeared to be confident that she could handle Marchmont and her mother if they complained about her being out all night. “They’ll be irritated but not desperate about my absence.”
Just before Paul let Sophie out of the ute in front of the Big House, she said, “Thanks for being so nice. That plane really did break down, didn’t it?” Before he could reply, she was out of the cab and running for the front steps of the house.
*
In the afternoon, Paul met Sophie as arranged at the gate of the Big House under the shade of a grove of eucalyptus trees.
“I’ll show you where we used to live before my father’s death,” Paul said.
He walked her along a path to the head stockman’s house. It was on short piles so the air could circulate, the windows shaded by a deep verandah. They could only stand near the gate under the wattle tree and look across the lawns, bright with bougainvillea bushes and rhododendrons. The house gleamed, neat and white.
“Not exactly the Big House style,” Paul said, “but a show-place and a temple to my mother.”
“She sounds ferocious.”
“In a way she is.”
Paul didn’t mention that he hadn’t told Ellen that he was bringing Sophie to visit. He knew that Ellen would refuse. If he wanted to introduce a girl, as he never had, he thought she was bound to say, ‘Are you going to marry her?’ and if he said no, or ‘Don’t be absurd. I’m only twenty,’ she’d say, ‘Then why bring her here?’ She was like that.
Paul and Sophie walked down the Hill to the Village and along the modest row to Ellen’s cabin. It was as neat and well-painted as the house on the Hill, but the strip of lawn, small bushes of flowers, wire fence and shed-like shape were a contrast. Paul showed Sophie inside to a spotless sitting room, crowded with an upright piano, standard lamp and the chintz covered lounge suite from the Hill.
They sat for a while talking and then Ellen, whom Paul suspected had been listening behind the slightly open door of the bedroom, entered. She was dressed smartly as always on a Sunday, although Ellen never attended the all-faith chapel on the Hill. She wore a dark blue dress with high-heeled court shoes, her neck and arms smooth and golden. Her figure swelled into attractive curves in the simple dress and the skirt was short enough to emphasise her slender calves and ankles. Her fingernails were painted red like her lips. Her hair was wavy dark-brown, worn short. She was a voluptuous woman but for the cold set of her cheeks and the firmness around her mouth which promised, in time, to flare into lines.
As Ellen stepped into the room she looked over their heads and out the window. “Well, to what do we owe this visit?”
Surprisingly, Sophie spoke first. “Paul asked me to come and meet you, Mrs Travis,” which wasn’t strictly true.
“Mum, this is Sophie Ryland from America…”
“I know who she is!” Ellen said, addressing him as though Sophie wasn’t there.
Sophie stood up, half a head taller than Ellen, red with confusion. “Perhaps I’ll see you later, Paul. I better go.”
“No, don’t go,” Paul implored.
“You’ve satisfied your curiosity, Miss. You better go,” Ellen snapped.
“For God’s sake, Mum!” Paul said angrily.
“What did you bring her here for? The daughter of Marchmont’s tart!” Ellen snarled.
“What were you?” Paul replied. The words just came out.
Ellen’s assurance cracked. He could see the turmoil of her uncertainty. She rushed into the bedroom, slamming the door.
“I don’t need this,” Sophie said, going out the front door.
Paul saw her running fast along the street toward the rise. He sank down on the couch. He listened, thinking he might hear Ellen crying, but he had never known her to cry. He fancied that she too was listening behind the door.
The clumsiness of what he had done, bringing the three of them together, began to come to him. All he meant to do was to reveal something of his life to Sophie. Not out of friendship; they had just met. And it wasn’t so much precisely her, as her connection with Marchmont. He was in touch with Marchmont through her. He was saying this is me, this is how I live.
But for Ellen, the mere sight of Sophie was too much; light playing round the edges of her golden hair, exuding youthful sexuality. He thought Ellen had probably imagined Marchmont caressing the breasts of a new mistress and now, in Ellen’s home, the new mistress’s daughter was casting her eyes toward her son…
9
Paul could not easily forget Sophie or Emma because they were so unlike any girls he had ever met, but they passed out of his immediate concerns from the time of Sophie’s visit to Mirabilly in 1
975. He was busy with Northern Airlift and it was an era of rapid growth and change. His visits to Mirabilly ceased to be so frequent and he had to take care to arrange them in advance with Ellen, to avoid unfortunate meetings with her callers. Sophie’s disastrous visit was never mentioned between them. Paul realised that if he rebuked Ellen for her wrong-headed rudeness, he would only provoke a tirade of abuse about Linda Ryland and Sophie.
Early in 1980, he became increasingly concerned about Ellen’s health. He had no firm evidence, just that she seemed to be fading. Some of her old zest was gone. She was always tired. She refused medical attention, saying she could heal herself. She kept a Bible annotated by Mary Baker Eddy by her bed. It was at this time that Paul heard from Terry Dunn that Marchmont was visiting again with Linda Ryland, whom he had not married and Sophie, now twenty-one.
Paul rang Sophie at the Big House and asked her to go riding. He was prompted by the same impulse which made him agree to introduce Sophie to his mother, a kind of subterranean contact with Marchmont. He could tell that she was pleased by the call. She joked that they better not take a plane ride. They made a date.
He met Sophie at the stables in the Village at six in the morning. She was friendly and cool. She offered her hand. Her face was a little thinner, her hair crammed under a white stetson.
Paul’s stomach wrenched when he heard Marchmont’s unmistakable commanding tone of greeting behind him. He thought, Oh, hell, is this man going to try to stop the ride or get in on it himself? He swung around. Marchmont hadn’t changed much. There were a few lines on his face and the thin, longish blond hair suited him. They shook hands.
“I’ve been hearing things about you, Travis.” Marchmont used a schoolmasterly tone which suggested that something was wrong. “Read something in the Sydney Argus and Terry Dunn told me. You’re selling out to Ansett.” He nodded a qualified approval. “You’ve done very well.”
Marchmont was slightly shorter than Paul and uninhibited by it. He stood with his riding booted legs apart, appraising Paul with harsh blue eyes which seemed to be trying to work out how Ellen Travis’s kid could have done this.
“I’m selling my half. My partner’s staying in.”
“What are you going to do next?”
Paul wondered whether Marchmont was being curious or polite. “Take my yacht out to the Barrier, cruise a little…”
“The papers say you’ve got mining interests.”
“Mining? Oh, yeah, sure. What else is there in Oz?”
Marchmont clapped him on the arm warmly. “Good luck. Look after Sophie.” He walked into one of the stalls and came back almost immediately. “How’s your mother?”
“She’s not too well at the moment.”
He frowned and it seemed that he was going to take the enquiry further, but after a pause he turned away.
*
When Sophie and Paul were on a trail beyond the Village, one which Paul thought Marchmont would be unlikely to use, she asked him whether he thought Marchmont was his father.
The question pierced him like a knife-blade as it always did. “Why do you ask that?”
“It’s the gossip at Mirabilly.”
“Let it be. It’s twenty-five year old gossip. Stale.”
“The conversation I’ve just heard is crazy. How could you two talk like that without saying something?”
“Shit! I don’t know!” Paul said. “I’ve buried it. What can I do? I mean… it’s all a bit late, isn’t it? What can he do? Invite me to the Big House for dinner? I don’t need a loan. It’s too late to pay for my education. At twenty-six I don’t exactly need a daddy.”
“But you might be father and son.”
“I don’t think he believes that or he’d have done something about it a long time ago.”
“John has talked about what you’ve done. He thinks you’re a hotshot, but he doesn’t like to admit it. He started with millions. He’s an old colonialist. You’re a different breed. You started from scratch and there’s something threatening about you, to him.”
“Whatever a hotshot is I’m not one of those. I’ve worked my ass off for the last eight years.” It had taken those years of hard, almost obsessional work to get to the present point. He had no regrets. What had materialised as a slightly boring but welcome change the day Melda tossed a coin and he was grounded, had become a demon he fought to conquer. Work was pretty well all he wanted to do apart from sailing his thirty foot yacht from Townsville. He often thought of the studies he might have done and all the books he might have read, but they were like an island he had sailed past in the night.
Nick Karantis was a different kind of man. Nick had been the driver, the blowhard who persuaded Burrundie Finance that their Pipers would rust on the tarmac unless they did a deal; he was the one who really got them into the air. If it hadn’t been for Nick and his easy-going father, Paul knew he might still be bumming around the NT in light aircraft, or possibly finishing university and thinking of becoming a fledgling lawyer. But as the business grew Nick’s contribution had diminished. He was a man who only wanted to do what he enjoyed – flying. Then he married and this changed him. He was a first generation Australian, with warm feelings about family from his Greek parents. He wanted to be home with his wife in the evenings and weekends; and when they had kids, his desire for a settled family life increased.
Paul, in contrast, had been pleased to work nights and weekends. He had no attachments and really no family other than his distant relationship with his mother. He had a lot of casual girlfriends but he never let anybody move in with him. After Ellen, he was sure he didn’t understand the sex. He had managed to keep the management of Northern Airlift an inch or two ahead of the natural expansion of the business. He had done the prosaic things that could be expected of a novice who studied elementary business administration and accountancy at Darwin Tech, while he directed Northern Airlift. He installed the systems which made the company solid, like personnel selection, computers, cash management, pilot and staff training. He even innovated by introducing female pilots and managers. Nick used to say that this was Paul’s harem and a way of saving time chasing women.
Paul learned that men and women find a person who has authority attractive for that reason alone and he began to appreciate that on a much greater scale this applied to Marchmont. Marchmont had a palpable field of influence around him; people’s lives were bent in the direction in which he wanted to go.
After Nick and Paul had mopped up the market formerly supplied by Dart and a few of their smaller competitors, their accountants suggested that the easiest way to expand was to take over other small companies. They added planes, pilots and territory to their business at much less cost than it would have taken them to compete. Paul liked stalking and then the dealing that led to buying other companies. Eventually, they bought a shell company quoted on the Sydney stock exchange and let it take over all their interests. By this time they had extended their activities thinly across the whole continent. Ansett showed an interest in buying a slice of Northern Airlift and Paul, tired of the air transport business, agreed with Nick to sell his share. All Nick’s dreams had come true, so there was no difficulty in parting. “Go in peace and make many more millions,” Nick said.
*
Paul visited his mother every few weeks, rarely staying overnight. She continued to work in the commissary and the cafeteria. Dick Mather retired as general manager and with his long-suffering wife, moved to a retirement village in Surfer’s Paradise. Ellen had callers and her activities were discreet but probably well-known.
She and Paul found it difficult to talk, except about domestic details and local and national politics (she continued to be an avid newspaper reader) but they never revealed their thoughts and feelings about their lives. “Think about the future,” Ellen would say when any touchy subject arose.
Paul offered her a home and a pension in any town or city in Australia, but her response was always the same. “Mirabilly is my home and I inten
d to stay here.” He tried to persuade her to return to England for a visit at his expense. Her answer was a rapid and peremptory ‘no’. She used the money Paul gave her for annual visits to Sydney. She went alone. She had no female friends, but she seemed not to be able to do without the company of men.
She continued to give Paul the impression that she thought she was a young woman whom all the men were chasing. It astounded him that in her mid-forties she could confuse her own undoubted attractions with continued youth. She had retained her figure, her graceful legs and her sensual manner, but even her immaculate dressing and make-up could not hide a weary hardness.
10
The Flying Doctor’s nurse rang Paul Travis in March 1981 in Darwin. “I’m sorry Mr Travis, but your mother’s ill and Dr Rogers says she’s refusing treatment.”
“What’s the matter?” He wasn’t surprised and his worries about her health came to the surface.
“Well… you’ll have to speak to Dr Rogers. She needs tests and possibly urgent surgery.”
Dr Rogers told him that Ellen had lumps in both breasts, which might be malignant. Paul flew to Mirabilly immediately. Ellen was in bed at home. She was being nursed by the despised woman next door, who had never been in the house while Ellen had been active. Ellen now praised her as an angel. When he told Ellen what the Flying Doctor Service had said, she clutched a hot water bottle over her breasts defiantly.
“If you think I’m going to let those butchers in Darwin cut me about you’re mistaken. I’m all right. If I’m not, my time’s come.”
With anybody else, it might have been possible to give them drugs and take over the management of the case, but Ellen wouldn’t take drugs or surrender. She lay on the bed, grimacing occasionally at the pain, with hotter and hotter hot water bottles on her breasts. Paul was unsure when he should step in and order that she be flown to hospital, or whether he was entitled to do this.
