The Unforgiving Shore

by Gil Hogg

  “How’s Peter?”

  “Poorly, but it’s not my place to be telling you about your own husband.”

  “What’s the trouble?” She knew Hilda could not resist medical details.

  “Blood pressure. Heart irregularity. The doctor says he’s too heavy.”

  “Yes, well, we’ve talked about his diet…”

  “You should be here supervising it.”

  “What say did I ever have in what he ate with you and Rose and Ivy faffing about?”

  “Ivy has been like a wife to Peter.”

  “I’m not coming back home, Auntie.”

  “Peter’s back at his mother’s. Ivy’s living in there now. She’s a brick, your sister. She’s nursing him. Not that you’d care.”

  “I’m leaving the Grange. I’m going to be away for a while.”

  “Where are you going, Ellen, if I might ask?”

  “To Australia.”

  A pause and Hilda’s grating breath quickened. “Australia? What are you talking about, girl? You don’t have the bus fare to Norwich unless some man is paying!”

  Ellen bit back her reply. “I’ll get in touch when I get back.”

  “Oh, will you, madam. And may I enquire about the rent?”

  Ellen was expecting this; it was awkward, but it had to be faced. She had been putting an envelope through Rose Burnham’s door every fortnight, with a sum of money that was only slightly reduced to enable her to pay her rent to Carrie Chatwin.

  “You’re saying Peter is living with his mother,” Ellen said, thinking it eased the problem.

  “Indeed, but what about Ivy, or does your sister have to sacrifice herself for nothing?”

  “Ivy can share Peter’s benefit. She might be entitled to one herself.”

  “Peter is entitled to the care of his wife, or had you forgotten?”

  “Peter is an adulterer who tried to murder me, Auntie. He intended to kill me and threatened he would.”

  “Tsssshaw! What rubbish to cover up the fact that you’re not prepared to support your husband!”

  Ellen was livid, but controlled. “No, I’m not going to support him any more.” There was a pause on the line while she heard Hilda wheezing with anger. “It’s no use going on about this. We’re getting nowhere,” she added softly.

  “And how will I know where to find you, just in case you might want to know what’s happening in your own family?” Hilda said bitterly.

  Ellen thought quickly. “You can get a message to me through Jack Grayson, the butler at the Grange.”

  “You’re so far above yourself, milady! I suppose you think you’ll become queen of the manor and never see the likes of Carrie Chatwin’s house again? Well, listen to me…”

  Ellen knew all about being above herself. Staying at school would put her above herself; reading books and playing the piano were all above her. Anything which didn’t involve cooking, cleaning house, having babies and waiting on a man was above her. “Goodbye, Hilda,” she said.

  “And might I know who’s taking you on this jaunt?” Hilda asked, maliciously curious.

  Ellen was silent.

  “You’re a wicked, neglectful girl and you’ll rue this day!”

  Ellen replaced the receiver not with anger which had come and gone, but with reluctance and discomfort. Her family would never understand.

  *

  It was awkward leaving the Grange because the staff thought Ellen was making a mistake; Jack Grayson tended to avoid her to protect his own feelings, Ellen thought. Only Laura admitted that if she was in Ellen’s place, she would do what Ellen planned. The goodbyes were hurried and hushed at a time when Ellen kept telling herself that she was setting out on the greatest adventure of her life.

  She stayed with Carrie Chatwin in Blakiston Row while John said he had to make arrangements and see people in other parts of the country. He gave her money which she could not refuse; she had no savings. The fear of being deserted by John lurked in her mind; it was a remote but fearful possibility. Carrie Chatwin and her husband treated her with the same calm affection they had always shown. Carrie’s eyes clouded with incomprehension when Ellen had told her about Australia. “I hope you’ll be all right love,” was all Carrie could say, pressing her veiny hand to her bosom desperately.

  On Sunday afternoons, Carrie’s son, Malcolm, usually came to the house. Carrie said he always came for an hour now that he was married. Ellen knew Malcolm from schooldays. He was a fitter in the railway workshops at Downham; his big hands had black grease ingrained around the fingernails. He was uneasy with her. In his mind, Ellen thought, women were pale and pregnant home-bodies; and he would know the local gossip. She was hardly notorious, but certainly talked about. Carrie left them alone in the parlour while she made tea.

  “You always were a strange one, Elly, like some kind of foreign woman.” He wasn’t unkindly.

  Malcolm Chatwin couldn’t have known how well he described her alienation from this cold and rainy place which had hardly changed in her lifetime except to decay a little; and her alienation from the sameness that seemed so important to her family; their square mile of poky houses, with mats on bare floors, an open fire in the parlour fire-place and glassware from the circus fairs on the shelves; all she had ever wanted for herself at one time. And her alienation from the sameness of the events of their lives, the procession of babies, the endless cooking and cleaning, the absurdly optimistic weddings, the drunkenness and the furtive adultery always eventually overlooked, but never forgiven or forgotten by the women.

  As Malcolm talked about June, his wife, whom Ellen also knew at school and their baby, she couldn’t help thinking of the way life revolved around the men and their appetites, their work, their Saturday afternoons at football, their evenings at the working-men’s club; and the wife at home with the gas stove and the babies and the grandparents.

  *

  For nearly three weeks Ellen had to keep a calm face at Carrie’s while she waited to hear from John. She made herself busy shopping and cleaning for Carrie who seemed very weak. Her money had run out. Carrie was watching her sympathetically and sadly. Ellen waited for the postman and listened every day to hear a letter come clicking through the mail slot in the front door. At last it happened. She was beside Carrie in the hall before Carrie picked the letter up; it was addressed to Ellen in a leisured, round hand that could only be John’s. She tore it open and absorbed the whole page in one glance. John would come for her in a week!

  Ellen read the letter carefully when she took it to her back bedroom. John wrote warmly but as if they had parted yesterday; there was no sense of lost time, or concern that she might be worried. He was a nice but thoughtless man.

  John came to Dock Street on the day they were to leave. He embraced her and then sat in the parlour with Carrie while Ellen finished packing; only one small suitcase on John’s instructions. Ellen could see that Carrie was surprised that this respectful young man in a thick sweater and corduroy trousers with an untidy crown of hair was John Marchmont. He lounged on the sofa, chatting easily; he wasn’t the apparition in tweeds with a loud voice and a moustache which Carrie had probably expected. When they left, Carrie squeezed her tight with happy tears.

  “Have a lovely, lovely time, dear.”

  15

  Before the voyage, when Ellen and John walked from Liverpool Street Station into the City of London, the footpaths were crowded with business people in dark clothes. John said that this was where the Marchmont millions were made. He said it in a way which made her think he was disconnected from the family emotionally, that they were people who did arcane and boring business which was of no interest to him.

  John took her by cab to Southampton Row and they walked to Russell Square. He pointed to the ornate pink brick façade of a hotel like a fairy castle. “That’s where we’re staying.”

  They had a double room at the front of the Russell Hotel, overlooking the square. Ellen looked out of tall windows at trees and lawns; almost
like the country if it hadn’t been for the deafening noise of the traffic which she found went on all night. The bed would have slept three or four people; the bath in the ensuite bathroom, standing on four short, podgy legs, was made for a giant. This wasn’t her first sight of what was called luxury but it was her first taste. The extravagance of swishing around in enough scented water to fill the wash tub at Ship Street three or four times over, was exquisite. She shivered when she remembered her other night in a hotel, the Duke’s Head in Market Square and the whiff of Peter Burnham’s vomit.

  John brought her a whole new wardrobe in Oxford Street, clothes she never dreamed of having: cocktail frocks, evening gowns, a mink evening wrap, skirts of every kind of weave, silk blouses of all colours and cashmere sweaters; and a vast selection of pink and white silk and satin underwear and nightdresses. He accompanied her at all times, joking with the salesgirls. She realised that he knew what she should wear and was guiding her. For himself, he went to Savile Row and the fashionable Jermyn Street shirt-makers. The results of this spree were packed in their three large metal cabin trunks and consigned to Southampton.

  They had time to see the crown jewels in the Tower of London, Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament. They went to a tea dance at the Ritz, saw Guys and Dolls in Shaftesbury Avenue and From Here to Eternity in one of the new Leicester Square cinemas. They dined at the Savoy Grill. All these things were fresh and fine to Ellen and to John, who spent his money with exuberance and a sense of occasion.

  When they boarded the Rangitoto at Southampton, Ellen found that they had a first class cabin with a small, self-contained patio. She could open the glass doors and lie on a deck chair in perfect privacy, although it was hard to imagine doing that in rainy Southampton. The ship seemed huge to Ellen; it may not have been the biggest of liners, but there were a confusing number of decks, pools, terraces, casinos, bars and ballrooms.

  They could go anywhere they chose on the vessel, but that did not apply to everybody. Ellen went down more than once during the voyage, alone, to the tourist class areas. The people down there were not too different from those she had left in Blakiston Row and Ship Street; many were emigrating and hadn’t bought clothes for the journey. Some of the men wore singlets or work-shirts, boots and braces. The women dressed in the shapeless, washed-out print dresses that they must have worn to scrub the floors at home; and the kids wore ill-fitting older brother’s or sister’s clothes. The faces of these passengers, even the kids, looked pinched and startled. Ellen knew why they were emigrating.

  John was endlessly sociable on the liner, but he rarely detached himself from Ellen. She soon learned to start a conversation with people she didn’t know. It was a rare night if they were in bed before two or three in the morning. They had long dinners, danced, watched cabaret, played deck games and swam, although Ellen couldn’t actually swim. John gambled a little in his imperturbable way. And they had uninterrupted hours to make love.

  The ship sailed through the Suez Canal and they visited the pyramids and the Cairo Museum and went ashore in Aden, Colombo and Singapore. The voyage was an endless party for them both, as John had said.

  *

  Ellen leaned over the rail day by day in anticipation as they sailed through the tropics. She watched the sea shade from midnight dark into blue translucence. The weather became milder by the hour as they passed through waters studded with coral atolls. They saw the Great Barrier Reef. With a sighting of the Australian continent, new colours emerged, the bronze line of hills and the pale blue of the mountains beyond.

  At last, Sydney in a world repainted in clear, bright colours; the flaking greys and hazes of the Wash were gone. The Rangitoto cruised up the fiord-like harbour to Port Jackson. Ellen loved the place immediately; pure skies, yachts on dazzling water, long beaches and low hills with trees shielding the houses.

  Ellen and John moved into the Grand Hotel in the Rocks area and spent a few days with friends from the voyage who didn’t want to part; and they met new Sydney people to whom John had introductions. This society was mostly young people like themselves from New Zealand, South Africa, Canada and the USA. Ellen was enjoying lunches, picnics, dinners at noisy restaurants and somewhat drunken parties.

  After a few weeks, she began to understand from oblique remarks of John’s, that they were running out of money. He didn’t seem concerned, but Ellen suggested that they rent an apartment and she even found one in the Morning Post at Pott’s Point.

  “Sounds great and very practical, Elly, but I’ve been thinking of Mirabilly.”

  “Mirabilly?” It was a name John had mentioned but not in a way to mark it on her memory. “Where’s that again?”

  “So much of the Marchmont empire. We have a cattle station on the Barkly Downs in the Northern Territory. We could go there as guests, stay as long as we like and let the old trust fund repair itself. A few months should do it.”

  She noticed the possessory we have a cattle station, which was unusual. “But we can’t invite ourselves, can we?”

  “There’s an open invitation to family members to visit, even poverty stricken ones like me. Nobody there except the manager. I mean there are hundreds of people there, but nobody from the Marchmont clan.”

  Ellen tried not to show disappointment; they had come thousands of miles to this beautiful city and John was proposing that they stay on a farm for a few months. “I can’t imagine what you’ll do cooped up on a farm, John.” But she did think at the same time that his restlessness would ensure that they didn’t stay too long.

  “By the way, darling, Mirabilly isn’t a farm. It’s a vast kingdom. We’ll be the king and queen.”

  “You don’t really know. You’ve never been there.” She did her best to sound agreeable.

  “Oh, come on, Elly. I was going to suggest dropping in at some time during our travels anyway. I want to see the place. It’s part of Australia’s history. Might as well do it now.”

  Ellen had to laugh but not with enthusiasm. It was his way. He hadn’t told her anything of this part of his plan. She put as good a face on it as she could and prepared to repack all her finery in the cabin trunks which had replaced the two small suitcases they had when they left Carrie Chatwin’s in King’s Lynn. It seemed that two small suitcases would be all that they would need now.

  The idea of being alone with John without friends or acquaintances didn’t worry her. Their time at the Grange and a lot of their time travelling together had been spent without friends. She had been a good companion to John socially; but the demands of travelling companions were slight. It would be more difficult for her to entertain his personal friends, not to mention his family if she had to.

  John had never given her any sign that he thought she was in any way wanting socially. On the ship there had been a few business and professional passengers who sounded as though their mouths were full of marbles; they talked easily about history, politics and literature. Her method with them was to be quiet and agreeable and move the talk to their family, especially their children, if they had any. She found that most of the people she met on the voyage were so self-absorbed that they seldom asked her questions about her origins. They seemed incurious and more than happy to talk about themselves. If by chance they asked her about her life, she had a ready story which was not actually untrue. She certainly didn’t reveal that she had been a servant at the Grange. Her other activity to outfit herself socially was to read as much as she could in her own time (mostly newspapers). She realised her attempts to improve herself were pathetic but she continued with determination. Learning, for her, was like a marathon cross-country run where you just gritted your teeth and slogged on and on.

  Ellen remembered that as she and John had walked down Dock Street to the bus stop with their suitcases, she had hoped it would be the last time she ever saw King’s Lynn. She had willed herself to be hundreds, thousands of miles away, and here she was in Sydney! But the prospect of leaving for Mirabilly was a disappointment she c
ould hardly contain after the brilliance of the voyage and the promise of Sydney.

  16

  The thought of visiting Mirabilly made Ellen uneasy because it wasn’t just a remote farm; it was apparently a vast, lonely and desolate place. ‘Dropping in’, the phrase John had used to describe their proposed arrival there, was more than an understatement. She purchased a map of Australia and couldn’t reconcile it with John’s explanation that they had to ‘Go north for a bit and then cut into the interior.’ When she made him place his finger on the precise place on the map where Mirabilly was, he touched a point that was hundreds of miles from any road or town, in a part of the continent that hardly had any roads or towns.

  John telephoned Mirabilly and they offered to arrange transport from Townsville. Ellen didn’t comment and tried to appear to take it lightly. Their trunks were delivered to the train in Sydney and they had tickets for Townsville. This part of the journey seemed to take weeks but it was only days; hot nights and hot days with only desert and scrub to see between stations.

  Townsville had a colourful, built-yesterday look and Ellen would have liked to stay a few days but John had insisted that they keep moving. A van and driver were waiting for them at the railway station, with a message of welcome from the general manager. They were driven to an aero-club airport nearby and were soon flying in a small plane across the Great Dividing Range, which shuts off the interior from the coast; over Mt Isa, with the Gulf of Carpentaria shining to the north. Although this, Ellen’s first flight, was thrilling, she soon fell asleep from exhaustion. She awoke as they were landing. The plane was passing over faded, peeling houses and sheds, toasting in the sun. She had little memory afterwards of the hasty introductions, as they were greeted by the general manager and his wife. Ellen’s bones felt sore and the dust and the smell of cattle made her yearn to escape into sleep.

  Her first real feel for the place was when she awoke in their bedroom, kicking her legs under silken sheets. She heard the hushing of the air-conditioning. John had gone from the room. She looked into a cool void, furnished as elegantly as any room at the Grange. As she found later, the dresser was intricately inlaid and there was an eighteenth century cheval mirror and cream satin drapes. The floor was polished wood, spread with what John later told her were Ushak rugs. She put on a wrap and padded through the self-contained suite, which also had a spacious lounge, smaller reception rooms, a study and dining room as well as spare bedrooms. The oil paintings on the walls were landscapes, like windows, letting in the special blue-gold light of Australia which she had come to recognise on the long journey from Sydney.