by Ella Carey
And yet a happy family was something that had eluded both him and Rebecca. Wealth was no cure for difficult relationships.
Edward pulled into the driveway, parking his car behind his father’s Rolls-Royce. The family butler appeared at the front door the moment Edward climbed out. Edward slammed the car door shut with a more ferocious snap than he meant and grimaced at the familiar facade of the redbrick mansion that his grandfather had built at the turn of the century.
It was hard to say when this feeling of unease at his family’s wealth had begun; it had crept up on him over the years. Being stuck in a Nissen hut crowded with men sleeping in rows on camp beds had opened Edward’s eyes to the way that he’d taken his privileged position for granted. He’d formed some of the most genuine friendships of his life during the war years. But he’d never confessed his wealth to the friends he’d made during that time. Instead, he’d enjoyed the freedom that came with being out of Australia and not, for all purposes, a member of the famous Russell pastoral family.
Now he moved past the ivy-covered facade of the house, three stories high with twenty windows looking onto the street. The exterior was imposing—Georgian with four tall chimneys standing sentinel on the roof. Edward greeted the butler and went into the grand entrance hall, wondering if he could make an escape upstairs to his room.
But his mother called out to him from her post in the living room that overlooked the back garden. The clink of her glass on a table resonated into the entrance hall. It was drinks time. Rituals governed the Russell household and the family stuck to them as if they were a pillar of support in themselves. Edward placed his car keys on the walnut hall table and strode past the formal rooms to the living room, with its French doors overlooking the Mediterranean garden out the back. His parents still employed three gardeners here full-time.
“How was university?” Celia Russell was arranged on a silk sofa by the fireplace, her strawberry blond hair falling in waves around her gamine face. Birdsong fluted in through the open doors. A glass bowl of pale roses sat on the mantelpiece. Celia had a room dedicated to arranging flowers. The flower-arranging room was the only room that the female members of the family entered apart from their bedrooms and the living rooms in the house. It had been this way for generations. The women in Edward’s family never went into the kitchens or to any of the practical areas of the house, nor would they dare intrude on the study or the gentlemen’s parlors that were the domain of men.
When a maid appeared with canapés, Edward’s father, Angus, arrived as if on cue from the garden. He removed his white panama hat, laying it on the polished mahogany table by the door, then stood framed in the doorway, his feet wide apart. Edward had inherited his father’s green eyes and blond hair, his tall height. As far as personality traits, Edward hoped that he had inherited very little at all.
“Ah,” Angus said. “I see you’ve returned from the fray, Edward.”
Edward moved over to the drinks cabinet, poured himself a sherry, and helped himself to a slice of cucumber topped with a sliver of radish and a swirl of cream cheese. Angus always behaved as if Edward had returned from battle, whether he had been at school, out with friends, or to the library to escape and read a book.
When Vicky appeared, a petite version of her mother, she sashayed across the room, helping herself to a delicate serving from a plate of yet more cucumber arrangements. The vegetables had been delivered straight from the hothouse at Haslemere, just one of the many alluring features of the property north of the wine country in South Australia where the family’s fortunes had originated in the 1840s.
“Edward’s been naughty,” Vicky said, ignoring the drinks and settling herself down next to her mother, who patted the sofa with her manicured hand. “You were spotted heading toward Little Collins Street, Edward. Last night. Not those infamous bohemians, surely? There are wild rumors about them!”
Angus poured himself his first glass of brandy. Once he had finished, he reached for his own particular wine glass, filling it to the brim with claret and making his way back to the French doors to stand there again. Master of the house; Edward couldn’t hold back the thought. And what a sham that idea was, a voice inside his head mocked.
But Edward sat down, too, and sipped at his sherry. “How has everyone’s day been?” Vicky was clearly bored. And onto him. He would have to divert her.
“More to the point,” said Angus, “how did your day go? I hope that university course is teaching you something useful. How long did you say it lasts? Three years, was it? Couldn’t you study commerce? Something useful like Robert is going to do now that the war is over?” Angus’s words hung in the beautifully decorated room.
Edward put his sherry glass down on a table. The drink tasted acrid. He’d had the same conversation with his father over and over again.
Edward needed to slip out of delightful Rebecca Swift mode into family combat mode, and fast. “We are studying the classics at the moment, Milton and Chaucer.” Would he ever give up hoping that someday they might understand?
“Oh, I adore the fact that you are clever, Ed.” Vicky examined her nails. “But do tell us where you were last night. Was it somewhere deliciously naughty?” She sat forward, an eager expression on her face. “Have you met someone interesting? Are you going to become an artiste?” She threw off the last word with a flourish.
Edward chuckled and crossed his legs. What a funny girl she was. “I wish I had the talent to do so, but sadly, darling Vicky, I cannot paint.”
“But who did you meet?”
Vicky was going to persist.
Edward shrugged. “People,” he said. “Sunday and John Reed, Max Harris, Joy Hester.” The noise of the party flashed into his head. Intelligent conversation. Conversation that made sense and that would leave his family perplexed.
“But what did you think of them?” Vicky went on.
Edward frowned. If there was one thing about Vicky that was anathema to the way she had been raised—to be polite and unquestioning according to the strictures of their class—it was that she was persistent. Unlike everyone else, Edward liked to encourage her to be herself.
He leaned forward in his seat. “Well,” he said, “I find them interesting, Vicky. To be honest, I’m intrigued by their modern views. I met Joy Hester first at the university, and one thing led to another. What they all have to say makes sense to me.”
His mother raised her eyes to the ceiling. She didn’t approve of women who worked. Career girls, she would sniff, if the topic was raised.
Vicky leaned forward in her seat. “You know that Sunday Reed has been excluded by her brothers from bringing those friends of hers to their house at Sorrento? Their belief in sexual freedom and a new ‘modern’ way of life is all so distasteful and odd.” Vicky’s voice resonated through the large room. “Sunday and her husband, John, had to rent a property farther along the coast for the summer. They are outcasts. The question is, do you really want to get to know them, Edward? Do you want to be associated with them and risk social rejection?”
Edward felt his jaw stiffen. “Vicky, your choice of language doesn’t shock me, but . . .” He glanced across to his mother. Celia stared fixedly out the window.
But Vicky wasn’t going to let up. “And what’s more, you must know about their political views. John Reed is nothing but a communist. And yet, he and Sunday are wealthy members of our class. Nothing but rich people pretending to be poor. What do you say to that?”
Edward forced himself to take a breath. He had never felt the urge to be nasty to Vicky. He adored her, and the way she spoke her mind was encouraging. He did not want to break that in her.
When they were young, Robert, Vicky, and he had been close until Edward went to boarding school at Geelong and Robert, as the eldest son, was sent to England for his education. Clearly, the young Robert had not coped. He was such a different person now as to be hardly recognizable. It was as if boarding school had knocked something vital and alive and kicking out o
f him. Six years in the war had done the rest. His worrisome dependence on alcohol was exactly like Angus’s, and yet Celia ignored it in them both. For Edward, Angus and Robert were like a dark undercurrent, running deep below the surface of all the family’s gentility. It was one of the reasons he hadn’t found his own house during the last year and a half. In some way, he wanted to try and fix the awkward situation in which his family had landed.
Celia had found her own ways of coping with her husband’s fondness for drinking. Edward knew his mother’s travel was an escape. He knew she wanted to get away, that she was a woman who hated being isolated out at Haslemere, stuck with a husband who resorted to alcohol in order to get through each day. Then the war had hit. And now, every member of his family seemed to have come out of it as if they were each from a different planet.
“Well,” Edward said, “yes, they are privileged. Yes, they are rich, as am I, but from what I’ve seen in the war, our class looks down on people like the Reeds. They are true modernists, true believers in freedom of the spirit who have the courage to live as they feel. They are formally of our class and yet they are despised. But, you see, they are living in a manner that adheres to everything we fought for during the war—the freedom to make one’s own choices in life. What could possibly be wrong about that?”
“Oh, for heaven’s sakes.” Celia brought her hand to her forehead and drooped back in her seat.
“And the fact that everyone says John Reed studies communist rhetoric—is that adhering to what we fought for in the war?” Vicky leaned back on the sofa, looking as sweet as a girl at a garden party, her eagle eyes stuck on Edward.
Edward picked up his drink from the delicate table by his side. “But they believe in the liberal spirit, Vicky. They believe in freedom of expression in the individual, in art, and in life. That is the true definition of modernism. Without freedom, how can we express who we truly are? Surely that is the antithesis of communism, which is the reduction of individuals to an anonymous mass. Freedom of the spirit is why we fought against Fascism, and one thing is for certain: we did not fight that war in order to go backwards to the old ways.”
But Celia’s brow furrowed. “I can’t see how they are possibly the right people,” she said. “You need to be careful, Edward. The Reeds’ way of life, living off the fruits of the land, seems very communist to me, no matter what excuses you give them. And isn’t Sunday having an affair with that artist Sidney Nolan while her husband just accepts it? The son of a train driver?”
Edward held her gaze. Why did the upper classes feel so entitled to judge?
Vicky continued in an intimate tone, as if she were not revealing something that all Melbourne knew. “The point is Sunday Reed has rejected her family. It’s far more than growing vegetables out on a farm and having affairs. I have to admit it scares me, you spending time with them. Are you going to reject us, Edward?” Her large eyes were two iridescent pools.
Angus coughed. “More to the point, we can hardly entertain the thought of their having anything to do with us,” he said. “Think of the scandal, Edward. What hope would Vicky have of making a decent marriage if we are all tainted by your association with the Reeds? We employ loyal workers who look up to us, at every property we own. We will lose their respect if you associate with these people. We will become repositories for gossip. And as for these people’s . . . proclivities, if you are linked with them, you are linked with that as well. You have to stop it before it takes off.”
“Come on, Father . . .”
But Vicky interrupted. “Haven’t you heard about their friend Max Harris? You know he went to court over the indecent nature of the poems he published in that magazine of theirs. He was set up by two local poets, who wrote a whole lot of trashy poems and sent them to Max, calling them ‘modern.’ Apparently the two poets simply acquired random words from dictionaries and thesauruses, threw them together on the page, and called the results modernist poetry. Max fell for the hoax and published the poems in his wretched magazine. Honestly, Edward, do you want to associate with all that? The poems were declared indecent. These people seem intent on breaking everything up—families, society, traditions. Everything that is civilized about the world.” Vicky’s eyes glittered.
“Your civilized structures are merely a way of keeping the lower classes under control.” Edward turned to stare out at the garden. What had he done? Betrayed state secrets? The irony of their attitude confused him. They criticized communism because it was fundamentally not about the individual. But wasn’t he trying to be a true individual rather than a sheep who followed the family rules?
Angus growled his words. “Someone at the club told me that one of their cohort, Albert Tucker, found some painting in a bicycle shop window and that painting went into Angry Penguins too! These people are the laughingstock of Melbourne, Edward. They’re never going to get anywhere in the real world. They’re living in a utopia. They might have wonderful theories, but those theories are never going to work. Human nature will get in the way of their pseudo-communism, their anti-structure, their nihilist views. Greed, ambition, power, these things are as inherent to man as breathing itself. Communism will break down. It won’t work because it, too, is open to exploitation. None of this is practical, Edward. No matter what your political system is, some will rise to the top while others suffer. Let’s face the facts; without society—marriage, religion, class, and so forth—we will go backwards, not forwards. We need rules in order to survive as a society, or ultimately we don’t know who we are or what rights and obligations we have to each other.” Angus lifted his glass and finished his claret in one swig. As if he was raising a toast to himself.
Edward stood up. He moved to the fireplace. “The fact that an artist could only afford to show his work in a bicycle shop window makes him unworthy of attention? Because of his class?”
“If you want to be taken seriously, Edward, if you say you want to write . . . then these people are not the people with whom you should associate. They are not regarded well in the top literary and artistic circles by any means,” Celia murmured.
Edward managed to control his voice. “You mean they are not well respected among the Establishment art and literary circles. But Sunday and John Reed are supporting artists who otherwise could not support themselves in order to pursue their talents—there is surely nothing more admirable than that. Yes, modern art with its absence of form and the Reeds’ ‘modern’ way of life break down structures, but isn’t that a positive result of what we’ve just seen in the war? Isn’t there something wonderful in ultimate freedom, the ability to love, to paint, to live as we choose? I’m sorry if such ideas are challenging to your perceptions of what society should be, Father. But can’t you see you are becoming threatened, and rightfully so?”
Angus coughed again. “The point is, Edward, these people, who are ultimately members of our own class, are actively attacking our sort of people. We have become their scapegoats. Do you want to become a party to that? They are attempting to turn us into something unfashionable, distasteful, and laughable, while the entire time they are living off the fruits of their own ancestors’ labors!”
There was a grim silence. Edward shook his head and stared at the polished wooden floor. Celia stood up, went to the gramophone, and played some Schubert. Polite salon music.
Edward marched over to the French doors and gazed outside.
“Our family heritage was not built on left-wing radicalism.” Angus’s voice boomed through the room. “And my goodness, Edward, you’ve benefited from your forefathers’ hard work.”
Edward felt his jaw tighten.
“Your friends can go and live in the USSR if they want to carry on like they are, quite frankly,” Angus said. “We need stability after the war, not all this free-living stuff. These people will not be successful in the end, Edward. None of them will. They are an anomaly. Don’t waste this family’s time.”
Edward closed his eyes.
When Vicky spoke
, her voice broke a little, almost as if she were about to burst into tears. “Apparently, if you’ve been invited out to the Reeds’ farm at Heide, then you’re in the inner circle. Have you had an invitation yet? You’d be quite the target for them. Getting you would be a real coup for the Reeds and their friends. Don’t you see? You’d be their next project, Ed. They are simply trying to make a point. You’re exactly what they want!” Her voice rose.
Edward winced.
Celia stood up and moved toward the bellpull. “I can’t talk about this anymore.”
Coldness seemed to lodge itself in the air, spreading itself around the room, turning everything that was familiar—the antique bowls and the mirrors and the elegant books—into something new and strange. It was as if the conversation had touched on something right now. Was the firm ground they thought they all stood upon only a precipice? And if Edward jumped off, would he take his whole family too?
But the idea of loving whom one wanted to love rather than marrying to please the people in this room, the idea of living simply in order to support others doing the same, the idea of treating people as equals—were these really such radical thoughts?
Edward stared at his face in the mirror above the fireplace. But instead of seeing himself, he saw the quiet way in which John Reed stood by Sunday, the intelligent manner in which the man listened to Edward and understood where he was coming from. It was as if, for the first time in his life, Edward had found people of a similar background who felt the way he did, people who felt that there was a deeper truth than money, ambition, connections, power. Why should he have to give up his feelings? A simpler way of life was a sensible approach after the horrors of war.
“It’s a different world now, and we all must change.” He chose each word with care, almost biting the words out, one by one. He was not going to let them see how rattled he was. “Politics aside, we can’t hold people back because of their class. As for these ‘bohemians’ as you call them, if they are experimenting with a gentler, kinder way of life, then why should we judge them? We must be open to other ways of living. There are other ways.”
