Palace of Tears

by Julian Leatherdale

  Freya understood exactly what he had done and why. She also knew that he could never forgive the injury done to him. The pain and anger would always be there, anaesthetised for a while so he could survive the loss of his son, but present nonetheless. One day it would resurface and Freya and Angie and Freddie would be punished for what Adam Fox believed they had done to him. She was sure that day had come now. Here he was, in broad daylight, as dapper as usual with his cane and his impeccable manners, asking to come in for a cup of tea. Freya had not forgotten what she had learned from the scene she had witnessed all those years ago in the hydrotherapy clinic: to beware of Adam Fox most of all when he wanted to help you.

  ‘What is it you want to discuss?’ she asked.

  ‘Your future,’ he answered simply.

  Freya thought about how everything had turned out better for Adam than he could have hoped for: the war, the anti-German hysteria, the scapegoating of families like the Woods. He had already got rid of Freddie. Now it was Freya and Angie’s turn. Freya must keep her wits about her. She was better off knowing his intentions than letting him plot against her behind his hedge, she reasoned. She invited him in.

  ‘I assume you know about my proposal to help you rent a house?’ he asked as Freya set a mug of tea before him.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And . . . ?’

  ‘We will be staying here for now. But I appreciate the offer.’ Freya was careful to remain diplomatic and appear suitably grateful.

  Adam clucked his tongue against the roof of his mouth disapprovingly and closed his eyes for a moment – almost a wince – as if Freya’s decision caused him physical distress.

  ‘Freya, please. Don’t be stubborn. Let me help you. It’s not safe for you here anymore. It starts with burning a piano and rocks through the windows and ends where? I cannot stand by and watch you get hurt. Or worse. You must leave.’

  Freya leaned forward. ‘And who will look after this cottage when I am gone?’ Her voice was shaking but she tried to keep it calm. ‘Will you, Adam?’

  Adam shifted uneasily in his seat. He did not like the tone of accusation in this question. But he chose to ignore it. ‘Well, yes. That would be the most sensible idea. Please God the war will be over soon and this hysteria will come to an end. Then you and Freddie can move back in and life will return to normal.’ Adam looked a little self-conscious about his choice of word, given that life had hardly been ‘normal’ at Meadow Springs since the death of his son.

  ‘Do you think that is what will happen?’ Freya asked a little too brightly.

  ‘Well, yes, of course. Don’t you?’

  She shrugged. ‘Who knows? Life is very unpredictable.’

  Adam put down his mug of tea. ‘Look, Freya, I know what this property, this cottage, means to you. It is your inheritance that you want to protect and pass on. It is also your connection to your father. To your past. It is part of who you are. I understand that.’

  Freya was caught off guard by this change of tack. She had almost forgotten just how clever Adam was, how subtle and disarming he could be. She had revealed herself to him long ago and he had kept those precious intimate truths up his sleeve like a magician.

  Adam took Freya’s silence as agreement.

  ‘So I assume you would do anything to keep this cottage safe. As you say, life is unpredictable. And we live in very strange times. I have heard that many “enemy aliens” have had their businesses wound up, their assets sold off and their properties confiscated and placed in the hands of the Public Trustee. The government has extraordinary powers, as I have found to my cost. They can and will do anything.’

  Freya listened. What trap was he laying for her? she wondered.

  ‘There may be a way to protect the cottage. As a registered enemy alien you are forbidden to buy or sell any property. Instead, I can have my solicitors draw up an agreement by which you transfer the land title into my name for a sum of money. It is not strictly a sale as the money is kept in a trust account for a period of time – say, three years – and earns interest. You get income from that interest to support you. At the end of three years, the property reverts to you and the capital sum in the account reverts to me. In other words, I hold the land in trust for you and no one can touch it.’

  Adam sat back, hands folded. His cards were on the table.

  Freya stared at him. ‘Why?’ she asked.

  ‘What do you mean “why”?’ Adam sounded hurt.

  ‘Why do you want to do this?’ she insisted.

  ‘Isn’t it obvious?’

  They were on thin ice now. Freya felt the dangerous urge to make Adam explain himself. She knew this would enrage him as he could not afford to be honest. He would be forced to lie: to say that he still loved her and wanted to help her, that he forgave them both for what they had done to Robbie, that the past could be healed. But she and Adam both knew that wasn’t true. The past could never be healed. It could only be buried under a growing mound of secrets and untruths.

  ‘I will consider it,’ Freya said. ‘Thank you.’

  She saw Adam’s fist close around the arm of the chair, the tightening in his jaw, the familiar toss of his sandy hair in irritation. At least she now knew what he wanted: the cottage. Was this his plan all along? To finally take over the entire cliff top and to erase completely any painful memories of his neighbours? In a way, she could hardly blame him. And the circumstances were perfect. He had Freya at his mercy.

  ‘This is not charity, Freya.’ His hand strayed from his tea mug and picked up one of the bills on the table. He held it between his fingers. ‘With Freddie interned, you will receive a small allowance from the government. It is a pittance. Ten shillings a week for you and two shillings and sixpence for your daughter. It will barely cover food. What will you do about new shoes, school fees, extras? If you become destitute, the government may even take Angie away too.’

  Freya’s face burned. No doubt Adam knew Angie was listening from the other room. He wanted her to hear this, to pressure her mother into being responsible.

  ‘I said I would think about it,’ Freya repeated. ‘In the meantime, I have a proposition for you.’

  Adam sat up, unable to disguise his surprise.

  ‘Come with me. I have something I want to show you. In the studio.’

  They both stood and looked at the oil painting. Freya had pulled it out from its hiding place at the back of the dusty, dark room and removed the layers of burlap and oilskin fabric that encased it. Adam stood there flabbergasted, the wind knocked out of him. He had never seen anything so magnificent in all his life.

  It was a landscape of the valley behind them: a breathtaking vision that transformed the view Adam knew so well into an epiphany. He felt tears prick at his eyes and his heart swell in his chest. There was no mistaking what this was: the last major work of Wolfgang von Gettner.

  There had been rumours of a last work in oils but Freya had denied all knowledge of it when Adam had asked her about it years ago. She confessed now that she had lied. Her father had finished the work in the last six months of his life. It was his final gift to his artist daughter.

  Adam extended his hand tremulously and touched the canvas as if to reassure himself this was not a mirage that would melt away in front of his eyes. He then half kneeled as if in genuflection before the painting to inspect it more closely. Freya smirked to see the art collector’s gaze fixated on her father’s signature.

  ‘Yes, it really is his,’ she said.

  Whatever pleasure this painting gave Adam aesthetically was embellished by the added satisfaction of knowing its market value would be considerable. While von Gettner’s work had declined in value towards the end of his career, eclipsed by the popularity of the Heidelberg School, there had been a reappraisal since then by academics and curators – and, most importantly of all, by the market. In June 1914 a panorama of Mount Kosciuszko and the Victorian Alps had changed hands at auction at Sotheby’s in Melbourne for over two thousand pounds.
Too late to be of any help to the artist himself or his family, Freya had noted bitterly when she heard the news. Adam could not help but imagine the excitement that the discovery of a ‘lost’ von Gettner would create, especially once the war was over and anti-German sentiment had died down. Hung in the gallery at the Palace, it would become an object of fascination and pilgrimage. And it would likely prove an exceptional investment.

  Adam knew exactly what Freya was doing: negotiating her survival on her own terms. She knew how greatly he admired her father’s work and she knew the circumstances that made this painting especially valuable. The purchase of a rare painting was not an act of charity and preserved Freya’s defiant but fragile dignity. She stood there, staring at him, her eyes glistening with triumph, just waiting for him to make her an offer.

  ‘You cannot sell this to me,’ said Adam.

  ‘I cannot afford the luxury of sentimentality,’ replied Freya. ‘My father was a practical man. He would understand.’

  ‘I still think it would upset him,’ observed Adam coolly. ‘He made it pretty clear he had washed his hands of us moneygrubbing collectors. But that is not what I meant. As a registered enemy alien, you are not allowed to buy or sell property of any significant value.’

  ‘So let’s do it some other way,’ said Freya, not so easily put off as that. ‘Like you proposed with the cottage.’

  She watched as he made his calculations. His gaze was drawn irresistibly to the canvas, his eyes lit up by a fervent craving for this thing of great beauty. It reminded Freya sadly of what she had once loved in Adam, that impetuous passion that would not be denied, that uncompromising lust that had been directed, for a short while, at her. She saw the struggle between his desire to take over her land and his desire for this painting: he was trying to work out if there was some way he could have both.

  ‘Very well,’ said Adam. ‘I will have an agreement notarised that settles on a sum of money I will pay you in instalments for borrowing your painting rather than buying it. In other words, a fixed-period loan. This should get us around the legal issues. We will sign and date the agreement but keep the existence of the painting itself secret until the war is over. I will keep the work hidden and safe until then. In the meantime, you will receive regular “rental” payments in cash for the loan of the work with a guaranteed option for me to buy it as soon as you are legally able to sell. We will each keep a record of these down payments. Does that sound fair?’

  Freya thought about this for a moment. ‘I think that could work,’ she said. ‘So tell me, Herr Fox, how much are you willing to pay me for my father’s last painting?’

  Adam looked at her for a long time, as if trying to penetrate beneath Freya’s crisp demeanour. Had any feelings survived from their golden time together? How could he possibly tell? He was not even sure of his own feelings about Freya anymore.

  ‘I will let you know,’ he said politely, and doffed his hat before stepping out of the studio and disappearing into the garden.

  Within days Freya had agreed on a generous offer from Adam. The document was signed and delivered with a brown paper bag of banknotes to the cottage in exchange for the painting, rewrapped in its burlap and oilskin, and stored in the basement of the Palace for its public unveiling in a much-anticipated time of peace.

  Mother and daughter tested their courage to its limits as they carried on with the normal routines of their life in an unrecognisable, hostile world. More stones were flung at the cottage, their milk bottles smashed, their front fence set alight. Hate mail arrived for Freya two or three times a week, its language more virulent and threatening with each passing day. She hid and burned these vile letters for fear of the nightmares they would cause Angie. But those nightmares were unavoidable.

  Two weeks went by and Angie was sent home from school with a note from the headmistress. Her usual brave protector Simon had been absent with the flu. Four students she barely knew had held her down in the laneway behind the school grounds and hacked at her hair with scissors. They had also written on her forehead in ink the words ‘HUN SPY’. Her screams had been stifled with rags stuffed in her mouth. The headmistress said in her note that she could no longer guarantee Angie’s safety and ‘in the light of recent events and strong public sentiment’ she had no choice but to expel Angie from her school as a ‘disruptive element’.

  Freya had raged at this injustice but even her righteous anger no longer seemed inexhaustible. Angie’s spirit could have been broken in so many ways but it was the horror of finding the bloody and broken corpses of three birds, including the handsome satin bowerbird who had kept her company that lonely day in the garden, that finally undid her. Their small bodies were pinned to the boards of the veranda with a note that simply stated ‘YOU’RE NEXT’. Angie could not stop shaking and crying for hours.

  Freya received a letter from Eveline the following day. Even a war widow and her newborn were not immune from suspicion. She had been outed by the local Anti-German League and her letter detailed the many casual and calculated insults and injuries she had suffered at the hands of neighbours, tradesmen and her landlord. A rent increase meant she would have to leave their Cremorne flat, sell most of their furniture and other belongings, and seek accommodation elsewhere.

  As a prisoner-of-war, Freddie was only allowed one heavily censored three-hundred-word letter once a week to his family. Freya could read between the lines of his stoic reassurances that he was ‘among friends’ and ‘well looked after’. It was obvious he was wretchedly unhappy and missed his family desperately. She and Angie had attempted one trip to Liverpool but the camp commander had changed the visiting hours that Sunday without warning and, after more than four hours of train travel in the sweltering heat, they had been turned away.

  Amid these days of terror and bitterness, one letter arrived that kept the flame of their faith in human kindness sputtering. It was from Robbie Fox’s former governess, Miss Jane Blunt, who was now a Sunday school teacher in Lawson. In her letter she expressed her sympathies for Mrs Wood and her daughter with a passionate indignation that Freya found touching:

  I am shocked and saddened by the news I hear of your situation: your husband’s dismissal and internment and your ongoing torment at the hands of cowards. You have been treated shabbily and I detect the overbearing hand of a certain person in much of this. Please remember that you have a friend who is willing to help you in any way possible.

  But one lone voice of support was not enough to change Freya’s mind. She announced her decision one evening as she sat opposite her daughter, who was sunken into a silent fit of depression and had not touched her supper.

  ‘We have no choice, Angie. We must move away. We will share a house with Eveline and Greta. Your father needs to see us as well. It is the right thing to do.’

  16 October 1916

  The sky is the colour of tin. It will rain this evening but she will not be here to see it. From her usual hiding place, she watches a distant rain veil, watering the valley from the grey keel of a cloud bank as it steams majestically towards her cliff top. The golden light fades rapidly from the bluffs all around her and the wind-tossed gum trees lose their sunlit sparkle and groan and hiss, waving their tortured limbs in protest. Cockatoos scream at the coming storm and dive for cover. The hedge rattles and shudders in the rising wind and the rain begins its manic tattoo but she will not budge until she hears the first crack of thunder.

  Rain is a fitting farewell. It mirrors her own tears, which flow for hours as she sits, curled in a tight ball of misery, inside her hedge and thinks about the gradual crumbling of her cherished world since the day Robbie died.

  She hears Freya calling. The van is packed. She looks back one last time at the Palace, its dome and battlements so familiar against the darkening sky, and wonders if she will ever lay eyes on them again.

  She runs through the garden. The rain is here. It is time to go.

  CHAPTER 11

  * * *

  Monika

/>   The Ritz, Leura, May 2013

  Lashed by the wind, raindrops continued to strike the window pane in Monika’s room, making their unpredictable patterns on the glass. It was freezing outside and the staff had cranked up the oil heaters in the corridors to pump out a soup of hot air that made the windows fog and everyone feel drowsy.

  Even so, Monika was having an exceptionally good day today. She sat upright in her armchair, smiling and attentive, with a box of handmade chocolates and a cup of Earl Grey at her elbow and played Scrabble, her favourite game, with Lisa. Neither the ravages of Alzheimer’s nor the stroke had touched Monika’s mastery of Scrabble. She was a clever tactical player with a vast vocabulary that meant she could lay out infuriatingly short obscure words in high-scoring patterns; Lisa nearly always lost, even when she was blessed with the ten-point Z and Q tiles.

  They played in a companionable near-silence for over an hour, interrupted every now and then by a mischievous chuckle from Monika or some playful baiting from Lisa. ‘Boffo? What’s that? You made that up!’

  ‘No, I didn’t. It’s used in reviews. Of films and plays. It means a knock-out success, a box-office hit. A boffo.’

  Lisa had her laptop open and checked the Oxford. Monika was right of course: origin 1940s.

  B on the double-letter-score, O, F, a second F and the final O on the triple-word-score finishing off HELL to make HELLO. A total of forty-eight points. Monika clapped her hands with glee. ‘Boffo!’ she exclaimed, and her eyes twinkled at Lisa.

  There was definitely something of Monika’s former sharpness, her arch humour and hauteur, alive in her today. Lisa smiled. Inside she struggled with her usual mixed feelings about her mother but she was still gratified her company brought Monika some small degree of happiness. A morning like this was something to be treasured, wasn’t it? How many more like these were left to them?