Afterwards, they cried together and held each other. That afternoon, Monika let Brün make love to her. Not because she felt sorry for him but because this was what she chose. He used a condom, of course, but she felt reckless even so, willing to plunge into this forbidden world of pleasure and blissful forgetfulness to escape the chill shadow of so much death and cruelty.
By chance, Monika had kept her camera with her that day. She took Brün’s photo as he sat by the window of the cottage, his hair shining in the sunlight, his face turned away in profile as he looked at something in the garden. A handsome satin bowerbird performing his dance for a female.
Monika wrote all this down later in her diary. Feverishly. Even though she was training to be a school teacher, she still harboured secret ambitions to become a writer. She recalled her English teacher at Osborne’s, Mrs Wickham, who had thought Monika had a bright future as a writer but warned her that ‘suffering is essential . . . to be a novelist of any note’.
But did that suffering include other people’s? As she recorded Brün’s story in her diary she felt a queasiness at stealing something intensely personal from him, a precious fragment of his soul. ‘I am only borrowing these memories, not taking them,’ she reassured herself uncertainly. And then wondered for one vertiginous moment whether she only loved Brün for his unusual history and forbidden otherness. Was that wrong? Would she be punished?
In March the governor-general – Prince Henry, the Duke of Gloucester – arrived with his wife in his private plane at Blackheath aerodrome to open a new wing of the district hospital in Katoomba. The good citizens turned out in force, a flock of hats and gloves, to greet the two British royals as they took a stroll down the main street with Prime Minister Chifley and Mr Freelander, the mayor, close behind. As a prominent public figure, Adam Fox joined the official party for the civic lunch at the Carrington that day and was photographed shaking hands with the duke and duchess.
Not surprisingly there was a great upwelling of patriotic sentiment, bolstered by the sight of Union Jacks hung from every shop awning and an honour guard of ex-servicemen, proudly wearing their medals, in front of the Carrington’s steps. None of this made much impression on Monika Fox as she was at college in Sydney. But there was to be an ugly consequence.
When Brün arrived at the cottage the following Saturday afternoon, he was wearing a cap pulled down low over his forehead. Monika teased him about looking like a ‘navvy’ and playfully snatched it away. She gasped at the deep cut on his temple. Brün was cross at first but then explained how he had been attacked by three men outside a pub on Wednesday night. Two of them were returned soldiers. Calling him a Nazi, they kicked and punched him to the ground. He managed to inflict some damage before he went down and, luckily, the three men took off quickly when a car approached.
The Fabers were aware of the undercurrents of loathing among the townsfolk of Lithgow that bubbled up every now and then into acts of open hostility, but the Fabers had their supporters too: fellow churchgoers and small-business owners and other families from the Lithgow migrant hostel. These ‘refos’ included the hundreds of ‘Balts’ and Germans working at the Kandos cement works. The final judgement of the town came in the bars and lounges of the local hotels where drinkers took to the Fabers’ lagers with a thirsty zeal. ‘You got to hand it to Krauts, they know how to make beer’ was the general verdict.
As if Monika’s tender feelings for Brün could be inflamed any more, she now felt fearful and protective and outraged at the injustice of this attack. She kissed his wound. They made love again and she held him in her arms for a long time afterwards, wishing she could kill the men who had dared to hurt her German.
‘How could you be so crass?’ Laura had asked Adam after the drama of the bombe Alaska at the party to reopen the Palace. Adam denied there was anything sinister in the presentation of the fiery dessert but for Laura the vision of the Palace in flames had triggered painful memories of that fateful night so many years ago.
‘I think that night haunts you more than it haunts me!’ Adam had said petulantly. ‘You can’t still feel responsible for Adelina’s death, surely?’ They had raked over these ashes many times and Adam had explicitly exonerated Laura of any blame for his poor wife’s breakdown and suicide. ‘It was grief for Robbie that killed my wife,’ Adam had explained to her. ‘Not my love affair with you.’
But it was not Laura’s guilt that poisoned the atmosphere of their marriage. It was Adam’s own jealous and paranoid conviction, despite repeated denials from Laura, that she was being unfaithful. He confronted her more than once with this accusation and she begged him to trust her. ‘Please, Adam, please believe that I still love you,’ she said. ‘You have nothing to fear.’
To ease the tension between them and gather his thoughts, Adam stayed in the cottage for short periods. Here, he sat on the veranda in the evenings, smoking and listening to 78s on the RCA Victor or the night songs of the bush, the violin-sawing of crickets and the cackle of tree frogs. He thought about Adelina and the fervour with which he had courted her as a young man in Melbourne, dazzling her with his vision for a grand hotel. He thought about Freya and their lovemaking here and in the studio, and his heartbreak one morning in this garden while baby Angie played. He thought about the first time he had shown this cottage to Laura and how she had fallen in love with it and talked him out of his plans to tear it down.
Ah, Laura, Laura, Laura. You should be sitting next to me here, my proud Queen of the Palace. Over the top of the hedge, Adam could see the grey slated casino dome and the crenellated rooftop with its fresh coat of white paint. The old lady looked as good as new since the Yanks had pulled out, and business was brisk again within weeks of her rebirth. There were several generations of guests who had given their hearts to this hotel. Like pilgrims before a shrine, men and women stood arm in arm in the lobby, their eyes misting over as they recalled the distant romantic highlights of their youth. No wonder locals still called it the Palace of Tears.
Adam struggled with the storm of emotions inside his head. Were his romantic feelings for Laura also now destined to be no more than memories? He was determined not to be consumed by the suspicious rage that brewed in his heart, telling himself it was an expression of his own weakness and self-doubt. There is a crisis in your marriage, he admonished his better nature, and you must find the courage to see it through. So Adam bargained with himself. Even if Laura was involved with another man, he reasoned, he refused to believe that she would ultimately choose him over her husband. Their marriage would somehow survive.
He had tried to be strong as he watched his wife’s evasiveness, her sadness and silent torment grow over the last two years. Laura apologised again and again for her strange moods and insisted they meant nothing and would be overcome. He tried to forgive her for the sake of their love and for their three children. But it was hard.
The tension at the Fox family home had grown in intensity over the last six months. By the middle of the year they could all feel its presence like a cloud of flammable vapour that hung over the house, awaiting only a single spark to set it off. Monika managed to remain aloof as she only came back for weekends. Brün was the haven she escaped to from the misery of her family.
But the whole family knew it was just a matter of time before it would all go up. The disaster struck with full force one Sunday afternoon in July with everyone home for a family lunch. Laura had spent most of the weekend in bed, falling into bouts of weeping for no apparent reason and refusing to come down for meals. Something had triggered this latest fit of despair, something terrible. Adam had tried to talk to her but to no avail. Monika, too, had tried, with similar results.
Adam sat at the head of the table with Alan, Lottie and Monika as they watched the meal their cook, Sarah, had prepared go cold. Adam had sent Sarah up to fetch Mrs Fox and would not let them touch a mouthful until their mother came down. No one spoke a word. The only sound was the tap of Adam’s glass of water on the table to
p like a metronome keeping time.
It grew louder and louder until, without warning, he hurled it against the opposite wall. Everyone froze in terror. Adam stood up and stormed out of the room. He mounted the stairs and began pounding on Laura’s bedroom door with his fists. Monika felt her stomach lurch and her body went numb. This was it, the detonation she had waited for.
‘What are you hiding from me, Laura? What are you keeping secret?’
Behind the door, Laura was crying. ‘Go away!’
‘Why won’t you tell me what’s going on? What is it you are hiding from me?’
‘Go away! Go back to your bloody hotel. It’s all you’ve ever loved. More than me. More than your children. I wish it had burned down that night of the fire. It killed poor Adelina and now it will kill me!’
Monika did not recognise this voice; it belonged to another woman, a wretched madwoman howling in distress. And the words made no sense at all, though they evidently wounded her father deeply, for he cried out as if in pain.
‘How dare you! How dare you say such things! Open this door!’ yelled Adam.
This rage was more terrifying than anything Monika had witnessed before. Alan, shamefaced and trembling, and Lottie, paralysed with fear, hung back in the dining room. But Monika tiptoed to the doorway to listen. Floorboards creaked overhead and they all heard something explode: an object thrown against a wall upstairs.
‘Go away!’ Laura shouted.
‘Open the door now or I’ll break it down!’
‘I don’t love you! You’re a monster! Go away!’
‘You’re lying to me, I know it. You’ve been lying to me for years!’
Adam bellowed like a wounded animal and went crashing down the stairs and out the back door. Monika ran to the dining-room window. She saw a thick-necked old man, his scalp glowing bright pink through his thinning hair, wrestling with the door of the garden shed. She could not believe this was the same man she had hero-worshipped all these years.
There was an ominous silence. The house itself seemed to tense as they all waited. ‘Mama, are you alright?’ Monika called out. There was only the sound of weeping from behind the closed door. And then the loud bang of the back door slamming open and her father’s heavy tread as he mounted the stairs again. Monika came out of the dining room and saw him. His face was a mask of cold, white rage.
He was carrying an axe.
Monika screamed, ‘Stop!’ She rushed at him but it was as if he did not see her. His hand went up and shoved her hard in the chest, throwing her back against the wall. He continued along the corridor towards Laura’s room. The first swing of the axe bit deep and the bedroom door shuddered on its hinges. The second splintered the top panel and took an effort for Adam to pull it out.
‘Open the door!’ Adam bellowed.
Monika heard the snick of the lock and the turn of the handle. Adam surged forward into the room. ‘Give me the letters! I know about the letters!’ he yelled.
‘No!’
The children heard a scream and the sound of more objects breaking; china or glass or wood, they could not say what. They were consumed by terror.
‘No, no!’ Laura begged in a pitiful voice drowned out by her husband’s angry shouts and the repeated sounds of heavy blows.
Monika had to act. She looked at Lottie, quivering with anger and fear, and her brother, Alan, his fists squeezed tight against his temples, sobbing with rage. ‘He’ll kill her!’ he cried. ‘We have to do something.’
‘Phone the police,’ Lottie hissed. ‘Or get one of the neighbours.’
‘No, wait,’ commanded Monika. Impelled more by desperation than any conscious act of courage, she ran outside to the shed. Alan had already picked up the telephone receiver when he and Lottie heard Monika’s feet pounding up the stairs .What was she going to do?
When Monika stepped through the doorway she saw her mother cowering in the far corner of the room. Her father had split her mother’s writing desk almost in two, spewing its contents all over the carpet: books, pens, bundles of letters, small boxes, all crushed, shredded, stained with ink from shattered bottles. Adam had his axe raised for the final blow.
She pointed the barrel of her rifle at the back of her father’s head.
‘Stop. Stop now. Or I’ll shoot.’
CHAPTER 28
* * *
Lisa
Katoomba, June 2013
When Lisa had finished reading, she and Luke sat in the bungalow in silence for some time, listening to sparks rattling up the stovepipe of the slow-combustion heater and the soft implosions of embers in the firebox. Raindrops tapping against the windows and roof made a delicate accompaniment.
‘Thank you,’ Luke said at last.
Lisa sat, dry-eyed, next to him on the couch. She had expected to feel exposed and ashamed but she did not. She felt, instead, surprisingly at peace, as if an invisible burden had been lifted from her chest, allowing her to breathe more freely.
Luke gently caressed the fingers of her left hand. ‘And you wonder why I feel a little protective towards you and your family? There’s so much to understand here, so much that is still hidden.’
Lisa nodded. She had read to the last entry in the final volume of Monika’s marbled-cover diaries: 25 August 1946. Here, the story ended abruptly with not a single jot on the succeeding pages. It was as if Monika’s childhood had plummeted into a blank hole, vanished into a space beyond words.
Lisa sighed. ‘And I’m running out of time, Luke. I want to understand all this before I lose her.’ She told him about Monika wandering off from the nursing home and refusing her meds. If the disease took off, it could be only weeks before Monika’s memory flushed away everything, including her daughter’s name and face.
‘The nurse said they found her down at Bloome Park. Apparently she was looking for someone called Brian. Unless the nurse got it wrong, and it was Brün she was looking for. Is that possible?’
‘Yes. It’s perfectly possible. He may still be alive and might even have stayed in – or returned to – the district. Just like your mother. I’ll give my friend Naomi a ring out at the Lithgow Historical Society to see if there’s anything about the Fabers in the archives.’
‘Thank you. You are so . . .’ She struggled to find the right word. ‘Wonderful.’
‘Yes, I am.’ Luke kissed her tenderly on the forehead. ‘I promise to help you as best as I can. Not because I am the historian of the Palace, but because I want you to know about your past. Before it’s too late.’
He looked at his watch. ‘Speaking of which, I have to go. I have a meeting tonight up at the hotel with the owners and the architects. Progress report.’
‘I suppose you won’t be mentioning you had several hours of sex with the youngest living descendant of Adam Fox.’
‘I’m not sure that it would be strictly relevant.’ Luke laughed as he pulled on his jacket and closed his laptop. ‘In fact, I’m pretty sure I should not mention it.’
‘When will I see you?’ Lisa asked, wincing at the cliché of her anxiety as he headed for the door.
‘Soon,’ he offered, already checking his iPhone for messages. ‘I’ll text you.’ And with a farewell kiss, he was gone, leaving Lisa in the familiar silence of her mother’s bungalow. Except that silence was now all the more profound for the strange void left by her lover’s absence.
She switched on the naked electric bulb in the basement. Why was she standing here again? Lisa had a powerful impulse to revisit the contents of her mother’s well-managed ‘tomb’. She turned the key in the padlock and opened up the trunk. She might be back where the journey had begun, but she had learned so much since she first stood here in early May, nearly two months ago.
She stared into the trunk, and inhaled its sickly musk of mothballs and dust. There were Monika’s childhood treasures. Horse-riding and clay-pigeon shooting ribbons from the Lithgow Show. A drawing of her cocker spaniel, Captain Pogo, signed by her brother, Alan. A pile of dog-eared child
ren’s books. A battered tin with a pearl earring. And a little girl’s Start-Rite Mary Jane shoe – just the one – its white patent leather all scuffed and the buckle rusted. What did these objects mean to Monika?
Lisa had removed some of the contents of the trunk onto the shelves opposite. These included two more photo albums, mostly of Laura and Adam’s trips abroad. Lisa had studied these again with interest, particularly the photos of a trip through France, Germany and South America in 1937. The children had been left in the care of their nannies for two months while Adam showed off some of his favourite places to Laura. The travel snaps included photos of the happy couple enjoying afternoon tea on luxury German airships as they travelled between Hamburg, Frankfurt, Dresden and Leipzig before embarking on a flight to Rio on the LZ 127 Graf Zeppelin.
Photos of their one day in Dresden showed Adam posing in front of the city’s baroque marvels: the landmark Frauenkirche with its distinctive ‘stone bell’ dome and the three-tier wedding-cake Semperoper opera house. No doubt this was when they had bought Laura’s new SLR camera, her Kine Exacta.
There was one package inside the trunk she had neglected to look at, that did not fit the pattern of nostalgic items from childhood. Wrapped in clear plastic, it lay underneath the stack of diaries and battered books. Lisa scooped it out.
It was Monika’s typewritten manuscript: the one she had laboured over for six years. Publishers had rejected it as ‘too strange’ and ‘unexpected’ from the famous author of the Kitty Koala series. Her mother had never shown it to Lisa. It did not belong on the tidy shelves with all the celebrated books and photos and merchandise. Instead, it had been buried here, an object of shame, a stillborn book. She had spied this unwanted, unloved thing when she first dug into the trunk but hadn’t thought to pay it any attention.
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