Charlotte snatched the sleeping Victoria and her doll out of the baby carriage and passed under the arch through the open door which she had left ajar. She walked around the stables, following the narrow earthen path that hugged the stable walls, and headed to the river. The muddy verge was slippery from all the rain. She skidded. The jolting movement she’d made to prevent herself from falling woke the child, who was immediately alert, gazing around her to take in the unfamiliar surroundings.
As soon as they turned the corner onto the river bank and Victoria saw the rushing water, she wriggled to show she wanted to be placed on the ground. Charlotte put her down and took her hand.
Both sisters were conscious of the novelty of the two of them on an adventure without any adult supervising them. A forbidden adventure. Walking alongside the river, which had a deep Dark Waterhole and was always out of bounds.
Victoria was almost shy of her big sister, holding her hand and smiling up at her.
“Mummy’s pet,” Charlotte said sadly, not returning the smile.
Victoria, wearing a white dress and carrying her doll, walked confidently. She was advanced for her age, as Nurse Dixon never tired of pointing out, steady on her feet at ten months, whereas Charlotte, the dummy, hadn’t taken her first steps until she was sixteen months old.
They continued on a little way to where a section of the bank had eroded, taking half the crumbling path with it. Victoria tripped on a dislodged lump of rubble and would have fallen into the water if Charlotte hadn’t held her tightly. The doll flew from Victoria’s hand and landed on the bank, its hair trailing in the flooded river.
“Stay back,” Charlotte shouted as they bent at the same time to retrieve it. “I’ll get it for you.”
Victoria ignored her and, snapping up the sopping doll with a squawk of relief, clutched it to the bodice of her white dress.
“Now look what you’ve done, getting muck all over your front. Give the doll to me so I can wash it so we don’t get into trouble.”
“No,” said Victoria. Mud was now dribbling all the way down her skirt.
“Did you hear what I said? Give me the doll.”
“No.”
“Give it to me.”
“No.”
“I’ll give you one more chance. Give it to me.”
Victoria looked bewildered and clutched the doll more tightly to her side. “No, no, no,” she said, shaking her head for emphasis.
“Give it to me or you’ll cop it. Teresa Kelly can’t help you now. She’s gone for good. Vanished.”
Victoria stepped back. Charlotte leaned forward, grabbed the doll by the hair and wrenched it out of Victoria’s arm.
Victoria toppled backwards inches from the water. Charlotte pulled her to her feet. Victoria wailed and tugged at Charlotte’s skirt.
“Stop that noise.” Charlotte held the doll above her head and tried to pull her skirt free.
Victoria held on tighter and wailed louder.
“Shut up or they’ll hear you.”
Victoria’s howl rose to a full-blooded screech.
Mummy’s pretty little favourite didn’t look so pretty now with all that mucus running down her screwed-up face.
Charlotte lowered the doll. Victoria let go of the skirt and reached up to claim it. Charlotte held it within an inch of Victoria’s desperate, fluttering fingers.
How easy it would be to give it to her and watch her clasp it close, cease her caterwauling, and look with pleasure again at her older sister, who could take her hand and lead her back to the courtyard, the dangerous adventure safely over. Easy, but not good for her, getting her own way just because she made a lot of noise.
With the dangling doll remaining just out of reach, Victoria’s frustrated screams rose to an even higher pitch and her contortions became so extreme she looked as if she was about to turn herself inside out.
Her face was so devilish it didn't look like Victoria's. Her voice was so harsh and piercing it didn't sound like a child's.
“I said shut up. Don’t you understand plain English? Do you want to be caught near the river and get beaten? Shut up! Shut up!”
Charlotte gave Victoria a straight-armed shove that shot her small frame, arms flailing, backwards into the river.
The white dress ballooned out around the child before the swirling water turned her slowly and propelled her away from the bank into the swift current where the water was deepest. Shock registered on her face. She re-emerged once downstream, her eyes and mouth wide open, her arms thrashing. Seconds later she disappeared from view, and Charlotte followed the course of the river with such unblinking concentration that her eyes flicked in and out of focus.
It would have been so easy to give back the doll.
But you can’t give in to children like that. It turns them into spoilt brats, Nurse Dixon’s voice scorched through her mind.
But Victoria is not a spoilt brat, Charlotte shuddered to realise, holding the doll out to her little sister now, too late. Offering it to the empty space where the pretty darling had stood a second earlier.
Charlotte felt a taste of vomit in her mouth. Her boiling temper had cooled in an instant as if it had been quenched by an upturned barrel of icy water.
“Come back, Victoria! Come back!” she called, with the doll dangling uselessly from her proffered hand. “I didn’t mean it!” Her leg muscles had turned soft but she forced them to move, all the while repeating, “Come back, Victoria! Come back! Please, Victoria, come back! I don’t mind if you’re the favourite. You’re my favourite too. You can have the doll. Look, I’m giving it to you!” She ran downstream past the bridge, hoping to see Victoria’s dress snagged on the branch of an overhanging tree, and Victoria holding out her arms and crying out to her. What wouldn’t she give to be able to reach out and unhook the dress and pull her to safety? What wouldn’t she give to have her beside her on the bank again?
She would give up her jealousy and her misery and promise to love her mother and Nurse Dixon and even give up riding Mandrake and never go back to the stables or see Manus again if only Victoria wasn’t drowned. She would join in admiring her pretty face and wouldn’t be relieved if Nurse Dixon was being cruel to her rather than to herself.
Perhaps below the weir where she’d often watched a ball or a tin can dance on the churning water, trying to guess how long it would stay there before being swept along, she would find Victoria wedged at the bottom of the fall, held by opposing forces.
With the large volume of water passing over the weir there was no fall of water. Only a bulge and then a straight run.
To gain height she stood on the bridge and looked as far downstream as possible. All she saw was brown water and flickers of white that gave her hope for the second before she realised they weren’t Victoria’s dress but froth created by the tumult of the flood. Upstream was the deep Dark Waterhole that swallowed up young children, according to Nurse Dixon. Perhaps Victoria was lying on the bottom of it, held down by strange creatures always on the lookout for naughty children who didn’t do what their nannies told them.
Consumed by a terror of being discovered by her mother and Manus, who might by now have realised that Victoria was missing, she staggered along the path by the river, bent over so she would be hidden by the vegetation, until she was out of sight of any of the estate buildings, before circling back to the rear of the Park. Knowing Nurse Dixon was in the nursery, she went only as far as the ground floor where she stuffed the doll under the stairs – she would retrieve it later and hide it in a better place – and then went outside again where her energy deserted her and she fell beside a channel that drained water from the house where for weeks she had been building a bridge. While her mind filled with a silent, long drawn-out scream she rearranged the stones she had collected for her construction and it was there some time later Nurse Dixon had found her sitting in mud to tell her Victoria was missing and everyone was needed for the search party, including her, though God knew why, seeing she was so u
seless.
75
Iseult kept Mary Anne with her until Charlotte had recovered sufficiently to take her back. Mary Anne had been happy enough during the day, but cried for her mother at night.
“Please don’t tell Lochlann about this little episode,” Charlotte begged her sister-in-law. “It will only worry him and besides it was nothing. I think I’ve been overdoing things and not getting enough sleep. I’m fully recovered now.”
Dr Grace, visiting at the time, murmured sympathetically as if she believed her, but secretly worried about the state of Charlotte’s nerves and wondered if she suffered from a deep-seated condition that could erupt at any time. Iseult feared that Charlotte had inherited a family madness that might be passed on to the child. One had only to remember that she had locked herself away for three years and eaten herself into the size of a barn to realise she might be a bit unbalanced. Neither woman confided her fears to the other, but both determined to keep a closer eye on the unfortunate woman whom they had grown to love and admire.
During the next few weeks both noticed that Charlotte didn’t recover her confidence and joy in the handling of Mary Anne. She was sad and tentative and prone to lapses of concentration, sinking into deep thought at intervals, oblivious of her surroundings.
Mary Anne became clingy, registering unease if Charlotte moved even a short distance away from her side.
Charlotte wrote to Colonel Turncastle to say she had given a lot of thought to what he had said, especially the part about securing the future for all children, and was applying to join the SOE as soon as possible.
76
Sydney
1943
It was half past five in the morning and the heat was already unbearable.
“Elizabeth.”
The whispered name woke Dixon from a deep sleep. The room was in darkness.
She was slow to react, having lain awake for hours the previous night, and many nights before that, trying to make sense of the explosive information Teresa had unwittingly given her. She was consumed with planning who to write to first, what to say or hint at, and how best she might revenge herself on those at Tyringham Park who had wronged her, especially the little tell-tale, Charlotte.
“Elizabeth!” A little louder this time, accompanied by tapping.
Lady Blackshaw would be first – that was only fair – she had already written a letter to her at Tyringham Park and would post it later in the day. Charlotte, Miss East, Manus and Dr Finn would have to wait until she heard back from Her Ladyship.
“Elizabeth!” said for the third time, loudly and impatiently, finally drew Dixon from her bed.
It was Jim Rossiter’s voice. Mrs Sinclair must have died and he had come around to tell her and to bring her back to the house to include her in the funeral rituals. Thoughtful as ever.
She pulled her dressing gown around her, clutching it at her neck with one hand while she opened the door with the other. Her face was already fixed in an expression of sympathy – Jim was exceptionally fond of his mother-in-law, and she of him.
“Is it Mrs Sinclair?”
Jim pushed past her, flicked on the light switch and closed the door behind him.
“No. It’s not her. She’s still hanging on. It’s you. What I want to know is what have you done with the bloody money?”
Afterwards, Dixon couldn’t remember in what order Jim had made his accusations, but “robbing me blind for years” was the phrase he kept repeating.
“Pack your bags. You’ll never see this place or Norma or her mother again. I’m making sure of that.”
Dixon felt as if she wasn’t standing in the middle of her bedroom, bare feet firm on the carpet, but falling backwards out of an open window, her fingers losing their grip on the slippery frames while a freezing wind snapped at the shroud-like curtains. She experienced a flashback to the time Miss East and Dr Finn came to the nursery together and she knew by the look on their faces that her time was up.
Jim upturned her mattress and emptied the contents of her wardrobe on to the floor. He accompanied her to the bathroom and waited outside while she washed and dressed. At one point while he was questioning her he came near and she put up an arm to defend herself from an expected blow, but he said he had never hit a woman in his life and wasn’t about to start now. He held her shoulders, looked into her face and said in a reasonable voice that it would save him a lot of trouble if she would tell him where the money was. The physical contact comforted her and she didn’t pull away. With hands like those steadying her she would never have to fear falling backwards through an open window.
After everything the family, especially Mrs Sinclair, had done for her, Jim continued, telling him where the money was hidden was the least she could do. She must have had an aberration. It could happen to anyone handling all that cash, being tempted, giving in during a weak moment, afraid to own up, not knowing how to undo it. He understood. It wasn’t too late to make it right.
An image of Charlotte Blackshaw keeping a stubborn silence came to mind. She would do the same. He couldn’t trip her up if she didn’t say anything. Look at what Charlotte had got away with.
He waited, but she held her nerve, looking downwards so she wouldn’t be influenced by his expectant expression.
“We all thought the world of you, Elizabeth,” he said, dropping his arms. “Just shows you how wrong you can be. I’ll find the money, believe me, even if it means lifting up floorboards and tearing the place apart, and putting the hard word on every bank manager in Sydney.”
Apologising for having to check her handbag, he took it to examine the contents and found amongst her personal things a wad of high-denomination notes fitted into an empty cigarette packet. The money was for her Beth Hall account. She had intended to deposit it later on in the day after she’d done the hotel banking, but she couldn’t very well tell him that.
“The mother of your fiancé?” he asked, reading Lady Blackshaw’s address on the unstamped envelope of the letter she had written. “I would offer to post it for you, but I have a better idea. You’ll hear about it in a minute.”
He replaced everything in her handbag, including the money. “You’ll need that where you’re going to tide you over,” he said. “It’s the big stuff I’m after, not this piddling amount. I can’t have you ending up on the streets. It’s not that I don’t appreciate what you did for the Waratah, but you have to admit you were well paid.” His voice sounded more sad than angry. “There was no need for you to put your sticky fingers in the till.”
From the top of her wardrobe he retrieved her suitcase, opened it, and felt around the linings and pockets where he found the necklace, rings and bracelet she had stolen from Lady Blackshaw. “Mrs Sinclair mentioned these. From your fiancé, she said.”
Dixon made a grab for them.
“I’ll keep them,” he said, putting them in his pocket as he sidestepped her. “Compensation. Go on. Pack. I’m not taking my eyes off you until we leave.”
It was Peter Molloy, the new manager, who had noticed something wrong, Jim said. “Get a professional to look over the books,” Peter had advised after he’d been there for six months. “Something isn’t adding up.”
The young pup had never liked her. He must have thought all his Christmases had come at once when the auditor found deficits going back twenty years.
The mistake she’d made was increasing her percentage after Peter, a hotelier with little experience, had been appointed manager over her when she knew the position was rightly hers. Passed over because she was a woman and a spinster. She knew there was no malice in what Jim did – he often acknowledged how she and Mrs Sinclair had done wonders wooing customers and how she had held on to them after her patron had left. He thought being manager, even of a respectable establishment like the Waratah, was no job for a woman, and he would have considered it the gentlemanly thing to do to protect her with a male superior.
He was going to deport her at ten o’clock precisely. It was either
that or inform the police, and he’d made the executive decision to send her back to England, from where she could cross over the Irish Sea and deliver her letter to Lady Blackshaw by hand and save on the postage. He would personally escort her to her cabin and wait at the gangplank until it was raised and the ship pulled away to make sure she didn’t disembark at the last minute.
“You’ll have the status of a stowaway,” he said, “except the captain knows you’re there. This no-speaking lark will come in handy for the trip.”
He couldn’t bring himself to involve Norma while the investigation was going on, he continued, and didn’t look forward to telling her before the next first Sunday of the month to explain Dixon’s absence. As for Mrs Sinclair, she would go to her grave without knowing her protégé had disgraced herself.
Jim didn’t allow Dixon to enter her office, speak to the night porter, or leave any written notes or phone messages before she left the hotel.
A young sailor was expecting them at the quay and led them to a cabin the size of a cupboard with ‘Quarantine’ fixed to the door.
“I gave your name as ‘Jane Brown’, not that anyone will be talking to you. Remember to stay out of everyone’s way – I don’t want my old mate cursing the day he did me a favour. You won’t be seeing him. He has more important things on his mind than social chitchat, like trying not to be sunk by a German U-boat, for instance.” He placed her case on the bunk. “You’re a cold fish, aren’t you? Did we ever know you?”
He put his hand in his pocket, retrieved her pieces of jewellery and, taking Dixon’s hand, folded her fingers over them. “Keep them,” he said. “I can’t dishonour the memory of your fiancé who wasn’t as lucky as I was coming home from the Great War in one piece. Just make sure you never show your face around here again. If you do I’ll personally break your bloody neck.”
Tyringham Park Page 35
