by Helene Young
Since I’d been home from Cairns Base Hospital I’d done nothing but bake, unable to face the world or leave my little home, trapped by the grief. I’d begged Charlie not tell anyone I was back, that we’d lost another child. I wasn’t strong enough yet to face the sympathy, the knowing looks. Let them think I was still in Cairns waiting for my baby. It was nobody’s business but the Dunmores’ and God’s.
‘He’s on the bottle,’ Dottie said listlessly. ‘He hasn’t taken to the breast.’
My breasts ached. Dottie and I should have been comparing our sons, but here I was, a barren woman unable to bear my beloved husband a child. The shame was crippling me.
I summoned a smile. ‘Do you want one now for him? Or boiled water?’
Albert turned in my arms and the sorrow stabbed like a sliver of glass, twisting and tearing.
‘Water might be best.’ Dottie looked so overwhelmed that I wanted to gather her up as well.
‘Okay.’
By the time I finally settled at the table Albert was sucking contentedly. Dottie had crumbled a biscuit onto the plate. I poured her another cup of tea. ‘He’ll be fine with me for the day. You take some time. I’ll send you home with some biscuits and slice if you like. How’s Mrs D?’
‘She’s all right. Feeling the heat, but doing better than me. Even the new refrigerator’s on the blink.’
‘You’ll get used to it in time. If we get some rain out of the storms that will help for a day or two.’
‘It’s enough to make a man doolally.’
And that was before he’d gone to war, I didn’t say aloud. I leaned in and put an arm around her shoulder. ‘You and little Albert don’t need to stay with Ernie. Marriage isn’t about survival. Love shouldn’t hurt. You know you’re always welcome here.’
‘But he’d know where to find me.’
‘And Charlie wouldn’t let him hurt you,’ I replied, hoping I was right.
‘He might not be able to stop him.’ Dottie looked up through a veil of tears. ‘I’d better go. Look after him for me, Ivy.’ She pushed her chair back and almost fled out the door, not even looking at baby Albert.
In hindsight I should have called Charlie in and told him that Ernie was having one of his episodes, that he and Dottie had gone to the caves. He would have kept a close eye on the weather then, made sure they were safe. Instead the storm rolled through in the afternoon. Albert slept through it. I watched as the massive thunderhead grew, blotting out the sun, and sending lightning to the ground before the deluge started.
Around four o’clock a smiling Charlie walked through the curtain of water that was running off the roof as the gutters overflowed. The water tanks were full for the first time since the end of the wet season last year.
‘Day for ducks, Ivy, my love,’ he said, ruffling his hair to shake the water loose. ‘Hello? What have we here?’ He spotted Albert asleep in the cot, the one he’d made so lovingly for our child. ‘A little Dunmore sleeping like an angel.’ He’d stood looking down at the child and the shadow of grief lengthened his face.
‘I’m worried about them. They’re out there somewhere, Charlie.’
‘Who is?’
‘Dottie and Ernie. She left Albert this morning, said she wanted to take Ernie out for a couple of hours, go for a swim. She thought it might help.’
‘Heaven forbid! Not the caves!’
‘Yeah. I warned her about the storms, but Ernie should know better, know when to leave. Maybe we should go looking for them.’
‘Not in this lot. As soon as it’s passed I’ll go up to the main house.’
I placed my hands on my still rounded stomach and he covered them with his own. ‘It’ll happen, love,’ he said. He pressed a kiss to the skin behind my ear and I breathed in the smell of Sunlight soap and Brylcreem. The baby stirred in the cot, regarding us solemnly, before he yawned, so innocent and defenceless.
We heard the sound of a horse being ridden hard and Charlie moved to the window with a frown. It was his father, shouting.
We hurried onto the back porch. ‘What’s wrong?’ Charlie said.
‘Ernie and Dorothy went to the caves and haven’t come home. Your mother’s beside herself. Trethowan’s meeting us there.’
Charlie stopped long enough to drop a kiss on my lips, before he wrestled his wet coat back on and jammed his hat on his head. I sank to the nearest chair, buried my head in my hands and I began to pray.
Hours later Charlie sat across the table from me. His face was ashen with shock. He told me Ernie had shot himself. He couldn’t believe that Ernie had survived the bloody war only to come home and do this. ‘He had everything to live for, everything,’ he said, and his gaze strayed to the baby gurgling in the cot and clutching a teddy bear. ‘Why didn’t I know? Why didn’t he talk to me?’
I felt a chill spreading through my bones. My voice shook, tears flooding down my cheeks. ‘He’d been getting worse, Charlie,’ I sobbed. ‘We knew that. I told Dottie today to come to us if she needed to, that you’d keep her safe. You know why she always wore long tops and skirts. It isn’t like his temper was a secret.’
‘But this?’ He shuddered, twisting his hands together over and over. ‘She was laid out next to him, in the Venus Cave on that rock ledge, the one we always picnic on. She was all tidy, her hands crossed on her stomach, her head turned away from him. She could have been sleeping.’ He stumbled over the words as he looked at me with anguish. ‘He’d choked the life of her, his wife, the mother of his baby. Why didn’t she fight him?’
I bowed my head. ‘I felt this morning that she knew something bad was going to happen. She handed me a huge bag. All of Albert’s toys are in it, as far as I can tell. As well as that lock of hair they cut the day he was born, and his birth certificate. A strange thing to leave if you plan on coming back.’
Someone pounded on the back door before it burst open. A wild-eyed old Mr Dunmore stumbled into the room. ‘It’s done,’ he said. ‘The police are on their way.’ The older man straightened, pulling his sodden hat from his head, sparse hair standing on end, and glared at the two of us. ‘I told them Ernie and his family are missing, that I found their stuff in the caves. I told them I reckoned they’ve been swept away by a flash flood.’
‘What?’ Charlie leapt to his feet. ‘Dad! What have you done?’
‘Let the water wash away his sins, Charlie. No son of mine will be branded a murderer.’
I struggled to stand. ‘What will happen to Albert?’ I couldn’t stop my voice from trembling.
‘I said he was missing too.’ The old man’s jaw jutted, daring anyone to disagree.
I held my nerve, prepared to defend the innocent child. ‘But he’s here.’
‘Silence, woman!’ Old Mr Dunmore roared. ‘You get the baby you deserve. No one will know. Trethowan will keep his mouth shut or I’ll ruin them all.’
I raised my eyes to meet his anguished glare. ‘We can adopt him, do it properly.’
‘No! No Dunmore should live with this taint.’
Charlie took two long strides and stood beside me, placing his arm around my shoulder. ‘It’s okay, love. We’ll work something out.’
My brain was whirling. I knew it was wrong, but this little baby, this tiny dependent bundle, deserved a better future. ‘But the police will know. There’ll be no body. What about a birth certificate?’
Charlie shifted on his feet, caught between his father and me. I could feel the tension and anger in him as he tried to find a path through the quicksand. ‘Only the staff in the Cairns Base hospital and the Dunmores know about our baby. Dr Wellington is bound by his oath and no one even knows you’re home yet.’
‘And I’ll have a word with Dr Wellington,’ Mr Dunmore growled. ‘The police will presume the little one was lost in the floodwaters.’
‘That’s if they find any of them so we can bury them.’ The look Charlie shot his father was full of grief and anger, and disgust.
I was still searching for a way out, a
way to convince my father-in-law to do the right thing. Could I, Ivy Dunmore, a devout Christian who believed always in telling the truth, be prepared to break my faith for the sake of a child?
‘But if you tell them he was with me, then we can still adopt him,’ I protested. ‘No one would argue with that.’
‘No! It’s done. I’ve already told them he’s missing. There will be no change to the story. It will only raise suspicions. Ernie and his family are dead, all of them,’ Old Mr Dunmore said, slumping into a chair, ageing before my eyes.
Days later I stood next to the fresh graves dug side by side in the family plot in front of the tiny chapel, the grass green from the storm of that terrible night. The exposed earth smelt as old as time itself, as if a rift had been carved deep into the bowels of hell as they laid the two terribly battered bodies to rest.
Little more than a year later I stood there again, with Kenneth on my hip, and Georgina growing in my belly, to mourn Mr Dunmore. The same year Charlie’s mother started putting her shoes on the wrong foot and talking to strangers no one else could see.
The next year we travelled 300 miles to farewell Dr Wellington at a packed church in Cairns. By the time Kenneth went to school, only three living people knew that his birth name had been Albert.
‘Wow.’ Ella broke the silence as Georgina finished reading. No one had dry eyes, not even Sean and Kate.
Ella wiped her sleeve across her nose. ‘It all makes sense now. I pulled Granny’s photos out last night, the ones she gave to me to sort through and put on her iPad. I was going to show you what I found tomorrow. You’d better see it now. Give me a sec.’ She almost tripped over Sinbad who was sitting in the doorway and scooped him up as she went.
Georgina was having trouble rereading the words. She couldn’t process her emotions at all right now. Ivy Dunmore, a woman with a black-and-white code of morals, had lived a lie. And so had Charlie. That wise, wonderful man had taken the secret to his grave. Was this what her mother had meant that last night in hospital? That Georgina was the eldest child, robbed by a cuckoo forced into Ivy’s nest? Did this explain why Ken turned out the way he did?
Ivy had done what she had to do. And in the end, she’d protected her girls. And she’d protected Ken. His betrayal must have hurt Ivy all the more. After everything she’d done.
‘How long have you known?’ Felicity asked Mitch, breaking into her thoughts. Georgina could hear the hurt in her voice. Mitch looked at the ground, stopped his toe scuffing the floorboard.
‘Dad let it slip the night of Charlie’s wake. He was roaring drunk and he and Ken had a disagreement about the boundary fence repairs. Dad kept saying the truth about Ernie should be told. I waited until the morning when his hangover was at its worst. He swore me to secrecy. The only thing keeping him quiet was his respect for Mrs D.’
‘I see.’ The distress was clear in her face. ‘And the mortgage? Kate says you did a deal and paid it out, a mortgage we didn’t even know about?’
Mitch paled under his tan. ‘Mrs D said she was going to tell you.’
‘She didn’t.’ Felicity’s voice cracked.
Mitch was smart enough not to move to her as he replied. ‘All I did was advance her the agistment fees for the next year up-front. It was enough to cover what Ken had already drawn. I was so angry when she let it slip. I wanted to beat the hell out of him right there and then. Kate dealt with it for her because I didn’t have time with mustering and the rest. Nothing sinister, nothing to repay.’ He held his hands up. ‘Lissie, I’m sorry. I was helping the only way I knew how. She wouldn’t let me be involved in any other way.’
‘Oh.’ Felicity dropped her head further. ‘So you still have a live export deal?’
He looked baffled, his glance shooting around the room.
‘Ken said you’d lost it,’ Georgina explained. ‘Told us that’s why you were doing the development.’
‘Bullshit,’ he swore, before inclining his head in apology. ‘That’s crap. Although if he’d kept stealing my cattle, I might have been in trouble.’ He nodded his thanks to Ella as they all digested his words. ‘The development was something Mrs D was keen to see go ahead. Clean out those ghosts once and for all.’
Dan broke the silence. ‘So no one else questioned the cause of death? No one noticed the gunshot wound?’
‘No. Once the doctor signed cause of death there was no point. Dad said Dorothy had no other family. She was from England and they’d all died in the war.’
‘Poor Dottie.’ Georgina shook her head. ‘No one to fight for justice for her.’
‘I think that ate at Mrs D the most. I’m sorry Mrs D’ll miss the opening of the house.’
‘You knew about that too?’ Felicity asked.
‘Yeah. I drove to Cairns so she could interview them. You know what she’s like.’ He managed a ghost of a smile. ‘She wasn’t going to hand over that sort of money to just anyone.’
‘But it was her nest egg.’ Georgina interrupted him. ‘She had no other money to live on, apart from your agistment fees.’
‘She didn’t talk about the amount of money, but I got the feeling she thought God wasn’t listening to her prayers because she’d been part of a terrible lie.’
Georgina blinked against the rush of tears. ‘That would be so like Ivy.’
‘Here!’ Ella bounded back into the room, waving a handful of black-and-white photos and some yellowed documents. ‘I went and had another look in Granny’s box. I knew she kept all her private papers there, but photos first.’
She laid them out on the table as the others gathered around. ‘December 1953, Granny with a baby bump and a really daggy dress.’
‘Maternity smock. She made them herself,’ Georgina murmured, remembering the pride in Ivy’s face as she’d talked about them only a week ago.
‘And this one’s Dottie.’ Ella placed another photo down. ‘Although she’s covered up from head to foot so it must have been a cold summer.’
‘Or she was black and blue,’ Georgina said. ‘She seems so fragile.’
‘Ivy always said she had spirit. She looks like a mouse in this photo,’ Felicity added.
‘Maybe they caught her on a bad day.’ Dan leant over Georgina’s shoulder.
‘Maybe?’ Ella sounded doubtful. ‘And this is the two of them. They look so happy. Cairns, Christmas 1953. It must have been just before the babies were due.’
The two women had their arms around each other, baby bulges touching, as they laughed uproariously. It was a moment of joy captured in a photograph over sixty years old.
Georgina’s throat thickened with unshed tears. They shared an emotion she’d never know. ‘Wow, how carefree are they.’ Her voice was husky. ‘And they do look very similar sizes.’
‘And on the back it says, “Due any time soon. Ivy and Dot.” ’
‘But it doesn’t prove Ken’s not Ivy’s son,’ Kate said, looking just as bemused as the others, but clearly curious.
‘No, but why would Granny have these hidden in an envelope in the bottom of her box?’ Ella spread out two fragile pieces of paper. ‘A death certificate for a baby boy born to Ivy and Charlie in Cairns Base Hospital on 14 January, 1954. A birth certificate for Albert Kenneth Dunmore born 5 January, 1954 to Dorothy and Ernest Dunmore. Three, four weeks later Ernie, Dottie and Albert were all killed in a flood. What’s Uncle Ken’s birthday?’
Felicity met Georgina’s gaze as they both spoke. ‘14 January 1954.’
‘Ha! It’s proof.’ Ella looked around triumphantly as Georgina picked up the death certificate and looked back to Felicity. Kate broke the silence.
‘It would be incredibly hard to prove one way or the other now,’ she said. ‘Perhaps you should talk to the police. But either way, I don’t believe Ken can win an appeal so, while it might be nice to know, it’s not going to change anything.’ She stood up, shook the creases from her skirt. ‘I’ll be in touch. Mitch, Ivy said she’d told you, but since you’re indirectly a beneficiary I�
��ll write formally. I’m sorry Ivy was right about Ken.’
‘A cup of tea before you go?’ Georgina felt compelled to offer. Ivy would have insisted.
‘No.’ Kate smiled. ‘But, thanks. There’s a bit to absorb for you all. Copies of the will are there.’ She pointed at the table. ‘There’s one each for you. Call if you need me. I’ll lodge the probate documents and be in touch.’
As she left the others looked at each other in the silence. Georgina could see the droop in Felicity’s shoulders. She wasn’t looking at Mitch. For someone like Lissie this would be a betrayal of trust. Mitch had kept ugly secrets. What else would he hide? From Georgina’s perspective she was glad that Ivy had someone to confide in, someone she trusted with such an awful thing.
‘Do you think he knew about his parents?’ Georgina asked.
‘He suspected something wasn’t right after Charlie died,’ Mitch said. ‘I don’t know where he found them, but he tried to blackmail me with letters from my father to Dottie. Letters telling her to leave Ernie, promising he’d look after her. Ken decided Dad had killed Ernie. I told him to go public. He didn’t, but it’s been strained between us ever since, not that I’ve ever liked the man.’
‘He had it so wrong.’
‘Yeah, about a lot of things,’ Mitch replied, looking even more uncomfortable. ‘When Mrs D gave me her journal for safekeeping a few days before her fall, she said Ken knew and she was going to have to tell you girls to put an end to his nonsense. She never said but I got the feeling he’d used the knowledge to pressure her.’
The silence deepened as everyone stared at him. He raised his hands. ‘Don’t shoot the messenger. She made me promise not to tell anyone. It was her business, not mine.’
‘I need a cup of tea,’ Felicity said, getting to her feet, visibly pale. Mitch paused in the doorway. He should march across and grab Lissie, Georgina thought. Then Ella intervened.
‘No, Mum, I know this thing about Ken is a shock, but I think champagne is called for. Granny D has done the right thing and left Roseglen in the safe hands of her two daughters. So not only is it your birthday, but it’s also the first day of the rest of your life on the land. We are going to celebrate in the style Granny would have demanded. You know she even gave me money to buy a case of champagne. I’m sure she’d approve of us starting early.’
