‘Family makes enquiries, receives favourable report. So willing to trust.’
And would no doubt keep an eye on things too, Bec thought. As was only sensible.
‘And in return?’
‘Family lend further one hundred thousand pound. Interest free, no fixed date of repayment. Lend to you personally, not to family. Use to rescue Penrose family.’
Ohmygod.
The taste of salvation was almost too sweet to bear.
‘One further favour required,’ said Mr Chan. He smiled benignly but his eyes were implacable.
Oh God, let it be something I can do. Let the taste not turn bitter on me now.
Bec dragged a smile from somewhere. ‘What favour is that?’
‘Derwent wool clip.’
‘What about it?’
‘Sell to Chan family interests, next ten years, twenty per cent discount on market price at date of sale. Can?’
‘Ten per cent, five years,’ Bec said.
Mr Chan smiled. ‘Fifteen per cent, seven years.’
‘Twelve per cent, six years.’ Her eyes challenged his. ‘My last word, Mr Chan. You agree?’
Mr Chan smiled. ‘Can,’ he said.
Weakness overwhelmed her. She was afraid she would wake up and find it all a dream. But no, it was real, it was Christmas Day, Alleluia Day, it was the salvation Maurice Miller had promised.
Tears burnt her eyes but – mercifully! – did not fall.
‘I shall get my lawyer on to it immediately –’ But stopped as Mr Chan shook his head.
‘Nothing in writing. Verbal agreement much better, no?’
‘You will trust me with all that money on my word alone?’
‘No trust, no deal. With trust, no need for written agreement. Less chance of trouble from government that way.’
‘Then how –?’
‘One week, all money with your lawyer. Yes?’
Bec was breathless. She stood outside Derwent House and waved goodbye to Mr Chan and Maurice Miller as they drove away down the hill. She turned to look at the house, its massive front door standing open behind her.
‘We are safe,’ she said.
Hard to believe; harder still to stem the tears that now began to fall. She went looking for Jonathan to give him the good news – how long was it since she’d been able to do that? – but could not find him.
‘Have you seen Mr Penrose?’ she asked Ivy.
‘He went out. While you was with the foreign gentleman.’
‘Did he say when he’d be back?’
‘No, miss. He was in a big rush. He had this phone call and was lookin’ real upset. Just grabbed his hat, jumped in the car and took off. Quite startled me, the way he was lookin’.’
‘Did you answer the phone? Who was the call from?’
‘It was the bank.’
‘Did Mr Penrose take a case with him?’
‘No, miss.’
A call from that damn bank manager. Then rushing out like that… Not going to the shack then. He wouldn’t go to the bank. It would be either Gimbaloo or Blackman’s Head. But which? Think!
‘I’m going out, Ivy. Shouldn’t be too long.’
Thank God they still had the two cars.
Bec drove like a monsoon wind and was soon bumping along the gravel track, constructed five years before, that led to the foot of Blackman’s Head.
She prayed she had read Jonathan’s mind correctly. This had been their special place ever since the days he had first courted her. But even if she had guessed right there was one inescapable fact: people had jumped off the top of Blackman’s Head before this.
Bec saw sunlight glinting on the car when she was still five hundred yards away. Relief surged. But where was Jonathan?
She skidded to a stop, threw open the car door and set out up the slope. Up and up, heart pounding, breath tight in her throat.
Relief flowed through her as she saw Jonathan sitting in the place that had always been precious to them. She ran to him.
‘You scared me. Why did you rush out like that?’
‘I needed air,’ he said. ‘And I did not know what I could do.’
She sat at his side on the warm and dusty ground. She saw Jonathan had been weeping, his eyes red, cheeks wet.
She put her hand on his arm. ‘Oh, my love…’
Jonathan said: ‘The bank manager phoned. I told him you were in a meeting but I don’t think he believed me. He said that if we didn’t take steps within the next two weeks to liquidate the amount I owe the bank would be forced to take action. His exact words.’
‘Did he say what action they were planning?’
‘No. But it’s obvious. They will push me into bankruptcy unless I am prepared, as trustee of the estate, to sell Derwent. Can’t blame them, I suppose.’ His eyes stared dully over the expanse that had been the family’s land for a century. ‘I don’t think you or anyone can understand how it feels to be the man who lost Derwent. The stupidity and the guilt.’
Bec took his hand in hers. ‘You mustn’t think like that.’
‘It is in my mind every day. If it hadn’t been for the money I lost we wouldn’t be where we are now.’
‘But –’ Bec said.
‘Do you think I don’t know how you’ve worked to salvage something from my idiocy? How little I’ve helped you?’
‘But –’ Bec said.
‘There are days when it’s more than I can bear.’
‘Listen to me!’ Bec spoke sharply and clearly. ‘Everything is going to be all right.’
‘I knew there was nothing…’ He looked at her, startled. ‘All right?’ he echoed. ‘All right?’
‘Very much all right. My dear love, it seems we aren’t to lose Derwent after all.’
Maurice Miller informed Hedley Crabbe that the Penrose family was not interested in selling Derwent at any price.
Bec, financial credibility restored, travelled to Hobart to complain to the bank’s general manager about Hamish Archer’s bullying ways.
‘As I am sure you will understand,’ she told him with the pleasantest of smiles, ‘Derwent, the Penrose family and all our other companies will be closing their accounts with your bank. With immediate effect, Mr Horrocks. With immediate effect.’
Horror on the GM’s face. ‘But madam, I assure you –’
Too late; she smiled graciously and swept out.
‘I suspect it put him right off his tea,’ she told Maurice later.
A month after Mr Chan’s visit Bec was driving back from Hobart. She was using the back road and was nearly home when she saw something unexpected. She drew into the verge and stopped, staring at a group of unknown men working in one of the valley bottoms. What made it interesting was that this was Derwent land and she had no idea why the men were there or what they were doing.
She got out of the car, walked across to them and asked to see the man in charge. This was a surly-looking individual with big shoulders and an Akubra hat.
Bec smiled at him. ‘May I ask what you are doing?’
‘Who wants to know?’
‘I do.’
‘And you are?’
‘My name is Rebecca Penrose and my family owns all this land. So let me ask you again: what are you doing here?’
He tilted his hat. ‘We’re with the hydro. We’re exploring the aquifer. Checking out the irrigation possibilities.’
‘On whose authority?’
‘The minister’s. But it was Mr Slack who contacted us originally.’
Half an hour later Bec was confronting Isaac Slack in his office.
‘You called in a government department without consulting me first?’
‘I wanted to see whether we could irrigate the area.’
‘Why would you do that?’
An awkward pause.
‘Who put you up to this, Isaac?’
‘Nobody. I promise you. I just thought –’
She could smell the lie on him. ‘And who was going to pay for it?�
�
He hesitated. ‘I was.’
Isaac’s eyes were everywhere and Bec did not believe a word of it.
‘You are lying.’
‘No. I swear…’ Isaac began to gabble. ‘I heard Derwent was on the market –’
‘Where did you hear that?’
Isaac said nothing. He would not look at her.
‘One person has expressed an interest in buying Derwent,’ Bec said. ‘Only one. Does the name Lemaire Forrest mean anything to you?’
‘Never heard of him.’
‘Or Hedley Crabbe?’
Silence.
His guilt was obvious. Bec looked at him.
‘You are finished, Isaac. I want you packed and out of here today.’
‘No, please…’
‘Today, Isaac.’
He had a wife and two children. She felt sad for them but had no choice. She was prepared to forgive much but disloyalty she would not tolerate.
‘Did they find any water?’ Maurice Miller asked when she told him what had happened.
‘Apparently yes. I saw a preliminary report.’
‘What do you plan to do about it?’
‘Nothing.’
‘It could be worth a huge amount of money to the estate.’
‘I think we’ll leave it where it is,’ she said. ‘I don’t like the idea of messing about with the water supply. Without the Chans it might have been our salvation but now we’re doing OK without it.’
1937–45
Over the years Bec had refused to admit to anyone the flaws in Giles’s character.
‘He will grow out of it.’
She had said it repeatedly – was still saying it during her battle to keep Derwent in the family – but he never had. Giles was a pupil at St James’s College in Hobart, a bright, charismatic and untrustworthy boy who on a number of occasions had come closer to being expelled than Bec had been able to believe.
He was eighteen by the time Bec had negotiated the deal with Mr Chan. She had thought he could assist Robert Jervis, the manager she had appointed to run the estate she had bought on the Chans’ behalf twenty miles the other side of Campbell Town, but after six months Jervis sent him home, saying he was unreliable and had no interest in or aptitude for the work.
Bec could have wept. After the traumas of recent years Jonathan at last seemed on the road to a partial recovery; Derwent, which she had thought lost, had by a miracle been found again. Things should have been fine for them at last, and now Giles, the son she loved, was injecting his own brand of turmoil into their lives.
It wasn’t fair but that was life. What had fairness to do with it?
The day after Bec’s fortieth birthday, Giles came home from a trip to Melbourne in the company of a young woman Bec did not know. Giles informed his parents that he and his companion had just got married and that the twenty-one-year-old Kathleen, an artist’s model, was the daughter of David Davies, a wealthy businessman and patron of the controversial artist Norman Lindsay whose nude studies had sparked outrage among the more conservative members of the community.
Seven months later Kathleen, with the aggressively thrusting body and flaring hair seen in many of Lindsay’s paintings, gave birth to a son they named David, after Kathleen’s father.
After the birth Giles and Kathleen announced they would be moving to Melbourne where David Davies had presented them with a house overlooking Port Phillip Bay and where Kathleen, once she had got her figure back, was keen to resume her life-modelling career.
Bec did not like this at all. In terms of the deed Giles would eventually become a trustee of the family trust, yet it seemed he had no interest in Derwent at all. His roots might be there but his spirit was not, and his spirit would always be the guiding factor in Giles’s life.
She talked it over with Giles’s father.
‘He really has no interest in the place.’
‘Except what he can get out of it,’ Jonathan said.
It seemed disloyal to be discussing their son like this but facts needed to be faced. What would Giles do if he ever took over control of the trust?
‘Giles will do what Giles wants,’ Jonathan said. ‘As always.’
‘The terms of the trust are quite clear,’ Bec said. ‘Giles becomes a trustee on your death. I only hope he’s up to the job.’
‘Either way,’ Jonathan said, ‘I’d like to think it won’t be for a few years yet.’
Bec looked at him lovingly. ‘Since I plan to die before you it won’t be my problem.’
They didn’t see much of Giles and Kath after they moved although they did visit them on one occasion.
That was a disaster.
The Melbourne house was large and crooked with floors and turrets architect designed and ceilings slanting this way and that.
‘Enough to poke your eyes out,’ Jonathan said privately, while Bec feared the warped lines might make her dizzy.
They would have got used to that in time, she thought, but there was one thing in the house she knew neither of them would ever learn to accept.
Kathleen’s enthusiasm for her modelling work had spilled over into her private life, except that privacy was clearly not a quality she much valued.
On the living room wall, facing anyone coming through the door, was a full frontal portrait of Kathleen standing and staring challengingly at the viewer, with Kathleen as naked as the day she was born.
On a side table was a photograph of Kathleen as revealing as the portrait.
‘She’s a good-looking girl, you can say that for her,’ Bec said hopefully.
But Jonathan muttered something about strip shows and seeing more than he’d ever hoped to see of his daughter-in-law and it wasn’t long before they fled home.
The next thing they knew it was the war.
‘Again,’ Jonathan said.
As if they hadn’t put up with enough from his involvement in the previous one, he would have liked to take part in this one too, but at forty-eight he was too old.
‘Thank God,’ Bec said.
Giles couldn’t avoid it but his father-in-law’s influence ensured he never moved outside Canberra.
Jonathan had a few things to say about that too, but Bec was glad.
‘This family’s suffered enough in Europe’s wars,’ she said.
Except that it was Europe’s war no longer, with Jap submarines in Sydney harbour, bombs dropping on Darwin and Aussie soldiers dying by the thousand in the hellholes of the Japanese camps.
Bec heard nothing from the Chan family, which had presumably been consumed in the furnace of the Asian catastrophe, but she still set aside the profits meticulously.
‘Why bother?’ Giles asked her. He had red tabs on his collar now and was in Hobart for a meeting. ‘Write them off. The land is in our name and no one knows any different.’
Bec did not agree. ‘We know. Someone in their family will have survived. In the meantime we shall hold it on their behalf.’
1945–80
The war was over at last.
Civilians danced in the streets. The soldiers returned: some to a rapturous welcome, others to broken homes, broken loves, broken futures. The camps discharged their human wreckage. Across the nation the dead were mourned.
The world went on.
A surviving member of the Chan family, a young man who said his name was Bryan, contacted Bec early in 1946. He had spent the war years in India and spoke fluent English.
He visited Tasmania. He insisted on showing Bec his passport to prove his identity. She took him to see the property she had bought on behalf of his family in the years before the war.
She commiserated over his family’s losses, which it seemed had been substantial; he expressed delight at the condition of the estate and the extent of the profits she had been able to set aside for his family.
The White Australia policy was still in force so for the moment the estate could not be transferred to its true owners, but at least
Bec was abl
e to assign the banked monies to Bryan and repay the loan that had enabled Derwent to survive.
They promised to keep in touch and Bryan Chan returned to Malaya to start work on restoring his family’s shattered fortunes.
The years passed.
It seemed no time at all before one war was replaced by another when on 25 June 1950 the communist North Korea invaded the South and conflict broke out on the Korean peninsula. Again Australia was involved and again Bec was thankful that no member of the family took part.
But there was a bright side: in 1951, at the height of the war, the price of wool had risen to 144.2 pence per pound.
It didn’t stay at those levels for long but it was still pretty good and they were looking at what had become a highly profitable organisation again. What a pleasure after the agonies and calamities of the past!
There was more good news in 1955 when Kathleen Penrose gave birth to her second child, a daughter the parents named Tamara.
‘Let’s hope when she grows up she doesn’t give us a free viewing like her mother did,’ said Jonathan.
‘By the time she’s grown up enough to be interesting, looking at girls will probably be all you can do to them,’ Bec said.
Although that time, fortunately, was not yet.
In the meantime Jonathan had gone back to another interest. The fishing that had supplied him with food during the dark days of his self-banishment now became a hobby. Once or twice a month Jonathan drove down to the shack. These days Bec often went with him. She didn’t go out in the boat – ‘I’ll never make a water baby,’ she said – but was happy on sunny days to sit and watch the water and listen to the surf, the green-sloping waves a blaze of gold and silver light.
It was 1960 and she was sixty-three; on his next birthday Jonathan would be seventy.
‘You are growing old,’ she told herself. ‘Better get used to it.’
A poem she’d read questioned the wisdom of eating peaches; she’d liked the poem but certainly did not go along with that idea. It was early summer and on the way to the coast they would stop at a farm stall and stock up with peaches, apricots and cherries. After Jonathan came back from his fishing expeditions they would scoff the fruit as they walked hand in hand along the beach in the evenings.
Land of Golden Wattle Page 39
