by Judy Nunn
‘The cook waited dinner,’ Charles would archly remind him.
‘You don’t need to wait for me, Father, you should go ahead and—’
‘I do not like dining alone, Stephen. As you very well know.’
It had taken Stephen years to realise that his father deliberately waited dinner in order to be disagreeable. The old man enjoyed disagreeable scenes. At eighty years of age, physically frail and confined mostly to his home, disagreeable scenes added spice to Charles Kendle’s otherwise tedious day.
The house was gloomy, the lights of the main hall had not been switched on. And where was the maid, Stephen wondered as he hung his coat and scarf on the brass pegs of the hall stand. Betty was normally there to take them from him.
Stephen crossed into the main lounge. To the left, his father’s study door was ajar and a light shone from within, but the lounge, too, was dimly lit, only the wall brackets from the upper level illuminating the main stairs and casting shafts of light into the shadows below.
He wondered briefly whether he should pop his head into his father’s study and let the old man know he was home. No, he decided, he’d go upstairs and dress for dinner first.
It was only when he was about to mount the stairs that he saw his father seated in the bay alcove, one of Charles’s favourite spots, silhouetted by the dusk light which shone through the windows behind him.
‘You’re home,’ Charles growled, ‘drunk I suppose.’ He’d dismissed the servants hours ago and, throughout the afternoon, had sat watching the hall door, waiting for Stephen.
‘Where’s Betty?’ Stephen asked. His father had a brandy balloon in his hand, which in itself was unusual—his father never drank before dinner, and he certainly never drank alone.
‘I sent her out for the night. Told her to leave. The cook too.’
Charles Kendle put down his glass and painfully pulled himself to his feet with the aid of his stick. He laboured his way, rheumatic hips aching with every step, across the room to the stairs.
In the spill of light from the upper wall brackets, Stephen saw his father’s face. It was ghastly. Haggard and birdlike. Over the past several years, as age had claimed him, Charles had withered away to a skeleton. But it was not the cadaverous look of his face that shocked Stephen now, it was the hatred he saw there, the malevolence which glittered from the sunken eyes.
‘You’ve been out drinking, having a fine old time, haven’t you?’ Charles said accusingly. His voice, the one thing which remained robust whilst the rest of him failed, quavered as he fought for control.
‘But I’m not late home, Father, and I’m not drunk,’ he protested. ‘Now why don’t you come and sit down …’
Charles shrugged away Stephen’s helping hand and lifted his cane as if to ward him off. He stared up at his son’s fleshy face and yet again wished he were twenty years younger. How he’d love to beat that useless, dissipated face to a pulp. But Charles knew, even through his own pain, that he could inflict a far greater agony on his son than any physical beating.
‘While you were out getting drunk with your cronies, we had a visitor,’ he said with malicious triumph, ‘a visitor from the War Office.’ He held up the crumpled telegraphic cable which was clutched in his right hand. ‘Do you want me to read it to you?’
Stephen said nothing but stood staring at the cable.
‘You killed him!’ Charles spat it out with all the venom he could muster. ‘The one and only son you ever managed to sire and you killed him!’ But Stephen wasn’t listening, he was walking away.
‘You’re useless to this family, you always have been!’ Charles screamed, demented in his rage. He tried to follow his son as Stephen strode into the hall, but he fell at the doorway. Heedless of the pain which seared through his leg, he lay there, still screaming. ‘Useless, d’you hear! Useless!’
But Stephen didn’t hear one word. His mind was too busy trying to encompass the fact that his son was dead.
Half an hour later, having lit the kerosene lamp aboard Maria Nina and hoisted the mainsail, his mind was still numb with shock. For years he’d lived in constant fear, as had all those whose sons had gone to war, but lately, with the talk that it would all so soon be over, he’d been lulled into a false sense of security. Mark was dead, his brain kept telling him, but something deep inside his being could not believe it.
A strong north-easterly was blowing. He snuffed the lamp and sailed well out into the harbour in the direction of Manly, then tacked to starboard and headed for Watsons Bay. He had to tack two more times before he reached the heads of Sydney Harbour and the open sea.
By then, as Maria Nina whipped through the water at a crazy tilt and he leaned well out over the side, automatically and expertly using the weight of his bulky frame, the realisation had hit with a vengeance and tears were streaming down Stephen’s face, only to be whisked away in the wind.
The moon was out in all its brilliance. Behind him, on the southern headland, the Watsons Bay lighthouse flashed its warning, and beyond that shone the lights of Sydney, but he didn’t look back. He followed the shaft of moonlight across the black sea, with nothing but thoughts of Mark in his mind.
Mark as a baby, when their family had been happy. Stephen had been so proud of his wife, and of himself too, for presenting the first male heir to the Kendle throne. Then three years later she’d died, and the boy had grown up looking after the emotional cripple who was his father. Stephen wondered at the fact that Mark had never given up on him, but his son had loved him throughout and had grown to be the man Stephen could never be.
The waves loomed, black and fearsome, but Stephen didn’t take in any sail, he flirted with the sea instead, meeting the waves head on, defying them. And then, for no apparent reason, he turned Maria Nina broadside and waited to be engulfed.
As the yacht capsized, he realised, vaguely, that he had not lashed himself to the helm as he usually did when he was sailing outside the heads on his own. He could have clung to the yacht too, but he didn’t, and again he wondered vaguely why as he was swept away from Maria Nina.
Instinctively he struggled for survival, swallowing water, gagging, feeling panic rise within him. Then he looked at the faroff lights of Sydney. Far too far to swim. He relaxed a little, thinking for a moment of Susan, hoping she’d understand; she was the only one he was leaving behind.
Heavy as the swell was, the waves were not white-tipped and angry. He discovered that if he went with the motion of the sea, he bobbed like a cork upon the crest of each wave and slid down into the trough behind, to be lifted once more, bobbing again like a plaything on the crest of the following wave. It was not an unfriendly feeling, the sea was not set upon killing him cruelly. They said that drowning was not an unpleasant death, so long as one relaxed; it was panic and the ensuing suffocation that made it so terrible, they said. He could bob around for hours, he thought. For hours and hours, just thinking about Mark, and the love that he bore his son.
‘He did it deliberately,’ Charles said to Susan from his bed in Sydney Hospital. Maria Nina had been found a week ago, wrecked upon the rocks of the Gap at Watsons Bay, but the body of Stephen Kendle had not been washed ashore until two days later. His death had been recorded as accidental drowning, but Charles knew better. So did Susan.
‘He did it deliberately to spite me,’ Charles said.
‘Oh for God’s sake, Father, why should he kill himself to spite you?’ Susan kept her voice down, conscious of the fact that in the corner of Charles’s private room the nurse was arranging the flowers which Susan had brought for her father. But she wanted to hit the old man. His broken femur and the reports that he’d never walk again roused no sympathy in Susan. Despite his physical debilitation and the loss of his son and grandson, her father was as callous and as cruel as ever, and she felt no guilt at her sense of loathing.
‘He’d just heard of his son’s death,’ she hissed. ‘What the hell could his suicide have had to do with you?’
The n
urse finished arranging the flowers. Despite Susan’s forced whisper, she’d heard every word. What a hideous woman, she thought, to talk so harshly to an old man so ill. She cast a baleful look at Susan as she left.
‘Everything,’ Charles snarled, ‘it had everything to do with me. The man wasn’t even fifty years old, he could have sired more children, he owed it to the family, but no, he has to kill himself instead. That’s why he did it. To spite me. To cheat the family of its name.’
‘Did you say anything to him that night?’ Susan demanded.
‘Of course I did. I told him he was useless. Killed the one and only son he ever managed to sire, that’s what I told him.’ Charles started muttering to himself, not caring whether Susan was listening or not. ‘He’s always been useless to this family. Useless. The whole of his life.’
‘You said that to him the night he learned that Mark was dead?’ Susan asked, horrified.
‘Of course I did.’ The voice that barked at her didn’t belong to the emaciated body in the bed. ‘That’s why he killed himself, I tell you, to spite me.’
Susan felt sickened. She’d supposed, when she’d heard the news, that grief had killed her brother, but perhaps after all it had been the old man’s contempt which had driven him to his death.
‘What did he do, Father?’ She kept her voice steady, she had to know. ‘When you said that to him, what did he do?’
‘He walked away,’ the old man sneered, and Susan could have cheered out loud. It was what she had told her brother to do, time and again. ‘Walk away from him, Stephen,’ she’d said. ‘Walk away. He can do nothing if you turn your back on him.’ ‘He didn’t say a word,’ Charles confirmed, ‘didn’t have the guts. Just walked away like the coward he is. Like the coward he’s always been.’
‘Good for you, Stephen,’ she said quietly.
Charles didn’t hear. Or possibly he chose not to, there was nothing wrong with his hearing.
‘There’s only one solution,’ he said.
‘Solution to what?’
‘The Kendle name of course. What the hell do you think we’ve been talking about? You’re a Kendle, Susan. And so is your son.’ Charles’s eyes glowed fanatically in the yellow-skinned skull of his face. ‘You must convince Lionel. He must change his name, he is a Kendle.’
Susan had an insane desire to laugh. ‘He thinks he’s a Napier, and so does his father.’
‘I’m serious, damn you, girl.’ Charles struggled his weight onto one sticklike elbow. ‘There’s money in it for him. I’ll make him my sole beneficiary.’
‘He doesn’t want your money,’ Susan replied coldly.
‘But there’s wealth and property,’ Charles protested. He was feeling weak, his elbow couldn’t support his weight, but he had to convince her. ‘And prestige. Above all, there’s prestige. Kendle and Streatham! He’d be one half of Kendle and Streatham, you tell him that!’
‘He’s already one half of Napier and Son.’
Excited spittle dribbled from the corner of the old man’s mouth. Any moment he’d collapse with exhaustion, but Susan felt no pity whatsoever.
‘Napier and Son is one of the most prestigious law firms in Melbourne,’ she continued, ‘as you no doubt know. Furthermore, Lionel is running for the seat of Collingwood in the next election. I doubt whether there is anything much you could offer him, Father.’
‘Kendle!’ The word rasped painfully from the very depths of Charles’s chest. ‘Kendle! I can offer him the name Kendle!’
‘Kendle!’ Susan exploded. ‘Kendle?’ And in the laughter which followed there was a touch of madness to match her father’s. ‘Shall I tell you what Lionel thinks of the name Kendle, Father? He loathes and abhors it, just as he loathes and abhors me. Do you know what he said to me once? He said, “The best thing you ever did for this family was to change your name back to Kendle.”’ She laughed again at the sheer irony of it. ‘Those were his exact words. “You and your father are two of a kind,” he said, “you’re both Kendles and you’re both fanatics.”’
Susan felt light-headed and dizzy with a sense of release. ‘I’m a megalomaniac, Lionel says, just like you. An unnatural parent with a lust for power, cold and hard and incapable of human affection.
‘It seems we have a lot in common after all,’ she said, gathering up her bag from the chair by the bed, ‘not least of all that we are both despised by our offspring. I hope you like the flowers. I shan’t be coming to see you any more.
‘I’m very much afraid, Father,’ she said as she opened the door to leave, ‘that you will have to resign yourself to the certainty that, when you die, the name Kendle will die with you.’
Five weeks later, on 11 November, an evening performance of the Sydney production of Katinka starring Gladys Moncrieff was interrupted and the audience informed that the Armistice had been signed. In the auditorium, on the stage and behind the scenes in the wings, people stood and cheered. As theatregoers danced in the aisles, actors and stagehands wept and hugged one another.
At approximately the same time in Melbourne. Mr Phillip Wirth stepped into the main ring during a performance of Wirth’s Circus and announced that the war was officially over. As one, the crowd leapt to its feet and sang the national anthem.
In cities and towns throughout Australia news of the Armistice was greeted with wild and emotional jubilation, pride and sheer relief.
Here and there, impromptu firework displays lit up the sky, particularly in Melbourne where excited hordes surged into the Chinese quarter and ransacked the stores for firecrackers. The following day, the press published an official appeal by the Defence Department urging people not to explode bungers, ‘in the interest of invalided soldiers and particularly those suffering from shell shock’.
And, in Sydney, throughout the night sirens screamed and whistles shrieked as people jammed the streets, cheering, singing and shouting with joy, while the sonorous horns of ferries reverberated across the harbour.
From his bedroom at Kendle Lodge, Charles could see, through the open balcony doors, the lights which fanned the sky, and he could hear the ferry horns and the riotous celebration in the city streets. Sydney has gone mad, he thought.
He was quite alone, the servants hadn’t even asked his permission before racing out to join the throng. The nurse had at least had the courtesy to inform him of the reason for the chaos.
‘It’s the Armistice, sir,’ she’d said—as if he hadn’t guessed—‘they’ve signed the Armistice,’ and she’d stepped briefly out onto the balcony, obviously longing to be a part of it all.
‘Well go on, go on,’ he said, his voice an angry whisper, he could barely speak these days, ‘leave me alone, see if I care.’
‘Just for a minute sir, I promise.’ And she’d dived out the door before he could withdraw his permission.
She’d been gone for hours now, or so it felt to Charles, he had little concept of time and he couldn’t see the hands of the clock on the mantel. He’d rung the silver bell which he held constantly to his chest at least a dozen times, but no-one had come, and the effort of ringing had exhausted him.
It was a plot, he thought. They’d left him alone deliberately. They wanted him to diewhilst the rest of the world was celebrating, damn them.
The sound of the festivities angered him. He wanted to scream at them all to shut up, he had nothing to celebrate.
What had Susan said? ‘You will have to resign yourself to the certainty that, when you die, the name Kendle will die with you.’
Well, he wouldn’t die. Not yet. There was still time. Money could buy anything. Of course. That was it! He would find a young man of good stock who would be only too willing to accept the Kendle name for a healthy sum, hundreds’d queue up for such an opportunity. Background and breeding would have to be thoroughly investigated, but he could employ someone to do that …
He tried to concentrate on his plan, but it was difficult to catch hold of his swirling thoughts with all the noise which swelled from
the streets. And his mouth was dry, he needed a drink. He looked at the jug on his bedside table, the full glass of water beside it, and feebly he reached out, only to hear the bell fall from the bed, and then discover that he couldn’t reach the glass anyway.
He tried to swallow but his mouth was so dry he couldn’t. He was panting now, small birdlike gasps. He needed to keep calm, he told himself, and to concentrate on his plan, but the noise was growing louder. And louder. His head was throbbing with the sound of celebration.
For the first time in his life Charles felt afraid, shockingly afraid. As the cheers and laughter, the sirens and ferry horns grew to a screaming pitch in his brain, he sensed suddenly that they were all directed at him. There was no time left, that’s what they were saying. His whole life’s work had been in vain, they were saying. There was no-one left to glorify his achievements, no Kendle remained to carry his name.
As the tumultuous joy of thousands mocked him, he clawed at the bedclothes, trying to close his ears to their voices, but he couldn’t. The whole city of Sydney was laughing at him, Charles Kendle, and the travesty of his life.
Nearly sixty-two thousand men had died, the newspapers reported. More than one in five of those who had served overseas. For a nation boasting an entire population of less than five million, such loss was devastating. A generation of young men had been decimated and, with them, their thousands of unborn children. Generation upon generation which should have existed, wiped out in four bloody years.
And amongst those who returned were the wounded. Thousands and thousands of limbless, blinded, shell-shocked men. For them the war would never be over.
Such men were living proof of the unbelievable horror from which, for the most part, the general public had been protected. War correspondents at the front had been advised of the need for censorship, photographers had been forbidden to take pictures of dead bodies, and even official war artists, who could have pleaded exemption on the grounds of artistic interpretation, had avoided painting the grisly truth. The policy of censorship was practised for the sake of the war effort, but in reality, those called upon to record the events openly admitted to the impossibility of describing the indescribable.
