The Unforgiving City

by Maggie Joel

  ‘You have moved me to a place I can neither spell nor pronounce,’ she had said that first day, standing at the window and gazing out at the tangle of overgrown garden below and at the funnels of the steamships docked at the nearby wharves.

  ‘No one can spell it,’ he had said with a laugh. ‘And anyway, my dear Miss Trent, to whom are you intending to give your address? And come to think of it, to whom are you intending to write?’

  ‘To no one,’ she had replied. ‘No one at all. It was merely an observation.’

  He had still called her Miss Trent then.

  ‘And which novels are the good citizens of Sydney purchasing?’ he asked her now. For she had lately found a position three afternoons a week in a small second-hand bookshop in College Street. She had found the position herself and had told him about this change in her circumstances only once the deal was done, as it were. He had been a little surprised. He had been a little put out. Why had she done this thing behind his back? Why did she need the money when he gave her all that she might need? He had said nothing, though, lest it sound petty, belittling. But he might yet say something, he decided; the subject was not closed merely because he had let it pass initially.

  She turned away from the window towards him. ‘Mr Thackeray, Mr Wells, Mr Hardy, Mr Conan Doyle,’ she recited as though she were often asked such a question and could answer it without thinking. ‘And all the old novelists remain popular here, as they do in England: Scott and Stevenson, Mr Dickens and Mrs Gaskell. But I can find no novels written by New South Wales authors. Are there any?’

  It was a simple enough question, asked with a simple honesty, but Alasdair found himself irked. For did it not imply something rather lacking in the menfolk of his own colony?

  ‘We have our own novelists, Verity, as you will discover: Mr Rolf Boldrewood and Mr Marcus Clarke are two fine examples. And our bush poets—Mr Paterson and Mr Lawson and others—are, I am told, held in high regard. I have little time for novels myself, tending more towards the historical and philosophical. When I was a boy, my father read to me each night from the journals of Mr Watkin Tench—of whom you will have heard?’

  But, no, Miss Trent had not heard of Mr Watkin Tench.

  ‘Then I trust you shall know the pleasure of discovering his accounts of the earliest days of the colony. They certainly made a strong impression on my youthful mind. And I am named for him, too—my baptismal name is Alasdair Watkin Dunlevy.’

  He bowed to her as he said this as though he were meeting the Governor-General. And it was a fine name, he had always thought so: Alasdair Watkin Dunlevy—it was, surely, the name of a future prime minister. Of a great prime minister.

  Verity had left the window and now at last she sat down, though not on the settee beside him but on one of the upright chairs. Again he noted her eyes sliding away from him, the unnatural pallor of her face.

  What was it she did not tell him?

  Was she dividing her time between him and another gentleman? No, it could not be. He had arrived unannounced at her rooms on too many occasions and her always at home and no sign of any other gentleman for it to be even a possibility. And, besides, he would simply not believe it of her, for she was an honest woman, he felt it instinctively, for all that she was conducting this illicit affair with him. Or was that how she considered it? She was curiously difficult to read. And that, he realised, was another reason for his attraction. And his unease.

  But still it was galling that she hid some part of herself, hid this appointment, from him.

  ‘You will have read of the incident at Parliament House last evening?’ he enquired, because she had as yet made no mention of it.

  ‘I am afraid not,’ she replied. ‘Was there an incident?’

  And now, because she had called it an incident, his own word turned back on him, it seemed ridiculous, absurd.

  ‘A madman stormed the chamber as the Premier hosted a reception and climbed up onto the dais brandishing a pistol. He was swiftly dealt with, but it was cause for a certain amount of alarm among the more skittish of our number.’ And Alasdair smiled to indicate he did not count himself among them.

  ‘Heavens!’ she replied mildly. ‘Why did this man do such a thing?’

  ‘His motive remains a mystery. I suspect we shall find out his faculties are impaired and he had no more idea of a motive than any such impaired soul does for any action they undertake.’

  ‘Perhaps that is so,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘But to prepare such an action and then to undertake it suggests a certain amount of lucidity.’

  A frown crossed her face as though the thought troubled her. And had he himself been in any danger? she might have asked. Had he participated in the man’s capture, had he acquitted himself heroically in saving the ladies present or in throwing himself before the Premier or Mr Barton? But she did not ask these questions. Instead, it was the madman and his motivations that troubled her.

  Had his wife been there? she might have asked, but she did not. To his recollection she had never once asked about Eleanor and that was entirely proper, though she must, surely, be a little curious?

  ‘I shall be a good deal engaged with the referendum these next few weeks,’ he said. ‘There are more Federation meetings at which I am to speak.’

  Indeed, he had spoken at such a meeting last evening, as she very well knew, though she had not enquired about it. Instead what she said was, ‘They work you very hard, Alasdair. I hope it all proves to be worth it.’

  It was a curiously empty phrase and his dissatisfaction grew. You said it would all be worth it in the end. Do you remember? And it was, was it not? Worth it? Eleanor’s words over breakfast. They had unsettled him. It unsettled him now that Verity had uttered almost the same thought. Were they so much alike then, his wife and his mistress? Must he be, forever, justifying his work to them? Did they not see that the work was noble, it was honourable, that it was, in fact, an end in itself?

  But what came into his head was himself returning home in a cab a year ago, the evening the Federation vote had been lost—irrevocably, it had seemed at the time—and entering Eleanor’s room to inform her. She had been lying in bed, quite pale and stricken, though her face had had no expression (how could that be, he wondered?). The doctor had just left and the look she had given him as he delivered his news had told him she understood. Their child was lost before it was even born and his despair at the Federation was how he would get through it. It was how all men got through such moments. He did not know how women got through them. He suspected women, in this way, were stronger than men.

  But Verity was watching him. He stared at her and for a moment had no idea who she was or why he was here. He made himself smile.

  ‘Naturally, my work is worth it. It is the creation of a nation. You are new to our shores, Verity, you cannot be expected to fully appreciate the importance of our task.’

  ‘Oh, but I do,’ she replied. ‘Men in parliament are always engaged in great and important tasks, and if this particular task may result in the creation of a new parliament, even greater and more important than the current one, then of course it must be worth all the effort you are putting into it.’

  He smiled at her, for she had missed his point—entirely and charmingly. She was young—twenty-two—and he was, therefore, more than twenty years her senior, which was as it ought to be. (There was something distinctly unbalanced about a man’s wife being almost the same age as himself. It was unnatural. He had not considered it so when he and Eleanor had met and were first married, but now it struck him forcibly whenever he was with her.) So he smiled at Verity and forgave her ignorance, forgave the secretive appointment.

  ‘Come here,’ he said, indicating the place beside him, and remembering his uncertainty the first time he had kissed her, the very first day he had come here to visit her—for nothing had been spoken between them and his offer of assistance, his setting her up in a place of residence and paying for the first six months’ lease on the place, mi
ght have been merely the generous gifts of a gentleman moved to help a young lady in distress and with nothing expected in return. But it had not been the generous gifts of a gentleman, it had most certainly been the price to pay for something that was very much expected. And the fact that he had never done such a thing before and he was fairly certain she hadn’t either only made it all the more open to speculation and misunderstanding. But he had kissed her on that first day and it had very soon become evident that the nature of their association was clear to them both and that there need be no more speculation nor misunderstanding between them.

  Verity got up now from her chair and came over and sat beside him on the settee and he kissed her, which was what he had wanted to do since she had opened the door to him, since he had sat in the hansom cab, since he had sat at breakfast reading the newspaper. He kissed her and he took her in his arms to show he forgave her the secret appointment, her less than satisfactory greeting and the job at the bookshop.

  But it had never quite left him, that uncertainty he had felt the first time he kissed her.

  CHAPTER NINE

  TRAVERSING THE DOMAIN

  A steamer recently arrived from the Clarence River was docked at the wharf and the shouts of the men as they unloaded her carried across the air. Otherwise, the street was utterly still and silent, not a curtain stirred nor a door or window opened. It seemed to Eleanor, seated in a stationary hansom cab halfway along the street, that the great and important business of the colony was being attended to, earnestly and with enthusiasm, but it was happening elsewhere. In this street, the arrival of a tradesman with a delivery would shatter the stillness; might, indeed, cause a number of the older establishments to quake on their flimsy foundations.

  She leaned forward. No tradesman arrived but a gentleman had just emerged from one of the houses.

  The man stepped smartly down its front steps holding a leather portfolio tucked under his arm. He might be a man of law, a businessman, a purveyor of insurances, though his hat—a tall hat covered with good silk—suggested otherwise. He disappeared momentarily as he passed behind the monstrous banksia but now reappeared and set off the along the street in the direction of the wharves. He did not pause to look about him, yet there was something about his gait, the movement of his head, the tightly controlled way in which his arms held the leather portfolio so close to his body that suggested an awareness of the world about him and hinted that his place in it, at this moment, was not altogether legitimate.

  Or so it seemed to Eleanor as she observed from the cover of her cab fifty yards up the street.

  The gentleman was her husband.

  He had been inside the house perhaps half an hour. It could not be much longer. Less time than she had anticipated.

  She studied the house. It was large, extravagant even, but worn, faded, its best days behind it. What sort of young lady lived here? The answer, of course, was no lady at all. Some other sort of woman.

  She had brought with her the note, still in its envelope, that someone—who?—had sent to her four days ago. She pulled the note from her reticule though she did not read it. She knew its contents. She had brought it with her as talisman or warrant or weapon, she did not know which, but to legitimise her presence at any rate.

  She felt that she had been waiting six months for the note, perhaps longer. Anticipating its arrival with no idea she was doing so.

  This house. The note. Her husband’s rapidly diminishing figure. She had her proof. She did not know what to do with it.

  What had Adaline Jellicoe done when she had uncovered her husband’s betrayal? Eleanor did not know. She had not spoken to her friend about it. It was possible Adaline had known of Leon Jellicoe’s affair a year ago as she had sat at Eleanor’s bedside offering her silent comfort, that it was this that had driven her to Eleanor’s side, had prompted her compassion.

  Calamity, it seemed, struck people differently.

  Eleanor sat perfectly still in the cab, one hand clenched on the faded upholstery of the seat, one on the strap that hung from the ceiling. The hat she wore had a fine gauze veil attached to it that she had pulled down on first entering the cab. She viewed the world, she viewed this street, through the delicate film of gauze and was protected by it.

  ‘Where to, missus?’ called the driver, grown impatient, his horse tossing its head and pawing at the ground. ‘Where to?’

  She did not answer him, instead hastened to open the door, struggling with the handle because her fingers would not do as she wished, had grown stiff and clumsy. At last she got it and the door swung open and she stepped down from the cab. With no warning, the ground surged up, it became as malleable as water. For a moment the world went black. She steadied herself against the cab, aware of the horse, its massive hindquarters, its nervous twitching head, its eyes swivelled around to view her.

  ‘Y’right, lady?’ The cab driver, peering down from his perch.

  She pulled herself back. It was intolerable that he should see her tears.

  She paid the man, handing him the coins and not caring if it was too much or too little, and turned away at once because his eyes on her face, even with the veil, was unbearable. He was a witness.

  She did not wait for the cab to depart but set off along the street and her legs were foreign and unfamiliar to her and did not do as she wished. She stopped when she came to the old house, thrusting aside the teeming banksia with its host of noisy lorikeets, and after a moment’s pause taking the steps that her husband had come down a few minutes earlier.

  At the front door she paused, not quite able to catch her breath. She put a hand against the peeling paintwork of the house to steady herself. Beneath her fingers a large flake of paint came away, revealing powdery brickwork. The flake of paint drifted to the ground. She placed the toe of her boot on it and it shattered into dust at her feet.

  Something made her spin around, a sound, eyes somewhere watching, but the street was deserted. The cab had gone. She turned back to the house. A wooden signboard was nailed to the wall before her on which the names of the residents were inscribed. Her eyes ran over the list of names, drawn to and repelled in turn by each one. Maj. T.H. Jenkins, Mrs T. Fowler, Mrs S. Longfellow, Mr T.E. Barnes, Capt. K. Littlejohn, Miss V. Trent, Mrs and Miss U. Tiptree. She went back to Miss V. Trent of flat 6, for she was the only Miss on the list aside from the Miss who resided with her mother, or possibly with her married sister. On the whole, Miss Trent appeared the most likely.

  She gazed at the name for a time. Miss V. Trent. One could tell everything and nothing from a name on a signboard. Was the V for Violet? Veronica? Vivienne? Victoria was the most likely, the most conventional, and she pictured the patriotic parents far from home bestowing on their newborn daughter the name of their distant consort. How proud would these same parents be now if they knew how their dearest Victoria made her way in the world? It pleased her to think this, but with a bitter pleasure as one might bite into a sour apple simply to prove it was sour.

  The door opened by her pushing it. Eleanor stepped inside and her heart beat a little faster. She must have a story at the ready, something she might say if she were stopped and questioned. She would say she was visiting someone.

  But there was no one about and no one stopped her. And did she not have a right to be here, as every wife had?

  She looked about her. The hallway was high-ceilinged and elegant but papered in a lurid crimson-striped design, the floor covered by a worn and ugly Turkish carpet. Two doors—closed—faced her and a wide, sweeping staircase led up to a first floor. There was also a lift; she could hear its uneasy clatter as it approached the ground floor.

  And what if it were her, inside?

  I will know her at once, thought Eleanor, and the words she might utter clogged her throat.

  But the lift doors did not open and no one emerged. The lift had simply arrived, as though in anticipation of her arrival. Eleanor availed herself of the lift, stepping into its cage and dragging the doub
le doors shut behind her so that they locked, studying the buttons, pressing 1 and lifting her face and testing the air about her as though she had arrived at a foreign land.

  The lift lurched and began its slow and rattling ascent. It arrived at the first floor with a clunk and the doors released. Eleanor pulled them open and stood for a moment. A long corridor greeted her, a number of oversized ferns in brass pots and five anonymous doors painted a uniform white. At each end of the corridor was a window, the one at this end small, round and high up, facing the street, the one at the rear of the house reaching floor to ceiling and creating a square of sunlight on the carpet. She stood for a moment, listening. The shouts of the men at the wharves and the booming of the great ships and the chattering of the lorikeets were gone and there was, instead, a strange quiet to the place. She became aware of her own position as imposter, trespasser. She felt the same way entering a cathedral or any ecclesiastical structure, could not comprehend how such places made some people calm. They always induced in her the most intense anger.

  She would like to be angry now.

  This end of the corridor was cool and encased in winter shadow but despite this her hand was slippery with perspiration on the handle of her parasol. Her skirts were heavy around her legs. Directly opposite was the door to flat 6. She peered at the door, at the space immediately before the doorway, as though she might discern some essence of her husband, some residual part of him that remained after he had gone, just five minutes earlier. She drew in a breath, pushed back her shoulders and strode towards the door, the parasol gripped in her hand, her reticule in her other hand.

  She heard a latch click somewhere behind the door and it began to open.

  She darted back, retracing her steps and retreating into the safety of the lift as Miss Trent herself emerged.

  Or one presumed it was Miss Trent. Eleanor peered through the grating of the lift. It was a very young woman, surely not more than twenty-one or twenty-two, slight of frame, almost too slender in a way that suggested economies being taken and the occasional straitened circumstance. She was of no more than average height, her hair a dull brown, her complexion unspoiled, to be sure, but pale in a way that made one think she was, or had been as a child, starved of sunlight; it was not the translucently pale and prized complexion that a lady of means and position might cultivate. Certainly her features were very regular, though the nose was perhaps a little too sharp, a little too narrow. A high forehead, an unremarkable chin. Her eyes were pale too, their exact shade elusive in such a fleeting moment. But her hat! It was a sorry little thing, too small, too insignificant, too many years past its prime—if, indeed, it had ever had a prime, which was doubtful. Her jacket too, which was short and narrow at waist and cuff with fussy little cap shoulders, was serviceable but of a feeble shade of green that had been popular with a certain class of female two or three seasons before; and her skirt, very high at the waist, not quite narrow enough at the ankle, was of the same green stuff. Her reticule, though, was of satin and pearl and very smart and, to Eleanor’s eyes, it struck an incongruous note.