The Unforgiving City

by Maggie Joel

  He thought hard. He had not supplied her with anything—except money, on a number of occasions. Money which she, presumably, had spent on this appalling act. Did that make him liable or not? He thought not, but he wasn’t sure. He pulled the book towards him and read and reread the passage but the words did not change; they said each time penal servitude for life.

  He was unable to take it in. Ought he to consult his solicitor? Good God no, that would set him on a path he did not need, nor wish, to go down. He had already done all he could to mitigate his risk.

  He closed the volume and carefully replaced it, replaced it all so that anyone coming in here—and who aside from the maid would come in here?—would see nothing out of place. He ran a hand along the spines of the beautiful leather-bound volumes of constitutional law. The law had been his friend, in an abstract way, but now it had turned on him.

  At a sound outside he lowered the light down to almost nothing and tweaked aside the curtain. Someone was down there on the path. It was Alice, returned late. As he watched she stopped, seemed to stumble and crouched down, her hands on the ground, her head lowered. What was she doing? Was the girl ill? He stepped back from the window and replaced the curtain before she saw him.

  He crouched again before the fire. He had wished this fire to be his alone and no one else’s so that he could feed it with his memories, dead memories, memories that might cost him dearly, cost his reputation, his career, his marriage, his freedom even, but he had found nothing to burn. All the memories were here in his head and in his heart and he could not burn them. He had no wish to burn them. He did not want to abandon her.

  Even though she had taken their child.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  THE LETHARGY OF INDIFFERENCE

  Two mornings later the first post brought a note from Marian Dempsey proposing Eleanor accompany her to the anti-bill demonstration arranged by the Women’s Suffrage League at Darlington town hall that evening and at which Miss Dempsey’s brother was to speak.

  ‘How extraordinary!’ said Eleanor, frowning over the note. ‘Surely Marian Dempsey understands you are an ardent supporter of the Federation, Alasdair? And yet she would invite me to an anti-bill demonstration.’

  And she passed the note to him, offered with it her brightest smile, yet her words sounded brittle even to her own ears, and the smile froze a little on her face. They had spoken on a handful of occasions since Wednesday evening and on each occasion her words had been thus, brittle, unnatural, and her husband’s replies terse, his fury suppressed. Though it was herself, surely, who ought to be furious?

  Why was it always herself brokering the truce, placating?

  Alasdair did not take the note. He did not look up from the morning newspaper.

  ‘Perhaps she believes you do not share my views,’ he said.

  ‘I have never said as much.’

  ‘And do you?’ He lowered his newspaper paper and regarded her. ‘Share my views?’ There was something rather cold in his question, and in his eyes.

  ‘Naturally. I am your wife.’

  After a moment’s silence he went back to his newspaper.

  Alice came in then, going to the fire and stoking it with a poker. It was the first morning they had had the fire lit over breakfast and Alice seemed unable to judge its efficacy as she returned continually to refuel it and nurse it. The girl gave a violent shiver that was excessive, or seemed so to her mistress, for really the morning was quite mild. The flames leaped up now and Alice moved a firescreen before it.

  And Alasdair did not stir, studying the newspaper as though it were a sacred text.

  ‘Is your speech at Penrith reported?’ Eleanor enquired.

  ‘Naturally,’ he replied, echoing her own response of a moment earlier. Usually it pleased him to have his movements, his speeches, reported in the newspaper.

  ‘Will you not read it to me? You used to.’

  She wished at once she had not said that, you used to. It sounded plaintive, reproachful. She warmed her words with a smile that she did not feel and that he did not see.

  ‘If you wish so much to read it then do so.’ He sat back and tossed the paper across the table at her.

  Eleanor took the paper, holding it tightly in her hands for she did not have her spectacles and could hardly make out the words. But here it was, a brief paragraph headed DUNLEVY ARRIVES LATE AT PENRITH DUE TO DELAYED TRAIN, and it went on to describe the very tardy arrival of the ministerial party due to a mishap on the railway line that had severely delayed the train. There was no mention of train-wreckers. The speech itself was not reported, though the outburst of the vulgar man was, described as a single dissenter subsequently removed from the proceedings.

  ‘How unfortunate,’ Eleanor observed, and the events of two days ago, which up to that point had seemed a trial and a challenge but ultimately a duty performed (if not an absolute success), now seemed farcical, a failure. She was uncertain if she shared in that failure or if she mocked it. She said nothing further on the subject.

  And on the same page she read: Early in the week a Women’s Federal League was formed at the Sydney Town Hall with Lady Harris (the Mayoress) president and the following vice-presidents: Mrs E. Barton, Mrs G.H. Reid, the Premier’s wife—

  And on it went, listing in exquisite detail the names of the wives of most of the prominent ministers of the Legislative Assembly and the Council, all of whom, it appeared, had also been in attendance. The object of the newly formed league was to assist in the securing of a large majority for the bill. It was to meet the next afternoon at the town hall.

  ‘But how extraordinary!’ Eleanor exclaimed. ‘I knew nothing of this. How was it I was not invited?’ She read again the list of names. ‘Mrs Price is to be honorary secretary, Mrs Forrester honorary treasurer! It is preposterous! What can Mrs Forrester know of accounting and finance? Can they have forgotten to invite me? Alasdair, do you not think it extraordinary?’

  What if she had not been forgotten? What if she had been deliberately excluded? The spectre of Miss Trent, always present though occasionally silenced, materialised once more, immense and menacing. For if Eleanor had found out about Miss Trent, why should others not have done so, too?

  It gripped her throat. An invisible hand clutching at her windpipe. Panic, and out of proportion to the situation, she saw that, but here it was. To be never free of this woman. To exist in the shadow of her own fear.

  She reached for the bellpull.

  ‘Alice, has any letter arrived for me in the last week that you have failed to deliver to me?’

  ‘No, madam.’

  ‘You are certain? Nothing has come that may have dropped and become hidden? Nothing still on the letter tray? Nothing you have given to Mr Dunlevy in error? Think carefully, girl.’

  Alice shook her head. ‘No, madam. I am certain of it.’

  ‘But how can you be certain unless you have looked? Go now, and search in the hallway and see if there is anything. And search thoroughly, mind.’

  ‘Yes, madam.’

  ‘There was an invitation, I believe,’ remarked Alasdair, when Alice had gone. He paused to pour milk into his coffee. ‘It came to my office some days ago.’

  For a time neither of them spoke. The sound of furniture being moved about could be heard from the hallway. Something clattered to the ground.

  ‘Then, as they are to meet again tomorrow,’ Eleanor announced, ‘I believe I shall go.’

  ‘As you wish,’ Alasdair replied, and still he did not look at her. ‘Though it is of no account. What can they achieve, I wonder, these women?’ He reached over and reclaimed his newspaper. ‘A wife’s proper place remains at her husband’s side. That is where she can achieve the most.’

  ‘Really? You are to attend a meeting at Marrickville this evening, are you not? And yet you have not asked me to accompany you.’ And the truce she had attempted to broker crumbled to dust in the face of her fury.

  Alice returned a little time later to announce tha
t she was very sorry but no letter could be found. Should she continue searching elsewhere?

  ‘I am delighted you accepted my invitation, Mrs Dunlevy,’ said Marian Dempsey that evening as they arrived at the town hall in Darlington. ‘I had thought you were entirely caught up with the pro-bill set.’

  ‘Really? Then why invite me?’ said Eleanor, who was a little uncertain herself why she had accepted the invitation. She feared it was perverse. Alasdair had gone to his meeting at Marrickville and she had stood, once again, at the upstairs window and watched his departure, and the only person who had observed her was James Greensmith as he had stood holding the door of the cab.

  ‘Because everyone else was otherwise engaged,’ replied Miss Dempsey, with a candidness and simplicity that might have been utterly guileless. ‘Thank you, my dear,’ she said to the ardent young women who stood at the doorway to the hall and handed her a pamphlet.

  Marian Dempsey was dressed in a neatly tailored slate-grey suit and a discreet little hat that was conservative and formal and entirely appropriate to a Women’s Suffrage League meeting—which, perhaps, suggested she dressed otherwise at other times, which she did not. Miss Dempsey rarely looked her best in formal evening dress, or at her ease. The triviality and frivolousness of dinner conversations strained her innate earnestness and the extent of this only became evident when one witnessed her in the daytime at a meeting or a rally or organising and cajoling her brother, a task of which she never tired and at which she excelled. That she would have made the better parliamentarian than he had been observed many times and was perfectly true. It did, however, on occasion, make her a little dull. Eleanor had dressed in a suit too, but hers was lavender and her hat had a fascinating little gauze veil that she wore pulled down over her face.

  Together they moved into a large room and looked about for a seat and Eleanor felt a sudden heaviness descend on her. Fury had carried her this far, but faced with yet another cheerless municipal hall, another platform of speakers, another hard-backed uncomfortable chair, her spirits waned. Must democracy be always so dreary?

  And must it, always, be held in such wretched places? Darlington was a place of poorly built workers’ dwellings, factories and workshops piled one on top of another with little thought for fresh air or sunlight. As their cab had swung into Darlington Road it had hit something which the driver said was a woman lying in the road, though he thought her already deceased on account of her not objecting when he ran over her. A crowd had quickly gathered and Eleanor and Miss Dempsey had abandoned the cab and gone the rest of the way on foot.

  ‘I am attending the Women’s Federal League tomorrow afternoon,’ said Eleanor, arranging herself in a chair and looking around to see who else was here. There was no one—or no one whom she recognised. This was a relief. ‘They have only recently formed and it is to be their first official meeting,’ she went on, though at this moment the thought of it—of further democracy—appalled her. That meeting, at least, was to be held in the more salubrious surroundings of the Sydney Town Hall, and this appeased her. ‘Lady Harris, the mayoress, is president and Mrs Reid and Mrs Barton shall be there.’

  ‘Hedging your bets, are you?’ said Miss Dempsey, nodding wisely. ‘Or is this evening a chance to spy on the opposition?’ And there was a gleam in her eye just as though it were all some childish game and Eleanor heard again Alasdair’s words at breakfast: It is of no account. What can they achieve, I wonder, these women? And perhaps he was right: what could they achieve? Though his words had stung, as they were intended to.

  ‘Should you find you require anonymity I am quite prepared to shield you with my parasol,’ Miss Dempsey offered.

  ‘I am intrigued to learn why Ned consented to speak here, Miss Dempsey,’ said Eleanor, choosing to ignore what she took to be a facetious remark. ‘Can it be he is secretly a champion of women’s suffrage?’

  ‘My brother is no champion of women’s suffrage, you may be assured of that, though on this one issue his views and theirs do happen to coincide. There he is.’ And Miss Dempsey nodded.

  Eleanor looked though she could not, for the moment, make out Ned Dempsey. There were a great many women in the hall and all the seats were taken and many late arrivals stood at the rear and still others were trying to come in.

  How extraordinary it was! These women stood about in excitable huddles, greeting one another, and proudly sporting their Women’s Suffrage League sashes. They gathered close to the large platform and at the entranceway, accosting new arrivals and urging pamphlets on them or deflecting the crude jibes and catcalls of the young men who passed by outside or who ventured into the hall to ridicule them. One or two gentlemen, come legitimately to the meeting, shook the women’s hands as though the ladies were gentlemen like themselves and they uttered gruff words of support or spoke loudly and pompously as though it were their meeting and they were the main event. And now Eleanor picked out Ned Dempsey, sometime member of the Legislative Assembly—though currently between constituencies—attired in his most formal suit and an old-fashioned silk cravat and spats, a top hat on his head, a cane in his hand, standing in the centre of the room talking in a loud voice and congratulating everyone, though nothing had been achieved yet and the meeting not yet begun.

  Beside her Marian Dempsey sat proudly in her seat waiting for her brother to acknowledge her. She was always touchingly proud of him when he did little, other than his own unerring loyalty to her, to warrant it.

  ‘Who is that fellow?’ said Miss Dempsey.

  Eleanor had just observed George Drummond-Smith in the entranceway to the hall, puffing a cigar and looking about him with slightly narrowed eyes as though he was taking the measure of the place. He swung about and looked directly at her but Eleanor ducked her head. Her flesh prickled and she had an uneasy sense of the room shrinking around her. Short of running into Alasdair himself, Drummond-Smith was the last man she wished to encounter here.

  When she ventured to look again he had gone.

  But evidently it was not George Drummond-Smith Marian Dempsey had meant, for a young man in the ill-fitting suit and bowler hat of the clerical classes was hailing them from across the room and now began to make his way over. He was upon them before Eleanor could reply, a slight figure with a thin, hungry face and bright, rapidly blinking eyes, clasping a notepad and a small stub of pencil which he licked as though he was about to take their order in a rather cheap hotel.

  ‘Mrs Dunlevy,’ he called as he approached, waving a hand to get their attention. ‘Peters of the Mail. I did not expect to see the minister’s wife here at an anti-bill demonstration.’ And having located her, the blinking eyes latched onto her face and scrutinised every part of it as though he might find that which he most desired there.

  Eleanor turned her head away, feeling a little sliver of ice prick her heart. ‘We do not subscribe to your newspaper, Mr Peters, and consequently have nothing to say to you,’ she declared, and proceeded to ignore him.

  ‘Really!’ said Miss Dempsey, when the young man had given up with a shrug and darted off. ‘One does not expect to be hailed in a crowd as though one were a hansom cab.’

  But the meeting was beginning and a small group had disengaged itself and was mounting the platform at the front of the hall. A number of chairs and a lectern had been positioned there and below them the rows of chairs were clustered very close to the front of the platform as though the person who had arranged the room did not expect any of the women to speak loudly enough. The speakers were introduced: the chair, the secretary, the honoured guests, a Miss Hickman and a Miss Scott and a Miss Jessup and Miss Taylor and a Miss—

  But Eleanor found it was too many names all at once and, now that she studied them more closely, they all looked astonishingly similar. All spinsters, every one of them, past their prime and into their middle years or beyond, plainly dressed in brown and grey as though suffrage could come in no other colours but these. As though suffrage must be dull and dreary. And self-important and qui
te, quite irrelevant, and Eleanor sighed a little to herself for it was a little absurd and a little pathetic. And beside her Miss Dempsey, though she was no suffragist, leaned forward expectantly, breathlessly, but then Miss Dempsey was a spinster too. She too wore grey.

  The chairman, a Miss Hickman, stood up and Ned Dempsey stood up too, and called loudly for quiet though the hall had largely fallen silent. Miss Hickman ignored the nod he gave her to proceed and began her address. It was a short address of welcome and high hopes and ended with an entreaty: ‘Electors of this colony, in your own interests and in the interest of those to come after you, vote No on June twenty!’

  This was met by applause, both sustained and enthusiastic, and one or two of the younger and more ardent women in the hall rose to their feet and then sat down again, a little self-consciously.

  And Eleanor thought it was all very well her urging them all to vote No, but had it escaped everyone’s notice that not a woman among them could vote? One might as well sit and lecture a roomful of blacks on the finer points of the constitution. It was absurd and, yes, a little pathetic. She smiled to herself because it was always pleasing to feel a little superior.

  Miss Hickman resumed her seat and Ned Dempsey leaned over and patted her arm and uttered something encouraging.

  A second speaker was introduced, a Miss Scott, who took a moment to compose herself; who looked about her, awed, perhaps, by the enormity of the hall, of the audience, of the task before her.

  ‘Ladies,’ she began in a clear, calm voice, ‘unlike the women of South Australia we have no vote!’

  ‘Shame! Shame!’

  ‘Yet we are taxpayers. And we are law-abiding citizens—more law-abiding than most men are!’

  There was laughter here, and applause. Ned Dempsey frowned, but in the saddened way of a disappointed parent.

  ‘Let these men divest themselves of the ridiculous old-fashioned idea that a great nation is made out of huge national debts, standing armies, expensive buildings, much territory, artificial sentiment, fat billets for some people, while others starve.’