The Unforgiving City

by Maggie Joel

  ‘The Tour of the South with the Premier.’

  ‘I did not realise you were to accompany him—’

  ‘I received word yesterday. What is it you want, Eleanor?’

  Already he had turned back to the mirror, his fingers fumbled with the myriad tiny buttons on the waistcoat.

  He had told her nothing of his intention to accompany the Premier on this tour. And she was to believe he had only learned of it yesterday? Was everything he now said to her a lie?

  For a moment Eleanor could not speak. The words rose in her throat, but they were all in a jumble, choking her one moment and then tumbling out any which way: ‘You accused me, Alasdair, of being a hypocrite for something I had done last year. You said—’

  He rounded on her, the fury returned. His eyes seemed black to her, when no one’s eyes were ever really black, were they? And yet they looked so, at this moment.

  ‘I said I would not discuss it!’

  He threw down his tie. He leaped forward and in that instant she was fearful, but he brushed past her and stood on the landing and called out for the maid. ‘Alice!’

  ‘Surely I have a right to know of what I am accused!’

  ‘Take the trunk downstairs and get a cab. I leave at once.’

  ‘Alasdair! I have a right—’

  He spun around to face her and there was fury still but also, she saw, dismay, disbelief, hurt. He looked as a man might whose wife has let him down in the most profound way, and now she wanted to shake him, to strike him, for it was she—she who had been wronged!

  ‘I saw you!’ he cried out, taking her by the shoulders then at once letting her go. ‘With that man. With Drummond-Smith—’

  She gasped, let out a laugh.

  ‘—with my own eyes. Your … liaison! My God, at Parliament House!’ He turned away but at once turned back again, clenched both fists tightly of front of his face. ‘Did you really believe I would not realise it? How could you be so stupid, Eleanor, so indiscreet? How many people, do you think, saw you come out of that room with him that night?’

  Eleanor stared at him. She shook her head. ‘You are mad! There was no liaison! How could you think such a thing?’

  ‘The man has letters that you have written to him!’

  ‘But he cannot, for I have never written a letter to that man. Ever. He is lying, Alasdair. He has deceived you—’

  ‘Ha!’

  ‘—because I rebuffed him, and in no uncertain terms. He threatened—oh, I did not take the threat seriously at the time, but here is what he has done: poisoned you against me with these lies!’ It was as simple as that and she laughed, though it was a bitter laugh.

  ‘He has letters!’

  As though she had not spoken. As though Alasdair had not heard a single word. It struck her, then: ‘But this was your excuse, wasn’t it? All the excuse you needed to be with this woman! Your justification for an affair.’

  ‘No!’ He walked away from her, shaking his head. ‘No. You cannot deceive me anymore, Eleanor.’

  ‘It is not I who has deceived you! Only one of us has been unfaithful in this marriage, Alasdair, only one of has broken their vows, has lied to other, and as God is my witness, it is not I!’

  ‘No! Leave! Leave this room now!’

  He looked stricken. She must look much the same, she presumed. As though they had plumbed some depth. Could not sink any further. It seemed they must, at last, understand each other.

  Eleanor spoke now in quite a different voice: ‘Do you care, then, so much for this woman, Alasdair—’

  But he cried out in exasperation and pushed past her and plunged down the stairs. She followed a step behind, but only as far as the top of the stairs. Heard the front door open below.

  ‘—that you would sacrifice everything?’

  But the door had closed.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  FLASH FLOOD

  The rain did not let up the following day or for the two after that. Within hours of the cloudburst the gutters in the streets of the city overflowed. By the end of the day they had turned to rivers. Great torrents of water cascaded down Macquarie Street, bringing with it tree branches, mud, sodden newspapers, broken umbrellas and the overturned refuse of every domestic and mercantile premises on the way, even one or two bloated animal carcasses, to be spat out into the quay and swept into the harbour and beyond. Rain lashed the windows of Parliament House, the Treasury, Customs House and Government House; it buffeted the bows of the steamships and the colliers as they attempted to dock at Woolloomooloo and it drenched the men on the dockside. Earthworks loosened and trees were unrooted. Roofs leaked and some collapsed. In the poorer districts, whole buildings were swept away and some of the residents along with them. Beyond the city the rivers swelled and burst their banks, the roads became impassable, the settlements and outlying stations became inundated. The sheep and cattle that had withstood the drought were lost.

  Alasdair’s newspaper declared it a disaster. Not the loss of life or livestock or property, but the referendum which was now just a week away. How would the men get to the polling stations, it asked, when the rivers had burst their banks and the roads had become impassable? Their drays could not ford the raging waters and their horses had perished. What were they to do?

  Alasdair read of the disaster in the dining room of a hotel, on a train, in the dining room of another hotel. The city was being washed away but the referendum would still go ahead. Polling arrangements were advertised. Whole pages were given over to the debate, the speeches, the nightly meetings held in hotels and town halls and council chambers across the city and in country towns the length of the colony. The Premier was here and he was there—six thousand heard him speak at Newcastle, a smaller number at Darlington, his speeches were reprinted in full, with almost as much space given to Mr Barton. A tally was kept of how many attended this meeting and how many attended that. Was the spirit in the colony for Federation or was it against? The anti-billites could be dismissed, said the newspaper, the motion was sure to carry. The anti-billites were a growing force, said the same paper, and nothing was certain, they could yet spoil the day. The editorials were daily more imploring, the letters to the editor ever more impassioned. An effigy of the Premier was set alight outside the meeting at Darlington and the local constables had to act promptly to put it out.

  Mr Dunlevy, the Secretary for Public Monies, reported the Herald, had attended a meeting at Marrickville and at Drummoyne, he had been at Waverley and Ashfield, he had been at Parramatta and Camperdown and Waterloo, and now he had left the city to accompany the Premier on his tour of the southern townships. It was a wonder, the paper said, that the people still came out, night after night, in all this rain.

  Alasdair stood beside the Premier on a stage at Albury that was built for three, four at a push, but the Premier was so generous of girth there was barely room for the two of them and when the Premier took a step forward or used his arms to make a point, which he did repeatedly and expansively, Alasdair was obliged to duck and step back and the stage shuddered and threatened to collapse altogether.

  ‘I have this day received word that our colleagues in Queensland have carried the Federation Enabling Bill!’ the Premier declared, holding in his fist this very telegram and the people cheered. ‘It is a Major Step Forward!’ he added, thus securing a further cheer.

  The Premier had been handed this same telegram three days earlier and he had given this exact same speech at Newcastle that evening, but the people of Albury were not to know this. He knew how to play a crowd, did Reid; he knew how to use a prop.

  They were at the Mechanics Institute and a thousand or more men had filled the hall to hear the Premier speak and a few hundred ladies filled the gallery above, and this despite the weather so dramatically and unceasingly inclement. The hall in which they stood was a vast, cavernous and high-ceilinged place, no doubt cool on a summer evening but on this wet wintery day it was bitter—though the perspiration glistened on the ba
ld head of the Premier and gathered in little droplets on his magnificent walrus moustache.

  ‘Those who sneered at the smallness of some of the colonies are guilty of snobbishness,’ said the Premier, ‘and those who fear their honesty are unjust.’

  And the people applauded. It was sometimes a little difficult to follow his exact meaning, but the gist, surely, was clear enough.

  ‘It is no argument against the honesty of the other colonies that they have not got as big a land revenue as we have. Once it is admitted that the people of Australia are honest all round, half the objections to the bill disappear.’

  Again the people cheered their approval. Alasdair cheered too, though he had heard the speech already on the train down. They had arrived at Albury by the mail train at noon and the mayor and most of the town had been at the station to welcome them. They had travelled by carriage to their hotel and the main street had been festooned with bunting and flags and a great banner had stretched across the street proclaiming, with unrestrained optimism, ALBURY: THE NATION’S CAPITAL. At a reception speeches had been made and the Premier’s health drunk, and in the afternoon they had been driven about the town in a carriage venturing as far as the border, where the good folk of Victoria had been almost as vociferous in their welcome and good wishes for the Premier as had the people of New South Wales.

  ‘Now I come to the question of the federal capital,’ said Mr Reid, ‘about which Albury has never shown any warmth of feeling,’ (great laughter). ‘It was a bitter pill for Victoria that Mr Turner, their premier, gave the capital to New South Wales,’ (cheers) ‘but having barred all Victoria he determined that Sydney should not have it and he is quite justified in doing so,’ (hear, hear).

  ‘Albury for the capital!’ cried the crowd, boisterous in its enthusiasm.

  And would Albury be the capital? Alasdair wondered. It had made a good case, as good as any other place. He thought of the long and uncomfortable train journey they had endured to get here, of the cattle wandering unheeded down the main street, of the farmers and landowners riding into town on horseback and his heart sank. It was a loathsome place! They were all loathsome places. When he envisaged the nation’s capital he imagined himself in an elegant house on Flinders Street overlooking the Yarra. He imagined himself in Melbourne. Was he the only one who dreaded the idea of a capital out here in the middle of a barren nothing, built on dirt and fit only for squatters? Why, look at the mess the Canadians had made of it! Mr Dibbs, the anti-federalist, had visited that country the year before and had found Ottawa, their newly built federal capital, to be a small place with no decent hotel and a railway station smaller than many of Sydney’s suburban stations. When he had enquired where the people of the capital were to be found, he was told they were out of town as parliament was not sitting.

  Was this their future then? Had the people of New South Wales learned nothing from the blunder of their sister colony across the sea?

  The elegant house overlooking the Yarra. It had grown and grown in his imaginings over the months until he could picture the wallpaper in the breakfast room, the carpet on the staircase, the light fixtures, the entrance hall. Even down to the ivory-topped cane in the hallway that the servant would hand to him and the walk he would make along the river towards the new parliament—all of it, every unspoiled, incredible detail. And the woman who sat opposite him at that breakfast table, he had pictured her too. Of course he had! She had been the crowning glory, the queen at the heart of the palace he had built!

  Now, when he attempted to look into the eyes of his queen, his eyes slide from her face. Try as hard as he might, he could not see her. She no longer had a face. She no longer had a name.

  And somehow a whole week had passed since he had gone to the hospital and he had made no enquiries since. If Verity lived or not, he did not know.

  There was no way back, he saw, aghast. No way at all.

  ‘Gentlemen,’ said the Premier, and the buttons of his waistcoat strained, ‘the struggle which is to culminate on June twenty is going to be victory for Federation!’

  The floor erupted into wild applause and the Premier beamed and allowed himself to be slapped on the back and heartily congratulated.

  And this was the man who, a year ago, had been so unable to commit himself to Federation he could speak for two hours on the subject and at the end of that time one still did not know if was in favour or against. The papers had dubbed him ‘Yes-No Reid’. Could this man one day be Australia’s prime minister? wondered Alasdair. The fellow was a great orator—the finest in the empire if you believed what some said, but his enormous girth (which one was hard put to ignore), that absurd moustache, the monocle he affected to wear, all of it made him less the eminent statesman and more the comic figure of vaudeville. Yet look at the people—for they were now taking a vote: for or against? And here was the response: all of them to a man in favour of Federation. But, no, one fellow here at the back voting in the negative. Still, all but one in favour. Resounding cheers all around the hall and a vote of thanks from the mayor. Alasdair slapped the Premier on the back, he offered his heartiest congratulations.

  How did Reid do it? The man was in his mid-fifties if he was a day, he had just returned from a gruelling tour of the Northern Rivers, an engagement at Sydney, then he had shot back up to Newcastle and now here he was at the start of a Tour of the South yet he looked as fresh as a batsman at the start of an innings. Alasdair had barely attended a meeting outside the city before today yet he felt close to collapse. Was superhuman endurance the mark of a premier, he wondered, of a potential prime minister?

  He did not know. Whenever he imagined that man, Australia’s first prime minister, it was not Mr Reid, his own leader, whom he pictured in the role, it was Mr Barton, and that was awkward. He did not voice these thoughts, naturally, but there was no denying that the leader of the Opposition—who had chosen to remain in the city and was speaking at Waverley this very evening and who was drawing crowds every bit as large as the Premier’s and delivering speeches reported every bit as enthusiastically in the Herald—looked the part, he spoke the part, he was the part. And perhaps Alasdair was not the only man who thought so. Even so, it was awkward.

  ‘Congratulations, sir,’ said Alasdair again, in case his first congratulations had not been quite hearty enough.

  They were travelling to Junee that night then on to Cootamundra and Goulburn. Alasdair had found it necessary to get Greensmith to consult a map of the colony to locate Junee, and even after studying the map they had been none the wiser.

  It was a long time to spend on a train with any man, not least the Premier.

  A crowd had gathered now about the Premier: local businessmen, landowners, half-a-dozen pressmen, the entire town council, and a not insignificant number of ladies, who had come down from the gallery and were fluttering their fans in his direction as though it were a summer’s evening and Mr Reid a dashing young nobleman at an assembly ball and, frankly, there was something undignified about the whole thing.

  Alasdair turned to the mayor and he shook the man’s hand and said something appropriate; he stood at the Premier’s side as the explosion of a photographer’s flash-lamp momentarily blinded them; he dashed through the rain to the waiting carriage; he sat opposite the Premier and talked of great and important things as they made their way back to the hotel. The main street was turned to mud in all the rain and quite deserted, the bunting and the flags sodden now in the deluge.

  ‘This town will not be our nation’s capital,’ said Reid, speaking in a low, measured voice quite different to that of the great orator of an hour ago. He leaned back in the carriage and peered out of the window at the darkened, deserted streets.

  ‘You think not, sir?’

  ‘Not one of these places will be our capital, Dunlevy. A new place will be chosen, virgin soil. A new town for a new nation.’

  It sounded good, statesmanlike even, and Alasdair nodded, but he was thinking of Ottawa.

  ‘
A British journal has proposed our new capital be named Britannia,’ he said.

  ‘That will happen over the dead body of myself and every other true and right-thinking Australian man,’ Reid replied, not turning his gaze from the window.

  And on that they could agree.

  They would not be staying overnight at the hotel. It was merely a place for refreshment, to wash and change their clothes. They were to travel on to Junee that night.

  It was a small party that made its way to the station an hour later, the mayor and the lady mayoress riding in the carriage to officially see the party off, a small crowd of well-wishers gathered on the platform and those of the press who were covering the tour and would be boarding the train with them. Reid was in high spirits, offering farewells and accepting thanks with all the bonhomie and triumph of a man who has already won an election. But once on board he disappeared into his sleeping compartment and was seen no more. Alasdair had a compartment next door and before the train had long left the lights of Albury behind he heard the Premier’s roaring snores through the wall.

  Was that the secret then, an ability to shut off and sleep at a moment’s notice? An ability to clear one’s mind of all troubling thoughts?

  Alasdair pulled down the sash window in his own compartment and stuck his head outside. A rush of cold, smutty air hit him and he closed his eyes and let the rain fall on his face.

  A week had passed since he had gone to the hospital and if Verity still lived, he did not know. This not knowing, it was an iron hand at his throat, its fingers slowly squeezing.

  And three days had passed, too, since Eleanor had flung her accusation at him and he had countered her with his own accusations. There was no part of that encounter he wished to relive. That his wife knew of his most private dealings with Verity—his love-making! It was horrifying to him.

  As horrifying as knowing of her liaison with another man.

  And this astonished him! That he had, at last, found the courage to charge her with it and her deceit, a thing he had nursed and carried in his heart for eight months, was finally made real. It seemed incredible to him that he no longer bore it alone. That she now must assume the burden.