The Unforgiving City

by Maggie Joel

  So she talked of inconsequential things in order that Eleanor might sit in silence and stare out of the window, and she saw in her friend’s eyes the brittle light of glass about to shatter. And Mrs Rothe talked, and wondered.

  They arrived at the town hall and it was festooned—everywhere now, it seemed, was festooned—though the rain guaranteed the flags and bunting that hung outside were bedraggled and sodden before the event was even begun. A great many people, most of them women—for this was a meeting of the Women’s Federal League—were similarly bedraggled and sodden as they had arrived on foot and Mrs Rothe’s carriage, pulling up right outside the door, splashed those young women unlucky enough to be standing near to the kerb. The two ladies, sheltered by the umbrella of the Rothes’ coachman, swept up the steps and into the hall and exclaimed loudly about the weather, though they were the only two people in the place who were dry.

  That is, Mrs Rothe exclaimed loudly about the weather.

  Eleanor Dunlevy stood quite still in the foyer as a great many people swirled about her.

  There was a child. To deny its existence, to deny one’s part in its existence, was perfidious.

  But someone was talking. Eleanor looked about. She felt very small, very transparent. She wondered if she had, in fact, come to the town hall with Blanche Rothe or if she imagined the whole thing.

  ‘I am quite surprised you dare show your face at a Women’s Federal League address, Eleanor, after your dalliance with the anti-billites,’ said Mrs Rothe, as though she had rehearsed this line on the carriage ride over and was not about to forgo the pleasure of repeating it now, and in the presence of a number of other ladies of no small import who happened to be within earshot, simply because her friend was, apparently, in the midst of a crisis.

  But her remark fell a little flat when none of the ladies present commented on it and Eleanor made no reply.

  ‘Mrs Dunlevy? I thought it was you! Is it true your husband froze and could not speak a single word at the Premier’s meeting at Bathurst last evening? It is reported in this morning’s Herald.’

  And thus was Mrs Rothe trumped, and by Mrs Parkes, who, while she was not strictly speaking related to the great man, did at least share his name.

  Eleanor thought, That is why Alasdair returned so suddenly from the west this morning. She had thought it was because of Miss Trent. And perhaps it was still because of her. Perhaps everything her husband did now was because of Miss Trent.

  It was news, too, to Blanche Rothe, she saw, as that lady’s gaze fixed on her own face, hoping to see a husband’s public disgrace there, perhaps even a little glad, for Blanche herself had felt the sharp pinpricks of public humiliation in the past. How easy it was to read all this, in an instant, in the other woman’s face, thought Eleanor.

  As for Mrs Parkes, who came at her through a large crowd, pushing her way through and swollen, it seemed, with her eagerness to make her cruel remark, the lady had nothing but a name shared with a great man three years dead and to whom she was not actually related. Her husband, a superintendent of works, resided apart from her in some other part of the city.

  ‘My husband is not with the Premier, Mrs Parkes; he is here in Sydney,’ Eleanor said, which was sufficient to cast doubt on the story. But she was dismayed at how her voice shook—though it was possible no one but herself noticed.

  The crowd that gathered in the foyer had now reached such proportions that conversing with one’s neighbour had become impractical and it was acceptable to simply stand and say nothing, to look at no one. The ladies of the Women’s Federal League bustled hither and thither greeting and organising, and presently they urged those gathered to move into the hall. They were to be addressed by Mr Barton himself, which was a coup and a feather in a number of people’s caps, though Mrs Rothe, perhaps perceiving she had an audience, declared she did not particularly care for the gentleman.

  Mr Barton arrived rather late due to another engagement elsewhere in the city and due to the rain, but he did, at last, arrive and several of the ladies present, many of whom had grown-up children, felt their pulses flutter and their faces flush as Mr Barton took to the platform. His magnificent stature and his smooth, clean-shaven cheeks, his boyish fair hair and his clear and ardent voice was enough to stir the most unromantic heart, young and not so young. And when he exhorted them, ‘Ladies, you cannot vote in Tuesday’s referendum, but it would be a great thing if you could influence your husbands, brothers and friends,’ they applauded and it did not, in that moment, appear an injustice to call on their help while denying them the vote.

  But later, when Mr Barton has gone, when they have made their way home, dashing over puddles, to make their husband’s tea, will they pause to consider what has been asked of them? Eleanor wondered, will they feel just a little cheated?

  Otherwise she thought very little. The applause swelled and rippled about her but did not touch her. She observed the hat worn by the young lady in front of her, a very wide-brimmed hat adorned by an ostrich feather that hung limply and was ruined by the rain. She noticed Mrs Rothe, seated beside her, pulling at the fingers of her gloves. She thought: If we lived separately, Alasdair and I, I shall be no better than Mrs Parkes—pitied, talked about, cruel. She thought: Shall I be forced, then, to go and live quietly in some other place? She thought of Balmain, where her father’s stone cottage had once stood. But she had left all of that. She had climbed her way out of it and she would not go back.

  People would find out. One person already knew, for they had sent her the note. And the cook, Mrs Flynn, she must know.

  Then Mrs Flynn, too, must go.

  Eleanor understood that this was just the start.

  The ladies around her jumped to their feet and clapped enthusiastically, and Eleanor also rose to her feet, or her shadow did, an echo of Eleanor Dunlevy, whose face was turned towards the gentleman on the platform but whose eyes stared down a very long and very dark tunnel.

  She left then, pushing past the ladies beside her and walking out of the hall, and Mrs Rothe, who was rather taken with Mr Barton though she had dismissed his charms not half an hour earlier, did not notice until after the meeting that Mrs Dunlevy had gone.

  In the foyer of the town hall Eleanor saw Cecily Pyke and one of her daughters, not Marguerite, shaking umbrellas and hats and full of the excitement of a journey made in the rain.

  ‘Heavens, the rain!’ exclaimed Mrs Pyke. ‘We are dreadfully late. Have we missed Mr Barton? Helena is most anxious to see him.’ And Eleanor remembered that this daughter, the second-eldest, was called Helena. This Helena was perhaps a year or two the younger and her cheeks more flushed and her excitement less contained than that of her elder sister.

  ‘It was because of the baby,’ Mrs Pyke went on. ‘He upset something or other and Nurse got quite cross with him and it was quite a to-do and hence we are late.’

  For Mrs Pyke had given her husband a brood of offspring covering a whole range of ages, the youngest of which was but a year old and still in the nursery.

  And Alasdair had impregnated two females, thought Eleanor. Two that she knew of.

  Eleanor left Mrs Pyke and her daughter to face the almost certain disappointment of having missed Mr Barton’s address and went out into the evening rain.

  Eleanor, what child, for God’s sake? Look about you. There is no child. There never has been a child.

  Alasdair stood at the window, dazed, and watched as the green-liveried carriage that carried Mrs Rothe and his wife to their engagement turned around and shot back up the hill. It occurred to him that he had forbidden Eleanor to leave the house or to attend any engagement until after the referendum, and yet here she was defying his instructions.

  How powerless he was in the face of her opposition. In the face of any woman, if she truly set out to destroy him.

  And this raving about a child—his child!—and the maid! It was madness.

  But where was Alice? he wondered. He had not seen her all evening and he realised
now he had no wish to come face to face with the girl, not after his wife had made such an appalling allegation. The shame of it must, surely, stain any future interaction he had with her.

  Dear God.

  He was glad, now, that he had permitted Eleanor to attend her meeting. He could show reason in the face of this mania; he could retain the ability for rational thought, even if she—if any female—could not.

  Eleanor had left her reticule behind. She had fled the house so abruptly, in such a state of nerves, she had left it on the table. He snatched it up and undid the fastening and turned it upside down. It was empty. Not believing this he thrust his hand inside and felt around. Nothing.

  It was perfidious. Chicanery. What did a female carry in such things? He did not know. Had bought one once, an expensive one, for Verity without the faintest notion as to what she might keep in there. A handkerchief, he had assumed. And his wife—twenty years his wife!—had never once offered to show him the contents of her reticule until that evening eight days ago when she had pulled out a crumpled envelope and waved it in his face, crying triumphantly, I have the letter you wrote to her, arranging your tawdry little liaison. Where was that letter now? Was its existence a figment of her imagination, as the crazed story of the baby was, or had someone really sent it to her?

  Who?

  He flung himself out of the room and up the staircase and into his wife’s room. He went directly to the writing desk and pulled at the drawer, exclaiming aloud when he found it locked. It seemed further evidence of her perfidiousness. Her chicanery. He scrabbled about among her things for the key but did not find it. He exclaimed again, stood in the centre of the room, curious bolts of energy shooting the length of his arms and back up again so that he could not stand motionless a moment longer. He grabbed the handle of the drawer, took up the paperknife that lay, as though awaiting him, on the desk, and attacked the lock, pulling and twisting until finally it gave with a dull snap. The drawer shot out of its slot with such force he almost fell backwards.

  Inside was a journal.

  Did Eleanor keep a journal? He’d had no idea. Well, he was certainly not going to waste his time browsing her various thoughts and observations on himself. He thrust it aside and here, nestling underneath, was a letter. Just the one. It occurred to him, only at that moment, that he would find letters from Drummond-Smith.

  He pulled back his hand as though he had found a funnel web lurking there, overcome by an aversion to finding any such letters.

  Extraordinary, how this felled him—utterly—for a time.

  He shook off the feeling and took up the letter. There were no others, just this one in a plain envelope, cream in colour and of good quality and addressed in blue ink in a workmanlike hand to his wife here at their home.

  Whose hand? He did not know. A man’s or a woman’s? He could not even guess. The single sheet of notepaper contained within was the missing note he had scrawled to Verity three weeks ago arranging his visit.

  He let out a shout of laughter. He shook his head, held the note at arm’s length, turned it over as though it might divulge its secrets, provide some clue.

  There was nothing. Just the note. Written by himself at his office, addressed by himself on some other envelope entirely and sent to Verity. And now it was here, in his wife’s drawer.

  Verity herself must have sent it.

  Another laugh. He could not find it in himself to be dismayed. He was beyond such things. He sat down on the bed.

  After a time he got up and searched through the remainder of the drawer. There was nothing at all from Drummond-Smith but this reprieve brought no release. It brought nothing.

  Finally he pulled out his wife’s journal and began to read.

  Sunday morning dawned grey and overcast, and the crowds, upwards of twenty thousand, began to gather in the Domain, it being the last Sunday before the referendum and there being little else to do on a wet Sunday morning unless you counted church, which most did not. For it was a much greater sport to splash through the puddles and slip in the mud on the waterlogged grass, to dash from one platform to another and hear the words of one speaker after another, cheering and laughing and haranguing and slinging great clods of mud as the mood took them. If this was what was meant by Federation, they liked it. They embraced it!

  In Elizabeth Bay Alasdair was standing before the mirror contemplating the futility of his Ascot tie when his wife walked into the room.

  He spun about, unprepared. It was a violation, a transgression. But it was only the latest in many such violations and transgressions.

  ‘Tell me how many there have been,’ she demanded, pausing a yard or two short of him. ‘I no longer wish to live in ignorance.’

  She was splendid in her fury, though there was a fragility and a desperation at the edges of the splendour that sent a chill of fear through him.

  Was it hysteria? he wondered. Had she lost her reason? One heard of such things, a sudden derangement of the mind caused by some great distress, such as the loss of the child a year ago—had it affected her more than he had realised? The female mind was weaker than the male. He thought of asylums. Doctors.

  ‘For God’s sake, Eleanor!’ he replied and he turned back to the mirror. His fingers shook a little.

  Could a man be a minister of the Crown, could he hope to hold any sort of parliamentary office, if he had a wife housed in an asylum?

  ‘No! I will not be put off!’ she said, advancing on him. ‘You will tell me.’

  Alasdair put down the tie that refused to be tied and whose very purpose no longer seemed clear to him and turned again to face her. It seemed important to speak very calmly, very firmly to her, though he felt the house loosen on its foundations and quake around him. He felt the insubstantiality and transience of all things.

  She wished to have him abase himself before her. Very well, he would.

  ‘I have admitted my transgression with Miss Trent, towards whom I did, I admit, experience some feelings for a time. Though that is now passed.’

  What it cost him to say these words. It seemed to him his broken heart must show as vividly as a scar upon his face. He looked directly at his wife, begging her to see it, his broken heart, terrified lest she did.

  ‘There has been no other,’ he said.

  But he was a little frightened of her. She seemed to be someone he did not know. He saw again, around the edges of her, some strange madness.

  ‘I do not believe you. The child—’

  ‘The child,’ he interrupted, reaching for the newspaper, last Wednesday’s newspaper, and thrusting it into her hands, ‘is not mine.’

  She continued to stare at him. Finally she looked down at the newspaper in her hand, at the page it was folded to. On a little chain about her neck hung a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles that he had never seen before and that she placed now on her nose. She made no comment as she read, but he saw from a faint rippling of the muscles around her throat, from a stiffness that came into her spine, that she understood.

  Her face had gone quite white, even her lips.

  When she had read it she turned about and left his room. Alasdair reached behind him for his chair and sat down and did not stir for a time. He ought to be angry with her, furious. But instead he reached for the newspaper. The story was an insignificant piece; variations of it—a different name, minor details altered—appeared in the newspaper every day. But this one had made him stop and read:

  SUICIDE OF A PRISONER

  Yesterday an inquest was held at Darlinghurst Gaol on the body of Millicent Nimrod, whose death took place at that institution on Wednesday last. Evidence showed the prisoner had committed suicide by hanging herself in her cell using lengths of sheet tied together to make a rope. Deceased was sentenced to three years’ penal servitude for malicious damage to property, her third such offence, and had recently given birth to a child, the fate of the child being unknown. A verdict of suicide while insane was returned.

  He folded the newspape
r and put it away. The story saddened him. He had not known the woman but her sister had, presumably, been their maid, Alice Nimrod, and now Alice was gone and he had an idea his wife had been responsible for the girl’s sudden departure.

  Much later, when the crowds at the Domain had begun to disperse and the platforms on which the speakers stood had sunk into the mud and were beginning to be dismantled, Mrs Dunlevy came into the kitchen. This, like her husband’s bedroom and the maid’s attic room, was a space into which she rarely ventured, but it seemed that all such demarcations within the house had broken down.

  She stood for a time in the doorway and when Mrs Flynn, who was engaged in a tricky manoeuvre with a leg of lamb and the stove door, realised she was there she almost dropped the lamb and the tray and burned herself.

  ‘Lord, missus, you gave me a start!’ she exclaimed with a jollity she did not feel, for Alice was gone and the poor wee baby too, and here was Mrs Dunlevy in the kitchen doorway and it was all very unsettling. And then she said, ‘Oh, Mrs Dunlevy, are you sick? You do not look at all well,’ though it was not something she ought to have said to the mistress of the house. But the mistress did look unwell, all grey and fainting, as she described it later to Mr Flynn. ‘Though I oughtened to have said so,’ she had added.

  And what Mrs Dunlevy had asked her was, did she know where Alice might have gone to?

  Just as though Alice had upped and left of her own volition—and perhaps she had, for now Mrs Flynn was no longer sure of anything.

  ‘And so I told her, Surry Hills, Mrs Dunlevy. That is what I said,’ she reported to Mr Flynn later that evening, ‘and then she was gone. What do you make of that?’