‘Maybe it is, but people don’t have to make things that obvious, do they?’ she replied harshly.
As he gave another supposedly nonchalant shrug and topped up their glasses from the last of the bottle Kate felt a sudden and intense desire to punish her father.
‘Let’s get back at him, Al,’ she said. ‘We can you know. We can give him the diaries first thing tomorrow.’
‘Nah,’ Alan shook his head, aware it was the drink that was talking, ‘we can’t do that, not now. One day, sure, he has to know the truth. But not now – he’s too bloody vulnerable.’
Kate studied her brother with affection. ‘How funny,’ she said, ‘I used to think that Neil was the big softie and that you were the tough one.’
‘I am, always have been,’ he said with a smile.
A half an hour later they weaved their way off to their respective bedrooms.
Alan stayed on at Elianne for a further month. There were plans he needed to set in place, having decided his future must now take a different path. He had secret and lengthy discussions with the three older Fiorelli brothers and he took mysterious trips into town, where he visited a number of businessmen and looked at properties for sale. He told only Paola of his plans. Apart from the brothers no one else knew, certainly no one in the family, not even Kate. The household was in mourning and it was no time to discuss his personal future.
Christmas came and went without anyone noticing. Cook observed tradition and prepared the customary feast, but no one was hungry. It was a sombre affair.
Alan returned to Brisbane in the New Year, presumably to resume his apprenticeship and his studies, but in actuality to tie up his affairs there.
Kate, however, did not return to Sydney. She’d passed her final year with honours (1st class) and had applied for a Vet Science PhD scholarship funded by Vesteys, the large meat-producing company that, among its many international interests, owned cattle stations in northern Australia. While waiting to learn if her application was successful, she decided to stay at Elianne in order to provide some added comfort for her mother, and most particularly to be with her grandfather.
Bartholomew was dying. It was generally agreed that the shock of Neil’s death had pushed him over the edge. That and the physical trip to and from town for the funeral, but in any event the past two months had seen a rapid decline. He was skeletal now, confined to his bed, even his favourite armchair in the corner by the window tantalisingly out of bounds.
Stan had employed a live-in nurse who specialised in palliative care to look after his father during the last weeks of the old man’s life, but he took no personal interest himself, making the occasional token visit to Bartholomew’s quarters with his wife simply in order to appease Hilda, who insisted it was proper. Stan didn’t consider it proper at all. Why should one bother with the elderly and infirm when one had lost a healthy son in the prime of his life? Stan was functioning these days, but with difficulty. He spent a great deal of time at the Burnett Club, where the combination of men’s sympathy and the downing of Scotch afforded some level of escape if not comfort.
Bartholomew was quite ready to die. In fact Bartholomew considered death long overdue. Seventy-nine this year, he thought, good heavens am I really that old? And over seven years since Mary went. It’s certainly time I joined her.
They’d shifted his bed so that it faced the windows, affording him the view he’d so treasured from his armchair. He never tired of the sight. Unfolding before his eyes was the endless expanse of cane that had been his life. He was looking at the past, the present and the future all in one.
Bartholomew loved the timelessness of sugar cane. Over the years he’d seen many changes with the introduction of mechanisation and new methods of production and there would no doubt be many more, but the cane itself remained constant, re-generating itself with a hardy persistence he found admirable. Even after the normal four-year growth period when a field was ploughed and left briefly fallow, it was not long before the freshly-planted cane emerged to grow tall and strong, starting the process all over again. The cycle of life itself, Bartholomew thought contentedly. Cane was so reliable, so predictable, a most satisfying crop.
Kate sat with her grandfather most afternoons. Very often he was sleeping and she would sit holding his hand, staring out at the beauty of the view, and when he awoke, he would smile and squeeze her hand gently with the little strength he had left. Sometimes she would chatter about inconsequential things and he would nod, appearing interested in her every word. And other times they would sit in silence, sharing the panorama of the cane fields.
The experience for Kate was never in the least upsetting. Her grandfather was at peace. He made no complaint and appeared to be suffering no undue pain, except when the nurse moved him, rather brutally at times, in order to correct his posture in the bed and straighten his spine. He winced then, Kate noticed. It’s probably murder when she bathes him and changes his pyjamas and rolls him around to put fresh linen on the bed. Poor Grandpa, she thought.
When she’d offered her assistance, however, the nurse had politely but brusquely refused.
‘Thank you, Miss Durham, but this is what your father pays me to do, this is my job –’
‘I just thought that perhaps with the two of us –’
‘No, no, it’s better this way, believe me.’ Norma Pendlebury was a professional to her fingertips. Family members had a habit of interfering with her routine and she needed no assistance from amateurs, however well meaning.
Kate could only presume that Nurse Pendlebury, highly qualified as she was, must be right, but she was a difficult woman to warm to, big and bossy and seemingly insensitive. All of which no doubt comes with the territory, Kate thought.
Then, early one Saturday afternoon, the most remarkable thing happened.
Kate was sitting in the bedside chair looking out at the view and holding Bartholomew’s hand as he slept. She was feeling rather sleepy herself. The sun through the open shutters and the gentle stirring of air from the ceiling fan formed a soporific combination and she was close to dozing off when all of a sudden she could swear she heard her grandfather’s voice. At first she couldn’t believe it. She’d not heard her grandfather speak for years, no one had, and she turned to stare down at him, presuming her imagination was playing tricks that surely the voice belonged only in her mind. But no, although his eyes remained closed his lips were moving. He’s talking in his sleep, she thought. Leaning close, she tried to make out the words, but there seemed to be none: the sounds were unintelligible, no more than a gentle murmur.
She stayed watching and listening intently, holding his hand, hardly daring to breathe. The murmurs became intermittent, stopping and then starting again as if he was having some sort of conversation, and Kate strained to discern any meaning in what he was saying. Then finally on the gentle exhalation of his breath, she heard the words, quiet, barely audible, but to Kate, listening with such care as she was, quite distinct. ‘Not long now,’ he said in little more than a whisper, ‘not long.’
He went quiet after that and minutes later the nurse bustled in with his medication. She was about to wake him, but Kate stopped her.
‘Nurse Pendlebury . . .’ Gently releasing Bartholomew’s hand, careful not to disturb him, Kate rose to her feet. ‘He spoke,’ she said. ‘My grandfather spoke.’
‘Oh yes,’ Norma Pendlebury replied, ‘he speaks quite a lot in his sleep, just gobbledy-gook, no sense to it –’
‘But he hasn’t spoken for years, not since the stroke he suffered after my grandmother’s death.’
‘Of course, Miss Durham, I’m fully aware of your grandfather’s medical history,’ the nurse replied pleasantly enough, but in her usual brisk manner. ‘Who can tell what the brain does in these final days, the strangest things happen, believe me they do. But I wouldn’t read too much into it if I were you, they’re just sounds he’s making, no more than that.’
Oh no, you’re wrong, Kate thought, you’re very, very wrong, they’re not sounds at all, he’s speaking. She did not correct Nurse Pendlebury, however. Instead she stepped to one side and watched as Bartholomew was awoken and propped up higher in the bed in order to be fed his medication, which had been ground up and mixed with water for ease of swallowing.
‘There we are, Mr Durham.’ Nurse Pendlebury handed him the glass of fruit juice she always brought to wash away any after-taste. ‘Now I’ll leave you two to yourselves,’ she said checking her watch, ‘and I’ll be back with your afternoon tea in three quarters of an hour.’
Bartholomew nodded his thanks, he was always most courteous to Nurse Pendlebury, and he smiled up at Kate, pleased to see her. He had no idea she’d been sitting holding his hand for the past forty minutes.
Kate waited until the nurse had left and the bedroom door was closed before once again sitting beside her grandfather. Bartholomew handed her the glass automatically; he didn’t want the fruit juice, he never did, but fruit juice following medication was part of Nurse Pendlebury’s routine. Kate placed the glass on the bedside table and took his hand.
‘Grandpa,’ she said. ‘You spoke.’
His expression was one of bemusement, as if to say did I? Did I really?
‘You were talking in your sleep. Nurse Pendlebury says you do it quite often.’ As his eyes darted to the door Kate thought she detected a tiny flicker of alarm. ‘She thinks you’re not really talking at all, she thinks it’s only sounds you’re making.’ The flicker of alarm had gone now, Kate noted. ‘But we know better, don’t we Grandpa. You
can
talk, can’t you.’ She looked into his eyes, making it very evident that she was not asking a question at all, that she already knew the answer. ‘I’m right, aren’t I?’
The reply came after several seconds, as if Bartholomew had given the matter a little thought. ‘Yes, Kate,’ he said, slowly and with care. ‘You are right. I can talk.’
In throwing down the challenge Kate had expected some form of response certainly, but she found herself nonetheless taken aback. His voice, although weakened by his condition, was just as she remembered, a gentle voice, a kind voice, like the man himself. She was moved, but fought against showing it.
‘I would have thought, after all these years, you’d have been a bit out of practice, Grandpa,’ she said with an element of accusation. ‘How long have you been able to speak without letting any of us know?’
‘I’m not quite sure, to be honest. After Mary went, I had no desire to speak and I think for some time I forgot how. Then one day, or rather one night I recall, I started talking to her out loud and I’ve been doing so ever since. She’s always nearby. I can feel her presence.’
‘Why didn’t you talk to any of us?’
‘I had nothing to say.’
‘Even to me?’
‘You and I never needed words, my dear.’ Bartholomew gave her hand the lightest squeeze and as he turned away to gaze out at the cane fields Kate felt a rush of guilt for having intruded upon his silent world.
‘I’m sorry, Grandpa. I won’t tell anyone your secret, I promise. I’m truly sorry.’
‘Why?’ He turned back to her. ‘Why are you sorry?’
‘I had no right to confront you the way I did. If you don’t wish to speak that’s your business, I should never have –’
‘Ah but now you have discovered my duplicity, Kate, I should like to speak. Just to you, no one else. There are messages you can pass on for me when I’m gone, my dear. Letter-writing is so wearying. I can no longer hold the pen.’
‘Anything Grandpa, tell me anything. I’ll be a willing messenger, I promise.’
‘Tell Julia she is all I could have wished for in a daughter. I know she reproaches herself for not visiting me more often, but she mustn’t. She has a family and responsibilities of her own. Tell her I love her very much.’
‘I will.’
‘And your father. Tell your father how deeply I feel for him on the loss of his son.’ Bartholomew looked down at their hands resting entwined on the bed, the flawless fingers of a young woman clasped in the wizened claw of an old man. ‘Had I chosen to speak, Kate, I could never have found the right words to express my sadness about Neil.’
‘No,’ Kate too gazed down at their hands, finding the sight beautiful, just as she was finding the sound of her grandfather’s voice beautiful, ‘no, I don’t think any of us could.’
‘I’ve gathered from the odd exchange between your father and mother when they’ve visited me that Stan is very bitter. I’ve gathered also that he would have preferred to have lost Alan than Neil.’
Meeting her grandfather’s eyes, Kate was amazed by the perceptiveness she saw there, and by the matter-of-fact tone of his voice, weak as it was.
‘That too is sad,’ Bartholomew said, ‘and destructive, in some ways more so for Stan than for Alan. Alan has always been strong.’
‘Yes, he has.’ Kate, riveted, waited for him to go on, but he didn’t. He simply looked away once again to gaze out the window and she presumed he was tired and that the time for talking had passed.
Bartholomew was tired, but the time for talking had not passed. ‘I was strong too, Kate,’ he said after a full minute or so. ‘I was strong like Alan, only Big Jim didn’t know it, just as Stan doesn’t recognise Alan’s strength.’
Kate remained breathlessly still, realising that as he looked out at the cane fields Bartholomew was re-living the past.
‘When my brothers were killed at Gallipoli, Big Jim made it quite clear that I should have been the one to die. Grief is such an illogical emotion I believe he even in some way held me responsible for their deaths.’
‘Yes,’ Kate said with deliberation, ‘I know.’
‘You know?’ Bartholomew turned to her, puzzled. ‘How could you possibly know, my dear?’
‘I’ve read Ellie’s diaries.’ Kate had decided in that instant that the time was right. She would seize this opportunity and test her grandfather’s knowledge. Just how much had Ellie shared with her son?
She told him about her discovery of the ledgers. ‘Ellie wrote very intimately of her family,’ Kate explained, ‘and with complete candour, I might add, she held nothing back.’