‘Oh. Oh my goodness.’ A hand fluttering to her chest, Hilda gazed down at the page. ‘Her diaries,’ she said breathlessly as if any moment she might have a heart attack. ‘Grandmother Ellie’s diaries,’ she traced her fingers across the paper with gentle reverence, ‘written in her very own hand.’
‘That’s right.’
Hilda’s look to her daughter was puzzled, even a little hurt. ‘But Elianne House was destroyed years ago,’ she said. ‘Why did you not tell me about the diaries earlier?’
‘It took me a long time to translate each of them, Marmee.’ Kate answered with care. ‘There were over a dozen ledgers and I wanted to –’
‘Of course, my darling, of course, you wanted to surprise me. I’m sorry if I sounded in any way accusatory, how shockingly ungrateful of me,’ Hilda’s eyes sparkled with excitement, ‘and how wonderful that you’ve gone to the trouble of translating them. I shall be able to read them all to myself.’ She glanced down at the open page, once again tracing a finger over the words. ‘I wonder why she chose to write in French – that’s most mysterious, don’t you think?’
‘No, it’s not actually, she had very good reason.’
‘Oh?’
‘Grandmother Ellie wrote intimately, about quite a lot of things that she didn’t want others to read.’
‘My goodness, how riveting.’ Hilda clapped her hands in delight. ‘But where are your translations, my darling? I can’t wait.’
‘Dad has them in his study, I gave them to him an hour or so ago.’
Ivy had arrived with the tea tray and was about to set it down on the coffee table beside the open book.
‘Careful, Ivy, careful.’ Hilda snatched up the ledger and closing it with care clutched it to her chest. ‘I’ll pour thank you, dear,’ she said and the maid left the room.
Passing the ledger to Kate, Hilda started to pour. ‘When we’ve had our tea, I shall join Stanley in his study,’ she said. ‘We can read the diaries together.’
‘I don’t think that would be a good idea, Marmee.’
‘Oh your father won’t mind, my darling,’ Hilda gave a light laugh. ‘I virtually worshipped his grandmother, as everyone well knows. Stanley won’t find my interest at all intrusive.’ She passed Kate a cup of tea and started pouring her own. ‘In fact I believe this could prove the perfect bond, something the two of us can share.’
‘It’ll be something you can share all right,’ Kate replied drily, ‘but I doubt it’ll prove the perfect bond.’
‘That’s rather enigmatic of you, dear,’ there was a mild rebuke in Hilda’s voice, ‘and a little cynical I might add.’
‘I’m sorry, Marmee, I didn’t mean to be rude.’ Kate very much wanted to prepare her mother for the inevitable, but she remained circumspect. There was no point in revealing the truth, far better Hilda should read Ellie’s own words than be told second hand. ‘It’s just that Grandmother Ellie unveiled a lot of family secrets, some of which are rather shocking, I’m afraid.’
But Hilda was in no way disheartened by the prospect of what might lie ahead. ‘How very intriguing,’ she said and took a sip of her tea. ‘So I shall just have to wait then, shall I?’
‘Yes, you’ll just have to wait,’ Kate replied firmly, ‘and for some time, I should think.’
Kate was right. The wait was a long one.
When Stan the Man didn’t appear at the dinner table that night, Hilda went to his study and knocked on the door, but received no answer. She tried the handle. The door was locked. She knocked again. ‘Stanley, it’s me,’ she said.
‘Go away,’ her husband called. ‘I don’t wish to be disturbed.’
‘But Cook has served dinner.’
‘I’m not hungry.’
‘As you wish.’
Hilda made no argument, although she was a little put out. A well-run household revolved around meal times and the observance of ritual.
She retired shortly before midnight, a good two hours later than normal, having waited up for her husband, and before she did she knocked once again on the study door.
‘Do you intend to stay in there all night, Stanley?’ she demanded.
‘Yes,’ came the brusque reply.
‘Very well.’ Her voice assumed the edge of command. ‘I shall have Ivy deliver breakfast to you first thing in the morning. If you choose not to open the door to her, she will leave the tray here on the floor outside. You cannot be so foolish as to starve yourself. Good night.’ She sailed off without waiting for an answer, but none came in any event.
The breakfast tray remained untouched the following morning and Stan the Man remained hidden behind locked doors.
He finally surfaced at lunchtime, just as Hilda and Kate were sitting down to their chicken salad.
‘Ah there you are,’ Hilda said, as if her husband’s prolonged absence was perfectly normal, ‘I was about to have Ivy deliver a luncheon tray.’
Stan dumped the armload of folders and their contents unceremoniously in the centre of the table, where they slithered to a halt among the condiments and salad servers.
‘Read that lot and discover the truth about your precious Grandmother Ellie,’ he said to his wife, then without drawing breath he addressed his daughter. ‘Who else knows?’
‘Only Alan and Frank.’
‘Frank!’ Stan stared at her in dumbfounded amazement. ‘You shared the Durham family skeletons with a total stranger!’
Kate nodded guiltily, although she couldn’t help thinking it was surely better she shared their secrets with a stranger than one who knew the family well. ‘I needed to tell someone.’
‘Why not try your father?’ His voice was icy.
‘I’m sorry, Dad. I wanted advice and I turned to Frank. It was Frank who told me I should –’
‘I don’t give a shit what your boyfriend told you.’ Stan waved a hand at the offending folders. ‘So you and Alan have known about this since the destruction of Elianne House nearly six years ago.’
‘I have, yes,’ she admitted. ‘I worked on the translations before I told Alan. He’s known for two years.’
‘And neither of you said a word to me. You kept the truth to yourselves, both of you, for two whole years.’ Stan seemed to be suggesting that the joint silence of his offspring had been some sort of conspiracy.
‘Yes. We were going to tell you, Dad, but . . .’ She tailed off. But Neil died. Do you remember the state you were in after Neil’s death, Dad? Do you think you could have handled the truth then? She didn’t say the words out loud. They remained in her brain as she tried desperately to fathom her father’s mood. He was scathing certainly, cold and disdainful, but she had no idea what he was truly feeling. Is he angry about the lies he’s been fed all his life? she wondered. Is he hurting at the discovery, is the truth as painful as Alan and I feared it might be? Kate found it impossible to decipher what might be going on in her father’s mind.
‘Do sit down, Stanley,’ Hilda insisted, ‘and have some lunch, you haven’t eaten for –’
‘Read that,’ he interrupted brusquely indicating the folders. ‘When you have, we’ll talk together as a family and decide what action we take. I’m going into town. Be close at hand for your mother, Kate,’ he added caustically, ‘she may well need your support.’
They didn’t see Stan for the rest of that day. He headed directly to the Burnett Club, where he sat in a haze of Scotch and fractured thoughts, chatting with old friends, wondering what they would say if they knew even a shadow of the truth. His daughter was not alone in her inability to fathom his mood. Stanley Durham was having trouble deciphering his own feelings. The one thing of which he could be sure was the fact that the world he had known for the whole of his life would never be the same.
Hilda spent the entire afternoon and quite a deal of the night in the front drawing room, having retired with the armload of folders that Kate had carried there for her.
‘Call me if you need me,’ Kate had said, but as the day wore on she’d received no summons.
It was well beyond midnight when Hilda finished reading the last of the diaries, after which she crept upstairs and into bed beside her husband, who had returned from town less than half an hour earlier. She could smell the alcohol on him even though his back was turned to her and as he wasn’t snoring she wondered if he might be awake.
Stan was. He’d felt her slip quietly in between the sheets. But as they lay there in the dark, their thoughts simultaneously racing, neither said one word to the other.
Kate had rung Alan during the afternoon.
‘Dad’s read the diaries,’ she said bluntly, ‘I gave them to him yesterday and he stayed up all night.’
‘Oh hell. What was his reaction?’
‘I have no idea. He’s keeping things to himself, so it’s impossible to tell. I think he might be in a state of shock.’
‘Yep, I’d bet on it. How about Mum?’
‘She’s reading them as we speak.’
Alan sensed his sister’s concern. ‘Don’t worry about Mum, Kate,’ he said, ‘she’s much tougher than you think. Mum’s a true survivor. Dad’s the one who’ll go under.’
‘I think you should come around tomorrow, Al.’
There was a pause. ‘You reckon that’s wise?’
‘Dad knows you’ve read the diaries. He said when Mum had read them we should talk together as a family. And family includes you.’
‘Did he say that?’
‘No, but he should have.’
‘My coming around is a bold choice.’ Alan’s voice sounded a warning.
‘I know.’ Kate had given the matter a great deal of thought. ‘But the diaries are such a leveller, Al. They put a different perspective on our entire world – Dad must see that. This is an opportunity to reunite the family,’ she urged. ‘We’ve all been fed lies, every one of us. We should face the truth together and support each other. We’ll be stronger for it if we do.’
‘Yes, we need to front the old man,’ Alan said, which was surprising, for he’d made a point of avoiding confrontation the whole of his life. ‘It’ll be a make or break situation, but even if it severs any bond I might still have with him at least I’ll know where I stand. Anything’s better than this endless, bloody stalemate.’
‘I agree.’ Kate too was relieved the situation was to be brought to a head. ‘Let’s hope things go our way.’
‘What time will I turn up? I’ll take the morning off if you like.’
‘No need; around midday will do. That’ll give Mum and Dad time to talk. I’ll tell Dad you’re coming, we won’t spring a surprise.’
‘Good thinking, 99,’ he replied, one of his favourite catchphrases, and Kate could hear the wry smile in his voice as he added, ‘Given some warning the old man can shoot through if he wants to.’
The talk that Kate had presumed would take place between her parents proved remarkably brief.
Hilda awoke to an empty bed the following morning, her husband having risen early to take himself off to his study, but he made an appearance at the breakfast table an hour or so later. Stan obviously chose to confer with his wife in the presence of their daughter, a fact which rather surprised Kate, who had assumed her parents would have a private talk before the subject was introduced for general family discussion.
‘Nothing, thank you,’ he said to Cook, who was serving Hilda’s cheese omelette. Cook herself was waiting table. Ivy had every second weekend off and was currently being driven to the station by Max, where she would catch the train to Brisbane to stay with her sister.
‘A piece of toast at least, Stanley,’ Hilda insisted, ‘you haven’t eaten for –’
‘Yes, yes, very well, very well,’ Stan said tetchily and he took a slice from the rack on the table. He helped himself to a pat of butter and spread it on the toast, wondering why he was being forced to perform such a trivial action when his world was disintegrating about him, and wondering also how his wife could sit there calmly eating a cheese omelette. The sight irritated him intensely.
‘So,’ he said when Cook had returned to the kitchen, ‘I take it you’ve read these “diaries” as Kate calls them?’
‘I have,’ Hilda replied.
‘And what was your reaction to their many revelations?’
Hilda put down her knife and fork. ‘I was shocked.’ She dabbed at the corners of her mouth with her linen napkin. ‘I was deeply shocked, I must admit.’
‘Hardly surprising,’ he said drily.
‘To think that for all those years the great love shared between Grandmother Ellie and Big Jim was a lie . . .’ Hilda shook her head, perplexed. ‘Who could have dreamt such a thing possible?’
‘I see.’ Stan studied his wife with disdain, as if she was some form of sub-human species. ‘And this revelation proved a greater shock than the discovery that you’d married into a family with black blood in its veins?’
Hilda knew that she’d come up with the wrong answer, but in the face of her husband’s derision she remained surprisingly unflustered. She had formed her own conclusions and refused to stray from her path.
‘Naturally, the relationship with Pavi Salet and its outcome is the greatest shock of all, Stanley,’ she said. ‘I understand the ramifications that this entails for the family. But I cannot personally find Grandmother Ellie’s actions reprehensible. She was lost and alone, cast adrift after the death of her daughter –’
‘That’s enough,’ Stan barked and Hilda lapsed into silence, aware that she was being judged, but not particularly caring. Stanley had never understood matters of the heart. Most men don’t, she thought as she picked up her knife and fork and re-addressed her omelette.
Kate had found her parents’ exchange fascinating. She understood her father’s reaction to his wife’s apparent superficiality, for her mother’s fixation with romance could indeed be irritating. But something in their brief dialogue, and particularly in Hilda’s response to her husband’s contempt, had changed the views of a lifetime. In the past, Kate had considered her mother’s fey other-worldliness a sign of weakness, a trait that left Hilda vulnerable and prone to ridicule. She realised now how wrong she’d been. Hilda’s ability to romanticise was her greatest strength.
Just look at you Marmee, Kate thought, studying her mother, whose focus was now solely upon the omelette before her, you’ve provided yourself with the perfect escape. Alan’s quite right. You’re a survivor. More than a survivor, you’re indestructible.
Stan wanted to hurl something at his wife. Watching her eat, so imperturbably and with her perfect table manners, he wanted to upend the impeccably laid table and send things crashing to the floor. But what was the point? He looked down at his buttered toast, knowing that if he attempted to eat it he’d choke.