Shadow of the Osprey (18 page)

‘It don’t matter,’ Ben persisted stubbornly. ‘Nothing matters except how I feel about you, and Willie. And all the things you said to me back on the track when we fought the myalls. Didn’t any of that matter?’

Jenny wiped away her tears with the back of her hands. She was trembling and Ben placed his arm around her shoulders. A delicate little sunbird flashed black and gold as it hovered near a flowering tree on the river bank. She stared at the bird – only fractionally larger than a hummingbird – with its long beak inserted in the heart of the flower.

‘I meant what I said then,’ she replied quietly. ‘But that was then and this is now. You and I could never be together in towns where people would talk about how you married a woman like me.’

‘I don’t intend to stay in towns,’ Ben said close to her ear. ‘I’m saving to take up a lease down south on the Flinders River. Run cattle to supply meat for the goldfields. Kate is going to help finance me next year. She said it was worth the risk for me coming back to work for her instead of panning for gold on the Palmer.’

Jenny felt his gentle and confident words against her cheek. For the first time since they had walked away from Kate’s house she flashed him a wan smile. ‘You really do love me!’ she said. ‘You would take me as your lawful wife to work with you.’

‘I’ve even got a name for our new place, when we get it,’ he said, with a broad smile across his sun-tanned face. ‘I’m going to call it Jerusalem.’

‘Why a name from the Bible?’ she asked. ‘Isn’t that where the Jews live?’

Ben bowed his head and stared bleakly at the river before answering. ‘I’m a Jew. At least my mother says I am. But she never told me much about being a Jew except to say people called Gentiles don’t like us. They reckon we killed their Saviour.’

‘I don’t care if you are a Jew,’ Jenny said, taking his hand in hers. ‘I don’t think you would have killed Our Lord if you had been around then, not that I know much about being a Christian anyway.’ They looked at each other and burst into laughter. The fragments had settled around them and they both remained unhurt by the explosion. Jenny leaned across to Ben and kissed him on the lips. ‘I always loved you too, Ben,’ she said. ‘From the first time I saw you by the fire looking at me the way you did. You had a kind look, not like the other men in my life who hurt me. I felt safe when you looked at me.’

‘You don’t have to tell me about what happened before we met,’ Ben said. ‘That was the past and all I know is that this is now. I think we should get married and take up a lease on the Flinders.’

Jenny flung her arms around the young man and crushed him to her. ‘We will,’ she said and, for the first time since she could remember, felt true love. That unknown feeling she had always suspected existed – but was afraid to find, lest it hurt her.

That evening Jenny sought out Kate and told her of the love she and Ben felt for each other. Her news was met with a long hug from Kate and the conferring of her blessing on the future for them both.

When Kate was alone she reflected on the happy news. It was a good union. She had always sensed in the young girl a wonderful, if partially hidden, strength very few possessed. Jenny would make a fine wife for Ben and stand by him through good and bad times. She wondered miserably why it could not be so between herself and Luke. A tiny voice told her that she had to trust her heart more than her head. But for now her head ruled and her heart took a secondary role in her busy life.

M
iss Gertrude Pitcher did not like Mister Granville White. A stern woman with a permanently pinched face and silver-grey hair, she had strong ideas on the raising of young ladies. For some time now she had sensed something in the girls’ father that was not quite right, an intangible evilness about the man when he was around his daughters. But she dared not express her misgivings to Missus White for fear of reprisal, although she would do everything in her power to protect the girls from harm.

The nanny felt disturbed as she stood in the drawing room of her employer’s house, suspiciously eyeing Mister White and the young girl who stood brazenly beside him in her cheap dress staring defiantly back at her.

‘Mary is a little friend I have brought to meet Dorothy,’ he said, almost too casually for her liking. The girl did not have the look of a young lady but more of one of those trollops from the working class suburbs of Sydney. She had long dark hair that flowed loosely around her shoulders and her cherubic expression seemed to mask a worldly wisdom. ‘She and my daughter Dorothy,’ he continued, ‘will spend some time together this afternoon in the library with me. I would like you to fetch Dorothy to join us there Miss Pitcher.’

Miss Pitcher did not know why she should feel uneasy except that Missus White was away for the next two days with her younger daughter Helen visiting friends at Camden. Dorothy had been left in her care because she had been running a slight fever and was not up to the coach trip to the country with her mother. But why the concern, she wondered with a frown, her female intuition telling her something did not bid well. ‘Do you not think that Miss Mary is possibly a little old to be a friend to Miss Dorothy?’ she asked coldly. ‘Miss Mary appears to be . . . ’

‘Miss Mary is eleven years old and my daughter is nine, Miss Pitcher,’ Granville cut across icily, asserting his dominance as her employer. ‘And I think it is my position as Dorothy’s father to decide who my daughter should befriend. Don’t you think so Miss Pitcher?’

‘Very well Mister White,’ Gertrude conceded reluctantly. ‘I shall fetch Miss Dorothy.’ She turned her back and swished from the room with the imperious air of her position as nanny to a budding young lady of good breeding.

Granville scowled at the back of the departing nanny. He would have to think of some way of having her dismissed if she maintained her insolence. The woman did not know her place.

Dorothy stood uncertainly in the library. It was not a place where she was normally permitted and the invitation to the sacrosanct room made her feel uneasy. Granville smiled at his daughter as Miss Pitcher closed the door behind her. He rose from behind his desk to cross the room and thought how much his daughter was like Penelope at the same age. He took his daughter’s hand and led her to the big leather couch. Dorothy had the same golden ringlets of his sister and the same exquisite beauty.

‘Have I done something wrong Papa?’ the little girl asked in a tremulous voice, as her father sat her down on the couch.

‘No Dorothy,’ her father answered in a tight voice, giving his daughter a gentle hug of reassurance. ‘You are here because you are a good girl my little darling.’

Dorothy felt like crying with relief. She loved the man who had always been so distant in her life and yet always there to protect her world. The soothing words and gentle embrace flooded her with a sense of well-being. ‘I am a good girl Papa,’ she answered, with a slight tremor of relief that the call to the darkly mysterious and forbidden room was not to chastise her for unknown transgressions. ‘I love you Papa.’

‘I know my little darling. And I know you will never tell anyone about the games we will play together in this room. No matter what happens. Because if you do I will have to punish you and send you away forever. You will never see your mother or sister ever again. Do you understand what I am saying?’

Confused, Dorothy listened to the soft words of threat with a terrifying realisation that in fact she had done something terribly wrong to cause her father so much anguish, although what she did not know. She did know however that her father knew everything, and if he said he would send her away, then he would.

She stared at him standing over her and her tremor became a trembling. She wanted to burst into tears but she knew she must not. She had been taught that a young lady should not display her emotions. Ashen-faced, she watched in stunned disbelief as the strange girl in the room took off her clothes. She stood naked displaying herself with a leering smile. Dorothy wanted to run from the room and run forever. Horrified she sat and stared imploringly, hoping her father would make what was happening go away. But when she stared into her father’s eyes she saw only the strange, glazed expression of someone she did not know. It was as if a devil had come to take her father away. The creature leering at her, with the sweat glistening on his forehead, was as totally alien as the strange girl who came to her. Mary knelt and ran her hands up Dorothy’s legs inside her dress.

‘You will like what Mary is going to do to you my little darling,’ her father crooned, as his lust rose at the sight of Mary kneeling before his daughter. Mary’s naked buttocks spread enticingly before him. ‘Mary will do things to you that will feel nice. And Papa will do things to you that you will like.’

With mounting, helpless terror, Dorothy felt the older girl’s hands force her legs apart and her fingers touch that place forbidden to all. She wanted to scream out. How could it be that the man she most trusted in the world could be taken away and the devil come to his body?

Granville groaned as he watched Mary smiling her pleasure for him. It was so easy, he thought, as Mary caressed his daughter with lewd words of encouragement. It was as easy as the first time with his sister all those years before in England. And now he had another Penelope to pleasure him. It was so easy. With casual and brutal indifference to his daughter’s terror he began to unbutton the fly of his trousers.

Miss Gertrude Pitcher had always prided herself on her absolute self-control. But now she felt her steel-like resolve dissolve. What she had seen in Dorothy’s bedroom a short time after she had returned from the library was beyond all control.

Granville sat smugly, watching her across the library with the eyes of a predatory animal as Gertrude’s rage boiled into words. ‘Miss Dorothy has been . . . been . . . ’ she faltered in her attempt to dredge up words to fit what she had witnessed in the little girl’s bedroom: a face turned to her with eyes that had seen a horror only the devil himself could conjure from hell. She’d had an experience so unspeakable that Miss Pitcher wondered if the little girl lying huddled on her bed would ever speak again.

‘My daughter has not been harmed Miss Pitcher,’ Granville replied self-assuredly. ‘She has had a little fright when I had to chastise her. That is all. And I would hope for your prospects of continuing employment in my house that you remember that well.’

Gertrude stared disbelievingly at the monster before her. How could he lie so blatantly when the signs were obvious that the man had interfered with his own daughter? This man that she had once admired, not only as her employer, but also as a leading gentleman of colonial society feted for a future knighthood – how could he destroy the innocence of a child as gentle and trusting as little Dorothy?

Granville calmly opened a drawer of his desk and produced a box of fine Cuban cigars. Casually, as if indifferent to the presence of the enraged nanny in the library, he lit one. ‘You have nothing else to say, Miss Pitcher,’ he said, softly blowing smoke into the air and turning his attention back to Gertrude who stood stiff-backed and lost for words. ‘If not, I would take this opportunity to give you some advice that I would hope you would consider wisely. And my advice is that you keep to yourself any unfounded suspicions you may have in your filthy mind.’ He leaned forward with his arms on the desk and his tone changed. His words came as a snarl. ‘You see, Dorothy will tell you nothing, as there is nothing to tell. And you will definitely not make any reference of this day to my wife. If Dorothy should behave in unusual ways in the future, I would expect that you will be able to provide my wife with a satisfactory explanation.’

Gertrude Pitcher gaped at the almost unbelievable arrogance of the man. His presumption that she would condone the unspeakable acts which had caused the little girl to lapse into a catatonic state. ‘I will be telling Missus White of my suspicions as soon as she returns,’ she said firmly. ‘I am sure she will know what to do.’

‘I can assure you that no such thing will happen Miss Pitcher,’ Granville said, as he watched a halo of blue smoke rise slowly in the still air of the room. ‘For if you speak of unfounded allegations I will use my considerable power to ruin you. Or worse still, you may have an unfortunate accident, as it seems many people around me do from time to time.’

‘You dare threaten me Mister White?’

‘I do not threaten Miss Pitcher,’ he snarled. ‘I do.’

Gertrude felt the heat of his malevolence scorch her soul with real fear. It was true that people around Mister White suffered unsavoury fates. She shuddered. Her personal fear for her life was now greater than her rage.

Granville smiled as he watched the expression of sanctimonious indignation dissolve on the stern nanny’s face. The extraordinary wealth at his disposal, thanks to his growing influence in the Macintosh companies, gave him unlimited power over the likes of the nanny and others of her penniless ilk. But he also knew he must guarantee her silence – and by means other than fear alone.

He reached into the drawer of his desk and removed a wad of bank notes. It amounted to a year’s wages for the nanny. Fear and greed were worthy allies to a man like Granville, who lived by both. He placed the wad on the desk and tapped it with the stub of his cigar. ‘All this is yours Miss Pitcher,’ he said. ‘It is yours to keep and use in any way you may wish. But I must point out that there are conditions attached.’

Gertrude opened her mouth to speak. Granville raised his hand to silence her. ‘I will finish speaking Miss Pitcher. The first condition is that you remain in my employ for as long as I desire. And by remaining in my employ you will – how do I put it? – protect my interests in the matter of my love for Dorothy, no matter how much you may find the way I express that love distasteful. I can assure you, that she will learn in time to appreciate what we do together and view it as a genuine expression of my affection. Needless to say, I hope that I can come to rely on your support immediately. That is all I have to say. I will leave you alone now to think about all that I have proposed.’

He rose and pushed past Gertrude who stood stunned by all that had transpired. Granville went to his daughter’s bedroom. Dorothy needed reassurance that what had transpired between her, Mary Beasley and himself was their little secret.

When Granville returned to the library ten minutes later, Miss Pitcher was gone from the room, and so too was the wad of bank notes.

The cedar-panelled boardroom of the Macintosh offices had an ingrained scent of rich old cigar smoke. Moments earlier the boardroom had been filled with men wearing expensive suits and grim faces. After the meeting was adjourned they left behind a haze of blue smoke and two people sitting opposite each other at the solid teak table.

Lady Enid Macintosh sat straight backed and stared hard at the man opposite her. He felt decidedly nervous under her unrelenting gaze and wished that the board of directors had chosen anyone but himself to speak to her. He had known Lady Macintosh for many years and wondered how she did not seem to age as he had in the same period. She still had the flawless complexion and dark hair of a woman much younger than one in her late fifties whereas time had given him a paunch and thinned his hair.

‘You have been in discussions with my son-in-law Mister McHugh,’ she finally said, breaking the silence. ‘And I presume he has convinced you all that I am a mere woman, incapable of managing my late husband’s estates.’

McHugh pulled a pained expression as if attempting to ward off her unrelenting stony stare. ‘It is not my personal opinion that you should step aside Lady Macintosh,’ he replied. ‘But the general feeling of the shareholders is that a man, such as your son-in-law, should be granted exclusive power to decide future enterprises. Mister White has a proven record for increasing profits, which you no doubt must acknowledge. It’s just that a strong man is needed at the helm to steer the Macintosh companies. You are not growing any younger Lady Macintosh, and the strain of managing your late husband’s companies must weary you.’

Enid’s unrelenting stiffness in the presence of the spokesman for the shareholders softened noticeably. Was it that the woman was finally seeing his point of view?

‘I concede that I may not be growing any younger Mister McHugh,’ she said with a faint smile. ‘But I do not concede my son-in-law is the man to take control of my late husband’s companies.’

‘But there are no other men in your family to take the reins when you have . . . ah . . . passed on,’ he implored. ‘Surely you can see that. Mister White is the only close male blood relative you have and, after all, he is married to your daughter.’

‘What if I said that you were wrong about Mister White being the only close male blood relative I have,’ Enid said with a mysterious smile. ‘What if another existed who I could prove was of my blood. Would that alter your opinion about Mister White being the only one capable of taking absolute control in the future? What if even now I had chosen one with Macintosh blood to be groomed for the company’s management?’

‘What you propose seems somewhat hard to understand,’ McHugh replied, hoping that his feeling of disbelief was not apparent in his face. ‘From what I know of the tragic circumstances of your family’s history none of your sons left children. Unless . . .’ The possibility of illegitimate offspring was not something one expressed and he let the question hang between them.

‘I do not intend to go any further with this conversation Mister McHugh,’ Enid said quietly. ‘And under the circumstances I can only request that you do not mention outside these walls what has transpired between us. All I ask you is to go back to the shareholders and reassure them that I will
not
be stepping aside for my son-in-law. And reassure them that there will be another of Macintosh blood to take over from me in the years ahead. One whose breeding has produced qualities far superior to Mr White.’