The Touch Read online

  WORK THAT was not to be done. On August 6 a telegram from the Trades and Labour Council recalled Bede to Sydney. News had come that the Pastoralists’ “Union” was shipping non-union bales of wool from the country to Sydney to be loaded aboard overseas-owned ships. The Sydney Wharf Labourers’ Union declared the wool “black” and refused to load it. In the midst of which a dispute blew up between the shipowners and the maritime unions, starting with the Marine Officers’ Association and going all the way down the pecking order. The Newcastle colliery owners then locked their miners out, so the miners on every other coal-field in the state struck in sympathy. Industrial chaos even extended to the Broken Hill silver mines, where the owners suspended all work due to the fact, they said, that bullion couldn’t be shipped.

  The strikes spread like wildfire and eventually involved over 50,000 workers of all kinds. A brawl in Sydney saw the Riot Act read out, and bitterness grew in pace with the privations the strikers began to suffer. Thanks to that huge donation to the London dockers in 1889, union funds couldn’t meet the demand for strike pay on the home front.

  The strikes, which had begun early in August of 1890, rolled on until the end of October, when the unions crumbled in the face of more than obdurate employers and lack of money; the whole continent was now feeling the escalating economic crisis. By mid-November the wharf laborers, coal miners and others were forced to return to work with their demands unmet. Employers won a great victory, for they came out of those terrible three months with the right to hire non-union labor, even in industries that until now had been closed shops. The last to yield were the shearers of sheep.

  Alexander had closed the Apocalypse Mine completely when the silver mines at Broken Hill shut down, pleading the same excuse: he couldn’t ship his bullion. About the colliers at his Lithgow mine Alexander didn’t care, but he was too astute to punish his Kinross workers, to whom he paid a subsistence wage slightly higher than union strike pay. Luck had been on his side; when the nation went back to work, Alexander’s economy measures seemed pale.

  KINROSS HAD become a distant memory for Bede Talgarth. He licked his wounds along with the rest of the labor movement, and turned his attention to the next elections for the New South Wales Legislative Assembly, which was the elected lower house. They weren’t due until 1892, but now was the time for planning. The three-month nationwide strikes had crippled many families on the breadline, and he was going to be one of the men who, by legislation, would take them off the breadline.

  A forward-thinking man, he considered the Sydney electorates wherein a Labor candidate stood a chance; they were many, as Sydney now held almost half a million people. Inner-city venues like Redfern, almost certain to return a Labor man, were so hotly contested by senior Labor men that Bede knew he’d lose the race to be Labor’s official candidate. Therefore he would stand for a more marginal seat, and decided to go just southwest of the dreary industrial wastelands around the filthy rivers that trickled into Botany Bay. Here he thought he’d get enough votes in the Labor pre-selection ballot, then enough votes in the state elections themselves to be returned as a Member of the Legislative Assembly. Mind made up, he moved to his chosen electorate and worked with indefatigable energy to become a well-known figure there—warm, passionate, caring.

  THE MOMENT the strikes were over Alexander packed his trunks and took ship for San Francisco. Much to his displeasure, Ruby flatly refused to go with him.

  Three

  Disaster

  NELL’S FIFTEENTH birthday was, in her opinion, a disaster. A letter had come from her father that told her he had undergone a change of mind; she would now wait until 1892 to commence engineering at Sydney University. The four boys, older than she, would also wait out this year of 1891 in Kinross so that the five of them would, as originally planned, go up together.

  “I think it’s important that I be in Kinross and Sydney when you start at university,” said his neat, straight up-and-down handwriting. “Of course I realize that this postponement won’t come as a joy to you, but button down your feelings and accept my decision, Nell. It’s made in your best interests.”

  Nell went straight to her mother brandishing the letter like a rioter a flaming torch.

  “What did you say to him?” the girl demanded, face scarlet.

  “I beg your pardon?” Elizabeth asked blankly.

  “What did you say to him when you wrote to him?”

  “Wrote to whom? Your father?”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake, Mum, stop acting the fool!”

  “I don’t care for your tone or your language, Nell, and I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “This!” Nell cried, shaking the letter under Elizabeth’s nose. “Daddy says I can’t start engineering this year, I have to wait until I’m sixteen!”

  “Oh, thank God for that!” said Elizabeth, sighing in relief.

  “What an actress you are! As if you didn’t know! Well, you do know! It was you made him change his mind—what did you say?”

  “You have my word, Nell, that I have said nothing whatsoever.”

  “Your word! What a laugh! You’re the most dishonest woman I know, Mum, and that’s a fact. The only pleasure you get out of life is making mischief for me with Daddy!”

  “You are mistaken,” said Elizabeth woodenly, withdrawing. “I cannot pretend that I’m not glad you have to wait, but it’s not of my doing. If you doubt me, go and talk to Auntie Ruby.”

  But the tears wouldn’t be stemmed another instant; Nell ran from the conservatory bawling like a six-year-old.

  “Her father has spoiled her,” said Mrs. Surtees, an involuntary witness of this outburst. “It is a pity, Lady Kinross, because she is a nice girl at heart. Very unselfish.”

  “I know,” said Elizabeth, looking despondent.

  “She’ll get over it,” Mrs. Surtees said, and departed.

  Yes, she’ll get over it, Elizabeth thought, but she won’t like me any better once she does. I can’t seem to find the key to Nell. The trouble is, I suppose, that she’s so far on her father’s side that I am to blame for anything and everything that doesn’t meet with her approval. Poor little thing! She topped the state in her matriculation exams last November, so what on earth can she do to keep her mind occupied for another year? I think that Alexander came to this decision not so much for Nell’s sake as because he must have realized that the four boys aren’t up to it yet. And if they don’t go, Nell can’t go. But why didn’t he explain that to her? If he had, she’d surely not blame me. A rhetorical question, really. Alexander does whatever he can to keep Nell and me apart.

  Nor was it any use going to Ruby for comfort; she had made it up with Alexander, albeit at a distance. When he did come home they would fall into each other’s arms like Venus and Mars. A shiver of fear rippled down Elizabeth’s backbone. With Ruby to come home to, Alexander might well return earlier than planned.

  WITHIN TEN minutes of that encounter with Nell, Elizabeth confronted another member of her feminine family. Jade.

  “Miss Lizzy, please may I speak to you for a moment?” Jade asked, standing in the conservatory doorway.

  How peculiar! thought Elizabeth, staring at her. Pretty, eternally youthful Jade looked ninety years old.

  “Come in and sit down, Jade.”

  Jade sidled in, perched herself on the edge of a white cane chair and squeezed her hands together in her lap, trembling.

  “My dear, what is it?” Elizabeth asked, sitting beside her.

  “It’s Anna, Miss Lizzy.”

  “Oh, don’t tell me she’s run off again!”

  “No, Miss Lizzy.”

  “Then what is wrong with Anna?” It was not an anxious query; only yesterday, during her shift with Anna, she had thought how well the girl looked—clear skin, lustrous eyes. At thirteen and three-quarters, Anna was settling into physical maturity far more easily than Nell. If only she didn’t behave so atrociously while she had her courses!

 
Jade managed to speak. “I suppose it’s all the fuss we’ve had in the last few months—strikes—Sir Alexander going away—” Jade stopped, licked her lips, started to shake rather than tremble.

  “Tell me, Jade. Whatever it is, I won’t be annoyed.”

  “Anna hasn’t had her courses in four months, Miss Lizzy.”

  Eyes wide, jaw dropped, Elizabeth gazed at Jade in dawning horror. “She’s missed three times?”

  “Or four. As best I can remember, Miss Lizzy. I dread her courses so much that I don’t want to think of them. My sweet baby held down, fed opium, screaming—I put them out of my mind! Until today, when she said, ‘Anna no bleed anymore.’ ”

  Chilled to the bone, a weight on her chest heavier than lead, Elizabeth got to her feet and flew up the stairs, forcing her pace to a walk as she neared Anna’s room.

  The girl was sitting on the floor playing with a heap of daisies she had gathered out of the lawn; Jade had taught her to poke a slit in their stems and thread them together to form a chain. Elizabeth surveyed her through new eyes. Anna is a woman in full bloom. A beautiful face and body, a beautiful innocence because the mind belongs to a three-year-old. Anna, my Anna! What have they done to you? You’re thirteen!

  “Mum!” said Anna cheerfully, extending her daisy chain.

  “Yes, it’s lovely, dear. Thank you.” Elizabeth looped the flowers around her neck and went to Anna to lift her to her feet. “Jade just found a tick in the daisies—tick! Nasty old bitey tick. We have to see if you got a tick on you, so will you take off your clothes?”

  “Erk! Nasty tick!” said Anna, who remembered the occasion when she had had a tick embedded in her arm. “Calamine!” she squealed. A three-syllable word of great importance to Anna, who knew that it took the itch and sting out of hurties.

  “Yes, Jade has the calamine. Take off all your clothes for me, dear, please. We have to look for the tick.”

  “No want! Anna no bleed.”

  “Yes, I know that. For the tick, Anna, please.”

  “No!” said Anna, looking mutinous.

  “Then let’s see if we can find the tick where you don’t have any clothes. If we don’t find it, we’ll play at taking off your clothes a bit at a time until we do find it. All right?”

  And so it went until even Anna’s drawers came off, her clothes folded neatly in a pile as Jade had taught her over years of patient persistence.

  The two women looked first at the naked Anna, then at each other. A beautiful body whose ordinarily flat belly was definitely starting to swell; full and perfect breasts whose nipples had turned dark brown, engorged.

  “We should have continued to bathe her no matter how much she objected,” Elizabeth said dully. “But one doesn’t see into the future.” She kissed Anna on the forehead tenderly. “Thank you, dear. You were lucky. No nasty bitey tick. Put your clothes on, there’s a good girl.”

  Clothes on again, Anna went back to her daisies.

  “How far along do you think she is?” Elizabeth asked Jade outside in the hall.

  “Closer to five than four months, Miss Lizzy.”

  The tears were streaming down her face, but Elizabeth didn’t notice them. “Oh, my poor baby! Jade, Jade, what can we do?”

  “Ask Miss Ruby,” said Jade, weeping too.

  Anger came, so violent that Elizabeth shuddered. “I knew Alexander was wrong! I knew we had to replace Dragonfly! Oh, what fools men are! He actually thought that he could throw the mantle of his power over my beautiful, desirable, innocent child! Damn him to hell!”

  Nell came down the hall in time to hear this, looking as if her temper had cooled enough to believe that her mother wasn’t the cause of her deprivation. “Mum, what is it? You’re not crying because I shouted at you, are you?”

  “Anna is pregnant,” said Elizabeth, wiping her eyes.

  Nell tottered, held herself up by leaning on the wall. “Oh, Mum, no! It can’t be! Who would do that to Anna?”

  “Some filthy mongrel who deserves to have it cut off!” said Elizabeth savagely. She turned to Jade. “Stay with her, please. Nell, you’re reinforcements. She’s not to be let wander.”

  “Maybe she ought to be let wander,” said Nell, white-faced. “Then we might catch the bastard.”

  “I’d say he’s gone. If he didn’t abscond weeks ago, he’d certainly see her pregnancy for himself now and be off.”

  “What are you going to do, Mum?”

  “See Ruby. Perhaps we can get rid of the thing.”

  “It’s too late!” Nell and Jade cried in unison to Elizabeth’s back. “It’s too late for that!”

  WHICH WAS what Ruby said after a fierce bout of lurid cursing. “What on earth got into you and Jade?” she asked, fists clenched. “How did you let her miss so many times, for God’s sake?”

  “In all honesty, I think because it’s such a nightmare when she has her courses—we dread them so much that we don’t want to think about them, let alone expect them. Besides, she does miss from time to time, she’s not regular,” said Elizabeth. “And who would—who would ever have dreamed of this? It’s rape, Ruby!”

  “I would have dreamed of it!” Ruby snapped.

  Somehow it mattered to have Ruby’s good opinion; Elizabeth battled on. “Things have been so hectic, and Alexander so hard to live with, between his arrogance, Lee’s defection, his wanting to get away, and the friction between him and you—”

  “Oh, I see! It’s my fault, is it?”

  “No, no, it’s my fault, entirely my fault! I’m her mother, she’s my responsibility!” Elizabeth cried. “I blame myself, no one else! Poor Jade is beside herself.”

  “And so are you,” said Ruby, calming down enough to go to the sideboard and pour two large cognacs. “Brandy, Elizabeth, and no arguments. Drink.”

  Elizabeth drank, felt a little stronger. “What do we do?”

  “Put getting rid of it out of your mind, for one thing. If she’s closer to five months than to four, she could die. You get rid of them at six weeks—even ten weeks is risky. And thirteen is so young! Though Sir Edward Wyler’s son might be willing to operate. He did take over his father’s practice, didn’t he?”

  “Yes. Simon Wyler.”

  “I’ll telegram him, but don’t hold out any hopes. I doubt a medical practitioner in good standing would consent to do it, even given the circumstances.” Ruby drew in a breath. “And Alexander will have to be told, even if he decides not to come home for the birth of his first grandchild.”

  “Dear God! He’ll be livid, Ruby.”

  “Oh, yes, he’ll be livid.”

  “What torments me most is what the baby might be like.”

  “The baby might be quite normal, Elizabeth, if Anna is the way she is because of her birth.” Ruby gave a snort of hysterical laughter. “Jesus, what an irony! Alexander might get his male heir from his mental daughter and some filthy fucking shit-arsed mongrel who preys on defenseless children.” Her laughter grew wilder, she shrieked with it until the tears came and she bolted into Elizabeth’s arms to howl herself into heaving silence. “My dear, my so very dear Elizabeth,” she said then, “what else is left for you to go through? If I could, I’d take it all away from you and bear it myself. You’ve never harmed a fly, I’m a whore pushing fifty.”

  “There’s one other thing, Ruby.”

  “What?”

  “Finding the man who did this.”

  “Ah!” Ruby sat up, found her handkerchief and mopped at the remains of her grief. “I doubt we ever will, Elizabeth, because I’ve never heard so much as a whisper that anyone was interfering with Anna. This is a small town, and I sit at the heart of it. Between the public bar, the saloon bar and the dining room, I hear everything. I can’t credit that he’s a local—no local would dare, he’d be lynched. Everyone local knows her age! My guess is a commercial traveler—they come and go so often that it’s hard to keep track of them, never the same man for the same company twice in a row. Rifle salesmen, saddlers, hawkers
and hustlers of everything from ointments and tonics to bottles of scent and gimcrack jewelry. Yes, a commercial traveler.”

  “He should be found and prosecuted. Hanged!”

  “That’s not sensible.” The green eyes grew severe. “Use your brains, Elizabeth! Your private sorrow would become everybody’s business and rags like Truth would have a field day with Sir Alexander Kinross’s dirty washing.”

  “I see,” Elizabeth whispered. “Yes, I see.”

  “Go home. I’ll send a telegram to Dr. Simon Wyler and get out the code book to send a cable to Alexander. This is one item of news he won’t want spelled in English. Go, dear, please go! Anna needs you.”

  ELIZABETH WENT, still shattered, but feeling that she could now cope with this disaster. The brandy had helped, but not as much as Ruby had. Practical, immensely experienced, down to earth. Though Ruby hadn’t seen this coming either; if she had she would have spoken up. That’s a comfort. We trust too much, we think that all the world will pity and protect these poor unfortunates as we do. It is no fault of theirs that they are what they are. But what a world is this, that it holds monsters who care only for their carnal satisfaction, who can think of a female human being as no more than a vessel. My darling child, a mere thirteen years old! My darling child, who won’t even know what has happened to her, nor understand when we try to tell her. We must get her through this—how, I do not know. Do cows and cats have any comprehension of what is happening to them when they conceive? But Anna isn’t a cow or a cat, she’s a damaged thirteen-year-old, so I can’t hope that she will deal with her labor the way cows and cats do. The pregnancy, perhaps. Knowing Anna, she’ll simply think she’s getting fat—or does she even know what getting fat is?