A Cry from the Dark Page 7

  “You go to Grafton’s and get your father,” said Betty’s mother. “I’ve got to go and have a word with the vicar about the Christmas party in the church hall.”

  “Oh, Mum! Do I have to?”

  “Now don’t whinge, Betty. No harm can come to you. I’ve got Oliver, and all you’ve got to do is ask someone to bring him out to talk to you.”

  That was precisely what Betty hated doing.

  To make matters worse, when she approached the main door of Grafton’s Hotel, Sam Battersby emerged from it to take a breather in the sun during a lull in customers’ orders. There he stood, fat and leering, and Betty had come so close to the entrance that she couldn’t change course and go around to the back.

  “Well, well, young lady. This is an unexpected pleasure.”

  “I’ve got to speak to my dad.” The request came out, as intended, more rude than merely businesslike.

  Sam Battersby’s leer broadened.

  “No problem about that. When I’ve just finished my smoke I’ll go in and get him for you.”

  “Please, it’s urgent.”

  “Now what could be urgent on a lovely Saturday morning when everyone’s enjoying the sunshine buying little things for Christmas? Let you and me just have a little chat and—”

  “It’s a message from Wilgandra. Dad’s got to drive Bill to Walgett to get some medicine urgently needed for Mrs. Cheveley.”

  He scanned her face to see whether she was lying.

  “Oh well…Bill’s a good mate…We’ll just have to postpone our little chat, young lady.” And he lumbered off into the smoky, dark, male-filled saloon bar behind him.

  “Anything wrong?” asked Jack Whitelaw when he came out.

  “Bill Cheveley wants you to drive into Walgett to get some new medicine for Mrs. Cheveley,” said Betty, this time not having to stretch the truth.

  “Oh, right…What I meant was, anything wrong with you? You looked sort of…upset, like.”

  “I don’t like the way he calls me ‘young lady,’ or the way he thinks he and I should have a ‘little chat.’ ”

  He walked on for a bit.

  “It’s not much, is it, Betty?”

  “No, not when I say it out…But it’s not just what he says, it’s how he looks at me.”

  “Yes, I can see that. Well, I’ll wait here for Bill and the car. That could be them in the distance. Look after your mother. We should be back by sundown.”

  But Betty did not go at once to join up with her mother and Oliver at the vicarage. From the edge of the little township where she had left her father she walked back along the strip of bitumen greeting schoolfriends, some with parents, usually mothers—the fathers were in Grafton’s, asserting their superiority to such concerns as shopping—some in little knots by Phil’s or Bob’s Café, or even by the little shack at the far end where Mr. Blackfeller swapped stories with anyone who passed. Betty walked quickly past the hotel, then went up to a group of about her own age outside Bob’s.

  “I haven’t seen Hughie, have you?” she asked. One or two boys gave exaggerated shrugs.

  “His mother was in Bundaroo yesterday, I think,” contributed one of the girls. “Her Ladyship probably did the family shopping then.”

  “What do you want with a mardarse like Hughie Naismyth?” asked Herbie Cox. Herbie was born in Nottingham, and his father had never lost his native dialect in the twelve years the family had been in Australia. Herbie picked up the words from back home and liked spreading those words of contempt as an alternative to the Australian ones.

  “Hughie’s not a mardarse,” said Betty. “He taught you lot soccer.”

  The shrugs came again, still more exaggerated.

  “Soccer’s a game for sissy boys anyway,” said one of the others. “You don’t want to go with that Hughie. He’s useless.”

  “He’s a sight more use than thickies like you,” said Betty, and she walked away quickly.

  Immediately she kicked herself. She was not going to help Hughie by abusing his classmates. She had been thrown by what she had just heard, which was what she had been dreading. The suspicion of Hughie, momentarily lightened by the boys’ interest in the new game, had softened first to indifference, but was now hardening again into disdain and dislike. Soon there could be one of those minor school vendettas—not frequent things, but always a danger where incomers were concerned. Bundaroo was a small town with a very small-town dislike of anything unfamiliar, unknown.

  As she made her way down the street, there was a shout from the little knot of teenagers she had left.

  “Only thing that nancy could play would be bloody Beethoven!”

  “Batehoven,” Betty turned and shouted, and again realized she’d done a foolish thing. If there was going to be a vendetta she knew she had to be on Hughie’s side. But it would be so much better if there was no vendetta, and all she had done in the last two minutes was to harden antipathies.

  She wondered how they had found out about the Beethoven afternoon, but it turned out to be quite simple. When Mrs. Naismyth had gone over with the English-style egg custard to the Cheveley’s house at Wilgandra she had not seen the invalid but had given it to the full-time cook and housemaid who had been so necessary since Mrs. Cheveley’s health had failed. This was the mother of Steve Drayton, wife of Kevin the stockman, whom the new manager had taken against, so conversation was inevitably short and stilted. In the course of it Mrs. Naismyth had said that her son and Betty Whitelaw had got together “and were playing Beethoven, would you believe it?” It was a remark somewhere between a boast and an apology. Mrs. Naismyth was a woman who was never sure of herself, her values, or her place in the scheme of things. The remark was reported later to the Draytons, father and son, and thence circulated around Wilgandra, and was carried into Bundaroo.

  When she saw her mother leaving the weatherboard vicarage, Betty went over and took charge of Oliver.

  “Dad’s on the way to Walgett,” she said, and her mother nodded.

  “The poor lady needs anything that could bring her relief, so I’m told,” said her mother.

  “Oh, Betty, I’ve got something for you,” said the Reverend Potter-Clowes, taking a sheet of exercise book from his pocket. “The competition was in this week’s Bulletin. I’m an awfully slow reader, because I sometimes get ideas for sermons from it—”

  “I know,” said Betty.

  “I’m sure you do! I couldn’t keep anything like that from a sharp girl like you. Anyway, I’ve copied it all out, and you can really get thinking.”

  As they walked back through Bundaroo and out toward home, Betty noted that the Naismyths had arrived, probably driven by one of the stockmen in his old jalopy (Paul Naismyth had talked about getting his own car since he arrived, but had not yet done so). Paul was shopping with his wife, perhaps because he realized he wouldn’t be made welcome at Grafton’s, or possibly from a sense that officers didn’t mix socially with the other ranks. He had a lot to learn about Australian democracy, which in the outback was real, and more than skin-deep. Paul Naismyth, however, did not talk or act like a learner.

  As they walked past Bob’s Café, Betty saw that the little knot of her schoolmates had been joined by Hughie. They weren’t ignoring him, but whenever he spoke they looked him in the eye and didn’t respond. It was a technique she knew very well. She sometimes thought she knew everything there was to know about Bundaroo. Quite soon she was to realize that her knowledge was as skin-deep as Paul Naismyth’s understanding of Australian democracy.

  The topic of Bundaroo and the Bulletin competition came up the next night when she, Oliver, and Sylvia went to the concert of classical pops at the Royal Albert Hall. She knew the Hall was the attraction, so she suggested that they meet in the bar half an hour before the concert was due to begin, so that if they felt like it they could do a bit of walking around before the music started.

  “Beethoven’s Leonore number three,” said Sylvia, looking at the program. “At least I know that.
And then there’s the Elvira Madigan concerto.”

  “Betty was famous in Bundaroo for playing Beethoven—on the gramophone, that is—with her friend Hughie,” said Oliver. “It was part of the local folklore after she was gone.”

  “I don’t see anything outrageous or contradictory in that,” said Bettina. “I see Bundaroo, or at least the country around it, as spare—rather grand and terrible. Not unlike.”

  “That wasn’t quite how you saw it in the Bulletin piece,” said Sylvia. Bettina shot her a glance.

  “Good heavens! You haven’t gone rummaging around in libraries to find that, have you?”

  Sylvia smiled, and nodded her head in Ollie’s direction.

  “A family heirloom,” he said. “We got it when Dad died. It was much-thumbed even then. He showed it around a lot.”

  “Of course, Dad would. We were given five copies, along with the prize—the little silver cup, I mean. The real prize was a hundred pounds and the trip to Sydney. I’ve still got one of the copies. Mum and Dad had one, and so did the Cheveleys and the vicar. That just left one, and I gave it to Auntie Shirley in Armidale. I was living with her by then, and she made sure I was practically a local celebrity.”

  “But in the piece you concentrated on the narrowness—how limiting the place was,” insisted Sylvia.

  “I dealt with it, but I covered it up pretty well. You’re sharp to see how important it was. If I’d plugged it too hard I would never have won first prize. I had to balance it with a lot of stuff about the closeness of the people, the sense of community, the church and school pulling the place together, the monotonous grandeur of the landscape. The narrowness of people’s horizons was a very minor part of the piece as far as space went. I was going all out for that prize.”

  “You knew even then you were that good?” asked Ollie.

  “I knew I had to get away,” said Bettina. She might have elaborated on that, but suddenly she said, “Good Lord! Speaking of my Bundaroo past!”

  Her companions looked toward the other end of the bar where Hughie, his wife by his side, was coping with two gray-haired ladies. Bettina knew fans when she saw them, and these had obviously bearded Hughie, determined to tell him how much they’d enjoyed his television series, The Rise of the Modern, now all of twelve years old, and dating back to the time when television took its educational role seriously. Hughie’s wife, Marie, immaculate in her blonde perfection like a Hitchcock heroine targeted by birds, stood resolutely beside him, her smile fixed in place as implacably as each strand of hair. After a minute or two the fans backed apologetically away, and Hughie turned in their direction, raised his hand to them, then, seeing in Bettina’s face permission, edged his way over, followed by the determined Marie.

  “Hello, Bettina. This must be Oliver. I remember you when you were just a dirty face and sticky fingers. I’m Eugene Naismyth—Hughie—this is my wife, Marie. And you must be Sylvia Easton. We haven’t met, but it’s good to see you over here. Did you have a good flight? Is there such a thing as a good flight from Australia to Britain, I wonder?”

  “I’ve only known two,” said Oliver. “All I know is, I prefer it with a stopover.”

  “True. But how ghastly you feel when you have to get on the plane again after the stopover. Marie knows. We go to Australia regularly, and it gets worse and worse each time—one other symptom of aging.”

  “Do you have relatives there?” asked Ollie.

  “No, no. I’m a sort of ambassador in this country for Australian art—an expert, if the truth be known, who knows rather more than some of the specialists back there. I go back regularly to make sure I keep up with the art scene.”

  “I don’t suppose there was much of an art scene when you and Bettina were going to school in Bundaroo, was there?” asked Sylvia.

  “Oh, definitely a burgeoning one,” said Hughie. “I’d been in Melbourne and noticed it. I thought I was the expert because I knew more about it than anyone in Bundaroo, which was a very small degree of self-praise. Anyway, I nurtured Bettina’s taste.”

  “Oh dear, don’t let’s go back into prehistory,” sighed Marie Naismyth. Her speciality was calculated rudeness. “You know, all Hughie’s wives have had to live with Bettina as a third in the bed.”

  “Metaphorically speaking,” said Hughie, covering up for her rudeness. “Our friendship has always been exclusively aesthetic.”

  “Too right,” said Bettina.

  She had been aware over the past two days that her accent was regaining some of its old Australian overtones, and now she exaggerated them deliberately. Hughie, on the other hand, who owed some of his television popularity to the cut-glass enunciation of old-fashioned upper-class usages, had put on his most dated and precious tones to welcome the newcomers. Bettina wondered how far both developments were deliberate, how far unconscious. They were interrupted by the sound of the bell.

  “Here we go for popular culture,” said Hughie.

  “Oh dear,” said Bettina, “I was intending to take them around the building before the concert, and now there won’t be time.”

  “If you would like a tour of this great monument to Victorian uxoriousness,” said Hughie, “you can have one in the interval with a moderately well-qualified guide.”

  “Oh yes—yes, please,” said Ollie and Sylvia, as they moved toward the auditorium. Bettina was pleased to get out of that chore, because really she knew very little about Victorian architecture, and she had other things on her mind. She pulled Sylvia back.

  “How is Mark facing his disgrace?” she asked ironically.

  “Disgrace? He seems quite unaware of any. He just says ‘All in a day’s work’ and grins. I’m still trying to work out what that’s supposed to mean.”

  The concert proved more to Bettina’s taste than she’d expected, with a performance of the Mozart by a young Norwegian pianist that was a revelation. But in the second half, full of familiar and bouncy short pieces, she wondered about Hughie’s unexpected appearance. She had told him on the phone all the things that they were booked for. Most of them were for long-running shows, or, as at Covent Garden, part of a series of performances. The concert was the only ticket they had that was a one-off, the one thing where Hughie could be sure of meeting Oliver and Sylvia.

  One thing Bettina was sure of: the last sort of cultural event that Hughie would normally wish to be seen at was an Albert Hall concert of classical lollipops.

  Chapter 7

  Painted into a Corner

  The audience at Tosca was predictably “brilliant,” which meant in Bettina’s view well-heeled, either by inheritance, the sweat of their brows, or via some infernal financial nous that she could not begin to understand. There were faces that she knew in the foyer and crush bar, people she could flap a brief greeting to, but she thought Oliver and Sylvia would be happiest just looking rather than being introduced, so they found themselves a space and contentedly sipped their drinks. Sylvia certainly observed the dresses with a clinical, appraising eye, suggesting not that she would ever dress like that herself, but that she was glad to know that this was what people did wear these days to smart events in London.

  “It’s good to have seen an audience like this,” she murmured.

  “Once,” said Bettina.

  Their seats were not of the grandest, being in the amphitheater stalls, but four of them had set Bettina back more than she cared to think about. She wasn’t mean, but she did like to feel she had got value for her money. What was the point of subsidizing a theater for the superbly well-heeled, she wondered, conscious that she would be accounted by many as one of that company herself. Clare slipped into her seat beside them only as the lights were going down, so there was no chance of doing more than making muttered introductions.

  The first act got into its stride quickly, and Bettina was glad it was an old, traditional production with monumental sets and a tenor of the stand-and-deliver persuasion—delivering, indeed, rather more, in the form of long high notes, than Puccini h
ad stipulated. Then Tosca arrived, jealous and demanding, and the temperature rose. Ollie sat forward in his seat, and Sylvia stiffened into renewed attention. By the time the act ended they were so involved that Bettina wondered they could forbear from booing Scarpia.

  They collected the drinks they had ordered and found a corner of the crush bar where they could watch and listen as well as talk.

  “Are you enjoying your stay?” Clare asked Sylvia. Bettina was interested that she couldn’t quite keep the note of metropolitan condescension out of her voice.

  “So far very much. Everything so new and unusual.”

  “We’re enjoying this tremendously,” said Oliver. “I gather that we’ve got you to thank for getting the tickets.” Clare gave a wave of dismissal.

  “All part of the service.”

  “I’m sure it’s not.”

  “For some authors,” amended Clare.

  “I know one can’t expect it to be in English, with international stars,” said Sylvia, “but I wish I knew exactly what was being said at each point.”

  “The theory is that you study the libretto in advance,” said Clare.

  “But if I did it thoroughly, I’d have to do it listening to discs of the music, and by the time I was really well-prepared I’d know the opera so well that it would have lost some of its impact,” said Sylvia.

  “You’re quite right,” said Bettina. “Audiences these days don’t want to follow the action, they just want to wallow in the music, with a vague idea of what’s going on. And that suits the singers, who don’t have to bother about getting the words across. They should be having that audience agog with the ‘what happens next?’ excitement. They’ve got it wrong, you’ve got it right.”

  It was the first time she had expressed even implied praise or fellow-feeling for her daughter. Sylvia flushed with surprise, and to cover the embarrassment of the moment Clare said, “And where else are you going while you’re over here?”