The Three Miss Allens, page 26
Clara didn’t look back at her sister. Her gaze was stoically ahead, to her future, however mysterious and unknown it might be.
Ruby managed to compose herself until she arrived back at Bayview. When she walked through the front door, Mrs Nightingale appeared seemingly out of nowhere.
‘Ruby, there’s a message for you. You know I pride myself in dealing promptly with all letters and telegrams, so I’ve been waiting here to give it to you.’
She looked down at the envelope. Her name was written across it in a neat hand and she hoped for a moment that it might be a farewell letter from Clara, full of things she hadn’t been able to say to Ruby’s face, perhaps holding a clue to the unanswered question. But she knew Clara’s writing, and this wasn’t hers.
‘Thank you, Mrs Nightingale,’ Ruby said, trying her best to summon a grateful smile. ‘I’ll head up to my room to read it.’
The proprietress nodded her head in thanks and bustled back to the kitchen.
Ruby’s feet felt like lead. She bypassed the reception room, not tempted at all by the radio or the happy chatter, and made her way upstairs. She had to be strong for Clara. She was now the keeper of her secret. She still had managed not to cry when she opened the door to her room and found it thankfully empty. The sheets and blankets on Clara’s bed had already been stripped off for washing and the striped grey-and-white cotton ticking of the mattress reminded Ruby of prison bars.
She didn’t cry until she’d ripped open the crisp white envelope and seen the note addressed to her in handwriting she wasn’t familiar with.
Meet me at the Harbour Master’s Walk at 10pm.
It was from Cain.
That’s when the tears came and wouldn’t stop, as relentless as a winter storm, so fierce they squeezed her heart dry and scorched her throat. She threw herself down on her bed and covered her head with her feather pillow to stifle the sounds of her agony at everything that had happened. Her poor sister. Her dear sister. All she could see was the final look on Clara’s face: the haunted despair.
How could her mother and father have done this to Clara? How could they have treated her so cruelly? Nothing would ever be the same in the Allen family, Ruby knew it with absolute clarity, felt it in the darkest depths of her heart.
And as she lay there, clutching the note from Cain, she also knew in the darkest depths of her heart that these terrible circumstances had forced her hand. She now had no choice but to marry Edwin Stuart and forget all about Cain Stapleton from Remarkable Bay.
And she had to tell him tonight.
At ten minutes to ten, Ruby crept out of her room and took the outside stairs. She supposed the sparse and heavy wooden steps had been constructed for safety, so that people could flee down them in case of fire. It was dim down the side laneway when she jumped the final step on to the dirt below. She smoothed down her dress, pulled her cloche hat lower down over her face and crossed the road.
The Harbour Master’s Walk seemed ominous tonight. She’d walked the little pathway that led from the croquet lawns down to the bay a hundred times or more in all the years she and her family had come to Remarkable Bay for the summer. It had been Clara’s favourite thing to do: to take the trail and search for birds in the coastal shrubs. There were robins and kingfishers and thrushes and dotterels and snipes. She’d often shown Ruby her sketches when she was younger, the pretty little drawings she’d compiled in one notebook after another, but after Adeline had teased her about her hobby, called her silly and girlish, Clara had kept her drawings hidden.
Clara had been taught to keep secrets.
There was no one about in Remarkable Bay at this time of night, for which Ruby was grateful. The only light was from the waxing half-moon, which was just bright enough for Ruby not to trip on the stone gutter as she crossed through the hedge and scuttled across the lawn. When she reached the sign, etched in wood and painted in white so it was bright in the dark, she hid herself in the shrubs and waited.
She reached inside her pocket and pulled out Cain’s note. His handwriting was lovely: neat and even. This was all she had ever had of him and she would have to give it back. She simply couldn’t take the risk of it being discovered in her things and with Adeline as a sister, there was every likelihood of that. Adeline’s curiosity had no scruples: she seemed not to have soaked up anything from their mother or father, from school or church, about decorum. How was it then that Clara, careful, innocent Clara, had been the one to find herself in trouble?
All Ruby knew, as she waited in the dark for Cain, the sea breeze in her hair and the smell of the beach all around her, was that she didn’t have the courage to say yes to him. Her fierce determination to choose her own life, her own fate, was yesterday’s foolishness. She could bring no more scandal or ridicule to her family. After Clara’s situation, she would never have her father’s permission to break her engagement to Edwin. Twenty-four hours ago, she was in the mind not to care if she had his approval or not. Was it only three days ago that she and Cain had held hands in Victor Harbor and made promises about a future? Everything had seemed possible when she was with Cain, smart, handsome, caring Cain. But her world had flipped on its axis. One sister’s scandal could be covered up. But questions about the behaviour of the oldest sister would lead to questions about the youngest and Ruby knew, even if she hated them, that there were rules. She had a duty to her family now, as the eldest, to do what was expected of her. She could not cause a scandal by breaking what everyone assumed was an engagement. And Adeline’s engagement to Edwin’s brother made things even more complicated. Could she make a decision that would ruin Adeline’s life too? Wasn’t the ruination of one sister in the family more than anyone could bear?
She couldn’t do it. She wasn’t strong enough, she knew that now. Clara had been the strong one, keeping her secrets, shielding the truth and stoically accepting her fate. Ruby had been off on a frivolous lark, carried away by ideas and emotions that she had no right to feel. Until the circumstances of the past two days had forced her to grow up, to be plunged into the adult world she merely imagined she had been on the cusp of before.
There were footsteps on the path. Ruby looked up. ‘Cain?’
‘Ruby?’
She recognised his suit by the gleaming white pocket kerchief. He’d worn it at the dance on New Year’s Eve and it made her heart ache that he’d dressed up for her in his best suit.
‘Hello, Cain.’
He reached for her, grasped her elbows in his warm hands and pulled her close. She wanted to kiss him but couldn’t lose her nerve. When she detected a spicy aftershave, she tried to remember Clara’s face. When she quivered at his touch, she tried to remember Edwin. And then she felt nauseous and weak-kneed and she wanted to sink into his embrace, into the comfort of his arms, into the promise of a world and a life far, far away from what was happening in her own.
‘I’m so glad you came. I wasn’t sure if you’d receive my note. I thought Mrs Nightingale might open it herself and that I’d be meeting her here tonight instead of you.’ He laughed quietly and stopped when she didn’t join in on his joke.
She felt her head pound and she held on to his arms, tight. ‘Cain …’
‘What is it, Ruby?’
‘Can we sit down?’
‘Of course.’ He took her hand and led her down the trail to a clearing. A weather-worn wooden bench was situated off to one side of the path. He guided her to sit down and then paced before her.
‘Ruby, there’s something I need to say to you.’
‘Cain, I—’
‘Please, Ruby.’ He implored her to listen and she owed him that, she knew. Her heart thudded and her hands felt suddenly hot and then cold and then hot again.
‘You’re the loveliest girl I’ve ever met and I meant what I said to you on New Year’s Eve. This year holds so much promise. The past few years have been hard ones for my family and for me, but I get the feeling 1935 is going to be a good year. I’m back at university which means I have decent prospects and after you and your family return to Adelaide at the end of your holidays, we can be together again.’
Ruby held a hand to her mouth to stop the words coming out: no no no no.
Cain tugged off his hat and knelt down before her. When he reached into the breast pocket of his suit jacket, she tried not to look. She couldn’t touch him, but she couldn’t will herself to keep her hand away. This was going to be the last time she saw Cain. She needed to remember what love felt like. The touch of his hand. The warm press of his lips. The adoration in his eyes.
He unwrapped something from a white handkerchief. ‘This is my grandmother’s wedding ring. I told my parents about you, Ruby, and they gave this to me to give to you. Miss Ruby Allen, will you marry me?’
Ruby leaned forward and clutched his hand with hers, so hard he made a play of flinching. ‘Ouch,’ he said and searched her face in the moonlight, waiting for an answer. When there wasn’t one, he edged closer and continued in a nervous rush. ‘I know we won’t be able to get married until I finish university, but we can be engaged, Ruby. It’s only two years. I’d like to go and talk to your father and ask his permission. And until we marry, we can spend as much time as possible together. We can go to the picture theatre and dances at the Town Hall and take walks in the Botanic Gardens and play tennis. We can be together, Ruby, from today and forever, if you’ll say yes.’
Ruby had never before wondered what the worst day in her life might feel like. Now she knew she was in it. Her head swirled and her stomach roiled. The waves in the bay below seemed suddenly explosively loud, battering her ears with their rhythm. Her heartbeat seemed to be breaking her ribs it was that painful.
‘Ruby?’
‘Cain,’ she managed through her quivering lips. ‘Dear Cain.’ And she managed to say the words she’d been dreading. ‘I can’t marry you.’
Cain was so shocked he fell backwards and he stayed there, his legs splayed out in the dirt, his chin on his chest.
‘Please, Cain. Let me explain.’
What could she tell him? Not the truth, never the truth.
‘I’ve … I’ve been foolish and I let myself get carried away down here at Remarkable Bay. With you.’ She squeezed her eyes closed so she didn’t have to see Cain’s stricken expression. ‘I have obligations that I recklessly … foolishly tried to ignore. It was only today, when I received your note, that I was reminded that I am engaged to someone else. I can’t possibly cause any hurt and disgrace to my family by breaking that arrangement.’
‘I don’t understand, Ruby. You said … you told me you don’t love him.’
‘I shouldn’t have said those things. It was wrong of me. I’ve been so selfish.’
His voice was low now, ragged. ‘Are you saying that you don’t love me, Ruby?’
How could she break his heart? Hadn’t she seen enough broken hearts in the past two days to last a lifetime? It would be easy to lie, to tell him she didn’t love him. But she couldn’t bring herself to. ‘Please come and sit with me.’
He got up from the ground and sat on the bench next to her. The warm strength of his thigh pressed against hers and her heart shrank at knowing this was the last time. She reached for his hand, ran her fingers across each one of his, savouring the calloused fingertips and the tough pads on the fleshy part of his palm.
‘I won’t ever lie about that, Cain. About loving you. Please believe that I do love you. As I believe you do love me.’ She wrapped her small hands around one of his large ones, tried to soak in their warmth and strength for what she had to say. ‘This can’t be, that’s all.’
He was silent for a long while. He had every right to be angry with her. ‘I understand. A farmer’s son would never do for a Miss Allen.’ The hurt dripped from every syllable.
‘No, that’s not it. Please believe me,’ Ruby pleaded. ‘A farmer’s son would never do for my father,’ she whispered. ‘There is a big difference. An insurmountable difference.’ She leaned her head on Cain’s shoulder and he took her weight, slipping an arm around her and drawing her in close. ‘I’ve been reminded, as if I didn’t know it already, that daughters must bend to the will of their fathers. I have no other choice.’
‘I’ll talk to him,’ Cain said, his back straightening. ‘Once he meets me, he’ll understand that I’m a good man, that I have prospects, that I will be able to look after his daughter one day. Surely, if he met me, he would see for himself how much I love you.’
Ruby shook and clung to him. ‘You can’t. It’s hopeless, Cain.’
It was a long time before Cain spoke as they both waited for the hard truth to sink in. ‘Can we continue to meet, here, until you go home?’
Ruby shook her head and looked up to the face of the man she truly loved. ‘No.’
His eyes flashed dark and there was a twitch in his clean-shaven jaw. ‘So this is the last night we’ll ever see each other?’
‘Yes.’ She reached for his face, cupped his cheek and urged him closer. ‘Please kiss me. One last time. I want to remember this always. This moment with you.’
And he did. He kissed her fiercely and desperately. Ruby didn’t want to let him go, but it lasted only a moment and then he tore himself from her grasp.
He stood. She saw him drag his forearm across his face and heard him sniff. Her eyes filled with tears and she sobbed. He looked down at her, and she could see he was torn, but he held himself still. He tucked the ring back in his breast pocket.
‘I’m so sorry, Cain. You can’t know how sorry I am.’
‘Goodbye, Ruby.’ His words sounded final but he didn’t move.
‘I’ll never be able to say it again but listen to me. I do truly love you.’
He put his hat on and disappeared into the dark.
Later that night, after Ruby had climbed back up the stairs, her legs a dead weight under her, and removed the piece of tree branch she’d slipped in the door so it would remain slightly ajar from the outside, she lay in the cool sheets of her bed and felt frozen. Adeline was breathing noisily across the room, having not even woken when Ruby had tiptoed back inside. She’d kicked off her shoes and slipped noiselessly under the covers in her dress, struggling to comprehend everything that had happened. She felt ten years older than when she’d arrived in Remarkable Bay with her mother and her sisters. Her whole world had turned in on itself and everything she knew to be true was a lie. Clara was pregnant to a man whose name she wouldn’t reveal and their parents had treated their youngest daughter as a pariah. How could they have betrayed Clara in such a way? How could they have put status and reputation and church before family? Did they not love Clara? Ruby had always believed she and her sisters were loved by their mother and father but now she doubted even that. Their actions had made the ground beneath Ruby’s own life less certain. She had always believed she would have her parents’ support but now feared their actions if she’d gone ahead and broken off her engagement to Edwin. They had tossed one daughter on to the scrapheap, instead of holding her close and loving her, despite her predicament.
How could they? Ruby felt betrayed. Deceived. Cheated.
And that realisation would change her young life forever.
CHAPTER
25
2016
When things got complicated and hard and awful, Addy McNamara ran.
She’d been running for twenty years, since her parents had split and she’d been sent to stay with Roma’s family at Remarkable Bay that first summer. Since then, she’d felt as if she was living on a fault line, one foot on either side of a precarious and rumbling split. There hadn’t been solid ground under Addy’s feet for a very long time. She’d been dislocated, pulled between her parents, dragged from house to house, from life to life, a witness to their fucked-up relationships with each other and with other people. School had been the same: one didn’t fit so she was shunted to another, and another year of isolation and dislocation and navigating the schoolyard cliques of girls, so she didn’t try. She gave them all the proverbial finger and slept with their boyfriends instead. And that set her apart, so she fought harder to be different, to stand out from the crowd, to show them she didn’t give a rat’s arse about what they thought. She’d created a world in which she believed that something new and better was always just over the horizon. That’s why working in the film industry suited her: it was sporadic, short-lived, with intense highs for a couple of months and then, when she fell, no one was around to see her shatter.
If she kept moving, kept obfuscating, no one would see the real her, full of mistakes and regrets and imperfections. She’d spent a lifetime papering over hers, the fact that she wasn’t smart or particularly clever. She knew she was too demanding of people’s attention, but couldn’t find a way to define why. Maybe because it stopped her disappearing. Maybe because if she stood still long enough, people would see her truth: how sad and lonely and broken she really was. If people looked at her, laughed with her, marvelled at how attractive and glistening she was, they wouldn’t be tempted to dig deeper, to get to know her, because they would find out that’s all she was. As brittle as old film stock, full of perforations and discolouration.
People liked her better when she was this Addy, the beautiful, sexual, flirtatious creature she’d created out of the shell of a scared, forgotten schoolgirl. And sex was part of reminding herself who she was. She needed the attention of men to help her feel anchored in this persona. When a man was fucking her, she knew who she was. She didn’t have to be the real Addy. She’d started to be the real Addy with Jack Andersson. She’d let her mask slip, had believed he wanted her for more than sex, that she was his muse, his inspiration, the wind beneath his wings and all that crap. And he’d looked inside her, seen that crack in her and had pushed through, picking at her weaknesses, her failings and her insecurities.
She couldn’t let that happen again or she would crack for good. Her mask was firmly back in place. Roma’s condescension had helped her keep it there. She had learnt to accept that this was who she was, that this was the way she navigated the world. Some people, like Roma, thought deeply about things and were good people. Addy had never thought of herself as good.
