Where had the time gone? Evelyn blinked back tears as she watched her daughter dance around the floor, the handsome dark-haired boy at her side. The music was different and so were the fashions, but if she closed her eyes she could almost see Jimmy and herself dancing out there with them.
She’d sensed trouble the moment her daughter had brought Peter home to meet Roy and herself. She knew that look in her daughter’s eyes. It was the same smitten look she’d once had when she’d looked at Jimmy. As usual, Roy had shown little interest and she’d had to step in and make the boy feel welcome. She hated the shadow of disappointment that crossed her daughter’s face at her father’s dismissal. Evelyn had tried so hard to make him love Irene and her heart broke anew each time she saw her husband’s rejection of the daughter he’d willingly taken on all those years ago.
I should have told Irene, she thought.
Many times she’d wished she’d been brave enough to raise Irene alone, but it had seemed easier just to let Roy take charge and move them away from North Queensland, away from family and friends to hide her shame.
Only it hadn’t been her shame because she’d been too numb to feel anything; besides, she could never feel ashamed of what she’d had with Jimmy. It had been Roy’s shame they’d been hiding. He was the one who couldn’t bear people gossiping about them. He didn’t want to be the ‘poor, pathetic fool’ he said they would all call him if they knew his fiancée had gone and gotten pregnant to a Yank—and a supposed friend at that—while he’d been away fighting in New Guinea.
Evelyn had tried over the years. She’d tried her best to be a good wife to Roy. She’d cooked and cleaned and dedicated herself to becoming the kind of wife he could be proud of. Only he never was.
She still remembered the day she’d told him about Jimmy and the baby. His face had lost most of its colour and the brightness in his eyes had dimmed. And it seemed from that moment onwards it never returned. She’d expected him to walk away from her, and he had. She hadn’t blamed him. She’d returned to her aunt’s house and begun packing. She’d had no idea where she was going, only that she had to leave. But then Roy had appeared on her aunt’s doorstep, asking to see her.
‘We made a deal. I intend to honour it,’ he’d said in a stiff, emotionless voice.
‘You don’t have to do this, Roy. You can return home and go on with your life. I don’t expect you to marry me after this.’
‘I said,’ he told her, ‘I intend to keep my end of the deal. We’re getting married tomorrow at the registry office down town, and then we’re heading to Tuendoc.’
‘Tuen where?’
‘Tuendoc. There’s plenty of good land down that way. I told them I was bringing my wife, and that’s what I plan on doing.’
‘But the . . . baby.’
‘I’ll take you and the . . . child on, under the condition you never speak the Yank’s name out loud again. You understand me? That kid,’ he said pointing at her stomach angrily, ‘will never know I’m not its father. No one will ever know. You got that?’
He’d always been a proud man and the thought of people laughing at him would have been unbearable. And so they had moved away and the past had never been mentioned again.
Over the years, Evelyn had tried to understand her husband. At first she’d put his bitterness and anger down to her betrayal, but as time had gone on, she’d started to realise it went deeper than that. The nightmares had started early on in their marriage. Roy would wake up yelling, covered in sweat and shaking like a leaf. When she asked him about it, he’d simply leave the bed and walk outside, where he’d remain for the rest of the night, staring out at the darkness, reliving things she had no hope of ever comprehending, lost in his private world of pain. His experiences during the war had changed him. Maybe her betrayal had added to the bitterness he carried, but it was more than that. He was not the Roy she’d grown up with. He lost his temper over the smallest things, and she would sometimes find him in their room, the curtains drawn, holding his head and rocking back and forth. She’d stopped asking him to go and see a doctor, it only seemed to enrage him further. Evelyn had done her best to shield Irene from the worst of it.
Until the horrible night when the past reared its ugly head and changed them all forever.
Evelyn had watched her daughter, so carefree and full of life, fall deeper and deeper in love with Peter. Ever since they’d made their debut together, they’d become inseparable. Evelyn had known it was going to end in heartache. If only she’d tried to warn Irene. It wouldn’t have done any good, though, she realised later. Young love was blind to anything except what it wanted to see.
The phone call that awoke them late one evening set in motion a terrible set of events. Peter’s father called, asking them both to come over and pick up their daughter and saying that there were some rather urgent issues that needed to be discussed.
Upon arriving, Evelyn’s heart lurched at the sight of her daughter sitting so dejectedly on the corner of the lounge.
‘I’m afraid we have some rather disturbing news,’ Dr Brown said gravely. ‘Your daughter arrived here earlier demanding to speak with my son. She was quite irate. When I asked her to move along, told her that Peter was not interested in speaking with her, she turned rather abusive. She then declared that she was pregnant to my son and refused to go home until he came down to speak with her. As you can imagine, the last thing we wanted was for the entire neighbourhood to be alerted to this whole sordid mess, so we brought her inside and called you.’
‘Pregnant,’ Roy all but breathed the word. ‘You ungrateful little witch. After everything I’ve given you, you repay me by getting yourself pregnant by the first boy who comes along.’
‘I love Peter.’
‘Love,’ Roy spat bitterly.
‘We’re going to get married. He promised,’ said Irene, although Evelyn saw the waver of uncertainty behind her eyes. She’d climbed out her window tonight, planning on running away to the city with Peter, only to discover he’d changed his mind and wanted nothing more to do with her.
Prodded roughly by his father, Peter sullenly told Irene that he didn’t want the responsibility of a baby and that it would be in everyone’s best interests if she got rid of it.
His mother sobbed into a handkerchief, declaring her son’s future as a doctor would be destroyed if he was forced to leave school to support a wife and child.
With each accusing glare thrown at her, Evelyn saw her daughter shrink a little more, until all that was left was an empty, dead expression, the same one that had stared back at her in the mirror after Jimmy’s death.
‘You will not disgrace this family and my name by having some bastard, do you hear me?’ Roy growled.
Peter’s parents bristled at the implication, but they were clearly not prepared to have their son’s promising future stolen away from him either.
‘Roy,’ Evelyn reproached quietly.
He spun on his wife. ‘You want everyone knowing what she’s done? What kind of parent do you reckon they’ll think you are once they find out?’
‘Let’s just go home and sleep on it for tonight and discuss it tomorrow.’
‘I can take care of this with a phone call to one of my colleagues,’ Peter’s father cut in grimly.
‘Can you do it tonight?’ Roy asked.
‘There’s no need to make any rash decisions,’ Evelyn said quickly.
‘The sooner we put an end to this, the sooner we can all put it behind us,’ Roy snapped.
‘I agree,’ Peter’s mother cut in.
‘I’ll make the call right now,’ said Peter’s father, leaving the room briskly.
It was all moving so fast. Evelyn saw that Irene was pale and withdrawn. She’d clearly hoped that Peter would stand up to his parents, but he’d refused to even look at her. Evelyn’s heart ached for her daughter.
When Peter’s father came back into the room, it had been organised for the next day in a private residence in an inner city suburb. They left the Browns and drove home, a heavy silence filling the car.
‘I’m not sure we should be rushing into this,’ Evelyn said quietly. ‘Maybe there’s another option.’
‘There’s no other option. The boy clearly doesn’t want anything to do with it.’
‘He did, till you and his parents stuck your noses into it,’ Irene spat from the back seat.
‘He was never going to marry you, and if you think I’m going to help raise another bastard, you got another thing coming.’
‘Roy!’
‘What are you talking about?’ Irene asked, looking between her parents warily.
‘Ask your mother,’ he snarled.
‘Mum?’
Evelyn felt herself go cold as she stared at her husband helplessly.
‘The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, does it, Evelyn?’
‘What’s he saying, Mum?’
Evelyn turned her desperate gaze upon her daughter’s tear-stained face. How many times had she dreamed of telling her about Jimmy? She used to daydream that one day she would sit down and calmly explain what had happened. She’d tell her daughter all about her daddy and how much he’d have loved her. But she had no right to do that after Roy had sacrificed everything to raise another man’s daughter as his own, and she’d given him her promise. Then one day her baby was sixteen and standing before her, heartbroken, in the same position she’d been in all those years ago. Now it was too late to tell her about her father the way it should be told, with love and pride. Instead she’d hear it told as something sinful and wrong.
‘I hate you,’ Irene said bitterly the next day when Evelyn sat beside the bed after she’d returned from the procedure. ‘I hate you both.’
She’d let her daughter down, and there was nothing she could say to defend herself. She’d stood by and allowed Roy to rob her daughter of all the love she should have had from a father. She’d thought that if she loved her enough, she could make up for Roy’s lack of interest, but it hadn’t worked out that way. She’d just made things worse, and now her baby had also lost her innocence. Evelyn knew that hollow look in the depths of her child’s eyes all too well.
She should have stood up to him, she should have made him stop, but it was too late. He’d sapped the life from her. Too many years of hearing what a failure she was, how ungrateful she was, how much of a disappointment she was to him, had robbed her of whatever self-confidence she’d ever possessed.
The worst part was that somewhere along the line she’d started to believe him. Maybe she didn’t deserve happiness. She should be grateful that he was still willing to take her in and provide for her. The truth was, she just didn’t care. When Jimmy was taken from her, she lost the will to care about herself. Not even her child could fix what was broken inside. She’d never stopped loving Jimmy and she could never love Roy in the same way. She had done her best to be the perfect wife, but he knew that her heart would always belong to another man. They were two wounded souls struggling on together, compounding the hurt that had begun years before.
It had been that way until his death. No one could really understand, with his experience, how he’d managed to misjudge such a steep incline and roll the tractor over the edge.
Evelyn still had no idea why he’d chosen that particular moment to end it, but there was never any doubt in her mind that he’d driven over that edge on purpose. Maybe he’d had one of his headaches and hadn’t made it home in time to lock himself in the dark and ride it out. Maybe he’d given up trying. Maybe he’d finally just grown weary of fighting his demons day after day. She’d never know. But life after Roy’s death was like the calm after a particularly violent storm.
Evelyn was forced to take over running the farm, and found that she quite enjoyed it. She managed most of the tasks alone, having assisted Roy often enough over the years, and for the things she couldn’t do, her neighbours were always there to lend a hand. She took back her life, but it was never the life she’d dreamed of. Jimmy was gone, but never forgotten.
It was a cruel joke that she should outlive them both.