When Bear Olsen returned home at the end of July 1930, he came in on the Sydney day train in a second-class compartment, then walked the three miles from the station to his cream and green house on Trelawney Way, carrying his suitcase as if it weighed a ton. His hat was pulled low over his brow because the eyes its brim hid were red and puffy from weeping. The five-hour trip on this local that stopped at every tiny station had proven a boon, for he could let his tears flow unchecked. What did it matter if anyone saw him? Not that many did; even a second-class ticket on a train was unaffordable for most men and women these days. Unaffordable for him, too, except that he knew he had to get home as soon as possible once he started in home’s direction; taking to the dirt roads as a swagman was for the future.

His sons were in the backyard. He could hear their happy yells and chatter as he mounted the front verandah, and shrank from that inevitable meeting. Grace was on her plant verandah, he could hear her humming—how she loved that green haven!

“Grace?” he called from the lounge room, suitcase dropped.

“Bear! Oh, Bear!” she cried, arriving at a run to cast her arms around him, kiss his unshaven chin. “I didn’t hear the car—did you park on the street?”

“No car,” he managed to say.

The hat came off; Grace looked into her husband’s face and began to tremble. “Oh, Bear, what’s happened?”

“Perkins has gone under,” he said tonelessly. “No job, no car, no severance pay, just a glowing reference that calls me the best salesman in Australia. But I didn’t have the heart to sell things people can do without when times are so terrible. Not that Mr. Perkins asked me to. It was like a landslide in the end.”

One arm about his waist, she led him into the green haven and seated him in the planter’s chair, pulled another chair close to him and took his hands in hers.

“You’ll get another job,” she said, trying to absorb the tragic eyes, measure the volume of tears he must have shed.

“No, Grace, I won’t,” he said. “I’ve spent ten days going all over Sydney, my glowing reference in my hand, but there are no sales jobs. None at all. People have stopped buying. Oh, what a shock, Grace! Jobless men everywhere, queues thousands long applying for just one job, police wearing revolvers in some places where the rioting is constant, shops boarded up, house after house empty, cut off from everything to keep squatters out—if it weren’t for the Sally soup kitchens and a few other religious mobs doling out food, I reckon Sydney would be a city of dead people. At least the parts of it I saw. Some parts are better, but the jobless don’t go there because there are no factories or workshops.” He began to weep again. “Jeez, I didn’t want to cry! I thought I’d be all dried up by now.”

She squeezed into the chair alongside him and held him to her breast, amazed to find herself tearless and composed. “You must cheer up, Bear. You’re home,” she said, throwing every ounce of feeling into that lovely little word. “You have family here, helpful contacts—Charlie will find you something to do, he’s giving out lots of jobs.”

“Not to salesmen,” Bear said.

Grace fished out her handkerchief and gave it to him. “It doesn’t have to be a job in sales, dear. Not right away, at any rate. Until times improve, it might be—oh, I can’t guess!”

“Grace, the only jobs anyone is offering are in hard labor, you know that. I’ve been a salesman since I was a beardless tyke, so all I can do is talk, walk, and drive. I can’t heft bags of wheat or swing a pick and shovel to save my life.” He drew himself up, the tears gone again. “Besides, I can’t use my relationship to an important man to step into a job that thousands are fighting over. So no, I’m not applying to Charles Burdum for any sort of job—or to Jack Thurlow or your father, for that matter.”

Appalled, Grace pulled away to stare at him and saw the humorous mouth turned down implacably, the cheeks fallen in, a faint scrag under his chin—when had he last eaten?

“Let’s go into the kitchen and I’ll make you lunch,” she said, pulling him to his feet. “The boys have already eaten, so we won’t tell them you’re home until you’ve had a chance to eat, have a hot bath, and put on clean clothes. Mark my words,” she chattered as they crabbed along, “you’ll feel a different man.”

In the kitchen she put him at her work table and busied herself slicing bread. “See? No ham or tinned salmon, dear!” She laughed, a merry sound. “It’s my own homemade jam, fish paste, or Marmite these days, and I put the ice chest into storage in the garage. Edda gave me her little old one out of her quarters—it keeps what I need chilled on a much smaller block of ice.”

Now why did that make him cry again? Determined to ignore it, she finished making his fish paste sandwiches, and while he ate them, washed down by a whole pot of tea, she ran him a bath with hot water from the chip heater. Finally, fed, bathed, shaved, and clothed, he was fit to meet his sons. Oh, Bear, don’t weep under their eyes, too! Grace prayed.

He did not. As he had sold virtually right around a quarter-million square miles, this last had been a lengthy absence, so to Bear his sons came as a shock. Brian was four months past two years, straight-legged and tall, slender like both his parents; his hair was still very fair, but less flaxen. And John was Brian at nearly fourteen months—walking, talking, busy, curious, adorable. From somewhere Bear managed to summon the strength to behave with them as he always did, tossing them around, laughing, pretend-spanking them—even, from out of his suitcase, to give Brian a jigsaw puzzle and John a humming top. Broke he might be, but how could a father come home to his sons without producing presents?

“Where do I register for work in Corunda?” he asked Grace after the boys settled to play with their presents.

“It’s only for hard labor,” she said. “They’ll give you a dole for government work, which is limited to hard labor. Jobs with skills just don’t exist. Few can do the actual labor, but they take the dole anyway. If they have to report, they just lean on their picks.”

“I’ll not take a dole! It’s something in return for nothing.”

“Charlie will find you something honest to do.”

“I’m not pulling strings by going to Charlie, that’s final.”

Luckily his travails over the past two weeks had exhausted him; by five o’clock he was tucked up in their bed asleep, and Grace was free to deal with the boys, settle them for sleep, too.

At six o’clock, in the pitch darkness, Grace lit a hurricane lantern and walked down to the junction of Trelawney Way with Wallace Street, where there was a red, Georgian-paned telephone booth. Their own phone had been disconnected when Bear cut the housekeeping last December.

When the penny dropped, a feminine voice answered.

“Kitty? Thank God!”

“Grace? Is that you, Grace? You sound odd!”

“Can you come and see me at once? I’m in the phone box, but daren’t be away too long.”

“As soon as I can find a driver, I’ll be there.”

Life with Charlie, Kitty was discovering, carried compensations for her giving up nursing. Though she loved Charlie very much, it had been a wrench to abandon her sick children, but the regulations were set in stone: no married nurses! However, she had Burdum House to renovate, an undertaking that involved many trips to Sydney to choose tiles, wallpapers, fabrics, floor coverings, chandeliers and sconces, furniture, fixtures, and fittings. As she found Edda a great help in guiding her taste, she timed these expeditions to coincide with Edda’s days off, and the two of them had a wonderful time in Sydney, staying at the Hotel Australia and dining at places where the chef was willing to cook his meat.

Her own forays into the kitchen were less successful; she found no thrills in watching pot contents boil over or frying pans go up in smoke, so when Charlie proposed a solution, she was ready to listen. They would hire a chef skilled enough to cater for both culinary poles, Charles’s north and Kitty’s south.

An enchantment Kitty hadn’t expected to feel engulfed her entire life. Charlie was a wonderful lover, though why she had assumed he wouldn’t be eluded her until she realized that she had transferred her own inferiority at being so small onto him as well. Small was inadequate, small couldn’t possibly be the answer to a maiden’s prayers. Now, fallen in love with Charlie, Kitty experienced the delights of being with someone just right for her. Her few encounters with men over the years had intimidated her, she now understood. Average height men were still so tall that she was forced to stand on tiptoe for a kiss, while six-footers lifted her clear off the floor; for some reason there were even men who wanted to pick her up and cart her about like a sick dog—her metaphor, and one that had Charlie in paroxysms of mirth.

Whereas Charlie was—Charlie was perfect! As if by instinct he knew how to arouse her, and he had a thousand ways of kissing her, all delicious. He put his hands on her with as much reverence as passion, and he let her know that she gave him huge pleasure.

So the Kitty who had to wait for a taxi was bubbling with joy, a joy she genuinely hadn’t thought could grow any greater until that very morning, when Dr. Ned Mason had told her she was definitely expecting a baby. A baby! Her own baby!

Grace and Kitty met, and were stupefied.

Grace saw a transfigured Kitty, beautiful and triumphant, a woman free from care, woe, worry.

Kitty saw a shattered Grace, all joy stripped from her, eyes protruding, body trembling, her beauty blighted.

“Grace, darling, what is it? What’s the matter?”

In answer Grace walked past her, wringing her hands together, then turned, it seemed gathering herself to dredge up a vanished courage, and said, “Bear has lost his job.”

“Grace! How—how awful! Let’s sit in the kitchen, it’s warm with the fuel stove—thank God Jack Thurlow keeps you well supplied with wood,” Kitty babbled, pushing the kettle onto the hotter part of the hob. “No, I can make the tea.”

“You’re too short,” said Grace, pushing Kitty into the chair and tipping a little hot water into the teapot to warm it. “Good strong tea, that’s what we both need.” Her grey gaze, calming, saw clearly at last. “How lovely!” she cried. “There’s a baby.”

“I only found out this morning, but don’t say anything until I’ve had a chance to tell Charlie.”

“Mum’s the word, I promise.” The tea making proceeded with smooth efficiency. “I’m actually all right, just terrified at the change in Bear,” she said, doling out cups and saucers. “I had to be the strong one when he came home today, isn’t that a turn-up for the books? And do you know what, Kits? I did it! I was strong for Bear and my boys. I—me, myself—didn’t seem important somehow. He cried so! He was that proud of being the top Perkins Man! But the firm’s gone under, closed its doors.” She poured tea. “The trouble is that he’s not a physically strong man, he certainly couldn’t do hard labor. And he’s a proud man too. Very proud! I need you to talk to Charlie, explain all that.”

“Don’t worry, I will. I agree about the hard labor, but Bear has a brain, which is far better. Charlie will know the answer.”

“It’s not that simple,” Grace said, sipping at the very hot tea. “Bear’s got it into his head that it would be wrong to pull strings by asking Charlie for help. In fact, he won’t hear of it. Honestly, Kits, I’m not exaggerating.”

“I see.”

“Oh, Kitty, I hope you do!”

Charles Burdum walked in, mouth tight. “At least you left me a message, I can be thankful for that, I suppose,” he said, sitting down at the table, one hand out imperiously to Grace. “No, no tea, please! How you can all drink coal tar and call it tea I do not know.”

“Dear, dear,” said Grace mildly, “in a bad mood, are we?”

“A taxi, Kitty?” he asked. “Was it so urgent that you see your sister at this hour?”

“As a matter of fact, yes,” she said, a little winded at his displeasure. “Bear has just come home without a job. Perkins is no more. The poor fellow is a cot-case.”

The metaphorical slap in his face had its calculated effect; Charles looked horrified, contrite, embarrassed. “Oh, Grace, I’m so sorry!” And, to his wife, “My dear, I apologize. It’s been a nasty sort of day, but I had no right to take it out on you.”

“More to the point, Charlie,” said Kitty, brushing apologies aside, “Bear is being very stubborn and refuses to ask you for a job or pull strings of any kind.”

“I understand,” he said, meaning it. “Everything Bear is, he won by his own efforts and hard work. A working man’s pride is very strong in him, I’ve always admired his success.”

“In the meantime, Charlie, Grace had to walk with a lantern to the phone box to ask me to come, and I refuse to have that worry as well. Grace must have a phone,” said Kitty, “but not a party line.”

“Grace will have a phone, and not a party line.”

Kitty leaned toward Grace, eyes pleading. “You must explain to Bear, Grace, that it’s for Daddy’s peace of mind. Without a phone, you and the boys are cut off from the family.”

“Yes, Kitty, I understand that, and I’m happy to agree. If Daddy weren’t a minister, Bear would listen to him, but he hates religion. He says all the wars are fought over differing ideas of God,” said Grace, who was beginning to see that her present problems would never matter to anyone else the way they did to her. And it was all her own fault. Were she not an incurable spendthrift, Bear would have met this disaster with £1000 in the bank, if not more. You, Grace Olsen, she told herself, have a lot of grief to answer for, not the least your husband’s present devastation.

“Yes, well,” she said brightly, “having told my news, there doesn’t seem much else to do until tomorrow, when Bear wakes up. Will you see him, Charlie?”

“Of course,” he said warmly. “I’ll be here at nine.” He rose to his feet. “I’ll wait in the car for you, Kitty.”

“He’ll cheer up no end when you tell him about the baby,” Grace said, smiling. “As for me, don’t think I haven’t admitted that were it not for me, we’d have money in the bank.”

Astonished, Kitty stared at her. The whining complaints and constant self-pity seemed to have disappeared in the face of this terrible catastrophe. The path to martyrdom she had visualized as Grace’s future just wasn’t the route she was going to take. “I wish you’d stayed in nursing longer,” Kitty said. “You’d have a better chance at finding part-time work.”

Grace smiled, shook her head. “No, that was never an option for me. Once I met Bear, I knew where my life was going. I’d have walked on my knees to China to be with Bear. I watched you vacillate for months about Charlie, but I never experienced one twinge of doubt about Bear. Something in me recognized my fate.”

A shaft of bitter envy struck Kitty’s heart with the force of a warrior’s spear—why had silly, empty-headed Grace known her mate so surely, while she, far more intelligent and grounded, had been so blind to Charlie? Did it mean that the love between Grace and Bear was far greater than hers for Charlie? Charlie had known at once. What was the matter with her, that her feelings had needed so much pushing and shoving before they surfaced?

Kitty joined him in the car not long after he had left the Olsen house, her face in the Packard’s dim interior light looking oddly pinched. Well, a shock. No denying Grace could be a burden.

“You’ll have trouble persuading Bear to take a job,” she said.

“A poor man’s pride is always hard to overcome.”

“Is it wrong to decline to pull strings?”

Charles gave a snort of laughter. “The world capers and cavorts on denser meshes of pulled strings than you’ll ever know, Kitty, starting with the politicians. Poor Bear is too proud to pull strings, so he’ll never accumulate the power to set up his sons in plum jobs, and I’ll be too busy setting up my own sons to help. Now’s his chance.”

Something in Kitty twisted; she let out a mew of distress. “Oh, Charlie, don’t tempt fate!” she cried.

“What is it, my dear?”

“When we get home,” she said.

But first there was dinner to be eaten, and Kitty’s tongue was anchored as if by leaden weights; she tried to find the mood of the morning vainly, crushed by Grace’s news. At a loss, she prattled about the change in Grace without noticing Charlie’s increasing exasperation—all this grief over a half sister?

“She’s talking about growing her own vegetables, and so happy that she planted an apple and a pear two years ago. Huh! Jack Thurlow planted them, she meant—dearest Grace! She also says she’s going to keep chooks. Grace, keeping chooks?”

“Keeping what?” he asked blankly, getting a word in.

“Chooks—hens, Charlie! Chickens too old to be chicks.”

“Chook. To rhyme with book and hook?”

“The very same.”

“I am forever learning.”

A silence fell, thick as treacle.

“Charles?”

“Did you just call me by my proper name?”

“Yes, I did.”

Eyes sparkling, he sat up straight. “I answer to Charles.”

“I’m going to have a baby.”

Her words literally knocked all thought out of his brain; he gaped at her, jaw dropped, mouth working, one emotion after another crossing his face, his eyes gone now to pure fire. Suddenly, convulsively, he jumped up, seized her and held her in a hard embrace. “Kitty, my Kitty! A child? Our child? When, my love?”

“Ned Mason thinks December. I saw him this morning for final confirmation, and he says I’m four months gone.” Her laugh sounded. To Charles, it was a victory paean. “A decently respectable interval after our marriage, yet, as Daddy would say, we are a fruitful pair.”

Still shaking, he sat with his wife on his knee and put one reverent hand on her belly. “He’s in there, growing—four months already! Are you well? Is Ned pleased?”

“Delighted. My pelvis is nice and wide, everything is as it ought to be, my basal metabolism is ideal—in short, Charlie dear, I’m bright eyed, bushy tailed, and my nose is moist.”

“It’s a boy,” he said positively.

“Latimer statistics favor a girl.”

“Grace has boys.”

“That’s what I mean. Daddy had four girls, so perhaps Grace has used up the Latimer boy credits already.”

“I’ll love a girl just as much. I married one.”

“True.” A shudder ran through her. “Still, today hasn’t been auspicious. Bear losing his job—pray it’s not an omen!”

“Any omens concern Bear and Grace, not us, Kitty.”

Grace decided to be frank about her activities, so when Bear woke next morning, she made him toast for breakfast and confessed that she had confided in Kitty.

“In the old days it would have been Edda, but circumstances have changed, Bear. Kitty is the one with the influence these days, so I asked her to see me last night, and she came here. No, no, I didn’t beg for a job, that’s not my business, any more than it’s Kitty’s business to beg one from Charlie. I simply wanted to tell my sister what’s happened, and ask her to send Charlie to see you here this morning. He’ll be here soon. I don’t care what you talk about or what you decide. I’ve done my bit in getting you together.”

He was staring at her, puzzled, not understanding how much Grace had changed over the past eight months, a change he had initiated by reducing her housekeeping allowance. The old, moaning Grace was nowhere to be found; instead, Bear encountered a firm and purposeful woman who completely understood her situation.

“What happened to you?” he asked her, confused.

The old Grace would have tried to play dumb; this new Grace didn’t. “I grew up in a hurry,” she said, pouring him more tea. “No more locomotive puff-puffs, Bear. Our sons can be excused that behavior, but we’re adults. We’re parents and providers.”

“Don’t rub it in,” he whispered, wincing.

She stroked his bent back. “Bear, I’m not rubbing it in. What’s happened to us isn’t of our making, though we must do the sufffering. More, I’d bet, than the people who created this mess will ever suffer. I’m trying to make you see that we used to have the prosperity to cherish illusions, but that now the illusions are forbidden. Including pride, which Daddy calls a sin. Take the work Charlie Burdum offers you, for the sake of your sons.”

Badly wounded in spirit as well as in mind, adrift in an ocean of unknowns, Bear hardly heard this alien Grace, and failed utterly to grasp what she said about pride. Well, she was sheltered, how could she even begin to know what it had been like in Sydney, watching the crawlers and boot-lickers swarm to get the jobs other men were more entitled to, except they wouldn’t beg and grovel. He wanted his sons to grow up men, not boot-licking crawlers.

In the meantime, Grace rattled on about Charles Burdum and how he, Bear Olsen, should be very civil . . .

And then the next it seemed second later he was overwhelmed by this charming, dapper, smooth little man in the proper Corunda clothes, with his grand gestures and his carefree manner—not to worry, Bear, it would all be over in no time!

“Meanwhile, Bear,” Charles continued, full of enthusiasm, “I have an ideal job for you! I swear, ideal! There’s a new field opening up for men with exactly your kind of skills—the gift of the gab, shall we say? The field is called public relations, and it’s fascinating! As population grows and governments and other kinds of public institutions grow ever more faceless, it’s becoming necessary to teach the general populace what’s going on. If the general populace isn’t educated about the faceless men in real authority or owning real power, trouble will erupt due to ignorance and misinterpretation.” The khaki eyes dwelled on Bear’s face. “Are you following me?” Charles asked.

“Yes,” said Bear.

Warming to his theme, Charles rushed on. “What I’m offering you, in effect,” he said, “is a selling job. But instead of selling goods, you’ll be selling ideas and services people don’t see, can’t touch the way they do a tin of ointment or bottle of liniment. Head up the new Corunda Public Relations Enterprise and sell Corunda!”

“Oh!” from Grace, awed.

“Sorry, I can’t take a job like that,” Bear said.

Charles looked stunned. “What?”

“It’s not for me.”

“Nonsense! You’re a brilliant salesman, it’s ideal.”

“I’m near enough to illiterate,” Bear said.

“Literate enough to have written good reports—I’ve seen them,” said Charles, betraying that he had already been thinking of Bear Olsen for his public relations enterprise.

“Sorry, no. Public relations? Confidence trickstering, more like,” Bear said. “I don’t want the job, it’s a swindle. We’d better get things straight now, Charlie. I don’t want any job from you because it would mean some poor blighter whose turn it really is would be passed over in favor of your brother-in-law. I’m the lowest man on Corunda’s job list, so I’ll go to the Town Hall and register for available work, take my proper turn. But I will not shame my origins by taking a dole for no work!”

With a sound like a rubber cushion suddenly emptied of air, Grace flopped down and gazed at Bear with tears in her eyes.

Charles swivelled to her. “Grace, make your husband see sense!”

Then Grace surprised Charles and Bear, though not nearly as much as she surprised herself. “No, Charlie, I won’t do that,” she said. “If Bear prefers not to be helped up the ladder a few rungs, then that’s all right by me. He’s the head of the household.”

“You’re cutting off your noses to spite your faces!”

“Then at least we won’t be stickybeaks,” said Grace valiantly.

Charles Burdum flung his hands in the air and stalked out.

So, head up, hat in hand, Bear Olsen registered for available work at the Town Hall, simultaneously declining the money doled out. Word ran like a blue flash of electric current around the district that Bear Olsen had principles, refused to take help from his powerful brother-in-law. There were those who roundly condemned him for his stupidity, but many more who praised him for his working man’s integrity.

His mood flattened into a dreary plain of hopelessness and he drifted around his house on Trelawney Way like a ghost, moving out of the way of wife or children when he encountered them as if he couldn’t stand being in their company. A kind of self-hatred forced him to cling to tattered pride as to a buoyant spar in a sea so thin it was more vapor than fluid.

“You can at least build Grace a decent chook run,” said Jack Thurlow on an infrequent visit; Grace had asked him to limit his calls after his first one caused Bear’s mood to sink noticeably lower.

For Jack, too, the Olsen tragedy had come as a series of rude shocks, not the least of which was Grace’s newfound strength. Very bewildered, he was thankful to be asked to stay away, and obeyed, yet when Grace did request a visit, he was there immediately, all else thrust aside. He understood Bear’s reaction to Charlie’s offers of help, which kept coming as fast as Bear’s refusals. That Charlie didn’t understand lay in his ignorance of the working man who would choose to starve rather than take charity.

“It’s Bear’s business if he won’t take work from Charlie,” said Grace to Jack one day, “but he needs a good kick up the bum to do some work around this house. I want to keep good egg-layer chooks, but that means a far better run, and I want to grow the vegetables in season—chokos if I can’t grow anything else.”

Chokos! Jack visibly gagged. Oh, they grew like weeds and you could bake them, boil them, fry them, make jam or chutney out of them, but—! They were awful, awful, awful! As much taste as weak urine, and no nutritional merit anyone had found.

She was continuing, heedless of dropping dynamite like chokos. “But I can’t do everything myself, Jack, and the boys are too little to be much help. Bear should take over the garden and the chooks.”

By dint of providing the materials and a strict supervision, Jack saw that a good stout chook run was erected and some of Maude’s Rhode Island Red chooks installed, together with a daily bucket of his own homestead pickings. As Bear had no idea how to cultivate potatoes or carrots or turnips, let alone cabbages or green beans or lettuces, Jack had perforce to show him, only to discover that his sons were more apt pupils. The best anyone could hope for from Bear was that he made sure he didn’t forget to shut the chook run door or tramp through a row of newly planted vegetables. He couldn’t stick with anything; the work devolved upon others while he remained flat and drifting, refusing the hard labor dole because to take it was unfair when he couldn’t labor.

The two little boys were made of sterner stuff. After Grace took them aside to explain to them how sick in the soul Daddy was, Brian and John were very good to him. Grace was rising to all sorts of occasions these days, but painting a picture to tiny children that they could grasp about being “sick in the soul” taxed all her descriptive powers. However, what she said sufficed; the boys’ conduct toward their father bore that out. They were gentle and unfailingly patient with Bear; it was, thought the awed Jack, as if they were the parent, Bear the child.

And in 1930, that frightful year, no one understood the myriad ways in which a mind could crash, or crack, or splinter, though Bear was luckier than most men in his wife and children, who never flew at him in rage, and rarely reproached him. Feeling it his duty, since no one else would, Charles Burdum railed at him several times; but Bear’s only reponse was to stand, face bewildered, and repeat that he was not going to pull strings.

“But this isn’t about pulling strings!” Charles cried. “It’s about caring for your family. You’re no help, Bear, no help!”

A statement that didn’t seem to impinge.

Kitty’s reaction was more practical. She donated a treadle Singer sewing machine that Grace accepted gladly. With Edda as instructor, she set out to become a dressmaker, making jackets and trousers for the boys from Liam’s and Charlie’s old suits, as well as all her own clothes. Cast-off dresses from Edda and Kitty were accepted, too. And if her life were impossibly busy, at least that meant that when night came she could sleep like the dead. Her marital relations with Bear had gone after John was born, and now seemed remote as the dreams she was too tired to remember.