‘No, this is my fault. I’ll take the blame. I’ll do whatever you tell me to do, but I won’t leave you.’
‘You will do whatever I say. Now get out. You drain me dry... you always have.’
Jane straightened up as she heard what sounded like a scuffle, then something smashed, and Beatrice screamed.
‘You ever hit me again and I swear to God, I will leave you here to fend for yourself — and we both know how that will turn out. Just like everything else you have ever touched. All you had to do was talk to her. You could have killed her, you bloody idiot.’
There was another scream, more glass shattering, and the back door slammed hard enough to break the hinges. Jane was sitting upright, the chisel in her hand hidden at her side when Beatrice walked back into the room. She was holding the ice pack meant for Jane to her own nose to stop it bleeding.
‘Are you all right?’ Jane asked.
Beatrice gave a humourless laugh. ‘That’s rather ironic, coming from you, wouldn’t you say? It’s nothing... but at the same time it is so very sad.’
She picked up the bottle of whisky and poured the rest of the contents into the now-empty glass.
‘I haven’t got any copies of Helena’s wills, if that’s what you’re looking for. I don’t even know what was in them.’
Beatrice laughed. ‘That’s not why I’m here. I have a copy of her first will and am prepared to contest the new one if needs be... and not necessarily in court.’
Beatrice stood by the fireplace, her back to Jane who could hear the repeated flick of a cigarette lighter followed by the smell of burning.
‘What are you burning?’ Jane asked
‘The family tree.’ Beatrice threw the burning papers into the fireplace. ‘I haven’t been honest about everything for so many years, but I think I have to be now.’
She took a long drink then swilled the remains round in the glass, her charm bracelet jangling.
‘My father forbade me to marry John, as he was an illiterate working-class bus driver who had been left a widower with a young child and didn’t have a penny to his name. But John was my salvation.’ She sipped her drink again, then touched her nose gingerly. It had stopped bleeding. ‘I’m sorry, do you need this?’ She held up the bloodied compress.
Jane shook her head.
‘You know about little Marjorie... well, after she died, Father’s attention turned to me. The sound of his keys in that silver bowl in the hall, and the clicking of his steel-tipped boots... that dread when he called me to go into the basement dark room. There were five steps down and below that was the cellar leading into the tunnel and the shelter.’
Jane gritted her teeth, anticipating that this was going to be a long, drawn-out theatrical explanation, like the one she had been forced to listen to in Australia. She watched as Beatrice sat down in an easy chair opposite her, crossing her legs at the ankles and smoothing down her skirt.
‘I didn’t think I was pregnant because he used a horrible douche contraption afterwards. Then there I was, all on my own in Sydney. I had to wait for John as he couldn’t raise the finances to bring his son with him. By the time he did arrive, poor Matthew had been born.’
‘That must have been terrible,’ Jane said.
Beatrice looked at her sharply. ‘Don’t patronise me, dear. You can’t begin to know what it was like. I lived in a horrible, damp apartment that smelled like that disgusting cellar. Having a very sickly child, I had to pawn or sell what I could of my mother’s jewellery. I was always afraid I might be arrested because I knew my father’s enduring hatred and venomous nature. And I had taken my sweet little sister’s pearls. I broke them up sold them one or two at a time. We moved to Adelaide so John could try and find work. He cared for Matthew, and poor Jason had to deal with him as well. Then it just got worse. John became sick and died four years later. I was forced to do whatever I could to provide for my sons, one of them sick and utterly helpless. Have you any idea what I had to go through?’
Jane slowly turned, swinging her legs to the floor.
‘Mrs Thorpe, I am aware that Helena provided for you...’
Beatrice was indignant. ‘Provided? How many years did she ignore my pleas before she “provided”? I prostituted myself. My father taught me how to pleasure a man and that’s what I ended up doing to survive.’
‘Mrs Thorpe, I don’t want to...’
‘You don’t want to what? You don’t want to hear this, but it’s all right for you to dig into my life, delve into private boxes and remove photographs that you had no permission to take? You think I wouldn’t find out?’
‘I was investigating a child’s murder—’
Beatrice interrupted her. ‘You broke into my boathouse and stole my property! Let me tell you, I had no notion of what Helena did with that baby, and my son didn’t know anything about it either, until you brought it up. For your information, I never threatened or blackmailed Helena about the baby because I didn’t know she had left it in the shelter.’
Jane took a deep breath. She knew she shouldn’t antagonise Beatrice if she wanted to get her out of the house, but at the same time this was an important new revelation. Beatrice continued, angrily explaining how the medical bills mounted as Matthew needed constant hospital treatment to drain the fluid on his brain. Plus, Jason had begun to go off the rails.
‘He grew his hair and started taking drugs... staying out on the beaches all day. But then I turned it around.’
She pointed her finger at Jane, standing up and seeming to gloat.
‘I threatened to return to England, taking Matthew with me and making sure our monster father’s abuse would be splashed all over the papers. I wasn’t sure at first, but even with his swollen head you could see he had my father’s eyes.’
‘Beatrice, are you telling me that Matthew is your father’s child?’
‘Of course I am — and probably conceived on the night Marjorie was in the tunnel giving birth. He abused sweet Marjorie from an early age, and may God forgive me, I was thankful because if he could have her, it meant he never touched me... until that night he came home early, drunk and shouting for Marjorie, and we told him she was ill and he made me take her place.’
She started to run her hands through her hair. ‘Helena constantly rejected my pleas for financial help until I threatened to make it public about our father’s abuse. Then she sent the money as often as I needed it, but I swear it wasn’t because of any threats, but out of guilt for turning a blind eye to our father’s disgusting abuse.’
Jane thought Beatrice knew full well her demands amounted to blackmail, but she said nothing, allowing her to continue.
‘She paid for Jason to go to college, and when I wanted to move back to Sydney, she even bought a house for us. She helped Jason start various businesses, and he began to get used to a different life. And I spoiled him because I had finally started to live mine.’
Jane held the wallpaper stripper in her right hand and eased forward onto the edge of the sofa.
‘What about Helena? Did your father abuse her too?’
Beatrice gave her a twisted smile. ‘She was his doting slave, but he wouldn’t touch her because she was ugly and thin as a rake. He used to call her his boy. She had to know what was going on because she helped him in his darkroom, developing and pinning up his filthy photographs. She burned Marjorie’s blood-soaked nightdress when he raped her and the one she wore when she gave birth. I’ll tell you something else about Helena — when Father had terrible fights with our Mama, she would take his side. And she reported back to him like a spy about our lovely music tutor. We hated her, and when I eventually escaped from that house, I was thankful she had him all to herself.’