At the Going Down of the Sun

‘Well?’

Molly James lifted her chin, even as she curled her trembling hands into fists in her lap.

‘Well what?’

‘Don’t you take that tone with me, young lady!’ her father snapped and Molly flinched, her bravado slipping.

Molly’s mother Ursula stepped forward and Molly looked to her, hoping for understanding. Her mother was the person she felt closest to in the world. Her only real friend, in fact. Surely she of all people would see that a terrible mistake had been made. Yet Ursula’s expression was stony.

‘What do you have to say for yourself?’ Ursula said. The coldness of her mother’s tone hurt Molly more than her father Harold’s anger and for the first time tears threatened.

‘I-Ididn’t know,’ Molly said.

‘Didn’t know.’ Harold scoffed. ‘Do you take us for fools? Half of Adelaide went to that man’s wedding. It was in the newspapers for heaven’s sake.’

‘I was away at school,’ Molly said.

‘A school you got kicked out of,’ Harold reminded her, pointing his finger at her like a fencing foil. Molly stared at it, pinned and trapped by her past, but she fought on.

‘Yes, but I had no idea of what was going on here. Honestly. I’ve only been back a month.’ She looked to her mother again for support but there was none forthcoming and Molly couldn’t halt the tears gathering in her eyes this time. ‘Please Mother, you must believe me.’

But even pleading made no difference. It seemed nothing Molly said would.

‘Randall Hall is a married man,’ Ursula said flatly. ‘You know it, we know it and Lord knows his wife jolly well knows it, although what she’ll say when she finds out about this.’ Ursula shook her head. ‘Poor woman goes to Perth to visit her dying mother and look what happens, the very moment her back is turned.’

Molly’s insides twisted with guilt as she digested that news, yet at least it proved her point. ‘I-I’m so sorry . . . but don’t you see? She wasn’t here. I didn’t know about her.’

However, Ursula was pacing now. ‘Randall is a scoundrel to have done this to her but it’s always the woman people will blame. I don’t know if we’ll ever live this down.’

‘This is beyond any stunt you’ve pulled before, Molly,’ her father said in his most serious lawyer tone. ‘It’s too much.’

Molly bowed her head, the fight going out of her. Her mother was right. Randall was married, impossible as that might seem. She was a fool to have ever believed otherwise.

‘I didn’t know,’ she said again. What else could she say?

Molly watched as Harold led Ursula to the side-chamber, pullingback the heavy velvet curtains to discuss the punishment Molly would receive while she waited, still trying to fight her tears. She looked across to the window at the now overcast day. How beautiful the world had seemed before, with the manicured gardens below soaked in sunshine and the blue sky offering such promise. How excited she’d been to stand at this very spot in her bedroom, admiring her new blue silk dress in the mirror, knowing she’d soon be dancing with Randall and drinking champagne downstairs.

Now both actions had led to them being caught in her father’s library doing . . . dear Lord, how had she let him take such liberties? Molly’s face flushed afresh at the memory of her parents walking in with several others, laughing, until they saw her and Randall, half-dressed and passionately entwined. Molly squeezed her eyes shut tight. Maybe this was just a bad dream. Or maybe there was still time to climb out the window and shimmy down the drainpipe to make her escape as she’d done in the past. But no, it was all too real, and it was too late to run as she heard her parents return. Reluctantly she opened her eyes to find both parents grave-faced in front of her.

‘We can’t just hope this will die down, Molly. It’s one thing to get in trouble at school or upset one of the other young ladies or whatever else we’ve expected people to overlook these past few years,’ her father said. ‘But this is too much.’ That he’d said that twice now showed just how serious this was. Her father never repeated himself.

Ursula cleared her throat and Molly knew at that moment her mother’s next words would be life-changing ones.‘Your reputation is ruined, Molly, and I’m afraid . . . I’m afraid we’re sending you away,’ she said. Molly stared at her in shock.

‘Sending me away?’

Ursula’s stern countenance revealed little but her voice was unsteady now. ‘Yes. To your Aunt Mavis in Rainbow. A quiet country sojourn might be just the thing.’

‘The country?’ Her mother might as well have said Africa, so foreign did the place sound. ‘But I . . . I hardly know Aunt Mavis, let alone anyone else.’

‘Nevertheless.’

Molly lost her battle against tears as she struggled to grasp theenormity of her parent’s’ decision. ‘Will you . . . will you come wit hme at least? Just for the first little while?’

Ursula met her gaze and for a moment she thought her mother might say yes. ‘I don’t think so,’ she said, the verdict landing in a sickening ball in Molly’s stomach. ‘Your father thinks it’s fitting that you go in the morning without any fuss. It’s better you head off on your own and make a fresh start.’

Molly nodded, managing to respond even though she could barelycomprehend such a thing. ‘If . . . if you think that’s best.’

‘I do,’ Ursula said firmly, but she was blinking back tears too. ‘You can’t mend a bad reputation, Molly. I’ve told you that all your life. Still, we’ll do what we can from here and perhaps, over time . . .’

‘You’ll let me come home?’

The words hung between them.

‘Maybe. One day,’ her father said, his tone a little softer than before. One day. They were placating her with a phrase they’d used in her childhood. Molly knew then they were wiping their hands of her, their only child.

‘Please don’t do this to me,’ she said, crying properly now.

‘You’ve left us with little choice,’ Ursula said, shaking out her handkerchief and dabbing at the corners of her eyes. ‘I . . . I hope you learn something from this, Molly Anne,’ she said. ‘You can only treat life like a game for so long until someone gets hurt.’

Molly could barely speak. ‘S-so this is my comeuppance then, youmean. Being hurt.’

‘More than one person was hurt this time,’ her mother told her, shaking her head. ‘You’ve quite broken my heart.’

Harold put his arm around his wife and they left their daughter with that. Molly sat and stared at the closing door, still weeping and feeling more wretched than she ever had in her entire eighteen years of life.

I never meant to hurt anyone, she wanted to say. He really did lie to me. Randall said he loved me. That he wanted to marry me. He never mentioned he already had a wife.

Truth was he’d fooled her after they’d met last month at the regatta. She’d been looking for affection after being expelled, she supposed, and certainly her mother had been angry that week. How green Molly had been to follow him to the sheds and allow him to kiss her, she recognised now. How willing to believe him when he said it was best to keep their affair a secret, as things became more heated over these past, heady weeks, because his friend Sebastian fancied her too. That was something Molly knew to be true, yet in hindsight she saw how ridiculous it was that she’d gone along with it all.

Molly crossed the thickly carpeted floor dazedly, looking around at her bedroom, trying to comprehend that soon it would no longer be hers. It’d felt like a gilded cage at times with its ornate floor-to-ceiling wardrobes and the great four-poster bed sitting in the middle. Countless times had she lain there when in trouble, as if she were a princess locked up in a castle turret. And yet what kind of place would she find herself in now, banished from her kingdom? Stuck in the countryside somewhere with an aunt she barely knew, lonely for her mother. Lonely for her life.

She moved to the mullion windows, swiping at her tears to stare out at the manicured city street below. How often had she gazed at this, her world, impossibly soon to be a scene from her past. Genteel folk strolled by stately blond brick houses just like hers in their fashionable best, and the occasional shiny automobile lumbered along, yet it was strangely quiet for a Saturday afternoon. A cloak had fallen upon it, and ominous dark clouds had gathered above as if to herald the fact that a scandal had befallen one of their own. A misfortune to be secretly relished by all, save those who bore it.

Molly knew that many of Adelaide’s finest would be cloistered behind the ornate facades of their homes right now, savouring the delicious gossip that she, Molly James, had fallen into disgrace. How quickly they would turn on her, a young woman who so often strolled amongst them with her parents, or drove by in Harold’s expensive automobile, smiling and nodding; respected, if envied, yet she was neither of those things anymore.

And oh, how they would gloat all the more knowing she was to be ostracised and sent to the country, leaving her parents to bear her shame.

Dear Lord, how could I have been so naive? she railed internally. Because she was too distracted by his flattery to ever ask questions, she realised. His good looks, his charm. Thinking herself falling in love ass he became swept away by the romance of it all.

She clutched at her handkerchief. Why, why didn’t anyone tell me? But she knew the answer to that too. None of the other girls in their set ever spoke to Molly unless it was a snide comment. Her mother had always said women were jealous of her, something Molly had learnt the hard way at boarding school. Hence her expulsion when she’d finally stood up to some particularly nasty girls in her form.

Molly frowned against that old, familiar hurt. Having no female friends was something she was well used to, but if only she’d had even one, this devastating scandal might never have occurred. Surely then she would have confided in her about Randall and the girl could’ve told her the truth. Molly felt her only real friend was her mother but she’d never talked to Ursula about Randall, of course. If only, again. Yet all the ‘if only’s’ in the world wouldn’t change things now.

Molly leant her forehead against the window pane, thinking about Ursula’s broken heart. Thinking about her own. How it hurt to hear her mother, the person she loved most, say those words. To lose her father’s affections too. To know that Randall never loved her at all. It seemed no one did.

The pain was like a strangulating vine, twisting and cutting off hope and joy from her life. It gripped at her chest and Molly willed it away as she clasped her handkerchief against it, desperate for something else to take its place. I can’t bear it. I just can’t.

Then slowly, surely, something did begin to churn. It was the same feeling she’d experienced before when the girls at school tore her down, or when women whispered behind their gloves about her. Molly recognised and embraced it, breathing it in deeply and giving it a name. Fight.

The feeling burned like a living thing as it surged through her, obliterating all else. It grew and it grew, breaking that vine, demanding her heart be set free, refusing to let her feel the devastating pain of heartbreak any longer.

Fight. Randall won’t win. He won’t destroy me.

Molly blinked against her tears, focusing on those grey clouds,only now they were a challenge, not an omen. For what did clouds bring but rain, then sunshine once more? And rainbows.

‘Rainbow,’ she whispered, testing the name on the air. Who was to say that the country was a place to be feared? In truth, what had city life brought her, other than despair?

Yes, she would go to that promising-sounding place. She would make a fresh start with her aunt and she’d make friends too, real ones, perhaps even her first female friend at last. And maybe . . . maybe she’d even learn to trust a man once more.

Molly might well have ruined her life in Adelaide, but the opportunity for a new one awaited her in Rainbow. She would grab on to it with both hands, even if that meant doing so alone. For she was young. She was strong. And Molly Anne James was determined to fight.