‘And if they don’t let you?’
‘Then I won’t shut up.’
Maria laughed and embraced her emotionally. ‘I’ll miss you,’ she said.
Elizabeth remembered it vividly, as the same boat idled in towards the jetty of Langley Island. She felt desperately unhappy about Maria. When she had warned her it might create an upset, she had never dreamed the parents of so many girls would behave the way they had. Nor, of course, had she known that all the other newspapers would feature the story, so that in the past week it had become difficult for her to walk in the Adelaide streets unrecognised.
It had been a salutary experience. A smartly dressed woman had spat at her. A group of office girls, on the way to the park to spend their lunch hour, had shaken her hand and wished her luck. A number of city businessmen whom she knew had snubbed her, making audible disparaging comments, while a uniformed soldier on crutches, had paused and managed, with difficulty, to salute her.
There seemed no predictable response. She knew her story had divided groups of people, and certainly caused eruptions in her own life. At moments all she wanted to do was return to the vineyard, and remain there in obscurity. The limelight, whether it be fame or notoriety, was not something she relished. Perhaps, she thought, I’m more my mother’s daughter than I realised.
The chief warder was waiting on the landing stage, with an older man. Once again he offered a hand to assist her ashore, and again she deftly avoided any contact with him.
‘Mr Lawrenson is from the Department of Prisons,’ McVeigh said. ‘He wishes to speak to you.’
‘Mrs Muller,’ the older man seemed anxious to make a good impression. ‘A visit to a prisoner here is a rare privilege. It is granted to very few. This is the second time you’ve been allowed to see your husband. I do hope you’ll remember that, when you next find yourself pursued by members of the press.’
‘I hope,’ Elizabeth said, ‘I’ll be able to tell them it was more agreeable than the first visit.’
‘I understand you made a scene?’
‘If you believe that, there’s little point in having this discussion.
May I see my husband under more pleasant conditions than last time?’
‘I’m sure Mr Mcveigh will do his best.’
‘I hope I’ll be able to tell the reporters so, when I leave.’
She could see McVeigh was livid with her, and while she nursed fear for Stefan, she realised she held one huge advantage.
They were afraid of what she might say to the newspapers.
She was determined to make full use of this. If she had to endure this tribulation of being in the public eye, so be it. Her sights were now set higher. It had begun to seem to her, if you had strength of purpose, almost anything was possible. If she could prolong her ordeal of being on the front pages for a short while longer, then it was not beyond question that she could force them to free him.
‘I have to tell you, Mr Lawrenson, I intend to read my husband a letter from our son, who is fighting in France. If I’m prevented from doing so, the Adelaide Herald has a copy, and will publish it in its entirety.’
‘Letters are subject to censorship by my office,’ McVeigh said. She interpreted the look the man from the Prisons Department gave him. He told McVeigh to take Mrs Muller to meet her husband, and allow her to read the letter — provided it was purely personal and there was no information in there to jeopardise the security of the nation. She wanted to laugh, but had an awful feeling the man was serious.
This visit was such a contrast, even though it was the same bleak room, with McVeigh and the same warder both still radiating hostility, preventing any hope of privacy. But the previous time she had been intimidated. Today, when she and Stefan were ordered to sit on opposite sides of the room, and the two men took up their intrusive positions, Elizabeth immediately requested the chief warder send for Mr Lawrenson.
‘Why?’
McVeigh was distinctly less abrasive, almost wary. She felt certain he had been told to handle this with more care, and it gave her assurance.
‘If his department wishes me to say I had a satisfactory visit, I can’t. I want him to see for himself, so that when I tell journalists we were forced to sit apart like this, stared at, listened to, treated worse than thieves or common criminals, he won’t be able to deny it. Not without lying.’
‘You want to sit a wee bit closer to him, is that it, lassie?’
‘I want five minutes of privacy.’
‘Impossible.’ McVeigh knew he was on safer ground here.
‘Five minutes.’
‘Rules, Mrs Muller. Dear me. Lord knows what the prisoner might get up to, if we locked you in here with him for five minutes.’
The guard sniggered. Elizabeth ignored him, her gaze fixed on McVeigh. Her contempt for the cheap jibe was obvious, and she meant him to know it. He was under some outside pressure and could not behave with the same aggressive malice he had shown the last time.
‘I’ll make one concession — to prove I’m not as bad as you may think,’ McVeigh said. He told the junior warder to leave, but remain on guard outside — and he waited until the man had gone.
‘You can put your chairs nearer, but you don’t touch, you don’t embrace or do anything of that nature. I’ll be in the next room with the door open. I’ll be able to hear your conversation — it’s my duty to monitor discussion, but you won’t be distracted by my presence or able to declare you were not left alone. I don’t think I can be fairer than that, Mrs Muller.’
‘Thank you.’
Even if he was under instruction, she was surprised he was being quite so conciliatory. It seemed unnatural, but she was not going to complain. He went into the adjoining room, leaving the door wide open. They moved as close as they dared. They wanted to reach out and touch hands, to hold each other urgently, but knew McVeigh was liable to return no matter what he promised, so they forced themselves to resist. He feasted his eyes on her, and she felt the strength of his love.
‘You look so beautiful. Not a day older.’
‘Oh yes I am, darling.’
‘Not to me. I can’t bear it much longer, not being with you.’
‘When this nightmare is over,’ she said, ‘we’ll never be apart again. Stefan, I want to read you a letter.’
‘From Harry?’
‘Yes,’ she said, surprised, ‘how did you know?’
‘Read it. Afterwards I’ll tell you.’
‘My dear father,’ she began, ‘I’m told you’re in a prison camp, accused of being some sort of enemy. What kind of people, in God’s name, are making this accusation?’
She continued to read it quietly to him, at moments having to pause because her throat filled and her eyes stung with emotion. It was the letter she had always hoped he would write to his father, ever since their quarrel, yet it was so much more. Harry poured out his feelings, spoke of his pride in Stefan, his anger at those who accused him, his horror of the war which surrounded him. Nothing was held back in this letter. It was from the heart, and therefore, certainly to her, unbearably touching.
When she finished he remained silent, nodding his head but unable to trust his voice to express how deeply it had moved him. ‘What was the last bit?’ he finally managed to ask.
‘I have long been convinced — and we have these crazy thoughts here in this hellish place — that I would die here. That I could not survive. Well, now I must. I must come home, first to make my peace with you, and after that to find out who is to blame for this outrage — and try to make them accountable. Your son, Harry.’
‘My son, Harry.’ Stefan whispered it. ‘I also want him to survive. Not to make anyone accountable, just to come home and live the rest of his life. To find a girl nearly as wonderful as I did. To have children, nearly as nice as mine. I want to spend time with him, liebchen. I want to make up for the years we lost. This letter — I know now why you fought so hard — this letter is something truly special to me.’
&n
bsp; ‘Now tell me how you knew about it?’
‘A few lines were quoted in a newspaper.’
‘You saw them?’
‘Yes. All newspapers are banned here — but they made an exception. They allowed me to read about you. It’s why they let you visit. Why they left us alone, instead of sitting in here, listening to every word and smirking at us.’
Now she understood McVeigh’s uncharacteristic conduct.
His surprising docility. She was angry at herself for imagining she had won: nothing had been won, she had merely been used. ‘What do they want?’
‘I’m to ask you not to go to the newspapers with more stories like that. I’m to tell you to stop making trouble.’
‘I understand,’ she said, feeling deflated. Feeling a fool for imagining she could beat these faceless people.
‘At least, that’s what they’d like me to say,’ Stefan said. ‘What I say, my love, is make more trouble. Lots more. All the trouble you can. People in here are on your side — they think you’re wonderful. And so do I.’
From the corner of her eye, she saw McVeigh moving into the room, moving past her, jerking his knee into Stefan’s groin, and bunching his fist as he hit him in the region of the solar-plexus. Stefan went down in agony, and McVeigh flung open the door and yelled for the warder to smarten himself, to wake up for Christ’s sake, the fucking prisoner had just attempted an assault and had been dealt with. So what was he doing outside the door, the dumb prick, hearing nothing, while his senior officer was in jeopardy? And the bloody prisoner’s wife egging him on.
‘Get the fucking bitch out of here,’ he yelled — and the warder, by now convinced he actually had heard something that was dangerous, shouted at Elizabeth to hurry and get herself down to the island jetty, where he would guard her until the next boat arrived, in an hour or two. McVeigh was blowing a shrill whistle that summoned more guards, and she was hustled outside, but not before she glimpsed a boot kick Stefan as he tried to rise, and saw McVeigh’s unforgiving face.
‘The stupid bastard had his chance,’ he snapped at her. ‘All he had to do was make you shut up. Ye’ll not get another chance to see him, that I promise you.’
Someone slammed the door, and mercifully she could no longer see them beating Stefan, or hear McVeigh’s malignant voice.
‘I can’t print that,’ Boothby said the following day. ‘I wish I could, but we’re no longer a free press. Guards kicking prisoners in the ribs while they’re on the ground. The chief warder of the camp speaking to you that way. The censor would put his pencil straight through it, but our own board would themselves disallow it before that.’
Elizabeth nodded. She felt sick with what she had seen.
‘It was all a ploy to make me stop,’ she said. ‘Allowing the visit was simply that. I feel so angry — and helpless — and such a fool. I even thought I might be able to make them release Stefan. I was stupid enough to imagine I had that kind of power.’
‘But you have,’ James Boothby said suddenly. ‘You have.’
William came down to breakfast. Mrs Forbes brought in his grapefruit, and said Maria had already been down, hardly even bothering to sit, just a piece of toast and a cup of tea and was on her way to school. She worried that she worked too hard, that one, and ate too little. It was very nice to be ambitious, and to get into Sydney University like her brother, but success was no benefit if you didn’t have your health. Without your health you had nothing, didn’t he agree?
William dutifully agreed. Mrs Forbes, in her late middle years, had become decidedly more garrulous, but he couldn’t imagine this house without her. She gave him the morning paper, and said Maria had marked a story on page three about Miss Lizzie, and for her grandpa to be sure to read it. Mrs Forbes said she hoped the Senator didn’t mind, but she herself had read it, and wasn’t it wonderful the way Miss Lizzie was standing up to people.
William, who was eager to read it, agreed it was wonderful, and thought again about telling Mrs Forbes he was no longer in the Senate, and therefore plain Mr Patterson would do — but he knew it was a lost cause. To Mr and Mrs Forbes, who had been here almost thirty years and had seen all the changes in his life, he would always be the Senator.
He began to read the story, and, if he hadn’t been so concerned, might have smiled. SENATOR’S DAUGHTER, the headline said: PETITION TO THE SUPREME COURT.
The report was from Adelaide, dated the previous day, and stated Mrs Elizabeth Patterson Muller, who described her father as one of the architects of Federation, and thus one of the founders of democracy in this country, had petitioned the South Australian Supreme Court for the release of her husband.
He realised Hannah had come in, and was reading it over his shoulder. She kissed the nape of his neck, and he slipped an arm around her trim waist.
‘Maria marked it for us, as compulsory reading.’
‘I should say so. Clever girl,’ Hannah remarked.
‘Maria?’
‘No question. But in this instance I meant Elizabeth. It’s smart. What I’d call a tactical ploy. Very enterprising.’
‘My darling, she hasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell.’
‘Surely that’s not the point, William.’
‘She wants him released. They won’t grant a writ of habeas corpus. We already know that.’
‘So does Elizabeth.’
‘Then what will she achieve, apart from further humiliation and more pain?’
‘She’s already achieved it.’
‘I must be missing something. I don’t see how?’
‘She’s put the matter back in the newspapers. As the daughter of — what does she say? — one of the architects of Federation, and thus one of the founders of democracy in this country.’
‘People don’t care. Even if it’s half true. They’ve forgotten.’
‘She’s reminding them. Lizzie is making sure that she can’t be dismissed as some crackpot — or a nobody.’
‘Good God,’ he said. ‘How do you know all this?’
‘Women’s intuition. If she loses, it gives her an opportunity to protest, to make another speech. There’ll be a great many reporters keeping an eye on the outcome. This virtually guarantees it.’
‘Devious.’
‘Wonderfully so. Truly her father’s daughter.’ Hannah laughed, and kissed him again.
They asked her to pose on the steps outside the Supreme Court building, and she patiently did so while the photographers set up their tripods. The reporters shouted a barrage of questions.
‘Any comments, Mrs Muller?’
‘How long has your husband been imprisoned?’
‘When did he come to this country?’
‘How did you first meet?’
She answered them all in turn. She refused smiles for the photographers despite their requests; she had no intention of being seen with a smile in any newspaper.
‘Did the court’s refusal to even hear your case surprise you?’
‘It deeply disappointed me. My husband was arrested without a charge — he’s being held without a trial — and the Court chooses not to hear my petition for his release.’
She looked towards the reporter who had asked the question.
He worked for Boothby, and it gave her the opportunity she needed.
‘But the real answer is, no it didn’t surprise me. I’m no longer surprised at the failure of decency and justice. But I have to wonder how my son feels, there in France fighting for his country — a country which imprisons his father, and will not tell us why.’
The photographers clicked. Lights popped. The reporters busily wrote it down. It was a good story, and this Mrs Muller was one hell of an attractive woman. If the pictures were any good, if those clowns with the cameras did their job, it should get a run on the front page.
It did far more than that. During the following few days the story was extensively reported by newspapers right across the continent.
The Sun ran a very large photograp
h of Elizabeth, and a banner headline: SENATOR’S DAUGHTER CONDEMNS SUPREME COURT. The Herald was more sedate, but probably more persuasive. FAILURE OF DECENCY AND JUSTICE. MRS MULLER’S STATEMENT.
The Telegraph, where Alistair Beames was now editor, suggested there were a number of questions which should be answered, and that since the complainant was not only reputable, but related to a man who had helped frame the constitution, the very least the justices could do was to hear her. If not, it was more than reasonable to ask why.
William read them all. There was even a leader in the Star, and while it was equivocal, determined not to risk appearing sympathetic to any German-Australians, it also thought the public were entitled to know the facts of the case, and whether there was any truth in these startling accusations being raised by the daughter of a former but prominent politician.
Christ Almighty, he thought incredulously, with a rush of emotional pride, she might just win.
Elizabeth went back to the vineyard, but only for a day. Carl was running it alone, managing to keep things going, he said, but warning her that when the harvest time arrived next February they may not have any pickers for the grapes. A few of his friends would help, but some would be busy on their own family vineyards, and the seasonal pickers they had used in the past would no longer work for Germans. Especially not for them. That was when she began to notice he was restless, almost distant.
‘The harvest is still four months away,’ she told him, ‘and who knows what may happen by then?’
He seemed not to have heard the determined optimism. ‘What is it, Carl?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Trouble?’
‘No more than usual.’
‘Please tell me.’
‘Nothing, I said.’ There was a silence, then he shrugged. ‘That bastard Carson’s been stirring things up.’
‘They’re so vindictive,’ Elizabeth said, ‘yet we helped them when they started their dairy farm. When they were poor.’
‘He’s rich now. They have even more contracts for army milk supplies.’
‘What happened?’
‘He’s been round again, trying to make Eva-Maria sell her land. He keeps offering less, scaring her into practically giving it to him. She was in tears, so I went and told him to keep away.’
A Bitter Harvest Page 40