‘How did he respond to that?’
‘Laughed. “What’ll you do?”, he said. “Go to the police?” He kept laughing like it was a great big joke. Said he’d have our vines ripped out and his cows grazing here before long.’
‘Here? He most certainly will not.’
‘He swore there’ll be a government order soon, saying no criminals can own land. Reckoned Pa’s a criminal. I nearly hit him.’
‘I’m glad you didn’t. It’s a silly lie, Carl, a bluff to scare you.’
‘I sort of knew that. And anyway — you own it, too. But the way things are lately — just about anything could be true.’
He looked away from her searching gaze, and she knew there was something else. What he had told her was merely camouflage for what mattered.
They were all so different, her children. Of the three, Carl was the one with whom she had spent the most time, yet the one she knew the least. There was a private, withdrawn side to him that she had never been able to penetrate.
‘That’s not all, is it?’
‘All?’ He pretended not to understand.
‘What else is worrying you?’
‘You are, Ma,’ he said after a long time.
‘Me?’
‘What you’re doing. Not everyone agrees it’s right. I don’t mean people like the Carsons and their mob. I’m talking about people in the town, friends, folk you’ve known for years — they’re divided. Some are in favour. Some think …’
‘What do they think?’ she prompted, as he faltered.
‘That every time you make a speech or get yourself in the newspapers, the prison guards will take it out on Pa. That you might be making it worse for him.’
‘Is that what you feel?’ she asked him gently. He finally nodded.
‘Yes, I do.’
‘That I’m making it worse?’
‘That you’ve never stopped to think what you’re doing. What you’ve done. Maria forced to leave school, living in Sydney, so we won’t see her again. You in Adelaide, so busy with speeches that you hardly ever come home. So many people gossiping about you.’
It poured out of him, a flood of pent-up anxieties, of doubts and mistrusts engendered by years of encountering hostility. Since the day war broke out, a schoolboy of barely sixteen, his life had been its own battlefield.
‘Nobody meets in town these days, without them all talking about you. “What’s she done now? What’s she said? Is she in the papers again?” Some think you’re really pleased at being so famous …’
‘Oh my God,’ she whispered.
‘I’m sorry, Ma, but you asked me. I’ve heard them say it.’ Famous or notorious, James Boothby had warned her, but no one could have warned her of this. Her own son, disapproving, almost hating her she felt, voicing the secret rancour he harboured. She felt sad at the enormous gulf between them, and knew she must try to bridge it.
‘I was foolish,’ she said. ‘It was wrong, not to talk to you first, to tell you what I planned to do. I told Maria, because I thought it might affect her at school, and she insisted I go ahead, do what I’ve done. The same as your father did.’
She saw him turn and stare at her. ‘When did he say that?’
‘On the last visit. When I read him Harry’s letter.’
‘Harry’s letter,’ Carl said accusingly. ‘That’s why all this happened.’
‘Don’t you think he was entitled to see it? You need something in that hell hole to give you hope.’
‘I thought it was just a prison camp — strict and bleak, not so terrible. That’s what you said, Mama.’
‘I know. I tried to spare you. I should’ve told the truth. If you think anything I do could make it worse for him, I assure you that’s not possible. Not in there. The treatment is inhuman. The chief warder is a filthy sadist, the guards are brutes, and the place is cold and dirty and barbaric.’
She unconsciously repressed a shudder.
‘As for those people who think I enjoy being “famous”, as they call it, I’m sorry. They won’t believe me, but I hate it. I’m scared. I feel sick every time I stand up and make a speech, but I’ll go on doing it as often as I can — because it’s the only chance of getting your father out of that dreadful, disgusting place.’
She drove away soon afterwards. Carl had a lot to think about, and he would do it in his own time. That was his way, and always had been. Carl was far more his father’s son, just as Harry was hers. She wondered if he even resented the references she often made to Harry fighting for his country in France. She should have told Carl she loved him, and without him there to run the vineyard she would be lost. But instead she had an uneasy feeling the void existing between them still remained.
It was wintry cold in London, and the afternoon had barely seemed to begin before it was over, and the twilight, as swift in winter as it was leisurely in summer, turned into dense night. The street lamps were few in number, and dim in case of any aerial bombing. The German airships had already made many raids, but ever since some had been shot down in flames, the attacks had been made by twin engine biplanes.
Kate sat by her window, and watched the searchlights scan the clouds. Like most people, she felt little fear of the bombs, even though the raids had killed over a thousand people since the war began. Much of the damage had occurred in Kent and Essex, and the recent raid in the City of London which destroyed the central telegraph office. One night she and Rupert had stood on Hampstead Heath, with hundreds of others, and watched the artillery guns and a searchlight trap a Zeppelin, and felt a shiver of horror as the airship burned, a spectacular conflagration that detonated the sky. The crowd cheered, then the sound died to a shocked whisper as they could see the outline of burning figures in the blazing craft, and one, trailing flames, hurled himself into oblivion. The others were etched in their dying agony, as the struts of the Zeppelin’s fiery skeleton fell slowly towards the heath and the ponds.
‘Bloody good shot,’ Rupert said, and looked around for Kate, but she was in a nearby clump of bushes being noisily sick. He calmed her and explained that war was hell, and the dead men would have dropped a bomb on the crowd, if they’d had the chance. She asked him to please shut up, and he did, and they walked across the heath to The Spaniard where he made her drink a brandy.
Soon afterwards the pub started to fill up, people excitedly regaling those who had missed it with the details of what had happened. A group of males, wrapped in thick coats, with public school scarves that advertised their old Harrovian origins, came in and ordered pints.
‘Beats the hell out of Guy Fawkes,’ one of them said. ‘Should’ve put up a sign saying, “Frying tonight”.’ There was a burst of laughter.
‘Oh God,’ Kate said, ‘what a disgusting, filthy thing to say.’ The laughter had ended. Her voice sounded loud and clear in the lull. Faces of the group turned to look at her. Rupert touched her arm, and stood, ready to leave.
‘We’ll be off, I think. The lady’s upset.’ He gave them a nod in token apology. ‘She didn’t mean it.’
‘Oh, yes she did,’ Kate insisted.
‘Take the bitch away, old boy,’ one of the group advised. ‘Or else we might take offence.’
‘Might take down her drawers and give her a slap.’
‘And a tickle.’
They all laughed again, and she realised they were drunk. ‘Not a bad idea, eh, Toby?’ another said to the man who had made the offensive remark.
‘Bang a beat on a beautiful bum.’
‘Alliteration!’ they all chorused, and thought it hilarious.
‘For Christ’s sake, Kate, let’s get out of here,’ Rupert hissed.
‘Tickle the tits. Top that, Toby.’
‘Tease the tottie’s twinkling twat,’ the one called Toby shouted, and Kate picked up an almost full pint of bitter and flung it in his face. There was a sudden silence, and then uproar, as the startled and drunken Toby made a lunge at her and Rupert hit him. The proprietor and a barman vaulted th
e counter and tried to restore order, shouting at Kate and Rupert to get out, and warning the old Harrovians that the police had been called and were on their way.
‘Please, Kate,’ Rupert said, then Toby’s fist found his eye.
Kate lashed out and kicked his shins. Toby fell like a wounded buffalo, trying to claw at her legs, and she stamped on his hand and emptied another pint all over his mottled face.
‘Kate! Please.’
‘Oh, all right,’ she said to Rupert, and they dodged past the barman and out the door, as a police car with its strident bell came up Spaniards Road. It pulled up in front of them. Uniformed police with truncheons emerged like Keystone Cops at the cinema. Kate stifled an urgent desire to giggle.
‘Thank goodness,’ Rupert gasped, as though expecting them.
In his best Camberley instructing officer’s voice he said, ‘In there. Drunken bunch of civilians, trying to pick fights and wreck the place. Well done.’
They watched the police run in, and the hubbub inside quieten. Then they saw a bus coming, and ran to catch it.
Later on, in bed, she bathed his eye. ‘Is it black?’ he asked.
‘More red and swollen. Like a carbuncle. But it definitely will be black by the morning.’
‘Oh Christ,’ he said, ‘I’ve got the General coming to address the graduating officers.’
She had started to laugh, and Rupert had joined in, and mutual hysteria enveloped them. After that she could no longer tell him what she had been bracing herself to say for weeks. That she was no longer certain. That perhaps they ought to just leave things a while, and not get married quite as soon as they planned.
Kate remembered that night as she sat by the window, watching the lights sweeping the sky and seeking German planes. The silly scene in the pub that had suddenly turned nasty. Rupert, directing the police. Making her laugh. Making love in this bed afterwards, and not being able to explain that she might, just might be in love with Harry Patterson after all- but since she wasn’t sure if he was alive or dead, that perhaps they could wait and see if he ever turned up, and then she could hopefully sort things out. That was what she had intended to say.
She hadn’t said a word, because he was really so nice, Rupert, and Harry was just a miraculous few days that felt like part of a dream, and it might never be like that again. So Rupert’s mother had begun to make plans, generously glad to be able to give the wedding since her own parents were unable to, and the church had been booked, bridesmaids chosen, a date set.
Six weeks from now.
In the meantime, her brother had written to say the family would drink a toast to her on the big day, and sent a batch of newspaper cuttings with photographs of Harry’s mother, and amazing headlines. She was being talked about a lot, David said, people were taking sides, and he was completely on hers. He wished Kate had met her. She was far more beautiful than her photos, and marvellous. Had she heard from H? He’d had a letter saying they’d met when he was on leave in London, but no details and nothing since. Anyway, he would keep her posted on the battle of Elizabeth Muller against the oafs of officialdom. His regards to Rupert, and a wedding present was on the way which he hoped would escape being torpedoed by a German sub.
Kate read all the newspaper stories. She remembered vividly the day she had been the one to break the news of his father’s imprisonment, his sadness for the man he had never been able to love, the anxious belief that his grandfather would have enough influence to secure his freedom. She had known then that it was unlikely. And now his mother was having a go! Making speeches. Challenging the court. Good on her! she said aloud.
In the days that followed, she thought about it endlessly, and finally she wrote to Elizabeth Muller. She enclosed the letters she had kept and never shown anyone, letters from Harry’s moments of despair in France, and she asked Mrs Muller to make use of them if she thought they could help. She added a P.S., saying that she believed she loved Harry, but things didn’t always work out the right way, and she was marrying someone else.
THIRTY FIVE
The small hall was packed. There was a sprinkling of men present, but they were scarcely noticeable among more than two hundred women. Despite the nervousness she had expressed to Carl, Elizabeth was becoming increasingly more confident each time she faced an audience, and she spoke with an impassioned sincerity that reached to all corners of the local School of Arts.
‘There are thousands — and I mean it literally — thousands of men and women being held in internment camps. Langley and Torrens Islands are only two such prisons. Trial Bay, Holdsworthy, Langwarrin and Berrima are others. How many thousands are held captive in these places? I can’t tell you that. We simply don’t know.
‘We can never know, because there are no records. No courts.
No juries. And no convictions ever recorded. People are just taken away in the night — without warning, without reason, without proof. It is a shameful record of persecution and prejudice, and a stain on our history.’
From the back of the hall, a man rose and shouted at her. ‘Shut up. You lousy traitor. Dirty, stupid German-loving bitch!’
‘Keep quiet,’ a woman told him.
‘Sit down,’ another advised him. ‘Either sit and listen — or clear out.’
‘Thank you, ladies,’ Elizabeth said, ‘all I ask is a fair hearing in our land of free speech.’
But the heckler was not to be silenced. ‘Stinking German tart.’
‘Go away,’ other women started to call at him.
‘He’s drunk.’
‘Throw him out.’
‘Your husband’s a lousy bloody spy,’ the heckler yelled, and left amid a chorus of boos and disapproval. A middle-aged lady rose from her seat and whacked him with a furled parasol as he went past, raising a gale of approving laughter. Elizabeth laughed with them, then seized on his parting words.
‘If my husband’s a German spy, then let me be the first to say he deserves to rot in gaol. Let me challenge them here and now — bring him to court, and accuse him. They won’t. They can’t. Because you know — in your hearts you all know — he and all those imprisoned people are innocent victims. Their only offence is to be caught up in the hysteria and the tyranny of this war.’
In the front row, an old lady stared up at her. Elizabeth could feel her intent gaze. The old lady nodded — and then put her gloved hands together. She began to gently clap. Around her, people saw her and followed suit. In a matter of moments the hall was enlivened by the sound of their applause.
Some weeks later Elizabeth was opening her ever-increasing batch of mail, much of it supportive and laudatory, some abusively offensive and obscene — you never knew which it would be until the envelope was open. In the pile there was a bulky overseas letter with an English stamp. The address was correct, the hand that wrote it unfamiliar to her. She opened it, and saw it contained several pages with Harry’s handwriting, and for a terrible heart-stopping moment thought he must be dead, and the mail had been forwarded on. Then she found the note that came with them, from Kate Brahm, and began to read it.
There was an even larger crowd this time. An amateur theatre, glad to rent the hall, filled at lunchtime with all ages, young office girls with their sandwiches, nurses in uniform, even soldiers. Perhaps four hundred people in all. It was her biggest audience so far.
‘This is a letter from my son,’ she spoke quietly, but they could all hear her. ‘It was sent to me by a friend of his. It was written in the trenches in France. It’s a cruel, unhappy, angry letter, but I make no apologies for reading it. This is what he and his comrades endure every day, while his father is imprisoned without a charge.’
She had carefully studied all of the letters from Kate, and never doubted which she would choose. She took the crumpled paper and began to read:
‘We are lousy, stinking, ragged, unshaven, sleepless. I have one puttee, a dead man’s helmet, a dead man’s gas protector, a German’s bayonet. My tunic is rotten with other men’s blo
od, and partly splattered with a comrade’s brains. I hate to write such things, but I cannot tell my family — yet I feel someone must know. If only to inform people when I’m dead. Why should some of those safe at home not be told what it’s like. I mean the ones who were so keen to send us here. I want the middle-class ladies who hand out white feathers to know that several of my friends are raving mad. One lived for two days with his head split open and his brains visible. Thank Christ he’s dead now. I’d like to tell the politicians that I met three officers out in no-man’s-land the other night, all rambling and completely insane …’
She stopped there, because she could no longer see the writing or bear the pain. There was utter silence, until somewhere among the crowd, a woman began to sob.
In the cooler days of summer, they often had their breakfast on the side terrace. It was one of those fine and calm Sydney mornings, and even Maria, now that her leaving certificate was done and her fate in the hands of the examiners, agreed to put down her books and join them.
Hannah had been out early and bought hot bread rolls from the bakery, and made a pot of tea. She had somehow persuaded Mrs Forbes she was unused to being waited on hand and foot, and did not enjoy it, and in this fourth year of the war it was wrong to have a large staff, when the factories and shop floors were desperate for people.
They no longer had a squad of servants. They closed sections of the house. In the evenings they used the cosy library rather than the formal and draughty drawing room. William marvelled at the way his wife had convinced Mrs Forbes to accept change, and found the simpler lifestyle so much more enjoyable. They often worked together in the garden, and if it had not been for Elizabeth’s problems and his fear for Harry, he would have said he was happier than at any time in his life.
‘Good heavens,’ Maria said. She was immersed in The Sydney Morning Herald.
William nodded with some satisfaction. ‘Yes, your mother’s in the news again. MRS MULLER GAINS SUPPORT. Not bad for The Herald. I read it earlier.’
A Bitter Harvest Page 41