‘We’d be the guards. We’d hit him if he dared look at us, make him sleep on broken glass, starve him — fill his cell with rats …’
‘Stefan, please …’
‘You asked how I stood it. That’s how. All night, planning, dreaming fantasies in revenge. It’s unhealthy, like a poison, but if you’re abused and degraded every day, that’s how you become.’
‘It’s over, my darling.’
‘It will never be over,’ he said coldly.
In the days that followed, she began to fear, not the injuries to his body, but the damage to his mind.
Meanwhile, the referendum to introduce conscription, despite being fought ferociously by the government, and supported by the press, was lost by two hundred thousand votes. It was also lost in four of the six states, therefore failing in every respect. The Prime Minister, William Morris Hughes, having declared he would resign if the vote was unsuccessful, did so, and was promptly asked by his party to reconsider. He said if that was the country’s wish, he must resume the heavy burden of leadership — and accepted.
Accusation for the defeat was laid at many doors. Among those to be blamed were the Irish, prejudiced by the Easter Rising. Farmers reluctant to lose their workers were also held responsible, as were men due for conscription if the vote was passed. Few refused to face reality — that vast numbers of people had become disenchanted, and begun to recognise that only the legality of Empire bound Australia to a conflict that was someone else’s war.
In some communities, zealots laid individual blame. Most of all in isolated rural districts, the condemnation was often personal and bitter. In the Barossa, there were some who considered Elizabeth Muller a factor in the scandalous repudiation of the war, and felt she had contributed to the outrage of voting against conscripted aid to the Mother Country. Such rabid patriots were mostly entirely Australian born, and often too old or unfit for military service.
But there was another, far less obvious group who resented her. There were German families with some of their members still interned, jealous of the way she had somehow managed to secure her husband’s release. Concerned only with Stefan’s recovery, Elizabeth was unaware quite how much envy and seething malice she had aroused.
Her father wrote — delighted about the referendum defeat — and expressing the wish that he and Hannah could visit soon. She replied, asking him to delay for a short while, to allow Stefan time to recover. She said nothing else. It was something she had to cope with alone. Carl was aware of the long despondent silences, as well as an apathy and a listlessness in his father. When he broached the subject, she tried to reassure him it was a natural reaction to being imprisoned for so long, and that he would soon regain his vitality.
Friends were worried, but she asked them not to display their concern. It was best not to dwell on the events of the past year, she said — telling them he was badly run down, and needed only a period of rest. Oscar and Sigrid wanted her to talk to Keith Hardy, no longer new, now the accepted General Practitioner in the district. She raised it with Stefan, but he said there was no reason to do so. His wounds would heal in time, he told her: the scars inside would remain for life.
He had dreams that made him wake, sweating and babbling in the night. She thought they would become less frequent, but this did not happen. He continually fretted that McVeigh and the warders were criminal thugs who had terrorised people, even driven some to suicide, and that they would escape justice. He expressed these fears to her only when they were alone; no one else knew of his turmoil. He even, in one respect, blamed her. He regretted, above anything else, not being able to accuse McVeigh and the warders on the island.
‘We’ll go to the authorities, if you wish,’ Elizabeth said.
‘There’s no evidence.’
‘We can show them. Your whole body is evidence.’
‘It means nothing.’ He shrugged. ‘I signed that declaration. You wanted me to, so I signed away any chance of retribution.’
She was angry, but held back any retort. No retribution was worth being held in there for the rest of the war, she wanted to say, no matter how long it might last. She tried not to feel resentment that he barely acknowledged the part she had played in gaining his freedom, nor conceded her father and Hannah had helped secure his release. It was as if, in the emotional storm caused by prolonged torture and torment, no one was entirely free from guilt.
During much of the time they spent together, he was silent and remote. He walked alone a lot, and where once he would have wanted her to join him, now he paced with restless strides between the vines, heavy with ripening grapes, showing little interest in them, hardly bothering to examine them, while she watched in growing distress from the verandah. They made love rarely; when they did it was brief and without passion, unrelated to their once joyous encounters. She had been married and deeply in love for twenty-two of her thirty-nine years. Now it was like sharing her bed and daily life with a stranger.
Elizabeth recognised the Ford as it crossed the bridge over the creek. There had been few visitors in the weeks since Stefan’s return, and she wondered why Dr Hardy was calling unannounced, until she realised Eva-Maria Lippert was in the front seat beside him.
‘I was on my way to see you. The doctor gave me a ride.’
‘Just finished my rounds,’ Hardy said as he shook hands with them both, ‘and it seemed a perfect opportunity.’
‘To give Eva-Maria a ride?’ Elizabeth hoped their obvious subterfuge would not be too apparent to Stefan.
‘To see your renowned vineyard,’ the doctor smiled. ‘And to say I’m glad you’re out of there, Mr Muller. Welcome home.’
‘Thank you,’ Stefan said. ‘Although opinion seems to be divided on that issue. If half the local people are pleased at my release, the other half seem to think I should have been left to rot.’
‘There are always bigots and fools,’ the doctor replied.
‘The most ferocious soldiers are the armchair ones, who’ve never worn a uniform or seen a gun fired.’
Stefan remembered the doctor’s compassion after the attack on Sigrid and Oscar. He gave a brief and rare smile.
‘Will you stay for coffee, Doctor?’ Elizabeth asked.
‘Gladly.’ He turned to Stefan. ‘Any chance of a look round the vineyard in the meantime?’
Elizabeth watched them move off. She turned to Eva-Maria and asked, ‘Your idea?’
‘My idea.’
‘What did you tell him?’
‘The truth. That you and I’ve been friends too long for me not to know something’s badly wrong.’
‘Yes, something is.’
‘So he’s a doctor. He likes you both. Maybe he can help.’
‘I hope to God he can,’ Elizabeth said. ‘I need help.’
A few days later she met Hardy in town, at a meeting contrived by Eva-Maria.
‘He’ll be making some purchases at Oscar’s pharmacy when his morning surgery finishes. At noon tomorrow.’
‘I don’t want Oscar or anyone else, not even Sigrid, to know about this,’ Elizabeth insisted.
‘They won’t. We’re just doing our shopping,’ her friend said. ‘When he leaves the Apotheke, we’ll happen to meet. Then you and he will stop and have a friendly talk — pass the time of day — while I have to go to the milliner’s and see about a hat.’
‘Oh, God. You and your plots!’
‘It’s not a plot. It’s an accidental encounter.’
‘Eva-Maria — honestly!’
But Elizabeth made sure she was there.
‘He should be in hospital,’ Hardy told her, while they went through the charade of their casual encounter. ‘But I don’t think he’ll go. He’s been physically and mentally tortured, as you know. He was also badly beaten here after his arrest.’
‘I never knew that. Stefan told you?’
‘Yes.’ He hesitated. He had debated whether to confide this, and decided he must. ‘He was beaten unconscious. He was kept here fo
r a week, and beaten every day.’
She shut her eyes, to block out the image and stop any tears.
‘It’s a wonder they didn’t kill him. Lucas should be charged, but there’d be no proof,’ the doctor said. ‘They’d all deny it.’
‘And he’s learned the hard way, there’s no future in protest. But he trusted you, telling you that.’
‘He told me quite a lot.’
‘Then you might be able to treat him.’
‘I’m just a country doctor, Mrs Muller. Broken bones, babies, and some surgery from my army days. Stefan is the closest thing I’ve seen to total shell shock since Gallipoli.’
‘Shell shock?’
‘It’s the only way I can explain it. Each day in that prison was like -like an explosion in his mind.’ He hesitated, then went on, carefully, ‘They stripped away his self-esteem. He’d built a good life here. A fine vineyard, beautiful wife, children, good friends. He worked hard, he was prosperous. His world was a nice place; decent and secure. Each moment in there, every humiliation was a blow to his self-respect. He began to doubt his worth, doubt you, his friends, most of all himself. I don’t want to be cruel, but he’s been reduced to a shell.’
‘You’re not being cruel. You’re telling me exactly what I felt, and couldn’t bear to admit. Now tell me the rest.’
‘His whole character, his identity is damaged. If he looks the same man, you and I know he isn’t.’
She nodded. People passed. She managed to respond to greetings, to appear normal, to pretend this was a normal day.
‘Is it his mind?’
‘Nature, temperament, it all stems from the mind, and must be carefully restored, by someone qualified to put his life back together. If it was a broken leg, I could put it in plaster: This needs a doctor who specialises in mental treatment. They call them psychotherapists. Or psychiatrists. It’s relatively new, at least outside of Europe.’
‘There are some problems,’ Elizabeth said. ‘First, I don’t know where we’d find someone like that.’
‘Certainly in Sydney. Your father could find out.’
‘Second and more important, I doubt if Stefan would agree.
I’m sure if we were to confront him with this — and I’d find that very difficult — he’d say that rest would soon make him his old self again.’
‘I’m sure he would, but I don’t think it can. Any more than in the war, kind nurses with words of comfort could cure shell shock.’
‘Oh God.’ She spoke so softly he wondered if it was a rhetorical question, or did she require an answer? ‘What am I going to do?’
THIRTY SIX
London’s Victoria Station seemed far busier than he remembered. It was crowded with embarking troops, mostly raw recruits by the newness of their uniforms, as his train came in. Another was about to depart, so that one side of the platform was filled with people waving tearful farewells, while on his side others scanned the carriage windows for arriving faces. A hospital train bringing the wounded was already in the station, and the uniforms of nurses could be seen all over the vast concourse. Some men were being assisted to the rows of waiting ambulances, others carried on stretchers by bearers wearing Red Cross armbands. A few — blinded — were being led.
Harry felt lonely, knowing there would be no one in the crowd waiting for him. He wished Marry Renshaw or Ted Shortland were there on leave with him. They could get pissed at the Grenadier near Hyde Park Corner, and go on a pub crawl all the way to the Kings Arms at the World’s End. End up full as boots, and try to pick up a girl each at the YWCA, or the nurses’ home in Battersea.
But Marry was dead, from a sniper’s bullet, and Shortland wounded and home by now. Only he and Harry knew he had shot himself in the leg, because he had been in the trenches too long, and his nerve had gone. Harry did the paperwork that saved him from a charge and military prison, but when Ted tried to offer thanks, Harry could not look at him. He understood why it had been done — he had made sure no one guessed, and perjured himself to save Ted from a court martial — but was unable to accept his thanks, or look at his face. Yet, he badly missed Ted Shortland. He would have been a comfort. Because there would be no Kate to share this leave with him.
He had not written to tell her he would be back in England this time. His final letter to her, three months ago, had been painful and difficult to write. He had delayed until almost the week of her marriage, and ultimately managed a polite but cheerful note to wish her well; long life and happiness, apologising he was unable to send a wedding present, but when next on leave he would remedy that.
He realised, as he thought about it now, in a taxi on his way to the same officers’ billet in Chelsea, that he did not know her address. No doubt he could find out, for she would be housed in the married quarters at Camberley, where Rupert trained public schoolboys to be sent as officers, immature and untried, into the cauldron across the Channel. He could telephone the adjutant’s office there, once he found a suitable gift.
The row of terraces that comprised the billet was unchanged.
If not the same lady, a counterpart on the desk, who explained the rules. No drinking in the rooms, no female guests, no undue noise after ten p.m. He went up to a neat, spartan room, a replica of last time, although he had little memory of it, having spent six of his seven days in Kate’s tiny shared flat at Swiss Cottage. It seemed a lifetime ago. Six months — one hundred and eighty something days that he had managed to cheat from the late Johnno’s mathematical theory of survival.
He unpacked, and looked out of the window. The same view; but a different season. Then, the trees of the hospital garden had been in full leaf; now, in winter, they were bare and gaunt against a pale watery sky. He felt cold; the heating was inadequate. He realised, with a trace of nostalgia, that it would still be summer in Australia. In Sydney, the beaches would be crowded, the girls wearing the daring new one-piece bathing suits instead of frumpish neck to knee costumes. The sea would be warm, with foam-crested waves washing onto soft white sand.
He longed to be there. Or else in the Barossa, where very soon they would harvest the grapes, and where his father was free at last. It must have been a happy Christmas, he thought enviously, and wondered who had been instrumental in securing his release.
The good news had come by telegram, which had somehow reached him in the line beyond the Somme at Villers Bretonneux, where they were huddled in masks, waiting for intelligence to confirm that the Germans would be shelling their position with mustard gas. A dispatch rider had brought a sealed communication to field headquarters, and it had been sent through the labyrinth of trenches and handed to him where he waited with the battalion. Ever since the major who was the senior officer had been killed, Harry was in temporary command, and he assumed this official-looking envelope was from Intelligence, who had apparently come to believe that using field telephones was unsafe. But inside he found a telegram, opened by a censor, who had then scrawled ‘Personal’ on it. It simply said: YOUR FATHER HOME. ALL WELL. TAKE CARE. GRANDFATHER.
He had written, expressing his relief at the news, but they would not have received the letter yet. Gazing out at the hibernating trees and the dead winter landscape, he tried to visualise the terraces of vines, the lush grapes, the noisy celebrations after the picking was done. Once he had hated it; how he would love to be there now, instead of spending this dismal leave in London. He could have chosen Paris, and been mad not to. Every step he took, every corner of this city was crowded with joyful memories, and full of pain.
At an art dealer’s in the old Brompton Road, he found a set of framed and numbered prints of Arthur Streeton’s Sydney sketches, and knew immediately that Kate would adore them. He was unsure about Rupert’s taste, but the wedding present was for her. They were far too expensive, but he haggled and tried to convince the dealer he was spending most of his leave pay on them — which was true — and they finally agreed on a price. He then located a public telephone, and began the business of attempting
to obtain a number for the officers’ training college in Surrey.
‘Camberley,’ he said yet again, being passed from one operator to another, repeatedly interrogated on why he required this information, and told eventually the matter could not possibly be dealt with over the telephone, and he must present himself at the Central Post Office, with suitable identity, and fill in a form. If the authorities were satisfied it was a genuine request, and he was who he claimed to be, the number could possibly be given to him. When he protested that he was only trying to trace a friend, he was reminded there was a war on.
He hung up, frustrated, the simple pleasure of purchasing the prints spoiled by this officious intransigence. He decided it would be simpler to go to Swiss Cottage if Kate’s former flatmate still lived there, obtain an address from her and send the damned things. He wrapped them and took them with him.
He rang the doorbell, hoping the girl would be home, and trying to remember her name. When there was no answer, he thought of leaving a note. Not knowing her name was awkward; he’d simply write that he needed the address, and would call back later in the day. Anything to avoid the ordeal of more telephones and pompous bureaucracy and having to present himself to fill in forms, trying to prove he was who he claimed to be, not someone trying to infiltrate Camberley Officers’ Training College with treasonable intent.
He gave the doorbell one last try for luck, then began to go down the stairs, hoping to find a neighbour to ask for paper and a pen. That was when he heard the door open. He turned and saw a figure on the tiny landing above him.
It was Kate. ‘Harry?’
‘Good God.’
She looked confused, as if the bell had woken her. She wore a floppy robe, and seemed startled and bewildered to see him.
‘Where did you come from? What are you doing here?’
‘I came to see your friend — the girl you shared with …’
‘Joanna? Why?’
‘To find out where you were living.’
‘She’s moved. I still live here.’
‘I thought you’d be in Camberley. In digs there. Has he been transferred?’
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