A tragic accident was what people called it.
Eighteen years later the pain still brought tears to her eyes. Professor Wilkins with his smart-aleck theories, she thought savagely; he wouldn’t know what hit him. She was looking forward to that.
2
One of Sara’s most useful skills was her ability to compartmentalise her life. Having taken the professor apart on schedule it was as though he no longer existed and she turned to the sexual antics of the errant politician. By comparison he had an easy ride. Deservedly so; a minute before they began the interview Sara had a slip of paper put in front of her saying that the police had established that the girl’s accusation had been part of a failed blackmail attempt. Luckily a minute was long enough for quick-thinking Sara to turn the interview around and discuss with the accused-now-victim the vulnerability of public figures to such false accusations and what they could do to protect themselves.
Millie was looking daggers. Tough. Given the circumstances there wasn’t much she could say about the politician but she no doubt intended to give her a clip on the ear for the way she had eviscerated the professor, but clips on the ear would have to wait. Within minutes of the programme going off air Sara had shed her make-up and was heading for the exit. The programme and the faces of those she had interviewed were gone.
The traffic was bad but Sara was used to it and knew a few short cuts that got her to her inner city home in fifteen minutes.
It always gave her pleasure to come home and the easing of spirit as she shut the door on the world never failed her. Her terraced house was a haven of peace, doubly precious because peace formed so small a part of her life. From the outside the nineteenth-century building was pleasant but nothing remarkable, with a lacework balustrade masking the upstairs veranda. The interior made up for it: a continuous space that had been suggested by pictures of Chinese properties Sara had seen, one room leading to the next in a continuous flow. She’d installed folding glass partitions so rooms could be segregated if necessary but for the most part these stood open. The polished wood floors provided warmth, the grey and white furniture coolness; colour came from an abstract painting in pink and blue above a fitted wall sofa. Tonight, however, she had no time to luxuriate in the peace and elegance of her precious home. She ran up the open wooden staircase, glancing at the time as she went: eight twenty-five. She stripped off and went naked into the en-suite bathroom. She stood under the shower and let the water flow over her.
FAMILY GET-TOGETHER
1
Hilary reached the restaurant on the dot of eight-thirty. Neither of the girls had arrived but that was all right. One of the penalties of her hyperactive lifestyle was that over the years she had become obsessed with punctuality. Like all obsessions it could be a boring business – the unforgiving minute, Kipling had called it. He’d certainly got that right.
It gave extra pleasure to sitting at the window table with a glass of Tio Pepe in her hand. She savoured the sherry’s dryness on her tongue and looked at the harbour in front of her, its spreading waters a glory of liquid fire under the moon, the scalloped roofs of the Opera House sheened with silver light. What kind of life was it when even five minutes’ inactivity became so valuable?
I really am getting old, she thought. Yet was she really? At sixty-three there was still time for another life, another way of living. Was she ready for it? Was she brave enough to dare?
She looked at her watch, more precious by far than the gold from which it was made. Twenty to nine and still no sign of either girl.
Sara had a reasonable excuse but Jennifer none.
Hilary sighed. An attentive waiter offered to refill her glass; she shook her head, watching the diminishing navigation lights of a container ship heading down the harbour towards the sea.
There was no getting away from it; Jennifer was thirty-six years old yet remained her problem child. Much loved, always, but the source of much irritation too.
In Hilary’s opinion it was a pity she hadn’t moved in with Martin Gulliver when she had the chance but Martin had no money and a free-wheeling lifestyle. Jennifer had been scared of that. Davis Lander, on the other hand, had been the epitome of respectability, a society player with the prospect of making serious loot down the track, so Davis Lander it had been. Hilary was convinced Jennifer had made the wrong choice but until Jennifer turned to her for help she did not think it was her place to interfere.
Hilary had been against the marriage and the fancy-pants wedding Jennifer wanted.
‘Don’t you want to make a good impression on Mrs Lander?’
‘Not particularly.’ Hilary was unimpressed by old money when it was used simply to shore up the social status of the person who had inherited it.
‘You don’t want me to get married at all!’
‘I want you to be happy. I’m not convinced Davis will make you happy.’
‘You’ve been against him from the first!’
He had talked Jennifer into coming to Hilary with a dodgy scheme for which he hoped to get funding. Hilary had refused and there had been a row.
‘The first thing I’ve ever asked you for and you say no?’
‘Hardly the first thing.’
‘Name me one!’
Hilary had laughed. ‘My dear, you’ve been asking me for things all your life.’
There were times when Hilary thought Jennifer had never forgiven her for that refusal. For which – Jennifer made sure her mother knew – Davis had blamed her.
It was a sour note. Hilary felt no guilt about it but supposed it might have influenced her decision to allow Jennifer the sort of wedding she craved and which Hilary thought a ridiculous waste of money, the bride in a Givenchy dress with half a mile of white tulle and gardenias in her hair, the ceremony graced by half the legal suits in Sydney including a High Court judge whom Hilary cordially disliked.
And so the good ship Jennifer had sailed off into the sunset with her pompous but well-heeled husband and all her days should have been as rosy as a virgin on the morning after but things hadn’t worked out like that.
Hilary was sad for her but her life was too full to waste time trying to mend things that couldn’t be mended. What Jennifer needed was an affair: with Martin if he was still available but certainly with someone. No doubt it would cause huge problems but might make her a happier woman. It had certainly worked in her own case, but she did not think her daughter had the courage to do anything as audacious as that. Jennifer had lost the knack of happiness and no one could resolve her problems but herself.
Sara was very different, of course: both more outgoing and more secretive. If she’d had love affairs since Emil Broussard Hilary knew nothing of them. No doubt there had been a few men in her life but Sara was too sensible to get hooked unless that was what she wanted and nowadays children were an optional extra, after all.
Sara had done well at university; she had an instinct for construction and perhaps for business too. Certainly her comments about Duncan Redgrave had been on the money. And now she was something of a star on the television screen. Hilary had watched her before leaving for the restaurant and thought she’d done well. Of course she and Millie Dawlish were chalk and cheese but that might not be such a bad thing.
The lights of the container ship were barely visible now. A stir by the restaurant entrance made her look up in time to see the two girls coming through the doorway together. Before she could prevent herself she glanced at her watch. Eight forty-five; fifteen minutes late. Once again she reminded herself that this was a social occasion and punctuality was unimportant. Tomorrow would be a different matter.
In the event the evening went better than she had dared hope. The food was brilliant, the wine delectable – as it should be, she thought, the price they charged – and the view sensational. Conversation had been light and inconsequential, just right for a mother-and-daughters get-together. There had been no disagreements: as always Sara had been watchful with little to say for herself; Jennif
er had been pleasant, with a lightness about her that made her mother wonder whether she had taken a lover after all.
‘When are you flying back?’ she asked over coffee.
Jennifer sipped her Calvados. ‘Tomorrow afternoon.’
‘Davis meeting you?’
‘He has an important meeting –’
‘Come to the office. We’ll have a light lunch before you go. I’ll have a car take you to the airport.’
2
Hilary always enjoyed coming home to what had to be one of the finest properties in Sydney. She liked to remember, too, how she had acquired it and the bargain it had been. It had come on the market just when she had made up her mind to relocate to the east coast. It had been owned by Ambrose Wylde, a wannabe tycoon who had got in over his head. Hilary had agreed to bail him out, lending him the money he desperately needed with the house as security.
When the market went south in 1987 Ambrose had been unable to keep up the repayments and Hilary had taken over the property shortly before she left to go on the Asian walkabout that had turned out to be the most significant journey she had ever made. Ambrose hadn’t been happy but from Hilary’s point of view it had been a prince of deals: seventeen years on, Cadogan Lodge was worth at least five times what she’d paid for it.
An agent acting for a Chinese billionaire had made approaches but she had no plans to sell. She owned property all over, from a three-floor Park Avenue apartment in New York to a tower block overlooking London’s Hyde Park and a ski lodge in St Moritz but, luxurious though they all were, in the end they were only buildings; Cadogan Lodge she loved. It was the closest she had come to somewhere she could call home, with what she liked to think were the best roses in New South Wales. Of course there was also Rumah Kelapa on its secluded beach with its face turned to the sea, but that she did not own. Rather it owned her.
It was past eleven but she did not feel tired. The next day would be an important one, with all it would mean for their future, but challenge had never intimidated her; it did not do so now.
She poured herself a brandy and took it on to the terrace. She raised her glass to the future, the brandy warming her stomach and her heart. Forget Dr Chang and his gloomy prognostications, she thought. I have so much more to experience in life. I don’t have time to worry about dying. Death will take me when it will, as with all of us. In the meantime I shall live every day as I always have: to the full.
1940–56
BEGINNINGS
1
Sixteen years later, when she was on the run, Hilary Brand had told Mike Tulip the long-distance truck driver that it had been the mindless fury of the air raid in the hours before her birth, the cacophony of bomb and shell and the throbbing menace of the bombers’ engines, that had called her from the floating darkness of the womb into the darkness of a night riven by the fires of a thousand incendiaries that on 30 December 1940 painted the skies over London with flame.
In those days she hadn’t the words to say it like that, but it was how she thought about it. How she remembered.
Whether she was right or wrong about the bombs it was certainly true that if she hadn’t been born three weeks earlier than the midwife had expected she would never have been born at all.
She remembered Grandma telling her the same thing over and over again, scowling as though Hilary were somehow to blame, how ever since the blitz began thousands of Londoners had sought nightly refuge in tube stations or air raid shelters; with the nearest station too far to reach after the sirens sounded, Hilary’s mum had used the air raid shelter on the corner of Vincent and Argyll Streets. Had Hilary not decided to present herself ahead of schedule she would have been there that night when a direct hit on the shelter killed everyone inside and wrecked every house within a fifty-yard radius.
She could remember three years later with Grandma going on and on about it to that friend of hers. Funny how she had a memory for things so far back but she did; she remembered the conversation clearly.
2
‘Took ’em in, didn’t I?’ said Grandma to her friend Mrs Moss.
‘A Christian act, that’s what it was,’ Mrs Moss said. ‘A real Christian act.’
‘Didn’t ’ave no choice, their place was a write off, but many’s the time I’ve regretted it. Born for trouble, that’s what the Good Book tells us,’ she said, eyeing three-year-old Hilary with a malevolent eye. ‘Born for trouble and she never bin nothin’ but. Too old, that’s what I am. Too old to bring up someone’s bastard kid, even me own daughter’s. And now with these doodlebug things… I tell you, Mrs Moss, my nerves is that bad –’
‘Wouldn’t worry about the doodlebugs, Mrs Brand. Not after that business back in 1940. You know what they say: lightning don’t strike in the same place twice.’
‘I wouldn’t be too sure about that,’ Grandma said.
‘And the father?’ Mrs Moss had heard the story a dozen times but never minded hearing it again; listening to other people’s tragedies always made her feel more cheerful about her own.
‘The Huns got him, didn’t they?’ said Grandma. ‘Dunkirk. Never even put a ring on her finger.’ And scowled at Hilary as though that were her fault too.
‘Fancy,’ said Mrs Moss. ‘Still don’t seem right you got to bring ’er up alone.’ She not only enjoyed hearing about other people’s sorrows; she liked to stir the pot, too, when she had the chance.
‘Audrey’s workin’ nights at Harrisons in Hillingdon Street.’
‘Just round the corner? That’s handy for ’er.’
‘Makin’ parts for them Lancaster bombers,’ Grandma said.
‘Best keep that to yourself, Mrs Brand,’ Mrs Moss said. ‘Don’t want no trouble, do we? You know what they say about careless talk.’ She chewed her gums as she thought about what her friend had said. ‘Parts for bombers, eh? I’ll bet someone’s makin’ a packet out of that.’
‘Maybe, maybe not,’ said Grandma, detecting what might be a note of criticism in her friend’s voice. ‘But if they are, Mrs Moss, I’ll tell you this for free. Audrey ain’t one of ’em.’
Mrs Moss was willing to be offended in her turn. ‘I ’ope you’re not suggestin’ –’
‘Only wish she was, eh?’ Grandma elbowed her friend’s ribs. ‘Mr Snap spared me an extra spot o’ tea this week. How about we ’ave a cup, eh?’
‘Can’t beat a nice cup o’ tea,’ Mrs Moss said.
3
At four o’clock in the morning of 25 June a doodlebug proved Mrs Moss wrong when it blew Harrison’s factory apart, taking half of Hillingdon Street with it.
The Civil Defence workers dragged Audrey out of the wreckage at nine-thirty. She had a broken leg and cuts and abrasions all over but at least she was alive, which was more than you could say for a dozen of her mates.
Grandma visited her in the hospital. ‘You was lucky, my girl. Nurse says you’ll soon be out and about again.’
‘Where’s Hilary?’
‘At ’ome. Mrs Moss is lookin’ after ’er.’
‘All right, is she?’
‘Screamed all night. I couldn’t get a wink of sleep.’
‘Was she hurt?’
‘Just frightened. Nothin’ wrong with her. I tell you, girl, my nerves won’t put up with much more of this. Think I might put her in care till you’re on your feet again. Just temporary, like. What you say?’
‘I wouldn’t want nothing like that –’
‘Just till you’re on your feet again,’ Grandma said.
The streets were a mess, debris everywhere and people shuffling, faces white with shock. Smoke from the smouldering ruins made Grandma cough as she walked home.
Can’t stand no more, she thought. As for the kid… When this lot is over Audrey will be wanting to settle down. Only natural, innit? What chance will she have of that? Stands to reason, no bloke’ll want to be saddled with someone else’s brat. There’ll be fingers pointin’, too, you can bet on it. She won’t never ’ave no life. Reckon I’ll put Hil
ary into care anyway, then it’ll be up to Audrey what she wants to do about it when she gets out of hospital.
She took young Hilary to the Waifs and Strays shelter in Peckham Road.
‘’Er mum’s in ’ospital,’ she said. ‘One o’ them dratted flyin’ bombs. Might be best if someone was to adopt ’er. Best for all concerned.’
I hope I done the right thing, she thought as she walked to the bus stop.
4
‘You done what?’
‘I did it for the best. I couldn’t ’andle ’er by meself, with you in the hospital –’
‘I tole you I didn’t want that!’
‘The best for both of us,’ Grandma said. ‘You want to find yourself a nice bloke when this lot’s over. Stan’s dead, Audrey. You got to move on.’
‘I’m gunna fetch her.’
‘You’d be better off without her. You know that as well as I do.’
‘I’m gunna fetch her.’
But the official, oozing sympathy, was rock hard in his determination to carry out what he considered his mission. ‘I am sorry, Mrs Brand. The child is no longer here. She was put up for adoption. Her grandmother said –’
‘Never mind what she said. I’m her mum and I never give you no permission! I want her back.’
‘I’m afraid that won’t be possible.’
‘You mean you can just steal my child and I got no say?’
‘I can assure you everything was done perfectly legally. And it is not the Society’s policy to reveal the name of the adopting parents. I can assure you Hilda will be very well looked after.’
‘Hilary!’
‘Excuse me?’
‘Her name ain’t Hilda. It’s Hilary.’
‘So it is. I do beg your pardon.’
‘But you won’t tell me where she is? Her own mother?’
‘I am afraid not.’
IN CARE
A Woman of Courage Page 7