A Woman of Courage

by J. H. Fletcher

  How the committee would react they still didn’t know but it didn’t take them long to find out what the station’s MD thought about it. He went ballistic, screaming down the phone with Hilary holding the receiver a foot from her ear.

  ‘Giving you priority? What’re our other advertisers going to say, eh? I’m closing your slot. If I find you’ve pulled a fast one you’ll be hearing from our solicitors…’

  ‘I have a contract,’ she said. ‘Signed, sealed and delivered. I’ve paid you guys a thousand quid for five gigs. You close me down, I’ll be the one doing the suing.’

  ‘You’ve got a contract?’ Apoplexy was a distinct possibility.

  ‘I have it in front of me now.’

  Quiet as a turtle dove, the MD was then.

  ‘I see. You needn’t think you’ll be getting another one,’ he said, trying to be fierce.

  ‘Suit yourself,’ Hilary said. ‘Our money’s good but if you don’t want it…’

  After that the answers to the adverts rolled in. Dave continued his doomsday scenario that the committee would take away their licences but Hilary, cocky as a rooster, didn’t believe it and was right. The committee might not like it but Hilary had exploited a loophole in the rules and they could do nothing. The only comeback was a good one: they had a huge number of enquiries and a good many sales too.

  2

  Five months later Hilary was driving home after a successful trip south of Fremantle with two more sales under her belt and she decided she’d explore some of the side roads. It was a sunny day with a light breeze off the sea and the sky was throbbing with heat. She was two weeks off her twenty-sixth birthday and she was letting rip with ‘A Hard Day’s Night’, one of the Beatles hits she’d first heard during their Aussie tour two years back. She remembered watching her first rock and roller on the box in Adelaide but she’d come a long way since her Johnny O’Keefe days. Her bull-frog voice threatened to crack the windscreen as she crested a hill, the ocean visible in turquoise glimpses to her left, and slammed on the brakes in a slide and smother of dust.

  ‘So there you are,’ Hilary said.

  The large block stretched up the slope to the right of the road. Thoughts started ticking in her head. Twenty acres, maybe twenty-five; road frontage; views of the sea, at least from further up the hill. The only building she could see was a tumbledown shack. It would have looked abandoned had it not been for a plume of smoke rising from the tin-pot chimney and shredding on the breeze.

  She had lucked on the Wiggins’ place. Every estate agent in the west had heard of it and the misanthropic old man who lived there alone with a pack of savage dogs for company. The word was that the property had no power, no running water and no telephone. Those who had seen him said that Walter Wiggins might be ramshackle in body but had a ferocious temper and hated trespassers with a passion. The dogs hated them even worse.

  The only way to get hold of Walter Wiggins was to yell from the boundary wire. That set the dogs going but nine times out of ten their owner ignored even that. The tenth time he threatened to set the beasts on anyone setting foot on his land and the only one who had tried it said afterwards he’d been lucky to escape with his life.

  Walter Wiggins was impossible. Everyone said so but that was not a word in Hilary’s vocabulary. The only gate into the property had a king-sized padlock that by the look of it hadn’t been opened in a generation. She thought about it then climbed on the gate’s metal frame, stood tall and let fly with a whistle that might have been heard a mile away. The dogs came howling.

  Hilary gave them a few seconds to get a good look at her. ‘How you going, dogs?’

  Their mouths were red, their teeth enormous. Moving carefully so as not to startle them, she climbed down to join them.

  3

  ‘You got a nerve,’ Walter Wiggins said. ‘I’ll give you that. Them mutts don’t make mates easily.’

  The pack leader was nuzzling in Hilary’s lap. She patted the shaggy head. ‘I’ve always got on with dogs.’

  ‘I call that one Bradman,’ he said.

  ‘Bradman? Like the cricketer?’

  ‘Cause he was always taking a bite out of the Poms. You ain’t a Pom, are you?’ he said, suddenly fierce.

  ‘No chance,’ Hilary said.

  She looked around her. It was more rubbish tip than house, with refuse everywhere you looked: tin cans and cardboard boxes and bags full of what smelt like a ten-year supply of kitchen waste. A graveyard of empty bottles. Old Walter was kitted out to match: a shirt that looked like he hadn’t had it off in a year, an ancient sweater despite the heat that was more holes than material, a pair of pants that would have put a scarecrow to shame. His mouth was toothless and the lines on his face were more like chasms; looking at the dirt in them Hilary thought you could excavate them and maybe find diamonds. God, you needed a strong nose in her job.

  ‘What you want, anyway?’ His voice creaked like he hadn’t used it for ten years.

  ‘A cup of tea would be nice,’ Hilary said.

  ‘You wha’?’

  ‘Cup of tea. With something nice to put in it.’

  She’d found it paid to carry a half bottle of scotch on her travels; it was amazing how often a friendly shot helped sweeten a deal. She produced it now.

  Wally wiped his paw over his lips. ‘Blimey.’

  He got them each a mug of tea that was strong enough to melt glass; as for the state of the mugs, don’t even think about it.

  If I die of food poisoning it’ll be in a good cause, Hilary thought.

  She handed over the scotch and watched as Wally took a gulp of tea and then filled his mug.

  ‘You want some?’

  ‘A small one to be sociable,’ she said.

  A small one was what she got.

  ‘What’s your game?’ Wally said.

  ‘A grand in your hand,’ Hilary said. ‘And a stack more later. That’s my game.’

  ‘What I got to do to get it?’

  ‘Sell your place to me.’

  ‘I been here all my life.’

  ‘So maybe it’s time to move on. Think about it. A grand – non-refundable, by the way – will buy you a house with heating, running water, all mod cons. What’s there not to like about that?’

  ‘What about me dogs?’

  ‘They go with you.’

  Wally chomped on the idea a bit, slopped more whisky into his mug and swilled it down. While Hilary held her breath.

  ‘Make it two,’ he said.

  ‘A grand now. Non-refundable, like I said. Another five when the deal goes through.’ She gave him her best smile. ‘Plus a crate of scotch to celebrate with.’

  ‘Now you’re talking.’

  ‘All I need is your signature.’

  She was waltzing all the way home. The land, once it was sub-divided and services put in, would be easy to sell. Her mind was doing its calculator bit; she reckoned, all up, she was looking to clear over a hundred grand.

  ‘Maybe more,’ she told the sunset. ‘Any luck, quite a bit more.’

  Now, at last, she was really motoring.

  4

  ‘You’re trying to steal my son away from me,’ Mrs Madigan said. ‘That’s what it is.’

  Hilary was sick of her mother-in-law’s endless sniping. ‘All I said was I thought it would be nice to move into a bigger place.’

  ‘You’ve got a house now. What you want a bigger place for? When you got no family?’

  ‘A bit of extra space for when we have one.’

  A buffalo would have snorted more quietly. ‘That’ll be the day,’ said Mrs Madigan.

  Lord give me strength.

  It was a bigger house. A better one too, and a better suburb, a three-bedroom brick house on a double block which might be handy for development later. When once again she decided to move on.

  She made a mistake, told Sean her thinking.

  ‘We’ve hardly settled in and already you’re talking of moving? What’s wrong with this place?�
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  Nothing was wrong with it, but it wasn’t Peppermint Grove. She remembered telling Mrs Madigan that was where she was heading and the old bitch had sneered. Well, that was still where she was heading; on one of her forays into the area she had even picked out the house she wanted, if it ever came on the market. And Mrs Madigan could sneer all she liked.

  5

  Sandy stuck her nose around Hilary’s door. Hilary was on the phone. She put her hand over the mouthpiece and looked at Sandy enquiringly.

  ‘Abe Raucher on the other line.’

  Abe was their lawyer.

  ‘I’ve got a man here I’d like you to meet,’ Abe said.

  ‘Is he buying or selling?’

  ‘Neither. But he has an idea you’ll find interesting.’

  Hilary was always in the market for interesting ideas. ‘When does he want to come round?’

  ‘How about now?’

  ‘I’ll be here. What’s his name?’

  ‘Haskins Gould.’

  1942–66

  HASKINS GOULD

  He had been born Joseph Haskins Gould in the British colony of Singapore in January 1942, a month before the Japanese arrived. His father had been top gun of an Australian motorcar firm and baby Joseph and his parents had been among the last to escape before the surrender.

  He grew up surrounded by the story of that escape: the freighter crowded with over two thousand escapees continuously bombed and machine gunned by Japanese planes yet somehow, miraculously, reaching safety in Australia. As a babe in arms he remembered none of it, which did not stop him in later life boasting how he’d helped two nurses drag a wounded gunner to safety.

  ‘They called me a boy hero,’ he said modestly, ‘but it was nothing, nothing.’

  The first thing the boy hero really remembered was growing up in an arcaded bungalow that might have been transplanted from the tropics they had been in such a hurry to leave, as though a portion of their previous lives had accompanied them into what was to become permanent exile.

  His father had been involved in the war effort and later with General Motors and the production of the new Holden motorcar. They were what people in those days called comfortably off but for Haskins that had never been enough. His parents indulged him; he did what he could to help them do so, taking everything they gave him and always on the lookout for more. He had never been hampered by scruples. He was smart, though, and money drew him like a magnet.

  He went to the States and in California discovered the gold mine that was called shopping malls. He did well; he was nifty with a knife in what was acknowledged to be a cut-throat business; he didn’t give a damn about the ruined lives he left behind him; and he had the knack of dealing with councillors eager for a sweetener so building permits had presented no problem.

  Unfortunately questions were raised about some of his business practices. Some of those he’d bribed were singing like a choir and in 1966, one jump ahead of the authorities, he returned to Australia eager to explore the possibilities and steal anything that wasn’t nailed down.

  He’d been back a month when a lawyer gave him a name.

  NEW VENTURES

  1

  Hilary sized up her visitor as he walked into her office. Haskins Gould was built like a truck, fists like coconuts. Barely suppressed energy radiated off him like heat.

  He looked around her office with a pleased expression. ‘Nice,’ he said with a hint of an American accent. ‘Way too small but nice.’

  Hilary saw that being outspoken was a way of life for Haskins Gould. ‘At least we agree it’s nice,’ she said. ‘And what can I do for you, Mr Gould?’ Mr Gould: to put him in his place, gently but definitely.

  ‘More like what I can do for both of us.’ Uninvited he sat down on the other side of her desk, stuck his elbows on the desk top and leant forwards, staring into her eyes. ‘Malls.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Shopping malls,’ he said again. ‘I’m from Sydney originally but I’ve been two years in California. They are the coming thing there. I’m just off the boat and I been looking around. Bit of a one-horse town, ain’t that right? A bit behind the times? I reckon a few malls would fit real well into this fair city. And into a dozen other towns in WA too, if I’m any judge.’

  Hilary had acquired a sandgroper’s attitude to the rest of the world, Sydney in particular, and didn’t relish her town being described as a one-horse anything by some eastern states bum who thought he knew the lot.

  ‘Tell me about them.’

  He did. Hilary, no slouch herself when it came to talking a blue streak, recognised an expert when she heard one and was prepared to discount ninety per cent of everything this hybrid Aussie-American wanted to tell her but, as he talked, she found herself growing more and more interested in what he had to say.

  ‘How high is the tallest building in Perth?’ he said. ‘I’ll tell you: it’s ten storeys. In California that would be like a hole in the ground. In LA I was building shopping malls eighteen, twenty storeys high.’

  ‘Under one roof?’

  ‘Sure under one roof. Inside there’d be ten, maybe fifteen, levels. Ground floor you put your high-ticket tenants, a supermarket, anything you need to draw the buyers in. Maybe a few restaurants where shoppers can rest their weary feet. Other shops at the higher levels. Outside a parking area and a petrol station.’

  ‘Will locals go for it?’

  ‘All their shopping under one roof? In pleasant surroundings? Why shouldn’t they?’

  ‘And the rents?’

  ‘Flat rate plus a percentage of turnover.’

  ‘You say you built them in America?’

  ‘I sure did. It’s like a vertical warehouse with individual compartments. It’s not hard; you need to be well organised but it’s not hard.’

  ‘So why do you need me?’

  ‘Abe was saying you got the land.’

  ‘Or know how to get it, yes. Is that all you want?’

  ‘Two other things. We’ll need money and I’ll need a free hand to build it.’

  ‘I’m in good with the banks,’ Hilary said. ‘I reckon I can sweet-talk them into a loan, if I decide to go ahead. But I’m not sure about the free hand.’

  ‘I got my methods,’ Haskins said. ‘They worked in California; they’ll work here. Like I said, I’m a good organiser and that’s what makes the difference.’

  ‘You got any plans I can look at? Any photos of work you’ve done in California?’

  ‘I got some back at the hotel.’

  ‘Bring them down. I’ll have a look at them and get back to you.’

  ‘I’ll bring them but they stay with me. We can look at them together. Then we’ll go and talk to the bank.’

  2

  Hilary decided to keep Haskins away from Henry Lancaster, scared his brash ways might put the banker off, but when she got back from her meeting she told him all about it.

  ‘Poor Henry! I don’t think he could believe his ears. This woman walking into his office, cool as you please, and asking him for a half-million-dollar loan on what – let’s face it – is nothing but a piece of empty land.

  ‘“But where is my security?” he asked me. “It’s not the land,” I told him. “It’s the vision. The future. It’s an idea whose time has come.” I showed him the plans. Photos of similar work you’d done in the States. “You’re an ideas man, Mr Lancaster,” I said. Buttering him up, you understand? “Well, this is the biggest idea in the retail trade you’re ever likely to see.” I was that confident. I could see it as clearly as though it was already built: a tower fifteen storeys high crammed with shops and people coming and going.

  ‘“One-stop shopping,” I said. “That’s how we’ll promote it. I’m a great believer in slogans, Mr Lancaster, and I guarantee this one will draw them in. One-stop shopping: the housewives will come running! You can bet your pension on that!” Which was funny because I suppose he was, in a way. Yet they say bankers are so conservative!’
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br />   ‘You got him to see it,’ Haskins said. ‘That’s why. You showed him the vision.’

  ‘I think I did.’

  ‘And he’s gonna lend us the money?’

  ‘He is indeed. And before a brick has been laid. Of course I’ve been dealing with the bank for years and never put a foot wrong. But he still had to stick his oar in, even after he’d said yes. “You know, Mrs Madigan, there are not many women I would do this for. Entrepreneurs of the female gender are an unusual species, I think you will admit. In fact you and Bella Tucker, the iron ore magnate, are the only two I know.”’

  ‘But we’ve got it?’ Haskins said.

  ‘Of course I got it.’

  He eyed her coldly. ‘That’s what matters. I don’t give a hoot in Hades how you got him to agree, babe. Just so long as you did.’

  2004

  A NEW DAWN

  1

  The hall where the exhibition was being held was in a side street but well advertised. A large banner over the building’s imposing entrance shouted the name for the world to see. MARTIN GULLIVER, the letters two feet high or more.

  No one else was about; Jennifer stood at the street corner, hands sweat-clammy, heart racing, and stared at the glass-fronted doorway while she debated whether she dared go in. Her heart said yes; common sense said no. Martin was the past, a long-ago love that thirteen years back she had abandoned for security, status and respectability. How stupid to imagine that Martin might still have the feelings for her that had tumbled from his mouth on that fatal day when she had told him she was marrying Davis Lander. Both of them had shed tears. But the world had moved on; the years had taken their youth but in exchange had at least given Martin the success that in those days it had seemed he might never have.

  I was a coward, Jennifer thought. I turned my back because I was afraid. I am afraid still. Of what? That Martin might not be there. That he might be there. He would spurn her: and who could blame him? Even worse: he might not recognise her at all.

  Thirteen years.

  Her dry mouth swallowed sourness. No. She half turned away, again paused.