Two Women Went to War

by L E Pembroke

  We were in the kitchen having tea, just the three of us. Tom was away at school. I recall my father leaning across the table to take hold of the teapot. He always liked a second or third cup of tea. He knocked the tall milk jug. Milk everywhere! It surged across the tablecloth to be lapped up eagerly by slices of stale home-made bread on the bread board and splashed against plates and bowls and spilled over the table edge. Who’d have thought a pint of milk could cause such havoc? My mother jumped to her feet, shrieking, ‘You clumsy oaf!’

  ‘Sorry,’ Dad muttered.

  Mum must have been having a bad day. She yelled: ‘Not nearly as sorry as I am, stuck here for the rest of my life with an ignorant, snuffling pig who can’t even drink a cup of tea without causing trouble!’

  Mum began clearing the table in a frenzy of activity. She flung everything onto the draining board, tossed the saturated tablecloth into a heap and threw tea towels onto the floor in an attempt to mop up the mess. She screamed, ‘Get out of the way, both of you!’

  I remember backing towards the outer door. Mum seemed to me to be out of control. I was scared stiff.

  ‘Why I married you I’ll never know. I wish to God I’d got rid of it.’

  ‘Shut up, will yer? The kid’s here.’

  I saw my mother pick up the carving knife; she whirled around, breathing noisily, her face puce. She shouted, ‘Go to bed, Genevieve!’

  What happened after that I wasn’t sure because I rushed outside, down the veranda steps and down to the tool shed. I heard furniture being overturned, the sound of scuffling, gruff shouts and high-pitched screams; I clamped my hands over my ears. I sobbed and hid in the corner of the shed curled up next to the dogs. Sometime later my father arrived; he lifted me into his arms and carried me back to my own bed.

  What made life worse for Dad was Tom’s attitude. It must have been terrible for our father to know that his only son couldn’t bear to have anything to do with him. When Tom came home for good after finishing school in Sydney I was fifteen and had just finished three years at a tiny little private school in town, which was run by the doctor’s sister. Mum would never have considered sending me away to school. She believed it was utter waste to spend money on further education for girls.

  Most of the children who went to our primary school began work after they had done the Qualifying Certificate after six years of schooling. My friend Rose left then and began work in a local bakery. Mum never liked me associating with what she called the hoi polloi of town. She couldn’t bear Rose and never even smiled at her if they met at church. I suppose that was because she knew about Dad and Mrs Walsh. Mum also believed that twelve was far too young to finish school – apart from the fact that fourteen years was the legal school-leaving age. So when Miss Carpenter started her little school with only ten pupils it was, in Mum’s opinion, the ideal solution for me. At that school for three years I learnt English (mainly poetry), history (always British), music, art and manners.

  All that finished when Tom, aged seventeen, came home for good. After the affair of the spilt milk my parents never again addressed each other directly and, as Tom and Mum were always good mates, he hardly ever spoke to Dad, either. Mum and Tom would talk to one another at mealtimes but never once include Dad. I remember how after tea, I used get out the draughts or cards and have a game with him so he wouldn’t feel so out of place.

  At other times, when Dad suggested to Tom that they had better get on with the drenching or ploughing or some other farming task, Tom made excuses, any excuse to get away from Dad. They turned him into a snob at that school in Sydney, and Mother encouraged him. I could tell that Tom had never understood why his educated and relatively well-born mother saddled herself with a drover.

  *

  Eighteen years old and my first time in Sydney – what a gauche lump I was! I felt as insignificant as an ant when I looked around the big and cavernous Central Station and watched all the other travellers moving swiftly and with purpose to other trains or cabs or trams.

  Mother steered me into the ladies washroom, and we cleaned up. Spending hours on a steam train meant that coal dust seeped into everything, hair, skin and clothing. My fairish hair with very distinctive red streaks was flattened out, greasy and dirty-looking. My face was shadowed by the dust and my hands streaked with it – not a very pretty picture for my first meeting with Matron.

  We had a cup of tea and toast in the railway cafeteria, then Mum led me out into Railway Square. Lugging my heavy leather suitcase, I trailed along behind her, stopping frequently to rest and look in every direction. The city street was an amazing sight. Hundreds of people pushed past me with not so much as an ‘excuse me’ or a ‘good morning’. How rude city people are. Many more were leaping on and off trams – the first I’d ever seen. The rush and bustle was astonishing and also rather frightening.

  ‘Where are they all going in such a hurry?’

  ‘They’re factory workers.’ Mum explained how if they were even a minute late for work their pay would be docked. So much to see while we waited for our tram: people, horses and carts, drays, and even one or two motor cars. Small children, carrying buckets and trowels, cleaned up the manure left by the horses. Mum said that they’d get a few farthings for a bucket of that.

  On one side of the square I saw a department store at least ten times bigger than the one in Summer Street, our main street. Off to the right a long street curved away from us as far as the eye could see. It was lined with shops and, according to Mum, led to the main part of the city.

  Then we caught the tram. It was cramped and uncomfortable. I had to stand in the narrow compartment squashed between the knees of seated passengers facing each other. And my case was in the way when people stood up and tried to alight – so embarrassing. We weren’t able to talk in the tram because of being separated by the crowds. That was a blessing. But when the conductor put us off at the hospital stop at the bottom of a steep hill Mother began to issue her final orders about me not gallivanting around the city when I was off duty and how I was never to speak to strangers.

  If I wasn’t permitted to leave the hospital when I was off duty, how would I ever become familiar with the city and see all the big shops and the harbour about which I’d heard so much? I protested, saying that I’d like to see the city. I asked why I couldn’t go into town with some of the nurses when we were off duty.

  My mother was adamant. I was too young and inexperienced. She went on to say that two or three girls alone in the city would be fair game to gangs of lecherous types and the world was full of them. Innocent girls were always being kidnapped, raped and murdered. She would have no peace of mind if she thought I was wandering around the city. Mum also warned me of the dire circumstances for a girl who was stupid enough to go out with a young man to whom she had never been properly introduced. What if I became pregnant? She finished by saying that she had no intention of facing up to her friends and admitting that her only daughter had gone off the rails.

  Like you did, I almost said. Instead I mumbled something about it would feel like being in prison if I couldn’t go anywhere.

  We reported to the Nurses’ Home and were escorted to Matron’s office, where Mum was over-polite and ingratiating, just as she always was with our rector, again much to my embarrassment. She inspected my tiny bedroom, then prepared to leave. ‘Be a good girl, Genevieve.’ She kissed me on the cheek and began her walk back to the tram stop.

  Naively, I thought – at last I am free to do what I want, whenever I want.

  *

  What a laugh that was; probationer nurses are rarely free. We were little more than overworked skivvies, sometimes beginning work at five in the morning and not finishing until teatime. I became very efficient at cleaning and shining the patients’ utensils with special emphasis on their revolting bedpans and disgusting spittoons that men seemed to need. ‘It gets better,’ said one of my friends. Her mother had been a nursing sister and told her, ‘If you can get through the first year, yo
u’ll get through to graduation.’

  I was determined not to give up and so were my particular friends. Plenty of others fell by the wayside. Despite my earlier fears, I made several close friends, quiet girls almost as shy as I was. Together we worked through the dreary probationary period knowing that by the time we reached second year we would be permitted to look after the patients, even taking their temperatures or bandaging a wound.

  The fact that I had no social life didn’t worry me much during the hectic first year. Although I yearned for a boyfriend, I had few expectations, having been convinced during my childhood that I was just a clumsy lump. Anyway, I was far too tired to think much about going out, meeting new people and exploring the city.

  In second and third years, occasionally a small group of us would go to town for our day off. There we’d have morning or afternoon tea, walk in Hyde Park or take a ferry ride, anything to get away from the poverty that surrounded our hospital. Tiny houses, with smelly lavatories in their small backyards, abounded, as well as ugly, blackened brick-walled factories with smoke belching out of their chimneys for twelve hours each day. When I was eighteen, I thought it would be marvellous to live in the city. By twenty-one, I had changed my mind. I couldn’t wait to graduate and go back to the bush; not to Bellara, somewhere in the far Outback where I could take charge of a small hospital, or perhaps even work on a mission station.

  When I look back, I realise that most of the nurses had come from sheltered backgrounds; we had little knowledge of the world and no experience with young men. We were earnest, naive, idealistic and emotional, fired with enthusiasm to give comfort to the less fortunate in our community.

  *

  Almost three years on and approaching my twenty-first birthday, my idealism was wearing thin. I would have accepted an invitation to go almost anywhere with almost anyone. Unfortunately, my particular friends were either country girls or city girls with no brothers. Young doctors never looked our way, and I didn’t fancy any of the patients. Apart from those few outings in town, the only break in my routine was our annual week’s holiday at the end of each year for which I always went home.

  I looked forward to letters from home. My friend Rose was the most regular correspondent, and her letters contained news of my father. Dad never wrote because he was ashamed of his writing. Through Rose, he sent the sort of news I longed to hear; details of what was happening on the land and anecdotes about the dogs and the horses.

  Rose’s personal news was of less interest. Nothing had changed with my old school friend. Poor Rose, still working in the bakery in Orange’s main street; her one social outing each week to the local dance on a Saturday night. She was just twenty-one and unmarried, which was unusual. She explained that was because the man she would have liked to marry wasn’t the marrying type.

  How dull her life sounded. How dull my life was, all work and no play. I hadn’t expected it would be like this. The only thrills I experienced in those days occurred in bed during the few minutes I was able to stay awake after a long day on duty; a few precious minutes when I read a page or two of a romantic novel and wished I too had a young man who escorted me to dances or strolled hand in hand with me through parkland or by a river, all the time gazing at me, his eyes full of love and admiration.

  CHAPTER 4

  My brother Tom was down in Sydney in 1914 because we had an exceptional ram at Bellara and he was confident it would take out a prize at Sydney’s Easter Show. Tom planned to take a friend, a girlfriend, to the Show. Much to my surprise, he wrote to me and invited me to go along with them on Easter Saturday if I could arrange to get the day off.

  On a cloudless Sydney morning with the sun shining with pleasant autumnal warmth, I took the tram to the show ground and met them at the main gates. I was very excited. This was my first time at Sydney’s Show, and I hardly knew what to expect. Tom immediately led us towards the sheep pens adjacent to the show’s judging enclosure and would have been happy to stay there for the rest of the day. Not me; I soon tired of inspecting and comparing the various animals. I said that I wanted to see the sideshows that I’d heard so much about from the other nurses and promised I’d be back in an hour or so for lunch.

  Tom was a little reluctant; after all, when I was young it was unusual for unmarried ladies to walk unaccompanied through the fairgrounds crowded with people in a festive mood. I reminded him that I was now twenty-one, and eventually he agreed. Anyway, I was certain he would be grateful to be left alone with his current sweetheart and his prize ram.

  Feeling totally free, I wandered through the show grounds alone. It was thrilling. I strolled along Sideshow Alley, looked in on the dog, cat, pig and horse pavilions, then returned to meet Tom and Elizabeth in time for lunch. The three of us were about to go for our meal when we heard a voice in the distance. Someone was calling out: ‘Tom.’

  We looked around. Tom muttered, ‘It’s Gordon McCann. Just my luck.’ The McCanns were neighbours from home. Tom liked Douglas McCann but was less keen on the older brother.

  I had never actually met Gordon – my mother made sure of that. He had a reputation as a womaniser. I knew of him, of course; Rose had mentioned him in her letters, and I had seen him talking to Tom about farming matters back home at Bellara. The McCanns were our nearest neighbours. Their place, although smaller than Bellara, wasn’t a bad property. A creek ran through it, and the soil was good. It was looked after by old Mr McCann and his two sons; Mrs McCann having died several years before.

  My mother commented more than once that the state of the house on their property must be disgusting with no woman to keep it clean. But the state of the McCann house was the last thing on my mind as this man hurried towards us. I remembered some sections of Rose’s letters in which she admitted to being keen on Gordon McCann and also said she wished he took as much notice of her as his brother Douglas did.

  ‘G’day, Tom.’ He then looked us girls over, in what I thought was a rude and cheeky way. He said what a bit of luck it was running into us as he hadn’t seen anyone else from home down here today. He suggested he join us for lunch. I could see the reluctance in Tom’s eyes, but Gordon was adamant, and suddenly we were all walking towards the food hall.

  Gordon said he thought they must have been keeping me under wraps. Embarrassed by his attention, not sure how to react, feeling hot in the face, probably bright red, I explained that I’d lived in Sydney for the last three years. He was so handsome. To be honest, at that time in my life, I’d have been attracted to any man who was paying me a little attention; that is, as long as he was taller than me. I didn’t ever want a boyfriend who was short.

  During lunch Gordon only had eyes for me. Every question, every comment he directed at me. How my heart swelled. So this was what love felt like. After lunch he suggested we take a walk over to the equestrian events and have a look at the show jumping and dressage. I could barely even squeak out a ‘yes, please’. The rest of the afternoon passed in a haze of joy.

  At the end of the day Gordon told Tom that he would like to escort me back to the hospital. Adrenalin coursed through my veins. I looked pleadingly at Tom and muttered that I didn’t have an evening pass and would have to be back in the Nursing Home by eight o’clock. Somehow Tom didn’t object. I suppose he thought no harm would come of it – his sister was twenty-one, no longer a child. How could Tom know that I was, in a manner of speaking, ‘ripe for the picking’?

  Something had changed in me that afternoon. In fact the world had changed around me. Everything was pleasant, passers-by smiled, flowers looked brighter than normal and the weather was perfect. I was confident of my appearance, had lost quite a lot of weight since coming to Sydney and my horrible freckles had disappeared. I wasn’t such a bad-looking girl; more than one person had commented on my nice brown eyes and my friendly smile, and I no longer tramped around the place like a hillbilly.

  The sensations I experienced that afternoon were thrilling but also disquieting. When Gordon’s hand brush
ed mine, or he casually put his arm on my shoulder, ostensibly to point out something, I shivered with excitement and wondered whether he was aware of the effect his nearness was having on me.

  We had a meal together in the showground at the end of the day, and although it was just pie and peas, it felt like a banquet. We arrived back at the hospital with only a few minutes to spare. We stood in the shadow of its walls. Gordon looked towards the rear of the hospital and asked if that was a garden he could see in the dim light. ‘Yes, it’s a rose garden.’

  ‘I like roses. Let’s take a look.’

  ‘If you want to, but I only have a few minutes.’ I didn’t want to waste the next few moments strolling around the small area of flowerbeds and trees at the back of the hospital. I wanted to stand in the shadow of the building and at least hold hands. Gordon made the decision for me. He took my arm, and we walked towards the shadowy garden. Once there, he didn’t appear so very interested in the rose bushes; instead he leant against the wide, rough trunk of an old oak and put his arms around my waist. He said how much he had enjoyed the day with me. I said I had enjoyed it too, but really had to go because we get into trouble if we’re late in. He pulled me a little closer and said, ‘No harm in a goodnight kiss, is there?’

  His hands felt like fire on my waist; even so, I hesitated. ‘I’m not sure if we should, Gordon. We’ve only just met.’

  He laughed. ‘It’s just a kiss. I don’t intend running off with you.’

  I was mortified by my lack of sophistication: I wanted to kiss Gordon; I’d only ever kissed people in my family but there hadn’t been much of that. In fact if he hadn’t asked I probably would have been miserable with disappointment. When he gently pressed his lips against mine I closed my eyes, the better to enjoy the strange sensation rising through my body. Then, after a moment, his lips parted and his tongue slid into my mouth. I couldn’t think of anything except I just wanted this previously unknown pleasure to go on and on forever. My head was reeling with both shock and delight.