The Women’s Pages

by Victoria Purman

  ‘Mrs Galloway? You there? Damn this phone line, if I—’

  ‘I’m here,’ she replied quickly.

  ‘Did you hear me? You heard what I said?’

  ‘Yes,’ she murmured. ‘But … but what about General Blamey’s office? You know people there, don’t you? His press officer? They’ll be able to find him, won’t they? Ask them, George. They’ll tell you.’

  His sigh was audible and frustrated. ‘I have. They know even less than we do. The Japanese have refused to cooperate in any way, shape or form when it comes to tracking people down. They wouldn’t even let the Red Cross provide any skerrick of humanitarian aid. It’s been abominable. They haven’t handed over any nominal rolls to the Allies so our side can track prisoners of war. And forget all about letters and parcels. The eight thousand POWs in Europe, poor bastards, at least got sustenance from the Red Cross and letters from home. The Japanese POWS, almost nothing. Complete radio silence. Thousands and thousands of men and women haven’t been heard of at all, officially or unofficially. That’s what we’re facing in finding your Archie, Mrs Galloway. It’s like a needle in a fucking haystack.’

  Tilly squeezed her eyes closed, trying not to hear what Cooper had just told her. All her letters and parcels and fruitcakes, written with care, baked with love and hope, wrapped tenderly. Archie had probably not received any of them. Had he thought she’d given up on him? Had he started to believe she didn’t care, that she’d given up hope? It was all so unthinkable and unbearable.

  ‘Mrs Galloway? You there? Can you hear me?’ he asked and there was an urgency in his tone.

  ‘Yes. I can hear you,’ she managed, her heart in her throat.

  ‘I promise I’ll keep searching. You know what my promise means.’

  ‘I know.’ She had survived this long holding on to the merest sliver of hope, and the news from Cooper meant that she would have to keep waiting. She would have to continue getting out of bed each day, putting one foot in front of the other and breathing in and out as if everything was normal.

  ‘Thank you, Cooper. I really do appreciate everything. I’ll make you a cake when you get back. At least—’ she found a chuckle to try to lighten the mood. If she didn’t she would burst into tears right there in the newsroom ‘—I’ll ask my mother to bake one.’

  ‘Everything good with my two favourite communists, Elsie and Stan?’

  Tilly laughed. ‘Yes, and I’ll tell them that their second favourite running dog of the capitalist press says hello.’

  ‘It’s a badge I wear with pride.’ Cooper had met her parents the summer before at the Australia Hotel on Martin Place. Mary had thrown Tilly a surprise birthday party at the fancy establishment and Stan and Elsie had walked through the entrance foyer, full of black Carrara marble and black glass and mirrors, and gawped. It was the fanciest place they’d ever seen. Stan had even borrowed a suit for the occasion from one of his wharfie comrades. As Tilly and Mary and the women of the newsroom chatted and sipped glasses of sherry, Cooper had arrived, much to Tilly’s surprise. He’d kissed her on the cheek and presented her with a box of chocolates.

  ‘Happy birthday, Mrs Galloway,’ he’d said and his eyes had sparkled with warmth and something else Tilly couldn’t define.

  She had opened her mouth to speak but had been suddenly lost for words. It had been so long since she’d felt the warm and intimate press of a man’s lips on her skin, had felt the solid grip of a man’s hands on her shoulders, that it had rendered her speechless and guilty and filled with longing all at once.

  Cooper must have interpreted her silence as embarrassment as he seemed overly relieved to have found another man in the gathering looking as uncomfortable as he was. That’s how her father and Cooper had met.

  ‘Mum’s fine. Dad is …’ She couldn’t say the words out loud in case the mere act of saying them might make them true. ‘We’re all waiting for news.’

  ‘Give them my best, won’t you? I’m here in Singapore for another four weeks. The military’s preparing for the war trials, here in Singapore and in Morotai and Rabaul and Darwin. I’ll get a few yarns out of that then I’m coming home for a break until they get underway, early next year we think. The war might be over but the story’s not, Mrs Galloway. I’ll call you the minute I find out anything.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘You have my word.’

  She knew what he meant. ‘Stay safe, Cooper.’

  ‘Be good, Mrs Galloway.’ Tilly hung up and slowly finished her cigarette, trying to disappear into the smoke, and turned when she heard her name called.

  It was Maggie, the police reporter, waving a piece of paper in the air.

  ‘What’s that you’ve got there?’ Tilly asked.

  ‘I’ve just been up to Sinclair. He wants something on this for tomorrow and asked me to give it to you. See if there’s a local angle.’ Maggie handed Tilly a printout from the teletypewriter, a story from the Associated Press out of London.

  ‘I don’t know if I’ll have the time today. I’ve already written two stories and I’ve got to file this for tomorrow.’ Tilly waved a hand over her notebook on the desk beside her typewriter.

  ‘What’s the yarn?’ Maggie perched herself on the edge of Tilly’s desk.

  ‘I’ve interviewed the Deputy Director of Posts and Telegraphs. They’re holding postcards at the GPO from prisoners of war that they haven’t been able to deliver to anyone. They’ve given me the names and addresses to see if printing them in the paper will bring people out of the woodwork.’

  ‘I hope so. Why haven’t they been able to find people?’ Maggie looked as perplexed as Tilly had been when she’d interviewed the deputy director, Mr Malone. The idea that such precious letters were in a mailbag unclaimed, when families would have been so desperate for news, was an agonising and unfathomable mystery.

  ‘Officially, “various reasons”. Unofficially, they haven’t been able to track down the addressees. In some cases, it’s a surname and a suburb. Like,’ Tilly checked her notes. ‘“Mrs D Sannsen, Tullamore.”’

  Maggie’s brow furrowed. ‘That’s out in the central west. Surely everyone there knows everyone. Especially the posties.’

  ‘You’d think. Anyway, what does Mr Sinclair want me to follow up?’

  ‘Something out of London? I’ve got to scram. Someone’s shot himself in Redfern.’ Maggie winked. ‘In the back of the head. It’s a miracle.’

  ‘Thanks, Maggie.’ Tilly looked up at her colleague with a weak smile. Fifteen years Tilly’s senior, Maggie was an enigmatic presence. She’d never married and took great delight in telling the girls she never wanted to. Tilly admired her but did not understand her at all. Maggie had both the street smarts and resilience needed to survive when dealing with the toughest cops in the city. And, to Tilly’s great admiration, she had never exhibited any fear of going into the back streets and dives of Surry Hills and Darlinghurst to track down a story. Maggie slung a leather satchel over her shoulder, saluted Tilly and strode off.

  Tilly scanned the Associated Press article and the date, 17 August. ‘Wave of “peace” ailments sweeping London’, the headline read. It was being reported that now the whole world was finally at peace, a new wave of sickness was driving Londoners into chemists’ shops in search of cures. ‘Chemists report a record demand for tonics at a time when, with holidays over, the sickness rate usually falls. Women are the principal sufferers.’

  The rise in anxiety and frustration, according to a doctor, was a result of women’s failed expectations about what the end of the war would bring. They’d been hoping to get a bit extra out of life after the war, he believed, and they were not getting it at all. It was all the fault of queuing, which was giving them neurosis.

  Tilly flicked the telex on her desk and rubbed a hand over her face, trying not to scream. What she really wanted to do was to shred it into a million pieces and toss them out the windows. She splayed a hand across her chest, right on the spot where her heart was beating lik
e a drum. Oh, dear doctor. If only you’d taken the time to speak to just one of those women and really listen to what they were trying to tell you, you would discover what was ailing them. And it wasn’t queues or clothes rations or the lack of red lipstick.

  It was too many years of fear; of being on high alert to danger and death and the threat of hearing the worst news imaginable. It was years of not enough sleep. It was the terror of hearing a knock on your door and fearing it was someone from the post office. It was too many pitying looks when people found out your husband was a prisoner of the Japanese and hadn’t been heard of in a year, in two years, in three and then four. It was the air-raid warden telling you that your husband must already be dead. It was the lonely nights full of demons, of stomach-turning thoughts about where Archie was and what he was possibly enduring at the hands of those brutes in the camps. It was the daydreams that Archie would return and then the shame at daring to imagine a future that might have already slipped through your fingers.

  Her own newspaper was filled with advertisements for Beecham Pills and laxatives and liver cleansers and salts for kidney disorders and Chinese herbalists, and drops for tired eyes and Dr Mackenzie’s Menthoids for high blood pressure and kidney problems and Clements Tonic for waking up in the morning with a song. Tilly would have tried them all if she believed for just one moment that they might have relieved her agony.

  The men of Sydney, in uniform or out, didn’t need such tonics or potions. They found their pick-me-ups in the bottle. If Tilly left work early and happened to walk through the throbbing heart of Kings Cross before six o’clock, she was witness to the swill, the crowds, the desperation of that urge for just one more glass. Cigarette smoke billowed onto the street from windows that had been flung open so men could pass beer upon beer to their mates in the street, everyone crawling over each other to get one last one in before the clock struck.

  She’d been drunk only once, at the wedding of an old school friend. It was gin and she’d vomited in the gutter out the front of her parents’ house. It hadn’t been anything she’d ever wanted to repeat and she’d been teased about it for months. When she and Archie were married, her father-in-law had brought them a bottle of Great Western champagne as a gift and she and Archie had sipped from their glasses, entwined their arms, and then kissed each other with tingling lips.

  Tilly reached for another cigarette and lit up. She smoked the whole thing down to a butt, ground it out in the ashtray on her desk, and then reached for her notepad. There was a chemist nearby she knew she could speak to, and a doctor in Kings Cross who’d prescribed some pills to Mary to help her sleep.

  She was a reporter and she would do her job. She would put one foot in front of the other and wake up tomorrow and do it all again.

  What other choice did she possibly have?

  Chapter Six

  ‘Is that you, Tilly?’

  With a hip sway worthy of a Tivoli dancer, Tilly closed the front door to her flat and set two hessian shopping bags on the floor.

  ‘I’m home,’ Tilly answered wearily.

  In the dim light of the living room, she stretched her fingers out, flexing and contracting, rubbing at the red welts with the opposite thumbs. In that moment, she longed for the luxury of a car. She had coveted a two-tone Buick in white and silver blue she’d seen once, glistening as it drove through Potts Point, catching the sun and reflecting its light just as the harbour did on a beautiful day, no doubt on its way to one of the fancy homes in Elizabeth Bay that also sparkled, that were so fancy there was room to park not just one vehicle but ten in long driveways that curled around houses like snakes. On Sydney days like this, when rain beat down from the skies like bullets and soaked you through to your bones, Tilly thought it would be lovely not to have to walk home with the squelching of your toes in your shoes like the cymbal crash of a percussive backbeat of a jazz song.

  Tilly wearily toed off her sodden shoes and sighed. She’d forgotten her umbrella on her desk at work and it had begun to pour as she’d been walking through Hyde Park so she’d trudged the rest of the way, drenched and exhausted, with an uncharacteristically bitter August cold chilling her through. Surely spring would arrive soon. In the front gardens of the houses around Potts Point there were already signs of new life, as if the plants too realised the war was over and were bursting to celebrate. Buds were about to blossom, leaves were on their way to unfurling, but that day’s rain and gloomy grey skies hanging low over Sydney had dragged Tilly back to the darkest days of winter. All she wanted was a bath and a cigarette, preferably at the same time, and then toast and tea while sitting by the wireless. And then to her bed to curl up in the blankets and disappear.

  Mary’s lace-ups were by the fireplace, one lying flat on its side revealing a hole in the leather almost as big as the ball of her foot. Tilly smiled at the simple familiarity of Mary’s shoes.

  Mary was an optimist by nature and her surroundings reflected her sunny outlook. From the minute they’d moved in to the flat, Mary had worked to turn it into a home. No matter what time of year, it was always decorated with fresh flowers, which wasn’t easy during the war. Flower growers had given over their land to the cultivation of vegetables so blooms had become frightfully expensive, which is why Mary was so careful with the flowers she surreptitiously stole from rosebushes and from the shrubs in the fancy front gardens of the houses along Victoria Street and Elizabeth Bay. She would arrive home with a shopping bag that smelt like a florist’s and would artfully arrange the blooms in little glass jars all over the flat: on the two window sills in the living room; on the kitchen table and on the kitchen sill to distract from the view over Orwell Street. Tonight, two deep purple freesias sat in an old perfume bottle on the mantelpiece by Bert’s photo.

  Mary tended the cuttings as if they were in her own garden instead of empty aspirin bottles. Each day, she took care to snip the stems just a little and refresh the water.

  ‘It makes it homely, don’t you think?’ she’d asked Tilly, admiring her own work with an entirely deserved sense of pride.

  And it wasn’t just the flowers. Mary had laid antimacassars over the back of each headrest on the settee and on the armchair by the fireplace. She plumped the couch cushions every night when they were about to turn in to their respective bedrooms for their restless sleep.

  The flat was a home to her, a haven she kept carefully prepared for Bert’s imminent arrival home. In the darkest depths of the war, throughout ’43, Mary had knelt at the side of her bed every night and prayed to God for Bert’s return. Each Sunday, she would rise early, dress in her finest winter suit or a day dress with hat and white gloves in spring, summer and autumn and join her fellow Anglicans in humble and confident prayer at St Mary’s Cathedral, from which she would return revived. Tilly hadn’t wanted to remind Mary that her floral habit was actually thieving and that God probably wouldn’t look too kindly on it because the perfume went a small way to masking the hint of mould creeping up the bathroom walls and, anyway, it seemed to bring Mary so much joy it would be like revealing to a child that Father Christmas wasn’t real.

  As the years went on, Mary’s faith in God and in Bert’s return had strengthened, in inverse proportion to Tilly’s growing fears about the unthinkable.

  ‘How can you be so sure God is listening, or even if there is a god?’ Tilly had asked her once.

  ‘Because I feel it in here.’ Mary had covered her heart with a hand. ‘Right here. Every time I think about Bert I simply feel … safe. I know that probably sounds strange to you but I know God is watching over him and that he’ll bring him back to me. Don’t you feel that about Archie, Tilly?’

  Tilly hadn’t found God anywhere, not that she’d been particularly searching for him. God hadn’t had a seat at the table in her family when she was growing up. In fact, her father’s suspicion of faith and the church had rubbed off onto Tilly in ways she was only now beginning to realise. She didn’t cross herself for luck or look to the heavens for any ki
nd of absolution and she hadn’t felt that the St Christopher’s medal Archie’s mother had given him would make any difference to whether any bullet missed him or not. Tilly’s mother had once been a regular churchgoer, more as an opportunity to catch up with her Millers Point neighbours than anything, but Tilly remembered the day Elsie had lost her faith. Tilly’s Uncle Ern, Elsie’s only brother, had been crushed by a load of wheat at Dalgety’s Wharf, leaving behind a devastated wife and six young children.

  ‘It must be God’s will,’ the priest from the Garrison Church had told Elsie and Stan when he’d come by to offer his prayers.

  Elsie had flamed red in the face, picked up her broom and waved it at the clergyman as if he were a swooping magpie. ‘Why on earth would God want my brother’s wife and his six little ones to lose their father? Why would it be God’s will to have him die like that?’ Elsie had shrieked at him and he’d cowered on the front verandah of the terrace. For every step forward Elsie took, the priest stepped back until he found himself in the middle of the street. ‘I don’t see God saving any of those men down there on the wharves, working themselves to death so other men can make a profit from their blood and sweat and pain. Why would God want them to beg for work, to fight each other to get a shift so they can put food on their families’ tables and pay the rent? If that’s your God, you can have him.’ She’d slammed the front door so hard a pane of glass in the front window had shattered and fallen in jagged pieces onto the verandah. After Ern died, his widow and Tilly’s six cousins had moved in with Tilly’s own family for a while, all crammed together into the attic room. They’d brought with them Ern’s six chickens and a fawn greyhound called Ned that he’d raced at Harold Park. Tilly had loved Ned as if he were her own, but without Ern to race him, the dog became a burden they couldn’t afford to feed and he was sold off to an old mate of Ern’s from Glebe.

  ‘Tilly?’ Mary called again, her voice high and almost a shriek.