The Women’s Pages

by Victoria Purman

  As soon as Tilly heard on the grapevine that the tour had been approved, she’d marched upstairs to Mr Sinclair’s office and insisted she be one of the party.

  He’d looked up at her over the rims of his glasses and blustered, ‘You want to go where, Tilly?’

  ‘The war. Well, as close as I’m allowed to go.’

  He’d almost spilt his tea all over the messy pile of copy on his desk.

  ‘Whatever for?’

  She’d held back the urge to stomp her feet in indignation at the ridiculousness of his question. Had he ever asked George Cooper why he’d wanted to cover the war? She’d enjoyed working for Mr Sinclair, and still admired him very much, but he was a relic, really, a man who’d been born in the previous century with ideas that sometimes reflected that, no matter how hard he tried.

  Mr Sinclair slipped off his glasses, tugged a handkerchief from the pocket of his trousers and cleaned the lenses with gentle circles. ‘Mothers, wives and sweethearts are desperate to know what their loved ones are doing, Tilly. How they’re living. Women are the ones best suited to telling this dramatic side of our war effort, I believe. The woman’s angle, Tilly. Only you ladies can do it justice.’

  Tilly’s mind whirred and spun. She was well aware she only had one chance to convince Mr Sinclair. She had to give him a story he wouldn’t be able to resist.

  ‘We are fighting for everything we hold dear, Mr Sinclair. Our very liberty. Our democracy. For the freedoms of enslaved people who are counting on us to be victorious so they may once again live in peace. We’re fighting against nationalism and pure evil. Young Australians, both men and women, are sacrificing their lives every day for this great and just cause. Why wouldn’t I want to cover such a story?’

  It took Mr Sinclair a moment to collect himself. He whipped off his glasses and wiped his eyes. ‘Damn you, Tilly Galloway,’ he muttered. ‘Write me some copy like that when you’re away, won’t you?’

  She’d almost raced around his desk and kissed him.

  It had been the first time Tilly had flown in a plane. She’d been thrilled at taking off, seeing Sydney’s harbour from above for the first time, the wharves she’d run past as a child like fingers reaching into the water. The bays and small peninsulas looked astounding and beautiful, as if drawn freehand. Windows in waterside houses glittered in the sun like jewels as she looked down and, her war correspondent’s uniform khaki and stiff, her portable typewriter in the hold, she felt as if she was finally going to be a real reporter.

  Tilly and Denise Stapleton from The Sun were the youngest of all the women correspondents and they soaked up all they could from the doyennes of Australian women reporters. She’d had the great good fortune to share supper and an in-depth analysis of the state of the war with Elsie Jackson from the Australian Women’s Weekly, Connie Robertson who was covering the tour for the Sydney Morning Herald, the Age and the ABC—she didn’t know how that woman ever slept—and the glamorous Iris Dexter from Woman magazine. Tilly had always believed that her own perceptive and curious personality and George Cooper’s advice had prepared her for this kind of reporting, but spending time with the other women on the tour was an education she had never forgotten. They were forthright and determined and Tilly came to understand that by hiding those aspects of her character she had done herself a disservice.

  A peculiar kind of solidarity had developed between the women, even though they worked for rival publications and broadcasters. While they would have stepped over each other as easily as any man to get a scoop, they’d quickly come to realise that their strength lay in numbers and in the fact that the armed forces and the government wanted more women to sign up for war work. What better way to do that than to have women write inspiring stories about the work the country needed Australian women to do?

  The four-week tour of army, air force and navy centres throughout New South Wales, Queensland and finally Darwin had been exhausting and exhilarating and the best four weeks of Tilly’s life.

  She had blossomed in the tropical heat like the verdant vegetation she saw everywhere. On the long and ear-splitting flights and over meals and bus rides, the correspondents had shared cigarettes and gossip about things that would never be in any of their publications. The stories about editors and male reporters and politicians and businessmen and criminals. Those with wandering hands and more; those who thought it perfectly acceptable to put conditions on promotions or scoops; or who had made threats. These women’s secrets were powerful information and Tilly soaked it all in.

  In Queensland, they’d landed in Cairns and she’d interviewed young women from the Australian Women’s Army Service. Dubbed ack-ack girls, they guarded the coastline and adeptly handled anti-aircraft instruments. Their colleagues worked in plotting rooms mapping out targets hidden in the tropical clouds that hung heavy overhead.

  There was one problem that had arisen early on in the trip. The women correspondents had been anticipating interviews with soldiers who were on leave or who were back in Australia for training or R and R, but they weren’t allowed near any of them. This led to a general crankiness among the travelling troupe that couldn’t be quelled by deliciously catered Country Women’s Association lunches. The officer escorting them had informed them more than once that they should feel honoured they were able to do something male reporters could not.

  ‘You are innately attuned to women’s stories,’ he’d said, unaware that condescension dripped from him like the sweat from his forehead in the dense Darwin humidity. ‘It is only women reporters who have the sensitivity to the particular work of women on the home front and to the importance of their role in wartime.’ Tilly hadn’t been alone in feeling infuriated at those oft-repeated comments but the army and its officers were not for turning.

  When the travelling troupe had arrived in the tropics, Tilly had tried to imagine what Archie had seen, smelt, heard. The energy-sapping humidity, the constant symphony of dripping water, of condensation and rain, the undergrowth and the canopy, so lush and fecund it felt as if the leaves were growing as you held them between your fingers. And the rain, oh the rain. It flooded down like a widow’s tears. In Bowen, they’d been stranded by rising floodwaters and the group had to fly out to Cairns in two Catalina bombers and a Tiger Moth before heading west to Darwin. It had been exhilarating.

  Upon landing in Darwin, she’d turned her eyes to the sky and imagined what it had looked like to locals when it had been filled with Japanese planes, with vessels on fire lilting in the harbour, billowing black smoke in toxic clouds as they sank. She could only imagine the terror of those left behind after the evacuation and in the troops there to defend it. Then she turned slightly north-east, imagining the Arafura Sea and to the north-east, Rabaul, a place fifteen hundred miles away that she’d never heard of before the war. Now she knew them all: Rabaul and Morotai and Lae and Wau and Salamau and the Huon Peninsula and Milne Bay and Madang and Finschhafen and Shaggy Ridge and the Owen Stanley Ranges. She knew those places as well as she knew the streets of Millers Point. Her schoolgirl atlas had been her only connection to her husband and she had sat, tracing her fingers over the lines of longitude and latitude, whispering, ‘Where are you, Archie?’ until sleep overcame her.

  When the women war correspondents arrived in Darwin, the garrison town was almost entirely populated by men—and men in uniform. Tilly believed the arrival of the women war correspondents had just about doubled the female population. On the streets, in the shops, at the base, there was barely a feminine voice to be heard nor a child to be seen. She remembered why: just after Pearl Harbor, most of the civilian women and children—two thousand of them—had begun to be evacuated, and by February 1942, just before the bombs had dropped on Darwin, they were all gone. By then, Darwin’s military capabilities had dramatically expanded, with eight times more military personnel in the city than civilians.

  When Tilly and her colleagues landed, they were silent in the face of the crippling damage from the Japanese air raid
s. No one said a word on the bus ride in, as they all seemed to take in how close the war had come. House roofs had been torn to shreds, the wooden beams exposed like broken ribs. Debris still lay in piles on the streets and as they passed the Darwin Post Office, Patricia Knox of the Argus in Melbourne, who was sitting next to Tilly, nudged her gently.

  ‘There was a trench behind the post office. When the raid started, all the workers inside ran out to take shelter.’ She paused and Tilly saw tears in her eyes. ‘It took a direct hit. All ten of them were killed.’

  Despite the heat, Tilly shivered. She thought of London and the Blitz, and realised that if what she had seen was only a small taste of what they had endured for so long, how unbearable it must have been for the English.

  They weren’t allowed to report anything of the damage, however. In one important respect the women war correspondents were given equal treatment to the men: they faced the same strict army censorship provisions. The Director-General of Public Relations for the army had absolute control over what any newspaper could publish and since he was the one ultimately authorising their presence there, they had little choice but to comply. However, there were grumbles that every single word they wrote for publication had to be approved by field censors. Even their private mail was subject to redaction and the scalpels. Nor were they allowed anywhere near a real soldier or a nurse or any other military type who hadn’t been schooled in what to say to them. Military personnel were strictly forbidden from talking to the press without permission, and Tilly and the other reporters had no doubt they’d been forcibly and officially warned as such before the arrival of the travelling female press corps.

  ‘The Americans and the English let women on the front line,’ Connie Robertson had argued with their army escort. ‘There are British Spitfire pilots stationed in Darwin. There’s a story there, you know, about who those boys helping protect Australia are.’ He simply smiled and shrugged his shoulders. The women were carefully shepherded, taken to the places and shown only what the army wanted them to see and had joked with each other that the only hardships they’d had to put up with were the mosquitoes and melting make-up in the heat. After a long three weeks of travelling, and limited opportunities for meeting anyone else bar members of the Country Women’s Association, the travelling troupe had been taken in jeeps to RAAF Base Darwin and a party in their honour at the Airmen’s Mess. It was a celebration to mark the end of their mission and after showers and many attempts to tame their hair made uncontrollable by the humidity, they wore their own clothes and smiles at the thought of jobs done as well as they were able to in the circumstances.

  That was where Tilly had seen George Cooper for the first time in a year. Tilly and her colleagues had just walked into the mess when a raucous cheer arose from the bar. A wag called out in a booming baritone, ‘The lady reporters have arrived!’

  Tilly looked over.

  It was George Cooper and he was on his feet, waving at her to join him, a look of pure disbelief on his face, a cigarette dangling from his lips. She could barely contain the thrill at the sight of him, and found herself firmly planting her feet on the wooden floorboards of the mess to stop herself from running over and throwing her arms around him. A familiar face and a friend, so far from home. What a wonderful surprise.

  The newspapermen surrounding him burst into boisterous applause as the women headed over.

  ‘Look out,’ someone behind Tilly said, and it might have been Alice or Iris. ‘I reckon they’ve got a head start on us.’

  ‘Which is exactly where I plan to be as soon as possible,’ said another, and the click of their heels on the floor was soon drowned out by the scratchy intro to a song blaring from a radio in the corner.

  Tilly walked towards Cooper, his laughing smile a magnet.

  He slowly took the cigarette from his mouth as he stared at her. A smile curved his lips and his blue eyes crinkled in the corners. ‘What the hell are you doing in Darwin, Mrs Galloway?’

  ‘Working.’ Tilly beamed. ‘Tell me something. You haven’t caught anything from any damn mosquitoes, have you?’

  ‘Bloody hell. I hope not.’

  ‘Good. Then I can kiss you.’

  He raised an eyebrow at her.

  ‘Oh, come on, Cooper,’ she laughed, punching him on the arm. ‘I’m so thrilled to see a familiar face from home. I can’t believe you’re here.’ She gripped his shoulders and pressed her lips to his left cheek. He smelt musty and sweaty and of beer.

  ‘You need a haircut, Cooper. And a shave.’ She screwed up her nose. ‘Not to mention a shower.’

  He held his chin and rubbed his thumb and forefinger over the stubble. ‘Guilty as charged. We only arrived two hours ago. Cleaning up will be my second order of business, after this.’ He upended his beer and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘I think I need another. A shandy for you?’

  Tilly scoffed. ‘A real beer, if you don’t mind, and make it as cold as you can possibly get it.’

  Cooper caught the attention of the bartender and held up two fingers. Then he looked her over slowly, from her sandals to her crumpled floral dress, which had been crushed by notebooks filled with shorthand at the bottom of her suitcase for three weeks.

  ‘So are you going to tell me what you’re doing in Darwin, Mrs Galloway?’ Cooper called out above the music.

  ‘This is the final leg of the women war correspondents’ tour.’

  ‘The what now?’

  ‘Didn’t you get my letter announcing the big news? I’ve been covering the war.’ She rolled her eyes and sighed. ‘Well, the women’s war on the home front. They won’t let us anywhere near the troops. This is the closest we’ve got.’ She glanced over to a crowd of men in uniform sitting around a table by the doorway. ‘And they’re American. It’s so damn ridiculous. We haven’t been let near a soldier. Or a pilot. This whole thing was organised to stop us complaining.’

  ‘Doesn’t seem to have worked then, does it?’ Cooper grinned.

  ‘Oh, it’s been infuriating but what can we do? No one wants to derail the war effort or accidentally let anything slip. Things seem to be going well, finally, don’t they? The Germans have surrendered in Stalingrad. The Brits are thrashing Rommel in Africa. And we’ve won Guadalcanal. I’m feeling more hopeful than I have in a long time. Aren’t you?’

  ‘Who wants to talk about the war? It’s Saturday night. There’s lukewarm beer. I might actually get a hot shower sometime soon and you’re here. This is a bloody good day, I reckon.’ He took a long drag on his cigarette and met her gaze.

  ‘I want to talk about the war. Tell me everything. Where have you been and what did you see?’

  ‘We’ve just come from Port Moresby.’

  She reached across and laid her hand on his bare arm. His eyes flickered there for a moment. Cooper had been closer to Archie than she would ever be.

  ‘Please, Cooper. Tell me.’

  He upended his beer and stared into the frothy remains. ‘You’ve still not heard anything?’

  Tilly shook her head. ‘Not a word.’ And loss and grief and pain roiled inside her again, making her feel seasick. She gripped harder.

  Cooper met her searching gaze. ‘New Guinea is the greenest place on earth.’ He stared off into the distance, lost in thought for a moment. ‘Even the water looks green. It’s lush and thick and undulating with huge tall trees and ferns and plants, mangrove swamps and tropical rain forests. It’s muddy and the humidity is so thick you imagine you could slice it.’

  Tilly closed her eyes and saw Archie in that peaceful and beautiful place, and imagined he might struggle with Sydney’s winters after living in such warmth for so much time. And she remembered the jumpers she’d knitted for him, one for each winter he’d been away, and thought how he’d laugh when he came home at the idea of needing one again.

  Cooper’s glass hit the bar with a thud. ‘There must be birds but I didn’t hear them.’ His eyes were glassy, his lips pulled tight. ‘Our troops are s
hut in by that godforsaken jungle. The poor bastards have to hack their way through it with machetes to create supply lines and it’s damn slow and excruciating work in that heat. That lush jungle? Perfect for hiding snipers.’

  Cooper paused and then whispered hoarsely, ‘All that fucking rain.’ His eyes darted to Tilly’s, a question in them. Was he wondering if she was shocked by his language—no wharfie’s daughter could be—or was he hesitating out of concern about how she would react to the truth?

  ‘They’re wet all the time and the skin peels off their feet in thick clumps. The mosquitoes that share their malaria with you are as big as the bats you see flying over Sydney.’ He shakily lit another cigarette. ‘So that’s what you’ve missed out on, Mrs Galloway. Dragging your portable typewriter into the middle of the jungle to sit on a tree stump and bat away the mosquitoes while writing about our brave troops as the sweat drips from your forehead and you’re looking for the nearest latrine because by god you’ve got the trots from some bloody thing or other, whether it’s the bully beef or the water you’re warned not to drink or some godforsaken tropical disease.’

  Tilly felt a chill. George Cooper made cynicism an art form but this was something more. Bitterness dripped from his every word and she couldn’t help but feel it was aimed somehow at her and her questions. Was he trying to teach her a lesson that she should be careful what she wished for? She felt as if she’d been chastised and it was hurtful and discomforting coming from someone she’d considered a colleague and a mentor. And a friend. Why was he trying to put her back in her place? She had asked for the truth and he’d delivered it to her with cutting words that felt like a slap in the face.