The Bride of Almond Tree

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The Bride of Almond Tree Page 9

by Robert Hillman


  ‘That’s how you do it, Bethy. As if you’re enjoying it.’

  ‘Oh, so you want me to be cheerful? La la la la la, a billion people who live like slaves, la la la la la!’ She walked off to be by herself, and was allowed to be alone, if that was the way she felt.

  Di said to Wes: ‘How do you put up with her?’

  ‘I care about her.’

  ‘Well so do I, but if I were a man, I’d be looking for someone less skinny. Franny wants you. Give Franny a try. She’s gorgeous. Good natured. Fabulous bosom.’

  ‘Di, I said I care about her. And I do.’

  They decided to stay a second night to spare Wes the drive for a bit. The noises of the dark were even more frightening than the previous night. Beth again came into Wes’s tent in her striped pyjamas with her shirt and trousers tucked under her arm. ‘I can’t bear the noises. Please don’t touch me.’

  ‘Of course I won’t touch you. The noises won’t hurt you. Rest. You’ll be safe.’

  In the morning, Wes rose early to make a campfire. Beth stayed deeply asleep. It was while he was setting the fire that he noticed, some fifty yards or more away, an Aborigine standing perfectly still, staring at him. His hair and beard were grey; he wore dark trousers and an oversize, rumpled blue jumper. He was shoeless. Wes raised his hand and waved. There was no response. The man continued to stare fixedly at Wes, and even over the distance, it was evident that there was nothing welcoming in his gaze. Wes raised his hand again, and again, no response. The man’s gaze was not hostile, but it was as if he did not want Wes to be there.

  Wes roused Di and Beth.

  ‘We have to leave. I think we’re somewhere out of bounds. There’s an Aboriginal man here.’

  The women dressed in the tents and emerged full of curiosity. The Aboriginal man remained motionless.

  ‘We should go and say hello,’ said Beth.

  ‘Beth,’ said Wes, ‘he doesn’t want to say hello. He wants us to go.’

  They packed as quickly as possible, bypassed breakfast, but left oranges, apples and bananas for their visitor. After camping overnight, they reached Marsha and Brian’s place at four in the afternoon. Beth argued most of the way that Aborigines were part of the proletariat and that Australians belonged to the proletariat, not to any tribe.

  ‘And this was explained to the Aborigines by Arthur Phillip when he anchored in Sydney Harbour, was it?’ said Wes.

  ‘They were colonialists. In other words, crooks.’

  ‘Beth, have you ever thought that within their tribes, Aborigines have been communists for thousands of years? They hold property in common. You know that.’

  ‘Oh, come on. They have no politics. They have no theory.’

  When they reached the Norwood house (finally, ultimately, and dear God what a journey) they told Marsha about the old Aboriginal man.

  ‘We have a Maralinga Tjarutja fella who comes and collects bags of clothes from the Port Augusta shop. But he’s a young bloke. Wouldn’t have been him.’

  Wes encouraged the women to rise for an early start to Mildura.

  Brian asked Wes whether he had enough tyres.

  ‘As I hope,’ said Wes.

  ‘You look all done in, mate. Take some breaks.’

  Wes didn’t take any breaks on the drive to Mildura. Nor was there much talking. But Beth did say she was disappointed that they didn’t get to Emu Plains.

  Wes stopped the Land Rover and turned to Beth.

  ‘Beth, has it ever occurred to you that the Maralinga people had their homeland stolen? And now they’re going to have it blasted to smithereens. Have you thought of that?’

  ‘Maybe we can stop it.’

  ‘And maybe we can’t. That Aboriginal man we saw, and the rest of his tribe, do you think they’re going to pack up and leave? The British will clear out the white men. The Aborigines, they won’t trouble about.’

  ‘All the more reason we have to stop them.’

  Chapter 14

  THE DAY AFTER the return from the expedition to South Australia, Beth sent a letter to Peter Corning to say that she had the photographs, but only of the Maralinga countryside, not Emu Plains. Two weeks later, Peter Corning telephoned Di Porter’s home and spoke to Beth. He gave instructions. The pictures were to be printed, all of them, and delivered to an agent whom she would call ‘Ivan’, a Russian, at a park that he believed was known as Fawkner Park. She was to take a bench near the tennis courts that he’d been told she would find in the park. At ten in the evening, Ivan would join her and take the pictures. He would have a document with him which she was to sign.

  ‘And then what happens? With the pictures.’

  ‘I can’t tell you that yet.’

  Beth was there at nine-forty-five. The park was lit with lanterns. She found a bench beneath an oak and waited nervously for the arrival of Ivan. She was carrying a shoulder bag with the thick wad of photographs inside. She was well aware that she was now engaged in espionage. Being constantly harassed by the police and having her politics vilified in the newspapers was bearable; years and years in prison, even at the scaffold—that was something else. She patted her chest and said, in a whisper: ‘Courage, Elizabeth Josephine, courage.’ She hummed ‘The Red Flag’ and thought of the many thousands who had given their life to the cause. She also wished Wes was with her. Just for the company. She was more comfortable with him than she’d ever been. He would have come if she’d asked him. Women had been assaulted, raped in this very park. And yes, she was on edge. Why did she have to hand the pictures over? Why not some junior in the movement, when she had so much to do? She was working as the coordinator of policy for the CPA, which meant settling disputes between the various CPA factions.

  She was seated below a lamp that attracted moths in great numbers. It had been a warm day but was now cold enough to cause her to shiver in her brown cardie and her green linen skirt. At exactly ten by her watch, a man in an overcoat approached: short and portly, a grey hat, a tie, round rimmed spectacles. He raised his hat and sat beside her. He said, in Russian: ‘I am Ivan. And you are Miss Elizabeth Hardy. I have seen your picture.’ Beth replied, in Russian: ‘Yes, I am Elizabeth Hardy.’ He seemed completely relaxed. But his Russian was a little awkward, not native Russian. He had obviously been taught Muscovite Russian, with its soft sound and sibilance, just as she had by Di, and the peculiarities of the Moscow accent could never be mastered by those who hadn’t grown up with them.

  Beth took the thick envelope of photographs from her bag and handed them to him. At that moment a possum appeared, ran past them up the oak. Ivan swung his head around to watch the possum disappear ‘Jesus Christ, what’s that,’ said Ivan in a distinct Irish accent.

  ‘Just a possum,’ said Beth.

  ‘Oh.’

  He produced from his inside breast pocket a folded sheet of paper and opened it. What was written on it could only just be made out in the lantern light. It read, I, Elizabeth Hardy, acknowledge copyright of the photographs of Maralinga South Australia taken in March, 1950. I further acknowledge that I have provided them to a second party representing the Soviet Union to be used in any way he sees fit.’

  ‘Why exactly do you wish me to sign this?’

  ‘Procedure.’

  Since that was as much explanation as anyone ever got from the party, it settled all doubts.

  For a time.

  Later, back with Di, she spoke about her uneasiness. ‘He wanted me to believe he was Russian, but he wasn’t. He spoke Russian like I do, as if it was taught and when he got spooked by a possum—a possum!—he shrieked something in English that sounded completely natural. English is his native language.’

  ‘We’ve done what we were supposed to do. Just leave the rest up to them.’

  ‘I feel dubious, Di.’

  Three weeks later, at the drab, windowless office of the Communist Party of Australia, six policemen arrived with a warrant for the arrest of Elizabeth Josephine Hardy.

  They did not say why
she was being arrested. Nor did they take her to a police station but to a room in a building in William Street as drab as the one in which she’d been arrested. At a desk sat a smartly dressed man in a relaxed pose, possibly forty, his silky fair hair flopping over his forehead. When Beth made to seat herself on the other side of the desk, a policeman growled that Mister Wagner would tell her when she could sit. Mister Wagner said, genially, ‘Go right ahead.’ Then: ‘You will have perhaps detected that I am English, Miss Hardy. From Cambridge, where you visited not so long ago. That’s right, isn’t it?’

  ‘I would like to know why I am here. And I would like to see a lawyer.’

  Wagner closed his eyes briefly, perhaps to show how deeply relaxed he actually was. ‘Here’s the thing, Miss Hardy. According to my Australian colleagues, we don’t have to let you see a lawyer for twenty-four hours. And indeed, we will not so allow you. But another interesting fact is that you must answer my questions truthfully. Are you prepared to do so?’

  Beth didn’t reply. She was not nervous or anxious. She knew she would likely go to prison. She saw almost immediately what had happened. The parcel of photographs had been handed over to Ivan, and Ivan was a government agent, or an ASIO agent, or even someone from MI5 or MI6. This meant that Peter Corning was also from MI5 or MI6. It was a set-up. It was obvious that she would never get the chance to let the British party know that Peter Corning was a traitor. She said: ‘It was Peter Corning.’

  Wagner leaned forward with his hands clasped on the desk. ‘I think I can share with you a fact of our own. Peter Corning has been taken into custody in Cambridge. For a political movement so practised in suspicion, your comrades can be extraordinarily naive.’

  ‘And what am I supposed to have done?’

  ‘You handed what you considered to be sensitive intelligence to a man you believed represented a foreign power. Essentially, a foreign power that has displayed animosity toward the Commonwealth of Australia and the British Commonwealth as a whole. You may well be found to be a traitor to your country.’

  ‘And who says I considered it sensitive intelligence? They were pictures of the desert.’

  ‘Well, I daresay the judge will decide. But when he learns that the photographs depicted what you understood was a prospective atomic testing sight, it may have an influence on his thinking.’

  Beth was taken to the women’s section of Pentridge Prison in Coburg. She had been to this section of Pentridge before, visiting comrades who had been locked up for weeks without charge merely for demonstrating. It was bleak, it was cold, and it was falling to bits, since a new women’s prison was planned for Fairfield and no money was being spent on Coburg. The male governor’s authority extended to the women’s section, but he was content to leave it in the hands of two relatively junior female officers who did more or less as they pleased. One of the junior officers was Bev Hutchinson, a woman of stocky build with thick-lensed glasses that gave her the look of a good-natured toad. She chatted genially to Beth as she escorted her to her cell.

  ‘So you’re a commie, lovie. Got some sympathy for the commies. The ones we’ve had here—maybe a dozen or so—all been quiet and well-behaved. A little bit boring, you might say. Out on the street, as rowdy as a herd of goats. In here, practically silent, reading their tracts. Can give you a cell to yourself: bit light on for bad girls at the moment.’

  Before they reached the cell, Bev stopped and faced Beth. ‘One thing, darl. I’m not going to get any strife from you, am I? Because I’d have to give you a hiding. And believe me, it will smart.’

  Beth wasn’t permitted a phone call. She’d been arrested mid-afternoon. But Janet at the CPA office would have informed Pip Morton, the lawyer who regularly represented party members, and also notified a QC, usually Matty Lear. At five in the afternoon, she was visited in her cell by Pip in his dilapidated dark blue suit, which may have been the only suit he’d ever owned. The dark blue had faded to grey in places. His tie was always worn loose. His attire perfectly complemented his mangled face, which had been squashed in a car crash some years ago and inexpertly repaired. He’d left his teeth behind in the wreck and the false teeth that had replaced them were also the work of an amateur, the upper and lower teeth the same size so that it was impossible for him to close his mouth fully. He was always in a rage that his fixed smile contradicted.

  ‘In her cell?’ he said to Leonie Peek, the other junior officer who managed the women’s section with Bev Hutchinson. ‘Why aren’t we in the interview room, for the love of Christ?’

  ‘The roof fell down.’

  ‘And who told this young woman, Betty, that…’

  ‘Beth,’ said Beth.

  ‘…Beth, that she couldn’t see a lawyer for twenty-four hours? That Pommy ponce, was it? He’ll be from MI5 or MI6. The British, they send these pooftas over here to tell ASIO what to do. And our blokes are so meek they do what they’re told. “Ooh, MI5, how impressive.” Makes me sick. Anyway, tell me what they’re saying you did, love.’

  Beth gave a thorough account of the Maralinga expedition, and of the meeting in Fawkner Park with Ivan. She confessed she’d signed a document at Ivan’s request, and quoted word for word what the document said.

  Pip covered his face with his hands, as if concealing briefly his despair. ‘What a fucking stupid thing to do. You’ve given MI5 and our wallopers a signed confession.’ Leonie Peek was sitting in on the interview. She was a tall woman, over six foot, renowned for her strength, and was sometimes called into the male part of the prison when more muscle was required to subdue rowdy inmates. Otherwise, she was more benign than Bev, pitied the women who’d ended up in Pentridge, found magazines for them and handed out lollies. She was known to the prisoners as Santa. But that was the surface. Underneath, as hard as nails. She’d been known to bang heads together to the point at which hospitalisation was required. She said: ‘Bloody hell, Beth, do you want to hang? You meet a man in the park and sign your life away?’

  Beth held her chin up. ‘I’m not ashamed.’

  ‘I’m not saying you should be ashamed,’ said Leonie. ‘But dear God!’

  Pip asked her who had accompanied her on the trip to Maralinga.

  ‘No one.’

  ‘What, a skinny thing like you drove over the outback alone? Do me a favour.’ That was Pip.

  Pip said: ‘Di Porter was with you, right?’

  ‘Just me.’

  ‘And what was the brand of the camera you used?’

  ‘Can’t remember.’

  ‘She’s not going to lag,’ said Leonie. ‘Good for you, love. Can’t abide laggers.’

  ‘Well, whoever was involved, even if it never comes out, is going to be living underground after the referendum next year, you realise that?’

  ‘What referendum?’ Beth asked.

  ‘Menzies is planning a referendum to get the Communist Party banned. Late next year. And it will pass. A case like yours? They’ll flog it for all it’s worth. Sweet country girl seduced by communist propaganda, becomes an agent for Red Joe. They’re going to love this.’

  ‘Well, let them. I’m a communist. I’m not about to deny it.’

  She was given a shapeless grey uniform to wear, a dress no more ugly than the clothing she had chosen for herself when she was free. Other women prisoners came to stickybeak at her through the bars of her cell.

  ‘Say they’re gonna hang you, love. Zat right?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Just for being a commo?’

  ‘For espionage.’

  ‘Yeah? Fuck me. You must have guts.’

  Beth was five days in the Pentridge cell before she was formally charged by the Crown with espionage and taken before a judge of the State Supreme Court who denied her bail, and told her that she would be tried by another judge of the Supreme Court, sitting alone, no jury, such was the sensitivity of the information that would be revealed. In two weeks’ time—an astonishingly short period.

  Another officer of the Crown, who lo
oked about fifteen, had visited her in her cell to tell her that it had been discovered that Di Porter had travelled with her to South Australia and that the vehicle had been driven by Wesley Cunningham of Almond Tree, neither of whom had broken the law and would not be charged with anything. A dozen people in Almond Tree knew of the planned marathon journey so the information could have come from this person or that. As it transpired, the information came from Di and Wes, who had been questioned by the MI5 agent with the floppy hair.

  Beth was allowed to see Di and Wes in company with Matty Lear, who would be taking care of her when she faced the judge. She hugged both of them, Wes first.

  Di said, ‘We told that creep from MI5 that we knew why you wanted the pictures. They don’t care. Handing over the pictures to that pseudo-Russian was the offence, not taking the pictures.’

  Wes was almost silent, but distraught. He reached for Beth’s hand, and she was content for him to hold it.

  Matty said: ‘Deary, you’re up that famous creek with a telephone pole for a paddle. Bob Menzies wants you punished. Look.’

  He showed her a copy of the Argus with a headline: Red Spy Girl to Face Judge.

  ‘And my love, you haven’t got a defence worth the name. You signed a confession. Have you seen Jean Lee while you’ve been here? Probably screaming. She murdered poor old Pop Kent, tortured him. She, they’ll hang. Right here, while you’re eating your Weetbix. They won’t hang you, my dear. Too young, no bloodshed, and your espionage wasn’t protracted. But Judge Mitchell will give you ten years. He’s as close to the PM as his Bonds singlet. Get set for a long stay.’

  Chapter 15

  JUDGE MITCHELL might have been any age between sixty and a hundred. He looked constantly on the brink of falling asleep as he listened to the Crown prosecutor and to Matty Lear. At one point he emerged from his torpor to discuss fly-fishing on the Upper Yarra with Matty—a shared passion. After an hour of listening to arguments this way and that, he raised his hand and waved it, signalling he’d heard enough. He displayed a document to the court, and read it aloud. It was the document that Beth had signed for the Irish Russian in Fawkner Park. He asked the clerk to show the document to Beth and asked her if her signature appeared at the bottom. Matty made a gesture of acquiescence, and Beth said, ‘Yes.’

 

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