The Bride of Almond Tree

by Robert Hillman

  Two days later, she returned to court for her sentence, which was, as anticipated, ten years. A further week later—a mere week—she was back in court for ten minutes to hear her appeal dismissed. Matty Lear was with her. After the announcement of the dismissal, Matty was permitted to make a statement for the record. ‘Your Honour, these procedures have made a travesty of the law of the Commonwealth. This young woman was judged and condemned before she ever set foot in this courtroom. No jury. None of the elements of a fair trial. More like a star chamber. I protest the highly unusual rules that have obtained here in this courtroom. As I have said, a travesty, your Honour.’

  Judge Mitchell nodded genially. ‘Noted, Matty, thank you. Sunday week, Matty, Launching Place on the Upper Yarra?’ Here he acted the casting of a line.

  ‘I believe I can manage that, your Honour. Yes, I’m sure I can. Meet at the Home Hotel on the Warburton Highway, say noon?’

  ‘And Matty, bring some of that Penfolds you brought last time. Superb. Lives in my memory.’

  So the cell in Pentridge was to be her home for ten years, seven with good behaviour. She lay on her bunk as stiff as a plank and stared at the ceiling. Leonie came to console her. ‘Seven years is nothing, sweetheart. Got women in here seeing out twenty-seven years. Stabbed their hubbies, throttled their kids. ’Course they had proper trials, not like yours from what I hear, which was bullshit, half the stuff they tried out on you wasn’t even in the law books. Wasn’t us responsible. It was the Poms, MI5. We do whatever they want, and they wanted you locked up and a DOD order slapped on the press. The papers can say you’re a red spy, but nothing else. Pip told me what you did, going to South Australia and all, told me why. If I whisper a word of it to the press, it’ll be you and me sharing this cell. Look love, I’ll do what I can for you. Get letters to you from your near and dear, smuggle your own letters out. Don’t you tell a bloody soul, okay? Not a soul. If you do, I’ll have to give you a hiding, one you won’t forget.’

  Beth thanked her, surprised and grateful.

  Later that night, she heard someone down the corridor bleating as Leonie laid into her for some infraction or other.

  Beth’s whole family had been in Melbourne for a week waiting for a chance to see her after the failed appeal, kids included. They were given permission to see her in Pentridge by the Governor, who told Bev, ‘Yeah, yeah, wave them through. The whole mob of them aren’t commies are they?’

  The day of the visit was a day on which Beth felt sick at heart. She was not in the world anymore. Nonetheless, she smiled and tried to give the impression that she was coping nicely.

  Bob Hardy wept for the whole visit. The kids asked if there were any shops in the prison, lolly shops. Lillian held her daughter’s hand and reminded her that she had a loving family backing her every step of the way. If they were allowed, one or more of them would visit every week. Gus and Maud called her a moron. Franny sat stiff and erect, unsmiling, knowing that Wes would never desert her in prison. Maud said: ‘You’re all over the papers. They’re saying you were a milkmaid before Di Porter got hold of you and bent your ear with commie rubbish. A milkmaid? You’ve never milked a cow in your life!’

  Gus said: ‘All this ratbag stuff and this is where it lands you.’

  ‘It’s just politics,’ said Bob Hardy. ‘They don’t like her politics. That’s all. We’re not at war with the reds. We just don’t like their manners. Putting a kid in jail for ten years for her politics is evil.’

  ‘But there it is and here we are,’ said Lillian. ‘It’s all Bob Menzies and his referendum. Nice country girl got hold of by the Russkies. What nonsense. “Could happen to your lovely kids” is what he’s saying.’

  Beth said: ‘Mum, it’s MI5, the British. More so than Menzies. They want me to disappear.’

  There was no exercise yard for the female prisoners, just an ancient building that had once been the laundry where the women could wander around and chat. Beth met Jean Lee in the old laundry, and one look at her made Beth think of a woman standing at the gates of hell.

  Jean bailed her up in a corner.

  ‘Did nothing. Didn’t touch the stupid bastard. It was Kev and Bob. Do you believe me? You fucking better, because it’s the truth. Did nothing.’ She grabbed Beth by her arm. ‘Get me out of here. You’re still pretty. They’ll listen to you.’ She threw back her head and screamed: ‘They made a slut out of me!’

  Leonie strolled over to intervene. ‘Calm down, Jeanie, just calm your little self down.’

  Jean fell to her knees and threw her arms around Leonie’s legs. ‘Lon, don’t let them hang me. Don’t you let them!’

  Leonie hoisted Jean to her feet. ‘Don’t go thinking about it, sweetheart. Read those magazines Bev got you. You’ve got a Pix there, a Women’s Weekly. Read them instead of carrying on.’

  Leonie led Jean back to her cell.

  Another prisoner, Deirdre, shuffled over and gave Beth a hug, and she needed something of the sort, badly shaken as she was. ‘Can’t hang her too soon for me,’ Deirdre said. ‘I’m sick of her. Like this every day.’

  She asked Bev for books and was told that she was denied reading material; then within an hour Bev returned with an armful of books from the prison library.

  ‘Who makes up these rules? Got you some romances. Helga Moray. Heard of her? Beaut writer. Lots of sex, doesn’t go too far. Funny thing. Got some girls here who try it on with each other, but what they like to read is boy-girl stuff.’

  Beth read one a day: didn’t like them but persisted. She wrote a list of titles and asked Bev to look for them in the library. But the library was devoid of political philosophy, except for John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty and God knew how that had ended up in Pentridge. She had read it before, but read it again with less scorn. And there were two anthologies of poetry left behind by a convict who’d served the final thirty-one years of his life at the prison. He had no relatives so his anthologies ended up in the library under Fiction. Beth read both anthologies avidly and found she had to admit that ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ was her favourite, even with its twee ending. Also ‘Sohrab and Rustum’. She feared she was growing sentimental.

  When her dad visited she asked him to bring her a dozen of her books from home, but Bev couldn’t allow him to leave them with her. ‘We’d have to go through every page looking for messages from your commie buddies. So they say; means nothing to me.’

  Wes, after great persistence, was permitted to visit her, or he wasn’t, but Leonie waved him in. It was the first moment of pure joy Beth had known in weeks. They sat on her bunk, and it was she who reached for his hand. ‘Don’t tell me about anything in the newspapers, the way they’re using me. I don’t want to hear. Tell me about what you’re doing in Almond Tree.’

  He told he was building three houses, including his own, all with the help of his brothers, Teddy and Max, and all three houses were beautiful. ‘The one we’re building for Liam Murphy and his missus on Canterbury Creek near that old Chinese camp where the creek runs over the boulders, that’s special, that’s made from granite blocks, heck of a lot of masonry stuff. With a triple gable of iron, and a veranda that runs down four sides, big windows, mullions.’

  She just wanted to hear him talk, hear his voice. She asked him to bring a book next time to read aloud to her. ‘You choose.’

  She came to know all the other women prisoners and their stories. Leonie kept Jean Lee away from her, but not out of earshot of her shrieking and pleading. Most of the women were where they were for crimes such as theft, fraud, soliciting, shoplifting (years of it before they were caught with a house full of merchandise).

  She listened. Laureen had expropriated seventy thousand pounds from her husband’s business accounts and spent it on nothing, just kept it hidden until one fine day she burned it. Gloria had shoplifted herself ga-ga, anything she wanted she took, until she discovered that she was under surveillance and stuffed everything she’d stolen under the house, where the police foun
d it.

  Acts of violence were few. Kathleen, a grey-haired woman of striking beauty, came to Beth and asked her what the commies had to say about sex. Beth told her that Marx had said little about sex, except its commercialisation in prostitution.

  ‘Meaning what?’ said Kathleen.

  ‘Capitalism commercialises everything. Even human emotion, human desire.’

  Kathleen nodded slowly. Beth noticed that she had been allowed to keep her small gold earrings. ‘Present from my granddaughter,’ said Kathleen. ‘So why am I here, lovely? Murder. Bit surprising? Caught my mongrel of a husband with his hand up my granddaughter’s dress when I walked into the lounge room one time. She lived with us, Tessy. Her mum, my daughter Sue, died of breast cancer the year before. He’s got his hand up her dress, her school uniform, she’s got tears running down her cheeks. I knew he’d mucked about with Donna, too, my other granddaughter, or I was pretty sure. Donna never said. I told Tessy, I said, “You go to your room for a few minutes, sweetheart.” I went to the shed and got the mallet, came strolling back in and stood in front of him, of Rupe. He could see the mallet but still looked smug, until I belted him over the noggin with it. Knocked him out cold. Dragged him out into the backyard, poured a bottle of kero over him, dropped a match, and poof! That woke him up. He went tearing around the backyard like a madman, crashed into the Hills hoist, burning like a candle. Dowsed him down with a few saucepans of water until he was just smouldering. Then I went out to the telephone booth in the street and called the police. Took their time coming. Didn’t bother with the ambulance. The coppers finally turned up, took one look at Rupe and saw he was dead. But they called for an ambulance. In court, the jury found me guilty—well, I said I was, didn’t I? Donna, she told the jury that Rupe was always after her. Tessy said, “He made me do things I didn’t want to.” Found me guilty but with a recommendation for leniency. It was the kero that did for me. They said it showed “malice”. Bloody right it did! The judge gave me five years, I’ve done three, I’ll be out in six months. Good behaviour. My daughter June’s been looking after Tessy and Donna. Hard for her. She’s got her own two littlies. So there you go, Beth. You can write up my story to fill in time. Needs telling, you think?’

  When Wes visited next, he brought Anna Karenina. He had read it a year earlier at Beth’s suggestion. Both loved it, all over again. She had even explained to him how to pronounce Russian names, where to place the stress. He settled at a table in the old laundry. Bev pulled up a chair, too. ‘Have to make sure you’re not doing anything creepy with secret Russkie codes, don’t I? No, my dad used to read the classics to me right up until I was fourteen, fifteen. Treasure Island, that was my best. And White Fang—all about a wolf up in the snowy bits of America, or Canada, can’t remember. So go on. Read. I’ll be quiet as a mouse.’

  Wes raised his eyebrows to Beth, but she seemed content. He started with the epigraph: ‘Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord; I will repay.’

  ‘What?’ said Bev. ‘Is that the start?’

  Beth said, ‘No, no, that’s the epigraph. Just a bit at the start that gives you some idea of what the book’s about.’

  ‘What’s it mean, but?’

  ‘It means only God has the right to punish. We mortal humans don’t have the right.’

  ‘Is that right? Too bad nobody told Jean that before she got to work with the carving knife on poor old Pop Kent. Go on.’

  Wes read: ‘All happy families are alike. Each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.’

  ‘Whoa!’ said Bev. ‘Is this another one of those epi-things?’

  Wes said, ‘No, this is the start of the story, Bev. The first line.’

  ‘Read it again.’

  Wes read it again.

  ‘I don’t reckon that’s true,’ said Bev. ‘No, no. My family, we were happy. Proper happy. Some of my friends, not so happy in their families. Either way, they were all different.’

  Beth said it was simply the proposition of the author. It wasn’t a fact.

  ‘They should have cut it out, well.’

  Wes was allowed to read deep into the scenes of mayhem in the Oblonsky household without any further interruption. More women prisoners pulled up chairs to listen, attracted by the novelty of a man’s voice. Wes read well, too. He never stumbled, and had found a way of slightly varying his voice for different characters without sounding affected. No one was more drawn to him and his reading of the great book than Beth. She glanced at his profile every so often and wished to God he could stay the night with her on her hard bunk and kiss her and hold her. She must have had rocks in her head when she rebuffed him. And when she told him to marry Franny.

  And so a pattern evolved of Wes visiting each Friday, taking the train from Almond Tree and the tram from Flinders Street to Coburg, the book in his hand. Beth’s family—some members, not all—visited once every two weeks. All of the women prisoners considered it a treat to listen to Anna being read each week. Even Jean Lee was permitted to sit in, having promised to be good. And she was good, no more than a murmur from her now and then. Expressions of disapproval were uttered on occasions, but brief. ‘She’s got a little boy! She can’t be chasing that what’s-his-face, Vronsky!’ And: ‘It’ll end in tears, I can see it.’

  Beth made a comment here: ‘Well, he loves her.’

  Bev said: ‘No, no, don’t give me that, Beth dear heart. You can look after your kids first thing, that’s what you can do.’

  In six weeks in Pentridge, mixing with her fellow prisoners, listening to their tales, Beth had come to understand something she would have bitterly disputed in the past. She had barely grasped life in its complexity and danger before Pentridge. She had seen only the smugness of the bourgeoisie, never the heartache, the desperate struggle to keep a life going. If a woman walked into a room and found a despised husband with his hand up a beloved granddaughter’s dress and punished him with a mallet and a bottle of kero, the class struggle wouldn’t explain it. Nor would it explain Claire throttling her boyfriend’s bit on the side. Human passion overwhelmed all theory. But politics had been her life for ten years now. She couldn’t cast it aside. At least her politics addressed the great injustice of inequality. She held to that, even as these new recognitions rounded off corners in her heart, reshaped motives.

  She learned what a slap from Bev felt like, too. She’d given one of the books that Bev had brought her from the library to Deirdre, and Bev confronted her in her cell.

  ‘Who said you could give that book to Deirdre?’

  ‘I just thought it did no harm.’

  Bev slapped her. ‘I say who gets favours. You understand?’

  Beth said yes, she understood, and was slapped again, harder. ‘Good. Keep understanding.’ And a third slap. Beth had never been hit before, not even by her argumentative sisters. She backed up to the wall in shock, her hand to her face.

  Chapter 16

  CHRISTMAS IN Pentridge was surprisingly cheerful. The women made decorations—stars, chains of coloured links, a small Madonna and child in plaster donated by Leonie—and the women with children visiting were all given bags of lollies for the kids. The mothers were tearful when the kids had to leave. The two women with husbands still on the scene gave the hubbies big, sloppy kisses and told them to be ‘good boys’. Beth’s family did not bring gifts, at her insistence, since most of the women would be getting so little. Bob Hardy, as usual, wept for the entire visit. Franny came along on this Christmas visit and smiled as best she could. Lillian said: ‘Christmas in the poor house, God what a sight. Still, good old Mister Marx, looking down on our daughter with pride.’

  Wes came on Boxing Day, and gave the women what they really wanted, more of Anna. One of the women asked why Anna was so upset after she made love with Vronsky for the first time. ‘It’s what she wanted. She should just cop it if she’s not sure.’

  Wes was two-thirds of the way through Anna when Jean Lee was hanged in early February of 1951. Bev was required to witness
the execution, the feeling being that a woman should be on hand. ‘She fainted when she saw the hangman, poor thing.’ The women had gathered around Bev to hear the story, just as they gathered around Wes to hear Anna’s story.

  ‘The doctor gave her something that pretty much knocked her out. So they had to carry her up the scaffold. Strapped her to a chair and stood the chair on the trapdoor. One, two, three—and down she goes! She’s left hanging there not knowing a thing that’d happened in the last five minutes. It’s not right. Just keep the poor silly creature locked up, but don’t go around hanging people. Thirty-five minutes, they hang Bobby and Norm. How’d you like to go home to your missus with that on your mind. “What’d you do today, my darling husband?” “Oh, hanged three people, two blokes and a woman.” “Well, you’ll be needing a good strong cuppa, won’t you?”’

  Back in Almond Tree, finishing the last of the furniture for the house, Wes looked up from the kitchen chair he was fashioning to see Franny standing before him in a bad way, wet cheeks, eyes brimming with distress.

  ‘Franny, what is it?’ He hadn’t seen her for a month; it had been a relief.

  ‘I’m pregnant.’

  Wes put down the sandpaper he’d been using on the shoulders of the chair.

  ‘What the heck?’

  ‘I’m pregnant, Wes. I’ve been to Doc Smith. He said I’m six weeks gone.’

  ‘Smithy said that?’

  ‘Six weeks.’

  She began to cry and shudder. Wes tried to take her in his arms but she pushed him away.

  ‘I’m okay. But I need your help, Wes. I have to have an abortion.’

  Wes had to concede that he didn’t know clearly what an abortion involved.