Above the Fold

by Peter Yeldham

  “Then you should. And if I can get there, maybe one day a KC isn’t out of the question.”

  “Oh, come off it,” he said aggressively.

  “What’s wrong with wanting to be a King’s Counsel?”

  “Why stop there? Next you’ll be imagining yourself a judge.”

  “Since you mention it,” she said, “is there any sensible reason why women shouldn’t be judges?”

  His derisive laughter annoyed her. “Dreams,” he said, “silly fantasies. Settle down, Helen.” He reached for the bottle of red wine and refilled their glasses. “We know you topped first-, second- and third-year law with high distinction, but it’s time to stop being ridiculous.”

  “Why am I ridiculous?”

  “Being best in class has given you ideas of grandeur. Practising law is different. You’ll soon find out that only men fill the high places.”

  “You think that, do you?”

  “It’s bloody obvious. No matter how well you do, you’ll end up working as an associate for some suburban solicitor, which is the best you can hope for. But a barrister? Don’t be stupid.” He laughed. “As for a judge, c’mon, try to be sensible. Keep saying things like that and you’ll be called a drongo.”

  “A drongo,” she said, now staring hard at him.

  “People will laugh at you behind your back. It’s plain silly to have these ambitions that are unattainable.” She’d given up eating, and drained the refilled wine. “And getting pissed on fourpenny dark won’t help either.”

  “Why are my ambitions just fantasies to you? Why are they so completely unattainable?”

  “If you really insist on knowing,” he replied, now losing patience with her, “it’s because you’re a bloody woman.”

  “What?”

  “And there are no women KCs or judges, and never will be!”

  Helen replaced her fork, collected her handbag, pushed back her chair and rose. “Well, that sums up your philosophy. So long, Barry.”

  “What do you mean, so long?”

  “It usually means goodbye — which is what it means now,” she replied, and started to walk out.

  “Wait …” he called. “Helen, don’t be so ridiculous.” When she was halfway across the restaurant, irrespective of people watching, he called out to her, “C’mon, I was kidding.”

  She turned and looked back. “Oh, no, you bloody weren’t!” she said in a voice that rang through the restaurant, stopping all conversation and the singing waiters. She reached the door and went up the stairs to the street. He realised he was the object of hilarity of other diners, among them a cluster of friends from university. It would be all over the quadrangle by morning. He did the only thing that occurred to him, and rushed after her, but was stopped by the cashier.

  “You haven’t finished your meal, sir.”

  “Yes, I have,” he said, attempting to push past.

  “No, you haven’t. Not until you’ve paid,” he was told, and had to fumble for a ten shilling note. Then, without waiting for the change, he raced up the stairs in pursuit. As he reached the street she was boarding a tram.

  “Don’t be a bloody idiot,” he shouted, as the tram moved off.

  He stared in astonishment as well-brought-up Helen Richmond, the local policeman’s daughter, gave him a two-fingered farewell salute.

  “Did you hear about it?” Rachel Ives asked when, by chance, she met Luke a few days later.

  “We’ve all heard,” Luke said. “News travels, Rach.”

  “She gave him an up yours from the tram.”

  “Poor old Baz.”

  “Stupid old Baz,” she corrected him. “He thinks women are only good for one thing.”

  “Do you reckon they’ll get back together?”

  “No chance,” she assured him. “Helen was already going off him.”

  “Our ranks are thinning. Have you heard from Steven?” he asked.

  “One letter. Half was censored, the other bit said he misses me.”

  “So where is he, I wonder?”

  “That was the part they censored.”

  Rachel saw a bus coming. She was on her way to Brookvale where she was attending evening classes at a secretarial school.

  “Given up thoughts of acting?”

  “Not me,” she said. “I promised my folks I’d have a back-up career, so I’ll stick at it. Then I’ll try for an agent who’ll get me auditions for radio.”

  I wish I could help, he thought, as she boarded a bus. But he was still a messenger, although the vibes were good. Rupert liked the new play, if a few amendments were made, and told Luke ‘them upstairs’ were impressed.

  “You’ve changed your room around,” Senior Sergeant Len Richmond said, after he’d tapped on his daughter’s door and entered. Helen was at her desk surrounded by law books, wearing the new gold-rimmed glasses the local optometrist had prescribed for reading. They gave her an old-fashioned look, but couldn’t hide the flawless complexion and dark eyes she’d inherited from her mother, or the long hair that could reach her shoulders, but was tied in pigtails when she was working. Len thought she worked too much, almost to a point of obsession, but was proud of her. And he loved the pigtails; they made her look about fourteen again. It was five years since his wife had died, and they’d become so close; he would not have been able to cope with the grief and loneliness without Helen’s quiet support.

  “What have I altered, Dad?”

  “Something in here looks different.”

  She took off the glasses and smiled. “Nothing important. Just some photos decided to swap places.”

  That was when he noticed her gallery. Photographs pinned around the walls; some of Rachel in character when she starred in school plays, one of Luke on the beach, Steven in his army uniform on embarkation leave, but none of Barry who had formerly occupied pride of place.

  “Ah,” Len said, “he’s been demoted.”

  “Dispatched,” his daughter said, “so you can stop worrying.”

  “Who was worried?”

  “You were. You never liked him.”

  “That’s true,” he admitted, “I never did. He’s clever and I know he has good points, but they always escaped me. Will you miss him?”

  “Not a lot.” She sat back in the typist chair she used for study, and stretched lazily as she smiled at him. “Not at all, actually.”

  “Was it a row?”

  “A misalliance,” she said. “I’m happy and relieved it’s over.”

  “That makes two of us. Anyone to take his place?”

  She shook her head. The pigtails swung on either side of her face. Len Richmond thought he was privileged to have such a daughter. But he sometimes wished in the matter of boyfriends that she’d remained with her first one. Not that a parent had much say in these matters.

  Helen Richmond knew her father so well, she could almost read his thoughts. Too late, she thought. Luke is no longer available.

  Rupert told him the management were pleased, and so was he. The days of running messages were over. The top floor, in its wisdom, had decided to make him a junior scriptwriter. They’d even managed to delay his call-up, on the basis that radio drama was contributing to the war effort on the home front, and while Luke didn’t understand what contribution he could be making, it was a great relief. The war was being won at last, and maybe would be over before he had to face the fighting. The promotion was what he had hoped for ever since taking the messenger job.

  “But the top floor doesn’t know I exist. You did this, Rupert.” In the past few months they had become firm friends.

  “I helped, dear boy,” he said, “but you did it. You, yourself, did it with guts and talent. So let me show you to your impressive new office.”

  They walked downstairs to a narrow door alongside the stationery department. Rupert was already grinning by the time they reached it. It was a tiny room without any window or natural light.

  “New fucking office! It’s the original broom cupboard,” Lu
ke said. “The alternate spot for adultery when the stationery room is occupied. Some famous names have rooted their girlfriends in here.”

  Rupert laughed uproariously. “It might spur you on to dramatic stories of love and betrayal. We had to find you somewhere, and this was the only space left in the building. It’ll probably look better with a desk in it.”

  “A desk? Are you sure it’ll fit?”

  “A rather small desk. Just big enough to hold a typewriter. Now have you got any half-decent ideas for another play?”

  “I’ve got a heap of them.”

  “No princesses,” he warned.

  “Not a princess in sight,” Luke promised.

  “No diamonds?”

  “Never again. How about a counterfeit doctor? Or an actual true story. A Scotsman who stole a ferry boat on the River Clyde, sailed it to Australia single-handed, and then sold it here under a new name.”

  “I like the sound of the Scotsman,” Rupert said.

  The publicity department arranged a photo shoot, and sent out coverage to newspapers headed YOUTHFUL NEW WRITER. The photo made him look about twelve, which was probably the intention. It was in the afternoon papers and even got a run from James Thorley in the Manly paper, which pleased Louisa and astounded his father. Its appearance in the show business weekly, Listener In, brought an invitation to write for another network, and the future looked extremely bright.

  Trouble was, this bright future was interrupted too soon. The cabinet voted to change the Defence Act, allowing them to send conscripts overseas and a wide-scale call-up followed. Only students, farmers or those in essential services were exempt. Barry Silvester escaped the net by being at university, but Luke’s tenure of the former broom cupboard was at an end.

  A notice arrived from the Australian Government. He was to report in seven days. He passed all medical tests; the examination found him healthy, his eyesight normal, and he did not have flat feet, so he was sworn in. The army issued him with a number, a pay book and a rifle, then sent him to the infantry training camp at Cowra. Luke prepared to grit his teeth and stifle the fears that had plagued him for so long. Perhaps the war would be over soon. The European war had ended with the suicide of Hitler, and the appalling discovery of the death camps that his regime had instigated.

  Five months later, while Luke was still in training camp and had not yet fired a shot in anger, two atom bombs were dropped on Japan and the Pacific war came to an abrupt end.

  TEN

  It was on a placid day in August 1945 that the seaport of Nagasaki died. The prime target had been neighbouring Kokura, a historic town of ancient castles, but that morning it was obscured by clouds so the crew diverted to their back-up target. The Superfortress was seen flying overhead by the civilian population, but being just a single aircraft it was assumed to be on a reconnaissance. It was three days after Hiroshima, and news of what happened there had not spread; a veil of secrecy hung over the fate of that city. So in Nagasaki, the bomb incinerated everyone on the streets and many inside their houses. The casualties were forty thousand dead that day, and radiation sickness was soon to kill another thirty thousand. A statement issued to the world by American President Harry Truman said: “The atomic bomb is an awful responsibility. We thank God the use of this weapon has come to us instead of to our enemies, and we pray that He may guide us in His ways and for His purposes.”

  Luke Elliott was young, but he found it difficult to understand why a US President, or any politician, could assume God’s complicity in this mass slaughter. He thought about it constantly. The combined death toll from the two nuclear bombs was estimated at over 250,000 people, asphyxiated, killed by shock, or burnt beyond recognition. Many buildings and the people in them were vaporised, so there was nothing left to find. In the words of one observer, the bomb left each city ‘looking like a graveyard with not a tombstone in sight’. Words that Luke never forgot. It was meant to force a surrender, but in the end it took six days before Emperor Hirohito went on the radio, allowing the Japanese people to hear his frail voice for the first and only time in their lives, when he announced the surrender. On that day, August 14th 1945, there was a joyous celebration in every city, home and army camp. At Canungra, young recruits on the verge of embarkation could not believe one device could destroy an entire city and kill so many. Later there would be a sober realisation of what these bombs had done, but on this day when the war ended they rejoiced with relief that they were spared from fighting.

  Luke felt like a fraud; his brief five-month army career had been a pointless progression from one infantry training camp to another, then to Canungra jungle school, the commando camp situated in the Gold Coast hinterland, where they crawled through barbed wire with machine guns firing live rounds above them, and scaled cliffs without a safety harness. They faced battle conditions, and it was there, with just seven days before embarkation, that they heard the news of the atom bombs. It explained the wild celebration of their survival. But in the days that followed, Luke began to realise what they were celebrating — a new kind of weapon, an obscenity that burnt people alive or left them to linger in cancerous agony. He thought about it a great deal, and tried to come to grips with the immensity of the death toll. Then Claudia sent him a letter containing photographs of the two devastated cities. He sat up late that night in the Salvation Army amenities hut where he could be undisturbed, and wrote an article.

  We rejoiced two weeks ago, we got drunk in celebration because the war was over, but today came the first pictures of the two cities where life has been extinguished. It is said a quarter of a million people died instantly, amid predictions there will be even more deaths. There was a feeling of triumph because they were considered the enemy. But these were not enemies. The people who died there were not soldiers or politicians. Not the brutal guards of Changi prison, not the Kamikaze pilots, not anyone our nation fought against. They were unsuspecting people going about their daily lives, they were shopkeepers and housewives and children on their way to school, obliterated in an instant by a new bomb that we do not yet understand.

  First Hiroshima, then Nagasaki, after which the President of the United States gave thanks to God for the use of this bomb. I find it difficult to comprehend that he not only issued the order for a second bomb when he knew the first had annihilated a city and shattered morale, but after the next city was destroyed he credited the Almighty with the means to kill so many innocents.

  ‘A graveyard with not a tombstone in sight’, one observer called it, and the photographs of the devastation are testament to his description. This is a weapon that will make the world a different place. We surely must wonder what has been unleashed when a single bomb can obliterate cities and kill such vast numbers. We must pause to consider the consequences, and to realise that what one country now possesses others will soon acquire.

  Will we ever be able to feel safe again?

  He posted it to the Sydney Morning Herald, but had no reply. “They don’t bother to answer unless they’re going to publish it,” a friend told him, so Luke shrugged off the disappointment and never realised it was going to change his life. He kept the photos, the horrific pictures of Hiroshima in particular. It was a wasteland, the trams and traffic and even most of the buildings were missing.

  A few days later they were told an occupation force would be sent to Japan, and all interested should apply to the orderly room to be considered. Luke was tempted; it was a chance to see the bombed cities, but it meant time away from Claudia as well as more army drill and training, and he’d had enough of that.

  Claudia wrote to ask why the delay in being demobbed? She was on night duty in the surgical wards, or would’ve applied for leave and come to Brisbane. At least Luke was able to warn her they were thirty miles away, so it was pointless.

  It seems, he wrote, we’re orphans of the storm, at the whim of your matron with the big boobs and my strutting major. He explained there was no immediate discharge; the early volunteers and released
POWs had priority, which was fair enough, but he complained that military lunacy still prevailed. Their platoon was forced to continue training, to shoot at targets and crawl through booby traps under live gunfire, until it seemed as if they were in preparation for another war.

  Steven is demobbed, she wrote back. I’m not sure if he and Rachel are still together. She spends most of her time with actor friends at the little theatres in the city. Steven suffers from malaria, and prefers not to talk about the war, but is impatient to see you. Barry has another new girlfriend. Miranda from Darling Point has been dismissed. He can attract them, but can he keep them, we ask ourselves? See you very soon, I hope, my darling,

  Oodles of love,

  Your Claudia.

  It appeared the delay for demobilisation would continue, until the day there was a surprise call on the camp loudspeaker for Private Elliott to report at once to the orderly room. Puzzled by the peremptory tone of it, he hurried there and asked the Sergeant the reason for the summons.

  “The Major wants to see you,” he said.

  “What for?” Luke asked.

  The Sergeant, a man of few words, simply pointed to the officer’s door. Major Bernard Mason had been a journalist in Perth and served in the militia before the war. He’d joined the AIF as a lieutenant and been wounded at Tobruk. Since then he’d been in charge of training camps.

  “Sit down, Private Elliott,” he said in greeting, which felt unusual. The Major was normally abrupt, and a summons meant standing at attention to be castigated for some misdeed or other. So he sat on a chair while Mason fumbled with papers and seemed unsure what he wished to say. It made Luke realise this was not a minor matter. Then came the surprise of being addressed by his Christian name.

  “Luke, you may know I was a journalist,” he began, “often sent to break bad news, but I’m out of practice at it. I’ve had a phone call from a Sergeant Richmond, a police officer whom I gather you know.” He waited for an answer; Luke could only nod a nervous reply. He instantly felt something had happened to Louisa. “I’m afraid it’s very bad news. Your father, Richard Elliott, is dead. He was killed last night.”