Four Fires

by Bryce Courtenay

  Morrie shrugs, ‘All the words, za soft words, they are comink out of him. He will try, but it is not in his power to influence.’ Morrie stops then continues, ‘I know these politics, I am myself a professor once.’ He spreads his hands, ‘I think he wants to help, but maybe also he is covering his arse!’

  They all laugh, even Mrs Barrington-Stone. Morrie could only have learned an expression like that from Nancy Maloney or maybe when he worked up top in the loony bin.

  ‘Well, no harm giving him a call, is there? He may be able to give us the names on the review committee, I shouldn’t think that would be such an enormous compromise.’ Mrs Barrington-Stone laughs, ‘Can’t see how that would affect his precious little bum.’ She calls Professor Block the next morning and, after several attempts to get through to him, is finally connected to Mr Tompkins who connects her to Professor Block. He was, she later reports, ‘Very polite but inferred my phone call was unnecessary interference. No, he didn’t know who would be elected to review Sarah’s case but yes, they would all be from the Faculty of Medicine. Then he added, “Mrs Barrington-Stone, these things require due procedure and take time, faculty members are busy men, I doubt whether the committee will even sit within a month.” So, that wasn’t quite what we’d hoped for, was it?’ She looks at Sarah, ‘I’m not at all sure he’s on our side, my dear.’

  So there it was again, Sarah has been played out of the game before she even gets to run onto the paddock or has handled the ball.

  ‘The names are the key, we can’t do anything until we have the names!’ Mrs Barrington-Stone says, showing her frustration and stating the obvious for the umpteenth time. She turns to Sarah again, ‘We’re far from defeated, my dear, all the members of the Medical Faculty must be listed, I’ll get the list somehow and simply call everyone on it if I have to, so that if they are chosen to sit on the committee they’ll know of our concern and the opposition they may have to face.’

  ‘Not always the best idea,’Big Jack Donovan says quietly,

  ‘Gives them time to close ranks, take a firm position and influence those among them who are eventually chosen to sit on the board. In my experience, group decisions are almost always to keep things as they are.’

  ‘I can’t agree with you, Sergeant, it’s basic politics, what is called “lobbying” in Canberra. It happens all the time amongst politicians, you scratch my back and, when the time comes, I’ll scratch yours.’

  ‘Ah yes, fair enough,’ Big Jack counters, ‘but we haven’t got anything to bargain with, nothing to encourage them to make up their minds in our favour, no way to scratch their backs in return. Which means they’ve got nothing to lose if they maintain the status quo.’Unlike the rest of us, he doesn’t seem to be a bit in awe of Mrs Barrington-Stone.

  ‘Hmm, I see what you mean, Sergeant,’ she replies, ‘I don’t suppose a clear conscience might be a suitable reward? No, you’re right, that would be much too much to expect.’

  Then Sarah pipes up, ‘If we can get the list of names, what about their wives?’ She turns to Mrs Barrington-Stone, ‘Like you said on the phone about the Melbourne bigwigs, they’re not heroes to their wives.’

  Mrs Barrington-Stone claps her hands, ‘Oh, well done, Sarah! You’ve taken the spoon out of the sink!’

  ‘But first we must get za list, eh?’ Morrie very sensibly reminds them all, ‘I think this is za spoon, no?’ Morrie, of course, knows our Maloney theory well, though Big Jack Donovan looks a little confused until Sarah explains it to him.

  And then the very next morning something happens that makes you believe in miracles. There is a knock on the front door of the Carlton terrace shortly after six in the morning and Sophie, who is with Sarah in the kitchen having a cup of tea, looks up in alarm. She still trembles when there’s a knock on the door.

  ‘I’ll go,’ Sarah says, seeing the look of anxiety on Sophie’s face. Morrie is still in bed, he has started a night job as a liftman in the Age newspaper building, working the four-to-midnight shift, and doesn’t get up until eight o’clock of a morning. He’s got it all worked out, being a liftman isn’t a strenuous physical job and even less so on nightshift. In fact, the only reason there is a nightshift lift driver at all is because the Storemen & Packers Union have a very strong shop steward on the print floor whose name, you’re not going to believe it, is Joe Bloggs.

  The liftman’s job allows Morrie to study as the lift whizzes up and down between floors and while he is waiting to be called. One of the staff carpenters has built a tiny desk into one corner so that when Morrie’s seated on his stool he can write notes. The union justified this by saying Morrie couldn’t hold a cup of tea safely and drive the lift at the same time. Joe Bloggs threatened management with a fifteen-minute smoko every two hours as the alternative to what they called the installation of a safety bracket. It’s not winter yet but they’ve already installed a three-bar heater to keep out the cold when it comes as well as free newspapers, both concessions won by the union from management.

  Morrie’s job is a true miracle and how he got it was also one. They haven’t been in Melbourne a week yet and Morrie is taking a tram into town. This bloke has a heart attack on the tram and Morrie jumps to his aid, giving him artificial respiration, and pumping his chest, bringing him back to life again when he was definitely dead already and all of this while the tram continues on and stops right outside the Royal Melbourne Hospital where they rush him into Emergency. Then, being Morrie, he visits the bloke in hospital to see how he’s doing. It turns out the guy whose life he’s saved is a high-up union official for the Storemen & Packers. Next thing you know, old Morrie is sitting pretty with the liftman’s job at the Age in his pocket. Morrie’s on a bed of roses while poor old Sarah’s still bashing her way through a blackberry bush.

  Sarah comes walking back down the little hallway to the kitchen. ‘Who is there?’ Sophie asks anxiously. Sarah is reading a letter and answers absently, ‘No one, they just stuck a letter under the door. It’s for me.’

  Sarah can’t believe what she’s reading:

  Dear Miss Maloney,

  The review committee of Melbourne University who will hear your case is made up of the following faculty members.

  Dr Keith Wearne – Paediatrics

  Professor Wayne McCarthy – Surgery

  Professor Henry Lenton – Pathology

  Dr Alex Hamill – Biochemistry

  Dr Peter Keeble – Urology

  Professor Hugh Spencer – Infectious Diseases, Tropical Medicine

  Dr Ivan Freys – Obstetrics

  Professor Irwin Light – Physiology

  Dr Nick Gleeson – Oncology

  Professor Graham Butler – Biology

  Professor Marcus Block – Dean of the Faculty of Medicine, Chairman.

  *Sec. Minutes, Mrs Billing – Administration Dept.

  Three dates have been set aside for the Maloney hearing: 22 March, 26 March and 10 April. The review committee will commence at 9 a.m.

  Due to short notice it is unlikely that the first date will be acceptable to all.

  The letter ends abruptly and is not signed and, surprisingly, not typed but is written on a plain sheet of paper in a neat copperplate handwriting which seems vaguely familiar to Sarah, though she cannot think where she has seen it before. It is certainly not the hurried and untidy script of a physician. Nevertheless, the last sentence in the letter sends Sarah into a state of despair. It is obvious that the writer knows of her deadline. The first date is the only one which falls within the two-week period before she becomes ineligible for the 1956 student intake.

  Getting to most of the wives of the review committee isn’t difficult as most of the men on the committee are listed in the telephone directory, though some give only a city surgery number. Big Jack Donovan, who’s taken a week of his leave to be in Melbourne on boxing matters, he claims, notes that they are all doctors
and doctors own cars. He quickly gets the remaining home phone numbers and addresses of the unlisted academics from the records held at the Exhibition Building by the Russell Street police, where copies of all driving licences are kept and where all medical practitioners must register their home phone numbers.

  Mrs Barrington-Stone then makes a call to each of the doctors’ wives. She simply states who she is and asks if she may visit to discuss a matter of great importance to women, while hastily assuring the doctor’s wife that it is an opinion she seeks and not a donation to the CWA. The Barrington-Stones are an old and respected grazier family as close to rural aristocracy as you can get and are well known in Victorian social circles. Any woman of any social pretension would be flattered by the call. She alerts the doctor’s wife to the fact that she will be accompanied by a colleague but tells her little more.

  In every instance her acceptance is immediate and at the appointed hour the best tea service is laid out with a sponge cake on its wedding-gift silver stand with the silver cake forks, polished and gleaming brightly against a background of carefully folded linen napkins.

  It is decided, after Morrie makes the suggestion, that Big Jack Donovan, in full uniform, should partner Mrs Barrington-Stone to the interviews. This is not because he is a policeman and likely to intimidate the doctor’s wife. Morrie points out that if a country policeman is seen to be on Sarah’s side, it gives a conservative male endorsement to their cause and will help to soften the attitude the doctor’s wife may have to Sarah’s pregnancy.

  Right off, the two of them form a pretty good team. Jack takes the role of the slightly clumsy honest country cop and Mrs Barrington-Stone needs no other endorsement than being the national president of the Country Women’s Association. Because they are both from the country they are assumed to be conservative. What’s more, Mrs Barrington-Stone’s posh accent and obvious class puts the doctors’ wives immediately at ease, she is one of them, or so they would like to think.

  The initial presence of a very large policeman at their door is a bit of a shock, but is almost immediately diminished by a smiling Big Jack Donovan, who introduces himself with the words ‘Good afternoon, madam, as you can see I am a police officer.’ Big Jack then turns to Mrs Barrington-Stone. ‘May I introduce you to Mrs Barrington-Stone, the national president of the Country Women’s Association.’ The how-do-you-dos then take place and Big Jack continues, ‘We are seeking your cooperation in a matter involving a small country community and one family in particular. May we come in?’

  Once seated, they go into their routine. First, Jack refuses the offer of a cup of tea while Mrs Barrington-Stone accepts. ‘Oh, lovely,’she says, ‘one sugar, please.’The one-sugar-please is a tiny gesture designed to intimate that Mrs Barrington-Stone isn’t a woman who stands on cere mony. It is a woman-to-woman thing, a code designed to break the ice. For the time being, Big Jack Donovan remains the male and the outsider. Then Big Jack smiles and asks if he may have a piece of cake and immediately the hostess feels protective towards him and completely in control. All of this has been worked out by Morrie who calls it basic psychology.

  Once the hospitality ritual is settled, Big Jack Donovan clears his throat and begins by describing the pretty little town of Yankalillee, which, it turns out, some of the wives have visited at some time. He goes on to talk about the role of a country policeman, which is to maintain law and order with a benign, though firm hand. After this he talks about young people and how difficult it can be for them growing up in a small tight-knit community with very little to occupy or interest them and few job opportunities. The only way out of town is to go to teachers’ college or university, something very few of them achieve as it almost invariably involves a scholarship. Finally he gets to the Maloney family.

  ‘For three generations the Maloney family have been drunks and layabouts, though, it must be said, each generation of Maloney volunteered to fight for Australia,’ Big Jack sighs at this point, ‘and after they returned from whichever war, they were even more hopeless than before.’ Big Jack pauses while they laugh, then says, ‘Until this present Maloney generation.’

  He goes on to talk about the present-day Maloney family, about Tommy, the small-time crim, and Nancy, the strong woman who has kept her family together against all odds. He describes their role as the town garbage collectors where the children rise at three a.m. every weekday to man the garbage truck. Finally he gets to Sarah, ‘the little mother’, vice-prefect of the high school and brilliant student who, because of one indiscretion with the captain of the school football team, has become pregnant to a boy from a prominent country family. He tells how the boy has since been sent away to Duntroon by his parents, who are unwilling for their son to marry into the family of the town’s garbage collectors.

  Jack carefully avoids the religious issues involved and concludes his story. ‘Madam, Sarah Maloney in last year’s matriculation exam received the second-highest marks in the state, first-class honours in every subject, an aggregate of ninety-five per cent. She will be the first Maloney in history to go to university, probably the first to have completed high school! On her academic performance she applied to study Medicine and was accepted as a scholarship student, subject only to the enrolment interview. To be a doctor has been a lifetime ambition and on the tenth of March, just eight days ago, she was interviewed by Professor Marcus Block and told that because of her pregnant condition she would have to await the decision of a subcommittee of the University Professorial Board as to whether she would be accepted.’

  Having Big Jack Donovan tell the story turns out to be a masterstroke. It gives Sarah’s story the down-to-earth authority it needs. It also leaves Mrs Barrington-Stone to talk about the women’s issues involved and the injustice of prevailing attitudes towards women. As the national president of the Country Women’s Association her brief is to fight these attitudes, which are, in particular, to be found in the larger institutions such as banks, life-insurance companies, the public service and, alas, even in the great seats of learning such as Melbourne University.

  Almost on cue comes the inevitable maternal question: ‘But how will Sarah take care of her baby?’

  Jack then gives them a brief history of Morrie and Sophie and speaks warmly of Sophie’s desire to care for the baby during the day while Sarah and Morrie are at lectures.

  With this one possible objection overcome, the doctors’ wives, each in turn, agree to lobby their husbands. Not only to lobby them but to make them meet on the first of the three dates set aside for the review.

  Mrs Barrington-Stone leaves them with a final injunction. ‘Now, we mustn’t soften our stand, this is about a lot more than pretty young Sarah Maloney, isn’t it? It’s about equal rights and the same justice for all. It’s not as though we females haven’t proven our mettle, is it? During the war women did a great many of the jobs formerly thought to be the exclusive domain of the big strong male. We worked in factories, as bus and ambulance drivers, on farms driving tractors, why, even flying aeroplanes.’ She then goes on to tell them how, during the war, she found herself in Britain and, as she had her pilot’s licence, she volunteered with a lot of other women pilots to ferry Spitfires from the factory to the various airfields in Britain. ‘Funny how when the men returned to civilian life, all that was quickly forgotten, we women were all required to put on our aprons and go back into the kitchen.’ Mrs Barrington-Stone would finally pause at the door, ‘Now, my dear, you’ll not let the cause down, will you?’

  It was powerful stuff made all the more potent because the doctors’ wives, for the most part, understood and readily responded to someone like Mrs Barrington-Stone, who was so clearly a leader as well as a pillar of the establishment. This was no young female firebrand. They all agreed that Sarah should be allowed to join the student ranks and promised that they would do their utmost to make their husbands see the light.

  There remained only one more, or perhaps two more
, duties to perform. The first was to get on side Mrs Billings, who had been appointed to be secretary, to take down the minutes of the meeting of the review committee. Mrs Billings proved to be easier than expected. She was an attractive widow in her mid-forties who had been in the university’s employment for twenty years and, as it transpired, nursed a dozen or more personal grievances mostly involving roving hands and other blatant liberties taken by the exclusively male faculty. She was angry and hurt and ripe for the picking. As she pointed out, she regularly took the shorthand notes for the important faculty meetings and had never been asked to take or sign an oath of confidentiality, something which was required of all the faculty members. Being a mere woman, or ‘dogsbody’ as she put it, it hadn’t occurred to anyone on the faculty that she had the intelligence to understand the proceedings or the power and influence to expose it should this become necessary. Her job was simply as a factotum, to take down words, type them up and hand them out. In the eyes of the males, unless they were groping her, she was invisible.

  Celia Billings promised to report on the findings of the committee immediately a decision was made. Perhaps she was being overcautious, but Mrs Barrington-Stone didn’t want the decision to be delayed, that is, only made public after Sarah’s two weeks had expired. In this way it would turn a ‘yes’ vote into a ‘no’ vote, justice seemingly done and then undone, and so achieve the end purpose of keeping her from starting her course on a technicality.

  ‘I don’t mind a fight, it clears the air, stops the whispering and plotting and gets things into the open. But it has to be fair, I cannot abide cheating or manipulation and women have always been cheated on and manipulated in society. I wouldn’t put it past them to delay the decision beyond two weeks, men are such poor losers.’

  Big Jack objects, ‘C’mon, fair’s fair, they’re not going to do that!’ He turns to Morrie, ‘What do you say, Morrie?’