Four Fires

by Bryce Courtenay

  ‘It’s time to take off the kid gloves and put on the boxing gloves,’ Mrs Barrington-Stone announced shortly after they’d heard the bad news outside the Professorial Board meeting room. But it had now gone well past boxing gloves and onto the bare-knuckle stage. Soon enough it would reach the knuckleduster stage or even perhaps the time-tolook-around-for-a-very-big-stick stage. Anyway, if this is what she’d meant by a brouhaha, we had a no-holds-barred one on our hands all right.

  This is what happened. After Celia Billings drops the note at Mrs Barrington-Stone’s feet, Morrie reports for work that night at the Age and tells the story to Joe Bloges, his mate, the union shop steward. Joe Bloges, naturally enough, is known in union circles as ‘Joe Bloggs’ and has long since given up trying to make the correction. He’s pretty militant left-wing Labor and in a way his nickname suits him better than his real name because justice for the common man is what Joe’s all about. He’s also got three daughters so it’s justice for the common woman as well. Next morning Joe goes down to the City Club Hotel in Collins Street at ten to find Ross Teasdale, who is at his usual spot in the saloon bar on the second of the two heartstarters to keep him going until noon when he’ll come in for five or six more beers to get him through the afternoon shift. Joe tells Teasdale the story. The reporter, though a bit of a drunk, loves to have a go at the establishment.

  ‘Pregnant girlie from the country smart enough to get into Medicine rejected by those old-school-tie pricks?’ He thinks for a moment. ‘Hmm, sounds like it’s got substance, I’ll make a call to the chief of staff, though we’re a pretty conservative paper. He may baulk.’ He bums sixpence off Joe Bloges to use the phone. Teasdale is pretty good mates with the night editor Norm Gabbage, who tells him to go ahead and see if he can get the story for the next morning’s edition. He comes back to have the beer Joe has bought him. ‘Miracles will never cease, old Norm’s bought it. I’m surprised, women’s issues isn’t really the Age, I was expecting him to say no.’

  But a columnist in the Melbourne Sun has recently had a go at the foreign-doctor issue so the doctor shortage is in the news and moreover newsworthy. The Sun is a strong rival of the Age and the particular Sun columnist is a fierce rival of Teasdale’s, who’s read the Sun article and clipped it out, thinking he might do a piece on it himself. Now he believes he might have an even better story. In part this is what the Sun article said:

  I’m not becoming unduly ruffled about the stiffly starched BMA-dominated Victorian Medical Board.

  But I join the hundreds of thousands of rebels who say there should be a curb on this tight little coterie’s activities

  . . . Consider this incredible sequence of events:

  The Commonwealth immigration policy has brought us many doctors with European training. Some are graduates of world-famous universities.

  But the British Medical Association – tightest union in the country, many people say – has set its face sternly against accepting foreigners, except on almost impossible conditions.

  At last the State Government has realised the absurdity of a virtual blanket ban and promises to pass legislation designed to ease the way for alien doctors . . . but will the BMA-sponsored members support the government? I have my doubts.

  There is clearly a shortage of doctors in Australia.

  Scores of country towns have no medical service because Australian graduates are disinclined to leave the cities.

  After Teasdale’s interviewed Morrie and talked to Sarah, taking a photographer with him to the terrace in Carlton, he puts a call through to Mrs Barrington-Stone, who has flown back to her property. She has a chat to him and also gives him the phone numbers of the review committee members who voted against Sarah.

  ‘Lovely,’ Teasdale tells her, then adds, ‘You do know what you’re up against, don’t you, madam?’

  ‘I think we’re beginning to realise it is going to be difficult, doctors are always difficult, the most reactionary group I know after the Victorian Liberal Party.’

  Teasdale laughs, ‘Reactionary! This mob are to the right of Genghis Khan!’

  ‘But we need more doctors? Here in the country we’re screaming out for them.’

  ‘Don’t tell me, I did a piece on this not so long ago and interviewed some of the medicos on the faculty. They all said they couldn’t increase their intake of first-year students, that lectures were over-crowded and facilities inadequate. “Perhaps then we should open a second medical school,” I suggested to them.’ Teasdale laughs. ‘You’d have thought I’d used a dirty word in front of the Pope! The answer as far as they were concerned was a smaller intake, end of argument.’

  ‘Well, I hope you give them curry, Mr Teasdale, what’s involved here is more than Sarah Maloney, much more. It’s about the rights of women to share equally in the system and to be entitled to observe the same rules and receive the same justice as their male counterparts.’

  ‘I’ll do my best, but as a betting man I don’t like your chances, madam. I don’t think you’d find a bookmaker in Victoria who would give you even hundred to one odds on a win.’

  ‘That’s all right, Mr Teasdale, Emmeline Pankhurst the great suffragette had odds greater than those against her. We’re simply a very small part of an ongoing fight with a long, long way to go.’

  ‘I hear you,’ Teasdale says, ‘I’ve got two daughters of my own.’

  Although none of the review committee members will talk to him, Teasdale has a feature story for the morning paper with the nice big photo of Sarah showing how very pretty she is and also head shots of Marcus Block, the dean of the Faculty of Medicine, and the professors who voted against her admission, all six photos obtained from the newspaper photo library taken on the previous occasion Ross Teasdale had interviewed them.

  The story appears on page three. Page one features the coming referendum to extend hotel hours and the shortage of quality accommodation for overseas visitors to the Olympic Games. Anyway, by now people are pretty sick of the Olympics, which has still got eight months to go, so the Sarah story gets a lot of attention it may not otherwise have received.

  The first thing that happens is that the reporters from all of Melbourne’s newspapers turn up at the university to interview Professor Marcus Block, who refuses to talk to them. This goes for the other five medical men who voted against admitting Sarah as well. Block also bans the five professors who voted for Sarah from comment and now the Faculty of Medicine is closed tight as a wombat’s bum. He also starts a witch hunt to find out how the reporter got the names of the five professors. Fortunately Celia Billings, having taken advice from Mrs Barrington-Stone, has taken some of her annual holidays, leaving the evening before and can’t be found. Taking the lead from Professor Block, the vice-chancellor of the university decides to sit it out and say nothing, which is their first big mistake, because the newspapers can now paint them into a corner.

  Then the radio stations get involved and encourage people to phone the university and the Faculty of Medicine and even the vice-chancellor, Professor George Paton, himself. It is one of the first times this has been done and there is suddenly chaos at the university. People from all over Victoria are phoning in and sending telegrams and it’s soon pretty obvious that women are the majority of callers and they’re mad as hell. The newspapers are beginning to say that women’s voices are being heard on this issue and that they’re angry and what the university has got on its hands is a public outcry. Suggestions are being made that Mr Henry Bolte, the premier, should step in and that the women’s vote at the next election could be critical for his government.

  Then, just as the story is getting a little soft, Mrs Barrington-Stone lets it out through Ross Teasdale that Professor Marcus Block, as chairman of the review committee, had a casting vote on the day and didn’t choose to exercise it. She’s done this deliberately to give him a chance to clear the air, to ask him publicly to cast his vote and bring t
his unfortunate business to a just conclusion. The news hits the papers and Marcus Block is back in the firing line in a big way. Hundreds of phone calls and telegrams ask him to declare his hand or resign at once. They all urge him to cast his vote and to see that justice is done. But he stubbornly refuses, saying that he won’t have any part in a fissiparous Medical Faculty.

  The word ‘fissiparous’ is picked up by a reporter and is soon used mockingly on all the radio stations and becomes a sort of in-joke, employees in companies walk around and say ‘Sorry, mate, don’t want to be a part of a fissiparous organisation’. The radio stations and the newspapers explain that it refers to an organism that’s divided into two parts. But it’s also a word that makes everyone feel that Professor Block and his cohorts are up themselves and think they’re above criticism. The general consensus is that it’s high time to bring them back down to earth.

  Morrie likes this new ‘fissiparous’ word a lot and says it only goes to prove English is an amazing language because just the sound of a word people can’t even understand can make them take sides.

  Then, the next thing, the Age newspaper is onto Duntroon. Their Canberra political reporter tracks Murray Templeton down at a football game and catches him in the dressing room with the rest of the Duntroon AFL team. The interview appears in the paper the next day.

  REPORTER: Mr Templeton, do you love Sarah Maloney?

  STAFF CADET TEMPLETON:Actually it’s not mister, sir, it’s Staff Cadet Templeton, sir. No, it was just something that happened.

  REPORTER:And you personally feel no responsibility that she has become pregnant?

  (Laughter from the players around him)

  STAFF CADET TEMPLETON: Who said it was me made her pregnant?

  (More laughter)

  STAFF CADET TEMPLETON: No, I take that back, sir.

  REPORTER: You know it was you or you take back that Miss Maloney was sleeping around?

  STAFF CADET TEMPLETON: The former, sir, Sarah wasn’t sleeping with anyone else. We only did it once, anyway. It was just bad luck.

  REPORTER: You did make her pregnant and it was just bad luck? You don’t feel any remorse?’

  STAFF CADET TEMPLETON (thinks): Yeah, I suppose, don’t know really.

  (A player offers him a soft drink.)

  STAFF CADET TEMPLETON (acknowledging): Thanks, mate.

  REPORTER: You don’t think you should have married her? (More laughter)

  STAFF CADET TEMPLETON: No way! Then I couldn’t have come to Duntroon!

  (More laughter)

  REPORTER: That was more important to you?

  STAFF CADET TEMPLETON: My parents thought so.

  REPORTER:And you?

  STAFF CADET TEMPLETON: Look, sir, I don’t have to answer your questions and I’m not going to say any more!

  CHORUS FROM THE OTHER CADETS: Yeah! Yeah! Piss off!

  This interview printed verbatim without anything added causes another public stir. The next day Duntroon is besieged by reporters from all over the nation and the Commander in Charge, Major General I. R. Campbell, CBE, DSO, refuses to allow Staff Cadet Murray Templeton to comment any further.

  All this begins to add up to the fact that people are beginning to believe the elite in society are protecting themselves. Melbourne University, especially, is seen for what it is, a bastion of privilege, a power unto itself and under the control of men who are arrogant and up themselves, all of whom come from an upper-middle-class background. With few exceptions, those of the Medical Faculty have had a private education, mostly at the most exclusive schools. They appear to be men who have no interest or regard for, as the Student Labor Club puts it, the proletariat, the common people, such as Sarah Maloney who comes from a working-class background.

  This is probably an unfair assessment, I mean, about them all coming from an upper-middle-class background and private schools, but it is nevertheless the public perception, so that the working-class element is very much on Sarah’s side, especially those people who see themselves as blue-collar workers.

  Then something extraordinary happens that throws everything into turmoil. Under construction at the university is the new Beaurepaire Sports Centre to be opened late that year. It will serve as a training centre for the Olympics and will be the most modern sporting facility of any university in the nation.

  The Builders Labourers Union working on the site decide to strike, demanding that Sarah have a second hearing, this time from the Professorial Board itself with the vice-chancellor, as the chairman. The construction workers carrying out alterations to the Anatomy building also strike and this is followed by the Student Union, which decides to call a simultaneous strike demanding the same outcome. Now Melbourne University comes to an abrupt stop.

  In the meantime the phone calls, telegrams and letters continue unabated and are streaming in from the other states as well. This is not a student uprising or a tradeunion dispute, but an issue which is proving to have repercussions in the wider community and one which the vice-chancellor cannot continue to ignore.

  Melbourne University puts on a brave face and someone purported to be from them breaks the silence by sending out an unsigned press release on university notepaper hinting that it is all a clever Communist Party plot to disrupt the university. Blaming the communists is always a pretty good way to get off the hook and Bob Menzies, the prime minister, has used it more than once in politics.

  The evidence their spokesman gives for this is the activity of the Labor Club, a student political organisation which during Orientation Week had set up a table in the foyer of the university union building and sold ‘progressive literature’, political tracts and publications by Karl Marx, Lenin and Joseph Stalin extolling the virtues of socialism. They also handed out leaflets demanding that Sarah Maloney be allowed to enrol in Medicine. The leaflet also points out that Denis Lovegrove, the Member for Carlton in the State Parliament, an ex-Communist Party member, has raised the issue of Sarah’s admission to the university in parliament. It points out that Lovegrove is also president of the Fibrous Plaster and Plaster Workers Union, the first union to walk off the job at the Beaurepaire Sports Centre.

  Even to the most ardent communist-under-the-bed conspiracy theorist, the university press release, if it is genuine, is over-the-top nonsense, and only serves to prove how cynical and naive academics are, thinking they can bamboozle the media and public with such a ridiculous assertion.

  Melbourne University is simply not accustomed to defending itself and is making a hopeless mess of things all round. The ABC has done a special program on Sarah’s case and mention is made of the communist conspiracy. Someone from the Communist Party of Australia who is on the program takes a great deal of pleasure debunking the theory. The only one who seems willing to go along with it is Mr Santamaria from the DLP and even he isn’t all that sure.

  The communist theory simply won’t wash. The Sarah affair, everyone knows, isn’t about politics or trade unions. Even the ALP Club, the sworn enemies of the Labor Club and representatives of the right-wing side of university socialism, come out in support of Sarah. Barry Jones, a leading member, points out that the issue is one of polemics not politics and is essentially about human rights and justice for female students and is a broad and long overdue issue that needs to be brought out into the open. What he means is that it’s high time women’s rights are looked at in the community not as politics but as plain justice.

  The vice-chancellor, Professor Paton, then makes an announcement on morning radio, saying the university has been unable to find the person purported to be on their staff who suggested the communist-plot theory and that the university does not hold this viewpoint. He claims it is a hoax and that it would be a simple matter to get hold of the appro priate letterhead. When asked what then is the viewpoint of Melbourne University, he says, ‘We will be making a statement later in the week.’

 
In the meantime the strident and demanding voice of Mrs Barrington-Stone can be heard daily on the wireless and read in the newspapers. As the reporter on the ABC program said, ‘The president of the Country Women’s Association, a bastion of conservatism, can hardly be accused of being infiltrated by the communists or being in sympathy with the trade unions.’ Furthermore, the program goes on to make the point that a small-town policeman who simply believes in fair play and justice cannot be accused of political manipulation.

  Mrs Barrington-Stone and Big Jack Donovan stick to their guns, saying repeatedly that what the university is doing is unjust and unfair and that their attitude turns women students into second-class citizens. They demand that female students enjoy equal rights with males and that they be judged on their scholastic ability and not on whatever biological factors or on such moral judgements the male-dominated review committee care to make.

  Though Mrs Barrington-Stone is the more vocal of the two of them and more attractive to the media as a protesting voice, Big Jack Donovan takes the issue away from just being females whingeing for a better deal. He is a wellremembered South Melbourne footy hero, and is known by those in a position to judge him as a damn good cop, while others who know him personally say he is fair dinkum and an all-round good bloke. The consensus in the pubs around Melbourne is if Big Jack Donovan is going in to bat for the little Maloney lass, then this is something that must claim the attention of fair-minded men everywhere.

  Then the university makes its statement and it’s their second big mistake. The spokesman is not from the Medical Faculty but is the registrar, a Mr Newington. He points out at the press conference that Sarah’s pregnancy was not the reason for her rejection, that the 1956 intake of medical students, due to an error in administration, was the largest ever and exceeded the quota that allowed for careful and considered tutorials and lectures and was more than the existing facilities could accommodate. To make his point he examples the intake of 1955, which was 218 first-year students, and 1954, which had 180. This year the intake has a limit of 248 places whereas, due to a clerical error, 255 students were granted a preliminary entry, subject to their final interview. In other words, the university very much regrets that seven students had to be rejected. He then goes on to say that Miss Sarah Maloney and six male students have been told they were not eligible for the 1956 intake.