Empire Day

by Diane Armstrong

  Ted shrugged. Ever since he’d started work at the Daily Standard he’d drifted away from his old friends. Most of them had become schoolteachers, bank tellers or clerks in the public service, and their stories about naughty children, office politics and banking problems bored him. They’d all become staid and smug, and all they talked about these days was finding somewhere to live or saving enough for a deposit for a house. Although they kept trying to pair him off with someone, he always made excuses. There was only one girl he was interested in.

  Syrupy theme music came over the wireless, indicating the end of the episode, and Verna turned the dial to Pick-A-Box.

  ‘I’ve been thinking,’ she said as Bob Dyer’s strident American voice introduced the program. ‘Why don’t you write something about poliomyelitis?’

  ‘It’s not news, Mum.’

  ‘Well I think it is,’ she said. ‘It said in the paper the other day that there were even more cases this year. The poor kids have to lie in hospital day in and day out, and their parents are only allowed to visit them once a week. When Kath tried to find out how Meggsie was going, some old battleaxe told her that anxious mothers slowed up their children’s recovery! What a nerve!’

  Ted chuckled. He could imagine Gus Thornton’s reaction if he suggested writing about kids with polio. Unless they were dying in droves as a result of medical incompetence, it wasn’t a story. But his mother was right. He did need to get out for some fresh air. He’d go down to the beach and stretch his legs on the promenade, and then get a malted milkshake on Campbell Parade.

  Ten minutes later he was on the green-and-yellow tram that swung around Five Ways and rattled along Bondi Road, past blocks of redbrick flats, boarding houses and car-repair workshops. As it rattled past the picture theatre, he saw that the poster for Morris the Magnificent had been replaced by an advertisement for a new movie with Virginia Mayo. He swivelled around for another look at the film star whose ravishing face reminded him of Lilija.

  The tram driver pressed the foot gong to let passengers know they’d reached the North Bondi terminus. With the clanging still in his ears, Ted strolled along Campbell Parade, watching the waves roll in, their foamy crests lit up by the lamps along the promenade. Although it was a pleasant evening, there was hardly anyone about, and when he looked around he saw that the shops were closed. It struck him that this was very different from the lively promenades in European cities, and realised that he was seeing Bondi through Lilija’s eyes.

  The aroma of frying onions made his mouth water, and before he knew it he was walking in the direction of the smell. Squeezed into the recess between a stucco-faced hotel with an Art Deco roof and a dingy block of flats with a dance studio on the first floor was a hamburger stall. Standing behind it, an olive-skinned man with a handkerchief knotted in four corners over his curly brown hair was placing lumps of minced beef onto a hot griddle and flattening them with a spatula. While the meat patty was frying, he threw a sliced onion and two rashers of bacon onto another part of the griddle, and broke open an egg. A few moments later he inserted the lot between two slices of thick toasted bread, added sliced beetroot, tomato and lettuce, and handed it to a stout man in a beige windcheater who bit into it as he strode away.

  Ted leaned against the wall while he waited for his hamburger. Most people were already home from work and, apart from an occasional Austin or Vauxhall, there were few cars on the road. As soon as his order was ready, Ted crossed the road, walked past a row of Norfolk pines and sat down on a bench facing the sea. He was glad that no one could see him as he tried to get his mouth around the hamburger, with the egg yolk oozing down his chin, onions spilling onto his paper bag and tomato sauce dripping onto his fingers. It wasn’t until he’d swallowed the last morsel that he noticed he wasn’t alone. Sitting at the other end of the bench, still and silent as a statue in a museum, was the peculiar man from Wattle Street, and he remembered the mysterious coffins Meggsie had told him about.

  ‘I need a bath after eating this,’ Ted chuckled, licking the sauce off his fingers and scrunching the greasy bag into a ball.

  The man didn’t reply, and Ted watched the white-tipped rollers on the dark water whose treacherous depths concealed sharks and created unpredictable rips. He turned towards his neighbour to warn him about the dangers of the surf but the man had slipped into the night.

  Emil knew that the young man lived with his mother across the road, but since his ordeal at the police station the week before, he’d become more reclusive and withdrawn than ever. You couldn’t trust anyone, he decided. The boy next door had broken his word and his mother had reported him. Although Emil no longer believed in God, he did believe in divine retribution. He also believed in the devil because he’d met some of his disciples here on earth. Once he’d believed in the power of magic, but his skill had become tainted, the magic had turned out to be a farce, and the only one who had been deceived was himself.

  Inside the dimly lit interviewing room at the back of the police station, the policemen who had questioned him had tried to make him admit he’d been at Waverley Park that Sunday, or at least to confuse him so they could accuse him of lying. He didn’t know why they had kept on about it, or why they had refused to give him any information, but he assumed that something must have happened in the park that day and they wanted to pin it on him.

  He had tried to say that they had no right to detain and intimidate him, but he’d had trouble putting the words together, and while he’d been stammering about his rights, Frank O’Connor had pushed his wooden chair backwards so it was balancing on its back legs, and given him a mocking smile. Emil was no stranger to men like O’Connor, whose uniforms gave them power over others, and whose lips smiled while their fists lashed out. The younger man, Constable Adams, looked more intelligent and seemed less of a bully, but Emil supposed that he’d go along with whatever his superior said.

  O’Connor leaned forward and turned to Adams. ‘Listen to this. Our friend here wants to teach us about his rights,’ he sneered, rubbing the knuckles of his right hand with his left palm. ‘Of course our laws aren’t as good as the ones where he comes from. Where do you come from, mate?’ he asked Emil with false bonhomie.

  ‘Berlin,’ Emil said.

  ‘Berlin! Well that explains everything! No bloody wonder you want to teach us about laws. You lot know all about that.’ He jumped to his feet, clicked his heels and gave a mock Nazi salute. ‘Heil Hitler!’

  Emil felt sick. He tried to explain that he wasn’t a Nazi, that the Nazis had deported him to a concentration camp, but before he could get the words out, O’Connor grabbed him by the shoulders, pulled him to his feet and landed a punch to his stomach that made him gasp and double up with pain.

  ‘Hey, you blokes,’ O’Connor shouted, opening the door. ‘You want to come in here and listen to a bloody Nazi telling us about the law?’

  Two young policemen trooped in and mockingly called him ‘Herr Bloody Hitler’. Emil blinked nervously, and his hands were clammy with sweat but he didn’t make a sound. He wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of crying out. He’d been through worse.

  After a few punches they lost interest and drifted back to their desks, shaking their heads and muttering about the government letting in bloody Krauts when decent Aussie diggers had nowhere to live.

  Thrusting his face right up to Emil’s, O’Connor hissed, ‘You’d better come clean about them coffins. Who are they for?’

  ‘For no one.’

  ‘Are you taking the mickey out of me?’ The sergeant banged his fist on the table so loudly that Emil jumped. ‘Are you trying to tell me that you make coffins in secret for nobody?’

  ‘I work for carpenter. Is against law to make coffin?’ Emil asked.

  The sergeant stared at him, his eyes bulging with fury. ‘It’s against the law to make a fucking racket and disturb people at night.’

  ‘So I will not do it at night.’

  Rubbing his knuckles, O’Connor glared at Emil an
d told him to clear off. ‘And watch out, ’cause I’ll be watching you!’

  Emil had trembled all the way home, but he had felt a sense of triumph. He hadn’t told them the truth about the coffins and he never would.

  Chapter 23

  The big red crosses woven into the white cotton covers of the beds were so bright that when Meggsie closed his eyes they were still imprinted on his eyeballs. He always closed them as soon as he saw the ward sister coming. Everything about Sister Davis was starched, from her white veil and stiff uniform to her rigid back. She always sounded put upon, as though they were all in hospital just to nark her, and he noticed that the younger nurses were scared of her and scurried about with nervous faces whenever she was around in case they hadn’t made the beds with perfect corners or had forgotten to give someone their medication. He thought of her as Sister Danglars, after the man who’d betrayed the Count of Monte Cristo and caused his misfortunes. Her eagle eye never failed to spot a sheet that hadn’t been perfectly tucked in, and she bossed the nurses around and told them off at the top of her voice, even when there were visitors in the ward.

  Once a week the consultant came in. Dr Tennyson Wilkie was a tall, lean man with eyes that reminded Meggsie of lozenges with all the colour sucked out of them. His distant gaze rarely rested on his patients as he walked at the head of a respectful entourage of junior doctors, registrars and senior nurses who always had a joke or a friendly word for the children but deferred to the consultant with murmurs of agreement bordering on reverence. Meggsie had never heard any of them offer a different opinion or ask a question in case he thought they were challenging his judgement.

  During one of his rounds, when Dr Wilkie stopped beside Meggsie’s bed and cast his eyes on the notes proffered by the ward sister, Meggsie suddenly spoke up.

  ‘Please, when will I be well enough to go home? I’ve been here for ages and I miss my mum and my brothers.’

  The residents and registrars looked at him as though they understood how he felt, but the ward sister had a murderous look on her face. ‘Don’t be cheeky,’ she said.

  Ignoring her, Dr Wilkie scrutinised Meggsie with concern in his tired eyes. ‘What’s the matter, lad? Sister tells me you’re managing to sit up a bit longer every day. Is something worrying you?’

  He sounded kind, and Meggsie longed to tell him how unhappy and worried he was, and how he detested the painful physiotherapy sessions which left him exhausted and upset, but with all their attention on him, he felt shy and hung his head in silence.

  When his mother came to see him the following Sunday, he was brimming with news. They’d started taking him down to the indoor pool for something they called hydrotherapy, which was the highlight of his day.

  ‘It’s so good, Mum, I wish I could stay there all day!’ he said.

  Submerged in the warm water, he felt weightless and didn’t feel any pain. For that brief period of time he almost forgot he had polio and imagined he could move his legs.

  Sometimes he dreamed that he was running and jumping and acting the goat with his brothers, but then he woke up and saw the red cross on the bedcover and knew he was still in the hospital, still living the nightmare. He’d squeeze his eyes shut and try to will himself back into that wonderful dream, but it never worked. That’s when the panic grabbed hold of him. What if he never walked again and became a cripple and had to be in a wheelchair all his life? Everyone felt sorry for cripples but no one wanted to play with them. And how would his mum manage without his help? It was all his own fault. If only he hadn’t spied on Mr Emil and sent that note to Miss McNulty, none of this would have happened. Maybe he was no better than Danglars, who had written a letter about Edmond Dantès and been punished in the end.

  Tears rolled down his face but he blinked them away. If the nurses saw you crying, the nice ones tried to cheer you up but some of the others told you to stop feeling sorry for yourself or you’d never get better. He’d even heard Sister Danglars say that to little Betty, and she was only five.

  When he’d first met Betty, she’d been a lively little chatterbox with sparkling eyes. She’d never stopped talking, and had entertained everyone with her questions and comments. She’d been the nurses’ pet as well, and he’d noticed that they lingered beside her bed and sometimes brought her a soft toy or a picture book while she quizzed them. Why had they become nurses, what did they have to do, did they mind emptying pooey bed pans, and did they like Sister Davis? Her questions had made them laugh. He had often heard her talking to her knitted blue bunny, telling him to lie still and take his medicine so he’d get better.

  Every morning she would ask the nurses if her mum was coming, but they usually shook their heads. From what they said, Meggsie gathered that Betty came from the country somewhere, and it took her mother most of the day to get to the hospital for the Sunday visit. Then she had to stay in town overnight to catch the train home on Monday morning. With a sick husband and five other kids to look after, she couldn’t afford the money or the time.

  On the rare occasions she did come, Betty’s excited little voice could be heard all over the ward telling her mother all about the other kids and the nurses and the yukky food, but when the bell shrilled to announce that visiting time was over Betty clung to her mother with her hot little hands and shouted, ‘Don’t go! I don’t want you to go! Take me with you! Don’t leave me here!’

  She screamed so loudly that her voice could be heard in the corridors and Sister Davis would stride in, pull Betty’s tearful mother away and tell Betty to stop playing up.

  Long after her mother had left, Meggsie would hear Betty’s gulping sobs, until one Sunday she gagged and started vomiting. One of the nurses came running, cleaned her up and tried to comfort her but Betty was inconsolable because she’d vomited all over her blue bunny and they had to take it away to wash it. ‘I want my mum. I want my blue bunny,’ she kept shouting.

  ‘Don’t cry,’ Meggsie whispered. ‘They’ll bring it back all nice and clean.’ But she was too distraught to listen.

  When the nurse brought the bunny back two days later, Betty wept again because it had shrunk in the wash and its pink tongue was missing. Gradually her chattering stopped and she just lay there, hardly saying a word. The nurses brought her little treats and read her fairytales; some of the other children in the ward told her riddles, and Meggsie told her stories from his Biggles books, but as the days wore on, Betty became more and more withdrawn, clutching her bunny and staring at the ceiling. Her sadness affected the entire ward, including the nurses, but Sister Davis insisted that the child was only seeking attention and shouldn’t be rewarded with special treatment.

  When Kath came into the ward the following Sunday, Meggsie asked her to go and talk to Betty even before he glanced at the comic books she’d brought him.

  ‘Her mum hardly ever comes, and her bunny’s wrecked,’ he explained. ‘She used to talk all the time but now she’s gone all quiet.’

  But when Kath sat down beside Betty’s bed and started talking to her, the child muttered, ‘I don’t want you. I want my mum,’ and turned her head to the wall.

  ‘Would you like me to bring you something next time I come?’ Kath asked.

  Betty shook her head. ‘I only want my mum.’

  Kath came back to Meggsie and squeezed his hand. ‘You’re a good boy,’ she said. ‘I know you want to help her.’

  Meggsie glanced over at Betty. ‘I just wish her mum would come. That’s the only thing that will make her better.’

  ‘Poor little mite,’ Verna Browning said when Kath told her about Betty. She fossicked in her purse, counted out nine shillings and handed them to Kath. ‘It’s not much, but it’ll pay for her mother’s train fare and accommodation at the YWCA in town.’

  Kath looked at her friend with admiration. Verna had given her an idea.

  At the pub the next day the men were crowding around the counter, guzzling their beer as the hands of the clock moved inexorably towards six. Kath knew they
were a bunch of drunken no-hopers, but their hearts were in the right place. At five-thirty, with only half an hour to go before closing time, they pushed forward, four-deep, jostling and calling out, and the wooden doors swung to and fro as more customers rushed inside to drink as much as possible while there was still time. The winos were slumped against the bar in a beatific stupor, while the whiskey drinkers had become more pugnacious and were picking fights with anyone who bumped into them or spilled their drinks. The air was thick with cigarette smoke, the language grew more foul, and drunken arguments raged about the favourite for the two o’clock at Rosehill on Saturday arvo. Bets were laid, and when swearing and cursing failed to convince or silence opponents, fists settled the argument.

  Kath heard someone retching in the far corner of the pub, and recoiled in disgust as the stench of vomit filled the air. Her arms ached from drawing one schooner after another, her legs ached from standing at the bar for hours, and her head ached from all the shouting and swearing. Thank god in twenty minutes they could close up and she could go home.

  ‘Hey, Rita, step on it, love, four schooners over here.’ It was Mick Kelly, the big bloke with a purplish bulbous nose who had given her the nickname.

  ‘Mick, how’d you like to do a good deed and go to heaven instead of the place you’re booked in for,’ she called out above the racket. Blokes were leaning on the bar, clamouring for another beer, and while she was serving them, she told them about Betty.

  Bob Longley, whose front teeth had been knocked out in a brawl the previous Saturday, hitched his baggy trousers over his beer belly, whipped off the battered felt hat he wore at the back of his head and held it upside down, showing its sweat-stained lining.

  ‘Come on, if youse can afford a schooner, youse can spare a bob or two to bring a smile to a sick little girl’s face,’ he slurred in his thick nicotine-and alcohol-ravaged voice as he pushed his way through the crowded pub.