‘What sort of girl is Lily Carter?’ Johnny asked.
‘Lily is intelligent, but she seemed sly to me. I would remind myself that she lost her father and her three brothers and that her mother is mentally unwell, but still I could not grow to like her. Lena is apparently determined to think the best of her.’ I could hear a hint of spite in Walter’s voice, which surprised me.
‘Was she especially close to anyone in the commune?’ asked Johnny. ‘Other than Susan, of course.’
‘She was closest to Lena,’ Kauffman replied.
‘Could you see her putting poison knowingly into Rick’s tea?’ asked Johnny.
There was silence as Kauffman considered his answer. ‘I do not know. I worry that poor Lily is like her mother.’
Walter was pleasant company, his ironic European outlook a counterpoint to Johnny’s more robust American view of the world. They agreed to disagree on communism and on the value of non-representational art, but they were both wholly committed to total victory in the war. After he had finished his lunch, Walter asked to be excused so that he could wander around Fremantle looking for Lily. He left the cafe and disappeared into the crowded street.
‘What now?’ I asked Johnny. He seemed tired and the nervous energy he’d exhibited since his proposal at my house that morning had dissipated.
‘Williams and I spent some time discussing tactics last night,’ he replied, pouring himself another cup of tea. ‘He’s meeting with the Attorney General and the Crown Solicitor this afternoon, but he’s not hopeful. We think we’d have the best chance to get the case re-opened if we get together as much evidence as we can ourselves. Then we’ll put it into the newspapers so the police can’t bury it.’
He ran his hand through his hair in a weary gesture. ‘Lena was only convicted last week. The police sure will have egg on their faces when we show that they’ve convicted the wrong person. That’s why Williams suspects they’ll push against the re-opening of the case. We’ll need to come up with something big to convince the Crown Prosecutor. And if he won’t agree to re-open it, we’ll need enough to convince the government to hold a Royal Commission.’
I felt rather daunted; this was serious stuff. ‘Johnny . . . do you want to write the article?’ I said tentatively. ‘Write it with me, I mean.’ I didn’t want to give up the story completely, but Johnny’s name on the by-line would ensure that it would be taken seriously.
‘No. It’s your story, honey. I’ll look at it, if you don’t mind, before you give it to Gleddings, but it’s all yours. I’ll put in an opinion piece with it – explain why I think it’s important to re-open the case. I’m pretty well-known, so that might carry some extra weight.’
‘Of course,’ I said. ‘And I’d always intended to show it to you before I put it to the boss.’
I asked Johnny to drive me home then, as I was anxious to begin work on the article. It was Wednesday afternoon, and I had until Saturday morning, but it was my first attempt at a feature article and I was worried about it.
There was a slight smile as we left the tearoom. ‘You decided whether to marry me yet?’
I smiled in reply, but I shook my head. Whenever I thought about marrying him, moving to America with him after the war, my mind went blank.
We didn’t go straight home. Johnny turned off the highway at Claremont and drove down Victoria Avenue for a while, along the cliffs above the river until we came to a little bush reserve, where he parked the car. It was the sort of place lovers went to be alone. There was no one around.
‘Marry me, Nellie,’ said Johnny. ‘Before I go back.’
I didn’t reply and we sat without speaking for a while, watching the river, listening to the low whine of aircraft engines in the distance. The American Catalina flying boats were returning from their patrols over the Indian Ocean; soon they’d be skimming along the water to finish up at Pelican Point near their university base.
Without warning, the wind rose and roared through the branches of the gum trees around us, competing with the noise of the Catalinas. The car’s window flaps were open and my hair was swept into a mess of tousled curls. I laughed, trying unsuccessfully to keep it out of my eyes and mouth, until Johnny cupped my face with his hands and pushed away the tangled strands. He held me still and stared at me with a look of such fierce, exhilarating intensity that it seemed to stop my heart. As he murmured something low and unintelligible and leaned in for the kiss, I thought that I had never before felt so alive.
And I knew, from the way my body responded to the touch of his hands, his lips, his tongue, to the taste of his skin and the sound of his voice, that something – everything – had changed between us.
‘We don’t have to get married,’ I said shakily, when we broke apart. ‘I want . . .’ I felt stupidly tongue-tied, wondering how to make it clear that I didn’t need to be married to him, that I wanted to love him – just love him – without a ring or a blessing or anything. ‘I want to . . . We don’t need to be married, Johnny. Not before you go.’
He understood what I meant. Of course he did. But when he smiled at me, his eyes were sad and I had the feeling that I’d disappointed him.
‘We’ll talk about it again later, honey. When the article’s finished.’
Johnny drove me home then and I spent the evening getting my notes together. The next morning I woke up refreshed and ready to make a start.
But I lay in bed for a while before I got up, thinking of Johnny. If I agreed to marry him, I’d not be the first girl to have acted so precipitously. All over Australia, women were getting engaged – getting married – just this quickly. ‘Met, Wed in One Week’ was the Marvel’s headline last year when Rhona Collis publicly and unceremoniously dumped her Australian fiancé to marry Ensign Bill Evans of Washington DC a week after she’d first met him. I’d thought she was insane, and now Johnny wanted me to do the same.
I grew cold as doubt assailed me. I wasn’t like Rhona and those other girls. I couldn’t marry a man I’d met only eight days ago. I couldn’t even agree to become engaged, not if I was so unsure about actual marriage. Johnny and I loved each other – I didn’t doubt that – but he fell in and out of love much more easily than I did. I needed to be sure that he wasn’t rushing us both into something we’d later bitterly regret. What we needed was time. But in a war, time was exactly what we didn’t have.
I suspected that one of the problems was unresolved passion. Desire made everything seem more urgent. I wanted him. Oh, how I wanted Johnny. Was it so wrong to sleep with him now? We could have our love affair and then he’d leave me to return to the fighting, but we’d write to each other and we’d meet as often as possible. When he had leave, Johnny would come back to me so we could get to know each other properly and decide about our future in a cool and considered way. Surely that was better than taking a gamble on the rest of our lives.
It was the only sensible thing to do.
After breakfast I put aside thoughts of Johnny, sat in front of my typewriter and put in a sheet of paper. I looked at it for a while. I got up. I read the notes I had made previously and added a few impressions of Lena in the prison, the horrors of her life in gaol and her desperate hope that the truth would emerge. Aunty May brought in sandwiches for lunch. I ate them staring at the blank page in the typewriter.
I had copies of all the newspaper reports of the trial itself, and I read them carefully, making more notes. Aunty May brought in my tea on a plate, and said that she didn’t want to disturb me, so she and Evie were going to the pictures. I ate my tea and took the tray to the kitchen and washed up. Then I went back to my typewriter and looked at the blank piece of paper.
I got up and made a pot of tea and as I drank the tea I re-read my notes. I walked aimlessly around my bedroom. I dusted my dressing table. I went back to my typewriter and typed: Last Thursday, Lena Mitrovic was found guilty of murder. I tore out the sheet of paper and screwed it into a ball.
It was going to be a long couple of days . . .<
br />
Johnny picked up the sheets of typewritten paper. It was close to four o’clock on Friday afternoon and I had handed the story to him as soon as he arrived at the Marvel offices.
I watched with trepidation as he started to read.
An innocent woman was sentenced to death last week. Lena Mitrovic stood in the dock of the Supreme Court and heard the jury pronounce her guilty of the murder of her lover, Rick Henzell. She heard the Chief Justice pronounce the words that might, if mercy were not granted, cause her life to end ignominiously upon the gallows at Fremantle Gaol. She listened in silent horror, wondering if she was trapped in a nightmare, because Lena Mitrovic was innocent of the crime for which she had just been convicted.
I watched Johnny’s face as he read, trying to work out what he thought from the look in his eyes. Finally he finished and handed the pages back to me. He smiled.
‘Well done,’ he said. ‘I really like it, Nell.’
And that was all he needed to say.
But of course I interrogated him mercilessly over a well-earned cup of tea.
‘I like the way you chose to look at the crime and the unfolding investigation from Lena’s point of view,’ he said. ‘When you deal with Lily and her home life, the commentary is poignant, but it’s not intrusive.’
‘I wanted to make it clear why the girls might have behaved in such a silly way,’ I said. ‘What else did you like?’
‘You’ve got an impressive eye for detail,’ he said. ‘That’s important.’
He looked at me straight, one professional to another. ‘And I think you’ve got a lyrical touch with words and phrasing. You write well.’
Johnny liked my piece. I wanted to shout it out, run into the street and hug everyone I met.
‘Exciting, huh?’ said Johnny, grinning. ‘This investigative reporting.’
I nodded, trying to keep my face straight. ‘It has its moments,’ I drawled. ‘Now I just have to send it to the boss for his comments. Do you still have that car?’
‘Yep. C’mon, honey, we’ll drop it off at his house and then I’ll buy you a drink. You look like you need one.’
‘I’ll have a shandy.’
Johnny shook his head in mock horror.
By ten o’clock on Saturday morning the mock-up was on Reg Burgess’s desk so he could do the final copy-edit and place the photographs and captions ready for the linotype operators in the composing room to start typesetting. Mr Gleddings had sent it back to the office with hardly any alterations and a note for me saying simply ‘Good work’. Reg had said to me that morning, ‘I didn’t know you had it in you, Nell.’
And yet, now the article was in, I felt numb. This evening thousands of people would read it, together with Johnny’s thoughtful and beautifully written opinion piece. But Lena was still in prison, Lily was still missing. My article was only the first shot in our battle to have Lena released and bring Lily home. We had a long way to go and I was already weary.
‘Feeling washed out, honey?’ Johnny was at my shoulder. ‘I usually do, after putting in an important piece.’
He put an arm around me and I buried my face in his chest, breathing him in. ‘I wish I could do more,’ I said, my voice muffled by his coat.
‘You’ve done a lot already. Now we need to wait to see if Lily comes forward. In the meantime we’ll keep on looking for evidence. We’ll get there in the end.’
hat evening we had dinner at the home of the US Consul, Mason Turner. Johnny introduced me as his ‘good friend’, and the Turners were charming. Afterwards, we drove to Point Resolution and parked. We spent a long time there, kissing and touching and driving each other crazy without any chance of an end to the frustration, because Johnny had decided to become moral. Now that I was ready to throw caution to the wind and embark on a love affair, Johnny said we should wait until we were married, which left me frustrated and confused and annoyed, because I couldn’t agree to marry him. Not so soon.
‘Please, Johnny, let’s go to your hotel.’ His shirt was partly undone and as I ran my hands across his bare chest, he shivered. I undid more buttons, slid my hands around to feel the muscles in his back, nuzzled the bare skin of his chest.
‘No.’ He pushed me back and batted away my eager hands. ‘Like I said, we’ll wait until we’re married.’
‘We don’t need to wait.’ I wanted to touch him so badly that it was an ache. I reached for him again, trying to pull him towards me. ‘Let’s go to your hotel.’
‘No.’ He pushed me away again and sat up, but his breathing was ragged and his hands trembled as he pulled out his tobacco pouch.
Now I was angry and my voice was sharp. ‘Johnny, you’ve had lots of lovers. I want this. For heaven’s sake, let’s just go to your hotel.’
‘That’s why I want to wait.’ He sounded very determined. ‘You’re the girl I want to marry. I want to do this right.’ He laughed, very slightly, almost bitterly. ‘Call it superstition, or blame it on my Catholic upbringing. I just feel that if we do this right, then it’ll turn out right.’
I sucked in a shaky breath. ‘Johnny, we hardly know each other. How can I agree to marry you so soon?’
I’d hurt him. I could tell by the set of his mouth and his studied nonchalance as he rolled a cigarette. He inhaled deeply and blew smoke out of the car window before turning to me again.
‘We don’t have the luxury of time, Nell. You can’t spend time worrying about whether getting married is the right thing to do. I’ll be gone in less than three weeks.’
‘I know that,’ I wailed.
Did he think I didn’t know that? It haunted my thoughts, that Johnny would be gone so soon. And yet . . . Marry in haste, repent at leisure. That’s what I’d been taught. That’s what I feared.
Johnny said quietly, ‘Nell, I might die up there – no, don’t turn away and pretend it won’t happen, because it might. Too many correspondents have already died and I’ve had some close calls. I want the whole shebang – nuptial Mass, blessing, honeymoon. I want those memories when I’m back up there. I want to know that you’re here, waiting for me. Take a chance on me, honey. Marry me before I go. You won’t regret it, I promise you.’
I could only shake my head.
At my desk on Monday morning, my worries over what to do about Johnny were blown away by my justifiable elation at the success of my article. We’d had twelve telephone calls already from members of the public who thought they’d seen Lily, and the boss had agreed to put Alf Sleep, Perth’s best private investigator, on to the job of finding her. More importantly, a friend who worked in the Crown Prosecutor’s office had told me that the Attorney General had called in the Crown Prosecutor to discuss the matter urgently on Sunday afternoon.
My telephone rang.
‘A Mrs Lorrimer wants to speak to you, Nell.’ It was Doris, our switchboard operator.
There was a click.
‘Hullo? This is Nell Fitzgerald speaking.’
‘Hullo, hullo? Oh, Miss Fitzgerald. I thought I should tell you – I mean you were so wonderful in saving Susan from that dreadful place, and I know that journalists like to know things right away.’
‘Know what?’
‘The police came here early this morning. They dug around our old tuart tree. And Miss Fitzgerald – they found the tin! A Coloseptic tin, just where Susan said that Lily had buried it. I thought you’d want to know.’
My heart was racing and the hand gripping the telephone receiver was damp with sweat. ‘Was it poison?’
‘They took it away for testing.’
‘Mrs Lorrimer, that’s wonderful news. Is it all right if we come up to the colony today? Interview you again? Take some photos?’
Johnny and I arrived in Richmond around noon and decided to lunch there before heading on to the artists’ colony. We had tacitly agreed not to mention marriage, but the question hung in the air around us during the journey, so I was happy to see Walter Kauffman walking in the main street as I got out of the car. He acce
pted our offer of lunch and a lift back to the colony.
Despite my quandary about whether to accept Johnny’s proposal, I was feeling content when we walked out of the hotel after lunch. I mentally ticked off all the good things in my life. We had found Susan Lorrimer and rescued her from that dreadful house. Evie was staying with me and Aunty May and she was safe. Lena now had a fighting chance to overturn her conviction. My boss thought I’d done a great job with my first investigative reporting assignment. Johnny loved me. I smiled up at Johnny and got a heart-melting smile in response.
My good mood didn’t last long.
‘Hey, Yank.’ It was a harsh voice, familiar. ‘You’ve come back. And now you’re a Kraut lover, eh?’
Walter sighed. ‘Neil Buchanan,’ he said softly.
Sure enough, standing across the road was Nugget, with his brother Paul. I’d forgotten how big they were.
‘Come back for another thrashing, eh Yank? You’re limping. Did we hurt you?’ Nugget’s voice was a parody of concern.
‘Poor Yank,’ echoed Paul. ‘Come on over here and we’ll do it again.’ He laughed.
I took hold of Johnny’s arm. The muscles were tight and hard and I could feel the tension in his body. He was like a coiled spring.
‘Don’t listen to them, Johnny. They’re trying to get you angry. Don’t give them that satisfaction. Please, Johnny.’
‘Trying,’ he muttered through closed teeth. ‘Succeeding.’
‘Got yer girlfriend with you. I bet she goes like a little beauty when it counts. Come over here, love. You don’t need a flaming septic tank to get ya going. Hey, Yank, we’re just saying how we bet she goes like a bitch in heat.’
Johnny let me lead him past them to the car, although the Buchanan brothers were still standing in the street, still calling out to him, saying disgusting things about me in an attempt to make him lose control. His face became suffused with blood, his eyes darkened and he would not look at me. He put water in the car’s tank, added charcoal to the hopper and lit the wick, all like a man in a dream. When he started the car Walter and I got in and we drove off down Glen Road towards the colony. Johnny looked like a stranger; his lips were thin and tight, a deep crease had appeared between his eyebrows and his nostrils flared with his breathing. After we’d driven for a few minutes, Johnny pulled over to the side of the road, stopped the car and got out. He went into the bush and disappeared from view. I looked back at Walter, uneasy and confused.
Taking a Chance Page 27