A Woman of Courage

by J. H. Fletcher

  ‘And then?’ she asked.

  ‘Then we leave them and come back in the morning.’

  ‘And count how many we’ve caught,’ Hilary said.

  ‘You got it.’

  Hilary put on a bold front. She was not sure it would work but work it did. She and Tim checked the traps every morning and as a rule found rabbits in at least some of them. Hilary learnt to kill the rabbits by giving them a sharp blow to the back of the neck. Afterwards they would gut them and carry them home. They would skin them and stretch the skins over pieces of bent fencing wire. They would take the carcasses to Mr Wilkins the butcher and the skins to Mr Salomon the dealer. The cash mounted up.

  ‘When are we gunna spend it?’ Tim asked.

  ‘Take your share when you like. I’m hanging on to mine.’ It was the first money she’d ever earned and she wasn’t planning to chuck it away.

  The business with the rabbits taught her more things than how to catch them. She learnt to kill: not easy at first but she got used to it soon enough. She discovered the importance of planning ahead, making sure she had a market before setting out to harvest the rabbits. She found she had the knack of making money. More than anything, her success gave her confidence in her abilities. ‘I am a hunter gatherer,’ Hilary said happily, quoting something she’d read back in the home.

  ‘I thought they were black Africans,’ Tim said.

  ‘Not me,’ Hilary said. ‘I’m a white Australian. But I hunt. And,’ said she, rattling the tin in which they kept the money, ‘I gather. What’s not to like about that?’

  ‘You’re not an Aussie,’ Tim said. ‘You’re a Pom.’

  ‘I’m an Aussie now.’

  3

  The seasons passed. The winter was a lean time: in the cold weather the bunnies stayed home and who was to blame them? Spring came again and in the killing fields things started to pick up. By the beginning of summer the tin had two hundred pounds in it.

  The news came that Brett would be coming home again for Christmas. Jasmine Pattinson was dancing but Hilary remembered last year and was not prepared to go through all that again.

  ‘I’m out of here,’ she told Tim.

  Tim was horrified. ‘You can’t just walk away.’

  ‘Who’s to stop me?’

  ‘The government.’

  ‘They’ll have to catch me first.’

  Tim was doleful. ‘I hate to think of you going.’

  ‘You’ll be off to ag college anyway in the new year.’

  It was true but seemed to give him little consolation. ‘I shall miss you,’ he said.

  ‘I’ll miss you too,’ she said. But every instinct was telling her it was once again time to move on.

  ‘Will you write to me?’

  ‘If I can.’ But was not too sure about that. She had no idea whether the authorities could make her come back or not but didn’t intend to give them the chance. A letter might give them an important clue, if they were looking for her.

  She divvied up the cash and gave him half.

  ‘You keep it,’ Tim said.

  ‘But it’s yours. It’s over a hundred quid.’

  ‘You need it more than I do.’

  Hilary thought about it, decided Tim was right. ‘I’ll pay you back when I can,’ she said.

  Two days later, while it was still dark, she left, walking away down the lane towards the road, and the dogs did not raise a peep. An hour later she hitched a lift on a truck heading west.

  2004

  BREAKING POINT

  1

  Jennifer had lunch with her mother in the penthouse adjoining Hilary’s office. She had never been there before and was impressed by the furnishings and the paintings on the walls.

  ‘Are these from your collection?’

  ‘Some of my favourites.’

  She prowled, looking at each in turn. ‘I see you have a Gulliver,’ she said. Even saying Martin’s name gave her a twinge.

  ‘I have several,’ Hilary said. ‘I like his work and I hear he is beginning to make a name for himself at last.’

  Jennifer had nothing to say to that; she had made a conscious effort to shut Martin out of her life – had been too scared of her husband to do anything else – and knew nothing about Martin’s present circumstances.

  ‘Come and eat your lunch,’ Hilary said. ‘I want to talk to you.’

  She’d had food sent up from a neighbouring restaurant: grilled snapper and a green salad.

  Their places had been set at one end of the long dining table. Genuine silver cutlery and an immaculate white linen cloth: Mother lived well. For a while they ate in silence, Jennifer picking at her food as she waited for Mother to come out with whatever she wanted to say to her. Finally Hilary put down her knife and fork and studied Jennifer across the table. ‘You know Tom Tallis has died?’

  For a moment she couldn’t place the name, then she clicked: Tom Tallis had been the curator who’d looked after Hilary’s art collection. She was sorry to hear he’d died but had never known him, so it was hard to feel too upset about it. She wondered why Mother was telling her this or what she was supposed to say about it. ‘I didn’t know.’

  ‘Only fifty-two,’ Hilary said. ‘Came into the gallery in the morning, everything normal, told Lucy he wasn’t feeling well, next thing he was lying dead on the floor in front of her. Poor girl, it must have been a terrible shock.’

  Jennifer had no idea who Lucy was either. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. Not very helpful but what was she supposed to say?

  ‘Vivienne phoned me with the news when I was in Jakarta. I miss him. But the world goes on. I don’t have the time or knowledge to manage the collection myself so I need to appoint someone to take Tom’s place. Someone who knows Australian art, whose judgment I can trust and who can use the money.’

  Jennifer waited, still nibbling at her fish. Mother was hardly likely to be offering her the job so she couldn’t imagine why she was hearing this.

  Hilary looked at her daughter across the table. ‘Someone whose judgment I can trust and who can use the money,’ she repeated. ‘I was thinking of offering the position to Martin Gulliver.’

  It gave Jennifer quite a jolt. She felt an obscure need to defend Martin, although against what she could not have said. ‘Why do you think he would want the job?’

  ‘That’s why I am asking you. You were close to him once. Do you think he’d be interested?’

  ‘I haven’t seen him for years but I doubt he’s the sort of person you can buy.’

  ‘I would rather call it offering financial support to an artist I admire.’

  Jennifer heard the reprimand in her mother’s voice but it was news to her that Hilary admired anyone. ‘You’ll have to ask him yourself.’

  ‘I shall. But I wanted your opinion.’

  ‘It’s thirteen years, Mother. We are different people now. How can I possibly know what he’ll say?’

  Frustration and defiance had joined hands like twin assassins. She could hardly believe she had said such a thing – and to Mother, of all people – but Davis’s behaviour after the party and Anthony Belloc’s admiration had changed her. Why, she thought, the chains are off. I am no longer afraid.

  ‘I always hoped you would get together,’ Mother said. ‘You know that?’

  ‘That wasn’t how things worked out, was it? Too late now.’

  Hilary said, ‘It’s never too late if you want something enough.’

  From somewhere Jennifer found a brittle laugh. ‘I’m a happily married woman, Mother.’

  ‘Married, yes, but you aren’t happy.’

  ‘How can you say that?’

  ‘Because it is obvious to anyone who loves you as I do. You haven’t been happy since that abortion.’

  Shock was a bolt of lightning. ‘How do you know about that?’

  ‘My dear, I have always known. Davis is a blabbermouth. He mentioned it to someone, I picked up the rumour and made some enquiries. It’s easy enough to find out these t
hings when you have money. It is one of wealth’s few advantages.’

  ‘You were spying on me.’

  ‘Not at all. I never thought Davis was right for you. I wanted to be there for you if you needed me, which meant learning as much about your problems as I could. But I also knew it was not my place to interfere.’

  And she had thought Mother had never cared. ‘And now you are thinking of bringing Martin Gulliver back into my life. I never thought of you as a matchmaker, Mother.’

  ‘I am thinking of asking him for my sake and for the collection. You have nothing to do with it. Even if he agrees you don’t have to see him unless you choose. After all, when I told you he’d died it took you a minute to remember who Tom Tallis was.’

  ‘If I have nothing to do with it why are we talking about it?’

  ‘Because I wanted to know what you thought.’

  2

  In the plane heading back to Melbourne Jennifer thought about what Mother had said. She’d told Mother the truth; she had no idea how Martin would react to the idea, if Hilary went ahead with it. How was she supposed to know after so many years? It was so obvious she thought Mother must have had another reason for talking to her about it. That would be Mother: always with the cards close to her chest. But surely she wasn’t trying to matchmake? Two people who would hardly recognise each other after such a long time? And what would Davis have to say about it? He would cut her into little pieces if he ever caught a hint of such a thing.

  She had been so occupied with the implications she had almost forgotten to ask her Anthony Belloc’s question but just in time she remembered.

  ‘A friend of mine was asking if you were ill.’

  Hilary’s expression revealed nothing. ‘Who of the people you know would be sufficiently concerned to ask something like that?’ Her long fingers played with the broken roll on her plate, her eyes steady across the table.

  ‘I forget.’

  ‘It was not your husband?’

  ‘I would hardly forget him.’

  ‘Much though you would like to,’ Hilary said.

  ‘You have no business to say that.’

  ‘Even though it’s the truth? You are right; we should never speak the truth, should we? Well, well, if you remember who asked, you can tell them I am very well. In the best of health: isn’t that what the doctors are supposed to say?’

  It was a strange answer, Jennifer thought. There certainly seemed nothing wrong with her yet something about the way she had reacted to the question had raised a question mark in her mind. And something else she had said, also, shortly before they parted.

  ‘One of the penalties of wealth is that you have always to be on your guard.’

  An apology? From Mother? Yet what else had it been?

  It made her wonder more than ever.

  3

  Jennifer returned to an empty house. There was a note from the cleaning lady. Mr Lander said he’d be late. Pie and vegies in fridge.

  No mention when Davis would be home; probably Mrs Harris hadn’t known. Jennifer lugged her case upstairs to her bedroom. She put it down and sat on the bed. She was depressed beyond measure; she’d been away only two days but to have no one welcome her home was horrible. The truth was, she told herself, nobody cared about her. No one in this wide world. Darling Daddy had cared; she’d been so little when he and Mother broke up that she hardly remembered them as real parents, but as she got older he’d still taken her out twice a month to have a special afternoon tea at Godfreys, the up-market restaurant off King Street. She had always looked forward to those outings and to the way Daddy had looked at her so fondly across the table. She could remember his voice even now.

  ‘You are my special girl, Jennifer. My beautiful special girl. And don’t ever forget it.’

  She would never forget how devastated she’d been when she heard of his death, as though one of the main props of her life had vanished.

  4

  She had a bath. Dressed in a robe, rose pink and covered in pictures of daffodils, she heated up her supper and ate it sitting alone at the kitchen table. She switched on the television to keep her company but there was nothing she fancied so she switched it off again. There were plenty of books but she had never been much of a reader. She leafed through a magazine, looking at pictures of impossibly slender models wearing the latest fashions. By half-past nine she was in bed. There had been no phone calls and Davis had not come home. Lonely and full of resentment she knew she would not sleep, but did. She did not hear Davis come in.

  In the morning, after the delights of five-star living in Sydney, it was back to reality: breakfast not with but in the company of a husband who, incarcerated behind his morning paper, barely acknowledged her presence. The cat clawed the rug; the toaster continued to give trouble. Outside the window it was a grey and rainy day, the garden tormented by a gusting wind.

  Despite everything that had happened in Sydney – the extraordinary, whisky-fumed episode in the hotel suite before the dinner at the Seven Stars and her lunchtime conversation with Mother – Jennifer was determined to make a final effort to restore her marriage to something like health and her cheery smile nearly cracked her face.

  ‘So nice to be home,’ she informed the back page of The Age. Which did not reply. ‘I had a wonderful time. Such a lovely reunion! Mother is insisting I visit her more often.’

  ‘Why don’t you?’ Davis said from somewhere behind the paper.

  ‘I think I shall.’

  ‘Good.’

  Was that all he cared?

  Smoke began to billow from the bread in the toaster.

  ‘Oh God!’ Jennifer leapt to her feet. Too late. She slid the charred offering onto a plate which she placed on the table in front of her husband. ‘I’m afraid it’s caught a bit around the edges.’

  ‘I’ve no time to eat it anyway.’ Davis was on his feet and heading for the door. ‘I shall be late tonight.’

  ‘It’s not good for you to work so hard.’ She gave the expected response. ‘We don’t want you having a heart attack like Daddy did, do we?’

  No answer. Davis was gone, taking the newspaper with him. Jennifer was alone with the burnt toast. She had a sudden and untypical urge to take the toast and the plate it was on and the breakfast things and the cat and fling them all against the wall.

  She had read a magazine article that said isolation and loneliness might be the cause of what the author called aberrant behaviour. Like smashing up the breakfast things, Jennifer thought. But oh, how deeply satisfying that would be. She could almost taste the thrill of seeing the shards of smashed china crashing to the tiled floor, the smear of ketchup and egg on the wall, of hearing the ritual destruction of her suddenly unbearable life, her failed marriage.

  She flung open the kitchen door and rushed into the garden, unable to get there fast enough. The rain was pouring down but she did not care. She stood outside, face raised to the clouds, mouth open to taste not only the rain but the sense that at this moment the equilibrium of her existence was slipping away. Slipping away, crashing like the splintered plates, and she did not care.

  Her gown was wet, her fluffy mules saturated. Her hair hung in wet strands over her face and she did not care. Nothing, nothing mattered. Why, she thought in astonishment, I am having a breakdown. That is what it is. I am falling to pieces in the pouring rain in the bedraggled and saturated garden of my husband’s multi-million-dollar house and I do not care. Not for the house or my husband or my marriage or anything. My poor, ruined, wasted life.

  Tears came, floods of tears to mingle with the flooding rain. She was stifling, unable to breathe. She snatched at the neck of her robe, tearing it open, feeling a button rip free. Better but still not enough. She dragged off the robe and let it fall to the ground. She kicked off her mules. Her nightie next, the one with the embroidered rosebuds, so pretty. So meaningless. She drew a deep breath. Free at last.

  Naked, Jennifer Lander stood in her garden and howled at the pouring
rain.

  5

  It was a woman at one remove from reality who an hour later, having bathed and washed her hair, made up her face with meticulous care, buffed her nails and obliterated every thought of the episode in the rain-drenched garden, rang her friend Tessa and suggested they should meet for coffee.

  ‘Eleven o’clock? Our usual place? Good. I’ll see you there.’

  Jennifer went into the downstairs toilet and inspected her reflection in the mirror. She touched up her lips. She fluffed up her hair. She thought she was looking very well. The cracks were there but hidden now. She was detached. It was true that her equilibrium remained precarious within a precarious world but the crisis was past.

  She made no attempt to retrieve her wet clothes from the garden. Let Mrs Harris fetch them; that was her job. There was another thing. The car was unreliable. She would not risk having it break down on her again. She would use a taxi and put it on her card. If Davis queried it she would say she needed new wheels, that she would neither endanger herself nor embarrass him by sticking with the old wreck that should have been put out of its misery five years ago. She imagined herself asking him what people would say, seeing the wife of a senior counsel driving around in a heap of junk.

  Oh yes. She felt firm, strong. Under the shower, sluicing away the mud from her feet and warming her chilled and shuddering flesh, she had decided. She would make herself new, emerging not from the fire but the deluge. She would reclaim her life.

  6

  Tessa frowned, trying to pin down what she sensed was change. ‘Have you changed your hairstyle?’

  ‘Not really,’ the new Jennifer said.

  ‘I’m sure there’s something.’

  The coffee arrived. Jennifer had been first at the café and had ordered before her friend had the opportunity to impose her views. Tessa frowned. ‘I had thought we might try –’

  ‘Harvested in the Jamaican mountains,’ Jennifer said. ‘So aromatic. I am sure you will agree.’