The Amazing Mrs Livesey

by Freda Marnie Nicholls

  Ethel left gaol with a limp, a result of a disagreement with a fellow prisoner that would give her arthritis in her left leg in later years. She had, however, also gleaned some useful information from her fellow inmates that would serve her well.

  She wanted to get back to England, but first she needed funds.

  She travelled up to New South Wales, and in three weeks took three more unsuspecting men to the cleaners, working again as Nurse Florence Anderson, the Great War nurse looking after the elderly and sick at home. Within days of arriving and telling her stories of woe, she was gone again, with their cash.

  Ethel was always on the lookout for ways to move on and better herself. For weeks the newspapers had been filled with the exciting news that the Australian cricket team and the Davis Cup tennis team would be travelling together on the RMS Orford to England for the European summer. With memories of being the fictitious Mrs Fingleton, and fantasies about even possibly becoming her, Ethel wanted to be on that boat to England. She wasn’t alone: everyone who could afford a ticket wanted to be there—though Ethel of course didn’t plan on buying a ticket.

  She fronted up to Sydney Harbour and boarded the enormous liner with all the other visitors and travellers, expecting to rub shoulders with some of the famous sportspeople and wealthy travellers, only to find that the teams were boarding in the next ports of Melbourne and Perth. No matter; she’d meet them then.

  As the ship’s bell rang, warning visitors to return to the dock, Ethel moved to the lounge and was about to order a drink when a smartly dressed ship’s officer asked her for her name and cabin number. With the ship completely full, and with so much interest in the cricket and tennis players, they were checking everyone left on board.

  Ethel tried to charm him, to no avail. He demanded to know her cabin number, and upon checking the passenger list promptly turfed her off the ship.

  Fuming, she stood in the international departures terminal and watched through the large glass windows as the gangplank was removed from the Orford and passengers threw paper streamers to friends and relatives far below. The side of the ship looked like a colourful wedding veil billowing in the wind, with each streamer flying upwards as it broke or was pulled from a wellwisher’s hand as the ship left port.

  Ethel turned and strolled over to a shipping clerk and asked where the next ship coming into the port was heading.

  He looked through his notes, then looked up. ‘It is the Niagara, heading for San Francisco.’

  ‘When will it be arriving?’ she asked casually.

  ‘Tomorrow morning, leaving Thursday. Were you after a ticket?’

  ‘No thank you, I was just curious,’ she replied, then slowly made her way from the port.

  San Francisco? Why not.

  That Thursday Ethel arrived three hours before departure and made her way onto the RMS Niagara. She couldn’t find a free berth anywhere, so she hid her bag in a lifeboat and settled into the lounge as the ship departed.

  She started up several conversations with various people and settled on one man who seemed to be travelling alone, Mr Frank Leitch.

  ‘My father’s name is Frank!’ she exclaimed in delight, when he told her his name.

  ‘And I’m sorry, your name …’

  ‘Oh, how silly of me—we haven’t been formally introduced,’ Ethel gushed. ‘My name is Eva Turner, Miss Eva Turner.’

  ‘And what brings you on this journey, Miss Turner?’ he asked conversationally.

  ‘I’ve always wanted to see the West Coast of America. I have travelled extensively since the war, but haven’t as yet explored that side of the country,’ she remarked, enjoying how her story was progressing. ‘I may go across to New York before heading home though—I so love New York.’

  ‘And home would be?’

  ‘Why, the United Kingdom,’ she replied in her best plummy tones. ‘My father works in the family business there, cotton,’ she said smugly, warming to one of her usual themes. Their conversation continued, Ethel being as charming as she could be, hoping to get herself a berth for the night.

  Mr Leitch told her he was travelling to New Zealand on family business, and he took great pains to point out that he was in fact married—happily married—when Ethel’s attentions became rather more personal than he was comfortable with. He bid her goodnight at the end of the evening and wished her an enjoyable voyage.

  Ethel sat back in her chair, dejected. Was she losing her touch? Where was she going to spend the night? The room was emptying and the wait staff were clearing up after the last of the guests. She made her way out towards the lifeboat where she’d hidden her bag, and noticed the tonneau latching she had loosened to place her bag inside was firmly back in place—did she have the right one?

  ‘You lookin’ for some’n?’ asked a thickly accented Scottish voice. Ethel turned to see a burly silhouette against the cabin lights.

  ‘No, no … I thought I’d just go for a stroll before retiring,’ she answered, then went to walk away.

  He stepped in front of her.

  ‘Yer sure?’ he asked, holding up her bag.

  The shipping company decided not to turn the boat around, instead sending a telegram notifying Sydney Harbour of a stowaway.

  To her horror, they hid the buxom Miss Turner in the dark hold for the two days and night it took to reach Auckland. Even then they kept her down in the hold for what seemed like hours, until all the passengers had finally disembarked and were long gone.

  She heard the lock being opened in the solid steel door and turned to face it. There standing in the doorway was her captor.

  ‘Ah, Mr McKenzie, so lovely to see you again!’ Ethel said with more gaiety than she certainly felt.

  ‘Miss Turner,’ the Scot said. ‘Will yer come with me please.’

  ‘Certainly Mr McKenzie,’ said Ethel, picking up her small black hat and placing it on the back of her head with care. ‘I must look a fright!’

  ‘Won’t matter where yer going,’ she heard the third mate scoff.

  ‘Come on Miss Turner, we don’t have all day,’ urged Mr McKenzie, making his way to the steel steps leading up out of the hold.

  She followed closely as he led her up onto the deck. There stood the Captain who had grilled her the morning after she’d been found, standing with her bag at his feet, two New Zealand police officers standing next to him.

  ‘Captain, so lovely to see you again,’ Ethel said breezily.

  ‘This is her,’ the captain said. The officers immediately came up on either side of her, one grabbing her arm roughly. Ethel glared at him and tried to pull herself into a more dignified pose.

  ‘She doesn’t seem to have any papers or passport on her, but she says her name is Turner,’ the captain told them.

  Ethel was staring at the captain with her big blue eyes. Then he turned to leave.

  ‘Thank you captain,’ she said, pulling her shoulders back, lifting her chin slightly. ‘It has been an interesting cruise!’

  ‘Come on you,’ said the officer holding her arm, pulling her towards the gangway.

  Ethel followed, but still looking at the captain, had one last thing to say:

  ‘I will NOT be recommending your ship to my friends.’

  Behind her, McKenzie gave a short laugh as she was led away.

  ‘What a dame!’

  The shipping company decided not to prosecute Ethel. Instead it sent her back to Sydney on the next liner out, the Monowai. As she was led off the ship, she was met by members of the press; her stowaway story had caught their attention.

  ‘Good afternoon, gentlemen,’ she greeted them, as the sailor who had escorted her off the ship scurried back up the gangway.

  ‘Miss Turner,’ one reporter asked eagerly, ‘how did you get on board?’

  ‘I did it vice-regal fashion,’ Ethel replied with a wave of her hand. ‘I followed an official-looking party on board, and just stayed.’ Which wasn’t true of course; she was retelling her previous trip from a few mont
hs before.

  ‘Where are you from, Miss Turner?’ another young reporter asked impatiently.

  ‘I came up from South Australia, I travelled to Sydney looking for work, and love the idea of working at sea,’ she said almost dreamily. ‘I love the sea, I have a craving for sea life—if I had been a man I would have been a sea captain.’ She was enjoying herself immensely, watching them scribbling down her every word on their notepads.

  ‘I journeyed as far as Fremantle last year and was not detected,’ she added for effect, pausing and making sure all eyes were back on her. ‘And I planned to stow away on the Orford, on which the Australian cricketers are travelling, but was found and escorted off before it left port,’ she watched them scratch her words into their pads.

  ‘I then joined an interstate passenger vessel for Melbourne and travelled undetected, and made a second attempt to board the Orford, but failed, so when I saw the Niagara heading to the United States of America, I thought I would go and see the world,’ she declared, exaggerating her story with an additional journey. She paused as the assembled reporters, soaking it up, recorded every word she was saying.

  ‘Miss Turner,’ the first reported asked, ‘how were you treated?’

  ‘Dreadfully!’ she replied. ‘I was imprisoned in the ship’s locker for the trip back here, and on the Niagara they threw me down in a dark hold for days and nights—it was frightful! And then when I arrived in New Zealand, the police insisted I be taken ashore and I had to spend several nights with the Salvation Army!’ Ethel really was enjoying how much they were hanging off every word. ‘The police in New Zealand treated me shockingly—not nearly as considerate as the Australian police.’

  ‘You’ve been in trouble with the law before?’ the second reporter asked eagerly.

  ‘No, no, of course not—only when I was escorted off the Orford,’ she replied hurriedly. ‘Now if you will excuse me I need to make arrangements.’

  Ethel pushed her way through the reporters as quickly as she could and, holding her bag tightly, caught a taxi at the international terminal exit.

  18

  LADY BETTY BALFOUR

  February 1935 and Ethel was back in Sydney, but keeping on the move. Using her old ruse of bouncing cheques, she conned one shopkeeper for £4 (just over $400), then headed to the southern beach suburb of Cronulla, where she once again became the returned servicewoman Nurse Anderson. There she looked after two more World War I veterans, Tasman Joseph Ward and William Carmody, and in the space of a week had taken a combined sum of £10 in cash from them.

  Next she again headed north to Brisbane and started living with a man called Mr Balfour. She began calling herself Betty Balfour, or Lady Betty Balfour, both famous people at the time. Betty Balfour was an English screen actress who came to fame in the silent movie era and was known as ‘Britain’s Queen of Happiness’ by her fans. The real Lady Elizabeth Edith ‘Betty’ Balfour was married to Gerald Balfour, Second Earl of Balfour, and brother of the British conservative Prime Minister Arthur Balfour.

  Ethel could see herself as both a movie star and a member of the peerage, so it seemed only right for her to live her new life as Betty.

  Unfortunately for Ethel, Mr Balfour was no gentleman, and when he struck her she decided it was time to move on—taking his trusty cheque book with her, and some money from a kindly neighbour who, after hearing one of Ethel’s sob stories about her abusive husband Mr Balfour, happily lent her the money to cover her medical bills.

  Over the next few days she swindled some more Brisbane shopkeepers with Mr Balfour’s cheques. It was becoming harder to open cheque accounts without identification papers, so each cheque she had left became precious.

  She made her way back down to Victoria, where she made contact with a former inmate from Pentridge, who gave Ethel the name and address of a corrupt Justice of the Peace—let’s call him ‘Mr Peace’—who might be willing to help her get a fake birth certificate so she could apply for a passport to England.

  Mr Peace’s office turned out to be a run-down chemist shop in a working-class suburb to the north of Melbourne. The effects of the Depression were still obvious in the area, with many shops boarded up on the busy road out of the city.

  Ethel entered the chemist with some unease.

  ‘I’m here to see Mr Peace,’ she stated to the young man who came to serve her.

  ‘Was it medical?’ the man asked tentatively, looking her up and down curiously. With her fur-lined black jacket, lustrous pearls and neat appearance, she looked out of place in the dark, drab shop.

  ‘No, something else,’ Ethel replied, trying to sound confident.

  She needn’t have worried. The assistant nodded knowingly and motioned for her to follow him. They walked along a short hallway; he knocked on a door towards the end of it, and then opened it without waiting for a reply. The assistant looked at Ethel and stood back to let her bulk through.

  Her eyes had to adjust to the darkened room, but she saw a stooped man rise from his chair behind a desk. ‘Mr Peace?’ she asked, and saw the old man stand and smile at her through the gloom.

  ‘Yes my dear, can I help you?’ he asked, indicating a wooden chair opposite him. Ethel made her way towards it, brushed it off and eased herself down as Mr Peace too returned to his seat.

  ‘I am after some documentation, and I was reliably informed you may be able to help me.’

  ‘I see,’ he said looking at her carefully. ‘May I ask who gave you that information?’

  Ethel mentioned the name of her fellow former inmate and the man smiled at her. ‘Yes of course. Now, did she mention a fee?’ he asked.

  Ethel nodded and watched as he turned around to pull some documents out of a cupboard behind him. He squinted at them in the dim light coming in through the dirty window, in a way that made her think he looked like a hunched mole, then watched as he made his way around the desk to sit alongside her.

  ‘Now, what proof of identification do you have?’ he asked, turning to her.

  She looked at him in surprise. ‘Well, nothing I can use,’ she replied.

  ‘Ah then,’ he said smiling sadly. ‘That is difficult.’

  They looked at each other in silence, before Ethel finally asked quietly, ‘You cannot help me?’

  ‘I did not say that my dear—it will just cost you a little more.’

  Ethel regarded him suspiciously. ‘How much more?’

  ‘Let us see what we have and I’ll let you know,’ he replied. ‘Your name?’

  ‘Betty Balfour,’ she replied, lifting her head, and saw his eyebrows raise.

  ‘Really?’ he asked.

  She stared at him for a moment in defiance, then reluctantly admitted it wasn’t her real name. He nodded slowly, then cleared his throat. ‘Well then my dear, I’m afraid I will have to charge accordingly. I gather there would be some urgency to this application as well?’

  Ethel replied with a nod and asked, ‘How much?’

  ‘What do you require?’

  ‘A birth certificate,’ she replied quickly. ‘And, a passport.’ Any documentation she had previously had been left behind in Adelaide when she absconded.

  Mr Peace nodded and contemplated her for a moment. ‘Fifty pounds,’ he announced.

  Ethel grasped her throat dramatically. ‘I can’t afford that!’ she whispered, thinking of her first-class fare back to England.

  ‘Well then my dear, I cannot help you,’ he said, shuffling his papers in front of him and about to rise from his seat.

  Ethel’s hand shot out and held his upper leg. ‘Is there not some way I could make it worth your while?’ she asked.

  He took a moment to assess the large, elegantly dressed woman beside him. ‘I am afraid, my dear, that at my age, cash is more important.’

  Ethel removed her hand and contemplated the Justice of the Peace beside her. She wanted to get out of Australia, and he seemed the only way to get a passport or any form of identification. She didn’t want to stow away on a sh
ip again, and she couldn’t open another bank account, fictitious or otherwise, without any identification.

  ‘I will have the money,’ she replied.

  Mr Peace gave her a broad smile, picked up his fountain pen and started looking through the documents before him.

  ‘Now then, my dear, what name would you like?’

  19

  MISS HARVEY

  Pamela Judith Eve Harvey arrived in the New Zealand capital of Wellington in the summer of 1935. She had chosen the names of four different movie stars and combined them to produce her new alias.

  Pamela Brown was an up-and-coming English movie star, and Ethel liked the name Pamela, it had a nice modern ring to it. Judith she kept from her alias Judith Anderson, which had worked so well for her, and she chose Eve after reading an article about an American actress, Eve Arden, who had created her stage name from two cosmetic bottles on her dressing room table: Evening in Paris and another by Elizabeth Arden. (Like Ethel, movie stars also chose names they could relate to—she liked that!) Her new surname was from another favourite movie star, Lilian Harvey, who had been a successful silent movie star and was now a famous talkie star.

  Ethel’s new name was complete: Pamela Judith Eve Harvey, known to her friends as Eve.

  She had also shaved nine years off her age: Miss Eve Harvey was now 29 years old.

  Mr Peace’s fee had meant she couldn’t afford to go all the way back to Britain first class, so she decided she’d travel a little closer by until things cooled down. Her new passport was duly issued, for a new life, in a new country.

  On the ship to Wellington, Ethel befriended Mr and Mrs MacTaggert, telling them how she was an artist, a wealthy woman of means with relatives in the cotton trade, travelling on a world tour, and eager to explore the country of New Zealand.

  Mrs MacTaggert seemed surprised when she learnt her new friend’s age, but Ethel tried not to appear too mortified and explained that she had suffered greatly over the years, losing her mother as a baby and having nursed her elderly father for many years, and perhaps that was why she looked a little older than she was.