The Women’s Pages

by Victoria Purman

  Did he know he’d just ripped open her heart and shattered every wish she’d had for Archie and his captivity? That he might bear it well enough to come home to her?

  ‘I can’t write the truth for the paper, Mrs Galloway, but I’m not going to keep it from you. It’s a shithole. And look around. We get to leave it. We write some bullshit about bravery and courage and the resolve of our diggers and send it off to the censors who hack out any hint of what it’s really like and people at home are none the wiser about what’s really going on. And those poor bloody blokes, kids really, getting by on bully beef and biscuits and rice, are still there.’ He raised his beer and clinked it hard against Tilly’s before she could react and frothy liquid spilled out of the glass and down the front of her dress.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ Cooper groaned. ‘Bartender. A cloth.’

  Tilly looked down at the damp stain across her breasts and felt the wet coolness soaking through her bra to her skin. It was her only frock and now it would smell like stale beer. Anger flared and became an unspoken rage that rampaged inside her, sending her pulse thudding in her ears. She opened her mouth to speak but the words choked her.

  Archie was still there.

  Cooper had articulated her rage so succinctly it was as if he was in her head. How did he know? Why did he know that about her?

  Tilly was still, a cigarette in one hand and her other wet with beer. Cooper held a clean cloth towards her and she met his gaze. Slowly, he came closer and pressed the cloth against the wet fabric of her cotton dress. The gentle pressure of his fingers pressing into her flesh, despite the cotton in between, made every nerve tingle and she imagined it to be a caress on her body and she closed her eyes and breathed in deep, trying to savour that long-forgotten feeling of a man’s hand on her, of an urgent kiss on her mouth, of desire flaring and crashing over her.

  It had been so long.

  Cooper’s eyes met hers and lingered there, soft and enquiring, before lowering to her mouth.

  Archie was still there.

  And Cooper was right here.

  She watched his hand pressing into her and saw Cooper, not Archie, and while that thought might once have scared her, she was beyond that. The past was so far away and the future was unknowable. All she had was that moment to feel alive.

  By the wireless in the corner, couples had begun to dance and Tilly gave in to the need for someone’s body pressed against hers. She took the cloth, set it on the bar and took Cooper’s hand.

  ‘Dance with me, George Cooper.’

  ‘Dance with you?’

  ‘Is your dance card full or something?’ She tasted beer in her mouth and her pulse thudded at her temple.

  Cooper’s smile faltered and was replaced with something far more serious. He held out his other hand and Tilly rested her pale fingers there. Sixteen steps and they were facing each other in the middle of the crowd. He stepped into her, slipped an arm around her waist and pulled her in close. She held on to his shoulder with her left hand and looked up into his eyes.

  She didn’t recognise the song that was blaring from the wireless but she recognised the look on his face. She’d seen it from other men, from her husband, but never from Cooper. His eyes flickered from her mouth to her eyes and then back to her mouth and she bit her lip. She felt his shoulders draw up as he inhaled deep and long and she knew in that moment she had a decision to make. If she held his gaze, he was going to kiss her. There was nothing surer.

  Was it the beer or Darwin or the war or Cooper or a combination of all of them wrapped up in her longing and loneliness?

  She paused and at the moment she felt his breath on her lips, she turned and rested her head on his chest. She could not give in to this. Not now. She listened to his heart beat instead of the song and held on for dear life.

  Chapter Eight

  ‘Excuse me. Pardon me. Daily Herald. Coming through.’

  Tilly elbowed her way through a Sunday sea of trilbys and homburgs and porkpies and flat caps; of elaborate and decoratively curled French rolls and freshly painted red lips; of worn but clean trousers; of greasy overalls and schoolboy pants and ribboned ponytails. The air was thick with cigarette smoke, special occasion perfume and the scrubbed, soapy scent of young children.

  She checked her watch. Two forty-five. She’d just hopped off the tram on New South Head Road before Elanora Street and was following the curve of Rose Bay to the waterfront and the wharf. She cut through Lyne Park, which was so crowded with people that it was impossible to make out exactly where the Anzac Memorial was, quickened her pace and sharpened her elbows.

  The Allies had declared victory in the Pacific four weeks earlier and diggers had been steadily returning from theatres of war each week to heartfelt celebrations in every home, every street, every town and every city in the country.

  And still no word of Archie or any of the other Lark Force boys or the Rabaul civilians.

  In years past, the flying boats that were about to land in the choppy waters off Sydney Harbour had carried first class mail all the way from London. During the war, they had taken flight, filled with ammunition bound for the battlefront. Now, they were carrying the most precious cargo imaginable: the first one hundred and thirty prisoners of war who’d been liberated from the Japanese. Bert Smith, unfortunately, wasn’t one of them. Mary had had further word that her husband was still being treated for malaria in a Singapore army hospital and she had taken the news with the same sense of optimism she had displayed during his entire captivity. He was alive and he was well, and the letter that had just arrived this week, written in his own hand that made her weep, had reassured her. His time would come, he said, as soon as he was well enough to make the journey home.

  The whole country had been avidly following the news in the papers that four days before, nine Catalina flying boats had left Singapore filled with men. They’d stopped in Darwin to refuel and four days and so many years later, the diggers were about to arrive home.

  Tilly moved around people, twisted herself sideways and bobbed under tall men waving their hands, inching closer and closer to the gates of Rose Bay Airport.

  ‘Excuse me. Daily Herald.’ She was going to need the crowds to part like the Red Sea if she was ever going to get any closer to the gates.

  ‘Tilly!’

  At Tilly’s left shoulder stood Denise Stapleton from The Sun.

  They threw their arms as wide as they could and embraced.

  ‘How are you, Denise?’

  ‘I’m very well indeed,’ she replied. ‘How about you?’ She leant close to ask quietly, ‘Any news about Archie?’

  Tilly shook her head and bit her lower lip to stop it wobbling.

  ‘You’re probably sick and tired of being asked, but I couldn’t not.’

  ‘I know. And I appreciate it, I really do.’

  ‘I don’t think I’ve seen you since Leeton when we interviewed the Land Army girls.’

  Tilly smiled at the happy memory. ‘Only the tastiest apples I’ve ever eaten. Picking them fresh off the tree made so much difference, didn’t it?’

  When they’d returned to Sydney after their war correspondents’ tour up north in 1943, they’d continued to report on the war at home, still barred by the army from doing anything else. Whether it was the work of the Land Army girls, or women in munitions factories all over Sydney who worked on massive production lines making bullets and shell casings, or stories about nurses and knitting circles, if it involved women and the war, the women war correspondents were assigned those stories.

  And while Tilly had found it fascinating that women were doing all sorts of jobs they’d never been allowed to do before—and in some cases being paid the same as men—the irony wasn’t lost on her that she still wasn’t allowed to do the same job that men on the paper were doing.

  When Tilly had pushed Mr Sinclair to be allowed to cover stories that didn’t only involve a feminine angle on the war, he’d stared at her as if she’d asked to be sent to the moon.r />
  ‘Wasn’t Darwin enough?’ he’d responded, exasperated.

  ‘Not in the slightest.’

  ‘You can’t cover the real war, Tilly. We’ve got the blokes doing that. Cooper and Farris and that pain in the arse Dalton who still won’t account for that week he went missing in Palestine. They can embed with the troops, see battles firsthand and really get a feel for what a soldier’s life is like. You couldn’t bunk in with the men, for god’s sake. You know the army won’t let you anywhere near a fighting man. Your job is to cover the human interest angles. How the ladies back home are coping. The home front. You know, how we need more women to sign up for the auxiliary forces and munitions work, that sort of thing. I’ve got enough on my mind keeping track of the boys without worrying about you getting into trouble in a war zone.’

  She had continued to push, arguing with Mr Sinclair that she could be sent overseas as a special war correspondent to cover the real and incredibly dangerous work of Australian nurses, and again he’d knocked her back.

  ‘But Mr Sinclair,’ she’d argued. ‘Other women have done it. Lorraine Stumm went to Rabaul, you know. General MacArthur invited her himself. And Elsie Jackson from The Australian Women’s Weekly has been overseas, too.’

  Rabaul. That’s where Tilly really wanted to go. If she was able to set foot on the same soil as where Archie had last been seen, she might be able to find the real story of what had happened to him. Wasn’t that a possibility?

  But Mr Sinclair had scoffed. ‘Stumm only got there because of the Americans. And Jackson’s the bloody editor! The Australians don’t want women anywhere near the front and they’re the people I have to deal with. Give it up, Tilly. There are plenty of stories right here in Sydney.’

  As it had turned out, Tilly’s fight was for naught. After Stumm’s and Jackson’s trips, the army had withdrawn all its accreditations for women war correspondents to enter operational areas. She was to be stuck reporting on gung-ho gals in munitions factories and all the women back home who were making do and mending.

  ‘What do you think?’ Denise asked Tilly, glancing over each shoulder to survey the people crowded onto the Rose Bay foreshore. ‘Forty thousand people?’

  ‘I’d say fifty, at least,’ Tilly replied.

  They slowly inched forwards.

  ‘Trouble is,’ Denise said, ‘if I tell my editor the Daily Herald’s running with fifty thousand, he’ll insist The Sun run with sixty.’

  ‘Mine will be exactly the same,’ Tilly conceded with a laugh.

  ‘Let’s ask the navy’s press officer. He’ll be here somewhere with whichever colonel is greeting the diggers.’

  ‘It’s Major General Eric Plant, I believe.’

  Denise elbowed Tilly good-naturedly in the arm. ‘Oh, who cares any more? We won’t have to do the bidding of those men in uniform much longer, will we? We’ll be back to doing the bidding of men in plain old cheap suits bought from Foy’s.’ Denise winked. ‘You doing the families?’

  Tilly sighed. ‘All the happy reunions. The colour. The women’s angle.’

  ‘Consider yourself lucky, Galloway. I’m doing frocks and hats. Oh, look. I spot a broad-brimmed white hat with a net veil. I’ll see you. A coffee soon?’

  ‘Definitely.’

  Denise waved and disappeared into the crowd.

  Tilly tried to move forward but came to an impasse.

  ‘Sorry, pet. There doesn’t seem to be much room to move.’ An old man looked back at Tilly over his hunched shoulder. He was hemmed in on both sides by office girls waving white handkerchiefs to every seagull flying and squawking overhead. His rheumy eyes sparkled in the September sunshine and the skin folds under his chin wobbled as he spoke. ‘My grandson’s coming home today.’ He clutched a handkerchief in his hand. His knuckles were misshapen and swollen, his fingers crooked. When he dabbed his eyes, Tilly spotted a set of initials embroidered at one corner: HC. ‘More than three years he’s been gone, our John.’

  Tilly pulled her notebook and pencil from the pocket of her jacket and extended her free hand. They shook, almost pressed up against each other in the crush. ‘Tilly Galloway, the Daily Herald. How long’s he been gone, sir?’

  ‘February 1942. Since Singapore fell.’

  Tilly didn’t need to write down that date. ‘So he’s in the 8th Division.’

  The man nodded. ‘The Lost 8th.’

  ‘One of General Bennett’s boys.’

  The old man pulled his lips tight. ‘Bennett. Yes. That bloke who told our troops to stay put at the same time he was on a boat out of Singapore. Our boy’s been a prisoner of war for three-and-a-half years because of that … that man.’

  Tilly never let down her guard when she was reporting. She had learnt to remain impartial, to ask questions and then listen, to not be scared of offending or upsetting. Some days that was harder than others.

  ‘What’s your son’s name, sir?’

  ‘He’s my grandson. Casey.’ The man’s voice faltered, almost broke. ‘Private John William Casey. We’ve raised him, me and my wife, since our daughter passed in ’36.’

  Tilly resisted the urge to pat him on the shoulder, to provide him some comfort. Everyone in Australia needed comforting of one kind or another these days; to be reassured that their loved ones were alive, that they were safe, that they would be the same men they were when they went off to war.

  ‘You must be so proud of him.’

  ‘Too right. Bloody proud.’

  Tilly wrote in shorthand: tears of joy at the prospect of a happy reunion between grandfather and grandson.

  ‘And your name? So I can put it in the paper? I’d like to tell everyone in Sydney how happy you are to see your John home.’

  ‘The name’s Herbert Casey.’

  ‘And your suburb, Mr Casey?’

  ‘Newtown.’

  Tilly’s pencil skimmed over her page. ‘And Mrs Casey? Is she here?’ Tilly wondered where her photographer was. She was due to meet him but he was nowhere to be seen in the crush.

  ‘She’s at home baking a sponge cake. Just for John. He can eat the whole thing, have it all to himself, that’s what she said. She saved up weeks’ worth of butter rations specially. She wanted to wait at home, not come down here. You know.’

  Tilly’s pencil hovered over her notebook. ‘What if I say she’s preparing a special party at home? That’s why she couldn’t be here. Would that be all right?’

  Mr Casey nodded and started to speak but his words were lost as the crowd around them erupted in a roar. Tilly was squeezed in a surge of hats and sharp elbows and bodies. She gripped her pencil tight in her fist.

  ‘Look! Look!’ A woman’s voice was shrill in Tilly’s ear.

  ‘Can you see them?’ A man with a wiry grey moustache and round silver glasses looked skyward, his hand flat to shade his eyes. ‘It’s one of them Catalinas!’

  Tilly shoved forward through a chorus of cheers and hollering and made a bolt for the gate to the flying boat base and then turned her eyes to look back at the crowd. She would need to remember it all to describe it when she was sitting behind her typewriter. People were packed, shoulder to shoulder, more bare legs than she could count dangled over the lip of the stone wall at the harbour’s edge, rows and rows and rows of people standing behind like an enormous choir. Young men were aloft, as if they might be sitting on someone’s shoulders, and the buzz of anticipation and excitement sparked in the air like electricity. Fifty thousand chins lifted. Fifty thousand breaths were held, and one hundred thousand eyes squinted towards the sky, waiting to get the first glimpse of the Catalinas.

  The flying boat’s long flat wings, each bearing two propellers, slowly came into more distinct view, a low white bird against the blue of the water and the grey-green of Georges Head on the other side of the harbour and then there was a splash of foam and it landed like a tremendous gull.

  Fifty thousand joyous voices behind her lifted in celebration. Waving handkerchiefs looked like a million white da
ncing butterflies.

  Tilly ducked and bobbed towards the airport’s main gate. The five destinations marked on it—Brisbane, Townsville, Darwin, Singapore and London—were now announcing arrivals instead. Beyond it, dignitaries and officials were milling, kissing cheeks and shaking hands, waving towards the plane in the harbour.

  ‘Tilly Galloway,’ she said quickly to the soldier guarding the gate to the wharf. ‘Daily Herald.’

  Her rush was not his. He looked her over.

  Behind the guard, she spotted her photographer, Peter Burton, freely snapping, his camera aimed out at the Catalina, which was bobbing now. She rummaged in her pocket and thrust her war correspondent licence as close to his eyes as her patience allowed. ‘Correspondent Tilly Galloway from the Daily Herald. My editor assigned me to cover the return of the POWs. It would be very useful if I could get down there on the pontoon to meet them.’

  He studied her licence. ‘No reporters allowed down there, Mrs … Galloway. Only photographers. Out of respect for the men.’

  ‘C’mon, digger,’ she implored. ‘I’m from the Daily Herald. All I want is to ask our heroes if they’re glad to be home. How much they’ve missed their sweethearts. What they’d like to eat as their first meal. If they had a good flight from Singapore, that kind of thing.’

  From the wharf, engines throbbed and three barges pulled away from the dock and headed out towards the Catalina in a convoy.

  ‘Dignitaries and photographers only.’ The soldier held up a hand.

  ‘Go back up to New South Head Road,’ the guard told her. ‘The buses will be taking the boys to the 113th Australian General Hospital at Concord. Yaralla. That’s where they’re meeting their families. You’ll get your story there.’

  Her story. The women’s angle. The feminine touch. She ground her teeth in fresh frustration. ‘Talk to the wives,’ Sinclair had said. ‘Find out how long they’ve been waiting for their husbands to come home. Ask them what they’ll be cooking for that first meal. Meatloaf or pork chops? Have they sewn up a special frock for the welcome home? Describe the dresses and the hats and the colour of their lipstick. Ask the young boys if they’re sorry they missed out on going to war. Ask how many kids were born while the husbands were away. Colour, Tilly, colour. The boys upstairs will talk to the diggers and the generals. You do the wives and families.’