The Women’s Pages

by Victoria Purman

  But Mary had different dreams and who was Tilly to say they weren’t equally as important or as meaningful as her own?

  ‘Are you thinking you’ll have children right away?’ Tilly tried to keep her voice bright and hopeful.

  ‘Goodness, yes. The minute he gets back, if I have my way. And I want to be Bert’s wife. I mean, a real wife. I want to cook him dinner every night from some of Vera Maxwell’s recipes in the paper. I want to learn how to sew—properly, I mean—and make curtains for the windows in our new kitchen. We always had chooks when I was growing up on the farm. There’s nothing like a sponge made with real eggs. Don’t get me started on those powdered eggs we’ve had to endure.’ Mary grimaced. ‘I want to teach Sunday school. I want to do all the things my mother did when I was growing up. As a matter of fact, all the things she still does now. That’s the kind of wife I want to be, Tilly. That’s the kind of wife I’ve always wanted to be. And that’s what Bert wants, too. We talked about it before he left, what kind of life we’d make together when he came home. It may not be that exciting to some people, but we never had big dreams. Not like you, Tilly. Being a war correspondent and flying off everywhere.’

  Tilly realised how it must have looked to Mary. Tilly had always felt herself confined by the small role she’d been allowed to play in the newspaper’s war reporting, at being relegated to Australia and being pigeon-holed into writing stories about the role other women played in supporting the war effort. But to others, of course it seemed adventurous, like something out of a movie: donning a war correspondent’s uniform and hopping on a plane.

  Tilly’s first instinct had been to say that she hadn’t really been a war reporter at all, not really, but in the warm glow of Mary’s regard, she let herself feel just a little bit proud of herself. She’d been the Daily Herald’s first female war correspondent, a badge and an honour no one could ever take from her.

  ‘It was fun, actually. Who would have thought …’ Her voice drifted off, lost in the memories she couldn’t seem to bury lately, although she’d been trying so hard to, of tropical humidity and lush palms and dancing with a man who wasn’t her husband. She tried to gulp away the guilt that rose in her throat but it stuck there like a half-swallowed pill.

  ‘Did I ever tell you,’ Mary began, ‘that when Bert and I got married, we couldn’t even afford a honeymoon. We spent one night at the fanciest hotel we could find the money for and then we both went right back to work the next Monday.’

  ‘Same,’ Tilly replied. ‘Married on Saturday. Work on Monday. We spent our wedding night at our flat in Bondi. Sleeping on an old straw-filled mattress on the floor.’

  They had been blissful days but Tilly was finding it hard to hang on to the memory of them now. They were becoming as difficult to hold on to as a dream upon waking.

  ‘As much as I have loved being your roommate—’

  ‘And I yours,’ Tilly added.

  ‘I can’t wait to have a home of my own. I don’t care where it is as long as there’s enough room in the backyard for a chook shed and some fruit trees.’ She paused and turned to Tilly with concern etched on her face. ‘What if I’m too old to have children, Tilly? I’m already thirty years old. If it doesn’t happen soon it could be too late. My aunt Josephine married when she was thirty-five, to a widower with four children, and she tried and tried and never had a baby.’

  Tilly scoffed. ‘You will have plenty of time, I’m sure. Thirty isn’t ancient, Mary.’ Although it certainly felt like it sometimes. Martha was a full two years younger than Tilly and she already had three boys in short pants.

  ‘Well, that’s reassuring, I suppose. I’ll keep that thought close. And I’ll keep praying. That’s all I can do. What about you, Tilly? Don’t you want to be a real wife again?’

  Tilly barely remembered what that meant. ‘I don’t know, Mary. Until I know about Archie, I can’t make any plans about what I’ll do next. I like my job. I love it, actually. And anyway, what is a proper wife these days?’

  A car horn sounded and two young women scuttled across the street, their hands on their hats to stop them flying off into the gutter.

  ‘It shouldn’t be long now. I know it’s seemed dreadfully slow, but new lists of names are still coming through every day,’ Mary said. ‘Don’t give up hope.’

  ‘There are still nearly five thousand POWs missing. That’s all I can think about. “Fate unknown” is the official term for it. It’s been fate unknown for four years.’

  The Japanese had provided little information about who they’d been holding, about the numbers of prisoners they’d transferred between different camps and countries or about the numbers of deaths. George Cooper had promised Tilly that he would keep looking for Archie and she knew he would be good for it, but she hadn’t heard any more from him since his phone call in August the day after VP Day. He was still in Singapore, reporting on the repatriation efforts and the Allies’ preparations for the War Crimes Tribunals that were due to begin early the next year.

  Mary gasped. ‘There you are, Tilly. That’s nearly five thousand boys who might be alive.’

  Or five thousand who were dead.

  ‘Never lose hope, Tilly,’ Mary implored and pulled her close. ‘It’s all we have.’

  Chapter Twelve

  The next morning while Mary was at church, Tilly answered a knock at the door from a scrawny man in a brand-new and stiff-looking army uniform. A kit bag hung over his shoulder and he lifted his slouch hat in a friendly greeting, revealing shadowed cheekbones and a shaved head.

  It took her a moment.

  ‘Bert?’

  ‘You must be Tilly.’

  ‘Yes, of course I am!’

  ‘How do you do.’

  And even though they’d never met, Tilly lunged forward and threw her arms around Mary’s husband as if she’d known him for years.

  ‘Oh, Bert,’ she cried. ‘Welcome home.’ And she immediately released her grip on him, trying not to let him see her shock at what she’d felt: the hard bones of his shoulders, his thin frame in her arms. She created a smile to cover her dismay and then, in the shock of the moment, threw a million questions at him.

  ‘Come in. Mary’s not here. I can’t believe it. She’s at church. But of course you would know that, being Sunday morning. She didn’t know you were coming home today. What are you doing home today?’ Peppering people with questions was her bread and butter and she couldn’t quell the natural instinct to find out everything all at once. ‘What’s happened? Why have you been discharged early? How did you get here?’

  Cooper would no doubt be shaking his head at her if he were there. She wasn’t listening to Bert at all.

  Bert’s eyebrows lifted into the creases of his tanned forehead. ‘Mary’s not here? I didn’t think. Yes, it’s Sunday. Of course.’

  ‘Oh my, are you going to give her a surprise.’ Tilly clapped her hands together with glee. ‘Bring your things in.’

  Bert stepped inside and lowered his kit bag to the floor. He looked the place over. If only it had been fancier for his return to the real world. The settee was worn and two of the cushions were patched and darned where the fabric had worn through. The old floral curtains, once hidden under Elsie’s blackout curtains, had hung at the window since well before the war. Only the wireless in the corner was relatively new, a wedding gift from Archie’s parents when he and Tilly had married. It had been a fortuitous gift, serving as her lifeline to a frightening world that had seemed alternately a million miles away and then right on their doorstep. Each night at ten pm, Tilly and Mary had perched on the edge of their seats, their hearts in their mouths, listening to the Japanese war broadcast that aired on the radio. They hated it and yearned for it equally and cruelly, because its star, Tokyo Rose, taunted Americans and Australians with news and messages from all the boys who were a long way from home. Tilly and Mary had been silent, hope in their hearts that maybe that night Tokyo Rose might read a message from Bert or Archie while ‘There’
s No Place Like Home’ played traitorously in the background. It was only a half-hour broadcast but they were routinely crying two minutes in, desperate to turn the dial to something else but absolutely compelled to keep listening.

  Bert’s inspection stalled when he saw his own photograph on the mantelpiece. He tentatively walked over, lifted the frame and took a good long look at his likeness. Tilly watched him and his younger self looking back at him, as if he were looking in a fun-house mirror that had distorted and shrunken his reflection.

  Did he know that Mary had kissed his photo every night? Would he ever know that Mary had cried herself to sleep over him?

  ‘Mary shouldn’t be much longer.’ Tilly checked the time on the carriage clock next to the photograph. ‘Perhaps half an hour.’ She waved Bert to the settee. ‘Why don’t you sit down? Or perhaps you want to put your bag in Mary’s room? It’s your room now too, of course. It’s just through the hallway and first on the left.’

  ‘Thank you, Tilly. I’ll do that.’

  Tilly waited anxiously in the living room, her heart aching for Mary. Bert was here and she was probably on her knees in church right that very second praying for him and all the children they would have. Poor Mary. She’d had so many plans for Bert’s proper arrival home. The banner on which she’d written, in her neatest hand, Welcome Home Bert from your loving wife Mary and decorated with pencil sketches of waving flags was in the kitchen on the dresser, still folded. The bunting she’d found in a shop in Kings Cross was still in a brown paper bag alongside it, as was the Union Jack they had planned to wave from the window.

  Bert returned to the living room and cleared his throat to catch Tilly’s attention. ‘This is a beaut little place you’ve got here.’

  ‘Yes. It’s small but we like it.’

  Tilly was having trouble reconciling this Bert with the man in the photograph. The Bert on the mantelpiece was round-cheeked, smiling-eyed and young, his long nose perhaps not quite so prominent as it was in person. His cheekbones were now as angular as a sail on a yacht, and when he smiled Tilly saw a dark space in his mouth where one of his top front teeth was missing. His clothes hung on him, his shoulders like a coathanger, the fabric of his obviously new uniform as voluminous as a priest’s robes on his thin frame. Two men could have fitted in the space between his flat stomach and the buttons on the front of the jacket.

  ‘Mary told me about moving here. How much she likes you. That was back in ’41. September. I didn’t get many letters, you see. Those I did get, I must have read them a thousand times. I know them word for word.’

  Tilly smiled. ‘She wrote to you every week, Bert. I swear it. Right in the kitchen on the table. Every Sunday she would go to church and then write her letter to you and then do her washing. That was her day. She’s been absolutely diligent about it.’

  Bert shook his head. ‘I don’t doubt that. I know my Mary. The Japs weren’t the best postmasters, it’s fair enough to say.’

  ‘I hear. Now, let me see. Are you hungry? Can I make you a sandwich or something else to eat? A boiled egg? I’d love to offer you coffee but all we’ve been able to get is that horrid chicory essence and after real coffee at Repin’s, I can’t bring myself to drink anything else. Can you imagine? They roast their own beans. So, perhaps not a coffee. What about a cup of tea?’

  If Tilly had been in the privacy of her own bedroom, she would have kicked herself. She was fully aware that she was prattling on like a nervous ninny but couldn’t seem to stop.

  ‘No thanks, Tilly. Not tea. Those nurses in Singapore made sure we got buckets of it. With the milk, it helped fatten us up a bit, you see, before we came home.’

  ‘Of course.’ What had Bert looked like before the fattening up?

  Bert slipped a finger inside the collar of his jacket and tugged at it. ‘I’ll just wait for Mary, if that’s all right with you.’

  ‘Of course. Please, make yourself at home.’

  Bert opened his mouth to speak, hesitated. ‘I do want to say one thing to you while I’m waiting for my wife. I owe you a debt of gratitude for looking after my Mary while I’ve been away. I know you’ve been a good friend to her.’

  Tilly swallowed her sudden tears. ‘You don’t owe me anything, Bert. If anything, she looked after me. We’ve managed to muddle through the war, she and I. Two wives waiting for their boys to come home.’

  Bert stilled. ‘And your husband?’

  ‘Still waiting for news, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Where was he serving?’

  ‘The 8th Division, AIF. Lark Force. He was taken prisoner in Rabaul in ’41 and it’s been very difficult to get word from him since then. The Japanese, you know.’

  ‘Yes. I know.’ Bert cleared his throat. ‘I look forward to meeting your Archie when he’s home. Maybe we can have a beer together. What did he do before the war?’

  ‘He worked for an insurance firm on Elizabeth Street. He was a clerk. And Mary tells me you were a watchmaker?’

  Bert nodded. ‘That’s right.’ He lifted his wrist and exposed the place a watch might have sat a long time ago. ‘Haven’t worn much of anything for the past four years, let alone a watch.’

  They exchanged polite smiles and Tilly bit down on the urge to fire a thousand questions at Bert, about his captivity, about the Japanese, about how he’d managed to hold on to hope after all these months and years, about how it felt to be free. The need for answers almost overwhelmed her and she felt the beginnings of a headache at the back of her skull, radiating upwards. Would any answer revive her ever-diminishing hope that Archie might be free too one day soon?

  She shook away her desperate desire for answers. ‘Bert. I do apologise, I seem to have forgotten. Was that a no to the offer of a sandwich?’

  ‘Don’t trouble yourself, Tilly. You go about what you were doing. I’ll just wait for my wife. I can’t believe I’ll get to hold her again.’ His gaze was off in the distance and Tilly swallowed the lump in her throat, of happiness and envy all wrapped up together.

  Tilly returned to the sink and to the scrubbing of a large saucepan that had been soaking overnight. She’d made a rabbit stew the night before and had left it too long. What a glamorous homecoming for a soldier, she thought. The smell of Bon Ami and burnt stew.

  If more proof was ever needed that life went on, that would be it.

  An hour later, Tilly had prepared a tuna casserole for supper, and had scrubbed every surface in the kitchen until the room sparkled. She’d climbed up on the sink and cleaned the windows overlooking Orwell Street with a page of the Daily Herald and a splash of methylated spirits before refreshing the water in Mary’s little vases on the sill. She had left Bert alone in the living room and he must have turned on the wireless because she heard the soft background noise of voices. She hadn’t wanted to crowd or overwhelm Bert, who was still a stranger to her, and she to him. The last thing he needed on his first day of discharge was the curious stares of a stranger, or worse, a barrage of questions. That was all she wanted to do, though. To ask him: what do you know? What was it like?

  But what use would that be? He wouldn’t be able to answer her most pressing one: where is Archie?

  When Tilly heard the click of a key in the front lock, she stilled, the latest Women’s Weekly open on the kitchen table before her. The lock. Bert clearing his throat. And then Mary shrieking and bawling. If there were confessions or declarations or expressions of love and longing, they were whispered, kept private between husband and wife, which was as it should be. Tilly tried not to listen. They deserved this private moment.

  She rested her head in her hands and fresh tears dripped onto a colourful Ovaltine advertisement, right on the blond curls of the baby in a high chair, rosy-cheeked, blue eyes, wearing a blue knitted jumper, full lips smiling and clutching a spoon full of the malt milk powder. It surely wouldn’t be long before Mary and Bert had a cherub of their own, one who was sure to inherit Mary’s blonde curls and round cheeks, her sunny optimism and her caring,
generous nature.

  Tilly swallowed the envy that traitorously flared again and forced more tears to flow. Mary’s future was bright now, laid out before her like the first chapter in a book, filled with so much promise. From the deepest depths of Tilly’s own despair, the words it’s not fair echoed in her mind.

  ‘Tilly!’

  She hurriedly wiped her face and turned in her chair. Mary and Bert stood arm in arm in the doorway, both beaming, both full of joy. How on earth could she begrudge them this moment?

  ‘I … I don’t … oh, Tilly. He’s home!’ Mary pressed her palms to Bert’s face and stood on tiptoes to give him a passionate kiss. She broke away and laughed more gaily than Tilly had ever heard her laugh. ‘You’ve met my dearest friend, I see?’

  Bert pressed his lips to the curls at Mary’s forehead and Mary’s eyes fluttered closed as a blush reddened her décolletage and crept up her neck.

  ‘I have to admit, she wasn’t the welcoming committee I was expecting.’

  Mary’s fizzing excitement was like sherbet. ‘What do you think of the flat, Bert? I know it’s small, but it’ll do until we find a place of our own. Tilly said to take as long as we need, didn’t you, Tilly?’ Mary slipped an arm through the crook of Bert’s elbow and leant into him. He folded an arm around her and pulled her close.

  ‘It’s beaut, love,’ he said and reached for his wife’s hand, kissing the back of it. He couldn’t stop looking at Mary, taking in every detail of her face. He adored her, it was clear as a bell. Fresh tears of joy welled in Tilly’s eyes.