‘Don’t get too excited, boys,’ Elsie replied. ‘It’s only devon.’ Then she looked at her daughter and whispered under her breath, ‘I’m saving the corned beef for tomorrow.’
Tilly leant in, her palms flat on the table. She eyed them one by one. ‘Do any of you understand the idea of what we reporters call off the record and protecting a source?’
‘Something about not spilling your guts if you’re told something other people don’t want you to know.’ Arthur crossed his arms and scrutinised Tilly. She knew she was battling on two fronts here: as a woman and as a reporter.
‘I couldn’t have put it better myself, Mr Black. Whatever I hear today is off the record. Okay?’
Bob poked Arthur. ‘No offence, Stan, but I don’t know if I can trust your daughter, working for the capitalist press as she does.’
Tilly sighed and held up a hand before her father could defend her. ‘Mr Black. Mr Bailey, Mr Rose. Do you know what some of the blokes at the newspaper call me? The commie’s daughter. And here, you think I’m a tool of the capitalists. I can’t win, can I?’
‘It’s a proud day when you’re called a commie’s daughter,’ Arthur laughed, winking at Tilly. She couldn’t help but laugh in response. Arthur turned to Stan. ‘Might be good to get our side of things in the paper for a change. What we’re fighting for. An eight-hour day and a five-day week. No more twenty-four-hour shifts on the wharves where you can’t even get a feed and a place to wash yourself after you’ve spent all day and night covered in muck.’
Bob exhaled and shook his head. ‘We’ve never got a fair run in the press, Stan. It’s always the bosses’ side. You should read what they’re printing about the strikes. That those workers at Bunnerong are greedy bas—’ He paused and apologised to Elsie and Tilly. ‘Greedy so-and-sos for wanting to be paid extra for working shifts. They’re calling us “perverted” for standing by the Indonesians against the Dutch Government. Why wouldn’t we stand on the side of freedom for the Indonesians against their colonial masters? We’ll do it proudly, just like we refused to load pig iron back in ’38 when Menzies wanted to ship it to Japan. What a bloody joke that was. Send them iron so they can turn it into guns and tanks to use against our diggers? And they have the bloody gall to have a go at Chifley, too, for standing with the workers against the waterfront scabs.’
Bob’s stump speech set Walter off. ‘And they print a photo of the deserted wharves, back-to-back ships and not a bloke to be seen, just to have a go, but then there’s barely a word about the fact that our members still loaded the HMS Reaper to carry supplies to those POWs in Hong Kong.’
Stan added, slowly, ‘Is it too much to ask, do you think, not to have to work yourself to the bone to live a good life in this country? For a fair day’s pay and a fair day’s rest? For a living wage? The working class has to fight now, and not later, for the world we fought for, for the things that were promised so easily during the war. If we let ourselves be fobbed off now, we’ll be headed for another depression.’
Elsie spoke up from the sink. ‘And who wants that?’
Walter had become so animated his copper hair began to curl. ‘You know what I saw in the paper the other day? An advertisement for one of those refrigerators. A Frigidaire, it was called. And you know how much it cost?’
‘How much?’ Elsie called from the sink.
He leant in conspiratorially. ‘Ninety-one bloody pounds! Tell me who can afford something like that when the average wage is five pounds a week. And what’s the point of having a fancy Frigidaire when you can barely afford to buy the food to put in it?’
Tilly looked over at her mother and immediately knew that Elsie was thinking about that ninety-one bloody pound refrigerator. The ice man still came to the Bells and everyone else in the street. Imagine no more daily trips to the butcher or the corner shop. No more dripping water from the icebox. No more sour milk. It seemed like a luxury from another life.
‘I don’t know who they think is going to be able to afford to shell out for one of those contraptions,’ Walter said. ‘Only the bosses, for their wives, I expect. How can a working man afford it when he doesn’t get a pay rise and the government and the bosses are doing all they can to cut the wages of workers now the war is over? It’s a disgrace,’ he huffed.
Before Tilly could stop herself, she stepped forward. ‘Not all of your members are fighting the good fight. I was at Central Court last week. Two wharf labourers at Walsh Bay were sent down for thieving. One got four months for helping himself to a roll of fifty yards of cotton cloth. And his mate got two for stealing fourteen pairs of silk stockings.’
Walter cocked his head, as if he was proud of the men. ‘Sounds like they were trying to impress their wives, if you ask me.’
Bob guffawed. ‘Or girlfriends, judging by the silk stockings.’
Stan raised a hand. ‘Now, boys. That’s not on and you know it. They probably weren’t even our members, Tilly. Scabs, I bet.’
‘And what do you say to those who take the side of the troops? All the boys who fought the war are being discharged and they’ll be fighting for jobs too. Hundreds of thousands of them. And yet the men who have jobs won’t do them. Won’t that just make it harder for them to keep their jobs in the long run?’
‘Tilly.’ Her father started but she wasn’t a young girl any longer. He didn’t need to wear any embarrassment at her questions, for she wasn’t embarrassed. Wasn’t her job to ask the tough ones, to hear both sides of a story and present them so a reader could make up his or her own mind?
‘It’s what some people are saying. So what’s the answer?’
Arthur raised a hand to settle Stan. ‘It’s the only power workers have, Tilly, to withdraw their labour. Without the right to walk off the job, you’re nothing but a slave.’
Her father coughed roughly but was determined to make his own point.
‘Archie went to war to protect our freedoms, Tilly. You were probably too young to remember but back in ’33, Herr Hitler banned unions in Germany,’ Stan began. ‘He sent in the coppers to arrest every union official and then he banned strikes, too. That’s how it starts. Bit by bit, they take away a worker’s power. One little thing on its own might not seem like much. But we know from bitter experience that it’s never just the one thing. It’s one condition and then it’s a wage cut and then you load something else on top of that and all of a sudden you’re going backward as a working man. That’s what the four of us here and every bloke is fighting for, Tilly. Blokes like your Archie fought for freedom from the Nazis and the Japs and Mussolini and all the other fascists. We’re fighting for freedom, too.’
Arthur loaded his plate with sandwiches. ‘You know what’s happened during the war. Workers have been hard at it six days a week, like … all those young ladies in the munitions factories and people doing those government office jobs. They’ve all put in extra time, hours and hours every week, for no extra pay, just to make sure our side won the war. They didn’t think twice about doing their bit for the diggers. But the war’s over. And you know what the bosses are doing to girls like you? Unions fought hard to make sure you’re paid three-quarters of what men are paid for doing the same work. That seems fair. And the bosses aren’t having a bar of it. They’re taking it to the High Court, can you believe that? They’re going to ask those judges to cut your pay.’
‘I work just as hard as any bloke at the paper. And I’m better than most of them,’ Tilly added, because it was true.
Stan puffed up with pride. ‘I bet you are. We put this all to one side during the war. Now it’s time to do something for the workers. The war might be over, but our battle has just begun.’
Chapter Fourteen
‘It’s nice to see you, Tilly.’ Martha passed a pack of cigarettes to her sister and Tilly slipped one out and lit it.
She took a deep drag and exhaled slowly. ‘I was at Mum and Dad’s. You’re on the way home. And I haven’t seen the boys in ages. I swear they’re grown six inches
each.’
The sisters sat on two old wicker chairs on the front verandah of Martha’s narrow brick cottage in The Rocks. Martha had slipped off her shoes and lifted the hem of her floral dress above her knees so most of her bare legs were stretched out before her in the warming sun.
‘I think your legs are looking a little pink,’ Tilly said.
‘Good,’ Martha replied with a laugh. ‘A tan will be better than rubbing coffee grounds on them. Did you know I tried painting them with gravy once?’
Tilly snorted. ‘Gravy?’
Martha laughed. ‘All it did was bring every dog in the street panting after me on the walk to work.’
‘That would have made a wonderful story. “Rocks Woman Licked to Death by Dogs”.’
The sisters laughed and Tilly remembered for a moment how good it felt to relax and enjoy a joke. They sat back, basking in the warmth of the sun, watching Martha’s three boys playing cricket out on the street with a ragtag collection of other children who’d come running when word spread there was a game on. International and interstate cricket had been suspended during the war and Martha’s boys weren’t the only ones waiting for the competition to resume in earnest.
Back in May, when the war in Europe had been won, the whole of Australia had been glued to the radio broadcast of the Victory Test match between Australia and England. It had been an important sign that despite the terrible chaos and disruption of the war, the most important traditions of empire would endure. Germany had only surrendered two weeks before the five-match series started but in everyone’s eyes, it had been a much-needed sign that life would continue as it had before the war; that the traditions Australians held so dear would endure.
Tilly remembered the details of that series so clearly. The real hero of the Combined Services Australian side had been South Australian Flying Officer Graham Williams. The poor man had been released from a German prisoner of war camp only days earlier. He’d been weakened from four years in captivity, and he played sixty-eight pounds lighter than when he’d been captured. When he’d walked out into the middle of Lords, the crowd had stood as one in heartfelt applause. He’d scored fifty-three runs and helped lead Australia to victory.
Tilly and Mary had sat glued to the wireless with endless cups of tea during those cold and blustery evenings back in May and June, listening to Alan McGilvray describe each ball and every run. Tilly had never heard of Graham Williams before that Test, but his bravery and courage had given her the hope she’d so desperately needed that perhaps Archie might survive. Here was a man who had endured the unthinkable, who had spent his captivity helping others and who had enough courage to play cricket at the end of it all.
In the scratch game unfolding on the street, Martha’s boys were assuming the roles of their heroes.
‘I’m Tiger O’Reilly,’ Martha’s eldest son Bernard called out, spinning the ball in his ten-year-old hands.
‘And I’m Bradman,’ nine-year-old Brian announced, waving his makeshift bat in the air. It bore a striking resemblance to a picket fence paling, down to the carving at one end, no doubt purloined from somewhere close by.
Eight-year-old Terry had drawn the short straw and was keeping wicket with his bare hands. ‘I don’t know who I want to be,’ he shouted and Tilly and Martha laughed heartily.
Martha lived with the boys a short clip from her parents but had missed Sunday lunch at Argyle Place that day as she’d taken her sons to see their other grandmother in Newtown for her birthday.
‘You’re asking me what’s really going on with Dad?’ Martha slowly exhaled the smoke from her cigarette. ‘You know more than I do.’
Martha was a pert bottle blonde who’d inherited their mother’s height and spirit. She’d followed in Tilly’s footsteps and learnt shorthand and typing at Fort Street High School, highly desirable skills for young women at the time. Office skills would keep them out of factory work or jobs as domestics and Tilly and Martha hadn’t argued when their teachers had veered them down that path. They were good and decent jobs for bright working-class girls who didn’t aspire to teaching or nursing and, anyway, they had seen the damage wrought on their father from a lifetime of physical work. If that could be avoided, all the better.
In the years since she’d left high school, however, Martha’s path had diverged markedly from Tilly’s. She’d had her first child at eighteen, to her husband of six months, Colin. He’d had been a house carpenter when they’d met and married but, like so many others, he had answered the call and had enlisted in the navy. Able Seaman Colin Winslow had served three years on the HMAS Australia, during which time he’d seen action in the Coral Sea and during the New Guinea campaign. He’d missed out on so much of his boys’ lives and Tilly wasn’t sure that Martha would have coped during his absence without Elsie’s help. Each week day, the boys gambolled straight to Argyle Place after school where there was always something freshly baked for them to devour. Elsie knew the way to her grandsons’ hearts.
Tilly lit a cigarette and blew smoke into the air, watching it rise to the sounds of the cricket match in the street. ‘You see Mum and Dad every day. How long’s he been this bad?’
Martha shrugged. ‘He’s been going downhill for so long I can’t say I’ve noticed. You know what he’s been like the past few years. He was the same age for ever and ever and then overnight he seemed to get old, just like that.’ She clicked her fingers. ‘Just like so many men around here.’
From the street, Bernard called out, ‘How’s that!’ and every child in the street turned their gaze to Martha. She murmured under her breath, ‘I wasn’t paying attention.’ Then she cupped her hand to her mouth and shouted, ‘Not out.’
‘But Bernard’s knocked the crate over, Mum.’ Terry, keeping wicket, pointed to the toppled fruit crate lying on its side.
‘It was a no ball,’ she replied with a wink at her sister.
‘You’re not even watching!’ Brian shouted huffily and strode back to his bowler’s mark, a line in the dirt etched with his bare foot.
‘Yes, I am watching, as a matter of fact. And so is Aunty Tilly.’ Martha propped her feet on the wire fence and sat back in her chair. She smiled at her sister. ‘Bernard wants to play for Australia one day. All he talks about is Tiger O’Reilly. It’s Tiger this and Tiger that. Why can’t he talk about Keith Miller for a change? He’s a handsome devil that one. And a fighter pilot.’ Martha sighed. ‘Colin had better come home soon, that’s all I’m saying.’
Tilly and Martha watched the scratch teams play as if it were the Ashes. Skinny little boys and girls battling it out against each other, counting the runs from fruit crate to a line from a stone in the gutter marking the crease at the other end. Their father had been gone three years. How many cricket games had he missed? Tilly wondered how much of him they would remember.
‘Bernard said something in passing last week about Grandad being asleep when the boys got there after school,’ Martha said. ‘I asked Mum about it and she brushed it off, told me it was nothing, which I expect meant it was something that she didn’t want to worry us about.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me about it?’ Tilly asked.
Martha tsked at her older sister. ‘Honestly, Tilly. I’m working every hour god sends. Half the girls in the office are away because their boys are back and those three rascals are a handful. I barely have time to scratch myself.’
Tilly tried not to hear the implicit criticism. She hadn’t been the best aunt to her three nephews, she could admit that. While she’d been happy for her sister and her brother-in-law when their children had arrived, in quick succession like shots from a spud gun, they’d always been a little too much for Tilly. They’d seemed to grow into boys all at once and overnight and she didn’t know what to do with them. The idea of having children was one thing but coping with someone else’s was another thing altogether.
‘Have you heard from Colin? When’s he being discharged?’
‘I haven’t heard from him since befor
e VP Day. Soon, I hope.’ Martha’s voice grew brittle, resentful even. ‘I’m tired, Tilly.’ Martha wiped sudden tears away with the hem of her old frock. ‘I’m tired of doing this on my own. Mum and Dad help me, don’t get me wrong, but the boys are exhausting. I want to sleep in just one day. Is that too much to ask? And I want my husband back.’
Martha didn’t ask Tilly about Archie and Tilly didn’t make anything of it. Tilly would have said if there was news and her family had long ago, in silent agreement, vowed not to keep asking her. Curiosity on their part had given way to fear and then the gravest concern for Tilly. They knew she would tell them when she knew. If she ever knew.
She offered Tilly another cigarette and they sat, watching the skinny-legged kids of The Rocks play their game, smoking in a heavy silence.
Chapter Fifteen
The Daily Herald’s editor Rex Sinclair leant back in the worn leather chair behind his desk and studied Tilly. She became immediately suspicious. When the creases in the corners of his eyes grew longer and deeper, when he tugged at the belt that straddled his Father Christmas belly, he was on the verge of delivering news he was sure the recipient was not going to welcome.
Across from him, Tilly crossed one leg over the other and linked her fingers in her lap.
Her boss cleared his throat and met her gaze. ‘Tilly, I’m going to come right out and say it. I’m sending you to the women’s pages.’
He knew her too, and he held up a hand to quiet her before she’d even said a word. ‘Just wait. Bob Arnold is back from London next week. Joe Charlton too. Roger Cleary’s on the next plane out of New Guinea and George Cooper’s on his way back from Singapore. And we’ve got five young blokes starting as cadets in January.’
The news about Cooper’s return distracted her for half a moment but she zeroed in on the rest. ‘What does their return—and five new cadets—have to do with me being demoted?’
The Women’s Pages Page 15
