The Women’s Pages

by Victoria Purman

  She took one slow and comforting sip of tea at a time and stared at her name on the envelope on the table.

  Mrs Galloway.

  She’d been a widow longer than she’d been a wife. And she hadn’t been anyone’s since July 1942, when Archie had drowned in the hull of a torpedoed ship somewhere in the dangerous oceans off Luzon in the Philippines. Before Cooper told her where Luzon was, she’d never heard of it and now it would forever be her husband’s watery grave.

  How oddly strange to be addressed as one thing but to have been another entirely for so many years. Should she stop using that honorific? Was it fraudulent now to call herself someone’s wife? Tilly knew widows. You couldn’t grow up around Sydney’s wharves and not know a woman whose husband had been crushed, drowned, poisoned or just plain worn out too early, not know the etiquette. Those women remained, sadly and proudly, honorifically Mrs their whole lives. Would it be different now, a generation on, and with so many husbands having been sacrificed to win the war? And if she didn’t call herself Mrs Galloway any longer, was she dishonouring Archie and all he had meant to her?

  Although gossamer threads of those questions had been in the back of her mind since his last letter, she still had no answers. And now, this letter, addressed to Mrs Galloway, Mr Galloway’s widow. Letters had assumed such importance during the war, for everyone separated by it. Every day she had wondered would a letter arrive today? That thought had sustained her during what she’d assumed had been Archie’s captivity. And then, as time slowly passed, she’d begun to think of it in months. Would a letter arrive in July? Or perhaps August? And as those months stretched out to become years, she’d stopped hoping altogether.

  She picked up the envelope and slipped out the letter. It was a single page with the newspaper’s name printed in a staid dark blue across the top. She almost knew the words by heart now but she read it again, the words a murmur on her lips.

  Dear Mrs Galloway. A line had been struck through her name and seeing it again made her breath catch in her throat. Then, above it, in a hand that she did recognise was her name: Tilly.

  It was with the greatest sadness that I learnt the news of the loss of your husband, Archibald. Please accept my most sincere condolences at your loss and the commiserations of all at the newspaper. These have been trying years for so many, none more so than those who’ve lost someone so loved and precious. We don’t expect you back at work for two weeks, when you will commence your new role, which I hope will go some way towards sustaining you in this time of such loss.

  With my utmost sympathy,

  Rex Sinclair

  Tilly set the letter on the table. She had accepted the offer of compassionate leave. She had known right away she would need it. How could she possibly be interested in the lives of other people when she couldn’t even feign an interest in her own?

  In the long hours of each night since Cooper had told her the news, she had wandered around the flat, her feet cold on the floorboards, thinking about June 1942. Archie’s last days on this earth. By then he’d been away for more than twelve months but his regular letters had kept her hopeful that he was all right. He’d seemed buoyed by his enlistment and had often written during his training about how proud he was to be serving king and country. In his letters, he’d been as he always was: the happy-go-lucky, sweet-natured man she’d married. And who had she been then? A wife who still carried in her heart dreams for their future together.

  Every hope and dream she’d had for them since June 1942 had been a mirage. The agony of that realisation was unbearable. Why hadn’t she known? Why hadn’t she felt it, somehow, that he was gone? Shouldn’t she have if she’d loved him so? Such a cruel, cruel trick to play on someone, for their loved one to be dead and for them not to know.

  Tilly folded the letter and slipped it into its envelope. The rest of her tea had gone as cold as her heart.

  She went back to bed.

  ‘Tilly?’

  At the sound of the gentle and familiar knock on the door, Tilly roused from her drowsy half-sleep. She couldn’t guess what time it might be. Her days and nights had begun to blur into each other and her sleep had developed the same pattern.

  ‘Come in, Mary.’

  The bedroom door opened hesitantly. Mary stepped quietly across the rug and found a perch on the end of Tilly’s bed. Mary wore her Sunday best: a tweed suit with a spray of the tiniest white flowers pinned to one lapel. On her head she wore a pale blue velvet hat with a half-veil and a feather, and the gloves she held in one hand exactly matched the blue of her hat.

  ‘You look lovely,’ Tilly told her croakily, blinking against the light spilling into her bedroom.

  ‘Thank you.’

  Tilly propped herself up on her elbows, realising with a start that Mary was dressed for church which meant it must still be Sunday. How had a whole week passed since receiving the letter?

  ‘I should get out of bed.’

  Mary placed a firm hand on Tilly’s leg and held it. ‘Stay in bed. You need your sleep. I hope you don’t think I was lying awake listening for it, but I heard you up and about during the night. Since a week has already passed since … I thought your sleep might have settled a little by now.’ Mary sighed and reached for Tilly’s hand. ‘Poor Tilly. I wish I knew what to do and what to say. If I knew I would do it, a thousand times over. You know that.’

  Mary’s eyes welled and Tilly said, ‘I know you would.’

  ‘There’s a pot of tea in the kitchen. Shall I bring you a cup?’

  ‘No, thank you. I really should get up.’ Tilly knew Mary well enough not to have to stifle the yawn that overcame her. ‘I suppose it must be past nine o’clock if you and Bert are heading out to church already.’

  ‘It’s just me. Bert’s not coming,’ Mary said, her voice brittle.

  ‘Is Bert unwell?’ Tilly asked.

  Mary slipped on her gloves and avoided Tilly’s eyes. ‘Bert’s in a dispute with God just now. And I must admit, he’s not the only one. But while my answer is to pray harder, Bert’s is to not pray at all.’ Mary shrugged her shoulders and sniffed. ‘The archbishop said last week that we can’t expect all the men to rush back to the pews now they’re home. They might have prayed on the battlefield to get out of nasty scrapes but that all disappears once they’re home. I hope it’s not forever.’ Mary knitted her fingers together. ‘We’re all doing the best we can, aren’t we, Tilly? The best we can with what God has handed us. He has his reasons for everything and I need to keep praying until he gives me the answers I’m looking for.’

  ‘I wouldn’t mind some answers myself. Say one for me, will you?’

  ‘I always do,’ Mary said as she stood. ‘I’m doing a roast lamb for lunch with all the trimmings. And a rhubarb crumble for dessert. I even managed to find some cream.’ Mary paused, her lower lip trembling. ‘If you feel like eating, that is.’

  Such simple kindness. Tilly wondered how she would ever thank her friend.

  ‘I’ll be up and spiffy in no time. I might have even peeled the potatoes by the time you get back. Tell me you found some potatoes?’

  ‘I found some potatoes and they’re already done,’ Mary smiled. ‘I’ll see you after church.’

  Tilly padded through the flat in her bare feet. She would have a shower and get properly dressed today. She would wash her hair and take some time with it, pin it into curls around her face so she might resemble the Tilly she used to be. She would massage cold cream into her tired face, so crumpled from all the tears, and brush on some mascara, even if she might not be able to stop it running down her face at some point during the day. And she would smile at lunch and eat roast lamb as if she were able to taste it and enjoy it. Because everyone had given her advice on how to cope with her loss and her grief and eating seemed to be at the heart of it.

  Her mother’s wisest words had been delivered with a warm embrace and a kiss on Tilly’s cheek. ‘Be brave, Til. That’s what Archie would have wanted.’

  Her
father had held her to his chest and said through his own gruff tears, ‘Those bloody Japs, Tilly. Those bloody Japs.’

  Mary had been her rock and her advice had been something Tilly was desperate to make real. ‘Life goes on, Tilly. You’re going to get through this.’

  She would have to dig down deep to find that strength from somewhere. She rubbed at her stinging eyes and hoped a good hot shower might be a start.

  She stumbled into the hallway and pushed open the bathroom door before realising that Bert was bending over the sink brushing his teeth. But that’s not all she saw.

  Her ragged cry startled him and he shot to standing and spun around to face her in half a second, before she could even understand that he’d moved.

  ‘Get out,’ he screamed and the sheer force of it, like a hurricane gale in her face, stole the breath from Tilly’s mouth. Bert waved his razor like a weapon and Tilly tried to move but her feet were numb so he gripped her by the shoulder, hard and tight, his fingers on her like a vice, spun her around and shoved her so hard into the hallway that she hit the wall on the opposite side of the door with a bone-jarring thud.

  She stood there for a moment, dazed, feeling pain creep up her left elbow and cheek, trying to find her balance, trying to unsee what she’d just seen.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  The livid scars on Bert’s back streaked in every direction, like gnarled threads of a damaged spider’s web, welded together like strands of melted cheese. The savage crisscrosses of raised skin were shiny and twisted, pale scars meeting red and angry welts, and the soft skin along his spine in the middle of his back was the only place untouched, like an equator separating his two worlds of pain.

  Everything Tilly had read and tried to forget about the Japanese and their treatment of prisoners of war blazed anew in her memory. Bert was one of those men who’d been beaten and brutalised. Who could think anything else, having been confronted with such clear and barbaric evidence? And it wasn’t just the scars that had scared her. When they’d exchanged that glance at each other in the bathroom mirror, his face had contorted in a nightmare of pale white terror; his voice a primal growl, his teeth bared, his hand raised in threat.

  And she hadn’t been able to look away because every thought sprinted towards Archie and the scars he might have borne when he was murdered. Had he too been beaten? Had he suffered as terribly as Bert had? The agony of the not-knowing rose up in her belly all over again and she didn’t try to fight the tears that welled and spilled, for Bert, for Mary, for herself and for her beloved Archie. What a terrible price they had all paid to have won the war.

  ‘Tilly.’

  Crouched on the floor in the hallway now, she opened her eyes. Bert was hovering over her, his arms above his head. Her own instinctively braced, and she pleaded in a supplicating, tiny voice she barely recognised as her own. ‘Don’t hit me, Bert.’

  There was a gasp and she saw he had been hurriedly pulling a singlet over his head to cover himself. He swore and she heard retreating steps. ‘Tilly, no. I’m so, so sorry. You don’t have to be afraid. I won’t hurt you. I promise.’ His palms were raised as if he were urging her back and his pleading was pitiful.

  He covered his face with his hands and jerkily fell to his knees. ‘I’m so dreadfully sorry. Oh, crikey. Tilly. I’m so sorry.’

  She struggled to her feet without his help. Her head pounded and her heart slammed against her ribcage, adrenaline coursing so hard in her veins she could only see in blurry black and white. She splayed a hand against the wall to steady herself. She could barely breathe. They were alone. Bert had almost attacked her, and when she realised the danger she was in she was overcome with tremors so strong it was as if she were standing in an earthquake.

  ‘Oh, god. Oh, god. Oh, god.’ Tears streamed down Bert’s face. She walked away from him and went to the settee in the living room but he followed her. Her hip pinched as she sat. When she gasped, Bert tucked a pillow behind her and gently eased her backwards to rest against it. He sat next to her and covered his mouth with a hand to hold in his sobs. ‘I didn’t see you,’ he croaked. ‘Please, for the love of god, don’t come up behind me like that ever again.’

  Then he hunched so far over his knees that his face was hidden and Tilly’s heart ached for this man, this broken stranger.

  ‘I’ll be okay, Bert,’ she said quietly and lifted a hand to pat him on the back. She left it there, feeling his body tremor, for half an hour.

  When Mary returned from church, Tilly was setting the table for lunch and Bert was putting the joint into the oven.

  ‘Well,’ Mary exclaimed, her face bright and as happy as Tilly had seen since Bert had come home. ‘What’s going on here?’ She propped her hands on her hips and widened her eyes, as if she’d stumbled upon a lovely secret.

  Bert closed the oven door and strode to his wife, kissing her long and lovingly on the cheek before wrapping his arms around her. Mary visibly glowed. ‘Tilly and I thought we’d have everything done by the time you got home, love. I thought you and I might have a stroll before we eat. Get out into the sunshine for some fresh air. It’s a lovely day out there, isn’t it?’

  Mary blushed with pleasure. ‘That sounds marvellous. Let me put my hat and gloves away, Bert, and I’ll be right with you.’

  Mary shot Tilly a glance before leaving the room. When the sound of happy footsteps on the hallway floorboards filled the flat, Bert quickly moved to Tilly’s side. She flinched.

  He kept his voice low. ‘Please, Tilly, I’m begging you. Don’t say anything to Mary. I couldn’t stand for her to know what happened.’ He searched her face and he looked so genuinely forlorn and heartbroken that Tilly gave him the only answer she could.

  ‘Of course,’ she said in an immediate attempt to reassure Bert but the words had fallen from her lips before she could fully think through the implications of what it meant to keep this secret from Mary. Her mind whirred.

  ‘Bert, I—’ she started but Bert stepped in to her and cut her off.

  ‘You’re a good sort, Tilly. Mary’s been telling me so and now I’ve seen it with my own eyes.’ He patted her arm and hurried to his wife. A door opened and closed and then there was happy laughter for possibly only the second time since Bert had been home.

  Tilly grasped for the kitchen table and sat. She dropped her head in her hands and breathed deep. Seeing Bert’s scars had brought home the brutal reality of everything she’d heard in the newsroom and read in the paper. The senseless, sadistic and inhuman beatings, the decapitations, the shootings and starvation, the forced marches of Sandakan and the slave labour of the Thai–Burma railway. Of beri-beri and dysentery and dengue fever. Bert had clearly suffered so much and was still suffering and now she had made a promise, albeit reluctantly, to a man she barely knew to conceal his actions from his wife out of gratitude for his service, guilt that he’d suffered and the pretence for his wife that he was normal.

  Tilly wondered, not for the first time, about what Bert had endured.

  The newspaper had been running a column called ‘Name Your War Criminal’ for weeks, in which returned soldiers named their tormentors. It was one of the newspaper’s most popular columns. George Cooper had been interviewing POWs with revenge on their minds, making regular visits to the soldiers’ hospital at Concord to speak with those who were recuperating, and visiting those who were already back in the folds of their families at home. Tilly had developed a macabre morning ritual in which she read each name and the details of their crimes. It fed her insatiable and crippling curiosity about Archie as efficiently as manure on a vegetable crop, helping her fill in the gaps about what had happened in Rabaul between February and July 1942.

  Lieutenant Fukuda of the Shimo Sonkrai Camp in Burma was accused of being directly responsible for thousands of deaths on the railway, forcing prisoners to walk one hundred and ninety-five miles in sixteen days without rest. Private Toyama at the same camp was described as a sadistic brute who was only happy when clubbi
ng or bashing prisoners. Sergeant ‘Monkey-Face’ Hoiki, a guard at Changi, ordered any sick prisoners to be ‘lollypopped’ which was, Tilly had read with dread, a slang term for beheading. Many of the three thousand five hundred men who lost their lives on the railway died by his sword.

  Archie’s final letter to her had been a lie, she realised, and he’d lied to protect her because he’d loved her. He’d written that he was in excellent health and in good spirits and that the Japanese had been treating him well. If he’d told the truth in his letter it would have been censored anyway. So she’d believed for all those years that he was being cared for according to the protocols of the Geneva Convention, that he was being fed and provided with medication if he needed it, that he was receiving care packages from the Red Cross and all her letters.

  None of it had been real.

  The next day, Tilly met Cooper at Burt’s Milk Bar on Darlinghurst Road, just across from the train station. She hadn’t wanted to dress and make up her face and leave the flat, she hadn’t wanted to see anyone, but Mary had urged her to get some fresh air and as soon as Cooper had promised more news about Archie and the Montevideo Maru, Tilly had agreed. Perhaps Cooper was the only person she knew who could understand what the mystery of Archie’s death meant to her. He solved puzzles and deciphered riddles every day in his quest for the truth. And that’s what she was after.

  She’d arrived a little early and squeezed into the last available booth in front of the counter. She waved away a waitress, deciding to wait for Cooper to arrive before she ordered anything, and waited, alone in the crowded cafe, wondering how it was possible to feel so lonely in the midst of so many people. Booths all around her were filled with young women in twos and threes, their hair primped and curled, swept off their faces and tied with pretty ribbons. Young men gathered outside the curved window, looking inside at the young women and a ritual as old as time played out before her. A mating ritual, a peacock strut, a flip of the hair and a smile. She felt old suddenly. She envied them and the endless possibilities of their lives, stretched out before them now in peacetime. They were on the verge of an adulthood that she couldn’t even imagine. Her life had been shaped by her parents’ hard-scrabble lives and two wars and the Depression in between. By her marriage and all the years she’d lived, as if preserved in aspic. Wait until the war’s over. Wait until Archie gets leave. Wait until you get a letter. Wait until Archie comes home. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait.