The Women’s Pages

by Victoria Purman

  ‘I was a dancer before I got into the newspaper business. Ballet. I was never quite good enough for the Ballets Russes or anything like that, but I was perfectly adequate for the JC Williamson company. My sister Maud auditioned and was accepted too. Oh, we loved those years. We were paid, a pittance but we were paid. We danced in theatres all over the country, the Tivolis, the Royals and the Roxies. I’d always loved the theatre. We were both Lovelies.’ A wicked glint appeared in Mrs Freeman’s eyes. ‘We had to stand on stage, draped in white robes but topless for all intents and purposes. If we moved, you see, we would have to be paid as dancers, so we were as still as Greek marble statues until the curtains closed.’ She stood, extended her arms and gazed up at the ceiling, and then became completely still. Tilly wasn’t even sure she had blinked.

  ‘It was all tremendous fun while it lasted. The boys in the chorus were all queer as quinces and such wonderful company. We could go wherever we wanted with one of them on our arm and no one blinked an eyelid.’ She was lost for a moment in her memories. ‘And then it all ended.’

  Tilly was transfixed. ‘A dance injury?’

  Mrs Freeman returned to her chair. ‘There was a pregnancy, you see, to a man who lavished gifts and promises and who had even rented a lovely little apartment in Rose Bay overlooking the water.’

  ‘And that young woman was you?’ Tilly asked, afraid to but desperate to know.

  ‘My sister. Maud. She was two years younger than me and we looked so alike people thought we were twins. When Maud died in childbirth, I raised her daughter as my own. Started calling myself Mrs instead of Miss and gave up the theatre.’ Mrs Freeman reached for a photograph in a wooden frame and passed it to Tilly. ‘This is Lucille. Lucy.’

  The woman in the photograph had dark eyes, upswept wartime hair and an impish smile. She wore a nurse’s uniform.

  ‘She works at the Concord Military Hospital, has done throughout the war.’

  ‘You must be very proud of her.’

  ‘I am. She’s a wonderful young woman. Smart as a whip. I like being surrounded by smart young women.’

  Tilly took the compliment with a nod and a smile.

  The story hadn’t come back around to the secrets from upstairs and when Tilly raised her eyebrows in a question, the older woman smiled conspiratorially. ‘Her father is Robert Fowles.’

  ‘Bloody hell.’

  ‘I raised his daughter and I kept his secret.’

  Tilly’s mind whirred as she remembered the gossip that had swirled in the newsroom for months about Kitty Darling and her affair with an Important American. ‘Kitty Darling? She’s in the same boat, isn’t she?’

  ‘She has a secret, too. But she won’t wear the shame of it as much as other women have. Women from your neck of the woods, or mine. It’s all being taken care of. Knowledge is power, as I’m sure you know. And I have a certain power that I wish I’d earnt in a more traditional way, but they were the times I lived in and I had to survive for Lucy’s sake. I owed that to my sister. But now, I’ve decided I’ve spent too many years in the shadows of powerful men, keeping their secrets. I’m retiring.’

  ‘You can’t do that—’ Tilly began.

  ‘I most definitely can. I’ve met a lovely man and I’m going to retire to the south coast. Bermagui. Lucy is on her feet and I’m looking forward to the companionship of a gentleman who seems to love me. I’ve waited a long time for this kind of happiness, you see. Anyway, my time here is over. I wouldn’t have fought for you if I didn’t think you were up to the job.’

  ‘I’m delighted for you, Mrs Freeman. But I’m not certain about your offer.’ Was Tilly giving up any chance of being taken seriously at the paper if she relegated herself to the section that had always been the laughing stock of the newsroom?

  She corrected herself: the men’s newsroom.

  ‘Just like Sinclair, Tilly, I’m a relic of another era. Do you know I was born when women weren’t allowed to vote? Who knows what I might have been able to achieve if I’d come into the world a little later. I’ve been honoured and proud to be editor of the women’s pages for the Daily Herald for as long as I have. We’ve come a long way but there’s a long way to go, and women of your generation, and perhaps the next, will bring the change we desperately need.’

  The honour she was being asked to accept felt like a double-edged sword. Mrs Freeman obviously sensed her doubt.

  ‘You’ll get a pay rise. A decent one. You’ll be able to hold your head up high when you go upstairs as a section editor. You’ll be part of the editorial conferences. You will be able to make your mark in any way you choose.’

  Tilly thought on it. ‘Did you say we’ll have more space?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And how much leeway will I have to run the kind of stories I think are important?’

  ‘As much as any other section editor at the newspaper.’

  ‘My problem, Mrs Freeman, is that I don’t see in our pages the stories of women that I know. We’re not giving our readers the truth. We’re giving them a box of chocolates when they are surviving on porridge and weak tea.’

  ‘Some might say our readers want hope and escapism.’

  Tilly heard the clear challenge in Mrs Freeman’s words and she rose to it. ‘Yes, sometimes we want fashion and frolics, just like the men want The Phantom and the sports pages. But I believe women want more. They want to recognise themselves in our stories. If they are able to get a window into the real struggles women are facing, it may well help them understand and cope with their own. To know they’re not alone in their suffering. Imagine what a service we could do for those women?’

  Tilly thought of Mary.

  ‘And what about women raising children on their own? Having to cope with husbands who’ve abandoned them without a pound, trying to survive on a woman’s wage that can be half of what men earn for doing the same job, the threat of poverty at their door every waking minute?’

  Tilly thought of Martha.

  ‘And older women who have kept their families together, never having worked a paid day out of the home, but every waking minute within it. Caring for broken-down husbands who’ve been worked to death? Looking after other people’s children when they can’t or so they can work to earn just enough to pay the rent?’

  Tilly thought of her mother.

  ‘Women who gave their all during the war, making uniforms and bullets and canned food, picking grapes and turnips and digging potatoes, creating maps to keep an eye on the enemy and to keep us safe. Women who served as nurses and even doctors and Red Cross workers. I’m not reading about them and what they will do now the war’s over and their husbands may or may not have come back from the war in one piece, if at all. Where are they in our pages?’

  Mrs Freeman smiled proudly. ‘I knew there was something about you I liked.’

  Tilly felt stronger and clearer than she ever had. ‘Will I have a travel budget?’

  ‘Why? Where do you want to go?’

  And the idea arrived fully formed in her head. ‘Japan.’

  Mrs Freeman sounded as shocked as she looked. ‘Are you certain?’

  ‘I’ve never been surer of anything.’

  Mrs Freeman gave Tilly a wry smile. ‘Leave it with me.’ Tilly reached out a hand. ‘Yes. I’ll take it. Thank you,

  Mrs Freeman.’

  ‘For god’s sake, call me Dorothy.’

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  ‘I think that’s everything.’ Mary looked over her possessions and laughed. ‘It’s not much, is it?’

  There were two suitcases. A tea chest and a cardboard box filled with a few books, her shoes, some dishes from the kitchen she’d brought to the flat when she’d moved in, and lying on top, her heavy winter coat. Next to it, Bert’s kit bag and another cardboard box filled with his civvies. The measly possessions of lives interrupted but more than many had.

  ‘Just think,’ Tilly said. ‘Your new place is a blank canvas. You can buy a houseful of new furniture
for it. You won’t be sorry to say goodbye to those creaking old things that came with the flat.’

  ‘I’ve heard built-in robes are popular. With sliding doors.’ Mary’s face lit up. ‘Imagine all the space!’

  Tilly gestured to the suitcases. ‘You’re going to have to buy some more clothes to fill them.’

  ‘And I plan to, Tilly. Bert and I have talked and I’m going to stay in the Classified Advertisements department for a little while longer. There’s no point quitting just yet.’ Mary’s mouth trembled. ‘Just until we get on our feet.’

  Tilly went to Mary and clasped her hands. ‘You love each other. Surely that’s got to count for something.’

  ‘I do love him, although my faith in him and in God has been tested, which you know better than anyone. Perhaps this is what God has had in mind for me all along. To be Bert’s wife. To help him get through this. I’ve thought a lot about it. Prayed a lot about it. When he went to war, I think I did too.’

  ‘We both did,’ Tilly said.

  ‘I’m lucky in so many ways. He came home.’ Tears welled in Mary’s eyes and Tilly understood that this wasn’t a boast. Mary had always been humble and she was humble now about her good fortune, even when it had been so hard to bear. During the years Bert was away, she had remained a bubbling fountain, a wellspring of hope for Tilly, but she’d been hollowed out since Bert’s return. The war had sucked life and hope and her future away, had stolen the bright dreams of a woman who had not wished for much for herself, just a little life, enough happiness to get her through a day and a week and then a month and a year. She hadn’t expected a bounty, an unfair proportion, or a share of anyone else’s. Just hers.

  It had never seemed that much to ask.

  ‘Life is a gift, Tilly. And with existence comes pain as well as love. I’m grateful for my life. All of it.’

  With existence comes pain as well as love.

  Tilly had had enough pain for two lifetimes and yet she was still standing.

  ‘I see that smile on your face. Cooper?’

  Tilly felt heat in her cheeks. ‘Pain as well as love. I’ll remember that.’

  ‘I would ask if you’re going to be all right here by yourself but I think I know the answer.’

  ‘Now that I’m an editor I’ll be able to afford the rent on my own. Doesn’t life work in mysterious ways?’

  Mary enveloped Tilly in a hug and held on tight. ‘I wouldn’t have survived the war without you. You’ll always be my best friend. My dearest friend.’

  ‘And you mine.’

  When they let go of each other, Tilly dipped her chin and met Mary’s eyes directly and intently. Her words were almost lost in a sob. ‘Promise me you will look after yourself as well as Bert. I will always be here if you need me. When things get hard, come to me. I understand like no one else can.’

  Mary nodded. ‘I promise.’

  From the street, a car horn sounded and Mary darted to the window. ‘It’s Bert.’

  Mary hoisted Bert’s kit bag over her shoulder and lifted a suitcase. ‘I’ll be back with Bert for the rest in a minute.’ She laughed. ‘My carriage awaits!’

  ‘Your prince is downstairs, m’lady.’

  They held their smiles for just a moment longer.

  ‘He’s loved you for a long time, Tilly.’

  ‘Cooper?’ His name quickly spilled from Tilly’s lips with a gasp of surprise that Mary had been paying attention all this time.

  ‘Who else do you think I’m talking about? Bing Crosby?’

  They giggled and that made Tilly so happy. They’d laughed so much in their earliest days in the flat and it felt so good for it to be filled with it once more.

  ‘Why wait? That’s all I’ll say. The people I go to church with will tell you it’s a sin, but you live your life the way you want to live it. Bugger what anyone else thinks.’ Mary surprised even herself with that expression and covered her mouth with a hand. ‘Life is short. You know that better than anyone. Live, Tilly, for those who can’t.’

  Later that night, Cooper and Tilly sat at the kitchen table eating midnight toast. They’d just got out of bed, suddenly hungry for something other than each other, and while Tilly had toasted the bread, Cooper had poured whisky into two glasses. He was dressed in his trousers, she in his shirt. The windows overlooking Orwell Street were wide open to capture the summer breeze coming off the water and the sounds of the crowd at the Roosevelt drifted up to them.

  Cooper lifted his glass and nodded at Tilly to do the same. She tapped hers against his.

  ‘To the Daily Herald’s newest section editor.’

  They upended their glasses and Tilly waited for the warmth to seep into her bones.

  ‘I’m so bloody proud of you, Mrs Galloway.’

  ‘Call me Tilly.’ She wanted to hear the sound of it on his lips, in his baritone.

  He looked away. ‘What kind of a name is that for a girl anyway?’

  ‘It’s short for Matilda. The waltzing kind.’

  No one had ever called her Matilda, not even her mother or father when they’d been cross at her which, if Tilly was honest, wasn’t often. Martha was the one who got into scrapes, who fought with the other children in the street, who skived off at school and bossed around the other children. Then, she became Martha Elsie Bell. ‘Martha Elsie Bell, you come right here.’ Or ‘Martha Elsie Bell, you put that down.’

  ‘Matilda Galloway,’ Cooper said, slowly, as if he were rolling those six syllables around in his mouth to taste them, holding her gaze for every syllable.

  She had never been Matilda Galloway and wasn’t sure she would turn at the sound of it if anyone were to call out that name out in a crowd. Matilda Galloway had never existed. And Tilly Galloway seemed like someone she used to be.

  ‘So you grew up as Tilly Bell?’

  ‘That was my name until I was twenty-five.’

  ‘Bell,’ Cooper repeated. ‘Miss Bell. It sounds like a schoolteacher’s name, don’t you think? I’m sorry, Miss Bell. The dog ate my homework.’

  He still hadn’t said it. Cooper could evade like the best politician. But she was a reporter too and she knew his tricks by now.

  ‘Say it.’

  ‘I need a cigarette. Don’t happen to have any, do you?’

  She waited. She’d learnt to listen and she was listening now. Her heart was beating strong and fast in her chest. His breath was frustrated and his fingers tapped on the table. He poured himself another shot and it glug-glug-glugged into his glass. After he swallowed it, he let out a small hiss between his teeth.

  ‘Say it,’ she repeated.

  He met her gaze. ‘Truth?’

  ‘Truth.’

  ‘Calling you Mrs Galloway always reminded me, and I’ve needed reminding for a long time, that despite what I wanted you belonged to someone else.’

  She knew what he needed to hear. It was what she needed to say to him and to herself.

  She held on to her empty glass. When Cooper moved to fill it, she shook her head. ‘Archie was a good and decent man. And that had nothing to do with being polite to the grocer or holding the door open for me or anything like that. He had an innate goodness to him. He didn’t have big dreams, didn’t want to change the world. When we met, we wanted a good marriage, children and a house, and to give them the life our parents couldn’t give us. That was going to be enough for him. And for me.’

  ‘I can tell you loved him very much,’ Cooper said and there wasn’t bitterness or envy in his voice, simply a weary resignation.

  She nodded. ‘I did and I will miss him forever and I want you to know that I will never get over losing him. How it happened made it worse, too. It was so, so cruel to live in hope all those years. What kind of a way was that to end the war? To realise that he’d been dead longer than I ever knew him?’

  Cooper exhaled a deep breath. ‘You can’t know how I’ve suffered for you.’

  ‘But he’s gone, Cooper, and I want to go on living. I couldn’t bury two peop
le.’

  If he understood the implications of what she was saying, he didn’t seem willing to acknowledge it. ‘Tell me something. Your husband enlisted to fight and suffered tragically for it and all I did was write about his sacrifices and those of so many others like him. What kind of a man does that make me? I’m not fit to shine his shoes.’

  ‘What kind of man are you?’ Tilly repeated, hardly believing he’d asked her.

  ‘I’m the worst kind. I’m a man who’s been in love with a woman whose husband was a soldier and a prisoner of war. That’s who I am.’

  Tilly’s fingers trembled on her glass. Mary had been right. ‘You love me?’

  ‘How could I not? You’re beautiful and smart and you write like a dream.’

  Tilly waited as his compliments sunk in. She was a writer and an editor. She was so far from the girl who’d left Millers Point but in many ways she was still that sixteen-year-old girl, full of questions and ambitions and desires for a life bigger than her own to that point.

  ‘Well, I’m no Ernest Hemingway. Or should that be Martha Gellhorn?’

  Cooper smiled at her and there was hope in his expression, a question.

  ‘You and I are alive,’ she said quietly. ‘We mourn the dead. We weep for them. We will never forget them. But still we live. Twelve million are dead, Cooper, but you and I are here. We need to go on living for all those who won’t ever have the chance.’

  He stood and went to her, reached for her hand and pulled her to her feet. He slipped his arms around her waist and pulled her in so their bodies were touching, thigh to hips, breasts to chest. He pressed his lips to her forehead and murmured so softly she barely heard it. ‘Tilly.’

  ‘Again.’

  He kissed her closed eyes, her cheekbone, the soft plump of her cheek. ‘Tilly.’

  ‘Again.’

  His lips were a breath away. ‘Tilly.’

  And when she tilted her head back to meet his mouth, she whispered into it, ‘I’m yours.’

  In the morning Tilly woke to silence in the flat. She roused, listened for sounds of Cooper but there were none. On the pillow next to her, she found a folded piece of paper. She opened it.