The Bride of Almond Tree

by Robert Hillman

  Wes came along with Kado and his sister to show him the trout under Rusty Creek. The timber bridge was so dilapidated that you took your life in your hands driving a vehicle across it but people did, without concern. The three of them stood in the middle of the bridge while Wes pointed out the brown trout turning lazily in the clear water below. They were waiting for the insects that found some obscure nourishment in the rotted pylons of the bridge.

  ‘Watch,’ said Wes, and within a minute a big brown trout leapt clear of the water to take an insect from the air.

  ‘Big brute, that one,’ said Wes. ‘Two pound, more.’

  Then another trout leapt high enough to make a splash when it hit the water again. Kado said, ‘Hoo!’

  ‘Fly fisherman come here, climb down the bank and take usually two or three browns.’ Wes had to explain fly fishing to Kado, the hook, the feathers, the tapered fly line, the manner of casting.

  ‘Do you come?’

  ‘Sure. But I’m the only one in my community who eats flesh.’

  Wes led Kado down to the river and along the bank to a shaded pool. ‘Wait,’ he said, and in a short time a platypus appeared in the pool, came to the surface and floated for a few seconds, almost as if it were accommodating the visitors, then dived down out of sight. ‘Ai! What is it?’

  ‘A platypus. You saw that it has a bill like a duck? Very unusual creature.’

  Over the rest of the outing, Wes was able to show Kado a wombat, big mother of a thing that sat hunched outside its burrow, and kookas, currawongs, magpies, rosellas, king parrots. No koalas to be found. It all delighted Kado. ‘The strangest country.’

  The next day, Wes was off to Pentridge and Patty took Kado to the Victory mine. At the entrance to the mine, Patty told Kado a story from her childhood. ‘We came here when we were kids—me and Wes and Teddy my brother and another girl from the Friends community, Charlene. We played a game that was partly a ritual. We had to go into the mine one at a time, without any light, feeling our way along the walls to the end. We were pretending that the mine was the road to hell. The idea was that we had to find the end of the mine, knock three times on the rock, and cry out loud, “Hell, I defy you in the name of God!” then find our way back. We did this maybe twenty times, and always emerged back into the daylight exhilarated. And now you and I are going to do it together.’

  She took Kado by the hand and led him into the mine, cautiously, feeling the wall, avoiding the openings that had functioned as exploratory offshoots, further and further, breathing in the moist reek.

  ‘This is the end,’ said Patty. ‘Put both hands against the stone. Now knock with one hand and say, “Hell, I defy you in the name of God.”’

  Kado did as he was told, but even in the pitch dark, she could tell that he was grinning. Patty said the same words.

  ‘You know what is behind this wall?’ said Kado in the darkness. ‘Nothing. A place of no feeling either way, that’s hell. God is variety without end, everything in multiples, and then the multiples multiplied again and again. In hell, nothing, not even the feeling of lacking, just nothing.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Is this poppycock?’

  ‘No, my darling, it isn’t poppycock. But what about evil, what about Hiroshima?’

  ‘About evil I know nothing. Destruction, yes, that I witnessed, but evil is a mystery. Perhaps there is no such thing. Just ill-will.’

  ‘Sounds plausible.’

  They kissed in the darkness at the gates of hell.

  For three years husband and wife had discussed pregnancy, but used condoms from the hospital while the discussion was unfolding. It was finally agreed that there would be no babies. For five years, Patty had seen exactly what radiation poisoning did to babies whose mothers had survived the bomb. The cardiac and pulmonary problems, the horrible disfigurements. Six months ago a woman had given birth to a baby girl with no eyes. Blindness was common. And Patty had to assume that radiation levels in her body were high. There would be no babies.

  ‘It is a sorrow for you, and a sorrow for me. No babies. Just Hiroshima. Even adoption seems futile. There are more than one hundred thousand orphans in southern Japan alone. Could we pick out one, two, and give them a better life, but not the thousands upon thousands left in orphanages? I couldn’t do that, and I don’t think you could either.’

  Patty wasn’t all that sure. But she wouldn’t harp about it. His point was difficult to argue against. Two babies out of a hundred thousand?

  She took Kado to three meetings of the Friends, in three different houses. Wes sang at two of them. At the third, the gathering sat in silent prayer for an hour. Kado didn’t pray. He kept his eyes open. Beside him, Patty sat with her head bowed. Occasionally her lips moved. Kado knew what she was praying for: a child. All the discussion back in Hiroshima proved futile. Sleeping together in Wes’s old room, they had made love a number of times without condoms. There was no argument. Patty had simply decided to risk it. That was her prayer. That a baby would come and would not be blind or deaf or deformed. Kado took her hand and kissed it. A wish, unspoken.

  They carried that wish with them back to Hiroshima.

  Chapter 18

  ON 22 SEPTEMBER the referendum to ban the Communist Party of Australia was held, and it lost narrowly. The news made its way into Pentridge a few days later and Beth danced on a table in the laundry and sang with gusto, ‘The Red Flag’, just as she had in Red Square. Leonie was the only other woman who knew the words, and joined in. ‘My old man’s a commie,’ she said, ‘in an on-again, off-again way. Taught us kids the song.’

  But when Wes made his next visit with Middlemarch, months after the lovemaking in the cell of the poisoner, Beth was gone.

  Bev took Wes into her office. ‘Two blokes from Canberra came and took her away. Not coppers. Bureaucrats in daggy suits. They had a warrant to move her to—wherever. Wouldn’t tell me a damned thing. Wouldn’t tell Beth anything neither.’

  Wes felt sick. ‘Who can tell me?’

  ‘Don’t know. I’ll find out what I can. Leave me a number and I’ll ring you if I hear anything.’

  Wes stayed with Di. She phoned a friend in the Department of External Affairs in Canberra, who knew nothing. She tried ASIO, but nobody answered the phone. None of the comrades had any information. Finally Wes phoned Bob Hardy, told him Beth had been moved from Pentridge and asked him to call Di if he was contacted by anyone.

  No news came from any source. Wes rang every prison in Victoria. He allowed ludicrous scenarios to play out in his imagination. Beth secretly executed. Beth tortured for information. Lillian came to Melbourne and waited outside the office of the premier while staff came and went for hours, only to be told that the premier would not see her. Bob Hardy went to the office of the local federal member in Burforth, Terry Mills, and pleaded with him to do something. Terry represented the Country Party, in coalition with the governing Liberals, but served on the backbench, no influence. Nonetheless, Terry was outraged and got into the ear of the Minister for Supply, Olly Beale, a friend, who would see what he could do. No promises.

  It was three months of intolerable distress for Wes and the Hardys before Terry Mills telephoned with an address in Canberra where something might be learnt. ‘Just go to reception at the Department of External Affairs. You can take one family member or close friend of your daughter.’ He gave a date and time in March 1952.

  They took the bus to Canberra and arrived well in time for the two o’clock appointment. The receptionist called an assistant, a young woman, to show them to an office on the second floor, utterly featureless, nothing on the desk other than a blank nameplate, nothing on the walls.

  ‘Won’t be long,’ said the assistant, in the manner of assistants who have no idea how long the wait might be.

  It was an hour. At five past three, a man of about forty buttoning up a blue shirt came through the door. His full head of auburn hair was wet. He unbuckled the belt of his trousers to stuff his shirt inside, apo
logising all the while. ‘I’ve been in the minister’s pool, do apologise for not watching the clock. It’s not Bondi, which I adore, but at least I was able to put in a few laps. If they offered me a job in Sydney, I’d take it just for Bondi. In your country, I must say, the best beaches in the world. I’m from Cambridge. The only time you ever get in the water is when you fall into the Cam.’ Then he remembered to shake hands. ‘Bob Hardy, is it, and this is?’

  ‘Wes Cunningham. I’m a close friend of Beth Hardy.’

  ‘Oh, so you’re Wes. You’re the Quaker. You look remarkably like anyone who isn’t a Quaker. I won’t give you my name if you can bear the incivility. Or if you like, call me Bill. Now, we have some documents for you to sign.’

  He called loudly, ‘Naomi!’ and the young woman who had shown Wes and Bob Hardy to the bland office popped her head in the door.

  ‘Those two documents I drafted last week, fetch them in, sweetheart.’

  Naomi returned in less than a minute with a thin manila folder.

  Bill opened the folder, pushed one document across the table to Bob and one to Wes. A third he kept for himself. What the documents recorded was brief. Bill (as he wished to be known) allowed Wes and Bob a couple of minutes to read the document.

  ‘Now let me summarise so that we all understand the same thing, the same facts. If either or even both of you divulge anything from this meeting, other than the destination of Elizabeth Hardy, you will be arrested and charged and will certainly go to prison. Please sign in the appropriate place, in just one moment. Naomi!’

  Naomi reappeared, as rapidly as if she’d been waiting poised on the other side of the door for this very summons.

  ‘Naomi, my love, you will witness the signatures of Robert James Hardy and Wesley Cunningham.’

  Wes and Bob signed, because there seemed no alternative. And Naomi witnessed both signatures. ‘Do you have a comb in your kitbag, sweetheart?’

  Naomi left the room and returned with a green comb. Bill combed his hair back, then asked Naomi if he looked ‘the goods’. Naomi said that he looked fine.

  ‘Pardon my vanity,’ said Bill, ‘if you can find it in your hearts.’

  Everything he said was impeccably polite and completely insincere.

  ‘Back to business. Your daughter, Mister Hardy, is in Moscow.’

  Bob rose out of his chair. ‘In Moscow? In Russia?’

  ‘Yes, the Moscow that is in Russia.’

  Wes, who had remained calm outwardly, asked simply, ‘Why?’

  ‘We traded her and seven other Soviet agents for one Briton taken in East Berlin. As you may surmise, this one Briton is extremely important to us, much more important than the Russians realise. They think we want him back because he is the son of a lord and related to the Royal Family, in a distant way. Not at all. But they have driven a hard bargain. The seven agents we could muster—mostly misfits and yahoos—were not enough. Then one of our people remembered your daughter, and the Russians accepted her, I think to forestall us dragging in one of their diplomats to make up the numbers. So there you have it. She’s in Moscow.’

  Wes said, ‘Did she choose to go?’

  ‘No. But she had no say. We sought and were given the approval of your prime minister and his cabinet. To what extent he relied on his cabinet’s endorsement I couldn’t say. I think he enjoys the authority to do whatever he wishes. He could propose building a bridge from Canberra to London and he’d certainly have his way. And a relative of the Royal Family? Well.’

  ‘Why were we not told of this months ago?’ said Wes. Bob Hardy was too upset to say anything.

  ‘Not possible.’

  ‘And how long is she there for?’

  ‘For as long as they wish. But my experience with people like Elizabeth—which is to say, what the Americans call chicken feed; she’s unimportant—is four years. About four years. There’s something about four years that makes the Russians feel that justice has been served. Three years, too soft for the NKVD. Now for some good news—we have not cancelled her Australian citizenship. If it is four years, as I suggest, they will put her to work translating, since she speaks Russian. Then she can apply to emigrate to Australia. If she does, we will be urging the Australian Government to view the application sympathetically. You can write to her, but your letters will be heavily censored by the Russians. She can write to you, but once again, the letters will be subject to rigorous censorship. However, once every three months she will be visited by a British diplomat, confirming her welfare, and he can smuggle a letter out that will not be censored. And he can smuggle a letter in, which will go uncensored. It’s the only consolation we can offer.’

  Wes wanted to know if he could visit her in Moscow.

  ‘Alas, no. Her correspondence with her family for these coming few years will be epistolary.’

  ‘Will be what?’ said Bob Hardy.

  ‘By way of letters. Cup of tea? While I answer any other questions you have? And provide an address for you in Moscow for Elizabeth. Naomi!’

  The ever-reliable Naomi was there in a few seconds.

  ‘I’m going to have Naomi prepare Earl Grey all round. Trust me, you’ll be in raptures. No milk in Earl Grey, so I won’t ask you, and better without sugar. Pardon me while I void my bladder.’

  Left alone, Bob Hardy dried his eyes with his handkerchief.

  ‘Poor kid. Poor Beth. This bloke is a born bastard. I’d like to wring his neck.’

  Wes said, ‘Bob, my feeling is that most of what they’ve done is illegal. But we wouldn’t be able to do a thing for Beth at this stage.’

  Wes was right. Within a month, the news of Beth’s exile had made its way into the newspapers, but discreetly. Red girl spy traded to Soviet masters. The article in the Argus, a handful of column inches on page 22, said that Beth had gone to Moscow, ‘of her own free will’ and the deal had secured the release of an ‘innocent diplomat held by the Soviets’. Beth’s comrades in the unions were not about to make a big deal out of a fellow comrade being sent to live in the flourishing heart of communism. Middlemarch was on hold. Four years was shorter than Beth’s remaining prison term in Pentridge (with good behaviour), Wes reasoned, but he wouldn’t see her, kiss her. He felt at times on the frontier of insanity with grief.

  The whole of the Hardy family, less Beth, were brought together to reinforce the need to be tight-lipped about Beth. Pete, Gus’s husband, in charge of a thousand sheep now that his wife was occupied with kids in a reluctant way, and Algy, Maud’s husband, who worked with the Ayrshires, were both bad drinkers and had spread a story in the Victoria pub that Beth had been kidnapped by the Russians, and had to be reprimanded by Bob.

  ‘Beth’s in Moscow, she was traded, and that’s all you can say to anyone. Got it?’

  The meeting was, as usual in the daylight hours, on the back porch. The kids, the three of them, were faring for themselves, also as usual. Lillian kept an eye out for anything dire, a brown snake in one of the kids’ hands, Billy steadying himself to brain Jonathan with half a house brick—these things had happened in the recent past. Gus and Maud restricted their interventions to half-hearted calls of ‘Keep it down!’

  Franny said, ‘What do you prefer, locked up in Pentridge or free in Russia? Probably loving it.’ It was accepted that Fran was only too glad to see her sister spirited off to the other side of the world. The longer the better; forever best of all.

  Pete said that he’d be prepared to go to Moscow and find Beth and smuggle her back to Almond Tree. He had an appetite for fantasies of triumph, always backed by Algy with, ‘That’s the shot,’ and ridiculed by Gus, with, ‘Pete, shut up.’ This time Gus asked him if he intended to take on the entire Red Army.

  ‘We’ll do nothing,’ said Bob. ‘We get her letters, as we hope. We reply. We wait for four years and bring her back here.’

  ‘And don’t go blabbing in the pub,’ said Maud. ‘You kids, quieten down or I’ll be out there with my smacking hand!’

  Chapter 19


  SO FAR AS he could, Wes distracted himself from his distress by accepting building projects willy-nilly. His own house, ‘our house’, was finished, but he was working on two other houses with his brother Teddy, and also installing a sunroom for Jolene and Jimmy Kemp out on May Pole Street next to the fire station. He was at the Kemps’ when Bob Hardy pulled up in his Dodge with a letter from Beth. The letter had taken much longer than three months—it was June when it arrived. It was in an envelope of coarse-grained brown paper, redirected from the British Embassy in Berlin and bearing a number of stamps, one depicting Comrade Lenin and a British one depicting HMS Victory. The letter inside, written by Beth, was nonsense. It read: ‘I am living among the heroic people of Moscow in happy circumstances. Do not be concerned about me. My quarters are very comfortable. I am translating English into Russian. I hope you are all well, including Wes. Love, Beth.’ These were the remaining sentences. Three-quarters of the letter had been blacked out.

  ‘Not much to go on, is there?’ said Bob. ‘But I was glad to see it. We have to hope and believe that we’ll get something through the diplomat that the Pommy spoke about.’

  Wes was happy at least to see Beth’s name at the bottom of the letter. And his own name mentioned.

  Three weeks later, a letter was forwarded from the Department of External Affairs in Canberra.

  Dear Family, How in God’s name did this happen? I understand I was in a package that brought about the return of a British goon being held by the Russians. But why me? A nothing from Australia. At least I can tell you the truth in this letter. I live in a squalid one-bedroom apartment close to Gorky Park, but I can’t see the park because the windows are so filthy on the outside. I share the place with a complete moron from Yorkshire called Eva who migrated to Russia two years ago. She talks about nothing but Marx and the superior power of Soviet weapons. God, this was me! How did you put up with me? But I can’t say a word in criticism because she would inform on me and my salary would be cut. I have to live on the equivalent of around one pound a week, buy all my own food. The apartment is free, though. My job is translating American textbooks into Russian. My Russian grammar isn’t all that good, but it’s better than my supervisor’s. Nearly all the textbooks are about oceanography—dear family, I can’t tell you how tedious it is. I have each Monday off work and I am allowed to go to various sites in Moscow. But I have to get permission from the police and fill in a form. There’s a police station on the ground floor of the apartment block, and a week ago on a Monday I filled in a form giving my destination as Gorky Park. A policeman read my form and said, ‘There is no such place in Moscow.’ I told him it was just across the road, but he said again there was no such place in Moscow. I said, okay, I’ll go to the Pushkin Museum. He said, ‘To get to the Pushkin Museum you must cross Gorky Park.’ I said okay, I’ll cross Gorky Park. He said, ‘There is no such park in Moscow.’ So I stayed home and listened to Eva babbling on about the Yorkshire Workers Collective.