The Missing Heir

by Kylie Tennant

  Because we were still foundation members of the Peace Pledge Union many of the young men who went to gaol during the war as conscientious objectors came to stay with us in Laurieton to recuperate. They told me about gaols and I began to think that conscientious objectors and young girls picked up for living with servicemen — people who weren’t robbers or burglars — were having a thin time of it. My fatal curiosity, my go-and-find-out urge stirred and smouldered. Roddy could help in the holidays but he would have to make our living as headmaster of the Laurieton school while I investigated in Sydney.

  I chose the title from a book by Lord Dunsany: ‘And ever at the heels of regal night whispers arose saying: “Tell morning this.”’ I took a job in a delinquents’ home where the splendid headmistress was a Christian Socialist, one of our friends. I proved almost too successful in uncovering minor lapses and a threatened breakout. I later worked in a jam factory where the word would go around: ‘The Fleet’s in’ and there would be noticeable absenteeism next day.

  I lived in strange houses and semi-brothels. I made the acquaintance of prostitutes, criminals, warders. When we drew up my list, Roddy said thoughtfully: ‘And I think you should do a week in gaol.’ The suggestion did not appeal to me as I am a claustrophobiac. I become uneasy if there is not a door or window open. Thinking it over, I realised he was right as usual. You cannot describe what you have not experienced at first hand. Roddy and I began our campaign by taking the head of the Vice Squad out to lunch.

  ‘All you have to do,’ I told him, ‘is pick me up.’ They made nightly rounds of Sydney picking up girls.

  ‘But, Miss Tennant, you could sue us for thousands and get it.’ He would not be persuaded that I did not want to sue anyone for thousands. Gaols, I felt, would be improved by someone like myself studying them from the inside.

  Next we saw a man high up in the Chief Secretary’s Department. He was very sensible. ‘But, Miss Tennant, too many people would have to be in the know. They’d get it all tarted up for you.’ I could see he had a point. I would have to start at the other end.

  By now I had finished with the children’s court and was down at Central. When a case came up that meant the courts would be cleared the prosecutor would say: ‘Your honour, there is a young social student present. Has she your permission to remain?’ The magistrate would glance at me over his spectacles and nod genially. I took morning tea with the stout affable matron. I made friends with the officers of the court. This was going to prove a handicap.

  I was escorting a young lady to Sydney Hospital for medical tests — the social services were glad of anyone they could co-opt in those days and were always understaffed — when I said thoughtfully: ‘Doreen, if you wanted to be arrested how would you go about it?’

  ‘Easy,’ Doreen answered. ‘Go down to Number Sixteen with a sailor. Don’t stand on the third step because a bell rings and someone comes out. The police always make a dawn sweep and pick up all the girls.’ It was rumoured that if you didn’t have a five-pound note in the heel of your shoe you appeared in court next morning. Doreen was pleased to provide a sailor who would be happy to help my project and not wish for any sexual reward. She would meet me outside a large hotel in the centre of the city at six o’clock the next evening and she would introduce him. I didn’t have much time.

  I wrote a note to Roddy: ‘If you don’t hear from me, don’t worry, I’ll be in gaol.’

  Next morning I called in to Goodie’s flat and, with her love of adventure, good journalist that she was, she rang up her hairdresser and pitched him a tale that I had a film test that needed my hair dyed blonde. When I got back — it took most of the day — I peered into Goodie’s mirror, aghast. Goodie was looking through her wardrobe having contemptuously rejected my clothes as quite unsuitable. ‘There’s that hat Yuki was married in. It made her look like a whore. I don’t know what it will do for you. Now, very high heels! And remember not to stride! I’ll do your make-up.’ She was really pleased at the work of art she created.

  I had arranged to meet my old elocution mistress and headmistress that evening. If they didn’t recognize me no one would … But I waited outside the cafe where we were to have taken a sedate cup of tea and neither of them appeared. This was not a good omen. I proceeded to the hotel outside which I was to meet Doreen and her obliging sailor. Neither of them arrived. By this time I was really annoyed. I didn’t want to spend another night in this costume: high-piled reddish-gold hair, black slinky dress, a fetching confection of hat (I never wore hats), and the make-up, the very professional make-up.

  A young man who had been waiting outside this hotel approached me. ‘I was waiting for some friends,’ I told him, ‘but they don’t seem to be coming.’

  ‘Well, I am here,’ he responded gladly and we agreed to have something to eat together. His name was Harold but if you think Harold was a saint with gold curls you are mistaken. He was, I think, a boxer because he had a flattened nose and an air that I, from much experience, associated with professional crims, the men who ran the rackets — booze, women, black markets. Drugs, in those days, were not on the scale that later took them to the top of the money market.

  Over dinner I reflected that it would not be fair to Harold not to tell him what I was about. He probably had expectations. He looked as though he had never read a book but he said instantly: ‘I’ll help you.’ I have discovered that people would always help me. ‘You don’t know a damned thing. First we’ll go down to Miller’s Point… ‘Harold took me on a conducted tour of the city explaining who ran what. He was very knowledgeable. By midnight and with sore feet Harold and I had established ourselves on a seat by the Art Gallery where the Vice Squad were accustomed to come by and pick up any girl on the prowl. They never picked up any men.

  ‘Can’t understand it,’ Harold muttered. ‘This is the first night they’ve missed round here. Well what do we do now?’

  ‘I could break a window,’ I said firmly.

  ‘They’d give you bloody years,’ Harold wailed, as I picked up a rock and put it in my handbag.

  ‘Well, there’s one more option,’ I declared. ‘You know that little lane behind Central that leads to the charge room? Always policemen hanging about there if nowhere else. If I pretend to be drunk they’ll whisk me in. Now what do I say to them that will really annoy them?’

  ‘They don’t like to be called flatfeet,’ Harold offered. He told me some more things to say to policemen.

  He parted from me, rather nervously, at the corner of the lane and I never saw him again, although I tried to trace him to thank him for his help. He was probably a disappointed young man who recognised that a woman who had her mind set on gaol had no thought of dalliance or distraction.

  There was a group of policemen outside the door of the charge room and I came down that lane like a vocal whirlwind. They were astonished.

  ‘Beat it,’ one of them said, ‘or we’ll put you in.’

  ‘You think you will,’ I jeered. ‘You’re a set of …’ and I launched into the ribald expletives in which Harold had coached me.

  ‘Well, that’s it for you!’

  They advanced on me and ran me into the charge room. I remembered to flop my head forward so that my red-gold hair covered my face.

  The matron advanced fussing towards me: ‘Oh dear, dear,’ she said. ‘I’d better take that brooch. It will only be pinched.’ The brooch was all that was holding the top of Goodie’s dress together.

  ‘What’s your name?’ they asked, shaking me. I mumbled and took a swipe at them.

  ‘Well, she’s got money in her handbag. She’ll go out in the morning. Put down anything. What about Thelma Parker?’ This seemed to be a standby name they entered in the charge book.

  If they thought I’d go out in the morning they were much mistaken after all my trouble. ‘What’s this bloody great rock doing in her handbag?’ one of them asked dubiously.

  I was escorted to the cells which were a set of narrow wooden bunks with hair
mattresses — and some lice — opening on to a court with a lavatory. I kept up the drunk act and pretended to be sick in the lavatory. I then stretched out on the bunk and went tranquilly to sleep. ‘Gee, you were pissing last night,’ one of the inmates said admiringly in the morning.

  The next hurdle was the prosecutor, who had seen me sitting in court a score of times but didn’t recognise me.

  ‘What’s your name?’ he asked.

  ‘You’re the bloody copper. You find out.’

  He drew himself up. ‘I could send you to the Bay for a week if you won’t give your name.’

  ‘You think you can.’ It was really a password. When I went into court, the magistrate, who had genially allowed me to stay for the cases that were not public, was told I refused to give my name.

  ‘And what is your name?’ he asked.

  ‘I’ll give you a week to find out,’ I told him nastily. He was just as suggestible as the man who had taken my fingerprints, who was very polite and pleasant but with the casual, contemptuous politeness of a man who knew his clientele.

  I was this time placed in a cell by myself. On the back of the door, in semi-darkness, was a list of the prisoners’ rights which was in such fine print you would need a microscope to read it. Chuckling to myself, I lay down on the hard bunk and went to sleep. I was awakened by two men looking through the Judas spy hole in the door. ‘She’s asleep,’ they said incredulously. Why should I rave or scream? Now I had achieved my aim I could shed the personality of Thelma Parker, anonymous drunk.

  The door swung open in the afternoon. Another prisoner was thrust in. I didn’t open my eyes while the girl sniffled and her mother mourned: ‘And here’s two pies for you, love.’ When the mother had gone, I sat up. The prisoner was still sniffling. She didn’t recognise me.

  ‘Doreen!’ I hissed. ‘What happened to you? She still didn’t recognise me and then she got a shock.

  ‘You!’ She said, breathlessly. She couldn’t believe it.

  ‘I got picked up,’ she explained. ‘Honest I would’ve been there.’

  Doreen and I went out to the Bay together.

  The wardresses gave Doreen and myself a tongue-lashing when we arrived. ‘Look at them,’ they said in disgust. ‘Just one glance and you know what they are.’ My make-up was caking by this but I was cautious about taking it off. We were told we would be allowed two visitors. I nominated my mother, who would go anywhere, even to a gaol, if it would do me any good. And for the second name I said, carelessly, ‘John Hope of Christ Church St Laurence.’ I received another torrent of abuse from the wardress. How dared I say ‘John Hope’ for the Reverend Father! She was one of his parishioners, I found out later. When I asked John Hope why he hadn’t come out to visit me when I was in gaol he said: ‘I wouldn’t have been able to stop laughing.’ He was too well known at Long Bay, where the ladies of the street had on one occasion told a visiting parson: ‘Oh no, we’re all Father Hope’s people. We got to Christ Church St Laurence.’

  I was placed in a cell by myself overnight and then moved to the remand ward, which was a big dormitory. When I arrived the inmates eyed me suspiciously. When I left two ladies connected with night-clubs and a recent murder kissed me on the cheek and called me ‘love’.

  What I noticed, settling in comfortably and making friends, was that a number of mattress workers were physically not very good specimens. They all had something wrong with them — poor eyesight, bow legs, bad teeth, skin troubles, weak bladder. They probably took up mattress work from an early fear that they were unattractive.

  There was a wide range and sampling. They taught me to sing their cheerful bawdy songs after lights out. One, with a haunting tune, I think must have come out with the convict fleets:

  I was a little serving-maid down in Drury Lane,

  My master was so good to me, my mistress was the same,

  Till up came a sailor, a sailor from the sea;

  And that was the start of all my misery.

  He asked me for a candle to light his way to bed,

  He asked me for a pillow to rest his weary head.

  And being an innocent little maid and thinking it no harm

  I crept into the sailor’s bed to keep the sailor warm.

  I used it as my contribution at some very high-class parties. The chorus goes rousingly:

  Bell-bottom trousers and coats of navy blue,

  Let him climb the riggings like his pappy used to do.

  If it’s a girl bounce the darling on your knee.

  But if it’s a boy send the bastard off to sea.

  Among the inmates of the remand ward were girls recognisably familiar with gaol tradition. These had been issued with aprons of calico in a white and grey twill stripe. (No one issed me with one. It was clear I had only a temporary sojourn.) What intrigued me was to see these girls washing out their aprons, soaping them and stiffening them with soap. They then smoothed them out neatly against the wall at night and in the morning they were stiff and dry. Feminine self-respect demanded that the girls keep themselves neat and crisp under conditions where there was no starch. They made do with ‘pasting up’. They would have been taught this ritual by older inmates in a previous gaol and followed it almost automatically. I would not be surprised to find that the tradition of ‘pasting up’ had come down from convict times when starch would have been as unobtainable as it was in wartime and the feminine impulse to keep this modicum of civilised dress had values and benefits.

  I always think it is a great tribute to the human spirit that people will sing in gaols, detention homes, hospitals and armies. Wherever they are you can judge them by what they sing and learn new songs from each other. It gives me the shudders to see some beaming cleric in a geriatric home insisting that ‘the old people’ sing such bits of slop as ‘Daisy Daisy, give me your answer do’. An inane song, and you can tell ‘the old people’ are only singing out of politeness. ‘Daisy Daisy’ ought to be banned.

  The day before I was due back in court, having spent a satisfying time with these good companions (even the food wasn’t so bad as I like oatmeal porridge which everyone complained about), I was escorted before the prison doctor who demanded my life history. I thought this over carefully.

  ‘I am sorry,’ I said, ‘that I will have to refuse to say anything.’ I didn’t want to lie in case there was some criminal offence in giving false information. The doctor went plum colour: ‘Very well,’ he growled, ‘I shall send you to the Reception House and they’ll make you talk there.’ Of course he was perfectly right; because all the psychiatric cases were sorted and graded to lunatic asylums from the Reception House. You see, unless you fit into some kind of pigeon-hole, our system is likely to follow the Russian example and declare you a nut. I was obviously not a gaol-house type so I was a lunatic. If I didn’t play this move right I might be in a nut house for — as Harold would say — ‘bloody years’.

  I was separated from the authentic gaolbirds at Central and given a free ride up to Darlinghurst where the old stone buildings for lunatics were clustered beside Darlinghurst police station, across from the court house. A nurse immediately washed all the curls out of my hair and set me to dry in the courtyard. A young doctor came up to me on the same old what-is-your-name ploy. With dripping lank strands of ginger hair I must have looked mad indeed.

  ‘My name is Kylie Tennant,’ I said. ‘I want to get in touch with my solicitor and I’m not allowed to ring him. I don’t suppose you’ve read any of my books …’

  He didn’t hesitate. ‘I’ve heard of you,’ he said. ‘I’ll ring him for you.’

  Doctors don’t read much. But like most people, he was willing to help. I settled down to study the people in the ward, who all told me, as people are apt to do when they find a listener, of their troubled and terrifying lives. I reflected on the day when, as in Russia, the gaols will be merged with the psychiatric clinics and more and more people graded into them by degrees.

  I was really surprised that my claust
rophobia was holding up so well. I was staring through the iron bars when my heart leapt up to see noble Roddy — who had deserted his school and hurried down to Sydney in case something lethal had happened to me. He was posing as Gilbert’s law clerk — otherwise he couldn’t get in. Was I pleased to see him! Gilbert Johnson immediately mounted the rescue operation. ‘That brum little court,’ Gilbert said with astonishment. ‘I never knew such places existed.’ He practised in the Supreme Court and was horrified. The poor magistrate of the little court, which would have railroaded me, was cowed by the array of top legal talent. I was back in Central and released in time for the celebration lunch. Of course my mother and the Parent were there. My mother felt she had rather scored over the Parent by going to the gaol in person. She had turned up there with cigarettes looking elegant, brave but terrified. At the celebration lunch the Parent gave the impression that the whole thing had been his doing.

  The Parents and Citizens Association of Laurieton took my new blonde look with great complacency. They had all read about my week in gaol in the Sunday Sun. This came about because Tom Gurr, the editor, convinced me I must write him an article ‘to protect yourself.’

  ‘If you don’t,’ he said in a blackmailing tone, ‘you’ll have what happened to me. I turned out an article once about a homosexual case and it had my photograph on it. Two chaps were sitting in the gutter discussing the article and one, pointing to my photo, said, “And you can see what a poofter he looks.”’

  In the article I said that probably the police found the name Thelma Parker in my handbag. I had a call one evening from the Police Department who wished to see me at their office in Clarence Street. They wanted to charge me with public mischief.