‘That’s what I thought.’ She was able to hold her voice steady again. She followed him to the fire, its flames almost transparent in the sunlight, only the coals glowing. The billy next to it did indeed need only nudging and two minutes brought it to the boil again.
He threw in tea then she watched as he did the traditional bushie’s trick of taking up the wire handle in a twist of bark to make a pot holder and swinging it around his head three times to help it brew. He grinned. ‘Every man who does that is boasting. Have you ever tried it?’ He shook his head at his own question. ‘Of course you have.’
‘Bill showed me how. She was a drover, married to our head stockman. He’s retired. Well, retired in that he sleeps in till six am sometimes. Their son Matt is head stockman now.’
‘I’ve met him.’
Of course he had. Matt had been at Gallipoli, had lost an eye there, and so had survived the war. He was sent back home to live among the cows, but without the pension a white man would have got. What pain, injustices and memories had Matt asked this man to help him cope with?
John poured tea into an enamel cup. ‘I’d offer milk and sugar, but I don’t have any. And, no, thank you, that wasn’t a plea for sugar.’ Another grin. ‘I probably eat better than any man in the district, with so many bringing me “a little bit of what the missus made last night”.’
‘Is your name really John?’
‘You must know it isn’t, or you wouldn’t have asked. Though I suppose it is John, now. You were crying for yourself, this time,’ he added.
Oh, this man knew people. Saw people, in the way that few did, in the ways Miss Lily had tried to show her.
‘Yes,’ she admitted. ‘But I’ve no right to cry. I have so much.’
‘What you have doesn’t compensate for what you’ve lost. Who did you lose that you loved?’
She could not bear this. Had never been able to bear it, adding up the totals of the dead. Suddenly, here, as a currawong sent its long liquid cry down the gully, she was able to. ‘Where should I start?’
‘Tell me in order.’ His words might have been the wind in the gum leaves, the question almost as often repeated as the gum leaves’ song.
‘Alison.’ Alison — her first friend in England, companion debutante, dying in childbirth of infection because infection was all around: Wooten Abbey had become a hospital. Alison as much a casualty of war as any soldier was.
She talked of Alison, of the patients lost at Wooten and her hospitals, nurses, ambulance drivers she had known for such a short but vivid time, of darling stalwart Dodders, dead of influenza after surviving four years in ambulances on the front line. She slowly became aware that the greatest loss of all had been Miss Lily, and Nigel too. But even to this man she could not talk of them, or at least not yet . . .
And she realised suddenly that the shadows were growing and Midge would begin to worry. And yet she still couldn’t leave. ‘Who did you lose?’
‘Besides ten thousand men?’
‘You know exactly what I mean.’
‘I do. But I am here as expiation, not to console myself.’
‘Do they have to be incompatible?’
He looked at the ground. ‘I never thought of that. That I might find comfort while comforting others.’
‘Don’t you have the right to comfort too? You did no more than any other officer in battle.’
‘Exactly. No more, and no less.’
‘You think every officer should pay for the orders he gave?’
‘I only know that I must.’
She put down her mug. Neither of them had touched the pie. She said abruptly, ‘I killed a man. Shot him. He was German and it was on a battlefield in war, and he would have killed me. And I was trying to save many lives and he was in the way. That is the nub of it. He was in the way and so I shot him before he shot me.’
‘Just one,’ he said. ‘It’s a small number in the abundance of war.’ He did not look at her with shock, or disgust. ‘You try to make lives better now. I do not see a crime, or sin. And no, you have not saved the world. But perhaps your conscience is a little too . . . ambitious if you blame yourself for that.’
She took a breath. ‘I drove another man to kill himself. A brute, who whipped his wife and lied and bullied. I didn’t do it deliberately — I only meant to make sure he would stay away — but I didn’t regret it. I still don’t. Because, well, death is tidy, isn’t it? I built up a scene that horrified him so much he could see no other way out and jumped. Should I be carving crosses on two stones? Would that absolve me?’
‘It’s not about being absolved. It’s about remembering them.’
‘I won’t forget.’
‘Then maybe you did what was necessary, and are still doing it.’
It comforted, a little, and a little was enough for now. ‘You never answered my question? Who did you lose?’ They both knew there was no family, no person probably in all Australia who had lost no one.
‘My wife. She died in childbirth like your Alison, and I was far away pretending that gaining a meagre foot of foreign soil mattered more than her and the child who was my son. And my brother, who was my twin.’ He hesitated, then very deliberately sliced the pie and took a hunk and bit it. He said, after he had swallowed, ‘That is why I go on living, because while I live in some strange way he does as well.’
‘And enjoys apple pie?’
‘It is good pie.’
‘Was his name John? I’m sorry,’ she added quickly. ‘I have no right to ask that.’
‘Yes. His name was John. When I have a child, if I ever have another child, which is improbable, it will be his too. If I live to see that child grow up, I will see his features, not my own. And I’ll give that child the love of two fathers, not just one.’
‘When you have carved the twelve thousandth stone?’
He smiled. ‘I don’t know how long after that it will take me to love and marry and have a child. But, yes, after that. Perhaps.’
‘It is a bit like saying when the war is over . . .’
‘It isn’t over. It never will be. This is just a lull.’
Nigel had said much the same thing, and James and Dolphie had also. Perhaps they all meant different things, but nonetheless it chilled her. For she agreed.
‘How many crosses have you carved now?’
‘I don’t actually count them. When there are enough, I’ll know.’
‘And then you’ll go away?’
He nodded.
She wanted to say, ‘Don’t leave.’ But she had no right to say that, to demand more from a man who had given so much. ‘Bald Hill will miss you,’ she said instead.
She wanted to say, ‘I will miss you.’ But she still spent less than half her time at Bald Hill; would spend even less if she were elected to parliament. John offered unconditional help to everyone, always at his gate. All she had to offer him — had ever offered any of her friends — was her time when she wasn’t doing something else. Yet he’d said that she’d done good work. And she had . . .
‘I think that last stone won’t be carved until I’m no longer needed.’ He looked at her, then shook his head. ‘No, you were right. I’ll go when I am healed. I should admit it, instead of basking as an almost-saint.’
‘You can do both. Heal yourself as well as others. Any nurse can tell you that.’
‘And one has.’
‘Not me. I was a terrible nurse but an excellent hospital administrator.’
He laughed. Suddenly he was a man again. And that was dangerous, because once again she felt as if she was a woman, one whose youth was leaving her, whose body had never truly known love. And just as the song said, ‘in sunshine or in shadow’, he was so beautiful. Perhaps, she thought, his body held the life of two men, his own and his lost brother’s. His hands would feel warm . . .
She stood up quickly. ‘I must go, or Mrs Harrison will have sent out a search party. I promise not to take up your time when I pass back through here tonight. I
can’t promise not to deliver whatever Mrs Harrison sends for you though.’
He stood too. ‘She’s a good one.’
‘She is indeed.’ She hesitated, then held out her hand. He shook it, briefly, firmly. His hand felt like a small sun upon her skin. Then he walked to open the gate for her, as she cranked the car.
Chapter 41
Remember me, if there is space in your wonderful lives to come. I will not be in your lives long. I have accepted that. But it would be good to think that sometimes I am remembered.
Miss Lily, 1914
‘Sophie, it’s good to see you again. May I present my wife? Thebe, this is Miss Sophie Higgs. Sophie, my wife, Thebe.’
‘Delighted to meet you,’ said Sophie pleasantly. ‘And to meet you again, Malcolm.’ How could she ever have thought she wanted to marry Malcolm Overhill, whose face possessed all the intelligence of an overbred Hereford bull?
Malcolm drew her aside. ‘I say, Sophie, you can’t really mean to stand against the pater. It isn’t done.’
‘What isn’t done?’
‘Women standing for election.’
‘It is being done. It is exactly what I am doing now.’ She smiled at Thebe Overhill, who was looking politely furious that the ex-fiancée she had heard about was better looking, better dressed and far richer than herself, as well as accompanied by the now locally famous Lady Georgina and young Viscount Timothy FitzWilliam. Sophie gave Malcolm a farewell pat on the arm, then made her way through the crowd to the stage.
Midge hugged her at the bottom of the stairs. ‘You will be brilliant. Go get ’em.’
‘Chin up,’ said Georgina.
Timothy shook her hand politely. ‘Best of luck,’ he said, as if she were going to a football match. Which was pretty much what it felt like.
Green gave her hat a surreptitious tweak. ‘Perfect.’
‘My darling girl,’ said Maria, with such sudden, unexpected emotion that Sophie brushed two tears away as she ascended the stairs.
She sat, as the vicar introduced ‘the man who needs no introduction, Mr Overhill, MP’, Sam Upton, the Labor Party candidate (she noticed the vicar did not bother to add Mr to his name), and ‘our own Miss Higgs’ in accents that were both admiring and patronising.
She smiled. People clapped, not for any particular person but because that was the time to clap.
Mr Overhill spoke first. ‘I can do no better than to echo our prime minister’s words tonight! It is necessary that we should determine what are the ideals towards which every Australian would desire to strive. I think those ideals might well be stated as being to secure our national safety, and to ensure the maintenance of our White Australia to continue as an integral part of the British Empire. We intend to keep this country white, and not allow its people to be faced with the intractable problems presently facing many parts of the world.’
He added more. Sophie stopped listening, trying to remember her speech. Maria, veteran of the successful Australian women’s suffrage campaign, had warned her not to read from it, but to meet the eyes of each person in the audience.
Which was impossible, she thought.
Mr Overhill sat, to great applause and a hearty ‘Hear, hear!’ from his son, on the opposite side of the stage from her friends. Her dear friends, who she was going to let down . . .
‘Miss Higgs? Perhaps you would speak second? Our rose between two thorns?’ The vicar clapped her politely.
Sophie stood. She moved to the front of the stage, and smiled out at her audience. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for being here together —’
‘Speak up, lady! We can’t hear you!’
‘This is an important time for Bald Hill, and for Australia . . .’
‘Why should we want to hear her? Ducks on the pond!’ It was the traditional cry that went up when a girl or woman entered the shearing shed, or any place exclusively for men, and meant all tools were downed until she left.
‘Ducks on the pond! Ducks on the pond!’
This had been organised. Someone — either Mr Overhill, or even Malcolm or Mr Sam Upton the Labor candidate — had made very sure that no votes would be stolen by a woman tonight. And once the chant began others took it up, for the simple joy of joining in.
‘Ducks on the pond! Ducks on the pond!’
‘Shut up!’ Suddenly Harry Harrison was beside her. He held up his hand and yelled, ‘And it’s no use your yelling at me because you all know I can’t hear you!’
Laughter. The chant died away.
‘You all know why I’m deaf too. Why Larry hasn’t got two arms and Billo will be on crutches for the rest of his life. There’s a lot of you here who know what it was like for us blokes there in the trenches.’ He paused and gazed around the silent hall. ‘Every one of you except our Mr Overhill, who never put foot in any trench unless it was a kitchen drain some poor bloke was digging for him. Well, let me tell you about this woman here.
‘Sophie Higgs is like my Midge, my Rose. Sophie Higgs was there, in the middle of it all, not to fight but to pick up what was left of us afterwards. We’d go through weeks or months at the front but girls like my Midge and Sophie Higgs went through the whole sodding war there. They called them the roses of No Man’s Land and, by God, and that’s not blasphemy,’ with a quick nod at the startled vicar, ‘but it’s the truth, they were our roses there.
‘Any man who came back home from the war owes that home-coming to women like my wife and Sophie Higgs. Any woman whose husband, sweetheart or son came home should get down on her knees and thank these women, because without them we’d have lost the war by that first Christmas, and lost our lives, and even lost the will to live.’
He paused again and looked around the hall. ‘I’m going to vote for her. I don’t give a fig for women’s rights. I just know that women like Miss Higgs and my missus are the best that life can give us. And if any man here only sees a skirt, and not a heart more courageous than any man’s I’ve known, then he’s a fool.’ He stopped, kissed Sophie’s cheek, then left the stage.
The hall was silent, straining. She had lost every word of the speech she and Midge had so carefully prepared. And suddenly it didn’t matter, as she knew exactly what to say.
‘Fellow Australians. Man or woman, black or white, that’s who we are, that’s what we fought as for the first time over there. We were Australians.
‘Mr Overhill knows a lot about how they decide to run our country down in Melbourne. Mr Upton will tell you about workers’ rights and I’ll probably agree with him. If he knows anything about Higgs Industries, he’ll know we have discussions with unions, not arguments, and it’s settled when both of us agree on terms and not before. And this is what I know.’
She lifted her chin. ‘I know how to fight. Not with a bayonet, like Mr Harrison and many others of you. I fought for my country with different weapons, the same as every other person here tonight did. Every single one of us fought the war too, tending stock to feed the army, making fruitcakes, knitting, keeping home safe so our men had a home to come back to — and so that I had and Mrs Harrison, and all the other women who survived our time on the battlefields.
‘I promise you this — if you elect me I will keep fighting for whatever you tell me is important. Not for what matters to me, but for what matters to you. I will fight with every fibre of my being.’
She stepped back. Sat.
The cheering shook the hall.
Mr Upton’s speech was an anti-climax after that.
Chapter 42
It has often been quoted that freedom cannot be given. It must be taken. Too many slaves cling to their slavery. It takes courage to be truly free. But sometimes the right person, the right words at the right time, can give that courage, for long enough for freedom to be real.
Miss Lily, 1914
SATURDAY, 14 NOVEMBER 1925
The Bald Hill electorate had five polling places but the actual vote sorting and counting took place at the church hall, long benches holding scru
tineers from all parties, including from what was now known as the Women’s Party.
Sophie sat, cautiously sipping sweet fruit cup — too much and she’d need to use the hall’s stinking outdoor dunnies — but refusing sandwiches, scones, fruitcake, lamingtons, date and apple cake, more lamingtons, ham and cheese pie and still more lamingtons. The district had gone lamington mad since a lamington category had been added to the Agricultural Show.
She wished Miss Lily was here. For surely Miss Lily would approve, not just of her parliamentary ambition but of the efficiency of their campaign. Every house in the district had been visited by herself or her volunteers, and at every house they had been offered tea and cake, not mutterings that a woman’s place was in the home.
Around her the crowd milled in two discrete camps, the Overhills’ on one side, Sam Upton’s on the other, but she was glad that her friends and the women who had campaigned for her moved freely from her to whichever other group they had traditionally been politically allied to.
Just as she was afraid the result of the vote would not be known that night — there was no way she would be able to sleep till the count had finished — the vicar’s bell rang up on the stage. For some reason she never could remember his name, possibly because he had never seemed to give an honest opinion of his own, unlike the chaplains of courage and integrity she had known in France and Belgium. No wonder the people of Bald Hill needed the solace of John . . .
She stood automatically as the vicar called them in to the hall, walked, trying not to shake, climbed the stairs and stood once more between Mr Overhill and Mr Upton.
‘The results for the 1925 election for the Bald Hill electorate,’ said the vicar portentously. ‘Primary votes: Sam Upton, Australian Labor Party — twenty-nine thousand, eight hundred and ninety-one votes; Miss Sophie Higgs, twenty-eight thousand, four hundred and one votes; and Mr Maxwell Overhill — thirty thousand, one hundred and fifty-two votes.’ He held up his hand as Mr Overhill’s faction began to cheer. ‘Which, when preferences are distributed, gives the seat of Bald Hill to . . . Mr Sam Upton, MP!’
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