If Blood Should Stain the Wattle

by Jackie French

  ‘What will you do? Thank you, Anita,’ to the woman who took their soup bowls. Jed waited till Anita had served the prawn cocktails. Fresh prawns of course, probably couriered down from Sydney with one of the shipments to the Thompson’s factory outside town, an advantage of being the mother of the chairman and managing director of Thompson’s Industries.

  Maxi yawned. Prawns were not interesting until they became leftovers.

  ‘I haven’t had time to work out what I really want.’ Jed shrugged. ‘Until three years ago all I could think about was surviving, or qualifying for a job that would pay a woman enough to live on. I’ll just live for a while. Plant a garden at Dribble. Lend a hand at River View or with the sheep.’

  ‘Ah.’ Matilda dissected a prawn neatly. ‘That is one of the things that I wanted to talk to you about.’

  ‘You’ve got a job for me?’

  ‘In a way. Two jobs, really. The first one would take four or five days a year at most. If you want it.’

  ‘I’m intrigued.’

  ‘You’re meant to be.’ Matilda’s look said, ‘You understand me very well, child.’ ‘You remember the terms of your great-grandfather’s will?’

  ‘It’s hard to forget a will that leaves you one cent less than a million dollars,’ said Jed wryly. At the time of his death, Tommy had honoured her wish not to be a millionaire. But she was, now, for she couldn’t spend even the interest on nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine dollars and ninety-nine cents, even by giving hunks away to whoever she met who was in need. Not to charities. Jed had a deep suspicion of charities, especially those set up for children. She had seen too much to trust in their goodwill.

  ‘Ah, yes. Well.’ Matilda looked as though she was wondering how to present a main course of crocodile and have Jed accept it. ‘Tommy’s will. There was a matter we didn’t mention at the time. It wasn’t in his will, as such, and of course you had been through so much —’

  ‘Spit it out,’ said Jed with a shiver of apprehension. Was Matilda going to say there was no money left? Jim was her trustee. Surely he wouldn’t have lost her money! ‘And I don’t mean the prawn heads.’

  ‘As you know . . .’ Matilda paused as Anita came back in to collect the prawn cocktail glasses. Maxi followed her hopefully as she left the room. ‘Your mother sold her shares and other assets before she left her first husband and vanished with your father. Presumably any money left at her death went to your father, and then to his second wife.’

  The hated Debbie. If Dad had left any money on his death, Debbie would have long since spent it on booze. ‘Yes?’ said Jed encouragingly. What was so bad that Matilda had to string it out?

  ‘Years before Tommy met you he created a family trust. It gives Jim a forty-nine per cent interest in Thompson’s Industries, and that same share of its profits, as well as his salary as president, with the remaining fifty-one per cent of shares, voting rights and profits to be divided between myself and Tommy’s children — if, and only if, they take up positions as directors of the firm. All Tommy’s children, or their descendants after his children’s death. That included your mother.’

  ‘But my mother was dead!’

  ‘Tommy didn’t know that for sure,’ said Matilda gently. ‘I think he always hoped, just enough so that if she did ever return long after he was gone, she would know she hadn’t been forgotten. Tommy wanted to divide the income equitably after his death, but also to ensure that the businesses he built up were treated with . . . compassion, not simply as financial enterprises.’

  ‘Do I inherit my mother’s directorship?’ asked Jed slowly.

  ‘If you wish to. Not until you are twenty-one at the end of the year. But I wanted to give you time to think about it.’

  ‘It’s really only four or five days a year?’

  Matilda nodded. ‘Or less. Often just the annual general meeting, which is held here. The directors take no part in the day-to-day decisions. They only involve themselves on larger matters.’

  ‘Do you want me to do this?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Matilda.

  ‘Why? I don’t need the money,’ Jed added.

  Matilda smiled, the Empress of the Universe smile that had so infuriated Jed when they first met. ‘Money can do good things.’

  ‘Like River View.’

  ‘And giving people jobs. Anyone who lived through the Depression knows jobs matter, how hopeless life can be if there is no chance of one.’

  ‘How many people does Thompson’s Industries employ?’

  ‘Ten thousand, four hundred and twenty-one. As of 30 June last financial year. It varies a little. Mostly making wirelesses and television sets. We still have several government contracts for . . . other things . . . but they are on a need-to-know basis.’

  Jed blinked, not just at the exactitude of the answer but the sheer size of Thompson’s Industries. ‘How many work at the factory here?’

  ‘Only twenty-six people these days. The Gibber’s Creek factory was Tommy’s tinkering place, really. During the war it was more important, as security was easier to ensure where a suspicious stranger would be conspicuous. Tommy and his engineers could work on new designs. Design work is done in Sydney these days.’

  ‘Are there new designs since Tommy died?’ Jed asked bluntly.

  Matilda smiled. ‘Yes. Jim is no engineer. Nor a genius, like his father. You need to love to tinker with the universe to be a genius. But he knows how to employ them.’

  ‘You still haven’t said why you want me on the board.’

  ‘As it stands, your mother’s voting share is held by all of us, including Jim. That means Jim can outvote Michael and me. If you take up your share, then, if necessary, you, Michael and I can vote against him.’

  ‘When might it be necessary?’

  Matilda raised an eyebrow, or the pencil line that replaced her almost invisible white brow.

  Jed grinned. ‘Does Thompson’s Industries have equal pay for equal work by women? Can girls become apprentice mechanics? Engineers?’

  ‘Not yet,’ said Matilda calmly.

  Jed’s grin grew wider. ‘Then I’ll do it. Of course.’

  ‘You don’t want to know how much money you are going to make each year?’

  She considered. ‘Not really.’

  ‘Good answer. The church teaches us that it is harder for a rich man to enter heaven than it is for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle. But it is quite possible for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, as long as the camel is dead, chopped extremely fine, and you have a lot of patience.

  ‘I have always thought that instead money is like water. Let money flow to you and past you, like swimming in a river, and it’s good, because then that money can be used for good. Keep it and you will drown. But most rich men don’t even know they’re drowning. That looks delicious, Anita. Thank you,’ Matilda added as Anita carried in a tray on which was a roast shoulder of hogget and vegetables, Maxi escorting her proudly, as if to say, ‘Many thieves would have stolen this great family treasure. But I, Maxi, have foiled them.’

  Jed waited while Matilda carved the meat, offered her vegetables from the dishes, still stunned into silence by the offer of a directorship. A chance to make real changes in a business that employed over ten thousand people. More to digest than roast pumpkin, roast potatoes, roast parsnips, roast onions, fresh green peas. Jed grinned again. Real food, not college food, which was heavy on cornflakes, corned beef and coleslaw. She picked up her first knife and second fork.

  ‘Apple pie for pudding,’ said Anita, smiling at her eagerness to eat.

  ‘Wonderful. Scarlett will have scoffed the pie you left at Dribble. Thank you for that, by the way.’

  ‘A pleasure. Always.’ Anita left.

  ‘Maxi, out,’ said Matilda. Maxi took up her position in the doorway again.

  ‘Do I need to talk to Jim?’ Conversations with Jim left her feeling he had patted her on the head.

  ‘Jim will
tell you to just endorse his decisions. Talk to Michael. He’ll tell you why Jim’s beliefs sometimes need a little modifying.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘I have, for example, never even bothered to put equal pay forward as a motion.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Jed. ‘Jim isn’t going to know what hit him.’ She pushed more gravy onto her potato hungrily. Food always had more flavour at Drinkwater.

  ‘Jim is going to know exactly what hit him,’ said Matilda dryly. ‘His mother’s soft-hearted misguided good intentions, his brother’s convictions, fostered by a truly equal marriage, and the long experience of his great-niece making do on “women’s wages”.’

  A time Jed would much rather forget. She needed time to think about what the role of director might mean. ‘I’m going to a party tomorrow night,’ she announced, to change the subject.

  ‘Really?’ Matilda raised an eyebrow as if to say, ‘Why didn’t I know of this already?’ ‘Who is giving it?’

  ‘The commune down the river. One of the girls there asked Scarlett to come, and Scarlett asked me. And a good thing too,’ she added. ‘I don’t want her going to that sort of place unless I’ve checked it out.’

  ‘I suspect it’s harmless,’ said Matilda. ‘Blue’s son Sam lives there.’ Her tone implied that no McAlpine could be involved in anything unsavoury, even in this new world of free love and recreational drugs. ‘Do you think I might come too? I’m curious.’

  Jed stared at her. ‘Go to a hippie party?’ There’d be people smoking dope, at the very least. Probably nudity. Possibly even a love-in, though Jed had never actually heard of one happening in Australia. She hunted for a suitable excuse. ‘It’d be uncomfortable.’

  ‘My dear girl, I can still tolerate a shearing shed in midsummer. I am sure I can cope with a hippie commune.’ The old eyes turned sardonic. She’s enjoying this, realised Jed. ‘I can also cope with nude men and women swimming in the river.’

  ‘How did you . . . ?’

  ‘Binoculars,’ said Matilda crisply. ‘No, I’m not a voyeur. I was looking for lambing ewes. Nor will I be worried by smoking . . . what do you call it these days? Weed? Pot?’

  ‘I don’t call it anything. I don’t use that stuff.’

  ‘I should hope not. Opium was the drug in my day. Laudanum. Chemists sold it for everything from arthritis to a cough. I used to give a spoonful every hour to my mother . . .’ She stopped.

  ‘Your mother was . . . an addict?’

  ‘Certainly not! My mother died of cancer, though that wasn’t the term they used then. And in pain, as I couldn’t afford enough laudanum, not on a twelve-year-old girl’s jam factory wages. We never saw daylight in those days. Worked fifteen hours a day six days a week for pennies and a bit of bread and jam. Ah, the grime in Grinder’s Alley . . .’ She looked up from her roast hogget to find Jed staring at her.

  ‘Tell me about Grinder’s Alley,’ said Jed quietly.

  Matilda smiled. ‘A factory with its machinery held together by bits of wire and Tommy’s tinkering, huddled buildings that were more soot than house; smoke-grey sky in the day and darker grey at night. The workers were mostly women or children. You didn’t have to pay children much. Or anything at all. Starving, the lot of us, and no way to change it. Women had no vote, and not enough men cared. The rich ruled the country.

  ‘And then it changed. Because people like my father fought for the right to be part of a union: battled for eight hours’ work, eight hours’ play, eight hours’ sleep, eight bob a day. Eight bob was enough to see you right back then. And women like my aunt fought for votes for women and women got the laws passed that outlawed child labour. We thought we were making a perfect world back then. Just give the working man a vote, and a party to vote for. Give women the vote and the world would change.’

  ‘But it didn’t,’ said Jed flatly.

  ‘Oh, yes it did. The world always changes. But getting votes for women didn’t change it enough. The same party in power for twenty-three years now: people who have built up their own empires of power. There’ll be no more change for good unless we fight for it. That’s why I asked you to come home this week.’

  Home, thought Jed. A lovely word. ‘I thought you might want me here for the end of the world. That’s what the party is to celebrate, by the way. Nostradamus’s end of the world tomorrow night.’

  Matilda grinned. It was the grin of an urchin from Grinder’s Alley. ‘Not the end of the world. The opposite. This year Australia is going to elect a new government. Gough Whitlam’s government. And that’s the second job I want to offer you — to help Gough Whitlam win.’

  Chapter 5

  Gibber’s Creek Gazette, March 1972

  Gibber’s Creek Central School is thrilled to announce that tennis legend and Australian of the Year, Evonne Goolagong, will present the prizes at this year’s sports carnival.

  JED

  Jed and Matilda had coffee in the living room. Maxi lay like a bulging carpet at Matilda’s feet. Jed suspected that Mrs Weaver’s aliens could invade and Maxi, her tummy full now, would keep snoring.

  Jed helped herself to sugar. ‘You don’t seriously think that Labor can win the next election, do you? And this electorate has been Country Party since the year dot.’

  ‘I would have thought a history scholar would be more precise,’ said Matilda.

  Jed shrugged. ‘Parties’ names change. It’s what they do that matters.’

  ‘This year we’re going to elect a Labor MP.’ Matilda sounded as sure as if she were predicting rain next Tuesday. She was right about rain, hail, grasshopper plagues or if the ewes were about to lamb, so why not elections?

  But a Whitlam Labor government seemed impossible. The Liberal Country Party Coalition was the government. Labor had come close to winning in the last federal election in 1969 and failed. Even though they won over fifty per cent of the popular vote, the gerrymander meant that each vote in conservative rural electorates with few people living in them counted for more than votes from those in Labor-voting inner-city areas. Why should this year’s election be any different?

  ‘What candidate have you chosen?’ Jed asked cheekily. Officially the rank-and-file membership of political parties selected their own candidates, but Jed suspected locally influential large donors such as Matilda had a major say in who the parties chose.

  ‘I wanted to talk to you about that too.’ Matilda looked slightly uncomfortable.

  Suddenly Jed understood why Matilda wanted her there alone.

  ‘You’ve chosen Nicholas.’ She put her biscuit carefully on the plate, just as she carefully made sure her hand didn’t tremble.

  ‘Rock Farm is in the Gibber’s Creek electorate,’ said Matilda. ‘My dear, I know you felt . . . warmly about Nicholas. I know he left you too.’

  Jed glanced at her. Matilda does see everything, she thought. Like an eagle with stereoscopic vision. She doesn’t need those binoculars.

  ‘I suspect he didn’t even have the courtesy to write to tell you he was engaged to Felicity McAlpine. I saw your face down at the river last New Year’s Eve, when Glenda Sampson told you.’

  ‘Nicholas and I hadn’t seen each other for more than two years,’ said Jed quietly. She forced a bite of biscuit down the aching tunnel of her throat. ‘You don’t need to tell ex-girlfriends when you get engaged.’

  ‘You do when you were as close as you two were,’ said Matilda.

  ‘I don’t know that we were really that close. Just both . . . lost.’ Jed forced herself to continue. ‘And I found myself, and so did he. He’ll make an excellent politician.’

  Or would he? The Nicholas she had known hadn’t cared enough to analyse whether he should fight in Vietnam or not; hadn’t cared enough to find a future after he had lost his legs in a futile skirmish on the edges of the war. Jed suspected she was still the only person he had shared that life-determining moment with.

  What would her life have been now, if they had gone to Sydney together? Closed off in a small
nation of two, protecting each other? No, she hadn’t needed Nicholas. And she was all the stronger for discovering that early.

  Did Felicity make him feel like a hero, not a cripple? More importantly, had Nicholas somehow learned to care enough about the world to fight for a new government?

  ‘I’ve heard Whitlam speak,’ Jed said. Julieanne had even dragged her to a couple of Labor Party branch meetings. They’d sat in the gallery at Parliament House too, then had dinner in the members’ dining room with Julieanne’s godmother, a Liberal Party senator, one of the few women who had managed to be elected almost three-quarters of a century after women had won the vote.

  ‘Labor’s policies are wonderful, of course.’ But what use were good policies in a party that couldn’t form a government?

  A faint flicker of delight flared as she thought what would, could happen if just possibly . . . impossibly possibly . . . Whitlam might get into power. Laws to protect the environment. Recognising the government of China, as if Australia could keep pretending that the world’s biggest nation didn’t exist just to the north of them. Equal rights for women, pensions old people could live on. An end to the conscription that had taken Nicholas to Vietnam . . .

  ‘Nicholas is possibly the only man who can win this electorate for Labor,’ said the ancient silken voice on the even older sofa beside her, dappled by the bodies of all those who had used it. How had this woman kept her voice after decades of yelling across sheep paddocks? ‘The young will vote for Nicholas because he’s young too. And handsome.’ Matilda raised an admirable eyebrow. Jed vowed to learn to do the same with hers. ‘The women will vote for Nicholas from sympathy, because he lost his legs and had the courage to learn to walk with artificial ones. A man who fought in Vietnam will be respected when he says that conscription needs to end.’

  And all of them — or most of them — will listen to Mrs Matilda Thompson of Drinkwater, Jed thought. They’d also think: this man is going to be the grandson-in-law of Flinty McAlpine, who was once the Girl from Snowy River, the heroine who saved her valley from the flood, and became a writer of horse books that girls across the world loved. Those same horse-loving girls who were now women and would vote for Flinty’s soon-to-be grandson-in-law . . .