Empire Day

by Diane Armstrong

  Chapter 6

  Sitting in his cubicle in the smoke-filled newsroom, Ted yanked the sheet of paper from his typewriter, screwed it into a tight ball and tossed it into the wastepaper basket, which was already overflowing. He’d paid for the typewriter from the measly three pounds a week he’d earned as a cadet, but now he punched the keys with the desperation of a boxer fighting a losing match. Shifting in his chair, he read what he’d written. He could already hear Gus calling it a crock of shit, and for once he agreed. He’d managed to write the lead for the story about the callgirl’s murder in Kings Cross, but after that his mind had gone as blank as the paper he’d been feeding into the machine, and even Gus’s threat that he’d ram the typewriter up his arse if he didn’t file the story by three o’clock hadn’t got him going.

  He was disappointed that Gus hadn’t been impressed by the speed with which he’d shot into the murdered girl’s flat, or by what he’d found out from the woman next door. ‘Bloody useless!’ Gus had shouted. ‘No suspects, a neighbour with amnesia, and a victim with a phony name. Another Pyjama Girl, doomed to remain unidentified for years. And where are the statistics on teenage crime you were supposed to get?’

  The staccato of typewriters all over the newsroom, and the occasional burst of raucous laughter, made it impossible to concentrate. Joe Black was describing an incident at the Journalists’ Club the night before. Joe’s drunken antics were legendary, and in addition to his drinking, he was a compulsive gambler. Ted could never decide whether to believe him or not.

  ‘You know that poker machine they’ve got there?’ Joe was saying. ‘Well, it kept swallowing all my tokens, and I got so mad I grabbed a sausage roll, stuffed it into the bloody machine and yelled, “You’ve got it all now, so you may as well have my dinner too!” And now I’m banned from the club!’

  Ted was laughing as he turned back to his story, but when he reread what he’d written he felt sick. His copy was as wooden as his desk. It was about as exciting as a shopping list. And that’s what it was, he realised. A list. It didn’t have any heart. Adrenalin rushing now, he threaded in a fresh sheet of paper and began to type, and this time his fingers flew over the keyboard. He was writing about two dainty teacups, a cold pot of tea and an unlit cigarette in a dead callgirl’s hand.

  ‘What’s this long-winded crap you’ve churned out?’ Gus roared when he read Ted’s copy an hour later. ‘Are you reporting on a crime or writing a novel?’

  Ted took a deep breath. ‘I didn’t think we needed all the gruesome details. Anyway, the story was more touching with the personal details.’

  Gus was eyeing him with his ferocious stare. ‘Let me tell you something. People like being shocked. The more lurid it is, the more it terrifies them and the better they like it. If they want to be touched, they read the Women’s Weekly.’

  He looked distastefully at the copy in his hand. ‘We’re almost on deadline, so hurry up and take out the guff. And next time don’t be so fucking sentimental. And let the facts speak for themselves. Our readers aren’t all cretins.’

  After he’d rewritten the article, Ted sat back and reread his notes from the SS Napoli. Letting Communists into Australia would be bad enough, but the thought of Nazis sneaking in was even more shocking. His father had died at Tobruk fighting the Krauts, and letting Nazis and their collaborators settle here would be a betrayal of what he’d fought and died for.

  On his way home on the tram that evening, Ted remembered sitting in the Star Cinema on Bronte Road at the end of the war, his mouth dry as sand as he watched the Cinesound newsreel showing thousands of skeletons heaped on top of wheelbarrows and being tossed into a mass grave at a concentration camp in Germany. He remembered feeling as though someone had plunged a fist into his stomach. ‘That’s what your father fought and died for,’ his mother had whispered. ‘To put an end to that.’

  His father had never been a talkative man, but before setting off to fight he’d sat Ted down and explained why he had enlisted, as if he’d known that this would be the last time they’d talk. In his slow Somerset accent he’d said, ‘You have to stand up for what’s right, son, no matter how hard it may be. If people like you and me don’t, then the bad ones will win, and we wouldn’t want to live in a world like that, now would we?’

  Alf Browning was an uneducated man who’d probably gleaned his philosophy of life from scoutmasters and Boys’ Own annuals. But although Ted had scoffed at those naive sentiments while his father was alive, he was surprised how often he still heard his voice in his head, sometimes with a hint of reproach. His father was the most honest person he’d ever come across, and deep down he suspected he wasn’t half the man his father had been.

  The man sitting beside him on the Bondi Junction tram got off, leaving his copy of the Sydney Morning Herald on the seat, and Ted picked it up as they rattled across the city. It was ten past five; the shops, department stores and offices had just closed, and the tram was filling up with office girls, sales assistants and secretaries on their way home from work. Ted stood up to give his seat to a stout woman who gave off a cloying smell of cheap scent. ‘Thanks,’ she said, flopping into the seat. ‘Good to take the weight off my feet after standing all day selling ruddy gloves.’

  Scanning the paper as the tram lurched along, he read that Sir Laurence Olivier and his wife Vivien Leigh were about to tour Australia. They were going to appear in The School for Scandal at the Tivoli Theatre. If only he could afford to buy tickets. He still hadn’t figured out a way of getting to know the New Australian girl, but having tickets for the Tivoli show would give him the perfect excuse to knock on her door and ask her out. He could already imagine her lovely face lighting up at the prospect of seeing the famous couple in real life. But by the time he’d paid his mother board and bought tram and bus fares, there wasn’t enough left over for theatre tickets.

  Turning the page, he read that the United Nations had approved the formation of the new state of Israel, and that Cardinal Mindszenty had been arrested by the Communist government in Hungary. A long report discussed the plight of three English women who were imprisoned in Moscow where their husbands had diplomatic posts.

  As he read on, the contrast between this serious broadsheet and the racy tabloid he worked for, with its emphasis on short articles, large photos and sensational reporting, made him squirm. Perhaps his mother was right and he should have aimed higher, but it was hard for a young reporter to get his first break, and he’d jumped at the chance of working for the best-selling paper in town. Perhaps one day, when he was more experienced, he’d get a job on the Herald, but for now the Standard would be a good training ground.

  An article on page three of the paper caught his attention and he struggled to hold onto the strap and turn the page without knocking the feather off the hat of the woman standing in front of him. Headed more migrants heading for our shores, the article included quotes from Mr Redvers Morrison, a former security officer with the immigration department who had served his term in the field and was now returning home to a desk job. He had apparently just returned from Germany where thousands of displaced people from all over Europe were applying to emigrate to Australia.

  Moving carefully to avoid the feather, Ted managed to extricate his notebook from his pocket and jot down the name. Ever since his visit to the SS Napoli the previous week, he’d been curious about the screening process for migrants, and it looked as though Redvers Morrison would be the ideal person to put him in the picture.

  Several days later, after numerous unanswered telephone calls and a succession of excuses designed to fob him off, Ted managed to arrange an interview with Redvers Morrison. To allay any anxiety the department might have about his real motives, he’d been careful to point out that his aim was to describe the situation in the displaced persons camps to his readers so that they’d appreciate the immense difficulties the immigration officers faced, and be reassured that only the best types of refugees were admitted. He felt no compunction about being s
o devious. Deception was a necessary tool to ferret out the truth from people determined to conceal it.

  As it turned out, his ploy had worked. Perhaps Redvers Morrison had convinced his superiors that this was exactly the kind of article they needed to make their policies more acceptable to the readers of a newspaper whose attitude to Mr Calwell’s immigration program was negative, to say the least.

  Walking along Bridge Street, past bank buildings and office blocks that cut out the sun, Ted whistled a bouncy pop tune under his breath. ‘“A you’re adorable, B you’re so beautiful …”’ A pretty blonde walking in the opposite direction gave him a knowing smile, but Ted hardly noticed her. As usual, he was thinking about the New Australian girl. He’d walked past her place many times hoping to catch sight of her again, and to strike up a conversation, but she was never there.

  As soon as he was ushered into Redvers Morrison’s spacious office and faced the suave-looking man with silver hair and neatly trimmed moustache sitting behind a cedar desk his confidence waned. Mr Morrison didn’t look like a man who’d let his guard down and reveal anything that might bring the government’s policies into disrepute.

  Ted listened to his rambling and evasive replies and scribbled down all the clichés, platitudes and bureaucratic jargon in shorthand, without challenging them or raising any controversial issues. When he gauged that the time was right, he asked which countries the migrants were coming from.

  Resting his elbows on the edge of the desk, Redvers Morrison steepled his fingertips. ‘Poland, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Yugoslavia, Italy, Greece, you name it.’

  ‘Do you speak any of their languages?’

  ‘Languages?’ he repeated. ‘A bit of school French. La plume de ma tante, that sort of thing.’

  ‘And what about the other security officers. Do they speak any other languages?’

  Redvers Morrison frowned. ‘I wouldn’t know. But how is this relevant to your article?’

  ‘Well, I’m wondering how you interview people if you can’t speak to them.’

  ‘We have interpreters.’

  ‘But how can you tell if they’re translating accurately?’

  Mr Morrison was drumming his fingers on the cedar desk. ‘Look here, what are you getting at? We do whatever’s necessary to make sure the wrong people don’t slip through the net. And in case you’re worried about Communists getting in, let me assure you that we have some reliable people in the DP camps who fled from the Communists and are only too happy to help us to identify them.’

  Ted looked thoughtful. He recalled the Lithuanian woman on the SS Napoli whose face was contorted with fury when she talked about the Communists on board.

  ‘So these people are helping you to spot the Communists,’ he said slowly. ‘And who’s reporting on the Nazis?’

  ‘We don’t admit any Nazis.’ Redvers Morrison looked pointedly at his watch. ‘I’m afraid you’ll have to excuse me,’ he said. ‘I have an appointment.’

  While Ted waited for the tram back to the office, he tried to sort out what he’d been told. Somewhere behind all that verbiage lay the truth and he wondered whether he’d have the skill to unravel it. Perhaps he should have taken Gus Thornton’s advice and stuck to youth violence.

  Chapter 7

  Hania was sitting at the table, picking at the beef goulash on her plate, when the smell of grilled lamb wafted in from outside and made her mouth water.

  ‘Can we have lamb chops for dinner one night?’

  Eda Kotowicz shuddered. ‘You want I should cook lamb chops? Isn’t it enough we have to smell them every night?’

  ‘Well, can I have dinner at Beverley’s one night then? Aunty Muriel said I could.’

  Taking her mother’s silent shrug as consent, Hania decided to push her luck. Ever since her mother had befriended Mrs Wajs from the boarding house on the corner, she had become more approachable, but even so, Hania knew she had to tread warily.

  Her mouth full of goulash, she said, ‘Beverley asked me to come to her Sunday school picnic. Can I?’

  Eda frowned. ‘A Sunday school picnic? With the church?’

  ‘It’s nothing to do with the church,’ Hania said quickly. ‘It’s a picnic at the beach, that’s all.’

  ‘That’s what you think,’ her mother retorted. ‘The picnic is just an excuse. They want to convert you. Listen to me. I know people. Remember how those people in Poland tried to turn you into a Catholic?’

  Hania pushed away her plate and fiddled with the edge of the tablecloth. Her mother would never understand. Every Sunday she had looked forward to the solemn ritual of the Mass. Sitting with her foster parents, she breathed in the spicy smell of the incense and the waxy scent of the flickering candles, and listened to the altar boys in their white lace surplices singing like angels in heaven. When she gazed at the statues of Jesus and Mary, they looked back at her as if they could see inside her heart, and the little gold cross her foster mother had placed around her neck made her feel safe.

  She looked helplessly at her mother. ‘Why can’t you understand? This isn’t Poland, it’s Australia. Beverley’s parents know I’m Jewish and they don’t care. They’re not trying to convert me, they just want to include me.’ She was shouting now. ‘There’ll be races and games, and all the kids in the street will be there, but I suppose I’ll have to stay home and miss all the fun like on Cracker Night. It’s not fair!’

  ‘You think they don’t care you’re Jewish but as soon as there’s trouble, they’ll call you a dirty Jew and say you killed Jesus,’ her mother shouted back.

  ‘There’ll only be trouble if you make it,’ Hania yelled, storming out of the kitchen and slamming the door. In her bedroom she took the cross from her drawer and, clutching it in her hand, threw herself onto the bed. ‘I don’t care what you say, I’m going to the picnic,’ she sobbed.

  On Sunday morning Eda Kotowicz was sitting on the sagging couch beside a pile of coats and jackets, finishing off the buttonholes and hemming the skirts, when Hania came out of her room, buttoning her coat. Snapping off a thread with her teeth, Eda looked up. ‘Where do you think you’re going?’

  ‘To Tina’s,’ Hania said.

  She knew her mother wouldn’t object because Tina’s Greek parents were even more strict than she was, and hardly ever let her go out. After school and on weekends, Tina wiped down the marbled red-and-white laminex tables, or served behind the counter of their milk bar in Oxford Street. The only time she went to a Saturday matinee was when she fibbed that she was going to Hania’s place. Beneath Tina’s bright smile Hania recognised a simmering resentment, and she knew that she and Tina both suffered from restrictions imposed by migrant parents in a way their Australian classmates could never understand.

  ‘Make sure you’re home by three,’ Eda said. ‘These skirts have to be ready by tomorrow morning, so I need you to sweep the floor and hang out the washing while I’m finishing them off. And watch how you cross the road.’

  Hania ran out of the house and ducked into Beverley’s house. Aunty Muriel was already wrapping sandwiches in greaseproof paper and placing chocolate crackles in biscuit tins, while Beverley and her little sister Daisy were crunching the cocoa-covered rice bubbles that had spilled onto the table.

  Finally all the food was in a wicker basket, covered by a white doily with a crocheted edge, and the women and children set off towards the tram stop, chattering excitedly. Hania kept glancing behind her to make sure her mother wasn’t on the verandah, and she didn’t breathe out until they’d turned the corner.

  By the time they spread everything out on the grass facing Bronte Beach, the fathers had already picked up a full milk churn from the Dairy Farmers depot in Spring Street. While some were pouring milk into mugs, others were mixing bright green cordial in iron buckets. The children were clamouring for food, but the mothers insisted on spreading neat gingham cloths over the tartan rugs before starting the picnic.

  ‘Now close your eyes and bow your heads. We’re al
l going to say grace together,’ Uncle Bill said.

  Hania looked around to see what he meant. The others all closed their eyes, except two small boys who were nudging each other and giggling behind their hands, until their mother noticed and gave them a clip on the ear.

  ‘God is great, God is good, let us thank Him for our food,’ they chorused. A moment later, dozens of hands were reaching for the sandwiches.

  ‘They’re like a swarm of locusts,’ Verna Browning laughed.

  ‘Come on, Hanny, don’t be shy, take one,’ Aunty Muriel said. ‘If you wait too long, they’ll all be gone. The way this lot are diving into them, you’d think they’d just come out of one of those camps like the Jews in the newsreels.’ She stopped abruptly when Verna nudged her and inclined her head towards Hania. Remembering her mother’s warning, Hania held her breath, but Aunty Muriel didn’t say anything else as she held out the plate of sandwiches.

  The bread was cut into dainty triangles and neatly filled with egg and lettuce, Kraft cheese spread, Vegemite or devon and pickle, so different from the thick hunks of rye bread her mother made with strong-smelling salami and garlic-flavoured pickled cucumber. As she bit into a triangle with Vegemite, she felt the white bread smooth against the roof of her mouth. As soon as the sandwiches were gone, the children grabbed chocolate crackles, hundreds and thousands sandwiches, iced buns and slices of sponge cake filled with jam and whipped cream.

  When no one could eat any more, the games started. The fathers rolled up their shirtsleeves and rounded up the kids with their good-natured grumbling. They sorted the children into groups according to their age, and while one of the fathers stood at the starting line blowing a whistle, two held a rope across the finishing line.

  Hania giggled while Uncle Bill tied her right leg to Beverley’s left. Hobbling across the lawn together, trying to keep in step to avoid tripping, they touched the tape first and collapsed on the grass shrieking with laughter. After that, they went in the sack race, and the egg-and-spoon race, and when the races were over, Uncle Bill suspended apples on lengths of string tied to the thick branch of a pine tree. Then he tied the children’s hands behind their backs and told them to eat the apples, which were bobbing and swaying in the breeze. Meggsie was the first to finish his apple, but some of the smaller kids complained that it wasn’t fair because he was taller.