by Peter Corris
She was ignoring the fact that she'd grown up in Brighton, Victoria, the way she ignored everything that didn't suit her. I grunted, checked my pockets for cigarettes and money, and left the compartment. I made the dining car just in time and settled down to a breakfast I don't care to remember - I wasn't to retain it for very long, anyway.
I left money on the table, lit a cigarette and got up to go. As I did so a man came into the dining car. He was a big fellow, well built, square-jawed and with sandy hair. He was wearing a police uniform which delayed my identification of him. But when I'd registered that fact and made allowance for it, plus a few years and few pounds in weight, I knew who he was and I had to grip the table to stay upright. Jack Henderson of the Liverpool training camp, the troopship Wisden and the muddy hell of France.
I had to go past him to get out of the carriage. Somehow I got my legs moving. I held my hand up to my face with the cigarette in it and shielded my features as much as I could. He was intent on looking for a seat. I'm going to make it, I thought. Then the bloody train lurched; I had to grab for a handhold, he did the same and our eyes locked.
'Hughes!' he shouted. 'You cowardly bastard!'
I pushed past him, stumbled through the door and pushed it back savagely at him as he regained balance and came after me. I almost ran through the narrow, bucketing passage; I swayed and hit my shoulders on both sides. Through the connecting door, across the shifting floor that covered the coupling, and into the next carriage. I bumped my knee excruciatingly but kept going. There was a mirror at the end of the carriage and I saw him practically fall through the door and charge after me. Time slowed down: I saw him reach behind his back and pull out a truncheon. His pale eyes started from his head as he came on.
I went through a rattling, half-open section over the coupling between this carriage and the next and tugged at the door. It was locked. The baggage car. I was trapped in a space six feet by six, open to the wind but with no hole big enough to jump through and with one of the toughest men in the 1st AIF bearing down on me. He threw open the door and fear confronted hatred.
'Hughes,' he spat, fighting for breath. 'Corporal bloody Hughes.'
'Jack, I can explain.'
'Deserter! Worse than a scab!' He swung the truncheon and it landed on my shoulder. I sagged in time to take some of the weight out of it but I knew what I'd feel if it landed on my head.
'I got lost.'
'You ran out on yer mates.' He was playing with me now, feinting with the stick, waiting for me to commit myself to a movement so he could clobber me in the right way. I was sobbing. I held my hands in front of me.
'Jack . . .'
I moved to my right although I hadn't meant to. I couldn't move again and he had me as a stationary target. His arm cocked and I waited for my head to explode.
The train went into a bend and swung wildly; the end carriages whipped around and our section bucked and heaved. Jack, intent on his prey, lost balance completely – he cannoned into a metal support, cried out and dropped the truncheon. I was still pleading as I bent, picked it up and swung it. With no timing, no finesse, just luck on my side, I caught him across the temple and he dropped like a poleaxed steer.
26
I imagine I was whimpering as I checked his pulse and rolled back his eyelids. The sentence for desertion combined with assault on an officer of the law would be impossibly harsh. If he died I was gallows bait for sure.
But he was unbloodied and breathing regularly. I recovered some composure and my brain began to function in a rudimentary way. Throw him out? I thought. No, you fool, that'll make it murder. Hide him? Better, much better. I sneaked a look into the rear of the last sleeping carriage. Still no activity and why would there be any traffic coming this way, except for . . . and there it was – the men's convenience.
I got Jack under the shoulders and dragged him through the door. He didn't move a muscle. Somehow I got the lavatory open and him inside. There was hardly room to turn but I wedged him between the wall and the bowl. I took off one of his boots, closed the door and jammed it tight from the outside by hammering the boot in between the bottom of the door and the floor. I was sweating from the effort and poked my head out for air. I vomited violently before I could make any sense of the landscape. I hadn't travelled the line for a few years but I could see that we were getting close to Sydney. Close enough? That was the question. Then I saw Jack's truncheon; a flick and that was out and over the embankment for some slum kid to find.
I wouldn't claim to be a resourceful man, too panicky, but I did a smart thing then. I got out one of my Brown Knight cards, wrote 'OUT OF ORDER – USE CONVENIENCE IN NEXT CARRIAGE' on the back and wedged it in the door at eye level. A man passed me, heading towards relief, as I scuttled back in the direction of my compartment. I heard him swear and then follow me. He didn't notice the boot or try the door.
Back in the two berth I urged Elizabeth to hurry with the collection of her things.
'Why?' she grumbled.
'I want to be first off.'
'Why? Papa always says . . .'
'Hang Papa. This is an emergency, try to think of me as losing blood from terrible wounds.'
'Why, Richard, whatever d'you mean?'
I didn't answer but the language made enough impact on her to get her moving. I collected my things (I was travelling very light, as always), and kept poking my head out to survey the corridor. Through the window I saw a station sign – Redfern.
'Hurry!'
'I am hurrying. I need a porter.'
'You'll need a doctor if you don't hurry!' I grabbed cases and boxes and shoved others into her arms and dragged her down the passage to the nearest door. I could imagine Jack coming round, gnashing his yellow teeth and throwing his thirteen stone against the door. The train slowed and went into a tunnel. If it stopped it could be the finish. Then we were out in the light and pulling into the Central Terminus.
Elizabeth was practically weeping and I pushed her out on to the platform. She dropped bundles but I scooped them up and collared a porter by showing him a fistful of silver.
'Very sick woman,' I said. 'Get us to a cab as quick as you can.'
'Right, sir!' He threw cases and boxes into his wheeler and started down the platform like a sprinter. I dragged Elizabeth along with me, feeling in my waistcoat pocket for the tickets. Nothing.
'Christ, the tickets!'
They took the Sydney ones last night, don't you remember? Richard, what is the matter?' She was red in the face and gasping. No bushwalker now. 'Aren't we going on to Newcastle by train?'
We were through the gates and I relaxed a little. 'No. I've had a premonition. My father's dying, we have to hurry.'
'Liar!'
'Here we are, sir. Should be a cab along any minute.'
'Thank you.'
'Thank you, sir!'
I watched him go and when he was out of sight I gathered up the cases again, ignored Elizabeth's protests, and dragged her off to the nearest tram stop. Police can follow porter/cab driver trails like hounds after foxes; honest folk travel by tram.
Sydney didn't seem to have changed much in the few years that had passed. A little more noise, perhaps, certainly more motor traffic. But George Street was instantly familiar and welcoming. As the tram moved up past the Haymarket I could see down to the edge of Chinatown and then up Park Street to Hyde Park where, in a few hours, people would be sitting out in the sun having their lunch. Sun, that was the big difference. It was the middle of the year but the day was going to be warm; we were both overdressed, Elizabeth particularly. We looked like refugees which, I suppose, we were.
Elizabeth was uncharacteristically quiet. She gazed out at the city, craned her neck to peer up the narrow, crooked streets and let her eyes wander up some of the higher buildings. I wondered if she was impressed, or felt, as many Melburnians do, that Sydney was a higgledy-piggledy mess. The Town Hall was a fine example of the style, surely. I hefted cases, preparing to get off and she
turned to look at me.
'Richard,' she said, 'where are the hospitals?'
Martin Place would be the spot, I reckoned – motor and hansom cab stands, flower sellers, newsstands, hustle and bustle even at nine in the morning. I installed Elizabeth with the baggage on a seat near the steps to the GPO and went off to look for a car hire firm. A few enquiries directed me to Gregory's Car and Charabanc Hire Company in Pitt Street. I knew the drill in a place like that. I produced a card from Green's of London and passed myself off as a one-time director of that august firm. I hinted that I was interested in investing in a local company (not setting up in competition, mind you), and could I negotiate a car hire for a trip to Newcastle and return? Insurance? Of course – essential part of the business. Fuel? Customer to purchase at selected outlets, goes without saying. Deposit? In cash, of course, and could a driver show me the operation of the vehicle on the short trip to collect my lady wife? Nothing easier, Mr Browning, sir.
A half hour later, having crossed the harbour on the vehicular ferry, I was pushing the Austin Vitesse along at a good clip up the Pacific Highway. Elizabeth had paid the deposit, I'm happy to say, and she was watching me intently as I drove the car.
'You drive very well, Richard,' she said. 'Could you teach me?'
'Of course, dear.' Promise them anything on the last hand in the game is my motto. I was feeling good, of course, with my coat and tie off, the window half open and a nourishing Sydney breeze blowing through. The back seat was full of our luggage and heavy clothes we'd discarded. We had a reserve can of petrol strapped to the running board, and I'd stocked up with wine, bread and cold meats in Crows Nest. I'd driven the route before and knew the hazards – bad stretches of road, the Hawkesbury ferry which could cause delays and several steep hills which had to be gone up in reverse in the old days. But it was a fine morning and the Vitesse was going like a bird.
There wasn't much conversation between us. Elizabeth, it transpired, was one of those people who can read in a motor car. Myself, I can barely read a map; a minute's concentration on the print and I'm ready to empty my stomach by the roadside. But my good wife read her medical and financial journals, only looking out at the scenery occasionally. The Hawkesbury fishing villages, she owned were pretty.
'But they don't compare with the ones along the Rhine, do they, Richard?'
I grunted something. That's the way Victorians are; rather than admit that Kosciusko is a respectable peak, and far superior to the miserable hills of their state, they'll compare it with Mont Blanc or the Matterhorn. We stopped for lunch once over Peat's Ferry and I still remember it as a pleasant occasion. We had a tartan travelling rug down on the grass, some decent claret and a crusty loaf. I felt quite domesticated as Elizabeth and I puffed on our cigarettes, brushing away the odd fly and looking forward to a cup of tea at the end of our journey.
There was the question of pursuit to consider of course, but I judged danger from that source to be small. Jack Henderson might rant and rave about having seen a deserter, but he only had the name Hughes and a quick, action-blurred description to go on. I doubted that he'd taken in too many details of my clothing and appearance. William Hughes, solitary breakfaster, and Mr and Mrs Richard Browning wouldn't easily be related and there should not be a warm trail from railway station to motor hire. The fright I'd had confirmed me in the wisdom of my plan, however.
We made pretty good time to Newcastle, considering the state of the road, getting stuck behind greybeards with horses even older than themselves, and Elizabeth's insistence that we stop to take photographs – not, you understand, of the scenery, which she disdained, but of ourselves. I had the Leica old Simondsen had sold me (God knows how I had hung on to it through all the vicissitudes since then), and I kept some of the snaps I took on that drive. They show Elizabeth, bursting at the seams of her modish dress, coyly sitting up on the bonnet of the Vitesse, and me, in shirtsleeves and motoring cap, holding a cigarette and smiling uneasily into the lens.
Newcastle today is said to have some of the best Victorian buildings in Australia. It certainly had a lot of 'em in 1920: look down some streets from the right angle and you could swear you were in London, or perhaps Birmingham if you were feeling depressed. The place depressed me as I drove in – too many bad memories: I was too drunk, too young behind that pub over there; . . . had my face slapped good and hard by a girl whose name I've forgotten in a house down that street; . . . still owed money to this shopkeeper and that one and several across the road.
The place looked prosperous enough though, as it always did when the mines were working and shipping was busy and all the agriculture in the hinterland was buzzing along. It only took a slump in the price of something or some fool of a radical unionist to call the men out and money dried up in Newcastle overnight. I'd often heard 'Wild Bill' rant on the matter. Thoughts of my sire were contributing to my depression. I'd often had fantasies of coming home in a Rolls, pockets bursting with money, my name on everyone's lips, and presenting myself to him in that fashion. It was a far cry from that – a rented Austin, a fat Melbourne blonde for a wife and about fifty pounds in gold to my name.
It was late afternoon and getting cool; Elizabeth had started to put back the clothes she'd taken off so that when I handed her out of the car at the Terminus Hotel she was swaddled and enormous.
'Isn't it rather close to the railway, Richard?' says she squinting at the tracks.
First complaint of the session, thinks I. 'Best hotel in town,' I grunted.
'I hope the trains don't run too early and late.'
'Couldn't say. Here boy, I'll take a paper.'
'Oh, do let's get on, Richard!'
'Yes, dear.'
It was the same story at the desk. 'No higher than the first floor, if you please, and well away from the railway.'
'Yes, madam. Room with bath?'
Never high on my list of priorities, but tops with Elizabeth.
'Of course!'
'Do you wish the laundry service, madam?'
Here she was good enough to consult me. 'We'll only be here one night, won't we, Richard.'
'Could be two,' says I. 'Better get the smalls washed, just to be on the safe side.'
She huffed and puffed at that and at the close confinement of the elevator, the darkness of the corridor and everything else until we were settled in our room. It was big and airy, looked out towards the city's park and monument and had a decent carpet on the floor. I kicked off my boots, wriggled my toes luxuriously and settled down to look at the paper.
'Richard!'
'Yes, Elizabeth?'
'Don't you think I have been most forbearing?'
'I don't follow you.' I put the paper down; hopeless to persist when she was in one of these moods.
'I haven't asked you why we got off the train in such haste, why we couldn't take the train and why we had to drive up here, at some cost to myself, may I add.'
'You haven't, that's right.'
'Nor do I know why we are putting up in this miserable hotel instead of going at once to your parents' home which, you tell me, is commodious. Unless that's another of your lies?'
'No, biggish place, as I recall, not The Gables but . . .'
'Well, my patience is at an end. Why, Richard? Why? Why? Why?'
I couldn't give her all the answers, of course; I had to improvise and embroider. Some of it was God's truth.
'On the train I was recognised by a chap I knew in the army.' I uncorked one of the bottles of wine we'd brought, located a glass on the bureau and poured. I held up the bottle enquiringly but Elizabeth shook her head. 'Had to stay clear of him for reasons you well know.' I let that sink in: if someone else blew the whistle on me as a deserter Elizabeth would lose her hold. She saw the point at once and remained silent. 'Chap was a policeman,' I went on. 'Could've mounted a search and so on, hence the motor.' She nodded. 'As to my parents, well, it's delicate.'
'They're not . . . undesirables?'
'Are to me,
particularly my Pa, but, no – you'd find them rough but presentable, especially my mother. Damn rich, too, unless Pa's affairs have gone downhill which I don't think for a moment they have.'
'Well then?'
'I'm under a cloud don't y'see. Black sheep and all that. I have to spy out the land – check on the old chap's health, see who's hanging around the place, find out how I'm regarded. That sort of thing.'
'Why?'
'You want a warm welcome, don't you? To be treated like a daughter?' I drank some wine and put on my boyish, confused look. 'Besides, when we . . .'
'When we what?'
'Well, children and all that. Bound to happen and there's a solid inheritance at stake here – for you and yours, I mean ours and mine, I mean . . . you see what I mean?'
I swear she blushed and I knew that I'd hit the right note. I wished I'd hit on this line of approach earlier but, there it was, better late than never. I knew how to handle Elizabeth for the little more time required.
'I see, Richard.' She sounded thoughtful and looked docile. I went across and planted a kiss on her slightly sweaty forehead.
'Now you just have a rest. We'll have dinner here. I'll go out later to sniff the air and by tomorrow I should know how to tackle 'em. Just leave it to me.'
She smiled and nodded. I buried myself in the paper and heard her ferreting around for a while. Then the bed-springs creaked and I could concentrate on my reading. I ignored the news and the sporting pages. 'Shipping' was the section I was after. Tiny print but I had sniper's eyesight. There it was – sailing on the 4.30am tide for San Francisco, the US merchant vessel Sternwood.
27
Meticulous planning at some crucial points in my career (and damn good luck at others) has kept me alive this long. Certainly, I'd planned things out in Newcastle in 1920. For one thing, I'd made sure that my valise with a few things like papers, clean shirt, razor and underwear remained behind in the car when we checked into the hotel. Elizabeth, only concerned about her own paraphernalia, didn't notice. Point two: I didn't let her sleep for too long. Just when she was ready to go deeply under, I roused her, forced her to accept a glass of wine, and took her downstairs for dinner.
