A Woman of Courage (17 page)

‘That'll do.'

He stared at her while his hands guided the big truck along the highway. ‘Adelaide's a long way from Melbourne. Where are you really headed?'

‘Anywhere away from here,' Hilary said. Her hands tightened into fists. She thought, I've blown it. He'll know I'm on the run. He won't know why but he'll know that much and that from his point of view I could be trouble. He'll pull over and tell me to get out.

He did not pull over. He kept going, hands motionless on the wheel, eyes fixed on the road unwinding ahead of them like a silver ribbon in the headlights. She glanced at what she could see of his profile. As far as she could tell he looked OK; neither old nor young, with a big nose and strong-looking chin.

She thought things would probably be all right. She settled back in her seat, watching the road. There was no other traffic and the truck kept up a steady pace. She could see nothing of the countryside in the darkness. The road kept heading west. In front of them the sky was still dark but looking in the truck's side mirror she could see a lightness behind and knew the dawn was chasing them down the miles.

‘You took a chance,' the driver said.

‘I know it.' She spoke defensively; she did not like to think of that.

‘Plenty of ratbags on the road.'

Hilary said nothing but crossed her fingers in the darkness, hoping he was not one of them.

More silent miles, then he said: ‘You on the run?'

‘Something like that.'

He said no more. Gradually it grew light: a greyness, first of all, then she began to see the dark shapes of bushes. The branches of a tree stood out against the sky. She glanced cautiously at the driver. She could see him properly now. He was a bit older than she'd thought, with a lined face that would have looked better for a shave and dark hair combed back.

‘Look all right, do I?' He must have sensed her examining him.

‘You'll do.' She grinned cheekily. She'd been on edge all the way but being able to see him made things easier.

They went through a small town, the streets deserted so early in the morning, then it was back to the countryside. The land was flat and she could see sheep grazing in the paddocks beside the road.

‘There's a roadhouse a couple of miles ahead,' the driver said. ‘I usually stop there to freshen up. You hungry?'

They pulled in; there were other trucks in the parking lot. Inside a few blokes were feeding their faces, some with their noses in newspapers. They freshened up and ate a cooked breakfast of eggs and sausage and potatoes with tea hot enough to rip the skin off your mouth. He wouldn't let her pay.

‘I got money.'

‘Next time,' he said.

Then it was the road again.

‘What's your name?' the driver asked.

‘Maggie,' Hilary said. ‘Yours?'

‘Mike. Mikhail Tulitsin.'

‘Blimey.'

‘My granddad was from Russia. Mike Tulip is easier,' he said.

‘You're not wrong.'

He looked at her. ‘Your name really Maggie?'

‘I told you!'

‘If you say so. You don't look like a Maggie to me, but I don't blame you, if you're on the run as you say. The blues after you?'

‘Could be.'

‘Why?'

‘I was in a home. They sent me to work on a farm but now I've left.'

‘Didn't like farm work?'

‘There were other reasons.'

‘I can guess.'

‘Yeah. Well.'

She slept then, woke with a taste in her mouth.

Mike smiled at her. ‘You slept well. Two hours.'

There was more traffic now: cars and the occasional truck.

‘Is it much further?'

‘A way to go yet,' he said. ‘And nothing to see all the way. Dead boring, this stretch. I knew it well, one time.'

‘How come?'

‘Born here, wasn't I?'

Silence for a while, the big truck eating the miles. They had passed Bordertown some time back and were now heading southwest past the southern fringes of what Mike told her was called the mallee country.

‘What's the mallee country?'

‘Living death to the ones farming it.'

He told her his dad had been given a slice of it as a soldier settler after World War I and he had grown up with the despair and black furies of a man who had attempted to make a living out of unforgiving land.

‘Ma walked out eventually. Said she couldn't take it and who was to blame her? Dad blew his brains out in the end,' Mike said. ‘Plenty did. I'll never forgive the bastards did that to them.'

‘Neither shall I,' Hilary said.

‘So what's your story?'

She told him about the bombs the night she was born and vague memories of her gran and how later she was sent to Australia.

‘Maybe they did you a favour. There are worse places.'

‘That's not the point. It shouldn't ever have happened, should it? I mean, being sent off like a parcel, without no chance to have a say…'

‘What about your mum?'

‘I don't remember her.'

‘Yet you say you remember the bombs the night you were born?'

‘I know it's not possible. Yet somehow I do, all the same.'

The miles passed.

‘What you gunna do when you get to Adelaide?' Mike asked.

‘Get a job, I suppose.'

‘Got a driving licence? Anything that says who you are?'

‘No.' She'd never thought about papers or of anything beyond getting away before Brett came back.

‘Don't worry. My brother Pyotir – Pete – will fix you up.'

She looked at him with narrowed eyes. ‘Doing what?' Because you never knew, did you?

Mike laughed. ‘Nothing like that. Cleaning job, maybe.'

‘Won't they want identification?'

‘Leave it to Pete. Resourceful man, my brother.'

After it got dark they pulled off at another roadhouse. This time Hilary paid for the food.

‘You need to hang on to your money,' Mike said but gave in when he saw she'd made up her mind. ‘Thanks anyway.'

Both of them slept for a while then headed on down the road, following the steep hill around a nightmare hairpin bend and so down into Adelaide.

‘Plenty go off the road there,' Mike said.

She could well believe it.

They pulled into the depot and Mike supervised the off-loading before taking Hilary to see his brother, who it turned out worked for a shop called Leppard's Clothing Emporium at the back of the Metro Cinema in Hindley Street.

The two brothers talked quietly to each other – she couldn't hear a word – before the one called Pete turned to her.

‘You want to hide from the police?'

‘I want a job.'

‘But no papers, eh?'

‘No.'

‘What happens, someone comes asking questions?'

‘Why should they?'

‘Depends why they want you.'

‘They may not want me at all.'

She was thinking this could be a serious problem. It sounded like the man called Pete was not interested in helping her – why should he, after all? – and she had no idea what she would do if he said no.

Then he smiled. ‘We'll fix you up. No worries.'

She felt a ton weight had been lifted off her heart.

‘I'll get you a union card,' he said. ‘That's easy. But it'll cost you.'

‘How much?'

‘Five per cent of your pay in cash, every pay day, to the union bloke.'

‘So much?'

‘It's worth it; a union card means you can go anywhere and no one will ask questions. Only thing…' He looked stern. ‘How old are you?'

‘Seventeen.'

‘Too young. We'll say you're twenty-one, OK? And I need your real name.'

‘Hilary Brand.' She looked shamefaced at Mike, but he smiled.

‘I always knew you were no Maggie,' he said.

‘But you can get me a job?'

The card was worth more to her than emeralds; for the first time in her life she would have a piece of paper saying who she was. But the best union card in the world was no use without a job to go with it.

‘I'll fix you up here, cleaning the store, helping with the unpacking, that sorta thing. That suit you?'

‘That's fine,' she said. She didn't even ask what she'd be paid. For the moment she was a beggar and choosing was off the menu.

2

She got the card and the job. She waved Mike goodbye as he drove away in his truck. She got on with the business of living. She cleaned the shop and the store. Occasionally she got to help unpacking goods in the warehouse out the back. Every month she handed over the cash to the union bloke, guessing not all of it would get back to union headquarters and not caring. She had the card in her own name; she felt she was going places at last.

Home was a dilapidated room in a falling-down tenement in an alleyway off Fenn Place. Fine evenings she would stroll down King William Street looking at the trams and watching the lights shining in the AMP building. At night she lay in bed and listened to the sound of the trains while the streetlights threw garish shadows across the stained walls.

There was an old fireplace in her room. She found a wood yard at the western end of Hindley Street, and when it got around to winter she sneaked over there at night. There were dogs but they didn't bother her. She'd nick a log or two and toast her toes. Luxury. But it was a dead-end job; she didn't know where she was heading but knew it was somewhere other than there.

When he was in town Mike would drop by, take her out for a feed. Good as far as it went but Hilary was restless. She wanted action without knowing what action it was. There were blokes after her because Hilary was a looker, but that wasn't the sort of action she wanted.

Some weekends she'd take the tram to Glenelg, walk along the beach, treat herself to an ice cream or a bag of chips if she felt like it, but the beach didn't satisfy her restlessness. She was looking, no idea what for.

3

She was eighteen. She became mates with a girl called Irish. Irish was a good sort but a bit of a cough drop too. She was in with a bunch of larrikins who called themselves the Hindley Mob and wanted Hilary to join in.

Hilary wasn't sure about that; she'd heard bad things about the Hindley Mob. ‘What do you do?'

‘Have fun, mostly.'

‘Like?'

Irish was a bit vague about that. ‘We show people we own the streets, you know?'

What that meant, they terrorised anyone weaker than they were. A shove and crumblies with disapproving faces went into the gutter. Young kids, too. They helped themselves to things in shops; if the owner objected they threatened to break his windows for him.

‘And the blues do nothing?'

‘I've known one or two end up in Yatala.'

The thought of gaol didn't seem to bother Irish but Hilary wasn't interested in dead ends and could see that Northfields, the women's prison, was the deadest of all dead ends.

One night she was with Irish and a couple of mates in a pub. One of them got into a blue with the bouncer, who was smaller and a lot older. Maybe that should have told Larry something but he'd never been a good listener. Next thing you knew, the little guy had decked Larry, who leapt up steaming only to have it happen again.

They found out later the bouncer was a former champion boxer. You'd never have known it to look at him. It shook Hilary. She walked home alone. It was true what they said, then. Look before you leap.

That night she lay in bed. She watched the streetlights on the bedroom wall and asked herself where she was headed. She needed action like a drug but there had to be better ways than the Hindley Mob. ‘Give it a miss, mate,' she told the darkness.

The next evening Mike was in town and took her out to the usual pit-stop café with plenty of grease and the air blue with fag smoke. Hilary had her up-to-the-minute gear on, rolled-up jeans and greased hair in a ponytail. Mike didn't normally have much to say but this time he did.

‘Pete was telling me you're in with that Hindley Street mob.'

She sensed criticism. Her shoulder muscles tensed. ‘I been thinking about it.'

‘I'd give them a miss, I was you.'

She'd already decided that but didn't like being told. Mike was a good bloke but he didn't own her.

‘You're not me.'

‘That's true.' And talked about other things.

Hilary felt bad, cutting him off like that. ‘I need action in my life.'

‘Sure you do.'

‘They just have fun.'

‘Most of them end in shit trouble. You know that. You are too bright to waste your prospects with a bunch of no-hopers but it's your life. None of my business.'

‘What prospects? I'm not bright. I got nothing: no background, no education, no future.'

‘You're as bright as a button. But when you talk like that I think maybe you're not so bright after all. What you're saying is you don't
remember
your background. But even that is not true.'

‘You reckon?'

‘You told me about the bombs.'

‘Bombs,' she said scornfully. ‘Yeah, right.'

‘It's a start. And you told me about your gran.'

‘I don't remember my mum, though, not properly. I don't know why she sent me away. Why would she have done that, Mike?'

‘I thought they told you she was killed in an air raid.'

‘That's what they said. But how do I know it's true?'

He took her hand. ‘I know this: the past is past. Nothing you can do about it. Life starts today. Haven't you heard that? Not yesterday or last year – today! And as far as education goes, there's a library, right? You know how to read. So read! You're a looker: do the best for yourself and stop making like a widgie.'

She knew he was right. Once again it was time to move on.

She was determined to keep her cleaning job but instead of wasting her evenings took a part-time job waitressing at a café off Rundle Mall.