A Woman of Courage (24 page)

‘You get the benefit too,' she said.

‘Still don't seem right. A man's got his pride.'

So he did; pride and an eight-to-six job in a machine shop. The most he could hope to earn was ten, maybe fifteen a week. Hilary was pulling down somewhere close to eighty.

The established agents hated her. Plenty of them shared what had been Jack Almond's opinion.

‘No job for a woman.'

They hated being wrong even more than they hated her.

‘She'll trip over her feet one of these days,' they said. ‘Let's hope it's soon.'

If things went pear-shaped she knew she could expect no mercy.

FOLLOWING THE HIGHWAY

1

Hilary Brand and Dave Peterfield were sitting in the office. It was Thursday 30 June 1966, the last day of the financial year, and papers were spread on the desk between them as they examined the sales figures Sandy had presented to them that morning.

‘One hundred and seventy thousand dollars,' Hilary said.

Seventy thousand for each of them, thirty thousand for Sandy. Decimal currency had been introduced back in February and for most people, although not for Hilary Brand or the Peterfields, it was still a bit of a puzzle working out values in the new money.

Dave sat back in his chair with a pleased expression on his rugged face, rearranged by a decade of footy. ‘Pretty damn good, I would say,' he said.

‘It's a start. A long way short of good enough, though.'

‘Nothing will ever be good enough for you,' Dave said.

He was right. It was the way Hilary was made and she knew it. It made for restless nights and an increasingly toey husband.

Sean was not happy. Their honeymoon in the forests of the south was five years gone and the cracks were beginning to show.

Mrs Madigan wouldn't let up. ‘Must be something wrong with her. Take her to the doctor,' she told Sean repeatedly. ‘I want a grandson.'

With every month that passed there was less and less chance of that. The passion of the early days was long spent; nowadays Sean hardly touched her from one week to the next. She was growing away from him and he hated it. On the rare occasions he made love to her it was with a barely suppressed anger, as though he wanted to punish more than caress her.

She continued to put up with it. She did not want to admit failure even in this but her mind was increasingly closed to him, her body not yet but getting there. She saw the highway unrolling ahead of her and was determined to follow it to the end. She would have liked him to join her on her journey but knew there was no chance of it. She was beyond him now.

‘Driving around I see lots of other agents' For Sale signs,' she told Dave Peterfield. ‘Sometimes they sit there for months. I think we should try a new approach.'

She had not forgotten her attempt to get into the television business, when the burly contractor had laughed her out of his office. ‘Anyone in your footy club work for television?'

‘One bloke's an announcer.'

‘Any chance of meeting him?'

‘What you got in mind?'

She smiled, dollar signs all over her. ‘You'll see.'

When she had been working in Mrs Shargey's fancy-pants dress shop she had told herself she needed allure. Now, when she and Dave sat down over a beer with Boyd Michaels, she with just a hint of cleavage out, she needed it in spades. Luckily she'd had plenty of practice; most of the people she'd been selling to were blokes.

She gave twenty-three-year-old Boyd the full treatment and in no time he was simpering and Hilary moved in for the kill. ‘You have a real way with you,' she said. ‘I'll bet people buy television sets just to watch you reading the news.'

Boyd did not deny it.

‘I reckon you'd be a star in selling, if you ever fancied a change.'

Boyd did not deny it.

‘What I want is someone to do a bit of selling for us, right after the news. We'd make it worth his while, obviously.'

Boyd was nervous but interested. ‘What would I have to do?'

‘Just read this simple message.'

She handed him a piece of paper. He tried it out aloud.

‘
If any of our viewers have property they'd like to sell, Brand Peterfield have large numbers of keen buyers waiting. This could be your big chance to cash in!
'

He looked even more nervous. ‘I dunno…'

‘The station gets money from its adverts,' Hilary said. ‘It relies on it. It'll get money out of this. So what's the difference?'

‘I'll speak to the advertising guys. See if they like the idea.'

‘What's not to like?' said Hilary.

Dave had his concerns. ‘The Land Agents' Supervisory Committee,' he said.

‘What about them?'

‘They'll crucify you,' he said.

‘Why should they do that?'

‘Soliciting business from other agencies' clients? That's prohibited, isn't it?'

‘We're not soliciting anything from anybody. We're making a general appeal to the public. If clients of other agents choose to reply it's not our fault. In any case we don't know if the station will do it.'

The station would do it all right; its advertising department couldn't wait to get her on board. The agreement was signed and paid for; the first broadcast made. The timing was what made it: not slung in with all the other adverts but in its own slot immediately after the nightly news, when the majority of viewers were watching and no one could miss it.

How the committee would react they still didn't know but it didn't take them long to find out what the station's MD thought about it. He went ballistic, screaming down the phone with Hilary holding the receiver a foot from her ear.

‘Giving you priority? What're our other advertisers going to say, eh? I'm closing your slot. If I find you've pulled a fast one you'll be hearing from our solicitors…'

‘I have a contract,' she said. ‘Signed, sealed and delivered. I've paid you guys a thousand quid for five gigs. You close me down, I'll be the one doing the suing.'

‘You've got a
contract
?' Apoplexy was a distinct possibility.

‘I have it in front of me now.'

Quiet as a turtle dove, the MD was then.

‘I see. You needn't think you'll be getting another one,' he said, trying to be fierce.

‘Suit yourself,' Hilary said. ‘Our money's good but if you don't want it…'

After that the answers to the adverts rolled in. Dave continued his doomsday scenario that the committee would take away their licences but Hilary, cocky as a rooster, didn't believe it and was right. The committee might not like it but Hilary had exploited a loophole in the rules and they could do nothing. The only comeback was a good one: they had a huge number of enquiries and a good many sales too.

2

Five months later Hilary was driving home after a successful trip south of Fremantle with two more sales under her belt and she decided she'd explore some of the side roads. It was a sunny day with a light breeze off the sea and the sky was throbbing with heat. She was two weeks off her twenty-sixth birthday and she was letting rip with ‘A Hard Day's Night', one of the Beatles hits she'd first heard during their Aussie tour two years back. She remembered watching her first rock and roller on the box in Adelaide but she'd come a long way since her Johnny O'Keefe days. Her bull-frog voice threatened to crack the windscreen as she crested a hill, the ocean visible in turquoise glimpses to her left, and slammed on the brakes in a slide and smother of dust.

‘So there you are,' Hilary said.

The large block stretched up the slope to the right of the road. Thoughts started ticking in her head. Twenty acres, maybe twenty-five; road frontage; views of the sea, at least from further up the hill. The only building she could see was a tumbledown shack. It would have looked abandoned had it not been for a plume of smoke rising from the tin-pot chimney and shredding on the breeze.

She had lucked on the Wiggins' place. Every estate agent in the west had heard of it and the misanthropic old man who lived there alone with a pack of savage dogs for company. The word was that the property had no power, no running water and no telephone. Those who had seen him said that Walter Wiggins might be ramshackle in body but had a ferocious temper and hated trespassers with a passion. The dogs hated them even worse.

The only way to get hold of Walter Wiggins was to yell from the boundary wire. That set the dogs going but nine times out of ten their owner ignored even that. The tenth time he threatened to set the beasts on anyone setting foot on his land and the only one who had tried it said afterwards he'd been lucky to escape with his life.

Walter Wiggins was impossible. Everyone said so but that was not a word in Hilary's vocabulary. The only gate into the property had a king-sized padlock that by the look of it hadn't been opened in a generation. She thought about it then climbed on the gate's metal frame, stood tall and let fly with a whistle that might have been heard a mile away. The dogs came howling.

Hilary gave them a few seconds to get a good look at her. ‘How you going, dogs?'

Their mouths were red, their teeth enormous. Moving carefully so as not to startle them, she climbed down to join them.

3

‘You got a nerve,' Walter Wiggins said. ‘I'll give you that. Them mutts don't make mates easily.'

The pack leader was nuzzling in Hilary's lap. She patted the shaggy head. ‘I've always got on with dogs.'

‘I call that one Bradman,' he said.

‘Bradman? Like the cricketer?'

‘Cause he was always taking a bite out of the Poms. You ain't a Pom, are you?' he said, suddenly fierce.

‘No chance,' Hilary said.

She looked around her. It was more rubbish tip than house, with refuse everywhere you looked: tin cans and cardboard boxes and bags full of what smelt like a ten-year supply of kitchen waste. A graveyard of empty bottles. Old Walter was kitted out to match: a shirt that looked like he hadn't had it off in a year, an ancient sweater despite the heat that was more holes than material, a pair of pants that would have put a scarecrow to shame. His mouth was toothless and the lines on his face were more like chasms; looking at the dirt in them Hilary thought you could excavate them and maybe find diamonds. God, you needed a strong nose in her job.

‘What you want, anyway?' His voice creaked like he hadn't used it for ten years.

‘A cup of tea would be nice,' Hilary said.

‘You wha'?'

‘Cup of tea. With something nice to put in it.'

She'd found it paid to carry a half bottle of scotch on her travels; it was amazing how often a friendly shot helped sweeten a deal. She produced it now.

Wally wiped his paw over his lips. ‘Blimey.'

He got them each a mug of tea that was strong enough to melt glass; as for the state of the mugs, don't even think about it.

If I die of food poisoning it'll be in a good cause, Hilary thought.

She handed over the scotch and watched as Wally took a gulp of tea and then filled his mug.

‘You want some?'

‘A small one to be sociable,' she said.

A small one was what she got.

‘What's your game?' Wally said.

‘A grand in your hand,' Hilary said. ‘And a stack more later. That's my game.'

‘What I got to do to get it?'

‘Sell your place to me.'

‘I been here all my life.'

‘So maybe it's time to move on. Think about it. A grand – non-refundable, by the way – will buy you a house with heating, running water, all mod cons. What's there not to like about that?'

‘What about me dogs?'

‘They go with you.'

Wally chomped on the idea a bit, slopped more whisky into his mug and swilled it down. While Hilary held her breath.

‘Make it two,' he said.

‘A grand now. Non-refundable, like I said. Another five when the deal goes through.' She gave him her best smile. ‘Plus a crate of scotch to celebrate with.'

‘Now you're talking.'

‘All I need is your signature.'

She was waltzing all the way home. The land, once it was sub-divided and services put in, would be easy to sell. Her mind was doing its calculator bit; she reckoned, all up, she was looking to clear over a hundred grand.

‘Maybe more,' she told the sunset. ‘Any luck, quite a bit more.'

Now, at last, she was really motoring.

4

‘You're trying to steal my son away from me,' Mrs Madigan said. ‘That's what it is.'

Hilary was sick of her mother-in-law's endless sniping. ‘All I said was I thought it would be nice to move into a bigger place.'

‘You've got a house now. What you want a bigger place for? When you got no family?'

‘A bit of extra space for when we have one.'

A buffalo would have snorted more quietly. ‘That'll be the day,' said Mrs Madigan.

Lord give me strength.

It was a bigger house. A better one too, and a better suburb, a three-bedroom brick house on a double block which might be handy for development later. When once again she decided to move on.

She made a mistake, told Sean her thinking.

‘We've hardly settled in and already you're talking of moving? What's wrong with this place?'

Nothing was wrong with it, but it wasn't Peppermint Grove. She remembered telling Mrs Madigan that was where she was heading and the old bitch had sneered. Well, that was still where she was heading; on one of her forays into the area she had even picked out the house she wanted, if it ever came on the market. And Mrs Madigan could sneer all she liked.

5

Sandy stuck her nose around Hilary's door. Hilary was on the phone. She put her hand over the mouthpiece and looked at Sandy enquiringly.