A Woman of Courage (25 page)

‘Abe Raucher on the other line.'

Abe was their lawyer.

‘I've got a man here I'd like you to meet,' Abe said.

‘Is he buying or selling?'

‘Neither. But he has an idea you'll find interesting.'

Hilary was always in the market for interesting ideas. ‘When does he want to come round?'

‘How about now?'

‘I'll be here. What's his name?'

‘Haskins Gould.'

1942–66

HASKINS GOULD

He had been born Joseph Haskins Gould in the British colony of Singapore in January 1942, a month before the Japanese arrived. His father had been top gun of an Australian motorcar firm and baby Joseph and his parents had been among the last to escape before the surrender.

He grew up surrounded by the story of that escape: the freighter crowded with over two thousand escapees continuously bombed and machine gunned by Japanese planes yet somehow, miraculously, reaching safety in Australia. As a babe in arms he remembered none of it, which did not stop him in later life boasting how he'd helped two nurses drag a wounded gunner to safety.

‘They called me a boy hero,' he said modestly, ‘but it was nothing, nothing.'

The first thing the boy hero really remembered was growing up in an arcaded bungalow that might have been transplanted from the tropics they had been in such a hurry to leave, as though a portion of their previous lives had accompanied them into what was to become permanent exile.

His father had been involved in the war effort and later with General Motors and the production of the new Holden motorcar. They were what people in those days called comfortably off but for Haskins that had never been enough. His parents indulged him; he did what he could to help them do so, taking everything they gave him and always on the lookout for more. He had never been hampered by scruples. He was smart, though, and money drew him like a magnet.

He went to the States and in California discovered the gold mine that was called shopping malls. He did well; he was nifty with a knife in what was acknowledged to be a cut-throat business; he didn't give a damn about the ruined lives he left behind him; and he had the knack of dealing with councillors eager for a sweetener so building permits had presented no problem.

Unfortunately questions were raised about some of his business practices. Some of those he'd bribed were singing like a choir and in 1966, one jump ahead of the authorities, he returned to Australia eager to explore the possibilities and steal anything that wasn't nailed down.

He'd been back a month when a lawyer gave him a name.

NEW VENTURES

1

Hilary sized up her visitor as he walked into her office. Haskins Gould was built like a truck, fists like coconuts. Barely suppressed energy radiated off him like heat.

He looked around her office with a pleased expression. ‘Nice,' he said with a hint of an American accent. ‘Way too small but nice.'

Hilary saw that being outspoken was a way of life for Haskins Gould. ‘At least we agree it's nice,' she said. ‘And what can I do for you, Mr Gould?'
Mr Gould
: to put him in his place, gently but definitely.

‘More like what I can do for both of us.' Uninvited he sat down on the other side of her desk, stuck his elbows on the desk top and leant forwards, staring into her eyes. ‘Malls.'

‘I beg your pardon?'

‘Shopping malls,' he said again. ‘I'm from Sydney originally but I've been two years in California. They are the coming thing there. I'm just off the boat and I been looking around. Bit of a one-horse town, ain't that right? A bit behind the times? I reckon a few malls would fit real well into this fair city. And into a dozen other towns in WA too, if I'm any judge.'

Hilary had acquired a sandgroper's attitude to the rest of the world, Sydney in particular, and didn't relish her town being described as a one-horse anything by some eastern states bum who thought he knew the lot.

‘Tell me about them.'

He did. Hilary, no slouch herself when it came to talking a blue streak, recognised an expert when she heard one and was prepared to discount ninety per cent of everything this hybrid Aussie-American wanted to tell her but, as he talked, she found herself growing more and more interested in what he had to say.

‘How high is the tallest building in Perth?' he said. ‘I'll tell you: it's ten storeys. In California that would be like a hole in the ground. In LA I was building shopping malls eighteen, twenty storeys high.'

‘Under one roof?'

‘Sure under one roof. Inside there'd be ten, maybe fifteen, levels. Ground floor you put your high-ticket tenants, a supermarket, anything you need to draw the buyers in. Maybe a few restaurants where shoppers can rest their weary feet. Other shops at the higher levels. Outside a parking area and a petrol station.'

‘Will locals go for it?'

‘All their shopping under one roof? In pleasant surroundings? Why shouldn't they?'

‘And the rents?'

‘Flat rate plus a percentage of turnover.'

‘You say you built them in America?'

‘I sure did. It's like a vertical warehouse with individual compartments. It's not hard; you need to be well organised but it's not hard.'

‘So why do you need me?'

‘Abe was saying you got the land.'

‘Or know how to get it, yes. Is that all you want?'

‘Two other things. We'll need money and I'll need a free hand to build it.'

‘I'm in good with the banks,' Hilary said. ‘I reckon I can sweet-talk them into a loan, if I decide to go ahead. But I'm not sure about the free hand.'

‘I got my methods,' Haskins said. ‘They worked in California; they'll work here. Like I said, I'm a good organiser and that's what makes the difference.'

‘You got any plans I can look at? Any photos of work you've done in California?'

‘I got some back at the hotel.'

‘Bring them down. I'll have a look at them and get back to you.'

‘I'll bring them but they stay with me. We can look at them together. Then we'll go and talk to the bank.'

2

Hilary decided to keep Haskins away from Henry Lancaster, scared his brash ways might put the banker off, but when she got back from her meeting she told him all about it.

‘Poor Henry! I don't think he could believe his ears. This woman walking into his office, cool as you please, and asking him for a half-million-dollar loan on what – let's face it – is nothing but a piece of empty land.

‘“But where is my security?” he asked me. “It's not the land,” I told him. “It's the vision. The future. It's an idea whose time has come.” I showed him the plans. Photos of similar work you'd done in the States. “You're an ideas man, Mr Lancaster,” I said. Buttering him up, you understand? “Well, this is the biggest idea in the retail trade you're ever likely to see.” I was that confident. I could see it as clearly as though it was already built: a tower fifteen storeys high crammed with shops and people coming and going.

‘“One-stop shopping,” I said. “That's how we'll promote it. I'm a great believer in slogans, Mr Lancaster, and I guarantee this one will draw them in. One-stop shopping: the housewives will come running! You can bet your pension on that!” Which was funny because I suppose he was, in a way. Yet they say bankers are so conservative!'

‘You got him to see it,' Haskins said. ‘That's why. You showed him the vision.'

‘I think I did.'

‘And he's gonna lend us the money?'

‘He is indeed. And before a brick has been laid. Of course I've been dealing with the bank for years and never put a foot wrong. But he still had to stick his oar in, even after he'd said yes. “You know, Mrs Madigan, there are not many women I would do this for. Entrepreneurs of the female gender are an unusual species, I think you will admit. In fact you and Bella Tucker, the iron ore magnate, are the only two I know.”'

‘But we've got it?' Haskins said.

‘Of course I got it.'

He eyed her coldly. ‘That's what matters. I don't give a hoot in Hades how you got him to agree, babe. Just so long as you did.'

2004

A NEW DAWN

1

The hall where the exhibition was being held was in a side street but well advertised. A large banner over the building's imposing entrance shouted the name for the world to see.
MARTIN GULLIVER
, the letters two feet high or more.

No one else was about; Jennifer stood at the street corner, hands sweat-clammy, heart racing, and stared at the glass-fronted doorway while she debated whether she dared go in. Her heart said yes; common sense said no. Martin was the past, a long-ago love that thirteen years back she had abandoned for security, status and respectability. How stupid to imagine that Martin might still have the feelings for her that had tumbled from his mouth on that fatal day when she had told him she was marrying Davis Lander. Both of them had shed tears. But the world had moved on; the years had taken their youth but in exchange had at least given Martin the success that in those days it had seemed he might never have.

I was a coward, Jennifer thought. I turned my back because I was afraid. I am afraid still. Of what? That Martin might not be there. That he might be there. He would spurn her: and who could blame him? Even worse: he might not recognise her at all.

Thirteen years.

Her dry mouth swallowed sourness. No. She half turned away, again paused.

If I do not go in I shall once again prove myself the coward I was before. If I do not go in I shall regret it forever.

In a way she could not understand, her will was disconnected from her body as now she walked down the street between the grey and silent buildings, crossed to the entrance and went up the steps to the glass door.

The door creaked as she pushed it open. She went in. And stopped, staring at the paintings hanging around the room.

They were a universe of colour, a battle cry and celebration of golds and greens and reds. A dozen shades of red. The artist had shaped ecstasy and flung it in the face of the observer. A powerful statement by a man she had known yet, it was now obvious, had never known at all.

The colours overwhelmed in their intensity, filling the exhibition room with light. They were too much, too much. Jennifer closed her eyes yet the vibrations remained. She could sense their brilliance; terror could lurk in those violent hues.

‘You are supposed to look at them.'

She heard the smile; knew the voice.

‘I am drowning, Martin.'

This before she had opened her eyes.
Drowning, and not only in the colours.
Again her heart was thundering. Again her limbs seemed disconnected from her will. Her eyes were pleading as she opened them and looked up at him. Helpless, after so long.

He had always been big but was more solid now, with a little grey in his hair and crow's feet about his eyes, but he was still Martin. Still the man she knew now she had never ceased to love.

‘You look like you could do with a cup of coffee,' he said.

The café was just round the corner from the exhibition hall. It was odd; she had thought it would be awkward, sitting with each other after such a long time, but it was not. Chatting was as easy as though they had never parted. Nothing weighty, at least to begin with. What they'd done; what they had not done. No sense at all of skirting around the edges of pain. No pain at all; rather a sense of rediscovery.

No, he had never married. Not exactly celibate but nothing serious. Nothing permanent.

She, still married. Davis was doing well, oh yes. No, they had no children. A nice house in Brighton; a cottage in the Whitsundays.

She did not tell him that her life was consumed by endless failure and futility.

Until Martin, his artist's eyes prising out the secrets she had hidden even from herself, said: ‘You are not happy.'

It was not a question.

She stared back at him, trying to muster a show of defiance to conceal her shame. ‘You have no right to say that.'

‘I have every right,' he said. He leant across the table to wipe the tears from her cheeks but there were many tears and he could not.

‘I betrayed you,' she said.

‘We betrayed each other.'

‘How can you say that?'

‘I shouldn't have let you walk away. I should have stopped you.'

The hint of a smile like sunlight through cloud. ‘How could you do that?'

‘I should have forced you. Dragged you by the hair, if I had to.'

‘Dear Martin…' Impulsively she leant forwards and covered his hands with her own. ‘That might have been a bit painful.'

‘No more painful than it was anyway.'

Which was true.

‘But what's the point of talking about it?' she said. ‘It's too late. And I have a husband.'

Whom it would not do to underestimate.

‘Of course it's too late to talk.'

Jennifer was taken aback; she had not expected him to agree so readily. But Martin had not finished.

‘Too late to talk. Now we have to act.'

‘Act?' She stared.

‘You don't think I'll let you get away again?'

Jennifer unable to speak, knowing he was right.

‘I have a boat,' Martin said. ‘You know anything about boats?'

Jennifer was stunned by the suddenness of it all, as though all decisions had been taken away from her.

‘Boats? No. I have never –'

‘Then now is the time to learn.'

2

Jennifer Lander lay on the cushioned berth in the cabin of the little sailing boat, listening to the sound of the water against the hull, feeling the movement as the tightly drawn sails propelled them over the waters of Port Phillip Bay, and watching the reflections of sunlight flowing across the white-painted deck over her head. She was thirty-six no longer. She was plump and middle-aged no longer. She was twenty-two and reed-slim and knew with absolute certainty that none of this could be happening to her.