A Woman of Courage (35 page)

‘You chose well. You obviously have a natural flair.'

She lifted her chin at him. ‘For an ignoramus?'

The comment clearly did not faze him. ‘For anyone.' He pointed. ‘Such energy… They almost leap off the wall at you. Aboriginal art is the coming thing and I have come across a number of Aboriginal artists but I have not seen many as lively as these. A woman, you say? What did you say her name was?'

‘I didn't. She did me a favour by agreeing to see me.'

‘So you are not willing to give me her name?'

‘Not without her permission.'

‘How did you meet her?'

‘When I was on holiday in Arnhem Land.'

They returned to the terrace and to a renewed pot of coffee.

‘I understand you are planning to build up a collection of modern Australian art and are looking for a curator,' Tom Tallis said.

‘An adviser initially. Perhaps a curator later on, when the collection takes shape.'

‘And you are wondering whether to offer me the job?'

‘Provided I believe we can work well together.'

‘How much latitude would I have?'

‘To make recommendations? Unlimited.'

‘And to buy? At auction, for example?'

‘Later, perhaps, but only when I'm sure we're on the same wavelength.'

‘You are planning to invest in Australian art. Is that what you're saying?'

‘Not quite. I intend to build the finest collection of Australiana that money can buy. Not to sell but to say to the world this is Australia's heritage. This is who we are.'

‘It'll cost you.'

‘Of course it will cost me. But that is what I want. My only question is whether you are the man to help me or whether I must look elsewhere.'

‘Just paintings?'

‘Everything. Paintings, books, journals, maps, photographs, artefacts, anything that will help to demonstrate our roots.'

As a means of establishing roots for a woman who had always been conscious of their lack, it would be a start. And hopefully Gayle Hastings would find the rest.

FOUND AGAIN, LOST AGAIN

1

‘We've managed to locate your mother,' Gayle Hastings said.

Hilary's hand tightened on the telephone. She felt relief but also apprehension.

‘Where?'

‘North of Sydney.'

‘What? Are you sure?'

‘Absolutely sure.'

‘I was expecting you to say she was in London.'

‘Not for forty years. After the war she married an Aussie soldier and came back with him. She's lived here ever since.'

Now apprehension took another form. ‘Have you spoken to her? Is she well?'

‘My agent spoke to her,' Gayle Hastings said. ‘She reports that considering her age your mother seemed very well. Very well physically.'

‘Physically?' Hilary said.

‘Apparently there is some dementia. She is living in a home.'

With Mum now well into her seventies Hilary should have thought of that possibility but had not. ‘Has the agent told her about me?'

‘Not yet. I thought I should discuss the situation with you first.'

‘What situation is that?'

‘She has three children by her second husband.'

‘I suspect she and my father may never have married,' Hilary said. ‘That would explain why I ended up in a home. If that was the case he would have been her first husband. But I do not see that as a problem.'

‘I understand there are several grandchildren.'

That too was to be expected – almost inevitable, one might say – yet still it was a knife turning in her heart.

‘Your point being?' Hilary asked.

‘We do not know how she will react to having you come back into her life. It is getting on for half a century, after all.'

‘You're saying she may not recognise me.'

‘The world moves on; people change. And you were very young when you were taken away.'

Of course she wouldn't recognise her; she wasn't foolish enough to think she might. But she thought if she explained…

She hadn't reckoned on dementia. Or the effect her unexpected arrival might have on an old, sick woman, on the old woman's family. Thinking about it, Hilary saw that she had been no more than a milestone on the road of her mother's life. Had she the right to disrupt what little remained?

So often she had envisaged the tears and joys of reunion, the healing for them both after so long. But now?

All this needed to be thought through; Gayle Hastings had been right to do nothing before speaking to her first.

‘Let me have her address,' she said. ‘I'll get back to you.'

2

The home was in a small coastal town on the central coast of New South Wales. Hilary flew in by chopper.

‘This shouldn't take long,' she told the pilot. ‘Expect me back in two hours.'

She took a taxi to the home. It was a nice-looking place standing in its own grounds on a bluff overlooking the sea. She had spoken by telephone to the matron before leaving Sydney so she was expected. Eager Mrs Hegwood, eyes round and bright as sovereigns, made much of Hilary – ‘It is not every day we are visited by such a celebrity,' she said – and sent a nurse, pert and plump, to escort their famous visitor to Mrs Jinks's room.

The nurse, all bust and bum, led the way along a concrete path past a succession of individual chalets, each fronted by a paved area with a chair placed just so and with a window looking seawards across an expanse of lawn. There were beds of flowers that had somehow survived the sea winds and beyond them a high wire fence.

‘In case any of them tries to wander off,' the pert nurse said. ‘Some do, from time to time. You a friend?'

‘I knew her a long time ago,' Hilary said.

‘I doubt she'll remember you,' the nurse said. ‘Poor soul doesn't know which side is up any more.'

‘Does her family visit her?'

‘Her daughter comes from time to time. But it's not easy. There's no real communication.' The nurse was not too proud to grab the visiting celebrity's arm. ‘There she is. Enjoying the sunshine.'

Mrs Jinks was sitting on her outside chair and staring at the ocean. Or perhaps just staring. A suet face above a body like a half-filled sack. She had scanty white hair with the scalp showing and Hilary would never have known her.

‘Don't you go catching cold, Mrs Jinks,' the nurse shouted. ‘Deaf,' she said to Hilary. And again shouted in a bruising, jovial voice. ‘Got a visitor for you.'

But Mrs Jinks continued to stare seawards. Hilary was unused to feeling helpless but did so now. Never in a million years would she be able to relate this sad wreckage of a woman to her vague impressions of the warm and loving being from whom she had been stolen a lifetime back. Never in a million years. Yet if she felt helpless she was not intimidated; the day had not dawned when she would be that.

‘Good day, Mrs Jinks.'

For the first time the old woman turned her head and looked at her.

‘Hello, Alice.'

‘Her daughter,' the nurse said.

‘Long time since I seen you,' Mrs Jinks –
Mum? –
said. ‘Why don't you come more often? Too much trouble for you to be bothered, I suppose.'

The voice was English but rang no bells.

‘This isn't Alice,' the nurse said. ‘This is a visitor kindly come to see you.'

‘Stop it,' Mrs Jinks said. ‘You think I don't know me own daughter? Stop telling me lies. She lies all the time,' she said to Hilary, whom shock had rendered speechless. ‘Come to take me home, have you?'

‘Now don't you go getting yourself in a state,' the nurse said. ‘There's a dear.'

Despite the aggressive bust she seemed kindly enough but it was clearly hopeless. As she had said, communication was impossible.

‘They come into my room at night and steal my money,' Mrs Jinks confided.

Belief suspended, Hilary rested her hand gently on the old woman's shoulder. To touch her seemed so strange, as though by doing so she might bridge the lost years. But there was nothing there. Nothing and no one. Her mother, if this was indeed her mother, did not exist.

‘I'll come and see you again,' Hilary said. And fled, lips closed tight on horror, as behind her Mrs Jinks began to shout.

‘Can't wait to get away, can you? Your own mother.'

Dear God.

‘Don't be distressed,' the nurse said, hurrying to keep up. ‘The poor old soul doesn't know what she's saying. It's sad when they get like that. But it's not as though you're family, after all.'

Hilary sat in shock as the helicopter buzzed her back to the city. The face like grey dough, the senile rage, had been a painful experience but did not erase her early childhood memories: the kindly arms, the smell of home. For the first time in years she was close to weeping at the loss of the two lives that should have grown together but instead had been so cruelly ripped apart. With the near tears came anger and a hardening resolve to do whatever it took to ensure that the same wickedness was never imposed on any child again. It was impossible to protect all children everywhere but even one saved would be better than none.

When she was back in her office she telephoned Gayle Hastings.

‘No need to take your enquiries any further. Just send me your account. I appreciate all you've done.'

She put down the phone and thought again about the old woman she had seen that day. Would she visit her again? The woman called Mrs Jinks? There was no point but she thought she might, all the same. We have only one mother, after all. As for the half-sister whose existence she had only just discovered… Hilary had always wanted to find her roots but that woman was a stranger. They knew nothing of each other, would have nothing to say to each other. There was no feeling of belonging. If she'd been a Catholic she might have lit a candle but as it was… Leave it.

1987–88

CATACLYSM

1

They had been good years, challenging and exciting, in which Hilary's fortune had multiplied many times. What she had renamed the Brand Corporation had grown with it. Brand Peterfield was still bringing in the dollars with the Peterfields still running it, but it was now a small player in a vastly greater operation.

It was October 1987 and the market was going crazy, roaring up and up with never an end in sight. Up and up. Everyone from the prime minister to the office clerk was on the train pounding up the track to the country of the blessed.

Hilary went along for the ride like the rest of the world but unlike the rest of the world kept her eye on the track and her hand on the brake.

For months she and her advisers had been planning a move on Channel 12, the television company she'd coveted for years. At long last it looked as though a takeover might be a goer but she wasn't aiming to do it with too much borrowed money. Owing billions might work fine for some but Hilary had always believed in keeping her feet on the ground. Also it seemed to her the property market, still rising strongly, was beginning to look vulnerable. She decided it was time to offload.

‘You crazy?' Haskins Gould's buzz-saw voice mirrored his disbelief. ‘Things are just getting going.'

Maybe he was right but she didn't think so. They owned twenty-three shopping malls across the state and Hilary wanted out. ‘So make me an offer, you think like that.'

He couldn't wait. Two weeks' intense negotiations and Haskins took over the malls; Hilary hung on to the undeveloped land. She let him think she was sacrificing her heart's blood by selling him the malls; in fact she was glad to see them go. When you did a development you handed over the keys, banked the cheque and moved on, but malls were a business. The returns looked good but the hassles – with tenants and self-important council officers – were never-ending. Maintenance could be a problem too. Everything had to be spotless; the shoppers wouldn't notice if it was but would be quick to move on if standards started slipping.

Haskins was leveraged out of sight to buy the malls but that wasn't Hilary's problem. She was liquid, millions in the bank as she waited for the Channel 12 deal to come to the boil.

It was as close to a done deal as you could get. Then, all of a sudden, it was not. At the eleventh hour a cowboy called Willy Montgomery came in with an offer for the shares that left the Brand Corporation floundering in the dust.

‘I always knew he had more ambition than sense,' Hilary said. ‘But a billion bucks? Even I never dreamt he'd come up with something as crazy as that.'

All the same she sat down with the accountants to see if they could make any sense of it. They went through the offer line by line but they all agreed that at that price the takeover was not a starter.

‘Unload our holding,' Hilary said. ‘The way Willy's pushed up the share price we'll make a killing anyway.'

So they would. Hilary still lacked her television station but she wasn't sentimental. She couldn't see how Willy could make a go of it with that level of debt hanging round his neck. If she was right there might be other chances down the track.

‘And at a better price too.'

2

5 October: share prices surging. 9 October: the market still rising. 12 October: up again. Euphoria! Yet there were straws in the wind for those who wished to see them. The US was jittery, with sharp falls in the second half of the week, yet by Friday 16 October confidence was still high despite wild storms having closed the London markets, with dealers in their twenties eyeing the happy prospect of buying a second Ferrari to accompany the first. Haskins was bouncing like a pea on a griddle, boasting to Hilary that his malls were up more than ten per cent from the price he'd paid her such a short time ago.

‘You missed out, doll! But fortune favours the brave, ain't that right? And you can't say I didn't warn you.'