When Joan rang Hugh at nine o’clock that Sunday morning from the padded telephone kiosk in the lobby of the Cairo Guesthouse on Macleay Street, she broke down and cried for the first time since finding Ellie as she described what had happened. ‘It was so horrible, Hugh.’
‘Poor darling! Listen, how about we meet up at the Arabian? I can probably get over there by midday, if the trams are running on time.’
Both Hugh’s parents were dead and he lived in Balmain with an overly protective older sister, Celia, who devoted herself to his full-time care. Celia liked to know where her brother was every hour of the day, though he had managed to negotiate a degree of freedom without hurting his sister’s feelings. Joan had not yet been to Hugh’s terrace house in Balmain, nor had she met Celia. He had made it clear that, for now at least, it was preferable that his sister believe that he and Joan were no more than comrades-in-arms. ‘Sis has been treated pretty shabbily by menfolk,’ explained Hugh. ‘She was jilted at the altar two years back by a feckless bastard whose face I would happily rearrange if he ever dared show it around our neck of the woods again. I keep hoping she might meet someone else.’ It was clear the siblings’ overprotectiveness was mutual.
‘I’ll see you at midday then,’ Joan agreed. ‘I’ll have to get Velma or Iris to keep an eye on Jess once she gets back from the police station. And I have no idea how long Bernie will be out at Tempe, God help her. What a nightmare … Greta’s only six.’
‘No worries. You do whatever you have to do. I’ll wait for you.’
Joan had first met Hugh six months ago at a public meeting at the Trades Hall on Goulburn Street, fresh from her disgust and anger at her Aunt Olympia’s immunity to the suffering of those less fortunate. Joan had been impressed both by the strength of his convictions, which spoke to her own maturing awareness of an unjust world, and also by his unquestioning respect for her intellect, something she had never really encountered in a man before.
Hugh was now a veteran of another war. Proud to be in the frontline of the clashes in the Domain in May 1921, he had bloodied the noses of ex-diggers from the King and Empire Alliance militia when they attacked communist speakers with clubs. In the last twelve months, there had been even bloodier brawls between communists and a new gang of fascist bullyboys, the so-called New Guard. A secret army of right-wing militants, many of them returned soldiers and officers, the New Guard had swelled to a rumoured hundred thousand men, armed and ready to stop the communist revolution they believed was about to tear Australia apart. Hugh had explained that, while the rank and file were clerks, bank managers, shopkeepers, barristers and accountants, the leadership were members of the capitalist class, men of means. ‘Company executives and owners in banking, manufacturing, shipping, coal mines. Many of them senior army officers who believe the country they fought for is under threat. Nothing to do, of course, with the fact that more than a third of men are now unemployed, their families are on the breadline, and the Commonwealth government is selling us all out to the British banks. No, it’s us Reds that are the troublemakers!’
Joan wasn’t all that surprised to learn from Hugh that her own uncle, Gordon Fielding-Jones, was involved in the New Guard leadership. Even in his Savile Row civvies, Gordon had never lost his martial bearing and air of command and made no secret of his combative, conservative views, particularly about the workshy unemployed and ungrateful working class. ‘Your uncle is in charge of defending the silvertails of Darling Point, Potts Point and Elizabeth Bay. When the workers rise up in revolt, he has plans to barricade the Butler and McElhone Stairs with machine gun posts and patrol the streets with shock troops. The New Guard has stockpiles of weapons all over the city. It’s gonna be war, Joan.’
In the last month, Lieutenant Colonel Eric Campbell, the New Guard’s leader, had held large public rallies where he had made a commitment to replace Premier Jack Lang’s subversive ‘socialist’ state government and unapologetically copied the right-armed salute of the Italian and German fascists. The New Guard were on the streets as well, attacking communists at their outdoor meetings across the city.
‘Believe me, Joan, Judgement Day is coming sooner than anyone thinks,’ Hugh had told her one evening, his voice lowered to a hoarse whisper for fear of being overheard. ‘Maybe only a matter of weeks. Some of us believe that Campbell’s plans go even further. To kidnap Premier Lang and overthrow the state government. A military coup.’
Hugh had tried to recruit Joan to write for the Communist Party’s Militant Women’s Group’s monthly paper, Woman Worker, but Joan was not ready to make the kind of all-consuming self-sacrifice the party demanded of its members, not to mention physical courage. It was not only men who were expected to be brave. Following a public protest meeting by two hundred and fifty unemployed women workers at Sydney Town Hall just over a year ago, sixty police had charged and assaulted the assembly, tearing off the women’s clothes and hats as they tried to pull them into paddy wagons. If there was any lingering doubt that women’s fighting spirit was the equal of men’s, this street-fight had put an end to it.
Maybe Joan was a coward, but she doubted she had the stomach for that kind of fight. It would also mean more time away from her own writing and, whether that was monumentally selfish (‘bourgeois individualism’ was the preferred term) or not, that was obstacle enough. She had a senior editor interested in her crime novel and a deadline to meet; she would never forgive herself if she let this opportunity slip by.
Joan couldn’t deny that her attraction to Hugh sprang not just from a meeting of minds; Hugh was handsome, what Joan’s mother would call ‘one of nature’s aristocrats’, with broad shoulders and chest, a tapered waist, perfect muscled calves and muscular upper arms—not to mention his sandy curls, intelligent grey-blue eyes and thoughtful smile. Though he’d been educated (‘Brainwashed more like,’ said Hugh) at poor inner-city Catholic schools, Hugh could easily pass for one of those private school rowing-and-rugby demi-gods. However, there was no getting around the fact that the war had aged Hugh prematurely, as it had so many men, adding perhaps another decade or more to his thirty-four years. Silver-grey hairs proliferated in his moustache and hair, a fine web of creases had formed about his eyes and furrowed his forehead, and there was a softening of the flesh under his chin and jawline. On bad days, his illness cast deeper shadows of exhaustion and anxiety over his fine features, but Joan loved him no less for that; in fact, his pallor and pain bestowed its own air of noble beauty.
‘Take a deep breath, Joanie,’ he said to her now. ‘It’s going to be fine. I promise.’
‘Thank you, darling. I knew I could count on you.’
But there was always a catch, wasn’t there, when it came to love? While Joan appreciated how respectful and protective Hugh was, she found him to be chivalrous to a fault. There was unmistakeable tenderness in the way he looked at her, kissed her, even held and caressed her, but despite clear signals that she craved more, Hugh held back. She had enjoyed sexual relations with Bill Jenkins and other men, so why not with Hugh, whom she desired much more fiercely?
‘I love you, Joan,’ Hugh confessed abjectly when she tentatively broached the subject. ‘Please be patient with me.’
Joan had showered him with kisses and reassurances then, wanting to spare her broken warrior any more pain. But in her heart, she was bewildered. What was the cause of his reluctance? There was nothing of the wowser about Hugh as far she could tell, so was it linked to some betrayal in his past? Or was it the gas neurosis that made him feel unmanly, perhaps afraid that intercourse might trigger an attack? He wouldn’t say and she didn’t insist. While Bernice and the other women in their bohemian circle indulged in a carnival of sexual adventure, Joan was obliged to exercise a nun-like restraint that she had happily abandoned when she left home nearly four years ago.
‘I’ll see you soon, Joan.’
‘See you.’
The next phone call Joan made was to her mother, Gloria. It had been at least three weeks since she had last rung home and getting on for a year since she had visited. The call was largely motivated by guilt, but it was also intended to head off any panic stirred up by her parents’ spiteful neighbour, Mrs Parkinson, who loved to trawl the newspapers for alarming stories about the evils of Sydney.
‘Hi Mum, it’s me. How’re you doing?’
‘We muddle along, love, as you know.’
Joan was resigned to the fact that her parents were always just ‘muddling along’. Her father had given up his full-time medical practice, thanks—ironically—to his own chronic ill-health and the lack of paying patients. These days, he mostly tinkered in the back shed or tended his rows of tomato plants and fruit trees while Gloria took in mending on the side to keep the household going. There was Richard to look after, as well: Joan’s older brother, who had been injured in the Battle of Hamel and had come home ‘a cot case’. His daily medications did little to ease the migraines from his head injury and his violent episodes of shell shock. And then there was James, of course. The son who never came home. Fourteen years after war’s end, James was still listed as missing in action, presumed killed. No remains had been buried in France, no fellow soldiers had come forward to testify to his brave last moments. Horace and Richard were reconciled to James’s death but Gloria’s faith in his return was unshakeable. Any day now, she insisted, James would come knocking on the front door.
For a long time Joan had pitied Gloria’s delusion, putting it down to the tenacity of a mother’s love that would defy all odds, but gradually her mother’s obsessiveness had begun to infect her, to the point that she would catch fleeting glimpses of James in the slipstream of her vision—in the morning rush on George Street, for instance, or disappearing around a corner in Martin Place. She suspected her grief for her missing brother had redoubled its power over her and was playing havoc with her mind because she was now involved with Hugh, a fellow soldier who’d made it home. With a pang of empathy, she resolved to make more of an effort to stay in touch with her mother.
‘How’s Dad’s gardening going?’ she said into the phone.
‘Not too bad. Got some nice nectarines last week. How’s things with you?’
‘I’m fine, Mum. I just wanted to let you know that there’s a story in the papers today about a girl who died in our boarding house. The usual scare-mongering nonsense! But I know how much Mrs P. likes to stir the pot.’
Then, as Gloria started to twitter anxiously, ‘No, wait, Mum, listen. She was not a friend of mine; she was a very sad case, got mixed up with some bad people. But you have nothing to worry about, okay? I’m perfectly safe. The police are confident they’ll find the person responsible. No, they’re quite sure none of the other tenants were involved. They’re all lovely, respectable people.’ Joan hoped she sounded convincing.
She was almost relieved when the conversation took its usual turn. ‘Yes, I’ll visit soon, I promise. Yes, I’ll see if Hugh can come. He’s very busy right now.’
Hugh remained a shadowy but heartening prospect in her parents’ understanding of Joan’s life. She’d told them that he was a journalist writing for a labour rights magazine (which they applauded) with no mention of the Communist Party (which they would not). The problem of her family meeting Hugh was repeatedly deferred to a theoretical future.
‘I love you too, Mum. Give my love to Dickie and Pa.’
‘I will, Joanie. And to James too when he gets home.’
‘And James, of course. Bye, Mum.’
Her third call was to Bill Jenkins, on the off-chance he was actually in the office. To her surprise, he was.
‘Joanie, how you doing, darl?’
She told him it had been a rough night but she was doing okay, then moved quickly to the purpose of her call. ‘Look, something’s been bothering me,’ she said. While making her other phone calls, she had watched several guests arriving in the guesthouse lobby carrying items of luggage; one guest was a young woman with a suitcase in each hand. ‘I don’t know if the cops picked up on it or not, but I noticed that Ellie had two valises packed with clothes. Why would she do that? Was she planning a trip somewhere? I thought you might ask them about it—assuming the coppers haven’t already closed the file,’ she added bitterly.
Bill said he would pass it on. ‘Don’t assume anything, Joanie. Commissioner Childs and Superintendent MacKay are hell-bent on taking down Jeffs and his thugs, despite a few rotten apples on the force and the bastard’s friends in high places. But the coppers have got their hands full at the moment what with the New Guard and the Reds making so much trouble. Anyway, I might see you at the coroner’s court if there’s an inquest.’ Bill was clearly in a hurry to wind up the call. ‘Take care of yourself, Joanie. Stay out of trouble, eh?’
She had one last phone call to make, the most daunting of all. From the pocket of her blouse Joan pulled out an envelope containing the Ladies’ Bacchus Club letterhead. A phone number was scribbled on it. Was it her aunt’s?
As she lifted her hand to dial, Joan was ambushed by a memory from when she was twelve. A birthday picnic in Vaucluse Park with tartan rugs and a fancy motorcar, her Aunt Olympia in a gorgeous dress and cartwheel hat, and little girls in ponytails and pretty frocks playing chasings. Joan had been invited to celebrate her cousin Amelia’s birthday party, the first time she had ever been included in that exclusive social set. Why? She did not have the foggiest. Except her brothers had just shipped off to war. Maybe that was it—they felt sorry for her. All that lingered now was a scalding sense of shame at her own ugly homemade dress, the merciless teasing of the other girls and something disgraceful she had done, the details now repressed. Her hand trembled as she dialled. What would she say if her aunt answered?
The call connected. A young woman’s voice, light and crisp, said, ‘Swanson and Hart Solicitors, Mr Fielding-Jones’s office, can I help you?’
Joan was dumbstruck.
‘Hello? You’ve reached Mr Fielding-Jones’s office, can I help you?’ It was a business number for Uncle Gordon. The woman must be a secretary. Joan did not know what to do. Should she say something? Then she heard another voice rumbling in the background, a male voice, clipped, impatient. Yes, that could easily be Uncle Gordon, whose British-inflected baritone perfectly matched his large patrician head and giant, expensively besuited frame.
‘I think it must be a wrong number, sir,’ said the woman on the other end of the phone with a note of irritation in her voice.
Abruptly, Joan hung up. What the hell had just happened? The phone number penned on the stationery for her aunt’s secret society was a direct line to her husband’s legal firm. And somehow this number had turned up in the possession of a prostitute in Kings Cross—a prostitute who had been brutally murdered and disfigured almost beyond recognition.
Joan’s heart was thudding so hard it knocked against the inside of her chest. The strange metallic taste in her mouth must be fear, but the fizzing sensation in her veins, in her whole body, that she recognised. It was the delicious dread, the ecstatic burning, that she loved most about life in the Cross, on the threshold of the perilous and forbidden.
She felt alive.