‘I’ll pop the kettle on. Or would you prefer something stronger? I think we have some Cutty Sark left.’
‘Both, thanks.’ Beth sat at the table and flicked through the mail. ‘Bill,’ she tossed the envelope onto the side table, ‘Bill,’ toss, ‘bill,’ toss, ‘bill,’ toss. ‘Oh, I don’t recognise this one.’
She turned the envelope over, held it up to the light and tried to read the postmark. She opened it and took out the letter inside and as she read her heart pounded against her ribs like a jabbing stick and her skin turned white.
‘Beth, what’s wrong?’ said Clara.
‘It’s from my husband.’
Beth dropped the letter onto the table but it fluttered to the floor. Clara grabbed it and read it.
‘But he’s dead,’ Clara said.
‘Apparently not.’
Beth was numb; she couldn’t feel anything, nothing at all. She pinched her skin but no, she felt nothing; she bit on her tongue, nothing; she slapped her arms — nothing. Clara handed her the warm whisky and Beth gulped it down. She could feel it as it burnt all the way down her throat.
‘More,’ she said hoarsely, the whisky still caught in her throat. Clara poured her another one and Beth motioned for her to fill the glass to the very top. She wanted a decent dose. So Clara filled it to the top and handed it to her and Beth downed it in one.
‘How could the bugger come back from the dead?’ Clara asked.
Beth watched Clara pour herself a whisky and follow suit, swallowing the lot in one go. Clara refilled their glasses again.
‘Is he going to want you back?’ asked Clara. Beth could hear the tremble in her voice.
‘What? No. I don’t know what he wants,’ said Beth. ‘He just says he is alive, that it has taken him a while to find me and he needs to talk. Which is a laugh because talking is the one thing Theo can’t do. But there is no return address.’
Beth looked at Clara. Her eyes were blue pools of sadness and her red curls had lost some of their bounce and hung unhappily around her face. Beth knew that Clara was not saying the one thing she wanted to say: Don’t leave me, Beth, don’t go off with him.
‘Come on, let’s have some more of that whisky, hey?’
Beth and Clara forgot about dinner but finished off the whisky and fell asleep in the lounge room sprawled over the couch and each other.
Saturday, 12 July 1924, when there is another ruckus.
Beth woke, rubbed her throbbing head and stumbled to the kitchen where she held up the Cutty Sark bottle, swore at it and put it down again. As she did so she saw the time on the kitchen clock.
‘Bloody hell. Oh sweet Jesus.’ She ran back into the lounge room and woke Clara. ‘Come on, we’re going to be late.’
The girls washed and threw themselves into clothes. Beth brushed out her short orchid bob and looked at her patent leather shoes that were scraped from being dragged along the ground when those nasty bullyboys had thrown her out of Adela’s speech. The leather had torn away making them look old, even though they were new. She threw them to the floor with a sigh and put on her sensible pumps and grabbed her coat and scarf. She stood at the door waiting for Clara to catch up.
‘The signs,’ said Clara. Her red curls flew everywhere and made Beth smile. Clara ran back inside to get the signs, then they ran and got puffed and walked until they could take running steps down Princes Street to Stokes Street, thanking their lucky stars they were only going to another street in Port Melbourne and not somewhere across the city.
They found the house they were looking for. People were already gathered on the street and in the small front yard. Their four comrades stood conspicuously to one side, objects of speculation as to who they might be and why they were there. Beth and Clara joined them.
‘We’re only waiting on Franny and Collette, but they are always late,’ said Evelyn.
‘This is our third in the last fortnight,’ said Beth. ‘They are becoming more and more common as things get worse. The last one wasn’t successful — let’s make sure this one is. Let’s save this poor destitute family.’
The women patted each other on the back. They had protested at a cottage in North Melbourne and another protest in Richmond. The North Melbourne one had nearly got them all arrested.
The front yard had filled with people willing to brave the cold for the sake of a bargain. Someone had lit a fire in a 44-gallon drum on the pavement and some men stood around it laughing and slapping each other on the back. Children squeezed between the men to light sticks that they waved about, flicking embers onto the cold tar of the road, where they quickly died. Women chatted quietly and looked over at Beth and her comrades suspiciously, as if they were going to upset everything when all they wanted was a bargain. The men sent scowls Beth’s way and dreamt of the beer they would have at the pub as soon as this malarky their wives had forced them along to was over. Three policemen arrived and immediately picked Beth’s group as the day’s problem and tapped their batons menacingly in their hands, glaring at Beth and the other women and muttering, ‘Bloody suffragettes, bloody man-haters.’ The biggest copper had put his baton in its loop at his side and swaggered as he approached Beth, each foot landing heavily on the ground as though he was a mountain struggling to walk because of his sheer bulk, a mountain moved by nothing other than his own will.
‘We’re here to do a job, missy,’ he said standing too close and looking down on her. ‘These people have to be evicted and their goods sold. Sherriff’s
