A Woman of Courage (12 page)

‘You approved her appointment. You knew her reputation so I guess you got what you were looking for.'

A plane was climbing into the clear air above the harbour, outward bound from Kingsford Smith. Hilary watched it, hearing the diminishing rumble of its engines, then looked at Sara again. ‘You don't approve?'

‘She will certainly push up the ratings.'

‘But you don't approve?'

‘Like I said. If you want top ratings she's very good.'

‘But?'

‘Do you want a top current affairs programme or top ratings?'

‘You don't think we can have both?'

‘No.'

‘What would you do about it?'

Sara shook her head. ‘Not my decision.'

‘If it were?'

Another shake. Sara, too, was not easily trapped.

‘I've given Millie a free hand,' Hilary said.

‘So I gather.'

‘And if she takes the programme down market?'

‘That would be your call, wouldn't it?'

Hilary kept a straight face but underneath she was smiling. Sara had avoided expressing her opinion on either Millie Dawlish or the programme but it was obvious that what she really wanted was a quality product and already knew that with Millie she wasn't going to get it. She was right.

‘Millie's brief is to get us top ratings. That means repositioning the programme in the marketplace.'

‘You mean heading down market.'

Now Hilary was remorseless. ‘We have no choice. But I also know you'll never be happy unless you're involved with a top-quality product.'

Sara took off her dark glasses and leant across the table, staring at her mother with naked eyes. ‘What are you saying to me?'

Now Hilary was running on instinct, as she had so successfully in the past. ‘I am saying I can offer you a way out.'

‘I think you are trying to manipulate me, towkay neo,' Sara said.

Hilary laughed. ‘Not manipulate; suggesting a course of action that I hope will offer you more opportunity and more challenge than you have now.'

‘You mean manipulate me.'

Hilary laughed a second time and rang the silver bell beside her plate. ‘I'll ask Mrs Walsh to get us fresh coffee and I'll tell you about it.'

3

‘When I asked you to have breakfast with me this morning I'd thought we'd be discussing your future role in the corporation. But now something else has come up. We're having problems in Hong Kong,' Hilary said. ‘We inherited a situation when we took over Channel 12 and it may have gone sour on us. I would like you to help sort it out.'

‘Oh?' Warily, giving nothing away.

‘Our enquiry agent in Hong Kong is talking fraud. I think he may be right.' Hilary watched Sara's investigative instincts kick in.

‘Tell me about it,' Sara said.

Hilary did. When she had finished Sara sat staring out at the harbour for a spell. Then she looked across the table at her mother and her eyes were sharp. ‘They said they could fix up an independent television channel in China? A station owned by foreigners? Given the nature of the Chinese government, how was that ever going to work? No wonder your agent has questions. But what do you want me to do?'

‘I want you to go over there with Martha and look into the situation.'

‘How can I? The programme –'

‘Forget the programme.'

‘But what about my interview with Emil?'

‘Do it when you come back from Hong Kong. It'll be your swansong.'

‘Are you asking me or telling me?'

‘You're a premium person. You'll never be happy with a less than premium product. The programme's future the way it is, I believe it's time for you to move on.'

‘So you want me to go to Hong Kong with Martha. Why?'

Now was the moment. Hilary drew a deep breath. ‘Because I am sixty-three years old. Because I plan to retire very soon and want you to take over from me. Not yet; you're not ready. But in a couple of years.'

The impact of Hilary's words set Sara back in her chair. ‘Retire? You? Never!'

‘You better believe it.'

‘It'll kill the share price!'

‘Not if we handle it right. Vivienne has been involved at the top of the operation for ten years. She is more than capable of taking over.'

‘But you're still Brand Corporation.'

‘So we get the PR boys to build Vivienne up.'

‘Will the market buy it?'

‘The big players know the score. I might have a chat with one or two of the institutions but I don't foresee any serious trouble.'

‘But where do I fit in?'

‘Vivienne is fifty-eight. If you accept you would understudy her for two years. It'll mean hard work: harder than anything you've done in your life. But I have every confidence you're up to it.'

‘I wish I did,' Sara said.

‘I'd be worried if you didn't have doubts but I am certain you have the ability to handle it. And by the time Vivienne retires you'll be ready to step into her shoes. You are more charismatic than Vivienne so you can use that time to build up your public image.'

‘But what are you planning to do?'

‘Something new. Which will also be challenging in its way.'

Sara stared. ‘What are we talking about here?'

Hilary's head shake rejected that. ‘We're not talking about me. I want to know if you're willing to go to Hong Kong or not.'

Sara combed her fingers through her hair. ‘I'm finding this a bit hard to take in.'

‘I'm sure you are,' said Hilary in what she hoped was a sympathetic voice. ‘But I need to know, you see.'

‘Know when?'

‘Pretty well straight away. Hong Kong can't wait.'

‘Do I have a choice?'

‘Yes. You can stay where you are, doing what you do now, with Millie Dawlish calling the shots. Or you can move on to the big stage.'

‘And take my luck?'

‘I don't think, properly handled, that luck will come into it.'

Sara drank coffee and looked at her mother across the table. ‘If I agree to go to Hong Kong I'll be locked in, shan't I?'

‘You will still be free to walk away.'

‘But you don't believe I will?'

‘That is my hope.'

‘Does Vivienne know?'

‘Nobody knows. Only you.'

‘Was that why you wanted us to have dinner with you last night?'

‘No. This doesn't concern Jennifer. She's never been interested in the business.'

‘Then why did you drag her up from Melbourne?'

‘You are my children. I always like to see you.'

‘You're up to something,' Sara said.

Hilary smiled. ‘Nothing to do with the business.'

‘If there'd just been the two of us we could have discussed it over dinner.'

‘It's not something to talk about in a restaurant.'

‘No one could have heard us.'

‘A directional microphone would pick up every hiccup.'

‘What are you saying?'

‘Only that I am reasonably well known. There are always people trying to eavesdrop and I've learnt to take precautions. You'll have to do the same, in time.'

‘I'll need to think about it,' Sara said after a moment.

‘Take as long as you like.' Hilary smiled as she threw Sara the challenge. ‘As long as you let me have your answer no later than tomorrow.'

After Sara had left Hilary sat on, staring at the shifting waters of the harbour. Well, I have told her. Now all I can do is wait but one way or the other I am determined. I want Sara to accept the challenge – that is my dearest wish – but if she does not I shall find someone else. After Dr Chang's warning, a change of course is what I shall have. I have no intention of dying in harness. From my earliest days in this country I have always known when it was time to move on.

1956–58

FARM GIRL

1

Hilary had been at Pattinsons' getting on for a year but this was her first stock sale. The transporter ground slowly down the long hill and turned into a stockyard swarming with men and livestock. Trucks lined up at the ramps were discharging sheep into the pens. Blue-shirted stock agents hurried this way and that. The air was thick with dust and loud with the bleating of sheep and bellowing of cattle.

Hilary turned to Tim. ‘Quite a mob. Is it always like this?'

She had long got used to the set up back at the farm, even if the stockyard was new. Had got used, too, to Mrs Pattinson treating her like dirt. Tim had told her his mother had been a Whelan, which apparently counted for something in Koornalla, and treated everyone like dirt, including his father and himself.

‘All except Brett,' Tim said.

Brett was Tim's older brother and the apple of his mother's eye. Brett was away at college but would be home for Christmas, which was now three weeks away. Tim, tall and rangy, with black hair and a willing smile, was a year older than Hilary and was her friend. Her only friend, unless you counted the dogs.

Before she'd arrived Sid Brackett had warned her to look out for the dogs. ‘They're a nasty lot,' he'd told her on the long journey from Bacchus Marsh. ‘Give 'em half a chance, they'll take a chew out of you, no worries.'

Sure enough, when they arrived the dogs had crowded around, snarling and showing their teeth, but Hilary had always got on well with dogs and in two minutes had them eating not out of her leg but her hand.

‘Wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it meself,' said Sid Brackett.

Jasmine Pattinson had resented Hilary from the first, smelling in the new arrival an unhealthy willingness to stand up for herself. To Mrs Pattinson the ease with which Hilary had won over the dogs was a sign of trouble to come. She was all in favour of having cheap labour to help her around the place but wanted it to be timid and obedient, scared of the dogs and of life. It hadn't taken long for her to find out that in Hilary Brand she'd got something different.

‘Too independent by half,' she warned her husband. ‘You'll see, we'll have problems with this one.'

Edward Pattinson, who favoured a quiet life and had seen nothing wrong with the new girl, did what he had learnt to do over the years. He said nothing.

It wasn't just the dogs; from the beginning Hilary had shown an interest in the operation of the farm. Whenever she managed to get away from the house – not easy, with all the washing up and laundry and ironing and cleaning and Jasmine's eyes burning holes in her back every inch of the way – she got Tim to explain the bits and pieces of equipment and how they worked.

‘What are those things?'

‘Drench guns.'

‘Tell me about them.'

‘They're better than the ones we had before. Their valves were always blocking but these are OK.'

‘What do you use them for?'

‘To pour drench down the animal's throat. See? They've got a dial to help you select the dose you need.'

He explained how to dose a calf, holding it between your thighs and forcing its mouth open to insert the nozzle of the drench gun. ‘Make sure you don't stick your fingers too far back or its molars might get you.'

She wanted to know everything, see everything, and the questions never stopped. ‘Why do you need it at all?'

‘To get rid of parasites: liver flukes, things like that.'

She came across a tangle of toothed traps in a corner of the shed. ‘What are these?'

‘Old rabbit traps.'

‘You got rabbits here?'

‘They're everywhere.'

‘I thought that disease with the long name was killing them off.'

‘Myxomatosis? It hasn't reached here yet.'

They stood on the high ground with the river glinting silver below them and watched Sid Brackett using a chainsaw to clear willows along the river banks.

‘Why's he doing that?'

‘Otherwise they'll choke the channel.' Tim grinned at her, shoving his Akubra to the back of his head. ‘You ever stop?'

‘What?'

‘Asking questions.'

‘I want to know. What's wrong with that?'

‘Nothing's wrong with it. Planning on being a farmer, are you?'

‘Not planning on anything. If I'm gunna live here it makes sense to know.'

‘Ma won't like it.'

Ma can take a jump.
But kept the thought to herself; she didn't know Tim well enough to risk saying it yet.

He stood beside her and looked out at the open country below them, the black shapes of the crossbred Aberdeen Angus cattle moving slowly across the flatland paddocks as they grazed, the sheep scattered on the hillside. There were rabbits too, an army of them.

‘I love this land,' Tim said. ‘The bunnies are a problem but I doubt I'll ever leave.'

With an elder brother at agricultural college that might prove tricky.

‘What's he like?'

‘Brett? OK, I guess.' But didn't sound as though he meant it. ‘You'll meet him when he comes home for Christmas.'

Hilary heard what he hadn't said. ‘And?'

‘You'll find out.'

Hmm.

They heard the furious bugling of a bull, frustrated and solitary, penned in its paddock.

‘What's his problem?'

‘He wants to get at the cows and can't.'

He grinned again and she knew he was eyeing her, breasts firm beneath the plaid shirt, backside smooth and tight in her jeans. Hilary was untroubled. She knew he fancied her but he wasn't the sort to try anything unless he sensed she was willing. She liked him a lot but was not ready for anything more; not now, maybe never, so she never teased him, never flaunted herself, but didn't hide from him either. She was as she was, four weeks short of her sixteenth birthday and on the verge of womanhood, and if she ever felt differently about him she would certainly tell him. In the meantime she didn't think too much about it but was comfortable with the feeling. It was strange, all the same, to know she was desired by a man.