To Ride the Wind (35 page)

Saul’s face broke into a wide grin. ‘Ah, you know of our prayer. But I think the way you and the British are going, it will be this year.’

With a handshake, Saul disappeared into the night. Matthew sat down on his cot and picked up his pencil and pad. But he was no longer in the mood to write to his mother. He downed what was left in the bottle before collapsing on his cot and falling into a troubled sleep, haunted by the image of Joanne being raped by German soldiers.

19

G
eorge Macintosh waited like a hunter in his hide as he sat behind his great wooden desk listening to the monotonous ticking of the grandfather clock in the hallway. When it chimed the first stroke for the morning he heard his wife’s car pull into the driveway outside his window. He knew the sound well. She was met by a very sleepy manservant who took over driving it to the stables converted to a garage.

George let the curtain fall back and left his office to greet his wife in the foyer. When door opened, Louise was startled to see her husband standing before her, wearing his smoking jacket.

‘Have you been with him?’ he demanded.

Louise stepped inside, wearing the chic dress she normally wore to the theatre. ‘With whom, George?’ she asked, confronting her husband.

‘That cripple.’

‘If you mean Major Sean Duffy, yes, I have.’

‘How could you shame me?’ George spat. ‘Every one of our friends must know of your infidelity and you don’t give a damn.’

‘I give a damn when I know that you visit my son’s nanny in her room even as I am lying a bedroom away,’ Louise flared. ‘But that does not seem to cause any problem with your conscience. I care that you have the power to separate me from my son and I care that you are a craven coward.’ Louise paled when she saw the riding crop dangling from her husband’s hand. He took a step towards her with the crop raised. Louise cowered, her hands above her head as it came down with a vicious thwack on her arms.

‘Whore!’ George screamed. ‘You have no idea of the risks I take to maintain the family companies and provide for this family.’

He raised the riding crop again and slashed down on Louise’s face, drawing a thin stream of blood and raising a welt. Louise was initially stunned by the attack but she was also the daughter of a tough father who had risen in business to establish an empire in his own right. She fought back, striking at her husband’s face with her fingernails. But he was now in a blind rage, thrashing his wife until she was forced to her knees, curled into a foetal position to protect her body. The attack seemed to go on forever until George found himself physically spent but sexually aroused by the punishment he had meted out to his wife.

He stepped back, sweat rolling from his face, and stared down at the woman he thrashed before turning to walk away, leaving her huddled on the floor and moaning in pain and frustration.

‘I will call the police and show them my injuries,’ she cried after him as he began the ascent up the stairs to the nanny’s room.

‘Call the police,’ George retorted. ‘See what they will do about interfering in a husband’s right to chastise a disloyal wife. If you like, I will give you the name of a friend I have in the force who might listen to you.’

Louise forced herself to her feet and clung to the foyer wall. She could feel her face swelling from the strike to the cheek and painful throbbing throughout her body. She felt shame and fury at the same time. ‘I swear I will kill you if you ever do that again,’ she screamed at the back of her husband.

George paused at the top of the stairs and looked down on his wife with a smirk of satisfaction. ‘Who? You and that cripple?’ he jeered. ‘A man with half a body?’

Louise glared up at him. ‘Sean Duffy is a real hero who has killed many times, so I would not be so complacent if I were you,’ she answered bitterly, sneering at George’s taunt. But he simply turned his back and disappeared from sight.

Louise thought about her son in his nursery. She could go to him and take him from the house, but knew that George would prevent that. She also knew that he kept the room locked when she was out at night to stop her from going to her son.

Wiping the streak of blood from her cheek with the back of her hand, Louise was already contemplating revenge. She would not remain under the roof where her husband kept her son from her, and lay with the nanny in her room.

Louise stepped back into the night where she saw the manservant hovering in the darkness, no doubt afraid to enter the house when he heard the violent attack inside.

‘Herbert, I wish to be driven to Master George’s brother’s house,’ she said with as much dignity as she could muster.

Herbert, still in his dressing gown, did not question her order. At least with her out of the house he would not be a witness to any further violence.

It was the tough Scot valet, Angus MacDonald, who answered the door in the early hours of the morning. ‘Mrs Macintosh,’ he said, blinking away the sleep. ‘Is something wrong?’

As Louise stepped into the light Angus blanched at the sight of her badly bruised and cut face. He helped her inside, nodding to her driver to leave. Very gently he led her to the kitchen, sitting her down at an old table used to prepare food. Louise was grateful for the kind attention and smiled weakly at the burly man fussing about in search of medical supplies. He retrieved a half bottle of Scotch he secretly shared with the cook.

‘Here, have a wee tot of this, Mrs Macintosh,’ he said, offering her a full shot of the fiery liquid. ‘It will cure anything that ails you.’

Louise gratefully accepted the drink and swallowed half of it before coughing at the cheap liquor burning her throat. ‘I doubt that it will cure what ails my life, Mr MacDonald,’ she gasped, getting her breath back. ‘I did not mean to disturb you this late at night, but this was the closest place I could think of to find sanctuary.’

‘I will fetch Mrs Macintosh,’ Angus said. He already had a good idea how her injuries had been sustained.

‘Please don’t disturb her,’ Louise said, waving her hand.

‘I am sure that Mrs Macintosh would be angry if I did not,’ Angus countered. ‘She has a good knowledge of medicine. I believe that she used to treat the natives on her father’s plantation.’

Louise wanted to laugh when she remembered how Giselle had always dreamed of becoming a doctor before the war, but motherhood had curtailed that dream for the moment and now with Alex away at the front she felt responsible to remain at the hearth to await his return before pursuing her dream of a career in medicine. Louise envied her sister-in-law for the love she knew existed between her and Alex.

In a short time, Louise was joined by Giselle who immediately went to her sister-in-law and examined the ugly cut and welt on her cheek. She did not ask what had happened as she had also guessed.

‘I will apply some antiseptic oil to the cut,’ Giselle said, bending over, the worried expression still on her face. ‘It will sting, but will help with the healing.’

‘I did not want to disturb you, but I could not think of anyone else to go to tonight,’ Louise said as Giselle located a small bottle of antiseptic oil from a medical cabinet she kept in the kitchen.

‘I am glad that you came,’ Giselle said, applying the oil with a small, clean gauze. Louise winced at the stinging oil but was grateful for Giselle’s medical skills. ‘Was it George?’ Giselle finally asked.

Louise nodded. ‘He knows about my affair with Sean,’ she replied, knowing that Giselle frowned on her behaviour of having an affair while still married.

‘You are welcome to stay here with us,’ Giselle said, replacing the phial back in the cabinet. ‘I can arrange to have your things brought over. I am sure that George will not mind you visiting for a while.’

‘And my son?’ Louise said bitterly. ‘Can you arrange to have him join me?’ Giselle looked away and Louise realised that she was taking her anger out on the wrong person. ‘Oh, I am sorry,’ she hurried to say. ‘I did not mean it that way.’

‘I understand,’ Giselle said, placing a kettle on the stove and turning on the gas. ‘These terrible times make us tense.’

‘You have reason to be tense, with Alex on the front,’ Louise said gently, going to Giselle to assist her prepare the tea. ‘Sean sweats and screams in the night,’ she continued. ‘It is as if he is still back fighting in the trenches. I wake him but it takes a long time for him to recognise that I am beside him. The war changes men forever.’

‘I cannot imagine my Alex changing,’ Giselle said, staring at the wall. ‘He is a gentle, brave and intelligent man, and a wonderful and warm human being, whose love for me and David cannot be questioned.’

Louise put her arms around her sister-in-law. ‘He will return to you as that same gentle and loving man,’ she said gently as she hugged Giselle, not really sure she was telling the truth. She could only pray that she was right. But even as she held her friend in the embrace, she was seething with rage. How could she see her husband humiliated – or even dead? The thought frightened Louise because she had truly considered the possibility. If her husband was dead then she would have her son back and could be with Sean. The idea of seeing her husband gone permanently from her life was becoming an obsession.

Thousands of wives, mothers, sisters, daughters and lovers dreaded the arrival of the telegram boy on his red GPO bicycle. Kate Tracy was no exception as she sat with her sewing in her lap on the wide, shaded verandah of her house in the tropics. Each day the mail man was welcomed as he rode up the long driveway to her house and delivered the precious letters from friends and relatives and, most importantly, those rare letters from overseas stained with the dust and mud of the battlefields. But the boy on the red push bike was not welcome.

It was a warm day and the world seemed at peace. Kate tied off the cotton thread on a shirt she was stitching for one of the gardeners when she glanced up to see the uniformed young boy riding towards her on his distinctive bicycle.

‘Oh, dear God,’ she heard herself groaning. ‘Let it be a mistake.’

She dropped the sewing at her feet and staggered to the railing as the young boy dismounted, propping his bike against a gum tree before walking towards her with an envelope in his hand. Kate knew the boy as she had sat with his mother only weeks earlier when the news arrived that her husband had been killed on the Western Front.

‘Mrs Tracy,’ the boy said apologetically as he walked up the steps to her. ‘I am sorry, I have to give you this.’

Kate did not say a word but accepted the telegram as the boy ducked his head and hurried away. Too often those he delivered the telegrams to fainted, and he did not like being around women who fainted or screamed out in their grief. It was unnerving. Besides, all he wanted to do was be old enough so that he could also sign up and fight the Huns.

Kate half-staggered back to her chair and slumped into it. She could barely bring herself to slip open the unsealed envelope and spread the single page.

It is with regret . . . killed in action.

From the drawing room where she was dusting the sideboards Angela heard the long, anguished groan and hurried to the verandah to see her mistress ashen-faced. ‘He’s dead,’ Kate said, holding out the single typewritten page to her. ‘Killed in Palestine.’ Then Kate broke down, tears streaming down her face as she sobbed for the loss of one more soldier in this terrible war.

*

Behind any such telegram is always a story of a moment in time, when a man faces death in his own way. Under the competent British General Allenby, the men of the Australian forces were on the road north to Damascus and Jerusalem. The advance had been spectacular, with thousands of Turkish and German soldiers taken prisoner as Allenby’s combined forces of French, British, Indian, Australian and New Zealand infantry and horsemen flowed forward, swamping the enemy. It had become a fluid war, unlike the bogged-down battlefields of Europe, a war designed for horsemen with the wide, sweeping plains to manoeuvre across.

In the air, Matthew, flying a new Bristol fighter, carried out recon and interdiction missions with his gunner, Sergeant Bruce Forsyth, now occupying the rear cockpit with his Lewis gun for rearward protection against enemy fighter planes. Matthew liked the new aircraft, as it was, despite being a two-seater, very agile and capable of engaging any of the German fighter planes they might come across on their missions.

On the ground, Trooper Randolph Gates rode with the advancing troops but a bout of malaria was dogging him. It was not only the enemy and the scorpions and snakes of the desert taking the lives of men, but also mosquitoes carrying the deadly disease. Randolph slumped in his saddle, shivering from the effects of the fever as they trekked ever northwards. They were advancing through low, craggy hills, and Randolph could see aircraft from Matthew’s squadron diving like angry bees into the gorge. The airmen had come across a Turkish transport column which had unwittingly made itself the perfect target for the aircraft circling above. The lead vehicles were immediately attacked with bombs and machine-gun fire; then the airmen went to work on the strung out column of troops, flying a few hundred feet over their targets, dropping bombs and strafing the desperate soldiers as they attempted to take shelter.

Matthew aimed the nose of his aircraft at a cluster of men he could see spilling from the back of a truck. Satisfied that he had a good sight on the soldiers, he fired the forward, fixed machine gun and saw the dust spouting up in tiny bursts as men caught in the bullets fell, riddled with high velocity .303 rounds. Horses were also hit and reared in agony before collapsing on the ground. Some of the braver troops on the ground were answering their persecutors with rifle fire, but to little effect as those aircraft with bombs remaining under their wings dropped them into the packed convoy, exploding ammunition and petrol. Behind him Matthew could hear the chatter of Sergeant Forsyth’s Lewis gun picking off targets of opportunity. The scene below was that of a slaughter but Matthew felt no emotion about the carnage he was helping to create. From his height, the men he killed hardly had features, certainly none he could discern, and were simply targets to be tallied at some later time.