Women and War

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• Janet Tanner
  
• Dedication
  
• OVERTURE . . .
  
• . . . AND BEGINNERS
  
• ACT I
  
• Chapter One
  
• Chapter Two
  
• Chapter Three
  
• ACT II
  
• Chapter One
  
• Chapter Two
  
• Chapter Three
  
• Chapter Four
  
• Chapter Five
  
• Chapter Six
  
• Chapter Seven
  
• Chapter Eight
  
• Chapter Nine
  
• Chapter Ten
  
• Chapter Eleven
  
• Chapter Twelve
  
• Chapter Thirteen
  
• Chapter Fourteen
  
• Chapter Fifteen
  
• Chapter Sixteen
  
• Chapter Seventeen
  
• Chapter Eighteen
  
• Chapter Nineteen
  
• Chapter Twenty
  
• Chapter Twenty-One
  
• Chapter Twenty-two
  
• Chapter Twenty-three
  
• Chapter Twenty-four
  
• Chapter Twenty-five
  
• Chapter Twenty-six
  
• Chapter Twenty-seven
  
• Chapter Twenty-eight
  
• Chapter Twenty-nine
  
• ACT III
  
• Chapter One
  
• Chapter Two
  
• Chapter Three
  
• FINALE
  

Janet Tanner is a prolific and well-loved author and has twice been shortlisted for RNA awards. Many of her novels are multi-generational sagas, and some – in particular the Hillsbridge Quartet – are based on her own working class background in a Somerset mining community. More recently, she has been writing historical and well-received Gothic novels for Severn House – a reviewer for
Booklist
, a trade publication in the United States, calls her “ a master of the Gothic genre”.

Besides publication in the UK and US, Janet's books have also been translated into dozens of languages and published all over the world. Before turning to novels she was a prolific writer of short stories and serials, with hundreds of stories appearing in various magazines and publications worldwide.

Janet Tanner lives in Radstock, Somerset.

For my Aunt and Uncle, Nora and Alec Mundy.

Tara was crouching behind the chair in the corner when Maggie and the man came into the room. She heard their voices – Maggie's soft Irish lilt and the man's coarse drawl – and tucked in as tightly as she could to avoid being seen. Like the rest of the furniture in the room it had seen better days – stuffing leaked out from the seat and hung in stringy streamers on the linoleum which covered the floorboards – but it was big enough to hide behind and Tara was glad. She should not be here, she knew, Maggie had given her a sixpenny bit and told her to go out for an hour as she always did when the men came to visit, but today Tara had not wanted to go. It was raining, soft flurries blowing ceaselessly against the windows of the cramped two room apartment she shared with Maggie in Darlinghurst, Sydney, and as she watched Maggie pull a comb through her mane of red hair and paint her lips to the bright scarlet slash that left stains on cups and cigarette ends, Tara had made up her mind. She would hide when they came back. With any luck Maggie would take the man straight through to the bedroom and they would never know she was there.

The door slammed shut. Tara held her breath. ‘Wait here a minute and I'll slip into something more comfortable,' Maggie said.

‘No need for that.' The man sounded impatient. ‘It doesn't bother me.'

‘It bothers me, dear,' Maggie said.

Tara peeped around the wing of the chair. The man was big, swarthy and untidy with a beer gut swelling above the leather belt which held up his trousers and tattoos up his arms. Tara surveyed him without much interest. He was like all the men who came to visit Maggie, more or less, and she hated all of them, partly because of the way she'd seen them paw Maggie and partly because when they came she was made to go out.

Maggie came back into the room. Tara caught a glimpse of her green art silk dressing gown, the one which showed every contour of her breasts.

‘All ready then,' she said.

‘Just a minute – what's that?' the man asked.

Tara squeezed tighter against the chair. A bit of fluff from the stuffing got into her nose and she was quite unable to suppress a sneeze.

‘Tara – is that you?' Maggie's voice was harsh. Tara had no choice but to emerge. ‘ By all that's holy what do you think you are doing?' Maggie demanded.

‘I didn't want to go out,' Tara began, then broke off. The man was looking at her, a strange and frighteningly unpleasant expression curling his poorly shaven face.

‘Hey – who's she?' There was suppressed excitement in his voice. He took a step towards her.

‘Never mind who she is,' Maggie said. And to Tara: ‘Get out now, like you were told!'

‘Wait a bit – how much?' He jerked his thumb in Tara's direction. ‘I'll pay well …'

Maggie moved like lightning between Tara and the man. Her hand shot out gripping Tara's arm so tightly that the fingermarks stood out like red weals on her flesh.

‘Out, Tara! Go on out!' she bundled her across the room, half threw her through the door. Tara stood on the stairs for a moment rubbing her arm. Then disconsolately she made her way down the stairs and into the street. The rain hit her like a soft veil. She had no coat, but at least it was not cold. Just as well. She would have to stay out for at least an hour. She certainly did not want to risk going back while the man was there.

Tara wandered aimlessly up the alley and started down the hill towards the centre of Sydney, a skinny eight-year-old in a faded print frock and sandals. The rain had made her hair cluster in tiny jet-black curls around her heart-shaped face but her cornflower blue eyes were clouded and there was no sign of the dimples that Mammy had used to say were there because the faeries had touched her cheeks with their little fingers.

She passed a corner bar and the jangling sound of a piano wafted out to her. Tara's footsteps faltered. She recognized that tune – ‘When Irish Eyes Are Smiling'. Mammy had used to sing it to her, leaning over her bed, her lovely lilting voice all mixed up somehow with the smell of her perfume and something else, something Maggie said was whisky, blending and wafting Tara to the very edges of sleep … Suddenly the pain was very sharp in Tara. She crept closer to the door, peeping inside. The cigarette smoke hung thickly so that she saw the people inside through a haze. But there was a woman with her back to the door, a woman in a red dress just like Mammy used to wear. Tara pressed closer, her heart beating in her throat so hard she could scarcely breathe. Could it be? This time, could it really be … Mammy?

The woman turned and as Tara saw her face the disappointment came rushing in, making her sick. A stranger with a garishly painted face. Not Mammy. Never Mammy. So many times Tara had thought she had seen her but it never was. At first when Mammy had gone she had walked the steep alleys of Darlinghurst until her feet were covered with blisters, waited outside the sly grog shops in Woolloomooloo and Kings Cross, haunted the taverns in the Rocks where Mammy used to sing for the sailors, but she had never come.

Tears pricked Tara's eyes and she turned away. It wasn't fair. It was not fair! Why had Mammy gone? Why, after all the wonderful dreams they had shared? They had come all the way from Ireland to Australia on the boat because Mammy had said that Daddy would be there waiting for them – the Daddy she had never seen – and they could make a new life in a land full of opportunities. But no Daddy had been there to meet them. Only Auntie Maggie who was not really an aunt at all but a friend of Mammy's and from the Emerald Isle herself. Tara had not minded about not finding Daddy. What you had never had you did not miss. And they were all right, the three of them, she and Mammy and Auntie Maggie. But Mammy had minded. She had grown thinner and older and though she still sang like all the larks in the air whenever anyone would listen, more and more often Tara had smelled that something which mingled with her cheap perfume and which Auntie Maggie said was whisky.

And then one night Mammy had gone away. Dimly, as if it were part of a dream, Tara thought she remembered her bending over the bed where she was sleeping, remembered Mammy's tears falling wet onto her cheek and heard her soft brogue, so slurred it was difficult to make out her words. ‘This is the best way, Tara me darlin'. You'll be better off without me.' But she could never be sure whether that part was just wishful thinking. Mammy had gone and though she had searched the highways and byways, Tara had never seen her again.

She loved Maggie of course, loved her with all her eight-year-old heart. Maggie was all she had. Maggie was kind and warm, all hugs and kisses. Sometimes Maggie would cry with her. Sometimes she would sing her to sleep. But she couldn't sing like Mammy. More often than not she would go out of tune and Tara itched to tell her so.

And too often – like today – the men would come and Maggie would send her out.

The tears pricked more insistently and as if she could out-pace them Tara began to run. Oh Mammy, oh Mammy, you used to tell me I looked as if I'd been left behind by the faeries, but it was you that left me. Oh Mammy.…

She ran blindly with no clear thought as to where she was going but her feet needed no telling. There was one place in all of Sydney that she loved above all others, one place where she could forget the heartache and loneliness, forget the feel of the pavement through the thin places in the soles of her sandals and the wet cling of her dress to her legs. As it came into view she caught her breath and felt the little twist of excitement shiver pleasurably through her.

The Capitol. Sydney's great variety theatre. Its light blazed out into the night and drew her like a magnet. Oh the hours she had spent here, eyes shining with wonder as she gazed at the imposing facade, at the portraits of the artistes in their glass fronted showcases, and peeped through the glass panels at the ornate gilded balcony and the staircases which swept down from it on either side between the tall lamps standing sentinel. Oh, the dreams that were bound up with the glamour and colour of it!