Territory (16 page)

Since meeting Aggie Marshall, Henrietta's life had changed irrevocably. She hadn't realised until now how lonely she'd been, and she blossomed. Her visits to Darwin increased until she was making the trip once a week. She even stayed overnight occasionally, at Marrinah House, a tasteful hostel for women located on the Esplanade not far from Aggie's house. She'd declined Aggie's offer to stay with her.

‘Good heavens, Henrietta,' Aggie said time and again, ‘it's such a waste of money. And I have one of the few remaining houses in the whole of Darwin (a slight exaggeration, Henrietta thought), so why not let me put it at your disposal.' No, she didn't wish to impose, Henrietta insisted. Secretly, she was very much enjoying her independence.

For the first month or so she had kept waiting for Terence to call a halt to her new life of freedom, but strangely enough he hadn't. He seemed genuinely happy for her. She'd invited him to come with her to the first dance she'd attended for the returning POWs, aware that he would not have allowed her to go on her own, and he'd satisfied himself that there was no cause for alarm.
Between Aggie and that strange Paul Trewinnard she was quite adequately chaperoned, Terence decided, and besides, he'd been bored witless watching his wife shuffle around the dance floor with emaciated soldiers.

‘It's a very nice thing for you to do, my darling, I'm quite happy for you to go on your own in future,' he'd generously agreed. So Henrietta kept up her weekly visits to Darwin and happily devoted the rest of her time to her son and to keeping the books in order at Bullalalla, a task which she undertook with all seriousness, determined to ‘run a smooth ship' as Margaret used to say.

Terence had little reason for complaint, the change in Henrietta delighted him. She was once more full of the spirit and enthusiasm which had first attracted him. Totally unaware of the influence his unpredictable moods had had upon his young wife, Terence decided that she'd become withdrawn over the past few years because of her isolation and the depressive presence of his mother.

Terence didn't miss his parents for one minute. He thought of his father as dead, it was easier that way. More pleasant to remember Jock Galloway as the hero he'd been. Terence was thoroughly enjoying being the boss of Bullalalla. He'd employed a full-time overseer and intended to return Bullalalla station to its pre-war grandeur.

His first mission in doing so had been to rid his land of the eyesores which remained as reminders of army occupation. The roads built by the military had been left littered with remnants of their camps, from abandoned huts and equipment to old jeeps and staff cars. Terence took what he could use and disposed of the rest. He was free to do so, the Government having set in motion a strategy called the Marshall Plan as a preventative to profiteering. The plan dictated that, in the interests of the country's economy, there was to be no selling off of army or air force equipment, and that all military property was
to be left in the scrub to rot. The plan even went so far as to allow planes to be shoved overboard from ships and buried at the bottom of Darwin Harbour. Nobody was to profit from the sale of parts.

Following the cleaning up of his property, the next priority on Terence's agenda was the Bullalalla Races. Their re-introduction, he decided, would prove to everyone just who was the king in these parts. The June 1946 ‘Victory' Bullalalla Races would go down in local history.

 

‘The Bullalalla Races, good heavens. So there's to be a return to normalcy so soon after the war, I'm most impressed.'

Henrietta was never quite sure how to take Paul Trewinnard. She sometimes wondered whether his air of cynicism was just an act or whether he really was as world-weary as he appeared. And she wondered now whether his comment was indeed cynical or whether he actually was impressed. He was a confusing man.

‘Terence is very excited about it,' she said a little defensively, ‘and he said I'm to ask my new friends as official family guests. And that means you two.' She directed her words to Paul, despite the fact that Aggie was sitting beside her.

‘Me too?' Paul deliberately misunderstood.

‘You
two
!' Henrietta emphasised with frustration, including Aggie.

‘Oh, you mean me and Aggie.' Lightening dawned.

‘Don't listen to him, Henrietta,' Aggie said dismissively. ‘I'll be there of course, wouldn't miss it for the world, you'll drive me, won't you, Paul?'

‘Delighted of course. How exciting.' Paul had been to the Bullalalla Races before the war, in Jock's time, and had enjoyed himself very much. He'd simply turned up, however, along with the hundreds of others who'd done so, he hadn't been formally invited. ‘An official family guest, thank you,' he said, ‘what an honour.' He meant it
sincerely, he couldn't help it if others misread him.

‘You must bring Foong Lee too,' Henrietta said. She'd met Foong Lee on a number of occasions and, although she didn't know him particularly well, she was aware that he was a very close friend of Paul's.

The three of them were lolling around in Aggie's untidy study, a preliminary meeting of the ‘rebuilding of Darwin' subcommittee in progress. Except that they hadn't progressed, Henrietta having been so excited about delivering her invitation that she'd jumped the proceedings.

Aggie was seated in her comfortable armchair, her carpet-slippered foot supported by the old leather pouffe she always favoured when her leg was tired. Henrietta was seated beside her and Paul was leaning against the window frame, the open windows which looked over the Esplanade affording the only air available, it seemed, in this stiflingly close space. It was the end of the wet season, but the weather remained uncomfortably humid, he thought. But then perhaps it was just Aggie's place. She didn't even have a ceiling fan, just a small, useless contraption which sat on the corner of her desk whirring noisily and doing little but blow her papers in all directions. She was forever plonking paperweights and bowls and ashtrays about the place.

‘The Races will be held in two months' time,' Henrietta continued, ‘and family and guests are to join us in the grandstand. Well, Terence calls it a grandstand, but if that's what it really is then it's a very miniature version.' She laughed.

Henrietta had certainly changed since their first meeting, Paul thought. He approved of her exuberance, in his opinion she'd never looked lovelier.

Paul Trewinnard would have quite willingly admitted, had anyone bothered to ask, that he had a bit of a crush on Henrietta Galloway. ‘Good heavens, what man wouldn't,' would have been his reply.

‘It's to be a two-day affair, people are invited to camp the night,' Henrietta chattered on, ‘and Terence is going to set up huge spits to roast sides of beef in the evenings. There'll be the family gymkhana events on the first day and the big races on the second, and he's planning it all for the second weekend in June.'

‘Thank God for that.' Paul fanned himself with the papers he held in his hand.

‘Stop complaining,' Aggie barked, ‘it's a beautiful day.' The heat never seemed to affect Aggie the way it did others. ‘It all sounds wonderful, Henrietta, and we shall most certainly be there, now let's get on with some work, there's so much to be done.'

 

The Bullalalla Races was a more spectacular event than Henrietta could possibly have imagined, even though Terence had promised that it would be.

‘Up to a thousand people used to come,' he'd told her, ‘bookies and jockeys and spectators would pour in from miles around. Of course that was before the war,' he'd corrected himself, ‘with so many evacuated from the area we probably won't get half that number, but it'll be something to see, I promise you.'

Henrietta had prayed that it would be a success, for Terence's sake, he'd worked so hard and it was so important to him, she couldn't bear the prospect of his disappointment.

Now, as she stood in the grandstand, little Malcolm in the perambulator at her side, preparing for the arrival of friends and family, she looked out at the crowd and was overwhelmed. Men were mingling around the perimeters of the track socialising, parents were watching the scores of their children taking stocky little ponies through their paces in preparation for the morning's gymkhana events and, beyond the track, yet more families were busily setting up camp amongst the trees by the creek.

‘There must be hundreds,' she murmured to Terence who was beside her, shaking hands, slapping people on the back, mostly fellow station owners and managers, proudly introducing them to his beautiful young wife in her pretty floral dress and his year-old son gurgling happily in his pram.

‘And this is only the first day,' he laughed in reply. ‘Just you wait 'til tomorrow when the big boys turn up to put the money on.'

Terence was in his element. Even he had not expected such numbers. Where had they come from? It was as if the war had never been. Perhaps that was it. People wanted to forget. Those from Darwin were only too happy to leave their troubled lives behind for two magic days, to forget that they were living in hovels trying to piece together a new existence, whilst others were willing to travel from far and wide for a taste of pre-war style celebration. Whatever it was that had brought them, they were there in numbers, and the atmosphere throughout was one of festivity.

The dusty oval racecourse was carved out of the scrub, the gymkhana courses set up in the centre. The track railings had been painted bright green, as had the several open shelters around the perimeter, which Terence had had built to provide shade for the elderly and women with babies. He'd gone one step further with the grandstand enclosure. The grandstand was bright yellow with green trim—‘the same as the Sydney Cricket Ground,' he'd boasted, ‘makes it look official.' Amidst the vast Territory scrubland, the overall effect of the Bullalalla racetrack was bizarre but attractive.

Hans van der Baan, who had married an Australian girl, a nurse he'd met during the war, and was now living in Perth, had flown up for the occasion and Terence was overjoyed. The two men opened a bottle of beer from one of the several iceboxes and were soon lost in conversation,
leaving Henrietta to converse with the station managers and their wives.

An hour or so later, the children's gymkhana events under way and the crowd roaring enthusiastically, Henrietta excused herself to feed and change the baby in the family tent, a comparatively luxurious affair in the shade by the creek. It was close to noon now and he needed to be out of the heat, she said. Nellie was waiting for her and the two women chatted, Henrietta thankful for the break. She hoped that Paul and Aggie wouldn't be too much longer, she could do with some allies, and she would need them more than ever when the family arrived. Terence's two younger brothers, whom she'd never met, were flying up from Adelaide with their wives and were expected to arrive in the early afternoon.

She left the baby with Nellie and, upon returning to the grandstand, was thankful to find that Paul and Aggie had arrived. They had driven out in Paul's newly acquired Austin and were standing to one side waiting for her, Foong Lee and his son Albert with them. She greeted them warmly, ushering them to seats in the front row alongside her.

She sensed a slight change in Terence as she sat next to him and hoped he wasn't about to have one of his unpredictable mood swings. He'd been in such good humour of late.

‘Is something the matter?' she whispered.

‘I told you to invite your
friends
,' he muttered.

‘I did.'

‘Since when have you been friends with the Chink?' He said it a little louder, obviously for Hans van der Baan's benefit, she noted, as the big Dutchman nudged him and nodded vigorously in agreement.

Henrietta was shocked and felt herself flush. She looked quickly sideways at the others, but Aggie, seated beside her, was in deep conversation with Paul, and Foong Lee
three seats further to the right could surely not have heard, he certainly showed no signs of having done so.

‘He
is
my friend,' she whispered fiercely, turning back to Terence, humiliation lending anger to her voice, her eyes flashing a warning, ‘and I'll thank you to remember that.' She was as confused as she was angry. Terence had never displayed any malignantly racist tendencies, and amongst the crowd there were many Chinese and Aborigines. It was Hans van der Baan's influence, she realised with an instant surge of dislike, and she gave the Dutchman a withering glance.

For once, Terence backed down. ‘All right,' he said, placating her, ‘all right, fair enough.' But he scowled as he took a swig of his beer, looking neither at her nor at Hans.

When the Dutchman had said, ‘What are you doing inviting a Chink to the grandstand,' Terence had replied, ‘I didn't', and he'd felt annoyed with Henrietta for having taken it upon herself to do so.

Given the potpourri of Darwin society and the Territorians' general acceptance of racial differences, Terence had always kept his disdain for Asians and Aborigines in check, but secretly he was of the opinion that Hans van der Baan and his ilk had the right attitude and he rather wished the Australian authorities had followed the line of the Dutch colonial administration of Indonesia.

‘They're not called the Dutch East Indies for nothing my friend,' Hans had boasted to him on more than one drunken occasion. ‘We kept the Malays and the Indonesians in their place right from the start. And even when the Jews of Asia came in for a slice of the action (Hans always referred to the Southern Chinese as ‘the Jews of Asia') they were soon taught their place. They can run their laundries and shops, they're good at that, but they've got to learn they're second-class citizens. I tell you, man, we'd never have allowed them the business foothold they've got in Darwin, this is a white man's country.'