Tools of War Read online

  “Where are we?” She blinked uneasily into the gloom.

  “It’s not far,” he repeated. It would be his only answer.

  Teetering on precarious high heels, she tottered uncertainly over the decaying pavement. On either side, barely visible, were small low-roofed buildings. Though she knew of them only from the newspapers, she guessed she was in an inner suburban slum. The stench of rotting garbage was sickening, the sense of watchful eyes behind obscure windows unnerving. A mewling child, the distant whine of a factory siren, and the hollow tap tap of her shoes were disquieting interruptions in the otherwise deathly silence. Careless of her distress, Julian hurried on. She wanted to call him back, but didn’t.

  At the approach of a shadowed figure huddling into a heavy overcoat, he stopped to wait for her.

  Catching up, she shuddered. “Julian - how far?”

  “Sh!” He grabbed her arm and pulled her against the slimy bricks of an unseen wall.

  “Julian?”

  “Sh!” His hand closed over her mouth. Gently.

  The stranger limped past, in his wake the stink of alcohol and the repulsive wheeze of diseased lungs.

  A few anxious seconds later, Julian released her. “It’s okay. It’s only a drunk.”

  She knew better than to ask what had happened. She didn’t need to. Julian was worrying about being watched. Steering her across the road, he thrust open a squealing gate, ushered her down a brick-paved path and ascended shallow steps to a tiled verandah. Her sense of impending danger was relieved by the comfortable sound of a tinny piano being amateurishly thumped. Approaching the softly-lit stained glass door, Julian pressed a barely visible button.

  There was no response.

  “Damn!” He pressed the button again. “When Herbie plays no one can hear a blasted thing.”

  Still no one answered.

  “Wait here.” Without warning, Julian disappeared.

  From inside the unknown house, she saw the eerie light and heard the discordant piano. Out here on the tiled verandah she was alone in the cold and the dark and the uncanny absence of sound. There was no sign of people, not even Julian. She had no idea where she was - or how to find her way back to the railway station, let alone the city. Suddenly, and not for the first time, Julian’s secret life filled her with terror. Where had he gone? And why? She wanted to scream. Fear silenced her. Battling hysteria, she banged on the door. The noise of her gloved fists drumming a muffled tattoo sounded like thunder. She stopped. What if someone crept up behind her? She wouldn’t hear them!

  Stepping back to the verandah’s edge, she listened. The only sounds were the disembodied piano and the rhythmic clattering of a distant train. She sat on the steps and cried.

  The front door opened, the suffused rays from the passage lighting the dark verandah.

  She turned to it. “Is that you…? Julian?”

  “Anne?” A stranger, his huge bulk blackly threatening, all but filled the doorway.

  She sprang to her feet, ready to run.

  “Anne?” He stepped onto the verandah. “Julian sent me.”

  Thankful his shadow hid her distress, she scrubbed at the tears.

  “Come along,” he beckoned. “Julian’s waiting.”

  Shaking, she followed the dark figure into a passageway dyed with the reflected reds and blues and greens and golds of the stained glass door.

  “I like stained glass.” It was something to say, the aftermath of hysteria.

  “It’s not mine.” He closed the door. “This way - down here.” Leading her down the long narrow passage, passing closed doors on either side, he opened the last door at the back of the house.

  Abruptly stark light blinded her. Shading her eyes against the naked overhead globes, she searched for Julian, but found only the undisguised stares of cautious strangers. Confused, she located piano and pianist. The piano, its top hidden under a pile of parchment-dry sheet music was an old yellow-keyed upright. The pianist, a shapeless form in a bright red shirt, was still wildly thumping the instrument. Seated beside the pianist, his back to her, Julian did not see her.

  “This is Anne.” Her large escort, courteously easing her into the room, introduced her to a group by the entrance.

  “I’ll take your things.” A middle-aged woman, whose intense dark eyes illuminated a halo of grey hair and a sickly white face, collected her coat, hat, gloves, and introduced herself. “I’m Inga. You’ll get to know us all eventually.”

  “Any friend of Julian’s…” A sympathetic voice from somewhere behind her was encouraging.

  She turned her attention away from the security of the strident piano. The questioning faces were now relaxed, the wary eyes were now relaxed. A few, like Inga, were pasty and haggard, haunted and - it was a look she hadn’t seen before.

  Except? Of course, she had seen that look. Though not in fact. Only in the news. In the movie news, in the war news before the main feature films. In the huge pictured shadows that revealed Hitler’s victims, Spain’s Civil War, Mussolini’s conquests.

  In real life she’d never even seen anyone like them, never heard anyone like them. They looked – different. Not Australian. It wasn’t just the haunted eyes and the pasty skin that was alien. It was the gauntness of the faces, the emaciation of the bodies. It was the look of age – old age; as though they’d never been children. Never played!

  These people had to be refugees. Of course she’d seen that look. She’d never expected to actually be close enough to touch it. They’d come all this way, so far from Hitler and Mussolini and the war. They’d come to Melbourne, inner suburban slum Melbourne.

  Could they all be communists? At least some had to be. Were they all Hitler’s victims? Or could some be refugees from Franco’s Spain? Or Mussolini’s Italy? So many violent confrontations between right and left, between Nazism and communism, between radicals and democrats, between governments and rebels. All far away.

  Not so far away. It explained the creepy feeling of being followed. It explained Julian’s caution in the dark street outside, so at odds with his careless behaviour on the train. Why had he brought her here? Why tonight? After all these months together, why tonight? Any friend of Julian’s. Were all these people his friends?

  She felt uncomfortable. Out of place. Disoriented. Except for Julian, everyone wore garish colours, red and blue and gold and green, brilliant replicas of the stained glass windows of the front door. It was as though the figures in the glass had come to life in this unexpectedly flamboyant place. She did not belong here, especially wearing the dark blue jumper and skirt and the plain navy coat that Inga was hanging on a hook behind the door. Though, oddly, sitting in his conservative suit beside the pianist wearing the red shirt, Julian seemed to totally belong. But then, Julian never looked out of place, he was comfortable everywhere.

  As though just aware of her arrival and without consulting her, or even acknowledging her presence, he turned from the piano to announce: “Meet my friend, Anne. She’s going to play for us.”

  So that was why he’d brought her here. She felt the starting flush of embarrassment in her cheeks, and prayed she could control it.

  “It’s okay, Anne,” Julian beckoned. “Herbie’s surrendered.”

  The pianist, a skinny young man whose emaciated body, parchment skin and burnt-coal eyes betrayed his refugee status, vacated his seat. Smiling a tentative welcome, he lisped in strongly accented English. “We have been told you are an excellent pianist, Anne. We look forward to this. Julian does not exaggerate.”

  They cleared a path for her. Grateful for the safe haven of the piano, even though it was an old yellow-toothed monstrosity, she crossed the room.

  “Good girl.” Julian settled her onto the piano stool, still warm from his body.

  Placing her handbag at her side, she tested the tinny keys. Although it was discordant and worn, every note worked.

  The pale pianist, his thin body bony against hers and his breath fetid, propped an album of popular
songs in front of her.

  Masking repulsion, she nodded, turned the pages, and began to play Waltzing Matilda. Unlike most of the songs in the thick album, it was familiar; a starting point to ease her tension.

  A half circle of people, some crowding close to read the words of the unfamiliar song, gathered around her to form the stifling sing-a-long cocoon she’d grown accustomed to. Despite the discomforting pressure of unfamiliar bodies and unaccustomed smells, it was comfortingly similar to the homely family experiences she’d grown up with.

  Julian patted her shoulder, then left. Unsettled by yet another desertion, she unhappily returned to concentration on the music. Inevitably, she soon became engrossed in the stimulating challenge of accompanying strange voices to strange music on an inadequate instrument. Some of the songs she knew, most she didn’t; the singers led her until she learned the tempo and beat.

  Eventually leaving only a few at the piano, the majority drifted off into small groups, where they continued the discussions she’d interrupted. Initially muted accompaniment to the music, their voices quickly crescendoed into pockets of heated argument that eclipsed the voices of the singers. She stopped playing, firmly shook her head at the few who tried to persuade her to continue, and turned from the piano to watch as they, too, joined the tight-faced and apparently angry groups.

  Out of her depth and out of place, she watched people shift and move into different groups or from group to group in an ever-changing and intriguingly inexplicable pattern. Their movements quick and purposeful, the colours of their intermingling clothes formed a constantly changing sea of colour, their raised voices a discordant clamour of sound. Acutely embarrassed, yet mesmerised, she searched the room without success for Julian. There was no sign of him, not anywhere in that sea of sound. Despairing, she re-sat at the piano and flipped nervously through yet another song album. Maybe someone would leave their argument and start the singing again. No-one did.

  Gradually, she became attuned to the overall mood of the raised voices. They were not arguing. They were pontificating. She should have understood. Julian did it all the time. Soap-boxers, her father called them; the week-end politicians who stood on wooden boxes in parks and lectured to small groups who argued with every word. Talkers for the sake of talking. Were Julian’s friends no more than talkers?

  Without surprise she saw that Inga, the emaciated pianist and the small group she’d guessed to be refugees, had withdrawn from the disputes. These people, whose haunting difference set them apart, were sitting quietly on the outer fringes of the room. In stark contrast to the passionate debaters, their stoic disinterest cast a pall over the room.

  She was contemplating leaving the haven of the piano when Inga, turning from her gloomy comrades, crossed the room and riffled through the brittle pile of music.

  “Play this, Anne.” Inga set a yellowing hand-notated manuscript on the stand.

  She read the title -‘The Internationale.’

  “I don’t know it. I’ll have to…”

  “It’s not too difficult for you, Anne.”

  She leaned more closely to scan the music. “What is it?”

  “It’s the communist anthem.”

  “I’m not…”

  “Play it, Anne.” Julian’s hands were suddenly pressing her shoulders; she hadn’t seen him come back.

  She shook her head.

  Behind her, the arguments had stopped. The room was hushed.

  “Play it,” Julian ordered.

  “Play it, Anne.” The big man and the others, as one, rose to their feet.

  “I don’t know it.” She felt the renewed stirrings of resentment. It wasn’t fair! She shouldn’t be here. She shouldn’t have been tricked into this, whatever it really was.

  Julian’s fingers bit into her obstinate shoulders. “It’s easy. You can pick it up.”

  “You’ll have to help me with the timing.”

  “Good girl,” Julian kissed her cheek.

  Blushing, she set her fingers onto the keys. As she felt for the unfamiliar chords, the crowding voices sang; at first quietly, even secretively; until, giving reign to their enthusiasm, the volume swelled.

  “Again!”

  Obeying, she pounded the old keyboard, matching the crescendo of the voices. As her fingers familiarised themselves, her quick ear analysed the voices of the chorus; tenors and baritones, one basso; a sweet high soprano; some trained singers, others powered only by raw energy. Not all sang in English. She recognised German and French; the others she did not know. The different languages, like their voices, were blending in a rousing roar of sound.

  “Quiet!” Julian’s hands, in mid-chorus, brutally arrested hers.

  The singers fell abruptly silent.

  “What…?”

  “Sh!”

  Clearly, they heard the peal of the front doorbell.

  “I didn’t hear…” Someone began.

  “I did,” Julian snapped. “Joe - answer it.”

  The big man lumbered from the anxious crowd.

  Julian’s hands on hers bit cruelly; it wasn’t fair. Someone had heard them. It could be the police! She’d be in trouble.

  It seemed like hours. It was mere minutes before Joe, smiling, returned: “It was the neighbours. We’re making too much noise.”

  The combined sigh of relief left her weak. Never again!

  “One more time, Anne, please.” Inga begged. “We’ll whisper. I promise.”

  Anyone else but Inga. How could she refuse? Fighting tears, she stroked the music into reluctant life. The subdued fervently whispered final chorus was oddly more moving than their former outburst.

  “Thank you, Anne.” Inga kissed her. “Thank you.”

  “Thank you, Anne.” The subdued singers quickly left.

  “Good girl,” Julian whispered, and steered her between the re-assembled groups into an un-crowded corner.

  “Can we go now, Julian?” She was flushed, frightened, tired and angry. It could just have easily have been the police. What if the complaining neighbour had recognised the communist anthem? What if they were right now thinking about it and calling the police? It was too much.

  “Half an hour,” Julian promised. “No more. We won’t miss the train. Wait here. There’s a meeting down the passage.”

  “It could have been the police!”

  “It wasn’t.”

  Frustrated, she watched Julian and his friends file from the room.

  “We won’t be long, Anne.” Inga switched off the glaring overhead lights, checked the two lamps standing by the shuttered window, and firmly closed the door.

  She was alone. Though in the muted glow of the shaded lamps the empty room seemed twice its former size, it was thankfully less threatening and more restful. Why had Julian excluded her from the meeting? Why had he brought her here? Just to play the piano? Or as a cover, a protection in case the police were watching?

  She shivered. In the warm room, she shivered. Knowing Julian, it had to be as a cover. Knowing Julian? Of course she didn’t know him. Seven years older than she was, he was always conservatively dressed in a grey suit, narrow-brimmed felt hat, black shoes, white shirt and an un-patterned blue tie. Even tonight, when his friends were dressed like gypsies, he looked as harmless as a career bank teller. Apart from his communist friends, that’s what almost everyone seemed to think; except her mother.

  Her mother was right not to trust him. In her thoughtful moments, when he was not at her side, Anne didn’t trust him either. Anyone with an ounce of sense had to question why a man like Julian would bother with her. If they hadn’t traveled on the same bus to the complex where they both worked, they’d never have met. They didn’t even have anything in common. The trouble was, the minute he touched her, or spoke, or even ignored her like right this minute, she stopped thinking and common sense went missing.

  She wondered, as she too often did - why had Julian chosen her? Was she just a means to an end? His ruse to avoid close scrutiny? Or a conveni
ence? Because, for sure, a more worldly woman could well be a problem for him. Was she being used as a way to disguise his active involvement in The Party? A cover for illegal meetings like tonight? His job as a physicist in munitions was very important, so there had to be no opportunity for official questions about how he actually spent much of his spare time. Therefore – a girl friend who was no problem – Anne Preston.

  She shivered. ‘Teenage munitions worker found in Communist Hideaway.’ It could have been the police at the front door. Imagine the headlines! Poor Mum. She hadn’t a clue.

  Her doubts were irrelevant. She loved him. She was privileged. The fire in his eyes and the depth of his commitment to his beliefs was special. Julian was special. The grey suits and the unobtrusive self control he showed people in the outside world convinced them that he was no more than what they saw. He didn’t look like a criminal. Far from it. So what if she was wrong again? What if she wasn’t a ruse? What if he did love her? He was letting her see things that could put him and his friends in prison. He had to love her. Didn’t he?

  The hushed house gave no clue as to where they all were or what they were doing. Were they still arguing? Planning? Planning what?

  She fell asleep.

  “Anne…”

  “Have they gone?” She started up.

  “Don’t move.” He held her close, his mouth warm on hers, his hands gentle.

  If only Mum knew what he was really like, how kind he could be.

  He released her. “The meeting was longer than we planned. Herbie’s gone to bed. I’m sorry. We haven’t a lot of time.”

  “Do we have to go?”

  “We’ve got a little time….” He took her in his arms. “Sh. Don’t talk.”

  For a moment she forgot about everything but Julian, his strong hands reaching under her jumper, moulding her breasts until the nipples hardened and her body ached. If only it could always be like this.

  “I’m sorry.” He drew back.

  “Julian!” She reached for him.

  “We must stop this, Anne.”

  “Why?”

  “Anne - I don’t want to hurt you.”