Four Fires (37 page)

'Five votes for, five against, the chairman didn't bloody vote! Imagine that!' Big Jack says in disgust. 'What a piss-weak little shit!' Then he puts his arm around Sarah, 'Go on, girlie, have a good cry, gawd knows you're entitled.'

'Maloneys don't cry!' Sarah whispers, nevertheless, a single additional tear escapes and runs down her cheek and over the edge of her chin to splash and disappear into the wool of her bright-pink cardigan. 'Bugger!' she says softly and hands the note to Morrie and then clasps her hands around her tummy, as if to protect her unborn child.

'Politics! Always politics,' Morrie sighs.

chapter eleven

Well, let me tell you, the whole of Yankalillee was split into two sides when the Age newspaper, showing a pretty picture of Sarah, head shot only, reported: pregnant student

refused permission

to enrol at university

The day after the Age piece appeared, the Truth newspaper also picked up the story and headlined it all the way across the front page, showing a photo of Sarah in her New Look dress with her tummy sticking out a mile. Nancy said it was in bad taste even if it was poetry.

uni student's

UP THE DUFF REBUFF!

Both newspapers came out strongly against Melbourne University and both sides in Yankalillee thought it was a disgrace, but a different disgrace. The first disgrace was the university and the second disgrace Was Sarah. One side wondered how Sarah could think of disgracing the town's
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good name by applying to be a student in her condition and as an Unmarried mother-to-be. The other side, like the newspapers, thought

the disgrace belonged to Melbourne University for its decision to exclude a favourite daughter who had been undone by a dastardly deed.

For once it wasn't only a Catholic versus Protestant thing. What with Mrs Barrington-Stone, a topnotch Protestant and from the richest and most famous family in the district defending one of the poorest Catholic families in town, it was difficult to turn it into a religious issue, though this didn't stop some people from trying.

The Templetons, of course, were furious because it had flared up again and their good name was in all the Melbourne papers. Unfortunately for them, a reporter from the Argus made a telephone call to the Templetons late in the afternoon when Mrs Templeton was well into a bottle of Gilbey's and alone at home. She proceeded to give the reporter the Templeton version of things, pointing out on the way that she was the great-grandniece of the Archdeacon of Salisbury Cathedral, the greatest Anglican cathedral after Westminster Abbey. She then told him how Nancy Maloney shamelessly used her 'harpy' of a daughter to try and trap her son into marriage in an attempt to raise their miserable station in life. She gleefully told the reporter how they'd foiled this malicious little plot by sending Murray Templeton to Duntroon and then how, out of the kindness of their hearts, they'd offered the Maloney family money, which they had the nerve to refuse. 'Offered money, what was that for?' the reporter inquired. 'To have her brat elsewhere or to get rid of it, we didn't much care which!' Mrs Templeton said, not realising in her inebriated state how that might sound to the outside world.

It was unfortunate for her that in her cups she forgot to ask the name of the reporter, who was Sean O'Conner, the features editor of the Argus, Melbourne's most trusted newspaper. Mrs Templeton would forever deny that she'd meant Sarah should have an abortion, insisting that

'get rid of it' meant to have it adopted. But of course it was too late and no one believed her anyway. Mr O'Conner wrote a full-page feature with the headline: pregnant student

boy's parents offer

abortion money!

Nothing like this had ever happened to Yankalillee. Father Crosby came around to see Nancy and to urge her to tell Sarah to keep her mouth shut because the Bishop wasn't at all pleased with the publicity. Nancy told him to go to hell and also that after she'd read the article she knew for sure there was a God in heaven. He told her that she had committed blasphemy. She told him to add it to her list of sins. He stormed out as usual. Later it was discovered that the Bishop was on the board of Newman College, the all-male Catholic college at Melbourne University, and preached regularly at its magnificent Walter Burley Griffin designed chapel, which was supposed to be the biggest university chapel in Australia. So, as you can see, while a battle royal raged in Melbourne, it was on for one and all on the home front as well. By this time, which was a week after the review committee decision, the name 'Sarah Maloney' was well known to most people in the city and also as far as the papers reached into the country, which was probably all of Victoria. Sarah was practically, nearly, almost famous. The Grand Plan, which had moved into what Mrs Barrington-Stone called the 'Second Phase', had got completely out of control.

'It's time to take off the kid gloves and put on the boxing gloves,' Mrs Barrington-Stone announced shortly after they'd heard the bad news outside the Professorial Board meeting room. But it had now gone well past boxing gloves and onto the bare-knuckle stage. Soon enough it would reach the knuckleduster stage or even perhaps the time-to-look-around-for-a-very-big-stick stage. Anyway, if this is what she'd meant by a brouhaha, we had a no-holds-barred one on our hands all right.

This is what happened. After Celia Billings drops the note at Mrs Barrington-Stone's feet, Morrie
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reports for work that night at the Age and tells the story to Joe Bloges, his mate, the union shop steward. Joe Bloges, naturally enough, is known in union circles as 'Joe Bloggs' and has long since given up trying to make the correction. He's pretty militant left-wing Labor and in a way his nickname suits him better than his real name because justice for the common man is what Joe's all about. He's also got three daughters so it's justice for the common woman as well. Next morning Joe goes down to the City Club Hotel in Collins Street at ten to find Ross Teasdale, who is at his usual spot in tne saloon bar on the second of the two heart-starters to keep him going until noon when he'll come in for five or six more beers to get him through the afternoon shift. Joe tells Teasdale the story. The reporter, though a bit of a drunk, loves to have a go at the establishment.

'Pregnant girlie from the country smart enough to get into Medicine rejected by those old-school-tie pricks?' He thinks for a moment. 'Hmm, sounds like it's got substance, I'll make a call to the chief of staff, though we're a pretty conservative paper. He may baulk.' He bums sixpence off Joe Bloges to use the phone. Teasdale is pretty good mates with the night editor Norm Cabbage, who tells him to go ahead and see if he can get the story for the next morning's edition. He comes back to have the beer Joe has bought him. 'Miracles will never cease, old Norm's bought it. I'm surprised, women's issues isn't really the Age, I was expecting him to say no.'

But a columnist in the Melbourne Sun has recently had a go at the foreign-doctor issue so the doctor shortage is in the news and moreover newsworthy. The Sun is a strong rival of the Age and the particular Sun columnist is a fierce rival of Teasdale s, who's read the Sun article and clipped it out, thinking he might do a piece on it himself. Now he believes he might have an even better story. In part this is what the Sun article said:

I'm not becoming unduly ruffled about the stiffly starched BMA-dominated Victorian Medical Board.

But I join the hundreds of thousands of rebels who say there should be a curb on this tight little coterie's activities . . . Consider this incredible sequence of events: The Commonwealth immigration policy has brought us many doctors with European training.

Some are graduates of world-famous universities.

But the British Medical Association - tightest union in the country, many people say -- has set its face sternly against accepting foreigners, except on almost impossible conditions.

At last the State Government has realised the absurdity of a virtual blanket ban and promises to pass legislation designed to ease the way for alien doctors . . . but will the BMA-sponsored members support the government? I have my doubts.

There is clearly a shortage of doctors in Australia.

Scores of country towns have no medical service because Australian graduates are disinclined to leave the cities.

After Teasdale's interviewed Morrie and talked to Sarah, taking a photographer with him to the terrace in Carlton, he puts a call through to Mrs Barrington-Stone, who has flown back to her property. She has a chat to him and also gives him the phone numbers of the review committee members who voted against Sarah.

'Lovely,'Teasdale tells her, then adds, 'You do know what you're up against, don't you, madam?'

'I think we're beginning to realise it is going to be difficult, doctors are always difficult, the most reactionary group I know after the Victorian Liberal Party.'

Teasdale laughs, 'Reactionary! This mob are to the right of Genghis Khan!'

'But we need more doctors? Here in the country we're screaming out for them.'

'Don't tell me, I did a piece on this not so long ago and interviewed some of the medicos on the faculty. They all said they couldn't increase their intake of first-year students, that lectures were over-crowded and facilities inadequate. "Perhaps then we should open a second medical
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school," I suggested to them.'Teasdale laughs. 'You'd have thought I'd used a dirty word in front of the Pope! The answer as far as they were concerned was a smaller intake, end of argument.'

'Well, I hope you give them curry, Mr Teasdale, what's involved here is more than Sarah Maloney, much more. It's about the rights of women to share equally in the system and to be entitled to observe the same rules and receive the same justice as their male counterparts.'

'I'll do my best, but as a betting man I don't like your chances, madam. I don't think you'd find a bookmaker in Victoria who would give you even hundred to one odds on a win.'

That's all right, Mr Teasdale, Emmeline Pankhurst the great suffragette had odds greater than those against her. We're simply a very srnall part of an ongoing fight with a long, long way to go.'

I hear you,'Teasdale says, 'I've got two daughters of my own.'

Although none of the review committee members will talk to him, Teasdale has a feature story for the morning paper with the nice big photo of Sarah showing how very pretty she is and also head shots of Marcus Block, the dean of the Faculty of Medicine, and the professors who voted against her admission, all six photos obtained from the newspaper photo library taken on the previous occasion Ross Teasdale had interviewed them.

The story appears on page three. Page one features the coming referendum to extend hotel hours and the shortage of quality accommodation for overseas visitors to the Olympic Games.

Anyway, by now people are pretty sick of the Olympics, which has still got eight months to go, so the Sarah story gets a lot of attention it may not otherwise have received.

The first thing that happens is that the reporters from all of Melbourne's newspapers turn up at the university to interview Professor Marcus Block, who refuses to talk to them. This goes for the other five medical men who voted against admitting Sarah as well. Block also bans the five professors who voted for Sarah from comment and now the Faculty of Medicine is closed tight as a wombat's bum. He also starts a witch hunt to find out how the reporter got the names of the five professors. Fortunately Celia Billings, having taken advice from Mrs Barrington-Stone, has taken some of her annual holidays, leaving the evening before and can't be found. Taking the lead from Professor Block, the vice-chancellor of the university decides to sit it out and say nothing, which is their first big mistake, because the newspapers can now paint them into a corner.

Then the radio stations get involved and encourage people to phone the university and the Faculty of Medicine and even the vice-chancellor, Professor George Paton, himself. It is one of the first times this has been done and there is suddenly chaos at the university. People from all over Victoria are phoning in and sending telegrams and it's soon pretty obvious that women are the majority of callers and they're mad as hell. The newspapers are beginning to say that women's voices are being heard on this issue and that they're angry and what the university has got on its hands is a public outcry. Suggestions are being made that Mr Henry Bolte, the premier, should step in and that the women's vote at the next election could be critical for his government.

Then, just as the story is getting a little soft, Mrs Barrington-Stone lets it out through Ross Teasdale that Professor Marcus Block, as chairman of the review committee, had a casting vote on the day and didn't choose to exercise it. She's done this deliberately to give him a chance to clear the air, to ask him publicly to cast his vote and bring this unfortunate business to a just conclusion. The news hits the papers and Marcus Block is back in the firing line in a big way.

Hundreds of phone calls and telegrams ask him to declare his hand or resign at once. They all urge him to cast his vote and to see that justice is done. But he stubbornly refuses, saying that he won't have any part in a fissiparous Medical Faculty.

The word 'fissiparous' is picked up by a reporter and is soon used mockingly on all the radio stations and becomes a sort of in-joke, employees in companies walk around and say 'Sorry, mate, don't want to be a part of a fissiparous organisation'. The radio stations and the
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newspapers explain that it refers to an organism that's divided into two parts. But it's also a word that makes everyone feel that Professor Block and his cohorts are up themselves and think they're above criticism. The general consensus is that it's high time to bring them back down to earth.

Morrie likes this new 'fissiparous' word a lot and says it only goes to prove English is an amazing language because just the sound of a word people can't even understand can make them take sides.

Then, the next thing, the Age newspaper is onto Duntroon. Their Canberra political reporter tracks Murray Templeton down at a football game and catches him in the dressing room with the rest of the Duntroon ALL team. The interview appears in the paper the next day.

reporter: Mr Templeton, do you love Sarah Maloney?

staff cadet templeton: Actually it's not mister, sir, it's Staff Cadet Templeton, sir. No, it was just something that happened.

reporter: And you personally feel no responsibility that she has become pregnant?

(Laughter from the players around him)