The Fourth Estate (6 page)

He walked slowly
through the market toward the far side of the town, stopping where the road
forked into two narrow paths. One led to the fields where his father would be
tending the cattle, the other into the forest.

Lubji checked
the road that led back into the town to be certain no one had followed him,
then disappeared into the undergrowth. After a short time he stopped by a tree
that he knew he could not fail to recognize whenever he returned. He dug a hole
near its base with his bare hands and buried the box, and twelve of the potatoes.

When he was
satisfied there was no sign that anything had been hidden, he walked slowly
back to the road, counting the paces as he went. Two hundred and seven. He
glanced briefly back into the forest and then ran through the town, not
stopping until he reached the front door of the little cottage.

He waited for a
few moments to catch his breath and then marched in.

His mother was
already ladling her watered-down turnip soup into bowls, and there might have
been many more questions about why he was so late if he hadn’t quickly produced
the three potatoes. Screeches of delight erupted from his brothers and sisters
when they saw what he had to offer.

His mother
dropped the ladle in the pot and looked directly at him. “Did you steal them,
Lubji?” she asked, placing her hands on her hips.

“No, Mother,” he
replied, I did not.” Zelta looked relieved and took the potatoes from him. One
by one she washed them in a bucket that leaked whenever it was more than half
full. Once she had removed all the earth from them, she began to peel them
efficiently with her thumbnails. She then cut each of them into segments,
allowing her husband an extra portion.

Sergei didn’t
even think of asking his son where he had got the best food they had seen in
days.

That night, long
before it was dark, Lubji fell asleep exhausted from his first day’s work as a
trader.

The following
morning he left the house even before his father woke. He ran all the way to
the forest, counted two hundred and seven paces, stopped when he came to the
base of the tree and began digging. Once he had retrieved the cardboard box, he
returned to the town to watch the traders setting up their stalls.

On this occasion
he perched himself between two stalls at the far end of the market, but by the
time the straggling customers had reached him, most of them had either
completed their deals or had little of interest left to trade. That evening,
Mr. Lekski explained to him the three most important rules of trading:
position, position and position.

The following
morning Lubji set Lip his box near the entrance to the market. He quickly found
that many more people stopped to consider what he had to offer, several of them
inquiring in different languages about what he would be willing to exchange for
the gold ring. Some even tried it on for size, but despite several offers, he
was unable to close a deal that he considered to his advantage.

Lubji was trying
to trade twelve potatoes and three buttons for a bucket that didn’t leak when
he became aware of a distinguished gentleman in a long black coat standing to
one side, patiently waiting for him to complete the bargain.

The moment the
boy looked up and saw who it was, he rose and said, “Good morning, Mr. Lekski,”
and quickly waved away his other customer.

The old man took
a pace forward, bent down and began picking up the objects on the top of the
box. Lubji couldn’t believe that the jeweler might be interested in his wares.

Mr. Lekski first
considered the old coin with the head of the Czar. He studied it for some time.
Lubji realized that he had no real interest in the coin: this was simply a ploy
he had seen him carry out many times before asking the price of the object he
really wanted. “Never let them work out what you’re after,” he must have told
the boy a hundred times.

Lubji waited
patiently for the old man to turn his attention to the center of the box.

“And how much do
you expect to get for this?” the jeweler asked finally, picking up the gold
ring.

“What are you
offering?” inquired the boy, playing him at his own game.

“One hundred
korunas,” replied the old man.

Lubji wasn’t
quite sure how to react, as no one had ever offered him more than ten korunas
for anything before. Then he remembered his mentor’s maxim: “Ask for triple and
settle for double.” He stared up at his tutor.

‘Three hundred
korunas.”

The jeweler bent
down and placed the ring back on the center of the box ...

“Two hundred is
my best offer,” he replied firmly.

‘Two hundred and
fifty,” said Lubji hopefully.

Mr. Lekski
didn’t speak for some time, continuing to stare at the ring.

“Two hundred and
twenty-five,” he eventually said. “But only if you throw in the old coin as
well.”

Lubji nodded
immediately, trying to mask his delight at the outcome of the transaction.

Mr. Lekski
extracted a purse from the inside pocket of his coat, handed over two hundred
and twenty-five korunas and pocketed the ancient coin and the heavy gold ring.
Lubji looked up at the old man and wondered if he had anything left to teach
him.

Lubji was unable
to strike another bargain that afternoon, so he packed up his cardboard box
early and headed into the center of the town, satisfied with his day’s work.
When he reached Schull Street he purchased a brand-new bucket for twelve
korunas, a chicken for five and a loaf of fresh bread from the bakery for one.

The young trader
began to whistle as he walked down the main street. When he passed Mr. Lekski’s
shop he glanced at the window to check that the beautiful brooch he intended to
purchase for his mother before Rosh Hashanah was still on sale.

Lubji dropped
his new bucket on the ground in disbelief. His eyes opened wider and wider. The
brooch had been replaced by an old coin, with a label stating that it bore the
head of Czar Nicholas I and was dated 1829. He checked the price printed on the
card below.

“One thousand
five hundred korunas.”

MELBOURNE
COURIER

25 OCTOBER 1929

W
all Street
Crisis:

Stock Market
Collapses THERE ARE MANY advantages and some disadvantages in being born a
second-generation Australian. It was not long before Keith Townsend discovered
some of the disadvantages.

Keith was born
at 2:37 P.M. on 9 February 1928 in a large colonial mansion in Toorak. His
mother’s first telephone call from her bed was to the headmaster of St.
Andrew’s Grammar School to register her first-born son for entry in 1941. His
father’s, from his office, was to the secretary of the Melbourne Cricket Club
to put his name down for membership, as there was a fifteen-year waiting list.

Keith’s father,
Sir Graham Townsend, was originally from Dundee in Scotland, but at the turn of
the century he and his parents had arrived in Australia on a cattle so boat,
Despite Sir Graham’s position as the proprietor of the Melbourne Courier and
the Adelaide Gazette, crowned by a knighthood the previous year, Melbourne
society-some members of which had been around for nearly a century, and never
tired of reminding you that they were not the descendants of convicts-either
ignored him or simply referred to him in the third person.

Sir Graham
didn’t give a damn for their opinions, or if he did, he certainly never showed
it. The people he liked to mix with worked on newspapers, and the ones he
numbered among his friends also tended to spend at least one afternoon a week
at the racecourse. Horses or greyhounds, it made no difference to Sir Graham.

But Keith had a
mother whom Melbourne society could not dismiss quite so easily, a woman whose
lineage stretched back to a senior naval officer in the First Fleet. Had she
been born a generation later, this tale might well have been about her, and not
her son.

As Keith was his
only son-he was the second of three children, the other two being girls-Sir
Graham assumed from his birth that the boy would follow him into the newspaper
business, and to that end he set about educating him for the real world. Keith
paid his first visit to his father’s presses at the Melbourne Courier at the
age of three, and immediately became intoxicated by the smell of ink, the
pounding of typewriters and the clanging of machinery. From that moment on he would
accompany his father to the office whenever he was given the chance.

Sir Graham never
discouraged Keith, and even allowed him to tag along whenever he disappeared
off to the racetrack on a Saturday afternoon.

Lady Townsend
did not approve of such goings on, and insisted that young Keith should always
attend church the following morning. To her disappointment, their only son
quickly revealed a preference for the bookie rather than the preacher.

Lady Townsend
became so determined to reverse this early decline that she set about a
counter-offensive. While Sir Graham was away in Perth on a long business trip,
she appointed a nanny called Florrie whose simple job description was: take the
children in hand. But Florrie, a widow in her fifties, proved no match for
Keith, aged four, and within weeks she was promising not to let his mother know
when he was taken to the racecourse.

When Lady
Townsend eventually discovered this subterfuge, she waited for her husband to
make his annual trip to New Zealand, then placed an advertisement on the front
page of the London Times. Three months later, Miss Steadman disembarked at
Station Pier and reported to Toorak for duty.

She turned out
to be everything her references had promised.

The second
daughter of a Scottish Presbyterian minister, educated at St.

Leonard’s,
Dumfries, she knew exactly what was expected of her. Florrie remained as
devoted to the children as they were to her, but Miss Steadman seemed devoted
to nothing other than her vocation and the carrying out of what she considered
to be her bounden duty.

She insisted on
being addressed at all times and by everyone, whatever their station, as Miss
Steadman, and left no one in any doubt where they fitted into her social scale.
The chauffeur intoned the words with a slight bow, Sir Graham with respect.

From the day she
arrived, Miss Steadman organized the nursery in a fashion that would have
impressed an officer in the Black Watch, Keith tried everything, from charm to
sulking to bawling, to bring her into line, but he quickly discovered that she
could not be moved. His father would have come to the boy’s rescue had his wife
not continued to sing Miss Steadman’s praises-especially when it came to her
valiant attempts to teach the young gentleman to speak the King’s English.

At the age of
five Keith began school, and at the end of the first week he complained to Miss
Steadman that none of the other boys wanted to play with him. She did not
consider it her place to tell the child that his father had made a great many
enemies over the years.

The second week
turned out to be even worse, because Keith was continually bullied by a boy
called Desmond Motson, whose father had recently been involved in a mining scam
which had made the front page of the Melbourne Courier for several days. It
didn’t help that Motson was two inches taller and half a stone heavier than
Keith.

Keith often
considered discussing the problem with his father. But as they only ever saw
each other at weekends, he contented himself with joining the old man in his
study on a Sunday morning to listen to his views on the contents of the
previous week’s Courier and Gazette, before comparing their efforts with those
of his rivals.

“‘Benevolent
Dictator’-weak headline,” his father declared one Sunday morning as he glanced
at the front page of the previous day’s Adelaide Gazette. A few moments later
he added, “And an even weaker story. Neither of these people should ever be
allowed near a front page again.”

“But there’s
only one name on top of the column,” said Keith, who had been listening
intently to his father.

Sir Graham
chuckled. “True, my boy, but the headline would have been set up by a
sub-editor, probably long after the journalist who wrote the piece had left for
the day.”

Keith remained puzzled
until his father explained that headlines could be changed only moments before
the paper was put to bed. “You must grab the readers’ attention with the
headline, otherwise they will never bother to read the story.”

Sir Graham read
out loud an article about the new German leader. It was the first time Keith
had heard the name of Adolf Hitter. “Damned good photograph, though,” his
father added, as he pointed to the picture of a little man with a toothbrush
moustache, striking a pose with his right hand held high in the air. “Never
forget the hoary old clich6, my boy: ‘A picture’s worth a thousand words.’”

There was a
sharp rap on the door that both of them knew could only have been administered
by the knuckle of Miss Steadman. Sir Graham doubted if the timing of her knock
each Sunday had varied by more than a few seconds since the day she had
arrived.