The People's Train Read Online Free PDF Page B

had a warm regard for both of them. (I admit I found Hope Mockridge enchanting in a way normal to a man, a way it was best to own up to rather than permit to turn morbid.)
    I approached Amelia Pethick and issued my invitation. Amelia smiled and said she would be dependent on Hope for escort but that she would be very interested to taste authentic Russian tea. I then chased down the frenetic Hope Mockridge, who was visiting Trades Hall during her lunch break from her other role as a lawyer in the attorney-general’s office. She stopped work, and she stopped frowning too, and said yes, she would be pleased to accompany Mrs Pethick. We were now forswearing the trams, but she was sure she could get one of the men who were lending their services as drivers to take them over to South Brisbane.
    On the day, I finished my day’s work on the docks and washed myself at the pump at Mrs Adler’s back garden and hurried to the Samarkand to await the arrival of the two women. The owners of the teashop were half-Russian, half-Tartar and came from the city after which the teahouse was named. I chatted to the husband and wife as the daughter made sweet cakes in the kitchen out the back, occasionally coming out to join in the conversation herself. A number of the older members of the Russian Emigrants Union, not all of them admirers of mine, were already ensconced at tables reading year-old Russian newspapers. I went to my own table with a Sydney paper that had been shipped up the coast, and read a dreary piece on land taxes. My hands, unaware that I was supposed to be a grown revolutionary, were sweaty enough to pick up ink stains from the newsprint.
    When the door opened, Hope Mockridge entered on her own. She was the type of political woman I had seen before and had an attraction to – elegant without having to concentrate on it, or without it having to be the point. Such women frowned greatly but always had a solid income behind them. Mrs Mockridge held her purse in front of her, as to shield herself from Russian strangeness in the middle of South Brisbane, but she also carried the half-smile of a child who expected to have wonders revealed to her.
    The old committee members of the soyuz watched like stunned fish, mouths agape, as she passed. She was an exotic bird in the Samarkand Café. They closed their mouths and bent to hiss at each other. As if I had put their beloved old association in further peril still by inviting Australians to tea.
    Is Mrs Pethick coming separately? I asked her.
    She sends her sincerest apologies, Mrs Mockridge told me. She is exhausted by her work. But she said she would be grateful to be asked in the future.
    I moved a chair out to seat Mrs Mockridge.
    I understand, I told her.
    She also said that she didn’t think I needed a chaperone. Do I, Mr Samsurov?
    I guarantee your safety, madam. I sat down.
    She looked me in the eye. That is a guarantee I trust, she said.
    Kelly would never forgive me if I did anything to destroy your faith in the working class, I said.
    Dear God, she said. At the end all you care about is the opinion of other men. You are a man of your own mind, aren’t you?
    I told her I wouldn’t give myself such high praise.
    Are you married, Tom? she asked. In Russia?
    I told her no. I have not had the time, I said. But you are married, Mrs Mockridge.
    My husband is a very distinguished lawyer, she said, with a trace of mockery. He is ... he’s not well. Certainly not all the time.
    I had already spoken to Kelly about this, and knew that her husband was what they called a silk, a King’s Counsel, but that he was a dipsomaniac who had been – until a recent reform – advanced enough in that disease that people had begun to avoid using him, even though his position in society was still very high, the Mockridges being one of those old pastoralist families of Queensland whose mental habits and view of the world might not have been so far from that of Russian nobles.
    On the subject of