A Woman of Courage Read online

  ‘I like it here,’ she said. ‘Where I was before I came here was very beautiful too. But it didn’t feel right.’

  Craig watched her. He said nothing.

  ‘I took a boat up the Mekong to Pakbeng, in Laos. There was a lodge for rich tourists and a temple in the hills with three golden figures beneath a cloth canopy. I thought it would be quiet. Sacred. It wasn’t. The place was packed with tourists. I was a tourist myself so I couldn’t complain but I felt we were treating the inhabitants like creatures in a zoo.’

  ‘You were also providing them with an income.’

  ‘I know. But it wasn’t right. For me, I mean.’

  ‘We have tourists, too. And Penang is a busy place.’

  ‘I’ve only been here five minutes but I get the impression it doesn’t seem to matter so much here. The tourists are just part of the whole. In Pakbeng they were everything. By being there I felt we desecrated the place. It was beautiful but I couldn’t wait to get away. Penang is different. I think I could live here.’

  Craig took her hand across the table. ‘Then do that,’ he said.

  She watched him, feeling the pressure of his hand. ‘For a week? A month?’

  ‘Try forever.’

  ‘You are serious?’

  ‘Never more so,’ he said.

  Indeed it was a serious business. Commitment to the man meant, did it not, commitment to his way of life? She tried to imagine herself spending the long years in this place. She could not get her head around it. Craig was offering a romantic hideaway on a tropical island out of the storybooks. A wonderful destination for a holiday, but for life? Hilary was not willing to commit herself to that.

  What she was willing to do was give herself time to enjoy this charismatic man with his wonderful house and a way of life that for a time at least was a siren song of enchantment. Turn him down and she knew she would regret it forever.

  He was still holding her hand. She looked at him across the table.

  ‘You do me great honour,’ she said. ‘Let’s give it six months and see how it goes.’

  Six months was good. She could handle six months. It would give her time but not too much. If at the end of it she wanted to take it further and he was still willing, so be it. Either way, by then she would surely know.

  I shall dare the sirens but hang on to my lifeboat.

  Australia was a million miles away but that night, waking briefly in the slow pre-dawn hours, she remembered the cut and thrust of her business life and knew, even as she drifted back to sleep, that the chains of the past were not so easily broken.

  LOOKING LAZY AT THE SEA

  1

  It was evening. They had been together six weeks and were sitting in easy chairs on the veranda of Rumah Kelapa. It was warm and still and the glasses containing their drinks were beaded with moisture. The sun’s lower hemisphere was an inch or two above the horizon, its image shimmering and distorted like a reflection in a pool. It was a breathless moment of failing light and the cicadas were setting up their nightly chorus in the undergrowth.

  ‘What were you doing before you left Australia?’ Craig asked.

  ‘A bit of this, a bit of that.’

  ‘That really spells it out,’ he said. ‘But it’s not important. I get the Australian papers, you see.’

  She looked at him.

  ‘I’ve known from the first,’ he said. ‘Where is Australia’s missing millionaire? Brand Corporation boss seeks redemption in the mystic east. Has Hilary a secret lover?’

  She didn’t know whether to laugh or scream. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘I assumed you didn’t want to talk about it. I believe in privacy, you see.’

  ‘I never thought… I must speak to the girls.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘What must they think, reading crap like that?’

  ‘You speak to them every week,’ Craig said.

  ‘But –’

  ‘Have they ever mentioned it? Do they sound bothered?’

  ‘No –’

  ‘They aren’t children. They are women. Give them some credit.’

  He was right, of course he was.

  ‘The media comes up with such nonsense,’ she said. ‘It’s one of the reasons I’ve always wanted to own my own television station.’

  ‘But you never have.’

  ‘Not yet.’

  He drained his glass. ‘Ah…’

  ‘Why ah?’

  ‘Because you said not yet. I was beginning to hope you had forgotten about the world out there.’

  ‘How can I possibly forget it, or the girls? But one thing staying here has done for me: it’s put things into perspective. There was a time when business and the market were the only things that mattered to me. To succeed, beat down the opposition, overcome the obstacles… When you start with nothing that’s important.’ A self-deprecating smile. ‘I saw success in business as my highway to the stars. It was my life. Now I know it is only a part of it.’ She reached across the table and took his hand. ‘I won’t lie to you: it still matters. But I am very glad we found each other.’

  It was a commitment of sorts, but not enough. They looked at each other. She saw Craig lick his lips but his eyes were steady.

  ‘I love you,’ he said.

  There. He had said it. He had unlocked the door and now Hilary found it easy to follow him into whatever might lie ahead for them both.

  ‘I love you too.’

  She had never thought to hear herself say such a thing again but she had. She felt a weight lift from her heart and knew her commitment to this man was not only soul-felt but forever.

  Hands held tight to hands. Eyes drank.

  The sun had disappeared below the horizon, leaving only a diminishing scarlet glow that was reflected in the undulating waves. The noise of the cicadas was tremendous. In near darkness they finished their drinks and stood up, the mood between them as tranquil as the darkening sea. Hand in hand they went into the house.

  2

  ‘It’s time for me to take up the reins again,’ Hilary said five months later. She spoke with conviction but there was sadness in her face that gave Craig hope, even when he knew there was no hope.

  ‘Why must you? You’re rich enough, surely? Why do you have to keep on working?’

  ‘Business is what I do. I’m good at it and enjoy it, so it doesn’t feel like work at all. Besides, it’s not just a case of making money but of contributing. The creation of wealth benefits all society. If you doubt that you only have to look at how people live in countries that don’t have it.’

  ‘And where does that leave us?’

  She walked to the window and looked out at the green stretch of lawn, the beds of red and yellow cannas blazing in the sunlight, the expanse of ocean beyond the casuarina trees. While he watched her back silently.

  ‘Exactly where we are now,’ she said. ‘I shall come over here every year, if you’ll have me. I’d like to think you’ll come to Australia too. There’s the telephone. There is this new email system everyone’s talking about at home. We’ll be able to communicate with each other every day.’

  ‘It won’t be the same.’

  ‘No, it won’t. But life is a compromise, isn’t it? As compromises go, this seems to me a pretty good one.’

  ‘You asked me once why I decided to settle in Penang,’ Craig said.

  ‘I’m not pushing you,’ Hilary said. ‘But whenever you want to talk about it, I’m listening.’

  ‘Let me open a bottle of wine.’

  He brought the wine and two glasses. They sat on the deck looking at the darkening sea and Craig talked.

  When he had been in the army he had come across homeless children forced to scavenge like rats to survive.

  ‘I saw them for myself. I’d read how children across the world, some as young as five, were being sold into what was effectively slavery yet nothing much was being done about it. After I left the army I decided to try and change that.’

  T
he problem was, he said, that the sort of rescue operation he had in mind was an expensive business and governments were reluctant to hand out cash for anything but their own pet projects.

  ‘If I had commercial backing they might agree to kick in something but without it…’ He shrugged.

  ‘But why Penang?’

  ‘Because the state government here said it would provide the land if I could come up with the money.’

  ‘To do what?’

  ‘To operate a home for damaged and runaway kids. So I thought: why not? I loved the place anyway. So I put down roots and hoped something would turn up.’

  ‘And has it?’

  ‘Basically, no.’

  Hilary drank wine. The sea was almost invisible now and the dark sky was a chain of stars. She watched the lights of a vessel heading south into the Malacca Strait. ‘Why didn’t you tell me this before?’

  ‘I was afraid you might think I was trying to bludge on you.’

  ‘And now?’

  ‘Now I know you better.’ He laughed. ‘Although I wouldn’t say no if you agreed to help.’

  Hilary thought, sipping more wine. ‘My company has a policy of supporting worthy causes. Of which this is clearly one.’

  He watched her. ‘But?’

  ‘Until now we have confined ourselves to Australian charities.’

  ‘Charity begins at home?’

  ‘Well, it does, doesn’t it?’ She thought some more. ‘Let me mull over it for a while. Like it or not I am the custodian of other people’s money. What sort of funding are we talking about?’

  ‘As much as you can provide.’

  She nodded. ‘Let me think about it. I’ll get back to you.’

  ‘From Australia?’

  ‘Yes.’

  It was a sad day, one week later, when Craig drove her to Penang’s country-style airport for the first leg of her return flight to Australia.

  She collected her boarding pass and returned to where Craig was standing, a mariner shipwrecked amid a sea of faces.

  ‘I love you,’ Craig said.

  ‘And I you.’

  They had told each other that many times and it was as true now as it had been that first time but he shook his head, his face immeasurably sad. ‘I hate this.’

  She had locked her smile in place and would not let it slip. ‘Think of it as a temporary parting.’

  ‘I wonder.’

  She gripped his hands in hers. ‘I promise you. Unless you change your mind.’

  ‘That I shall never do.’

  Precious words. She carried them on to the plane like a priest bearing a chalice. Courage, she thought. That was the key.

  1998

  A NEW HORIZON

  1

  On Thursday 14 July 1998 Hilary sat in her office and stared thoughtfully at the man on the other side of her desk. He was young and his slender body trembled with barely controlled energy. He also had what she thought of as visionary’s eyes, looking beyond the horizon at images only he could see. She had seen the same look in photographs of the arctic explorer Fridtjof Nansen and in icons of medieval saints but William Gainsborough was neither explorer nor saint; he was a scientist, a medical doctor who claimed to be working on a discovery that would revolutionise the treatment of cancer and other genetic diseases.

  It was unusual for a man like Gainsborough to get to see Hilary at all; Janet in the front office screened out most of those who came hoping for funding for this or that project. They were many, most of their ideas ludicrous or unworkable or with no realistic prospect of commercial application or success, but this man, Janet had said, was different. He had come to talk about a sheep.

  ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘Just see him, Hilary. I get the feeling he’s on to something but that’ll be for you to judge.’

  Hilary pondered, checking the gold Patek Philippe watch that had been Craig’s gift to her. ‘I’ll give him five minutes,’ she said. ‘Ring me after that, remind me I have a board meeting.’

  It was a game they had played ever since Janet had joined her five years before.

  Within a minute William Gainsborough was in her office. At first sight he could have passed as a teenager with his blond hair falling in a soft wave over his forehead but it turned out he was in his early thirties with an impressive track record and degrees from a number of important universities. He had worked as a research assistant, most recently with Ian Wilmut at Scotland’s Roslin Institute, and now was heading up a laboratory in WA.

  ‘You want to talk to me about sheep?’ Hilary said.

  William laughed. ‘Maybe one specific sheep.’

  Hilary found the faint Scots accent as attractive as the man but she had no time for games, verbal or otherwise. She made a point of glancing at her watch. ‘Explain.’

  ‘Dolly the sheep was the first mammal to be successfully cloned from a single adult stem cell.’

  ‘I remember reading about that. But if you’re planning to clone human beings I doubt I can help you. The ethical concerns –’

  ‘Are huge,’ he said. ‘I am well aware of that. I doubt it’s possible in any case, given our present state of knowledge. I am talking about something entirely different.’

  No looking at her watch now. ‘Continue.’

  ‘Our present research relates to the study of genetic diseases for which there is presently no cure. Within twenty years, possibly less, I believe we could be looking at the eradication of all forms of cancer, birth defects and Alzheimer’s Disease, to say nothing of the damage to tendons and ligaments in the human body that at present account for over a quarter of this country’s disability cases.’

  ‘You said we could be looking,’ Hilary said. ‘What’s the snag?’

  ‘What it always is,’ William Gainsborough said. ‘Money. Or the lack of it.’

  ‘You are hoping that this company will fund, or help to fund, the research you are discussing?’

  ‘In a nutshell.’

  ‘Then, in a nutshell, the answer is no.’

  He hadn’t been expecting that. ‘No?’

  ‘Not at this point. I take it we are talking of a great deal of money?’

  ‘But the benefits –’

  ‘Just answer me, Dr Gainsborough. Are we or are we not talking of a great deal of money?’

  ‘It depends what you mean by a great deal.’

  ‘Tens of thousands? Hundreds of thousands? Millions?’

  ‘It is very hard to estimate –’

  ‘No. I’m sorry. This won’t do. Give me a straight answer or go.’

  The phone rang. She lifted the receiver. ‘Ask them to wait ten minutes.’

  ‘I thought you’d find him interesting,’ Janet said.

  ‘Perhaps.’ Hilary replaced the receiver. Her eyes dared him. ‘You were saying?’

  ‘I am not prepared to put a figure on it but it will be substantial. There is need for specialist equipment…’

  ‘We are talking millions,’ Hilary said. Putting the concept out there, flat and undeniable, so they could both see and acknowledge it.

  ‘Perhaps. In the long run.’ He spoke reluctantly, his accent stronger now. ‘Research of this type is very expensive.’

  ‘You have costings? A specific proposal?’

  He looked at her helplessly.

  ‘We are a commercial organisation,’ Hilary said. ‘Not a charity. We donate money to certain charities but we have shareholders, a board of directors. You know what they will say if I go to them with a proposal like this? They’ll ask what’s in it for them.’ It was a harsh thing to say but she chose the words deliberately. Standing on the frontier of new knowledge required huge courage. She needed to know whether this man had the guts to fight his corner. ‘What am I supposed to tell them?’

  He stared back at her and his eyes did not waver. ‘Tell them there is a fortune to be made when we make a breakthrough.’

  ‘When you make a breakthrough? Don’t you mean if?’

  ‘I
mean when. It will come; I am sure of it. The truth is there; it is just a question of putting our finger on it.’

  ‘And you are confident you can?’

  ‘If we have the funding.’

  Hmm.

  ‘And you say there is a fortune to be made?’

  ‘We’re talking about a procedure. A technique. It can be patented. A joint venture could be set up between Brand Corporation and my research laboratory. And yes, there is a need for this type of treatment all over the world. Think of it: a simple injection rather than invasive surgery, a high percentage of total cures… The demand will be immeasurable.’

  ‘Commercial benefit from pure research? There are some won’t like that.’

  Gainsborough laughed scornfully. ‘They can go hang.’

  ‘And the risk of failure?’

  ‘It’s there, I’ll not deny it. But I would say the risk is small.’

  ‘There is another problem,’ Hilary said. ‘You have come to me with a proposal I am not competent to assess. I would need independent advice from an expert before I could even think of taking your idea to my board.’

  ‘No!’ Gainsborough said. ‘That would not be possible.’

  ‘But you must surely see it is essential.’

  ‘There are no experts: that is the nature of original research. In any case I could not permit it. You must understand, Ms Brand, this is my lifetime dream and my fortune. I have staked everything I have on this. Premature publication of my findings and I would lose control of the project. Call me selfish if you wish but I am not prepared to risk that.’

  ‘But how else am I to judge the merits of what you’re telling me?’

  Impasse. They looked at each other across the desk. Then Gainsborough sighed. ‘I apologise for wasting your time.’

  He made to stand up.

  ‘Wait.’

  Hilary was still watching him but in her mind another image took form: of an old woman sitting and looking vacantly at the sea while the nurse did what little she could to comfort her. An old woman who in her mental incapacity had been unable to recognise the safe return of her long-lost child.

  Poor soul doesn’t know which side is up any more.

  ‘Dr Gainsborough…’ Hilary spoke slowly. ‘You say this research may help to cure a range of genetic disorders?’