A Woman of Courage by J.H. Fletcher

weren’t there long and afterwards she remembered little about it, just a nurse in a white coat poking her about. She remembered what happened next, though. Again the train. Then…
    â€˜Cor!’
    It was a big boat with two funnels.
    â€˜We going on that?’
    â€˜You certainly are.’
    â€˜Going where?’
    â€˜Across the ocean. All the way to Australia.’
    â€˜Is it far?’
    â€˜The other side of the world. But you’ll like it there. Lots of sunshine. Oranges growing…’
    â€˜Will we be able to pick them?’
    â€˜As many as you can eat. Come along now.’
    4
    There were lessons on board, just like in a real school. When she got the chance Hilary escaped to the deck and looked out at the ocean. Every day they had to sing a hymn at the morning service, the boys on one side of the room, the girls on the other. Hilary looked around at the faces – some scared, some lonely, some cheeky with you-can’t-do-nuthin-to-me looks. Like her, none of them knew where they were going.
    â€˜Thy seas are found around us…’
    One of the little ones thought it was Icy frowns around us but Katy was only five so you had to make allowances.
    â€˜Miss…’ A boy with his hand up.
    â€˜What is it?’
    â€˜The seas and the ocean? Are they the same thing?’
    â€˜Don’t be stupid! Of course they are.’
    â€˜Only asking.’
    â€˜Well, don’t.’
    Miss Hammett was a nasty little thing.
    The ocean gave Hilary a funny feeling. It was so big, so mysterious. No way to know what might be out there. Miss Anderson’s face floated in her memory. She’d been kind – one of the few. But Miss Anderson was gone. Everything she’d ever known was gone. Here be dragons… Right. There were days she was scared but mostly she was thinking, Here we go again. It seemed that all her life she had been moved on. She began to wonder whether she’d ever been a real person at all, but one thing cheered her up and kept her going.
    At the home they’d told her Mum was dead. Killed in an air raid – that’s what they said. Hilary didn’t believe that. She could see Mum’s face now. She stood beside her on the Ormonde ’s deck. Together they watched the sea and the smoke blowing back from the ship’s funnels. Mum’s fingers were warm, wrapped around Hilary’s hand. At night she came to her in her bunk amid all the other kids. Hilary smelt her clean-Mum smell; saw her eyes shining in the darkness. Her smile. How could she be dead?
    One of these days I shall find her, she told herself. In the meantime… She tried to think of herself as a heroine setting out into the world to do wonderful things. Here be dragons…
    â€˜I’ll kill them,’ Hilary told Mum that night in the swaying darkness, the sounds of the sleeping children all around them. ‘You see if I don’t.’
    5
    The land was flat and featureless, barely breaking the sea’s horizon, but later there were cliffs with sand dunes beyond them, and the dunes glowed red and gold and copper in the sunlight. Not a tree, not a moving thing, no sign of life at all.
    Hilary hung on the rail, watching. There it is, she thought. At last. She felt apprehension – yes – but also excitement. A new place. A new life. I’ll fight, if I have to. I’ll be OK.
    There were people all around them when they came ashore. People shouting, rushing this way and that. Confusion.
    â€˜Where are we?’
    Wherever it was, it was very different from the empty land Hilary had watched from the Ormonde ’s deck.
    â€˜Australia.’
    â€˜Where in Australia?’
    â€˜Station Pier Melbourne, you stupid child,’ nasty Miss Hammett said. ‘How many times have I got to tell you?’
    â€˜Is this where we’re going?’ Looking around at the docks, the warehouses, the people.
    â€˜You are going to the Lady