The Fourth Estate

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 Hitler. “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 cliché, 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.

“Enter,” he said in his sternest voice. He turned to wink at his son. Neither of the male Townsends ever let anyone else know that behind her back they called Miss Steadman “Gruppenführer.”

Miss Steadman stepped into the study and delivered the same words she had repeated every Sunday for the past year: “It’s time for Master Keith to get ready for church, Sir Graham.”

“Good heavens, Miss Steadman, is it that late already?” he would reply before shooing his son toward the door. Keith reluctantly left the safe haven of his father’s study and followed Miss Steadman out of the room.

“Do you know what my father has just told me, Miss Steadman?” Keith said, in a broad Australian accent that he felt sure would annoy her.

“I have no idea, Master Keith,” she replied. “But whatever it was, let us hope that it will not stop you concentrating properly on the Reverend Davidson’s sermon.” Keith fell into a gloomy silence as they continued their route march up the stairs to his bedroom. He didn’t utter a sound again until he had joined his father and mother in the back of the Rolls.

Keith knew that he would have to concentrate on the minister’s every word, because Miss Steadman always tested him and his sisters on the most minute details of the text before they went to bed. Sir Graham was relieved that she never subjected him to the same examination.

Three nights in the treehouse—which Miss Steadman had constructed within weeks of her arrival—was the punishment for any child who obtained less than 80 percent in the sermon test. “Good for character-building,” she would continually remind them. What Keith never told her was that he occasionally gave the wrong answer deliberately, because three nights in the treehouse was a blessed escape from her tyranny.

* * *

Two decisions were made when Keith was eleven which were to shape the rest of his life, and both of them caused him to burst into tears.

Following the declaration of war on Germany, Sir Graham was given a special assignment by the Australian government which, he explained to his son, would require him to spend a considerable amount of time abroad. That was the first.

The second came only days after Sir Graham had departed for London, when Keith was offered, and on his mother’s insistence took up, a place at St. Andrew’s Grammar—a boys’ boarding school on the outskirts of Melbourne.

Keith wasn’t sure which of the decisions caused him more anguish.

Dressed in his first pair of long trousers, the tearful boy was driven to St. Andrew’s for the opening day of the new term. His mother handed him over to a matron who looked as if she had been chiseled out of the same piece of stone as Miss Steadman. The first boy Keith set eyes on as he entered the front door was Desmond Motson, and he was later horrified to discover that they were not only in the same house, but the same dormitory. He didn’t sleep the first night.

The following morning, Keith stood at the back of the school hall and listened to an address from Mr. Jessop, his new headmaster, who hailed from somewhere in England called Winchester. Within days the new boy discovered that Mr. Jessop’s idea of fun was a ten-mile cross-country run followed by a cold shower. That was for the good boys who, once they had changed and were back in their rooms, were expected to read Homer in the original. Keith’s reading had lately concentrated almost exclusively on the tales of “our gallant war heroes” and their exploits in the front line, as reported in the Courier. After a month at St. Andrew’s he would have been quite willing to change places with them.

During his first holiday Keith told his mother that if schooldays were the happiest days of your life, there was no hope for him in the future. Even she had been made aware that he had few friends and was becoming something of a loner.

The only day of the week Keith looked forward to was Wednesday, when he could escape from St. Andrew’s at midday and didn’t have to be back until lights out. Once the school bell had rung he would cycle the seven miles to the nearest racetrack, where he would spend a happy afternoon moving between the railings and the winners’ enclosure. At the age of twelve he thought of himself as something of a wizard of the turf, and only wished he had some more money of his own so he could start placing serious bets. After the last race he would cycle to the offices of the Courier and watch the first edition coming off the stone, returning to school just before lights out.

Like his father, Keith felt much more at ease with journalists and the racing fraternity than he ever did with the sons of Melbourne society. How he longed to tell the careers master that all he really wanted to do when he left school was be the racing correspondent for the Sporting Globe, another of his father’s papers. But he never let anyone into his secret for fear that they might pass the information on to his mother, who had already hinted that she had other plans for his future.

When his father had taken him racing—never informing his mother or Miss Steadman where they were going—Keith would watch as the old man placed large sums of money on every race, occasionally passing over sixpence to his son so he could also try his luck. To begin with Keith’s bets did no more than reflect his father’s selections, but to his surprise he found that this usually resulted in his returning home with empty pockets.