by Robbi Neal
Tomorrow Laidlaw would come and collect all the boxes that were ready to go.
‘Why is Bovril good for the soldiers?’ Gracie asked so she could write it in her letter.
‘Like I said before, because “vril” means “an electric fluid” and bovine means “cow”, so it’s called Bovril. The electrical quality of Bovril maintains your bodily fluids in their natural equilibrium and the meaty beef provides strength for the liver. Bovril can cure diseases that are common in the trenches, where the men don’t have access to a good hot cooked meal like you and I have. If you don’t eat meat every day you die and the electric quality of Bovril means it is better absorbed and therefore better for you. There,’ said Edie, ‘so far I have sent enough Bovril for sixty-two thousand cups of broth for the soldiers.’
Gracie wrote My sister has sent sixty-two thousand cups of Bovril in her letter to the Queen.
‘That will keep them in good health as they fight for our freedom on the other side of the world. Pass me another newspaper,’ said Edie.
Gracie reached down and pulled up a wad of newspapers and something on the top sheet caught her eye.
‘Don’t sit there and read it,’ said Edie, ‘pass it over.’
‘Listen to this, Edie,’ Gracie said, ‘Cadet’s Last Message,’ then waited a moment for Edie to absorb that before she went on:
‘The warship Leon Gambetta went down. Seven officers seized Admiral Senes, who ran out of his cabin clad only in his nightshirt, and forcibly lowered him into a launch, but the boat capsized and all were drowned. As the last boat was making for the shore, long after the Leon Gambetta sank, it passed a cadet — the last living object in the water. It was impossible to take him aboard, as the small craft was already crowded; so the boat forged slowly away from the boy, who gasped, “Never mind lads! Give a kiss to my mother for me.” ’
Gracie put the sheet of newspaper down on the table and smoothed out the creases with her hands. ‘I can’t let you scrunch up that sheet, Edie, it would be like scrunching up the boy’s memory.’ She looked up with tears in her eyes. ‘That would have been an English boy?’ she asked.
Edie nodded, she could feel the tears filling her eyes, too. She passed the kitchen scissors to Gracie. ‘Here,’ she said, ‘cut out the article and we will glue it to the wall and that way we can remember his sacrifice.’
She watched Gracie carefully cut around the article, then Edie lightly smeared some glue across the back of it and pasted the article to the wall and they both stood and looked at it and wondered how a boy could be so brave. They stood side by side in silence, united by their own helplessness in the face of the boy’s courage. What could they really do to save these poor boys’ lives?
‘I’m going to marry a brave English boy,’ Gracie said finally.
‘Good heavens,’ said Edie. ‘Why?’
‘I just think,’ said Gracie carefully, knowing she was putting bricks in place in her life that, once assembled, could never be moved, ‘that if the English are that brave it might be a good idea.’
Edie tapped Gracie’s nose. ‘You’ve got at least ten years before you marry anyone.’ And Edie reached for a jar of Bovril and held it out to Gracie. ‘Kiss it for good luck,’ and Gracie did so and Edie hoped that Theo would get that jar of Bovril as she wrapped it and put it in the box.
She wondered again if Theo was safe. She tried not to mind any more that he had got over his love for her and married Beth. In her notebook she had written:
Plan — Be happy for Theo and Beth even if I’m not.
And she really tried. She would remind herself that she loved Beth like a sister and so she could only wish good things for her. She told herself that she couldn’t be angry with Beth because Beth hadn’t chased Theo, they had found each other because of her. She had said no to him, rejected his love, so how could she expect him to give up his life for her and not to make a life with anyone else? And if he was going to make a life with someone else, she would rather it was with Beth than, say, Vera Gamble.
But when Beth announced they were engaged so soon after she had said no once and for all, it had cut her heart to pieces. The week after that he walked Beth home from church, leaving her and Papa to walk about half a block behind. She watched as Beth hung tightly onto his arm as if the faintest breeze would pick him up and blow him back to her. On the other side of him was Gracie, holding his hand and pulling him in different directions as she skipped and hopped. Edie could see he was paying more attention to Gracie than Beth but she didn’t wonder why. Gracie would command anyone’s attention. At the corner of Webster Street and Drummond Street Papa had leant over and patted her arm and asked meaningfully, ‘Are you okay?’, pointing his umbrella accusingly at Theo.
‘I changed my plan, Papa, and now I must wear it,’ she said, and hoped she was wearing it well.
Then, as well as walking Beth home from church, Theo had started visiting during the week. Edie knew his knock on the door like the back of her hand and for a moment her heart would skip and she would have to remind herself that it wasn’t her he was calling on. Sometimes while he was visiting they found themselves alone in the hallway together — she might have been going to her bedroom and he to the study to see her father — with no more than their breath between them and they would stand like that forgetting where and who they were until her father appeared and said something like, ‘Theo, come and look at this.’
When Theo spoke to her she felt a mashing pain in her chest. He spoke kindly, as if she could be anyone and certainly not someone he had fervently loved for years, and she spoke to him as though he was nothing to her other than Beth’s fiancé. But her heart was a pulpy mess.
Edie knew she had two choices. She could take bitterness and slowly shrivel, or she could love him privately, secretly, in her heart. Whenever she so much as glanced at Gracie and Gracie looked up at her and smiled, she knew that Gracie loved her more than anyone else in the world, even more than Theo had loved her, and she knew that she returned that love and that her decision was the right one. So she had watched as Beth had filled Theo’s stomach with her roast pork and his eyes with her prettiness and bantered with him in a way Edie never had and she became convinced that he was much better off with Beth. She would never have loved him as Beth did, because her true love would always be Gracie.
If she did love him she should want the best for him, and that was Beth. But she still yearned for him. So she made a plan to help him and packed Bovril to keep him safe while he was in the trenches.
‘Pass me a jar of Bovril, Gracie, I can fit in one more jar.’
Gracie passed over a jar and neither of them noticed that a tear for the English boy that had been sliding down Gracie’s cheek had spilt onto the label and smudged the ink.
Edie took the jar and wrapped it in newspaper and put it into its bed in the box with its brothers and sisters. She glued the lid down, tied the string and reached for the paper and pen to address the box. As she held the pen mid-air she stopped and thought for a moment. Then did something she had never done before. Instead of just writing To the Comfort Fund, she wrote:
To the 8th Battalion
Australian Imperial Forces
C/o The Australian Comfort Fund
Twenty-Seven
The Afternoon Tea
Saturday, 4 December 1915, when all the town can hear Gracie yell.
Edie asked Gracie to check the afternoon post. Gracie sighed but she put down the scarf she was knitting and did it anyway.
Edie smiled at the scarf looped onto the large wooden size-eight needles, full of holes where Gracie had dropped stitches and then picked them up again several rows later. It looked more like a fishing net than a scarf but she would help Gracie fix it up and it would still keep some poor soldier’s neck warm.
‘Though with all those colours he’s likely to become a sitting duck,’ she said to herself. She picked up the needle and held it up and the scarf hung down like an abstract tapestry. The wools were
different sizes and colours, the edges meandered in and out like waves, but the scarf sang with all the determination and enthusiasm that children put into their creations. Edie could hear it and she hoped whichever soldier got the scarf would hear it too. She rubbed the soft wool against her cheek. Suddenly the scarf’s song was drowned out by hollering coming from out the front of the house. Edie dropped the scarf back onto the table and ran, her heart thumping, to the front door. In his study, where he was writing a speech in support of the election of Vida Goldstein as the first woman in parliament, Paul heard the yelling and put his hands to his ears. He rushed out into the hallway where he nearly collided with Edie.
‘Come on,’ said Edie, ‘that’s Gracie — something must be really wrong.’ Paul ran out of the house behind Edie. Nothing could happen to Gracie, it just couldn’t. She made Edie’s life whole. Gracie’s voice rang out in high-pitched squeals and the men preparing the lake for the upcoming aquatic carnival to raise funds for the Red Cross dropped their tools. The folk walking around the lake enjoying their Saturday afternoon stopped still in their tracks and people up and down the street dropped their cups of tea and their books and ran out of their houses. Jack Puce dropped the screwdriver he was using to hang a new photograph of the boys. Daphne Puce dropped the apple she was peeling for the crumble and it rolled along the floor and under the table. Arthur dropped the cricket bat that was really an old paling and Geoffrey dropped the tennis ball they were using as a cricket ball and they ran to the street with John following behind to see what the noise was all about and who had died. Laidlaw, Dottie and Beth dropped the bread they were rationing to the swans and the swans flapped and greedily gobbled the meal that was now a smorgasbord. The three of them ran towards the Cottingham house leaving the swans to fight it out. Nurse Drake, hiding in the tall grasses in Fairy Land, shook herself off George, held out her hand to yank him up and together they ran toward the Cottingham’s.
Edie saw the crowd gathering as she ran down the driveway towards the letterbox. Her heart had stopped now, she was sure of it. Gracie had to be in the middle of all those people. Had she been hit by Doctor Appleby’s car? He always drove like a maniac, tearing along at at least twenty miles an hour. No one would have a chance if they got in his way. Had a snake or a spider bitten her? There were tiger snakes that made their way into people’s backyards — she was forever telling Gracie to keep an eye out over summer, and there were red-backs that hid in letterboxes. What if she had killed Gracie by sending her to the letterbox? Had Gracie fallen and smashed her head on the hard road? All these possibilities raced through Edie’s mind and they all ended with a vision of Gracie sprawled bleeding and dead. She pushed her way through the throng and Paul followed close behind.
And there was Gracie in the middle of the crowd of neighbours, jumping up and down, flapping her arms in the air and holding onto an envelope. As soon as Edie saw Gracie’s face she knew that all the noise was excitement. Some of the other children started jumping up and down and squealing too, even though they had no idea what about. So Gracie wasn’t dead or injured, she was well enough to be bouncing as always, and the noise she and the children were making was building. Edie looked at her father for help. Paul put his hands in the air and called for silence like a judge in an unruly courtroom. Everything became quiet and Gracie stopped jumping. Edie put her arms on Gracie’s shoulders to keep her still.
‘Now what’s all this fuss? Are you hurt? Are you injured? Tell me quick.’
‘I have a letter from the King and Queen! All the way from London!’ Gracie flapped the envelope in front of Edie’s face and the paper brushed against her nose making her blink. Edie felt an enormous relief that Gracie was okay and all this fuss was over a letter. But she looked hard at the girl, she wasn’t bleeding and dead but perhaps she wasn’t as rosy as she could be and she was far too short for a ten-year-old girl. She needed more tonic and perhaps some cod liver oil.
‘I’m okay, Edie, stop worrying,’ said Gracie. ‘Didn’t you hear me, a letter from the Queen!’
Gracie broke free from Edie’s clasp on her shoulders and jumped up and down some more.
Edie said, ‘Well, there’s certainly nothing wrong with you health-wise.’
‘It’s a letter from the Queen,’ Edie said to Paul and he laughed, ‘Yes, it is apparently.’
‘Look, look, it’s come in the afternoon post.’ Gracie flapped the letter again and the north wind tried to tug it away so she scrunched it tight and stood puffing in front of them.
Jack Puce said, ‘Oh, this is exciting, we all need a bit of good news. It’s got to be good news, hasn’t it, if it’s from the Queen?’ and Daphne Puce said, ‘My aunt got a letter from royalty once,’ but no one heard her.
Beth, who had arrived puffed and had been bent over and holding onto her knees, said, ‘Go on, Gracie, open it up.’
‘How do you know it’s from the Queen?’ asked Daphne Puce.
‘It’s got the royal insignia on the envelope, see, a red crown stamped on and everything,’ said Gracie. But she was holding the envelope so tightly no one could see anything.
‘For goodness sake come in out of the hot sun; come inside and then you can read it to us,’ said Paul, ‘if you can smooth the crinkles out of it. Come on, everyone, into the dining room. Laidlaw,’ Paul said, ‘come on, you know your way in, lead on.’
‘Everyone?’ asked Edie.
‘Why not?’ said Paul.
‘Why not indeed.’ Maybe he was right, maybe this was just what they all needed in the middle of the war — a letter from the Queen.
Everyone else thought this was the best news anyone had had in many a month — they were going to get to go inside the famous Cottingham house and all because of a young girl and her letter. So Jack and Daphne Puce acted as if they had been inside the Cottingham home so often it was no fuss to them. But others, some from Soldiers Hill, some from Newington, and a few miners from East Ballarat and their families who were all out for the free entertainment the lake offered, were now getting so much more. They poured past the boarded-up door they had heard about and into the Cottingham dining room to see Gracie’s letter.
Edie looked at all the people squashed into the dining room. People were taking off their hats and enjoying the coolness of the Cottingham’s big home. Her gaze lingered on the mining families and their waifs, the mothers without husbands and the children without fathers who had gone to war. She was standing next to Paul who was talking quietly to Laidlaw. Laidlaw was telling Paul he had signed up but hadn’t yet told his wife. Edie thought it was awfully unfair how men felt free to make decisions by themselves but women felt they had to ask permission. Gracie was standing next to her, ready to read her letter. She saw the expectation in people’s faces, that the letter contained something bigger than their lives.
‘We should all have tea first,’ she said to Paul. Following her gaze to the children’s hungry faces he said, ‘You know what, I think we might all go downstairs where it’s even cooler and then we can really take the time to enjoy this special letter.’
No one could believe their luck. They were going to see the famed underground house. Now it was Laidlaw’s turn to be cocky. ‘I built it with my own hands,’ he told everyone many times.
Edie wasn’t sure how they were going to make afternoon tea for so many people.
‘I need our Lord Jesus,’ she whispered in Paul’s ear, ‘to turn a single loaf of bread into many.’
‘I’ll help,’ said Beth.
‘See — he heard your prayer,’ Paul said.
Edie didn’t know how she was going to do it but she pulled out all the china, the good and the everyday, and Daphne and her boys ran next door and got her everyday china and her three aluminium teapots, her milk and a loaf of bread and a pot of jam. Beth put on the kettle and filled three saucepans with water for the six teapots Edie had managed to find in the cabinets.
‘Don’t put out the sugar,’ said Beth, ‘no one will expect it with the
rations.’
‘Sensible,’ said Edie.
She found cups for the adults and glasses for the children and even with Daphne’s contribution they were still short but it worked out because some of the people who had been picnicking around the lake had their own cups.
Then Edie, Beth, Dottie and Daphne carried trays with the tea, milk, glasses and teacups downstairs and it took them three trips each and on the final trip Edie saw that sandwiches, cake and biscuits had appeared on the downstairs dining room table and she looked at Paul.
‘Oh yes, people have opened up their picnic baskets,’ said Paul.
‘Isn’t it lovely,’ said Gracie, beaming.
‘Well, this is much more fun than the lake,’ Laidlaw said to Dottie.
When the food was gone and the tea was drunk Edie nodded at Gracie. ‘I think it’s time for this letter then.’
‘At last,’ she said, as though the wait had been more than she could bear and people laughed as she slowly peeled the envelope open.
‘Wait,’ said Paul and he got off his chair and moved it over for Gracie to stand on so everyone could see and hear her.
‘It’s not every day you get a letter from the Queen,’ Edie said.
‘I have to do it carefully, I have to make sure I don’t tear it,’ said Gracie, her fingers trembling.
‘We’ll still be waiting this time next year at this rate,’ said Paul and everyone chuckled.
‘I want the moment to last forever,’ said Gracie and she looked at everyone watching her as she pulled out the letter.
Paul picked up the envelope as it fluttered to the floor and turned it over. ‘That’s the royal insignia all right. Who’d have thought?’
The letter was on thick creamy paper, folded into three equal parts. Gracie carefully unfolded it.
She held it up and showed it to everyone like her teacher did with picture books, making sure even those crammed in the corners of the room could take time to see. Everyone took a deep breath. Even if it hadn’t had a message on it, the letter was magnificent.
