Pennies For Hitler

by Jackie French

  But it was all for an English boy. Not a German boy called Georg.

  Chapter 20

  He slept deeply and dreamlessly, then found himself awake, wondering why the ship was still, why his bed didn’t roll. It took him a moment to realise where he was.

  It was still dark. The room smelled of old wood and books and ironed sheets. He found that he was crying for the first time in months: crying for Mutti, who was far across an ocean, who he couldn’t even name or talk about; and for Papa.

  Papa who was dead. Somehow, being so far away made it easier to accept that now.

  He suddenly realised that if Aunt Miriam died, if the bombs got her, then Mutti might never find him again, nor he her. How did you find a boy who’d sailed across the world? Who had changed his name and country?

  At last he slept again.

  It was still early when he woke. The light was different here: hard bright light, like it had been on the ship the last few weeks, but softened by the green of grass and trees. But this was early-morning light.

  The house was still.

  He dressed quietly and tiptoed out to the kitchen. The wood stove still gave out its warmth. Next to it on the bench was a big enamel dish covered with a damp tea towel. He lifted it up and saw it was bread dough, all puffy.

  The dogs looked up from the mat by the stove. One of them — Samson? — thumped his tail before he put his head down again when Georg made no move towards the pantry and food; Delilah got to her feet, stretched, yawned and padded after him.

  Through a scullery, with big sinks for washing vegetables, and shelves with cans and bottled fruit, and an enamelled food safe as well as a strange tall box thing that smelled of kerosene; then through a laundry with a bare concrete floor, out the back door past a pot of mint and two funny steel tanks up on wooden platforms. He could see a big barn, open at one side, and a paling fence that turned out to surround a giant vegetable garden when he peered over it — rows of cauliflowers and cabbages and other plants he didn’t recognise, but suspected were vegetables too.

  He looked around. Hens clucked in a wire run with a corrugated-iron shed. There was row after row of trees, proper trees, for when he got closer he could see small fruit on the branches among the leaves, too tiny yet to tell what kind they were. The trees were all thick-trunked, and higher than the house.

  And that must be the dunny. It looked like a sentry box, with a strange tangled vine over it. He opened the door cautiously.

  It smelled funny. There was no porcelain cistern, but a sort of wooden box with a lid that he lifted tentatively. A spider ran off, down the side. He looked down the hole, but it was too dark to see much. His nose told him what was down there though.

  He sat cautiously, hoping the spider didn’t come back, then looked for the toilet paper. There wasn’t any, just sheets of torn newspaper jabbed onto a bit of wire. Was that what he was supposed to use?

  He was just about to put the lid down when he noticed the bucket of sawdust with a battered tin cup in it. So that explained part of the smell down the hole, and why it didn’t stink more too. He put a couple of cupfuls down the hole, then washed his hands at the garden tap.

  Delilah dropped a stick at his feet. He picked it up and threw it. She bounded off and grabbed it as soon as it had fallen, then trotted back, but not to him. She stopped at one of the biggest fruit trees, and looked up, wagging her tail slowly.

  Georg looked up too.

  A face peered down at him — a girl’s face, slightly grubby, brown hair falling out of two pigtails. She wore what looked like a boy’s old shirt and shorts. Her feet were bare, black and calloused on the soles. He remembered Elizabeth — the first one, not the one on the ship — with her soft skin like a white peach, her neat black hair. This girl couldn’t have been more different.

  Was her family too poor to afford shoes and proper clothes for her?

  ‘Hello,’ he ventured, slightly embarrassed that she must have seen him go to the dunny. ‘What are you doing up there?’

  ‘Waiting for you.’

  ‘You knew I was going to be here?’

  ‘Course. Everyone knows you’ve come. Your name is George like the King and you’re escaping the Nazi menace.’ It sounded like she was quoting someone else’s words. ‘And we have to be nice to you ’cause you’ve been bombed and we can’t ask you lots of questions in case you’re homesick or a spy hears about your ship. I’m Mud.’

  For a second he thought she was talking about the smudge on her face. ‘Mud?’

  ‘Well, it used to be Maud. But on my first day at school I tried to write my name and left out the A. The big girls called me Mud. They meant to be nasty but I liked it. I like mud. It grows things. We wouldn’t have things to eat if it wasn’t for mud.’ She held out a hand. Her fingernails were torn and dirty. ‘Come on up.’

  He glanced back at the house. ‘The Peaslakes may not let me climb trees.’

  ‘What?’ She peered down at him as though he had grown donkey ears. ‘Of course they’ll let you climb trees. What are trees for?’

  For fruit and shade and wood, he thought, but didn’t say. Instead he clambered up, careful not to tear his shorts, and sat on the branch beside her. Delilah lay down, resigned, below them.

  ‘The girls at school — are they all nasty?’

  ‘Nah,’ Mud said scornfully. ‘Not once you know how to handle them. Those ones’ve gone now anyhow. Amy is working at a factory in Wollongong and Morna married one of the Stoker boys. You and me are the oldest in the school now. There’re only nine of us,’ she added.

  ‘In the whole school?’

  Mud nodded. ‘And they’re all younger so you and me have to be friends because there’s no one else. I asked Uncle Ron for a girl,’ she added. ‘But they came back with you. Maybe all the girls were taken.’

  ‘Uncle Ron?’ He felt strangely flattened that they’d wanted a girl. Or maybe they hadn’t. Maybe they’d chosen a boy, chosen him, but not told Mud.

  ‘Mr Peaslake. Mrs Peaslake is my Auntie Thelma. She’s Dad’s older sister. We live over there.’ She pointed in the direction of a hill, past another mob of slowly chewing cows.

  ‘Do you like the Peaslakes?’ He suddenly wished they’d asked him to call them Aunt and Uncle too.

  She looked surprised. ‘Course. Uncle Ron’s grand. He used to be a bank manager up in Sydney. Auntie Thelma was really old when she had Alan. When Uncle Ron retired they came down here. Do you know he makes kites? He takes me kite-flying on Saturday afternoons unless we’ve got to help Dad with the fencing.’

  He felt a pang of jealousy. Mr Peaslake hadn’t mentioned Mud, or that there might be someone else sharing their kite-flying excursions.

  ‘Auntie Thelma’s the best gardener in the world. She wins first prize every year for her pumpkins. She even cooks better than Mum. Well,’ she allowed generously, ‘maybe Mum is better but she’s busy with the farm now the boys are away. My brothers,’ she added, at his look. ‘Ken and Len are in the army in Malaya; Kenny’s a corporal. It’s just Mum and Dad and me at home now.’

  ‘It must be hard with them all away,’ Georg offered tentatively.

  ‘I can do anything they can do! Uncle Ron helps,’ she added. ‘You can help now too.’

  ‘What sort of farm do you have?’

  ‘Cattle. Herefords. Eight hundred head. Twenty-three sheep too, but they’re mostly for meat for us.’

  ‘You milk eight hundred cows?’ He thought of Jamie’s story of early-morning milkings and beatings if you got it wrong. How long did it take to milk eight hundred cows? Though if they had land for eight hundred cows then they couldn’t be all that poor, could they?

  She laughed. ‘We don’t milk them. Well, only two of them; and just Daisy now — she’s Mum’s pet. I brought the milk over this morning. Herefords are beef cattle.’

  ‘To eat?’

  ‘Of course.’ She looked at him curiously. ‘Have you ever been on a farm before?’

  ‘No.’r />
  ‘Never mind,’ she said comfortingly. ‘You’re here now. I’ll show you the beach later. Maybe Auntie Thelma will make a picnic. You want to watch me climb this tree to the top?’

  ‘How can you climb right up there?’

  ‘Easy. I can do anything.’

  ‘Anything?’

  ‘I bet I can. If I try.’

  ‘You couldn’t fly.’

  Mud considered. ‘Yes, I could. It’d just take me a while to learn how to work a plane.’ She stood up, her bare toes slightly curling around the branch. ‘This tree is simple.’ As Georg looked she tucked her legs around the trunk, pushed, then reached up for the next branch, and then the next and then another —

  Delilah barked and stood up.

  ‘George? Breakfast’s ready.’ Mrs Peaslake wore an apron and her hands were still clicking her knitting needles. ‘Mud? I might have known. Do you want some breakfast or have you already eaten?’

  ‘That was hours ago.’ Mud peered down from almost the very top of the tree. It swayed alarmingly, but Mrs Peaslake didn’t seem worried.

  ‘It’ll be ready when you are,’ she said. Georg had worked out what that meant now. Delilah pranced at Mrs Peaslake’s heels as she went back in.

  Mrs Peaslake’s hands again seemed to flash all over the kitchen. The knitting lay on the table, ready to be picked up in any spare moment. The dough from the enamel bowl went into long tins then into the oven. Crack, crack and eggs from the bowl on the bench went into a saucepan, one hand stirring while another added butter — not butter from a neat rectangle but from a deep yellow dish that had been taken from the strange box in the laundry which was called a refrigerator. It kept things cold.

  Snip went her hands as she added chopped green stuff, moving smoothly over to the metal bucket with a lip to pour out milk into two big glasses. The milk frothed as it filled the glasses. Mrs Peaslake handed one glass over to him with a smile.

  He looked at it cautiously. This milk had been inside a cow this morning. Inside a cow …

  He sipped, then drank some more. It was cool and somehow thicker and sweeter than any other milk he’d ever tasted.

  Mrs Peaslake put plates of scrambled egg on the table, one, two, three, four. Her hands hovered over the fifth place, by an empty chair.

  Alan sits there, realised Georg.

  Mrs Peaslake sat too, and began to eat, casting glances behind at the big-ridged plate on the top of the wood stove, where the toast was browning. She seemed to know instinctively when to flick it off and put on another slice.

  ‘Plum jam, honey or Vegemite?’ she asked. ‘Down, Delilah. You’ve had your breakfast.’

  ‘What’s Vegemite?’

  ‘They call it Marmite where you’ve come from,’ rumbled Mr Peaslake, busy with his scrambled eggs. ‘Delilah, down!’ The dog subsided briefly onto the rug by the stove, drooling slightly at the smell of eggs and toast.

  Georg didn’t like to say he’d never tasted Marmite either. He watched Mud slather the home-made butter on her toast, then spread black stuff from a jar on it. It looked a bit like grease: not like jam at all.

  He placed a bit on the corner of his toast, then bit it. It tasted like grease too, but salty. He could feel the flavour run down his throat. He wondered if he could spit it out. Suddenly Delilah’s head appeared on his lap. He spat the toast quickly into his hand, then passed it down to her. She swallowed it in one great gulp, then licked his fingers.

  Georg reached for the plum jam instead. Mud grinned at him.

  ‘I like him,’ she said to the Peaslakes.

  ‘That’s good,’ said Mrs Peaslake calmly, spreading butter and honey on Mr Peaslake’s toast.

  ‘Why?’ asked Georg. The question surprised him. He had been quiet for so long, asking questions only when he had to.

  Mud reached for her fifth piece of toast. ‘Because you didn’t say I couldn’t do anything I want to do; you just wanted to know how. And because Delilah likes you. Dogs always know. You talk funny though.’

  Georg froze. But Mrs Peaslake was smiling. ‘It’s an English accent.’

  Mud nodded. ‘Like on the wireless.’ She looked at Georg sympathetically. ‘You can’t help speaking posh. But don’t worry. If anyone laughs at you I’ll use my secret weapon on them.’

  ‘What secret weapon?’

  ‘It’s a secret.’ She looked back at the Peaslakes. ‘Can George and me have a picnic?’

  ‘After chores, this afternoon. And no going down to the beach unless we come too. George can’t swim yet.’

  ‘Can’t swim?’ Mud made it sound like he didn’t know how to breathe.

  ‘Nowhere to swim in London,’ said Mrs Peaslake. ‘And it’s too cold most of the time.’

  There had been the river, but Georg had never seen anyone swim in the Thames.

  ‘He’ll learn soon enough.’

  ‘And tomorrow I’ll show you how to milk Daisy — George thought we milked all the cows — and then, after church, you can help us bring the cattle in. I don’t suppose you can ride a horse either,’ said Mud. ‘And the next day we can go to the bushranger’s cave — you have to climb around the cliff to get to it.’

  ‘Next day’s school.’ Mrs Peaslake was smiling.

  ‘Well, next Saturday after chores then. You can come to the bushranger’s cave too if you like,’ she added to the Peaslakes generously.

  School. It sounded …

  Normal. Day after day of school, and no bombs, and other children: smaller ones, not nasty ones.

  He looked at Mud, happily eating her sixth piece of toast, and slipping the crusts to Samson under the table. Despite the wrong colours and the strangeness, it sounded good.

  And suddenly it seemed he had found a friend — or she had found him. He grinned: a friend called Mud.

  Chapter 21

  The first chore, it seemed, was feeding the hens. Mud grabbed the bucket of scraps that stood on the bench out of Delilah’s reach, then looked at Georg’s feet. ‘Why are you wearing shoes?’

  Georg stared at her. ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Shoes,’ she said, as though repeating it would make him understand. ‘It’s not like we’re going to church or a party or anything.’

  He looked down at her bare feet. ‘I always wear shoes.’

  ‘It’s cold in England,’ said Mrs Peaslake comfortably. Mr Peaslake had already gone out. ‘All the children wear bare feet here. You don’t want to wear out your good clothes either. I’ve put some old ones of Alan’s on your bed.’

  They wanted him to go without shoes? And wear old clothes? And their dunny was in the backyard …

  But the Peaslakes didn’t seem poor, even though they didn’t have a maid or gardener. Mr Peaslake had mentioned a car — even the Rektor of the University hadn’t been able to afford a car — and the wireless on the dresser looked new.

  ‘Come on,’ said Mud.

  He was leaving his old life behind with his shoes. The bare floorboards felt funny under his toes. He walked out carefully as Mud shoved the back door open. She led the way down to the hens, who saw them coming and clucked excitedly behind the wire.

  ‘Chooks don’t like orange peel,’ said Mud. ‘So don’t put any in the scrap bucket. Or lemon peel.’ She opened the gate and threw the scraps in. The hens fussed happily around the pile, then settled down to eat.

  Georg tried not to look disgusted. ‘They eat in the dirt?’

  ‘Chooks like dirt. Dirt is good. I told you. They bathe in it too.’

  Was she teasing him? ‘You can’t bathe in dirt.’

  ‘You can if you’re a chook. They fluff up and the dust cleans their feathers. They comb it out with their beaks.’

  ‘But they’d be dirty!’

  ‘Do they look dirty?’ asked Mud patiently. ‘It doesn’t stick to them. Not unless it’s wet. It takes away mites and fleas and things.’

  ‘Hens have fleas?’

  She looked at him curiously. ‘You don’t know anything,
do you?’

  He thought a boy from London wouldn’t know about ‘chooks’ either. Or Vegemite.

  ‘I know lots of things.’

  ‘Like what?’

  He tried to think of all the things in the encyclopaedia, back in Mrs Huntley’s library. It still hurt, to think of the books fluttering in the rubble. ‘Capybaras are the biggest guinea pigs in the world. They’re much bigger than,’ he framed the word carefully, ‘chooks. They are as big as pigs actually and live in swamps.’

  ‘Are they really?’ Mud considered. ‘That is interesting.’

  She’s serious, Georg realised. He relaxed a bit. It was good to find someone who liked knowing about things like he did. ‘Why do you call them chooks?’ he ventured.

  ‘That’s the sound they make. Took, took, took. You can call them and they come too. Chook, chook, chook.’

  The chooks ignored them, scrabbling and pecking at the chop bones. ‘Well, they come if you call and you’ve got the scrap bucket.’ Mud didn’t sound put out. ‘Come on, we’ve got to get the eggs.’ She led the way into the chook house. It was dark and dusty and smelled of feathers. ‘You need to watch out for snakes.’

  ‘Snakes!’ He thought of the giant boa constrictor in The Adventure Book for Boys.

  ‘Browns. They like eating eggs. They’re this long.’ To his relief she only held out an arm’s length.

  ‘Are they poisonous?’

  ‘Of course. They’re snakes.’

  ‘Oh,’ he said.

  ‘Don’t worry. The dogs keep them away. Mostly. If you’re bitten you have to keep still and yell for help.’

  ‘I will,’ he said sincerely. He reached down and picked up an egg, then nearly dropped it when it felt warm. That egg had been inside a hen — a chook — just like the milk had been inside a cow. And the honey Mr Peaslake had eaten had been inside a bee. He’d never eat honey again. Or a scrambled egg …

  But that was silly. He’d eaten eggs and milk and honey all his life. They weren’t any different because now he could see where they came from. But it did feel different, just like the grass under his bare feet.