Mrs Peaslake was taking the loaves of bread out of the oven as they brought the eggs back in. She hacked off the crusts at both ends as soon as they were out of the oven and handed them to him and Mud.
Georg copied Mud as she slathered on butter, watched it melt into the bread, then bit into the soft sweet crust. It was perhaps the best thing he’d ever eaten.
They dug up potatoes and carrots for lunch after that — more dirt, thought Georg, looking at his filthy fingernails — and picked baby runner beans from the big trellis at the edge of the garden.
Mr Peaslake put his head out of the shed as they passed. He held up the kite that had been on Georg’s bed. ‘Just adding more rags to the tail.’
‘Can we fly it after lunch?’ demanded Mud.
‘Too right,’ boomed Mr Peaslake.
They walked up the lane to the headland, past Mud’s house, Mud and Georg and Mrs Peaslake carrying kites, Mr Peaslake carrying the picnic basket — in case we feel faint from not enough food, thought Georg, slightly stuffed from breakfast and an enormous ‘baked dinner’ of mutton and vegetables for lunch. Mud had stayed for lunch too. He was already getting used to the feel of the dirt under his feet, though he made sure to avoid any stones. The dogs bounded at their sides, or pretended to find rabbits in the tussocks.
Mud’s house was much like the Peaslakes’, but with even more rooms straggling from both ends of the main building. Perhaps a new room had been added as each child came along.
Georg examined it. It didn’t look like the house of a poor person either, although it could have done with repainting, and the garden was just shrubs and rough grass. But there was a new-looking truck in the shed, and it seemed that Mud’s family owned all the land between here and the beach too. He thought only kings owned as much land as that.
They trudged through a gate and over lumpy land dappled with cow droppings. (‘You’ve never seen a cow dropping?’ said Mud incredulously. She picked one up, all dried and flat, and sent it skimming over the grass for the dogs to chase.) The hill rose in front of them so they were nearly at the cliff edge when Georg saw the sea. It almost hurt with its beauty, the blue like the stone in Mutti’s ring, the froth like white lace on the waves. The water washed back and forth on bright white sand, and licked the rocks at either side of the bay.
The wind lashed their backs and the spray spat at their faces. The rocks were black and shiny where the sea had washed them.
Georg looked at the kite in his hand. It was supposed to go up, but how?
‘Like this,’ began Mr Peaslake. His roar sounded right up here in the wind from the sea.
‘Let me show him!’
Mr Peaslake looked at Mud, and smiled. Mud handed her own kite to Mrs Peaslake. ‘Hold the string of yours,’ she commanded Georg. ‘I mean, not the string, the wood it’s wound around so the string can roll out.’
‘I don’t understand.’
She grinned. ‘You will.’ She took his kite and began to run, into the wind. Suddenly the wind tore the kite from her hand. In seconds it had leaped up into the air. Georg nearly dropped the winder in surprise as the string began to unfurl. The kite climbed higher, and higher still.
It was impossible. It was wonderful. It was like somehow earth and sky were one thing, not two. He pulled the string experimentally and the kite soared even higher.
Mud had her own kite up now, and Mr Peaslake his.
‘Don’t let them get tangled,’ he yelled. ‘If it droops, start running into the wind till it rises again.’
‘Like this!’ shouted Mud against the wind. She began to run, the dogs bounding with her. The kite shadows flickered across the ground.
Georg ran too. He stubbed his toe, but it didn’t matter. Just for a moment he felt like the wind himself.
Suddenly there was a fourth shadow. Georg looked up.
It was a bird, brown and white. It balanced on the wind, just hanging in the blue sky. The kites flew, but this bird owned the air.
‘Sea eagle.’ Mr Peaslake’s kite string grew slack while he stared at it. ‘Alan …’ He hesitated as he said his son’s name, then went on. ‘Alan says that one day he’s going to fly a kite as high as the eagle.’
‘Do you think he can?’ shouted Georg, so the old man could hear above the wind. It seemed that nothing, not bits of string and bamboo and paper, could ever challenge that bird up there. But bits of wood and paper shouldn’t be able to fight the wind at all.
‘I reckon he might,’ shouted Mr Peaslake. ‘After the war is over.’
Mrs Peaslake opened the picnic basket and put out a Thermos of milk and another of tea, more of the fruitcake and big swollen oranges from the trees out the back of the house.
Georg remembered the last picnic basket he had watched being unpacked. It had all seemed so neat, so tame and safe that day — the quiet lake, the smooth green grass, Papa’s playful teasing and Mutti’s blushes — so different from this howling headland and its waves.
But it had not been safe. Neat grass had hidden hatred and secrets too.
‘Who’d like a scone?’ asked Mrs Peaslake. ‘There’s plain and there’s date or pumpkin.’ She picked up her knitting again.
Chapter 22
Bellagong
New South Wales, Australia
30 November 1940
Dear Aunt Miriam,
I hope you are well. Thank you for the money order. I bought a book and a box of chocolates for Mrs Peaslake and some sweets that I shared with Mud. Mud’s name is Maud but she does not spell it right. Or say it right either. Her last name is Mutton which is funny because they have a farm for beef, not mutton, but Mud did not laugh when I told her. She said they do get mutton from their sheep.
I did not need to buy clothes with the money order as Mrs Peaslake has made me shorts and shirts and knitted me a jumper and three pairs of combinations. I wear old clothes from Alan Peaslake and Mud’s brothers when I am on the farm because we get dirty, but do not worry, there is a big bath so I am clean each night.
It is a big farm with lots of cattle. We have to move them from paddock to paddock. I thought they would run over me but then Mud said ‘Yah!’ and they all walked away and through the gate.
Mr Peaslake and Mud and Mud’s dad, Mr Mutton, ride horses. Mud said she would teach me but her dad said maybe next year. You have to be a good rider to chase cattle on a horse so I only help with the cattle when we can walk. Did you know that it is not true that bulls run at red things? Mud has a red hat but they do not chase her. They do what she tells them to do.
It is good here. There are oranges growing right in the garden! They have puffy skins, not like the oranges in shops, but they taste the same.
I have learned to prop a fence post. I have not been bitten by a snake yet. Mr Peaslake says not to worry, it has been years since anyone was bitten by a snake, but I am careful when I collect the eggs. Snakes like eggs.
I am top of the class this week but that does not really count because there is only Mud who is my age too. Mud was top last week but Mrs Rose says we are both precocious which means we are very clever and do our work well. Mud likes books too but only when it is dark and she cannot do things outside or if it is raining. She is all right.
If anyone asks could you say I am very happy here and remember to say where I am, in case anyone does not know where I have gone?
Your loving nephew,
George
PS Here is a gumleaf I dried for you. Mud can play a tune with two gumleaves but it is not much of a tune. The gumtrees look funny and the leaves smell strange but you get used to it.
Georg stared at little Sally and Susie and Mary-Anne skipping in a corner of the rutted school yard. They chanted as they skipped.
‘Underneath the water six feet deep
Old man Hitler fell asleep
All the little fishes ate his feet
Underneath the water six feet deep.’
It was hard, even now, to accept that the Führer he had believed
in two years before was the same man as the Hitler the kids chanted about now.
‘Hey, George, want to play Spitfires?’ Big Billy picked his nose, then inspected his finger before he ate what was on it. Big Billy was taller than him and Mud, even though he was six months younger and still hadn’t learned how to read or even write his name. These days he mostly just picked up firewood outside for the school’s potbelly stove.
Big Billy didn’t mind. He was happier at school than working on his uncle’s farm, and he got to play with the other kids at lunchtime, and they shared their lunches with him too, because Big Billy’s uncle never packed him lunch.
‘You can be the Spitfire,’ added Big Billy generously. ‘And I’ll be the Stuka and you can shoot me down. Clakka, clakka, clakka, clakka …’
A friend of Mr Peaslake’s had shown a newsreel at the town hall the weekend before, so now all the children had seen Spitfires and Stukas fighting above the city during the London Blitz. It had been strange seeing the London he’d once known in black and white, flickering on the hall wall.
‘George wants to play cricket,’ said Mud.
Big Billy shrugged agreeably. Georg nodded. He didn’t want to be a Spitfire, or a Stuka either, and he’d learned the basics of cricket on the ship. They’d had to make up new rules to make sure the ball didn’t go over the rail, so no one noticed he’d never played cricket before. He knew enough about the game to be able to play a school-yard game now, with a fruit box for stumps and Mud’s brother’s old bat.
Georg liked Bellagong Public School, even if it was nothing like school back home, with its deep bell to tell you when lessons had ended, and neat uniforms and proper marching, and all boys too.
Here the girls sat down one side of the room and the boys on the other, except for him and Mud who shared a desk because they had to share their textbooks. No one wore a uniform, or even shoes, except the teacher, Mrs Rose.
It was more like the school in the church hall back in London, just noisier and with more flies and a water tank that a possum had drowned in last year ‘but it’s all right to drink the water now,’ Mud had assured him. ‘Because when it started to stink Dad and Uncle Ron drained the water out and cleaned it.’
Instead of proper lessons he and Mud were given their textbooks to learn from, checking each other’s answers on the tests at the end of each chapter, while Mrs Rose taught the littlies how to read and do their sums on their slates. Mrs Rose had been a teacher before she got married. Now the real teacher was in the navy so Mrs Rose had come back again, till the war was over.
Sometimes he and Mud helped teach the littlies the five times tables or got them playing ‘sheep, sheep come home’ or ‘defence’ in the playground. Helping the littlies with Mud and playing with children of all different ages felt a bit like being on the ship. It didn’t even matter now that Mud was a girl.
On Saturday mornings he helped Mrs Peaslake put the wet, clean washing through the mangle, squeezing out most of the washing water, then hanging it all out on the big lines propped up by wooden poles in the backyard. Mrs Peaslake didn’t have a servant, just Mrs Purdon who came three mornings a week to ‘do the rough’. They’d had someone who came every day, before the war, but now you were only allowed to employ people over forty-five years old to help with your house or garden.
Georg learned how to sweep a floor properly, even the corners; how to black lead the stove to make it shine; how to swirl sand in the glass vases to scrub away the flower stains, and why flower stems had to be cut under water before you arranged them to make them last.
He learned to tell a carrot from a weed, and how to know when the beetroot were big enough to pull up, and how much mint to pick for the sweet-sour sauce Mrs Peaslake made to go with roast mutton, which was weird but good.
Now and then when he came into a room Mrs Peaslake was there, just sitting, looking at nothing, only her hands moving as they made another sock, a jumper, a pair of ‘combinations’ to keep him warm in winter.
She always jumped up when he came in and bustled off to stir up the stove, or put the dinner on. She never said what she’d been doing, but Georg knew, because he did it too.
She had been remembering. She remembered Alan and he remembered Mutti and Papa, Aunt Miriam and Elizabeth. There was so much they didn’t talk about but only remembered now.
Sometimes it was as though Alan Peaslake was only off down the shop to buy a pound of sugar. His picture stood on the mantel in the kitchen and the living room, on the sideboard and on top of the piano.
Even at the table his place was always vacant, in case he should appear. No one sat in his chair in the lounge room either, or the dining room. Mud knew not to sit there, and Georg learned not to as well, even though Mrs Peaslake never said anything about it.
They had their big lunch in the dining room on Saturdays and Sundays, with roast lamb or beef, slightly blackened roast pumpkin, parsnips, carrots and potatoes, and boiled beans and, over it all, gravy speckled with the bits of roast vegetables left in the pan, followed by apple crumble, because that was Mr Peaslake’s favourite and their Alan’s too.
There were always leftovers, partly so there’d be cold meat to eat with salad at what the Australians called ‘tea’ but the English called ‘dinner’, and so the cold roast potatoes could be fried up with eggs and cabbage for bubble and squeak for breakfast the next morning, or the lamb sliced for sandwiches during the week. But mostly, Georg thought, it was in case Alan suddenly appeared. Alan might be across the sea but there always had to be a plateful more, a tin full of cake or biscuits, in case he magically arrived.
Alan Peaslake was with them too when he and Mud and Mr Peaslake flew kites up on the headland. Mrs Peaslake usually came as well, sitting on the tussocky grass, not flying kites but knitting yet another sock or balaclava, the kites bobbling and laughing down at them, the dogs bounding at the shadows that flickered over the ground.
Each week Mr Peaslake took the Muttons’ horse and cart (there wasn’t enough petrol these days to use the truck except for emergencies) to gather firewood for the fireplaces in each room and the wood stove in the kitchen.
The straggle-branched gumtrees were careless with their branches, dropping them whenever they felt like it, so there was lots of wood. It burned with a strange sweet-smelling smoke that wasn’t at all like the stuffy smell from the coal in London, or from the wood Lotte had burned in the kitchen at home. Samson and Delilah ran beside the cart, snuffling in the horse and cattle droppings and bringing sticks to throw.
Sometimes Mud challenged Georg to see who could gather the most wood; so they’d race for the long wiggly branches that looked like snakes. Of course, the snakes here were shiny black with red bellies, like someone had painted them to shout a warning — Careful! Poisonous snakes!
Mud always won, whether she was racing him to the cliff or seeing who could play ‘Chopsticks’ the fastest on the piano. It annoyed him a bit: that she always had to be the best. But he didn’t mind too much.
Sometimes it even felt like he was happy in his new life at the end of the earth.
Chapter 23
Bellagong
New South Wales, Australia
2 December 1940
Dear Aunt Miriam,
I hope you are well. It is hot here. Big insects called Christmas beetles fly into the roof and roll down. They make a lot of noise. Delilah, who is one of the dogs, tried to eat one and was sick. Mrs Peaslake says she tries every year and never learns.
It is funny to have Christmas coming and be hot.
Mrs Peaslake is worried that my mother has not sent a letter, but I explained how sick she is and that you will write and tell me how she is.
Mr Peaslake has taught me two poems. They are Australian poems. One is about black swans. Swans are black in Australia, not white. The other is called How McDougal Topped the Score and is about how a dog won a cricket match but it was not a proper orderly cricket match. It was a funny poem just the same.
I hope you are safe and that you have a good Christmas dinner. I hope you like this Christmas card. I made it myself at school. I hope you like the chocolates and the cake. I bought the chocolates. Mrs Peaslake gives me pocket money for doing the chores. Mrs Peaslake made the cake. It has a pound of butter in it and eight eggs.
I collected the eggs but I did not make the butter. Mud made it. Mud traps rabbits for their fur. She made twenty-six pounds this year. She said she will show me how to do it but I do not want to but I might next year, as Mud says the rabbits eat all the grass and then the soil washes away and the rabbit skins are useful to make men’s hats and coats for women and I can put the money into War Bonds which will help win the war. So even if I do not want to hurt rabbits I think maybe I should do it too.
I do not know if your friends are where you are now. I hope they are. I know you won’t get this before Christmas, but I hope you have a merry one.
Your loving nephew,
George
‘Twas the night before Christmas,’ chanted Mr Peaslake, peeling potatoes at the kitchen sink.
‘When all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
In hopes that St Nicholas soon would be there.’
‘George? There you are. Come and put up the decorations with me,’ said Mrs Peaslake. ‘You too, Father. Just leave the spuds to soak till dinner. We need you to put the angel on top of the tree.’
Georg followed them into the lounge room. It looked even more crowded with the big gumtree branch propped up in a bucket in a corner. He stared at it. How could a bit of gumtree be a proper Christmas tree?
Mrs Peaslake handed him a red crepe streamer from a cardboard box on the floor. Georg stared at it uncertainly, then began to drape it around the tree, in and out of the leaves and twigs, just as he had draped tinsel on a proper pine tree with Mrs Huntley in the library the year before; and all those other years with Mutti and Papa.
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