Mrs Peaslake nestled a ball of cotton wool among the leaves and then another. She is pretending it’s snow, he realised.
He draped another streamer while the Peaslakes added more ‘snow’. Then Mrs Peaslake opened a small papier-mâché box. She took out a rounded cardboard angel, badly coloured in. She touched it reverently. ‘Alan made that,’ she said softly.
Georg stared at it. Alan wasn’t very good at colouring in then, though he didn’t like to say it.
Mrs Peaslake saw his look and smiled. ‘He was only five. First Christmas at school. It’s been on top of the tree every year since.’ She looked into the distance. ‘I hope the Christmas cake gets to him in time. And the pudding.’
And the socks and bunch of gumleaves, and the card signed by them all, thought Georg. But all he said was, ‘I bet they make a special effort to get the mail to the troops in time for Christmas. Wherever he is.’
‘Probably rather have a beer,’ boomed Mr Peaslake. He reached up and fixed the angel to the highest twig of the tree; it lurched a bit to one side. ‘Mother, have you got the rag bag? I want to make some ties for the new kite.’
‘Can’t send beer through the post,’ said Mrs Peaslake, in the loud clear voice she always used for her husband. ‘The rag bag’s in the linen cupboard, where it always is. Men can never find things. In the linen cupboard! No, I’ll get it.’
Mr Peaslake watched her go. ‘Glad you’re here,’ he said suddenly. ‘House has been too empty. Bad for her: an empty house.’
Georg looked at the over-filled room. Delilah had arrived too and was sniffing the tree with interest. Empty? But he knew what Mr Peaslake meant. ‘But you’re here with her.’
‘Not the same. You miss the snow?’
The hairs on Georg’s arms rose in his alarm. Snow? It had never snowed in London at Christmas, but it had at home. Papa had shown him how to fall on his back with his arms out to make a snow angel.
Mr Peaslake was staring at him. ‘What’s wrong? Look, I’m sorry, lad. I didn’t mean to make you homesick talking about snow.’
‘No, I’m all right. It doesn’t snow in London at Christmas. Not often,’ he added, in case it sometimes did.
‘George!’ It was Mud at the back door.
‘Knock politely,’ called Mrs Peaslake from the linen cupboard. ‘You weren’t brought up in a tent.’
‘I did knock. You didn’t hear.’ Mud burst in from the kitchen. ‘What are you doing? Come on,’ she added to Georg before they could answer. ‘We’ve got to practise for carol singing.’
‘Carols?’ His heart lurched. He knew lots of carols; he’d sung them every Christmas at church and at home too. But all the carols that he knew were German.
He followed her automatically onto the road, then down the tussocked footpath towards the school. His feet had toughened so he didn’t even think about stones under his bare feet now.
Carols? How was he going to get out of this?
His heart began to pound. Even the shop had a poster: ‘Beware the horror in our midst.’ Would something as simple as carols be the thing that betrayed him as a German?
‘We sing carols at every house in town every year: every kid in the district. Not just kids either — Ken and Len and Alan, and all the girls. You love carol singing in England, don’t you?’ To his relief she didn’t wait for a reply. ‘But there’s only us at school to sing this year. It’s got to be really good so that everyone puts lots of money in the hat. The money we raise is going to buy rope to make camouflage nets.’ She flung the school gate open.
The other children were already there, playing jacksies on the school-room floor, even Big Billy. Mrs Rose looked through music on the old piano.
‘Right,’ she called. ‘Everyone over here, please.’
‘I’ll conduct.’ Mud began to wave her hands in the air as the music began. ‘One, two, three …’
The smallest kids began to sing.
‘Silent night, holy night,
All is calm, all is bright …’
Their voices trailed off one by one, as though they didn’t know the words. Big Billy had stopped after the ‘Silent night’. Georg found them all staring at him.
‘Why aren’t you singing?’ demanded Mud.
He knew the tune.
He knew the words to it too.
German words.
‘I … why aren’t you?’
Mud flushed. ‘I can’t sing.’
‘Everyone can sing.’
‘I can’t.’
Big Billy laughed. ‘You show him, Mud.’
Mud’s flush grew deeper. ‘No.’
‘Go on!’
‘No!’
‘Mud’s a scaredy cat! Mud’s a scaredy cat!’
‘Billy …’ Mrs Rose said.
‘I’m not scared of anything!’ Mud clenched her fists. She opened her mouth. A noise emerged. It was like the bullfrogs in the lake back home.
‘Silent night, holy night,
All is calm —’ Mud glared at them all. ‘There. Is that enough?’
Georg stared. Mud was good at everything! How could she not be able to sing?
‘I can’t sing either,’ he said, inspired.
‘What? Both of you?’ Mrs Rose threw her hands up. ‘Well, you can’t go carol singing now.’
‘But we always have carol singing!’ Mud’s voice was anguished.
‘Not this year.’ Mrs Rose sounded tired. She sounded tired often these days. She stood up and began to gather the music. ‘The littlies won’t remember the words without at least one of you singing along. Billy can’t read them either.’
‘Nope,’ said Billy cheerfully. He began to pick his nose.
‘But we have to!’
‘There’s no have to about it,’ said Mrs Rose.
Suddenly Mud ran from the room.
‘What’s got into the girl?’ Mrs Rose snapped the music into her case. ‘Sometimes I think —’
Georg didn’t wait to hear what Mrs Rose thought. He ran out the door, then gazed around. But Mud had vanished.
He hesitated, then jogged back home, up the front path then around the house, into the orchard. He stood under the pear tree and looked up into the leaves.
‘Go away.’ Mud’s voice sounded strange.
‘No.’
‘I said go away. This is my tree.’
‘No, it isn’t. I live here too.’
‘Well, I’m using it now. Go and find your own tree.’
‘I’m coming up,’ said Georg. He wasn’t sure why. Mud didn’t want him. He was glad there wouldn’t be carols too. But something in Mud’s voice reminded him of something, someone …
Of himself, he realised. Of times when everything was too much, when he knew he could take no more, but had to keep on going.
Mud was a small angry ball, curled up by the trunk on the second branch. ‘What do you want?’
‘To help,’ said Georg simply.
‘You can help by learning to sing.’
‘I’ll try to learn for next year.’ He would too.
‘Too late next year.’
‘Why does it matter so much?’
‘Because it does! Don’t you understand? If we don’t sing Hitler has won! We have to do it, just like it’s always been done. Just like everyone does it every year, all together. Except now there’s only us.’
And this year her brothers aren’t here to sing too, Georg thought. And Alan Peaslake. Just us, to do all they used to do. Me, to make the rooms less empty. Mud, to take the place of her brothers.
No wonder she has to be best, he thought suddenly. I only have to take the place of Alan Peaslake. She has the emptiness left by two absent brothers to fill. Mr Peaslake might be able to take over fencing duties, but nothing could really fill the spaces left by those you loved.
Was that why Mr Peaslake recited his poems so loudly? Not just because he was deaf, but to fill the emptiness too?
Suddenly he had an idea. ‘Mud … we don’t have to sing
.’
‘We do!’
‘I mean, not sing. Mr Peaslake has a Christmas poem.’
‘So what?’
‘So we can recite it! You and I can learn it. We can write it out for the littlies to read. And … and we can make reindeer antlers for them. It’s all about Santa and reindeer, six of them. We’ll make a sort of play of it. The littlies can be the six reindeer so it doesn’t matter if they lose their places and forget their words in the poem.’
Mud gazed at him. ‘Big Billy can be Santa. We can stick on cotton wool for a beard and he can wear my red beanie and Dad’s red jumper with a pillow underneath. We can use sticks for the antlers — cover them in brown paper.’
‘And at every house we’ll recite the poem.’ He looked at her anxiously. ‘Not the same, but better.’
‘We’ll make heaps.’ To his relief Mud was grinning through her tears. ‘It’s a long poem,’ she added. ‘I’ve heard Uncle Ron reciting it. Bet I can learn it by heart before you.’
‘Bet you can’t,’ he said, but he knew she could. And even if she couldn’t this time he’d let her win. For now he knew why winning — all the time — was important to Mud.
He was doing his maths homework at the kitchen table when he heard the clucking from the hen yard. He ran to the door in time to see Mrs Peaslake emerge, one hand holding two young roosters upside down by their legs. The birds squawked and fluttered their wings indignantly.
Mrs Peaslake walked over to the tree stump by the shed and picked up the axe in her other hand. In an instant she had laid the roosters’ necks on the stump and given them two short sharp blows.
The heads rolled onto the grass.
Red blood. Green grass. Georg felt sick. He was going to be sick …
He ran to the bathroom and retched, but nothing came out. He tried again, then drank a handful of water.
‘You all right in there?’ called Mrs Peaslake.
‘Yes.’ Georg padded down the hall and looked into the kitchen. Mrs Peaslake was at the laundry tubs, pulling out black feathers; the dogs were at her feet looking hopefully at a pile of — Georg’s stomach lurched again — what must be rooster guts on an old newspaper on the bench.
‘Not for you,’ she said to the dogs. She smiled at Georg. ‘Christmas dinner.’ She nodded at the roosters. One was half naked now, it’s pimply skin very white.
He stared at her. This woman who warmed his pyjamas every night for him could kill roosters without thinking about it.
She looked at him with understanding. ‘I felt sick first time I saw my gran kill a chook. Meat comes from somewhere, George. We’re just closer to it than in the city. And if we keep all the roosters they’ll peck the hens to death.’
Georg thought about the scrubbed kitchen back in Alfhausen: Lotte in her white frilled apron; meat on an enamelled tray brought by the butcher’s boy wrapped in white paper. Neat sausages and the legs of pork no longer bleeding. But there had been blood in that land all the same.
Chapter 24
He felt funny when he woke on Christmas Day. It was a day to be happy, but he was not — although he had been mostly happy in Bellagong. Happy, except when he remembered Mutti in the dark.
A kookaburra yelled to say that it was morning. He was glad. Today felt the emptiest of all. Even a kookaburra was good to fill the silence up. He had bought handkerchiefs for everyone for Christmas — Mud too. He hoped they were the right sort of gifts for Australia. Mrs Peters who ran the shop had said they were.
He sat up, then stared.
A pillowcase hung on the doorknob. Somehow he knew it was a Santa present, even though there had been no Santa Claus at Aunt Miriam’s. It was almost, but not quite, like the Christkindl gifts at home. He padded across the floor and took the sack back to his bed.
A set of coloured pencils, a pen knife, a Violet Crumble bar — he’d never eaten one till he came here, but they were good — a faded tin that when opened was full of home-made toffees in little paper cases. And a football.
He rolled it over in his fingers. He just knew that Mud would be good at football. Somehow he guessed that Big Billy would like it too.
He padded out to the dunny, then back to the bathroom. He washed, then wandered into the kitchen, still feeling as though he was really somewhere else.
‘Merry Christmas!’ Mrs Peaslake smiled at him from the stove, the frying pan in her hand and a pile of pancakes on the warming plate. Her eyes and nose were red. He wasn’t the only one who felt an emptiness this Christmas. ‘Father’s out the back giving the chooks their Christmas breakfast. Extra corn for them this morning. There’re letters for you on the table.’
You never knew how long it would take for a letter to reach you these days. Ships were sunk or delayed. Mrs Peaslake must have kept these letters hidden for him to have today.
He sat down at his place. Delilah transferred her head to his feet, hoping for toast, as he picked up the first letter.
(Address unknown)
England
Dearest George,
Merry Christmas! I am afraid I didn’t know what to get you, so I hope you will buy yourself something with the money order enclosed.
It was good to get your wire saying you had arrived safely. I hope a ship carrying a letter from you arrives soon. I am so very glad you are happy with the Peaslakes. They seem such good people. Mrs Peaslake has sent a wire to me too, telling me about your progress at school. Please thank her so much for the Christmas cake for me and your mother that she says is on the way. It will be a treat for all of us here. It was so very kind of her, and is so appreciated. A butter ration these days isn’t enough to make a Christmas cake. I am so glad that you are with such kind and thoughtful people and I am very proud of your bravery. Please tell Mrs Peaslake that sadly there has been no change in your mother’s condition, but I know that she will be pleased that her son is with such a loving and happy family.
I am well here and enjoying the countryside. You will be glad to know that the flat is still undamaged. Mail is still forwarded down here. I managed a weekend in London recently and stayed there. Even the windows have been replaced with a new material that does not break.
The most surprising thing of all is that Mrs Huntley has opened the library again. The library now shares the space in the tea-shop next to where it used to be. Somehow she managed to rescue most of the books. She and her husband must have been days there sorting through the rubble. She has mended many of them most beautifully and, as she said, even if there are a few pages missing readers should still be able to work out the story.
She sends you her regards and asks if she could write to you. I have given her your address so you may receive a letter.
All my best wishes, dear boy.
Your loving aunt,
Aunt Miriam
‘Your auntie well?’ asked Mrs Peaslake.
‘Yes, thank you,’ said Georg. And she had managed to let him know that if a message came from Mutti she would get it. ‘And … Mummy …’ He hesitated on the word, hatred of the lie seeping through him. It was almost denying Mutti’s existence to call her Mummy. ‘Mummy’s just the same.’
Mrs Peaslake touched his shoulder comfortingly. ‘You know what the best thing you can do for your mum is?’
Georg shook his head.
‘You be happy. That’s what any mum wants most for her kiddies. Now you open your other letters.’
The second letter came with a package. Georg recognised the writing from his hours in the library.
Kensington
London
Dear George,
I hope this finds you as well as it leaves me. I was so very glad to know that you are safe and in Australia too! I hoped that perhaps you were in Brisbane where Elsie and John are but I am sure New South Wales is nice too. You will get very brown!
Your auntie may have told you that I have opened the library again. Some of the books were sadly damaged but we managed to rescue most of them, although the Encyclopaedia Br
itannica now lacks Vol 15 (Italy to Kyshtym) and Vol 28 (Vetch to Zymotic Diseases). As few readers want to read about zymotic diseases, especially in these days, I do not think they will be missed much.
It is very pleasant sharing the tea-rooms. Not only is there tea (!) but Miss Elrington and I share some of our duties. She minds the desk while I make scones, for she kindly says that my scones are much lighter than hers, even in these days when there is no sugar to sweeten them. It is very convenient for the customers too, as they can borrow a book to read while they drink their tea. I think anything that helps to brighten these days has to be good.
I am enclosing a book that I think you will like. It is not from the library of course. I bought it at the church jumble sale last weekend. We raised enough money to buy a whole wing of a Spitfire! The book is not quite new, of course, but has been well looked after.
My Ernest is an air-raid warden now. It was hard for him at first, not being able to join up, but as he says, we are all in this together and every hand helps.
With all the very best wishes for your stay in Australia. Until we meet again,
Mrs Eleanora Huntley
It was funny to think of Mrs Huntley as an Eleanora. Georg was glad she was in the tea-rooms with her books, and happy.
He looked at the book: Greenmantle by John Buchan. He had loved John Buchan’s The Thirty-Nine Steps back in the library and read it over and over. Had Mrs Huntley remembered?
Of course she had. Mrs Huntley would never forget a book.
It was wonderful to get another one. The Peaslakes had two bookcases of books and Mud’s family had books too, but he’d read them all now and school only had yellowed old textbooks. Mrs Peaslake had asked at the Red Cross meeting if anyone could lend George things to read. Boxes had arrived all the week after, from everyone in town — some of the books decades old — Boy’s Own Annuals and books of hymns and a set of encyclopaedias from 1892. He’d read them all, and then read them again.
He picked up the third letter. He had never seen the writing before. Mrs Peaslake turned away, carefully looking at the pancake she was cooking.
Pennies For Hitler Page 17
