Two brothers facing the enemy, he thought, and one cousin who must be like a brother. And now her father was off to war too.
‘It’s all right to cry, you know,’ he said at last.
‘I’m not crying! I never cry!’
‘I do,’ he said.
She stared at him. ‘Boys don’t cry.’
‘Maybe we pretend we don’t, but we do. I cried for …’ He hesitated again to use anything other than his parents’ real names. But he had no choice. ‘When Daddy died. I cry for Mummy.’
‘It … it’s worse for you too, isn’t it?’ said Mud slowly.
If only he could tell her how bad it really was, not knowing if Mutti was safe or hunted or in a camp; if Papa had really died there on the University lawn. ‘I don’t think it matters which is worse. Maybe it just gets so that it can’t hurt any more … no matter how bad it is or how much worse it gets. But you’ve got to keep going.’
‘Of course I’ll keep going,’ she flared. ‘I can use a cross-cut saw as well as Dad and repair the fences.’
‘I’ll help. But Mud, I meant … your auntie is worried about you. Your mum will be worried too.’
‘Why worry about me?’
‘Because you’re hurting,’ said Georg simply.
Mud made a small sad noise. She knuckled tears from her eyes angrily, glanced at him again, then let them fall.
‘Do you want to borrow my hanky?’
‘No! Yes,’ said Mud.
He handed it over, glad that it was clean and neatly ironed by Mrs Peaslake. Funny, he thought vaguely, to let children run about with dirty feet but make sure their hankies were snow white and ironed crisp.
‘Come down and have some lunch.’
Mud scrubbed at her eyes with the hanky, then blew her nose. ‘I’m not hungry.’
‘I know. But it’ll make you feel better. And your mum and Auntie Thelma.’
‘I suppose it’s not fair to make them worry about me as well as about Dad and the boys,’ said Mud slowly.
Georg nodded. Convincing Mud that what her parents and auntie and uncle needed most was not to have to worry about her too made him feel better about leaving Mutti and Papa. A bit, at any rate.
‘All right,’ said Mud at last. She met his eyes. ‘It’s just … it’s so big. The war, I mean. It just gets bigger and bigger.’
And makes us feel smaller and smaller, thought Georg.
‘I’m going to load the hay bales this afternoon. All by myself. That’ll show Mum and Dad that they don’t have to worry, even if the land girls don’t know what they’re doing at first. City girls never know anything.’
Georg thought of the heavy bales of hay, of Mud’s wiry arms tugging at the strings to get the heavy bales into the cart, then off into the shed.
‘I’ll come with you. We can lift them together.’
She didn’t say anything. He could see when she realised how much easier it would be for two to lift the bales than one. He doubted even Mud’s determination would be enough to bring in a paddock of lucerne hay by herself. But two of them could manage it.
‘Thanks,’ she said. Mud will never be pretty, he thought, not the Elizabeth kind of pretty, but she’s sort of beautiful, when she smiles like that. When Mud thanked you she meant it from her heart.
‘Friends help each other,’ he said. He slid down the trunk, landing on his tough bare feet, and waited for her to join him.
Chapter 29
Bellagong
16 December 1941
My dear Alan,
I hope you don’t worry at getting a letter written by your dad instead of Mum. We are all well, so don’t worry, but it’s easier for her if I write to you about all this, not her.
Your Uncle Don came home yesterday and told his family he had found a way to not get drafted into the army. Your aunt asked how and he said, ‘I’ve joined the air force.’ We are all proud of him, as you can imagine, but he is your mum’s only brother, her ‘little brother’ too, and so of course she worries. More than five hundred blokes joined up just that same day. I only wish I were young enough to join up too. We’ll let the Nips know that we have only just begun to fight.
I hope this reaches you as it leaves us. We are all well, and optimistic, despite the news. The sons of the empire will not be defeated, not by the Jerries nor by the Nips either.
Your cousins are all well and fighting fit if we are to believe their letters, and Johnnie Cooper’s family had a letter from him last week too.
We old blokes left at home have turned the Bushfire Brigade into the Home Guard. I am the air-raid warden, but as it only takes ten minutes to check the whole of Bellagong I can pop out after dinner and be back in time for cocoa. Your mum and CWA are doing wonders with the camouflage nets. They can make a net in eight hours now, and did two last week alone, as well as the Red Cross work and the care packages. Mum even knits when she helps move the cattle. She was going to have a go at spinning wool but there’s been an appeal for ‘sheepskins for soldiers’ so I tan the hides and send the fleeces there instead.
That’s all the news from us. I know Mum will be writing to you next post, and probably young George too. Don’t worry if you can’t find time to put pen to paper, lad. Just know that you are in our thoughts every day.
Your loving father,
Dad
It was a defiant Christmas this year. The Christmas pudding, the cauliflower cheese, the baked pumpkin, even the decorations hanging on the tree declared: we shall not be beaten. We will keep our traditions and our country free.
There were four empty chairs at the dining table now.
On Christmas Day the Japanese took Hong Kong.
Two days later Mr Curtin was on the wireless again, his words thundered in the newspapers too. England wanted Australia’s soldiers and planes to defend England from the Germans, and to defend India from the Japanese.
For the first time an Australian prime minister defied the English one. Australia had to defend itself. The United States was Australia’s ally in the Pacific War now. ‘Australia looks to America … free of … traditional links or kinship with the United Kingdom.’
What did Aunt Miriam think in her office, far away in England? Georg wondered. Did she think Australians should sacrifice their country for England too? It was impossible to know. Aunt Miriam’s letters didn’t change, always calm and downplaying any danger. But he thought that when she signed them ‘your loving aunt’ she meant it.
Every night he and the Peaslakes sat by the big wireless in the lounge room to listen to the news. News broadcasts were too important to listen to on the small kitchen wireless now.
They listened as the Japanese pounded into Thailand, the Philippines and Borneo. The Italians took back dearly won Benghazi …
Part of him felt frightened, in a way that even Mud could never know. He knew what war was like. War wasn’t real until you saw the flames after the bombs, the blood and glass scattered across the pavements.
Yet part of him was glad too, despite the change. Australia’s hatred had turned from the Germans to the Japanese now. The cowardly Japanese, who had struck without warning; the treacherous Japanese, who had bombed before declaring war. Hatred had run through the town like the row of pennies the soldier had shown him, all falling down almost together.
Georg could share the hatred of this enemy.
This enemy wasn’t him.
Chapter 30
Bellagong
26 February 1942
Dear Aunt Miriam,
I hope you are well. We are well here but we are worried about Mud’s brothers. They are in Malaya and the Japanese are there, but of course you will know that. I hope the censor leaves that in about Mud’s brothers because I do not think their being there is a secret that will help the enemy, and besides, Singapore is the best fortress in the world so the English and Australians will stop the Japanese there.
Alan Peaslake had a bad leg. I do not know what was wrong with it, as he did not say
in his letter, just that he is back on duty and it is all right now.
I will not write more now as there is no news really. All the real news is on the wireless.
Your loving nephew,
George
Singapore could never fall. It had been said so often that everyone believed it — except the Japanese.
Georg sat on the lounge-room carpet, staring at the big wireless, the letter he had just finished forgotten. Delilah sat next to him, licking the scab on his knee.
Mr Peaslake stared too, as though it was impossible to believe what they had heard. Mrs Peaslake’s knitting needles had stopped clicking.
Singapore had fallen. Singapore, the mightiest British fortress in the world.
Singapore was supposed to have made Australia safe. What could stop the Japanese invading Australia now, with so much of its army and navy still on the other side of the world, helping England?
‘And in other news …’ said the announcer.
Mr Peaslake stood up and turned the wireless off. ‘The boys will be all right,’ he said heavily. ‘Len and Ken … they’ll have escaped. If anyone can escape it’ll be them.’
Mrs Peaslake said nothing, just looked down at her knitting and began clicking again.
How many Australian soldiers have been killed? wondered Georg. The wireless hadn’t said. Surely they couldn’t all have been killed, not the whole army. Soldiers could surrender, couldn’t they? Maybe Mud’s brothers would be sent to prison camps if they hadn’t escaped. Prison camps were bad but people got letters from prisoners there. Mrs Purdon’s husband had been taken prisoner in Crete and she had got two letters and a postcard.
He remembered with a taste of terror his own escape in the suitcase. There could be no suitcase escapes for Len and Ken. Maybe they could hide in the jungle, like boys did in adventure stories in the Boy’s Own Annual, or find a boat.
Mrs Peaslake stood up. ‘We’d better go over there.’
‘Over there’ meant Mud’s place. Georg didn’t ask what they would do there, or even if he should go too. He knew why they were needed: why he was needed too.
When things were bad you stuck together.
The women sat in the kitchen, talking quietly. Mr Peaslake glanced at them, then muttered something about ‘filling the wood box’. He went outside. Georg heard the sound of the woodsplitter on a log.
There was no sign of Mud.
He walked quietly down to her room, and knocked.
There was no answer. He knocked again, then opened the door.
Mud lay on her bed. It was a girlie bed, with a pink bedspread with fuzzy tassels at the edges. There was even an old doll on the dressing table, next to a teddy bear with a chewed ear.
‘Are you all right?’ asked Georg. It was a silly thing to say, but he of all people knew that sometimes there were no right words, that just saying something was all that you could do.
‘They’ve escaped,’ said Mud. Her voice was hoarse, but there was no anxiety or anguish in it. Instead she sounded sure.
‘How do you know?’
‘I just do!’
‘All right. Do you want to …’ Georg searched for something they might do together. ‘Help fill the wood box?’ he said at last.
‘We don’t need more wood,’ began Mud. Then she stopped, as though she finally heard the sounds of wood being split outside. She stood up and nodded.
They went to join Mr Peaslake at the wood heap.
Chapter 31
District Records Office
RAS Showground, Sydney
6 March 1942
To Mrs L Mutton
Red Gate Farm
Bellagong
New South Wales
Dear Madam,
I have been directed by the Minister for the Army to advise you that no definite information is at present available in regard to the whereabouts or circumstances of your son Corporal Ken Mutton 8th Division AIF and to convey to you the sincere sympathy of the Minister and Military Board in your natural anxiety in the absence of news concerning him.
You may rest assured, however, that the utmost endeavour will continue to be made through every possible source, including the International Red Cross Society, to obtain at the earliest possible moment a definite report, which, when received, will be conveyed to you by telegram immediately. It would be appreciated if you could forward full particulars to this office as quickly as possible of any information you may receive from any other source, as it may be of the greatest value in supplementing official investigations which are being made.
Yours faithfully,
HN Glass, Major, Officer in Charge, Records
Mud sat dry-eyed in the stuffy classroom. Her eyes had turned to metal since her brothers had vanished in the fall of Singapore.
Both she and Georg knew all the kings of England off by heart now. Blaxland, Wentworth and Lawson crossed the Blue Mountains; Captain Cook discovered Australia; Columbus discovered America. What else was there to learn?
Nothing in the school textbook anyway, thought Georg. But it was time for the history lesson, so that was the textbook they had open.
Mrs Rose sat knitting at the front of her classroom, her face pale, the shadows dark around her eyes. She had heard the day before that her husband was a prisoner of war in Malaya. But she was still at school this morning, though she had set the littlies to work at their copybooks, practising perfect round letters, instead of giving lessons today.
Big Billy snoozed at the back of the room. He’d been shucking corn for cattle food by lamplight for his uncle the last few nights. School was the only chance of sleep he got.
Fat flies bumped at the window. Stupid flies, Georg thought. If they went to the door they could fly out.
Suddenly heavy footsteps sounded outside. Mrs Rose looked up in alarm. The children did too.
But it was Mr Peaslake. He panted like he’d been running. He was sort of smiling. Only ‘sort of’. Georg had never seen an expression like that before.
‘News,’ he boomed. ‘Mud, it’s good news. They’re safe. Both Len and Ken. Got the telegram just now. I said I’d run right over. Don’t know where they are. But they’re not prisoners. They’re safe.’
‘I knew they were,’ said Mud calmly. She shut her history book and stood up. ‘I’d better go to Mum.’
She ran out of the class. Georg wondered if he was the only one who had seen her face break into anguish, the tears pouring down before she had even reached the door.
Mr Peaslake looked after her, then back at Mrs Rose. ‘Something else,’ he said, quietly for him.
Mrs Rose clutched her knitting. ‘What?’ She was crying too: for Mud, for her husband, for herself, or maybe for us all, thought Georg. Little Susie down the back began to cry too.
‘The Japs are bombing Darwin. They’re bombing us now too.’
Chapter 32
Red Gate Farm
Bellagong NSW
29 March 1942
Dear Dad,
Here is a scarf I knitted for you. It was going to be socks but they didn’t work so Auntie Thel changed them into a scarf for me. I am sorry about the lumps.
I know Mum told you about the letter from Ken and Len. I TOLD her they were all right. I wish they could come home on leave but I know that it is too far for them to come. Mum has stuck the letter on the dresser with a drawing pin so we can read it every time we go into the kitchen to remind us they are safe.
We got all the first cut of hay in and will have a second cut too. I drove the header all by myself except I let George have a go too. It’s all right because he does really straight rows. His old hat was too small but the shop had a new one out the back. It still looks too new but I told him not to worry: it’ll get sweat-stained and floppy by winter.
Everyone is furious about the Japs bombing Darwin and Broome and places. I am so angry I could bust. There are posters everywhere, even in the butcher’s shop, about their treachery. I am glad Mr Curtin told the English that our
men had to come home to defend Australia instead of fighting the Japanese in Burma. England already has most of our men and our planes and ships and it isn’t fair that Mr Churchill wants more.
I called Mr Churchill a greedy pig at school. I was worried in case it made George angry, because England is his country, but he didn’t say anything. I was glad because he is my friend and he helps a lot with the farm, you would never know he was from the city. He doesn’t even talk posh now mostly.
It is good that the Americans are coming here and that Mr Curtin can work with General Mackarther. I am not sure how to spell his name, I need to look up the newspaper, but he looks good in the photo, not fat like Mr Churchill. If the Japs try to invade us we will be ready for them.
We got twenty-six pounds each for the stock at Friday’s cattle sale. That is the best price yet. I told Mum we should keep all the weaners this year and fatten them as we will have enough lucerne even if we don’t get much rain, and she agrees.
It was 106 in the top paddock today. I bet George we could fry an egg on the corrugated iron over the salt lick. I won, but the egg cooked solid and we couldn’t scrape it off. It looks funny but when you see it you’ll know what it is and not have to wonder.
Uncle Ron and the Bushfire Brigade were going to be a People’s Army like it said in the paper, but now they are an official Volunteer Defence Corps. I wish I could join but there are no kids and not even any women, though it said in the paper women can be in the People’s Army. I asked Mum and Auntie Thel if we could form a branch of the People’s Army here. They said no but if you write and say it is a good idea maybe they will say yes instead. Please write and say yes because we all have to stop the Japs now.
It is all right to tell me and Mum when you will be sent overseas. We will be careful that no spy finds out.
Pennies For Hitler Page 20
