He waited till a thicker finger of mist waved between him and the fourth soldier with the machine gun. And then he charged.
Lunge right, left, then right, right, then realised it didn’t matter, the sweep of the machine gun would get him anyway.
It did.
He felt it, not pain, just blows. Blows to his chest again, his side, his arm. Left arm, knife in his right. A blow to his leg, the one that had been hit before. Hard blows not hard enough to stop him.
He was running for his country now, for Mah, for Blue, for Sheba, for anything he had ever known that was good. He was running for Bert and the lieutenant and Big Bob, for the hundreds of blokes who might come up this hill. He was running for them all.
He was nearly there.
More blows. He saw the surprise on the shooter’s face. Saw him reach for his own knife. But the security of his powerful gun and hidden position had made him leave it too late. The eyes knew it too. Brown eyes, so like his own. Was there pity and admiration in them, as he thrust the knife in and up? Was there pity and admiration in his own too?
He knew nothing. Nothing to know.
Just, at last …
Nothing.
He woke. A fire burnt his leg, his chest.
Couldn’t be a fire, ’cause it was raining.
‘Get his pants on, Bob.’
‘Why? He’s done for.’
Privates on parade, thought Fred, somewhere down a far-off tunnel.
‘’Cause he wasn’t in uniform. And when we get his body back and tell them what he done, we ain’t saying how he done it. All right?’
A pause. ‘All right.’
The fire flared again. Big Bob said, ‘He’s breathing.’
‘What?’
More flames, hands tying string around him.
Then Bert again. ‘All right, lieutenant. If we get back … when we get back — you’re going to tell them about this. Tell him how he should get a medal. The Victoria Cross. And we’re going to go through it time after time till you get it right.’
‘No need.’ The lieutenant’s voice. When had the boy grown up? ‘He charged two machine-gun positions single-handed. Despite injuries, he carried on. He saved the three of us, and who knows how many others too.’ A pause. More hands, but the feeling was flowing from his body now. The world was supposed to be turning black, but it was green, dark green. The lieutenant’s voice came faintly, from very far away. ‘That sound right to you?’
‘It’ll do,’ said Bert.
More green. The flames vanished into cold.
Time. No body. No thoughts. Just knowing that time had passed. He supposed he should be dead. But he’d never practised dying, only living. Maybe he didn’t know how to die yet. More time. More noises. Noises that slowly turned into the King’s English, or at least an Aussie version of it. The unmistakeable smell of disinfectant.
A first-aid post. He managed to move his head enough to see white bandages, with only a small amount of mud and blood. Dressing station then.
‘Here he is, sir.’
A face bent over him. Officer’s cap. Officer’s voice too. ‘Good to see you’re still with us, Smith. Soon have you down to Myola. Then Port Moresby and home.’
Where was home? Not the orphanage, long past. Not with Mah. The circus vanished. Repairing a fence, maybe, the plain stretching into blue-grey distance.
‘Captain Southam is recommending you for a Victoria Cross. Well done, soldier.’
The face vanished. The voice said something indistinguishable, which ended with, ‘Think he’ll survive?’ More words, among which were ‘he might’.
At first he just felt shock — life, when he had expected none. Joy, seeping through him just as the pain began to creep too, as if his body had decided it might belong to him again.
A Victoria Cross for Fred Smith! His lips began to grin.
Stopped. Victoria Cross winners — or even those with lesser medals — got their photos in the paper. One photo and Fred Smith would be Robert Malloy, wanted for armed robbery and murder.
Prison? Maybe not, or not for long. Because he hadn’t killed that bloke, hadn’t even touched the gun that did, and the robbery was decades ago. But it would mean … fuss. Would mean that Marjory McAlpine would be pointed at not as the sister of a hero, but of a crook. And at worst it might mean a cell instead of the blue sky.
He had to escape. He found a smile somewhere. Finally, safe at last, a hero, and he had to escape. Into the jungle, first chance he got. They had to put the stretcher down sometime. He’d crawl, crawl so they couldn’t find him, might think other stretcher-bearers had picked him up. No one would expect a wounded hero to desert.
And then? Death, probably. It would find him even if he’d refused to look it in the face. He had no illusions about how badly he was hurt. ‘Might make it’ depended on nursing care, hospitals.
‘Only one thing I can do for you now, Marj,’ he whispered.
Vanish.
Chapter 32
Gibber’s Creek Gazette, 15 December 1942
Fashions for Victory
The new fashions for Victory show that there is still plenty of scope for attractive dressmaking under the new regulations.
Five buttons are allowed for fastening.
Tucking and shirring are allowed if used for shaping.
Tailored frocks for everyday use may have a flared skirt and a belt no more than two inches wide.
GIBBER’S CREEK, NEW SOUTH WALES, AUSTRALIA, 19 DECEMBER 1942
THOMAS THOMPSON
Thomas Thompson looked at the paperwork on his desk. It had seemed so simple in The Boy’s Own Annual adventures he’d read as a kid, back at the library in Sydney. Invent something brilliant and needed and you’d end the war.
In reality it made you rich. It also gave you paperwork, at least a ton of it each week, and the war ground on, because all sides had inventors just as good as him.
He looked out the window at the factory floor below, conveyor belts, the foremen in their grey dustcoats, the women in white. Before the war the only women in the factory had worked in the lunchroom. He’d never thought of employing women, despite being married to a wife who managed half the district. It had taken the example of Blue and Mah McAlpine as well as a war to show him that women were not only as capable of the technically difficult assembling but often more reliable employees, less likely to blow their wages on grog and vanish for three days on a spree. They worked, went home to their families and, if the kids were sick, got their mum or auntie or the woman next door to mind them so they could still turn up at work.
He looked at the paperwork again and made a bargain with himself. One-third of the pile and he’d go home for the day, put his feet up and not even turn on the wireless for the news. Talk to his wife, his son, back from boarding school, take a walk down to the river with peaches for Sheba. Neither he nor Matilda had meetings or plane spotting tonight. A good thing too. She had been looking tired lately. Forget the war for a whole night …
‘Mr Thompson.’ Mrs Jamieson, his secretary, opened the door. ‘There’s someone to see you. Mrs White. She’s been working down in the carpentry section for the last ten days.’
‘Tell her to come in.’ It meant a few minutes away from paperwork, at least. ‘Yes, Mrs White? Come in and sit down.’
She stood, despite his invitation, twisting her white cap in her hands. Her face was a queer mixture of nervousness and something else that he couldn’t quite identify.
‘Excuse me, I’m sure, Mr Thompson. I’m not one to put myself forwards. But in days like these you got to, don’t you?’
‘I’m sorry, Mrs White. I don’t know what you mean.’
‘Them nasty Nazi spies. Told us on the radio they’re everywhere, ain’t they? Got to look out for them. A place like this would be just what they’d like.’
He pushed his chair back, looked at her more closely. Spite, he thought, that’s what I’m seeing, and pleasure in it too. She’s enjoying this. But s
he was also right. The factory work was top secret, one of the reasons he’d chosen this of all his factories for the production. Everyone knew everybody in a country town. A stranger would not just be noticed, but the neighbours would know his grandmother’s name and what he liked for breakfast before teatime.
‘You think there’s a spy here?’
‘I know so. Sir,’ she added.
‘Who?’
‘That George Green. That’s what he calls himself anyway. His real name is Jürgen Grünberg.’
Tommy looked at her, the malice, the self-importance. ‘How do you know this?’
‘His parents live in Rocky Valley, same as my hubby’s parents. Grünberg they were before the last war, then all at once it was Green. But they was still German. Still are. The old woman still calls herself by a German name.’
‘That doesn’t mean he’s a spy,’ said Tommy quietly.
She looked at him shrewdly. ‘Bet he didn’t put down his real name on those forms we had to fill in to work here, did he? Bet he didn’t say his German cousin came out here, year before the war. Stayed with the family and everything. Bet there’s lots of things he didn’t tell you.’
Tommy wondered if he’d have had the courage to make known his German heritage, if he’d had one, on any official forms at times like these. But this woman was right. The young man should have done so.
‘Very well. Thank you for bringing this to my attention. I’ll take care of it.’
She stared. ‘Is that all? Aren’t you going to call the police? He should be in prison. Passing secrets on. Whole lot of them should be interned.’
‘I said that I’d take care of it. Please don’t mention it to anyone.’ He gave her the blank stare he knew was more effective than any anger. ‘This is now a security matter, Mrs White. You too may be prosecuted if you speak of it to anyone at all. Thank you, Mrs White.’
‘Well, I just did my duty, same as anyone would have. No thought of a reward neither.’
Good. Because you’re not getting one, thought Tommy.
He shut the door after her, and sat at his desk to think. George Green. He knew the lad vaguely. Not in the carpentry section either, nor in the loading bays, but in the design department, worst of all. Few if any of those who put his machines together knew the whole design. But George Green would. Or Jürgen Grünberg.
A quiet lad. Well groomed, handsome even. Well spoken too. He’d done engineering at night school, been working at the factory for almost a year before the war broke out. Reserved occupation, which was why he wasn’t in uniform — though Tommy had never put any obstacles in the way of any man who really needed to fight physically for his country, despite the value of the work they were doing here for the national war effort.
The woman spoke from malice, he had no doubt. But there might be some substance to her allegations.
What should he do now? Nothing in a hurry, he thought. These were people’s lives he was dealing with. The last design change had been almost four months ago — if George Green was really a Nazi spy, he’d have had plenty of time to pass it on. Tommy felt slightly sick at the thought of his plans, so laboriously thought through and rethought, tested and retested, handed on a plate to a German factory, then built and used to kill Australians, not to save them.
No, he needed to talk this through with people he could trust. His wife … he hesitated … and his son.
Dinner was Irish stew, a good one, onion and carrots among the potato, gravy and mutton chops long simmered till they were tender. Green peas, home grown, tomato salad, the tomatoes grown by the Gibber’s Creek Central School and sold to raise money for the war effort, which meant they had tomatoes at every meal as Matilda could never resist a child’s road-side stall. Grilled for breakfast, in sandwiches for lunch and a salad with dinner. Tommy didn’t mind. He liked tomatoes.
He waited till Matilda and Michael had taken out the plates — Mrs Mutton only worked half-days now — and brought in stewed peaches and custard, home-grown fruit, milk and cream and eggs from the property too, the peaches sweet enough to need no rationed sugar. We do well, thought Tommy; the shortages hardly touched them here at Drinkwater. They had always lived mostly on what they grew anyway, not from lack of money, but because it was the only way to get fresh food.
He took a spoonful of stewed peaches. His hand was almost steady these days, despite the stroke ten years earlier. He swallowed before he spoke. ‘There’s something I’d like your opinions about. Classified,’ he added.
Matilda raised her eyebrows. ‘Do we have to sign the Official Secrets Act?’
He gave a slight grin. ‘Even more secret than that.’
Michael laid down his spoon. He looks like his mother, thought Tommy, with a good bit of his great-grandparents too. There was intelligence in those brown eyes and, he reckoned, compassion. Pride in his son was so strong he had to put his spoon down. ‘A Mrs White came to me with a tale today.’ Briefly he told them what the woman had said. ‘The question now is what do I do?’
‘You could fire him,’ said Michael slowly. Tommy noticed that his wife had held back to allow their son to speak first. ‘But if you do that, the police probably would arrest him, and maybe intern his whole family.’
‘Not good places, internment camps,’ said Matilda. Tommy didn’t ask how she knew.
‘But, equally,’ Michael seemed to be treating the matter like a maths equation, ‘you can’t risk her story being true. Or at least you can’t risk the part of her story about being a German spy to be true. Is there any other proof that he might be sending messages? Has he any real links or loyalty to Germany beyond this cousin? If the cousin really was German,’ he added. ‘You know what gossip is like. Flinty would know.’
Of course. Flinty Mack had lived her whole life in Rocky Valley. She’d know the Greens, or Grünbergs. She’d know more about them than the police could ever find out too. More even than her brother Andy, their manager, who’d been away from the valley all through the last war, and most of the post-war period too, first droving and then working here.
‘We’ll drive up there tomorrow.’ Matilda began to clear the plates again. ‘It’s urgent business, so we can use the petrol for this. We can’t wait till we see them at the Christmas party. We need to get it cleared up fast. Either the woman is a troublemaker, in which case we need to stop her before she does any real damage, or …’
Or all my security precautions of the last three years have been for nothing, thought Tommy, and the Germans have everything I have created.
Matilda waved Michael back into his chair. ‘I’ll wash up tonight. You stay and catch up with your father.’
‘Leaving us men to our port and cigars?’ asked Tommy dryly.
It was a joke — even in the old days Drinkwater people had never gone in for the formal routine of ladies retiring and leaving the men to discuss important manly matters over their port.
‘A cup of tea. Fresh too, not stewed — Mah got the rations this morning. And Mrs Mutton made stuffed monkeys.’
‘Can’t do much better than a stuffed monkey,’ said Tommy. Though the biscuits were made without sugar these days, they were sweet enough with a filling of home-dried plums and peaches and apples.
Michael sat back in his chair. He’s grown again, thought Tommy. How had he and Matilda had such tall sons? But then who knew how tall he and she should have been? They’d both been half starved as children, working in the jam factory where he’d first met her when she was a child of twelve — a little skinned rabbit of a thing but, oh, she’d had courage. His ma had made sure he had enough to fill his belly, but it had been mostly bread and jam or treacle duff — tummy stuffers, and not the milk or meat or fresh vegies that gave his boys their height. Not to mention feet like a kangaroo’s.
‘Dad?’
‘What? Sorry, I was far away. Back when I first met your mother.’
Michael nodded. He and Jim knew the story of the jam factory, just like they knew the tale of their gran
dfather, the striking shearer turned swaggie at the billabong whose death had inspired Banjo Paterson’s ‘Waltzing Matilda’. But they only know them as stories, thought Tommy, romance, not the anguish it was then. And the joy. The excitement of simply being young … ‘Sorry, Michael,’ he said again. ‘What did you say?’
Michael gave a half-smile very like his mother’s. ‘How proud I am of you. I … I know it can’t be easy, being a civilian just now.’
Which means some of the boys at school have been ragging you about having a father not in uniform, thought Tommy, though he said nothing. Even if his war work wasn’t vital, no army would have accepted him, not at his age and after the stroke that had half crippled him for a while, and still left him weak on one side. Even before that, the dreadful burn that had ended his career as the jam factory’s odd-job boy had damaged his arm too much for him to be accepted into active service. ‘I’m proud of you too.’
‘And I’m proud of the lot of us.’ Matilda carried in the tea tray. ‘Up ourselves, aren’t we?’
Tommy smiled at her, his beautiful wife. His handsome son. People of integrity. People who cared enough about a man they hadn’t met, and his family, not to condemn him out of hand. Good people. I have been blessed, he thought. So blessed, a family and a job and a land to love.
Chapter 33
Gibber’s Creek Gazette, 20 December 1942
Shire engineer Mr Bill McIvor has informed the Gazette that the new Gibber’s Creek air-raid siren is now ready for testing. It should be heard within five miles of shire offices. Mr McIvor says that Hurricane air-raid sirens powered by compressed air will be sent to all churches in the local area, with air-raid wardens appointed to sound them in the event that enemy planes are spotted. Residents are reminded that they can obtain forms showing the silhouettes of enemy and Allied planes from Council offices, nine-thirty am to four pm Monday to Friday, to avoid mistaken identification.
ROCK FARM, ROCKY VALLEY, NEW SOUTH WALES, AUSTRALIA, 20 DECEMBER 1942
To Love a Sunburnt Country Page 27
