The words rang out as loud and alarming as a gunshot. Angie had switched off her reading light, tucked her copy of The Songs of a Sentimental Bloke under her pillow and turned her face to the wall in the dark narrow space of the sleep-out. The louvred door behind her was closed but even so she could not mistake the panicked rage in Freya’s voice as she read aloud to her sister the contents of a letter from Adam Fox’s solicitor. Her voice was shaking.
Given your past confidential and close relations, my client naturally took on trust your representations to him as to the authenticity of the work which is the subject of your agreement with him. The work in question is currently stored for safekeeping and my client’s intention is to keep it from public view until the war has ended. It is as a result of a private viewing of the work by a close and trusted friend of Mr Fox, who also happens to be expert in art history, that doubts were initially raised about the work’s pedigree.
Further examination by suitably qualified persons reinforced the view that this painting is a forgery. Mr Fox does not impute any malicious motives to you in this matter but regrets to inform you that he cannot justify any further down payments on a work that has little to no market value and would only bring discredit to your father’s reputation.
As an act that he hopes will be understood as one of generosity and good faith, he proposes not to reclaim any monies paid to date. In recognition of your straitened financial circumstances, he also renews his original proposal to you of a transfer of land title by way of a trust arrangement for a period of three years. He hastens to point out that such an arrangement will secure the property from attempts to have it transferred to the Public Trustee as the confiscated property of a registered enemy alien.
In anticipation of your speediest response.
Arthur J Pullen, Solicitor.
‘Liar!’ shouted Freya. ‘The painting is real, I swear it is! You see how he threatens us while pretending to be our friend and protector? He has us at his mercy and will steal our land if it is the last thing he does. Monster!’
Angie lay in the dark, not daring to move. Even though she was now fourteen, moments like these made her feel as vulnerable as a little girl. She thought her heart would break to hear her mother’s distress. Freya’s outburst had woken Greta, of course, and it felt as if the baby’s wailing expressed Angie’s own anxiety.
‘Beruhige dich, liebe Schwester!’ urged Eveline, trying to quieten her distraught sister as best she could. Eveline understood Freya well – her changeable moods, her violent tempers – and could often find ways to console and comfort her. But tonight Freya was beyond such help.
‘It’s all a trick, don’t you see? He is so clever! He set this trap and I have walked right into it. We cannot afford lawyers to do our dirty work for us. He has all the power and we have none.’
As Angie listened to her mother’s rant, a memory swam back to her through the dark waters of that sombre year following Robbie’s death. While her father was staggering under the blows of public disapproval at the hotel, her mother had retreated into a sustained burst of painting in her studio. The memory that struggled up to the surface was a glimpse through the studio door of a large oil painting: a landscape of purple and gold cliffs and silver-green forest.
In the darkness of her bedroom, Angie opened her eyes in a moment of terror. Dear God, was it possible that Freya had lost her mind? Had she in fact planned to deceive Mr Fox with a fake Wolfgang von Gettner for a sum of money and then been found out? Was she so lost in delusion that she now imagined that this fake she had created was in fact real and railed against its discovery? It was too horrible a possibility to contemplate.
The following morning, Angie did not say a word. Freya postponed their lessons and for several days did nothing but sit quietly in the front room. Sometimes she sat alone. Sometimes she sat in companionable silence with Eveline as her sister breastfed Greta or rocked her in her bassinet. After a week of thinking the matter over, she replied to Fox’s solicitor. She also wrote a personal letter to Adam Fox himself.
The following month Angie saw Freya give Eveline enough cash to pay for Greta’s visit to the doctor and medication for her whooping cough. She assumed that her mother and Mr Fox had reached an agreement. Angie was tempted to ask her mother point blank about the cottage, but when she looked at Freya’s pale face, the worry lines imprinted ever deeper across her forehead and the ever-thickening silver hairs at her brow, she decided it could wait.
Astrid and Angie called themselves the ‘Rose Street internees’, imprisoned under their mothers’ joint protection. Their only joy was in each other’s company. Left alone in Mrs Eyl’s front parlour one long rainy winter’s afternoon, they dug out an old board game from the linen cupboard. Courtship and Marriage it was called, the colourful board lavishly illustrated with wedding bells and romantic vignettes of Edwardian couples enjoying picnics and jaunts in their vintage motors. ‘Come on, let’s play!’ said Angie. ‘It looks hilarious!’
They soon discovered that the game was altogether designed from a male suitor’s point of view. From square one – Introduction – each hopeful bachelor threw a die to proceed along a curving, wedding-bell-shaped path. Players advanced by turns across the many stepping stones of courtship: from Picnic, Motor Ride, All Smooth with Family, Parents Charmed and Croquet Party to Proposal, Fancy-dress Ball and Engagement, finally landing on Happy Wedding and matrimonial bliss. Pitfalls along this knotty path included Flirtation, Offend Parents, Rival, Jealousy, Short of Money and Jilted.
They played for a while, putting on mock gentlemanly voices and making silly expostulations such as ‘Egad, that’s just too damned bad!’ or ‘Oh I say, poor show, old chap!’ Astrid and Angie fell about giggling and shushing each other in case Mrs Eyl came in and discovered they were making fun of a favourite girlhood game.
Angie won the first round and Astrid’s mood changed.
‘Shame they didn’t include a square for German, Dirt Poor and Despised,’ she said gloomily as she munched on one of her mother’s pastries.
Angie gave her a hug. ‘Now, come on, don’t be like that. We won’t be trapped like this forever. And guess what? Aunty Eveline told me a new family have moved in on Reilly Street. And they have a son!’
Angie related how Aunty Eveline, while pegging out the washing in the backyard, had surreptitiously let Angie know about Oskar Krause. Eveline had met him last Friday on her way to the clinic with Greta. ‘We spoke briefly. He seemed a very polite young man. Fifteen years old. Going to Liverpool Boys High School. His father is a political journalist. Interned, of course.’
‘And . . . ?’ Angie prompted.
‘And what?’ said Eveline with a teasing smile.
‘What does he look like?’
Oskar Krause was tall for his age, golden-haired, dark-eyed and had lightly tanned muscled arms. In short, he was handsome. Angie was determined to find a way for them to ‘accidentally’ meet.
‘Well, that takes care of you then,’ said Astrid moodily. ‘It was nice being your friend. Come by and visit whenever you can spare the time.’
Angie thumped Astrid with one of Mrs Eyl’s hand-embroidered cushions. ‘Don’t be such a ninny! We haven’t even met him yet. And anyway, our friendship comes first.’
Astrid smiled a little but she still looked unconvinced. ‘Have you ever been in love?’ she asked.
The question took Angie completely off guard. Tears pricked at the corner of her eyes. She had not thought about Robbie for such a long time. Should she tell Astrid? The temptation to unburden herself of her secret past was great. It would either strengthen their bond or destroy it. She decided to take the risk and unfolded the history of her childhood friend and his death in detail.
Astrid was lost for words, not something that happened very often. ‘It’s a story worthy of a Wagnerian opera,’ she said at last. ‘You are such an interesting person, Angie Wood. Which is probably why I like you so much.’
Oskar was handsome.
And tall. Allowed out for a short excursion to the post office to mail a parcel for Mrs Eyl, Angie and Astrid encountered him one Monday morning as he was leaving the house for school. Much to Astrid’s dismay, Angie hailed him in German: ‘Wo gehen Sie, Mein Herr?’
Oskar spun around, a scowl of alarm on his face, and rushed towards the two girls. ‘For heaven’s sake, not so loud! Are you crazy? What if the neighbours hear?’
Angie apologised. ‘It got your attention, though. Can we walk with you? We live over in Rose Street. No more German, I promise.’
By a stroke of good fortune, a local publican had commissioned a painting from Freya for his hotel. She insisted on being paid in cash – and not beer as he originally proposed – and so she was kept busy, using the wash shed out the back as her makeshift studio. Aunty Eveline asked that Angie and Astrid keep her company on her afternoon walks to the park with Greta now the spring weather was here and Freya welcomed the solitude to work. Thus did Angie’s aunt conspire with the two girls to meet up once or twice a week with Oskar for twenty minutes or so at the park on his way home from school.
‘If mother ever finds out . . .’ Angie had objected at first when Eveline put the idea to her with a wink.
‘Then I shall remind her of what she was like at your age. And anyway, it’s all an innocent lark. I am your chaperone and Oskar is a true gentleman.’
The two girls and the tall boy walked and talked under the trees. They tossed sticks into the river and cracked jokes. Oskar was talented at boxing and showed how he had dealt with the Hun-baiting bullies at school. Encouraged by both her new friends, Astrid even smuggled her violin out of the house and gave a short concert by the willows. Galahs shrieked and whistled in the distance as the violin swooped and sang. Oskar did cartwheels in appreciation of the performance.
It soon became obvious that Oskar liked Angie and Astrid – and especially Angie. The painter’s daughter and the journalist’s son coyly exchanged notes in which they expressed their appreciation of each other. Angie could feel her pulse race whenever the golden-haired young man came near. His face sweetened her dreams. She had sworn never to let herself feel this way again, but she couldn’t help it. She had already begun to let her guard down. Maybe it was time to let Robbie go finally and put all that pain behind her.
The moment of truth came one magical spring afternoon. The air was soft and the lemon fluff of wattle blossom floated on the breeze. Oskar and Angie found themselves alone in the park, hidden briefly from Astrid and Eveline. They had their backs pressed against the smooth bark of a willow tree.
Their conversation had dropped away to a long silence. Angie looked up at him. Oskar’s dark brown eyes had narrowed to a gaze of intense seriousness and his brows were knitted. She nodded as if in answer to an unsaid question and Oskar leaned closer and kissed her tenderly, if a little awkwardly, on the lips. Angie felt her heart bolt and a feeling of bliss and possibility unlike anything she had ever known flowed through her whole body.
‘Angie? Oskar? Where are you?’
They both heard Astrid’s sulky cry. It sounded as if they were kids playing hide-and-seek and she was put out that they had stayed hidden so long. They grinned at each other, and Oskar squeezed Angie’s hand tightly before they emerged from behind the tree.
After a month, Eveline decided that they should introduce Oskar to Freya. ‘We can’t keep him a secret forever. Better to tell the truth now than be found out later!’ She was right of course and they broke the news to Angie’s mother that she wanted to invite a boy over to tea. ‘He’s a fine young fellow,’ attested Eveline.
Freya took the news well when it was explained how they had met at the park one day. ‘Well, I guess it can’t do any harm. His father is a journalist, you say?’
Oskar came with excellent family credentials. His father had been a writer for a left-wing workers’ paper – which was why he had been interned – and his great-aunt had been active in the Australian suffragette movement. An invitation was sent to him and his mother to come for tea.
Oskar and Mrs Sascha Krause duly came, as did Astrid and Mrs Eyl. Eveline and Freya prepared a Bienenstich or ‘bee-sting’ cake for the occasion. Even Mrs Eyl was impressed. While the adults shared their stories of suffering, Angie, Astrid and Oskar exchanged meaningful looks. It was strange to have their secret friendship out in the open like this but it was also a welcome relief. How good it felt to have friends, thought Angie. Friendship provided a refuge against the hostility and cold indifference of the world. She had felt so terribly alone in Meadow Springs. Now, though she missed her garden and her view of the valley, the friendship of Astrid and Oskar was a marvellous compensation for her forced exile in the hot bleak wasteland of Liverpool.
Later, tea and cake was followed by a concert in the front parlour. Accompanied by Eveline on piano, Astrid performed Brahms’ Violin Concerto in D Major, its beauty eclipsing for the moment the ugliness of the world at large. Surrounded by friends and family, Angie studied each face transported by the sublime music and felt her heart swell with hope and love for them all.
Eveline came into the cottage trembling, her face as white as a sheet. It was Anzac Day, 25 April 1918. News of the great German spring offensive on the Western Front was everywhere, the Kaiser’s last desperate throw of the dice.
That evening Eveline opened the letterbox and found dog excrement mixed with broken glass and a piece of paper that simply said ‘BOCHE SHIT-EATERS’. The two sisters hugged each other and prayed that the nightmare would not begin again. They did not tell Angie.
How was this fair? They were two poor women living with a young girl and a baby. What harm had they ever done anyone? They were always courteous to people they met on the street when they took Greta for a walk in her pram. They paid their bills at the butcher’s and the grocer’s and the doctor’s like everyone else. They had even used some of their meagre savings for a War Loan subscription and Eveline’s husband had died fighting for Australia. They were Australian citizens. They were patriots. They did not deserve to be treated this way.
As she walked home from her violin lesson with Mr Weiss the following day, Astrid was confronted by a wild-eyed man who spat at her and yelled, ‘Boche bitch!’ He snatched at the violin case and it slipped from Astrid’s grasp and crashed to the footpath. The instrument was badly damaged and would cost money they did not have to be repaired. Angie tried to comfort her afterwards but Astrid was heartbroken. ‘I just don’t understand it. I don’t know what we have done wrong.’
They found their neighbours’ pet schnauzer, Suzie, dead, poisoned, in the back lane a day later. Then the vile letters began to arrive under the front doors of every German family on Rose Street. Stones were thrown through windows. Buckets of blood were splashed across fences. Graffiti screamed: HUN SCUM GO HOME.
Freya did not bother Freddie with any of these troubles. Even as she privately worried about her husband’s worsening state of mind, she was forced to make excuses for their less-frequent visits to the camp. The truth was that she and Angie had become afraid to catch the train from Liverpool to Holsworthy. And with good reason.
It was a Sunday afternoon in mid-May. Angie kept looking over her shoulder, convinced that the woman in the raincoat a few yards behind them had been shadowing Angie and her mother as they walked from Rose Street to the train station. She kept telling herself she must be imagining things; the unpleasant events and sleepless nights of the last few weeks had them all spooked. Even so, on the railway platform, Angie sensed the figure of the woman draw closer.
Then, without warning, the stranger lunged at Freya, screaming at the top of her voice: ‘Murderer! Murderer! You killed my brother at Polygon Wood!’
A murmur of dismay went through the crowd of soldiers from the Liverpool camp who were waiting to go on leave to Sydney. The stationmaster rushed forward, followed closely by three men in uniform.
‘Whoa! Hang on there! Take it easy!’ Angie noticed how solicitous these men were toward
s her mother as they did their best to restrain and calm her attacker.
‘Don’t you understand?’ the deranged women cried at the soldiers as they pinned her arms. ‘These are the Kaiser’s whores. They gave birth to the monsters who murdered poor Angus. Such a sweet boy. Just like you. How can you let these demons walk free?’
Angie was afraid now. This woman’s revelation about Angie and Freya being German and her appeal to the brotherhood of soldiers would no doubt tip this confrontation in her favour. Angie expected every soldier on the platform to turn on them.
‘Please, miss, we understand how you feel, we really do,’ reasoned the shortest of the three privates, a blond-haired young man with sad eyes, ‘but I’m sure these ladies do not mean you any harm. Our fight is with the Hun. Over there, not here.’
Angie studied the young soldier’s face. He was not that much older than her. Something about his freckled nose and dark eyes reminded her of Robbie. And his lick of blond hair made her think of Oskar. She was deeply touched by his words. I’m sure these ladies do not mean you any harm. He put the case in their defence so simply and sincerely. He seemed an honourable man, no less a soldier trained to kill but not an unthinking brute either.
But the reaction that surprised her the most was her own when she looked at the face of their attacker. Realising she had not won over these men, the woman hung her head in defeat. When she looked up again, Angie could see the woman’s face had crumpled from an expression of outrage to one of total anguish. With the hardness melted away, she looked much younger, possibly no older than twenty or so.
What tore at Angie was her expression of utter bewilderment. With that look, Angie felt a bright sliver of insight enter her heart. She suddenly understood that this attack was the only act of public grief this woman was allowed. Widows were expected to bear their suffering with quiet dignity: they could shed tears but could never give voice to their lust for vengeance. Who else could this wretched woman blame for her brother’s death? Who else could she punish? She was a frail woman, powerless to act and without the soldier’s sanction to kill. No wonder she seemed lost.
Palace of Tears Page 16
