War's End

by Victoria Bowen

  Billy’s face lit up. ‘I’ll see,’ he said, and took off like a racehorse.

  We made the train with time to spare, and piled into the carriage with the fewest people in it. Even then we were squashed and glad to get off at Leighton and dash across to the changing sheds.

  Billy and Jack were already in the water when Martha and I came out.

  ‘Beat you in,’ I shouted and raced over the hot sand into the clear, cool water. It took some time to wade out to where Jack and Billy were showing off taking turns to boost each other out of the water and toss them as far as they could.

  ‘Me too,’ I shouted and they joined hands to give me the biggest lift up and out. I’m sure I made the best splash of all.

  Martha said she was happy just floating.

  After lunch, Jack, Billy and me started on a sandcastle.

  ‘You need some decorations,’ said Pa, and he got Mum to take off her shoes and stockings and walk down the beach with him looking for shells for the best castle in the world. When they came back with a big cuttlefish for the drawbridge and seaweed for the flags, it was even better.

  The hour for no swimming was up, but we had to dig a channel from the sea to the moat first. Martha strolled down the beach for a last swim and suggested we practise diving under the waves as they came in bigger and stronger now. When we’d had enough, Jack and Billy bombed the castle. I wish they hadn’t but I had a go as well since it was already smashed.

  Late in the afternoon Mum called us in from poking around in the rock pools. Pa stood up from his seat under the big pine tree and stretched his back. Martha had already changed back into her frock, so she just had to pack her book away. Really, she is going to end up looking like a book. At the station we all sat quietly waiting for the train. We were so full of sun and water we couldn’t even speak. That night Pa and Jack walked up the street to buy fish and chips for tea.

  Martha says Mum is letting the purse strings loose because she thinks Dad’ll turn up any time and she won’t have to worry any more.

  EVERYDAY WORK WENT ON. FIRST THING EVERY Monday, in the heat of summer or the frosts of winter, Pa filled the boiler-tub and started the fire under it before we even got up. In the holidays Martha and me were expected to help.

  ‘Come on, Nell,’ Mum said. ‘Time for the washing.’

  We’d already melted the soap and turps and ammonia on Sunday, and while I tipped the nasty mess into the boiling water and swished it around Mum sorted the clothes, putting aside any that were stained. She rubbed lemon juice on the bits that were dirty, rolled them up and put them to one side for a little time. While the first wash of whites bubbled away I kept poking the clothes down until Mum thought they were clean enough. I don’t mind doing this. Jabbing clothes and watching them sink under the water is very satisfying.

  Martha would come and help then. She’s better at lifting the clothes from the copper into the rinsing tub. They’re too heavy for me and because I’m not tall enough the water runs down the clothes-stick and burns my hands. As it is I have to stand on the box to turn the handle as the washing goes through the wringer and into the blue rinse and back again. After the first ten minutes sweat is prickling our backs and rolling down our faces. Mum’s and Martha’s faces are bright red so I suppose mine is too. Red faces, red stinging hands, aching backs – washing is very time-consuming and hard work. I’m going to marry someone who is rich enough to get help in.

  Mum and Martha hung out the first load while I poked the next lot in the copper.

  Since the washing dries so quickly in summer, Mum thought we should keep going with the ironing while we were in the mood.

  What mood? I wondered. But I wasn’t game enough to say that out aloud to Mum. So I sprinkled and rolled the shirts and blouses and skirts and pinnies and dresses and petticoats while Mum and Martha, flush-faced, one at each end of the ironing blanket on the table, thumped irons down while the other ones sat on the kitchen stove heating up. I love it when Mum or Martha lifts a new iron off the range and spits on it. If it spits back, it is ready.

  I think Mum’s hoping that when Dad gets back she might get one of those new electric ones for Christmas.

  Pa’s wood round isn’t as heavy in summer as it is in winter. His customers are only interested in wood for the stoves, not heating their houses. So he spends more time in the garden.

  Mum’s roses are full blown in the heat. There are nineteen bushes and Mum and Pa dead-head them most days and tip the washing water over them after breakfast to kill the aphids. I try to get ahead of them to rescue any ladybirds in their way.

  Dad always gives Mum a rose bush on their wedding anniversary. It’s a bit soppy but the roses do look nice and they’ve just about filled the beds along the front fence. Each year since Dad’s been away Pa sends him the latest rose catalogue and Dad chooses the one he likes and sends money to Pa to buy it for him. Mum cries each time Pa comes home with one in a hessian bag and while he carefully settles it in the hole he’s dug and fills it in with his special compost.

  This year she laughs and joshes Pa to make sure he’s got plenty of space lined up for more. ‘There’s the whole side fence to go,’ she says.

  Pa really prefers his vegetables. And Jack and me are his special helpers.

  Summer is our best time in the garden. Best of all is that the grapes are ripe. Big, fat, juicy pale green grapes hang from the long trellis that goes half the length of the fence next to the Brownlows. I make a guts of myself with grapes and drive Martha mad by sitting up in bed at night munching through a bunch one grape at a time, spitting the seeds back into the bowl. I love the sudden swish of sweetness in my mouth. Martha says she can’t concentrate waiting for the sound of the pip splatting into the bowl; I say she must have extra sensitive ears if she can hear that.

  Summer is the time for drying the grapes into sultanas. Me and Jack climb up onto the wash-house roof and Pa and Martha edge the big wire mesh drying frames up to us so we can lay them out across the roof and spread out the grapes pulled up in buckets. I have to get up every second day to turn them. We can’t do that late in the day because the roof is too hot to stand on, so that’s another first-thing-in-the-morning job for me while Jack goes to work.

  Mum used to grumble that it was cheaper and easier to buy fruit and veg from the grocer, but Pa said, ‘You never know when food might get short.’ And he was right. The longer the war went on, the less fruit and vegies there were in the shops.

  JACK AND PA FOLDED UP THE TENT AND STORED IT away in the shed the day before we went back to school. I couldn’t see why going to school made it impossible to sleep outside.

  Mum snorted, ‘Time to get back into a routine, Nell. They’ll be expecting more from you this year now you’re in Standard Six. High School next year.’

  Martha didn’t mind going back to our hot, airless bedroom.

  ‘Really, Nell, it’s easier to work there and it helps having our school things handy in the morning. Sleeping outside is a holiday thing.’

  You have to wonder sometimes if Martha is alright in the head. First she wants to sleep inside in our hot bedroom and then she really wants to go back to school. There she was early Monday morning dressed in her navy uniform with her school bag already full of books. Mum had to growl at her to get her to sit down for porridge.

  I was dressed up too. Mum perked up the frills on my pinafore and kissed me goodbye when I started on the walk up Monger Street. It was already too hot to walk on the road so I had to hop from tree to tree. It was my first time going to school on my own and although kids called out and waved it was a lonely walk.

  May was at the gate waiting for me as she always did.

  ‘What’s the plan this year,’ she asked as we drifted over the girls’ playground to be first in the Standard Six girls line. ‘First in on first day’ was our motto for the start of each year. It gave us the pick of the desks in our new room. Of course some teachers rearranged us after a few days but we always stayed together.


  ‘At the front by the fire,’ I said. ‘Being at the back last year was too cold in winter.’

  ‘Agreed,’ said May. ‘Anyway, I think teachers look over the front rows and watch the back of the room more.’

  We spat on our palms and shook hands like Jack had shown me.

  And, wonders of wonders, there was a new teacher who didn’t know Martha. Who didn’t look at me and wonder at how different I was to Martha, how unscholarly I was in comparison. Mr Brooks had come back from France. He had a nasty cough and kids whispered that he’d been gassed.

  Some of the boys pestered him the first day. ‘How many Huns did you kill, Sir?’

  ‘Were you really gassed, Sir?’

  ‘Did you get lots of trophies, Sir?’

  ‘Were you frightened, Sir?’

  That was the only question he answered.

  ‘Of course I was frightened. You’d have to be insane not to be.’ He said, ‘The next boy or’ … he turned to the girls’ side of the classroom and bowed slightly towards us … ‘girl who asks a personal or just plain stupid question will get the cuts. Be warned and understand this now and for the rest of the year. I am not prepared to discuss what it was like at Gallipoli or in France. And I’ll remind you that the Germans are people just like you and me.’

  Eddie Baker couldn’t resist. ‘Not like me, Sir.’

  For someone who was supposed to have been gassed, Mr Brooks moved quickly. He was down the aisle and had Eddie by the ear and out the front by his table before anyone realised what he was doing.

  ‘Hand out, lad,’ he said, taking his cane down from on top of the cupboard.

  And that was the end of personal or just plain stupid questions.

  After a month, Mr Brooks called me up to his desk.

  ‘Nell,’ he said, ‘you appear to have an ability with numbers. I’d like to set you some harder work. Would you be willing to try some special homework?’

  And that’s how I learned I was as good as Martha at arithmetic. And it was when I decided to try very hard for Mr Brooks because I saw I could be smart and I could be part of Billy and Jack’s plans. I’d be their bookkeeper.

  ‘Mr Brooks says I’m good at arithmetic,’ I told Martha that night.

  ‘Didn’t you realise that?’ she answered smiling at me. ‘You’ve always been good with numbers. Much better than me. I have to work hard at maths and you just do it naturally. Another year, Nellie, and I’ll be asking you for help.’

  Goodness, I thought.

  PA REACHED INTO HIS POCKET AND PULLED OUT A paper bag. ‘I’d forgotten your mum slipped these into my pocket as we left home. Have a couple to keep you going, Nell.’ He offered the bag to Dad too. ‘We had a good summer this year, Harry.’ And, winking at Nell, he went on, ‘Enjoy some of the fruits of our labours.’

  ‘Wish we’d had some of these in England,’ said Dad, pulling a whole bunch of raisins out of the bag. ‘We were camped on Salisbury Plain waiting for a ship. Cold and the food wasn’t at all good. I couldn’t settle and began walking out again.

  ‘There was a village not far from the camp and I made friends with a bloke there. I’d gone into their church to look at the woodwork and there was this man polishing a brass plaque. “Sorry,” I said. “Am I here at the wrong time?”

  ‘“Nay, lad” – he called me “lad”, so that gives you an idea of how old he was – “I’m just keeping m’ boys bright. Bill Pearson’s m’ name.”

  ‘I looked at the brass. It was to the memory of Robert William Pearson and William Albert Pearson, both killed at Messines. “Both your sons?” I asked.

  ‘“Son and grandson. Just me left now and m’ son’s wife and three too young to go.” ’

  ‘Tskk,’ went Pa.

  That’d be like losing Dad and Jack at the same time, I thought. What a blow.

  ‘I told him I’d been there. At Messines.

  ‘He asked me to come and have a cup of tea, and we walked to his cottage just three houses down. Slowly, because he was old and in no hurry.

  ‘It got so I called in most days. Bill earned a little extra working in the garden at the big house. Been there all his life, he said. Retired just before the war but went back to help out what with all the men away.

  ‘It belonged to the local bigwig. A Mr Aldridge. Bill took me to meet him. Huge house about the size of the post office in Perth.’

  I gasped. This Mr Aldridge must have a very, very big family.

  ‘Nice man. He and Bill had grown up at the same time, Bill working for Mr Aldridge’s dad. We were drinking our tea one day Mr Aldridge asked Bill if he remembered the last time Robert was home.

  ‘“Aye”, said Bill. “Just ’fore he went back and got killed.”

  ‘“That was a brave sight,” said Mr Aldridge, “those boys cutting that field.”

  ‘They sat for some time thinking.

  ‘“Bobby was always a good wheel-man,” old Bill said at last. “Kept the rhythm right.”

  ‘He turned to me: “A brave sight it were; young men in their strength moving in a straight line, swinging their scythes on the call. I’ve been on a line of ten in m’day. But four was enough this time to make a show. Of them, you know, only Bert the smith’s boy come home and he was gassed and can’t move quick-like.”

  ‘“That was a right day, wasn’t it, Mr Edward,” he said, turning to the other old man.’

  Pa stood up and, swaying with the rocking of the train, started to swing his arms and stamp his feet. Dad laughed and joined him. I’ve never seen such silly billies – Pa calling out ‘sweep’ and the pair swinging their arms at the same time, tramping on the spot and staggering as the train rocked back and forward. I was glad we were the only ones in the carriage.

  They didn’t keep it up for long and both fell back onto their seats happy with themselves.

  ‘Oh,’ said Dad, ‘I needed that.’

  Then he gathered himself together and went on.

  ‘When Mr Aldridge found I’d trained as a carpenter he asked if I’d do some work around the house. So few tradesmen left, he explained. There was nothing happening at the camp so I said I would provided he understood I could be off without notice.

  ‘It kept me occupied for a couple of months and paid enough for me to shout Bill at the pub in the evening before I headed back to camp; and to put a little bit by as well.’

  Dad turned to me. ‘The house was like nothing you’ve ever seen, Nellie. Big stone place. You could fit our whole house into the big room. The hall, Mr Aldridge called it. It took my breath away. Called for respect, like a church. The bedrooms were all upstairs; ten at least and a grand lav with pictures around the inside of the bowl.’

  Pa laughed and muttered something to Dad. I caught the words ‘shitting’ and ‘cherubs’ but that was all. I know the first one, of course, but I haven’t heard of cherubs. Perhaps they shit a lot.

  Dad cleared his throat. ‘Seat was a nice piece of work in itself. Padded leather. No cold bums in that house. Well, not upstairs anyway. The banisters of the stairs to the upstairs were a bit wonky and Mr Aldridge wanted some of the uprights replaced.

  ‘Talk about planning for the future. We went down to one of the barns out the back and it was stacked with timber. Mr Aldridge explained that his father, and probably his grandfather, had laid it down. There was some beautiful old walnut. Lovely to work with. And there was a lovely set of tools to go with it.’

  ‘“They belong to Manners,” said Mr Aldridge, “the estate carpenter. Take care of them, won’t you. He’s still in hospital. Not too sure when he’ll be right to come home. Don’t want to put someone on until we know how he is.”

  ‘Mr Aldridge’s son came down from London one day. Must have liked what he saw and asked me to go back with him to London to work on his house. Called me “my man”. He was one of those spit and polish officers I bet never saw a trench. I told him “no”. He was not well pleased, but there was no way I was going to work for one of them. Mr Aldridge
took you at your worth; his son saw you as something to use. And often not well either.’

  Dad was quiet for a moment. Then: ‘I wonder how Bill got on. I didn’t have time to let him know we were off. He’d understand, though.’

  Imagine walking upstairs to your own bedroom. If Dad had told me that before I’d stayed on my own in the camp I’d have thought a whole bedroom to yourself the best thing in the world. I’m not too sure now. Martha’s a pain but it’s comfy knowing she’s there. A lav close by would be handy though. Not having to hang on to the last moment and then wake Martha to walk out in the dark with you would be a blessing.

  Our house is Pa’s house really, but when Grandma (who I never knew) died just after Mum and Dad were married he asked them to live with him. Pa owns the block across the road too and he keeps the wood for his business there. It was a hard time back then and Dad couldn’t get work as a furniture maker so he joined Pa in the wood business.

  Pa’s room is at the front of the house and none of us, not even Martha, is allowed in unless Pa says we can. As well as his bed, there’s a big old armchair and three shelves with books on them. Martha’s allowed to read them, and sometimes Jack will ask Pa if he can have a look at one of them. They’re not all real books. Pa sometimes buys penny dreadfuls up at Billie’s dad’s newsagency. I suspect they’re really for Jack, but Pa doesn’t let on in case Mum says not to waste money.

  Martha says Pa used to spend a lot of time sitting in his armchair reading but since Dad’s been away he has to spend most of his spare time in the garden. I think he misses the time with his books. Grandma taught him to read after they were married and I’m sure he thinks he’s letting her down if he hasn’t got a book on the go, especially since Grandma looks down on him sternly from her thick wooden frame on the wall.

  The house is made of wood, not grand like stone, but we have a big block and it’s just right for us. If you come up the front steps and go around the side verandah instead of through the front door you come to the most wonderful bit. It’s a door, and the top half is all glass in different colours. My favourites are the bits that shine a deep mysterious red when the sun is low or when it’s dark and the sitting room light is on. One red is wrong. That’s the bit I stuck my hand through when Jack slammed the door on me when we were playing chasey once. Pa couldn’t get the same colour again. There was so much blood Mum forgot to tell me off, but sometimes now she looks at the wrong bit of glass and then looks at me ‘in sorrow’, as Mr Wilson says.