War's End

by Victoria Bowen

  The nurse nodded. ‘That makes sense. Now, still be careful and follow all the flu regulations. Inoculation helps keep it away but it doesn’t work for everyone. Don’t take any chances.’

  That day a telegram arrived from Dad. It just said, ‘Albany. Back soon. Harry.’

  ‘ALBANY,’ SAID PA SMILING AT DAD. ‘IT’S YEARS SINCE we were there. Liz had just left school and we took a break over January to get out of the heat. Lovely place in summer. Cool and green. Though a dip in the ocean took your breath away at first. What’s it like in winter, Harry?’

  ‘Cold,’ said Dad. You could see him almost shiver as he remembered it. ‘The winter rain had set in. It’s a cruel, cold rain there, straight off the South Pole, I reckon. It seeps into you. I thought I’d learnt all about cold in France, but Albany has its own special cold.’

  ‘Pretty town, though,’ said Pa. ‘We stayed with a woman who couldn’t do enough for us. Good food and as much of it as we wanted. Liz – your gran,’ said Pa turning to me, ‘not your mum – was so pleased to be “in a civilised spot” she insisted we go out for afternoon tea every day. Don’t know that Liz – your mum, Nell – was so keen on Albany. She’d just met your dad. Turned a few heads of the boys down from Perth, though.’

  Dad laughed. ‘Not too many of them there when we were. We did well with our billets too. Quite a few of the locals were more than happy to take us in and make a few bob from the army. I think they were having a hard time of it after the war.

  ‘And a dip in the ocean did more than take your breath away, William. I went swimming in the ocean just the once. It was so cold I was in and out in one bound.’

  We were cold all the time. I’m sure Martha was trying to get Moggie to sleep with her instead of me to keep her warm. Though, to be fair, she didn’t tell Mum on me when she found him sleeping down my sheets. One blanket, a dressing gown, a cat and an old eiderdown weren’t really enough.

  Pa grabbed me when we got back from the inoculations. ‘Can you give me a hand unpicking the old chaff bags, Nell?’ he asked.

  I looked at my arm significantly but he ignored that.

  He’d already done some, but we needed plenty more before we had enough hessian to cover the new wall to Jack’s room. Nasty scratchy stuff it was and it took us ages to get enough. We had to work in the stables with the doors open for light and the wind channelled through the cracks in the walls and rushed in the door making a fine old breeze. But, by the time we’d beaten all the chaff out of the bags we were warmed up.

  ‘Jack,’ said Pa, ‘is going to have to wait another day for his wall. I’m puffed out and we deserve a few hours’ rest.’

  Over tea that night Pa told Mum we needed a better plan. She needed to be seen out and about or people would talk.

  ‘I couldn’t do that,’ said Mum. ‘I might spread the flu.’

  ‘You accepted the possibility of that when you wouldn’t let the doctor come,’ answered Pa.

  Mum looked horrified.

  ‘Do you want to change your mind?’ asked Pa.

  Mum shook her head, so Pa went on. He agreed with Mum, he said, that we needed to keep the wood yard going or we would have trouble with money; we needed a sharing of jobs; and we needed a bit of time off for everyone, otherwise we would all end up sick or too tired to look after Jack properly.

  So here’s how we worked.

  First thing each morning, Pa would fill the copper and light the fire, like he always did. He’d feed Bessie while I fed the chooks like I always did. Then we’d have breakfast as a family, together. If anything special came up, that’s when we would plan what to do.

  After that, Pa would help Jack with his bodily functions, as he called them. That meant trying to get Jack to piss in a bottle.

  Mum had me picking lemons by the dozens and squeezing them into water for Jack to drink.

  ‘He hasn’t got scurvy,’ Pa said.

  ‘It can’t hurt,’ Mum said.

  Dressed in her new coveralls and with a mask over her face, Mum would wash Jack all over and change his pyjamas and his sheets. When she left Jack’s room she’d drop his dirties into a big bucket of carbolic together with her overall and mask.

  Jack had his own room now.

  Pa and me had finished unpicking the bags and had tacked them up on Pa’s frame, though we couldn’t do anything about a door just yet. ‘Can’t manage that,’ said Pa. He tacked an old sheet over the hole to try to keep some of the cold out and the influenza in.

  ‘Lots of fresh air,’ said Pa. ‘Just what’s needed for sick people so long as it isn’t too cold.’ Mum and Pa keep changing hot bottles to keep Jack warm. Martha and me didn’t mind going without ours as it was ‘for a good cause’.

  While Mum was doing Jack’s morning wash, me and Martha washed up and made soup – chicken soup from bones, potato and cabbage soup from the garden. Once Martha even broke eggs into hot water.

  That was the time Pa went across the road and started cutting up the wood for that day’s deliveries. He was busy again now that it was cold and he missed Jack’s help in the morning before he went into work. It took much longer for him to cut enough for what he needed, and he was later each day coming back to hitch Bessie up for the wagon.

  Straight after Mum had finished washing Jack, she and Martha took everything out of the carbolic and boiled them up and hung them out to dry. Martha did most of it, because Mum kept stopping every so often to check on Jack. I helped Martha if the washing wasn’t finished by the time I’d done my work.

  Mum would put on a proper dress and when Pa had finished loading he’d put a blanket over Bessie and leave her in the back lane while he read the paper and kept an eye on Jack for the time it took for Mum to do the shopping. Flour one day, a little sugar the next. Oats, a few lollies, Mum strung them out so she was seen. It was the quietest time of the day with the fewest people around and she was quick about it.

  Pa would take a sandwich with him when Mum got back and he could set off on his rounds.

  It all worked very well and Pa said we worked like Trojans. I wondered if the Trojans were as tired as us.

  After a few days Mum said I should take a break, so I scooted out into the back lane and there was Billy. Just as he’d promised, he’d come every day.

  WE TOOK THE LONG WAY ROUND TO THE STATION SO no one would see us. Billy wormed his way behind a fat old palm and waved for me to follow. He’d found a space close to a boarded-up window of the waiting room. It hadn’t been done properly and you could easily see through the slats. It was empty and it smelled of carbolic, though I did wonder if that was just my nose full of it from home. I couldn’t turn to Billy because of the squeeze we were in, but I felt his eyes on me.

  ‘What’s going on, Nell?’ he asked. ‘Your mum comes out each day, scurries around and can’t wait to disappear back into the house. Why isn’t she getting her order delivered like usual? We never see Jack, and only catch glimpses of you or Martha. Your grandpa is not chatting to people, just unloading and whisking away.’

  ‘Jack’s hurt his leg badly and Mum’s looking after him.’

  ‘You can’t keep that story going for much longer.’

  I stiffened.

  Billy went on. ‘Tell your grandpa I’ll come round to help with the wood chopping and with the deliveries to give him a break. If he writes out his bills, I’ll collect the money. I won’t come up to the house unless you ask me.’

  At that moment we heard a truck pull up on the road outside. We peered out from around the palm and some minutes later saw two men coming up the slope to the station. They wore long, shapeless white coveralls with only their shoes poking out. Their heads were completely covered, their eyes showed through narrow slits. Between them, they carried a man on a stretcher. You could only see his face but there was a tinge of blue to it. Even his lips were blue. A few minutes after they passed the palm they turned into the waiting room and we could hear them shuffling around it.

  ‘Over here, Bill,’ mum
bled one through his mask. ‘It’s a bit more out of the wind.’

  And they put the blue-lipped man down, his stretcher just inches off the floor. One said, ‘Poor bugger. He’s not going to make it.’

  Jack is not that colour. Perhaps he will make it.

  They brought two more people up. The third one was a girl and a nurse walked next to her. As they were lowering her stretcher to the ground, we heard the train whistle as it came into the station. One of the faceless men waved at the train driver. The couple of people who had arrived on the platform stepped back smartly, and one turned away.

  The Death Train pulled up. It had only two carriages and a guard’s van. As soon as it stopped, another man wearing the same sort of cover-ups jumped out of the guard’s van and opened one of the carriages. The people waiting on the station for the next train moved back even further, except for one boy who looked through the door opening right in front of him. In the gloom you could see beds with a person on one of them already.

  ‘Bugger off, you ghoul,’ shouted the guard, and the boy turned and ran.

  ‘Picked up between Freo and here,’ whispered Billy.

  One by one the ambulance men carried our three people into the carriage and lifted each of them carefully onto a bed. The guard waved a flag and the ambulance men carried the rolled up stretchers back down the slope.

  ‘Where do they take them?’ I asked Billy.

  ‘Dunno.’ He turned to me. ‘They go off to die and at midnight the train comes back with them in coffins. And sometimes there are more coffins waiting at the station to be picked up.’

  I was impressed, but … ‘How do you know that?’ I asked.

  It was a silly question, because Billy knows everything about the railway. His dad was always early to bed as he had to pick up the papers dropped off from the first morning train out of Perth. His mum kept the same hours, so Billy was usually the only one up late at night. They didn’t know that Billy often slipped out to watch the trains.

  ‘I’ve seen them,’ he answered, putting on his know-all face. ‘It didn’t sound right, a train stopping at that time of the night, so, after a couple of times, I went and had a look. There was one coffin on the station with two men from Dale’s with it – you know, Nell, the undertakers from Subi. When the train stopped, they shoved it on. It comes every night now. Sometimes there’s a coffin waiting, sometimes not. But it always stops just in case.’

  ‘That’s horrible,’ I said. ‘Who sends them off to die?’

  ‘I think it’s the doctor,’ said Billy. ‘He’s getting rid of the ones that aren’t going to make it.’

  ‘Doctor McKenzie!’ I squeaked. ‘He wouldn’t do that! He always gives you a jelly bean when you go to him.’

  ‘These are tough times,’ said Billy with a little bit of superiority in his voice. ‘All the doctors have to do what the government says. And the government has to act in the best interest of most people.’ There’s definitely a touch of Jack’s boss to Billy. Unless it’s what his dad has been saying and Billy is just copying him.

  ‘But who’d send their family away?’ I wondered. ‘You can’t send people off to die alone. Does that mean their families don’t want them?’

  ‘Could be,’ said Billy. ‘Perhaps they don’t have families. Or perhaps they’re going to die anyway. Perhaps the families don’t have a say. The government is making new rules all the time.’

  I was glad that Mum hadn’t let anyone know about Jack. They might have taken him as well as quarantining us.

  I TOLD PA WHAT BILLY HAD SAID, ABOUT COMING around to help.

  ‘Can he be trusted?’ he asked. ‘Really trusted?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, and thought a bit, ‘I’d trust him with anything.’

  ‘You sure?’ asked Pa looking me in the eyes.

  ‘Yes.’

  I liked Billy more than anyone. Apart from Mum and Pa and Jack, of course. And Martha, I suppose. He never bullied or teased. He smiled a lot. Teachers liked him because he was honest and never sucked up to them. I liked him because he thought about what I’d like to do as well as what he wanted to do. Not always. When he was with the other boys he didn’t take any notice of me, but that was all right. He had to do that. Just like I had to play with May and the other girls and not let the boys join in. But Billy wouldn’t stab you in the back, or let you down. He was a bit like Jack. Thoughtful.

  Pa and me got on with turning the compost.

  Right now most of the long rows of mounded soil were what Pa called ‘resting’. Before he was sick, Jack had barrowed down Pa’s special compost and helped Pa dig it into the soil. There were just three beds not empty and the biggest one of those was filled with silver beet. Months of slimy dark green vegetable lay ahead of us. And slimy red puddings, as the rhubarb was doing well too. Behind the lemon tree and the fruit trees the strawberries had been divided and were spreading.

  Pa was pleased with how we’d gone over the summer. We had lots of potatoes in their bags in the shed and big fat pumpkins sat on wire shelves next to them.

  We planned ahead in our own ways.

  The next morning Billy came back with Pa from splitting the wood.

  ‘You worked right hard, young Bill,’ said Pa as they came in through the stable. ‘How about you wait here and get acquainted with Bessie while I go down to the house and get some tea to warm us up.’

  I was getting the feed out for the chooks. Grain in the morning, mush at night.

  ‘Look, Nell, she likes this,’ said Billy, rubbing Bessie’s nose as if it was a surprise.

  I decided to be diplomatic. ‘You’d better tell Pa, so he can do it too,’ I answered.

  Billy did tell Pa, who was as diplomatic as me and only said, ‘Well, that’s good to know.’

  Pa didn’t help with Jack on Saturday as he wanted to get on with his rounds while he had Billy. During the week Billy would have to be on his way to school by eight o’clock so he could only help Pa load up.

  ‘Billy certainly quickened things up and brought some money in,’ said Pa when he came back. While Pa was unloading, Billy had been around the door handing in the bill and getting the money. The moment he was back they’d be off, quick like, onto the next delivery.

  It meant Pa could take over from Mum early.

  ‘Take some time off, Liz,’ Pa said. ‘Go and visit Em.’

  ‘I couldn’t do that,’ Mum said. ‘What if Mary or Em came down with the flu? I couldn’t live with that.’

  Pa raised his eyebrows and sighed. ‘Go and have a lie-down then. Get yourself a bit of rest.’

  A few moments later, Pa called me to Jack’s room.

  ‘Don’t come any further,’ he said as I peered through the door frame. ‘Jack’s started to sweat badly. It’s pouring off him. Go and get your mum.’

  ‘What’s up?’ she asked, when I shook her awake.

  ‘Pa says Jack’s sweating badly. He doesn’t know what to do.’

  Mum broke into a smile. ‘Oh, Nell, that’s the best thing that could happen. It means the fever’s breaking.’

  And, for the first time in days, Mum was happy.

  Jack sweated for another day, but he was awake from time to time and Mum could talk to him. It was easier for her to get him to take sips of water and soup and she would leave him for a couple of hours at a time. Mum started cooking again.

  ‘Thank goodness,’ whispered Pa. ‘I don’t know if I’d have survived much more of Martha’s cooking.’

  Martha was never going to be a cook. It didn’t matter how often Mum showed her what to do, she never got things right. Her boiled eggs were rubbery. Chops turned to cinders. Mashed potatoes were watery.

  ‘Mind’s on other things,’ said Mum.

  And she was probably right, because Martha hadn’t given up studying. She’d brought all her books home and every night she read them. She worked through arithmetic problems, wrote essays and memorised long lists of places and things that happened in the past. I’d go to sleep while she was
still at her table, reading by the light from the lamp. And she did that knowing she had to be up early to cook breakfast and do the washing.

  ‘Why?’ I asked.

  ‘Because I want to do something different. I’m going to be a teacher and I’m going to save my money and I’m going to travel. It’ll take a while but I’ll do it. I’m not going to fail my exams because of this flu.’

  It sounded grand, but was it worth all the effort?

  ‘Yes. In fact, I think it’s essential,’ said Martha. ‘I want a life different to Mum’s. Not better, just different. I want to do something I’m proud of. Not that Mum hasn’t done things to be proud of, but, honestly, I’m not sure I want to spend my life washing every Monday, having babies, keeping house.

  ‘Look at the nurses in the war. They did something worthwhile. Not that I could do that – I’d probably faint at the sight of blood – but I know I could be a good teacher and … Nell, can you keep a secret from Mum?’

  ‘Of course I can,’ I said, and meant it. But the thought of Martha keeping anything from Mum is almost unbelievable.

  ‘What I really want, Nell, is to go to university. It’s free but you have to pass an exam to get in. And it’s three more years without any money coming in. But if you do very well in the exams, you can apply for a scholarship to pay for books and things.’

  ‘Do you reckon Mum’d let you do that?’ I asked in amazement.

  ‘I’ve talked to Pa about it and he says to wait till Dad’s back. But he did promise to pay for my books if I don’t get the scholarship and to talk to some of his friends about holiday jobs for me. I can do it, Nell, and I want so badly to do it.’

  Martha sounded so full of confidence I knew she would.

  EVERY TIME I THOUGHT OF THE DEATH TRAIN I WAS glad Mum hadn’t sent Jack away. It meant she really loved him and perhaps her bullying him all the time was really just trying to do the best for all of us. It’s still not fair on Jack, but perhaps I can see what Mum is trying to do.