by JH Fletcher
As she watched, the red van turned on to the side road and began its slow climb up the hill to the farmhouse. It had to be coming here; the road went nowhere else. It was still too far to see clearly but it had to be Larry Coogan’s van, Larry the only man in the mid-north with a vehicle that cheerful colour.
Larry was from the little town ten miles away and Saturday was not his day for visiting this area yet, despite the new war, Ruth had no intimation of disaster or tragedy as she watched the red van draw steadily nearer. That was what she remembered afterwards, her complete lack of any sense of foreboding.
Larry raised his hand in greeting as he drove past the verandah and she waved in return. The van stopped behind the house and a minute later she heard Larry’s deep growl as he spoke to her mother. Ruth got to her feet and went indoors.
‘A letter come,’ Larry was explaining as she went in. ‘Seein’ it’s from the government I thought I’d best bring it now rather than wait ’til Monday.’
His red, honest face was worried; letters from the government were rare enough to cause concern. Ruth’s father, come in for his dinner, was frowning as he read it.
‘Well …’ he said.
Without another word he handed it to his daughter.
Suddenly she knew. ‘It’s the Hirschmanns, isn’t it?’ She grabbed the letter from him. Her eyes raced down the page.
Death was a crackle of paper in the otherwise silent room. She looked at him in horror. ‘They can’t —’
They had.
Inasmuch as Doctor David Hirschmann is a German national …
Ruth read the letter a second time, seeking some chink in the bureaucratic armour that might give her reason to hope. Finding nothing.
In light of hostilities currently existing …
From the paddock at the back of the farmhouse a cow bawled. Part of her mind said, It’s Maggie, missing her calf, life going on despite the horror on the page.
… further consideration of the application regarding the aforesaid Doctor Hirschmann and his family …
Ruth squeezed her eyes shut, praying briefly to a God she did not believe in, and opened them again.
… is indefinitely delayed.
Life on the farm; death on the page. Because that was what it meant. She was sure of it. Death visited by the Australian authorities on Doctor Hirschmann, his wife, and daughter Miriam, a year younger than herself, who for six years had been her penfriend. She had never met her; now would never meet her. There was a photo of Miriam in Ruth’s room. Small, dark, smiling. Her Austrian penfriend. Her Jewish penfriend.
Miriam’s letters had told Ruth so much: of herself and her family, of the town of Salzburg where she lived. Mozart’s birthplace, Miriam had written. Cheerful letters, laughing letters. And then, in 1938 … As you will know from the newspapers, our lives have changed recently and not for the better.
They — Ruth, Aunt Dorrie, anyone willing to help — had been trying for over a year to get permission for the Hirschmanns to come to Australia, to escape from the Nazi terror that had engulfed their homeland. Miriam’s father was a medical practitioner with certificates from several major universities, from hospitals in Vienna. It should have been easy. We shall help them escape, Ruth had told herself. They will come to Australia, they will start their lives again.
She had imagined meeting them off the ship, putting her arms around the friend she had never met. Despite the delays, the questions, she had never doubted. Of course they would come. It made sense, didn’t it? Especially now. He was a doctor, for God’s sake. Australia needed doctors. He spoke good English, Miriam had assured her. He would be happy to work in the bush, if permitted. He would be happy to work anywhere. Of course they would come. Anything else was unthinkable.
She looked again at the letter.
Indefinitely delayed.
Anguish and rage spewed like vomit in the hot, still room. ‘Bloody bastards!’
Bob Ballard was an easygoing bloke, everyone outside his immediate family knew that, but there were some things he would not tolerate.
‘That’ll be enough of that,’ he said.
Ruth’s eyes were like daggers. ‘You’re right. Question is, what are we going to do about it?’
Bob did not understand. Truth to tell he had never been in favour of these mates of Ruthie’s coming to Australia in the first place. What did they want with a bunch of Jews? And Germans, at that. There were enough Jerries around already, some in his own family. But Ruthie had been keen and he had gone along, happy to live up to his reputation as an easygoing bloke; not actually helping — that would have been going too far — but not hindering either. He had even allowed the application to be lodged in his name because they thought it might have more clout if it came from him. He could see Ruthie was feeling pretty crook about it but she would have to go along. The government had decided and that was an end to it.
‘Do?’ he repeated. ‘What can we do?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said, ‘but I damn well mean to find out.’
Mary, Ruth’s mother, might sympathise but Ruth knew better than to turn to her for help. Or even comfort.
Mary had worries of her own. By rights they should have been Bob’s worries — Laura was his sister, after all — but that had never been Bob’s style. Besides, he had never got along with Laura’s husband, the stiff-necked Fred Vogel who had arrived from Germany some time before the First World War and had already buried one wife before the unhappy day he had married Bob’s sister. Fred had two sons. Franz, by his first wife, and Peter, by his second. Peter was safe at university in Adelaide but Franz, born and raised here in South Australia like the rest of them, had shot off to Germany. By choice, mind you. A Nazi, too, by all accounts.
And now they were at war. Franz was lost to them, not that Mary cared about that, but feelings would be high in the town. Tonight there was the usual Saturday dance at the Institute. They always went and Mary was dreading it. There’d be blokes looking for trouble. Bob had fought in the first war. Easygoing bloke or not, if anyone started making smart remarks about the Ballards and their Nazi relations he’d be into them boots and all. Franz didn’t have one drop of Ballard blood in his veins so you couldn’t blame Bob but being right was small comfort if they all ended up in a free-for-all.
Yet it did not start like that.
They drove down, as they always did. There was the usual clutter of vehicles outside the hall, Fords for the most part, Charlie Peterson’s Dodge. Horses, too.
‘Reckon we’ll all be on horseback before we’re much older,’ Bob prophesied gloomily.
Mary could not imagine it. ‘Why?’
‘Petrol, old girl. I doubt the government will let us run around the way we can now. We’re at war. They’ll want all the petrol for the army.’
War.
It occupied everyone’s mind, sucked the oxygen out of the air so that faces seemed redder than usual, older men more breathless. The younger ones were excited. The prospect of battle had stirred them up, energy spilling into the hot and crowded room. Oh, those young bodies, heated by war.
Ruth watched them. Laughter was louder, gestures more vivid, the young men’s beauty was painful to see. She was unsure whether the coming of war had really wrought such a transformation of the unpromising flesh or whether the change was in herself, seeing them like this for the first and possibly last time.
Some had gone already.
Patty Clark’s husband was one of them. A strange face was a rare bird in the mid-north and Ruth homed in on her precisely because she had never seen her before.
‘You wouldn’t have done,’ Patty said. ‘Only got in from Adelaide this arvo.’
A cheerful soul, perhaps a year or two older than Ruth. Plentiful white flesh in a frock of green and purple flowers that made much of cleavage and bum.
‘Me old man’s volunteered for the duration. The Light Horse. So here I am.’
Ruth did not understand.
‘Marge Lennox
is Johnno’s cousin,’ Patty explained. ‘I’m staying with her for now.’
The Lennoxes share-farmed a few hundred acres on the other side of town. What with them and their four kids their tiny house was full to overflowing already. It was hard to see how it could accommodate Patty Clark’s exuberance without coming apart at the seams.
Patty looked about her at the sweating faces swimming in the smoky haze. ‘I never lived in the country before.’
Ruth had been born and raised in the country but now, after her three years at the Royal Adelaide Hospital, knew what Patty meant.
‘You’ll find it strange after Adelaide.’
The music had started — an accordion and a piano not quite in tune. Some of the boys must have sneaked some beer out of the pub before it had closed at six; certainly not all this conviviality could be explained by the war.
Though that was enough for some.
‘Your old man off to give the Huns a bashing?’ Toby Bolt breathing fire and beer, protuberant eyes resting on the expanse of Patty’s white flesh.
She was good-natured about it. ‘Something like that.’
‘Shouldn’t take long.’
‘Dunno about that.’ Shaking her head dubiously, perhaps hoping Toby was right. But Toby, she could see, was the sort who had seldom been right in his life.
‘Sorted ’em out last time, di’n’ we?’ Aggressive in the face of what might have been defeatism.
‘Took a while.’
‘It’ll be a lot quicker this time round.’ As though he had a direct line to God.
A voice said, ‘It would be quicker still if all our blokes were on the same side.’
Patty’s forehead crinkled as she frowned at the man, black hair, hectic eyes, standing at Ruth’s shoulder. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
Ruth knew, oh yes.
Andrew Hillier jerked his head at Ruth, the smile that was not a smile focused on Patty’s puzzlement. ‘She knows what I’m getting at.’
Patty was not the sort for innuendo. Her eyes narrowed. ‘You got somen to say, mate, maybe you’d best come right out and say it.’ A warrior’s voice emerged from that lushly female body and Ruth loved her for coming so speedily to her aid.
‘He means my cousin,’ she said.
‘Damn right. Ask her where Franz is, why doncher?’
Instead Patty looked at Ruth. ‘This bloke a mate of yours?’
‘Ratbag like him? No chance.’ Though he had wanted to be once. Which, far more than Franz’s whereabouts, was the reason for the present unpleasantness. ‘What he’s trying to tell you is that Franz is the son of my aunt’s husband. By his first wife. He lives in Germany, reckons he’s a German.’
‘He’s a traitor,’ Andrew said and smiled, enjoying himself, hoping that his words hurt. Which they did, although Ruth would die before she admitted it.
Patty’s eyes moved between the two of them, assessing. She made her decision, smiled at Andrew and reached up to caress the side of his face. ‘Why don’t you piss off?’ she said.
The sallow cheeks flooded with spiteful blood. ‘You wanner hang around with traitors, I reckon it’s up to you.’
The raised voice fell into a lull in the music. Everyone heard, including Bob, who could move fast for a man of his years. He held Andrew in his massive paw. Eyes rolling, Andrew dangled. ‘Take that back or I’ll beat the living daylights out of you.’
Enid Hillier descended, screeching like the harridan she was. ‘Take your hands off my son.’ Voice congested, purple lips spitting a fine rain.
‘I’ll scrub the floor with him.’ And might have done so had Claude Hillier not decided that he had to do something, however reluctantly.
‘Best do what she says, Bob.’
And before they knew it half the hall was involved. The foxtrot ground to a halt in a chorus of yells and crashing glass.
‘A stoush,’ Patty said with pleasure as niftily she extracted Ruth and herself from the worst of it. ‘I always like a stoush.’
They stood side by side against one of the walls while the blokes got stuck in. It didn’t last long. High spirits, mostly, like a game of footie played indoors. But Andrew Hillier had an eye like a plum and there were one or two other bangs and bumps to take into the paddocks tomorrow morning. And, inevitably, Enid Hillier, voice like a buzz-saw, ranting on about her precious son and the bloody Ballards and their Nazi relatives.
Bob and Claude eyed each other, still belligerent for the record, but underneath they were embarrassed. The next time they met they would share a beer, no doubt, and scowl and clear their throats and, eventually, laugh.
Ruth was suddenly moved by a great wave of affection for these people, her people, and the country that had raised them. Even for Andrew, who had caused it. Sour grapes because she hadn’t let him maul her, that was all it was. It signified nothing.
How Franz, who once she had thought she loved, could have turned his back on these people for the iron hatreds of the Reich she could not imagine, but Franz had never had patience with the lackadaisical Aussie way.
She imagined his censorious eyes watching the joyous punch up. The stoush, as Patty had gleefully called it.
‘These people,’ he had told her once, ‘are not serious. They have no discipline. A country without discipline can never be great.’ If that was what was meant by greatness she was glad of it. Yet he had been wrong, too. These men and women knew what was right and would stand up for it, though they’d die before they said so, and Ruth was thankful for that, also. By all accounts Germany was great on discipline, on an iron and implacable resolve.
Oh Franz, Ruth’s heart grieved as she watched the warring boys.
But knew he was lost to her.
It made what she had decided to do so much easier to explain to herself although how she would explain it to her parents she could not imagine.
She glanced at Patty. ‘You staying or just visiting?’
‘Reckon I’m here for the duration,’ Patty said.
‘What you going to do?’
‘I’ll find something.’
Casual jobs, like strange faces, were hard to find in the mid-north. Ruth thought of the Lennoxes’ wooden house, little more than a shed, of Patty’s exuberance strangled within its sun-warped planks. ‘Ever worked on the land?’
‘No. I’m a good learner, though.’ Shrewd eyes appraised her. ‘Why?’
For the moment Ruth was not willing to say. ‘Just wondered.’
The dance wound on. The piano tinkled cheerily. The smoke-swirled air coiled about dancers intent upon the rituals of foxtrot and big apple. Voices rang beerily, and laughter. For the moment the stoush had blown away war-time blues, although numerous women were not speaking to husbands or sons, who had disgraced themselves.
‘Wouldn’t read about it.’ Charlie Peterson hoofed gay-footed, grinning like a fool, and staggered.
‘Be falling down directly,’ Patty hoped but Alma Peterson, grim-mouthed, got to him in time, dragging him homewards.
‘Reckon we’d better go, too,’ said Bob regretfully. The punch-up had made him young again, as it had all the older men who might otherwise have resented being overtaken by the youngsters and their new war.
So home they went, Ruth with the prospect of confrontation weighing on her. Because it would not be easy, what she had made up her mind to do.
The farm kitchen was large but cozy, the centre and focus of the home.
Mary boiled a kettle for tea. With visible relief Bob removed jacket, collar, tie. He eased his collar stud and sat down at the wooden table. He turned on the wireless but there was nothing, only some all-girl band from Sydney, and he switched it off again.
Ruth stood by the door, watching them.
The lower part of her father’s face was the colour and texture of leather, the forehead and crown milk-white where his hat had shielded it from the sun.
Her mother was bent, broad-beamed, over the kettle. Steam wreathed about her as she poured boil
ing water.
It was like watching two strangers. Ruth observed her parents, the room itself, receding from her like figures seen from the window of a departing train. They were there still, she had only to cross the room to touch them, yet a widening gulf separated her from them. They were gone from her, irrevocably, as she was from them but for the moment they were unaware of it. Before the weekend was over she would have to tell them she had made up her mind to join the army.
At eighteen her parents had asked her, ceremoniously, what she wanted to do with her life. Until you get married, was implied, if unsaid.
Foolishly she told them the truth. ‘I want to write.’
Her parents inspected the idea, as though inspecting a beetle. Her father in particular had never been one for art, for any know-all nonsense.
‘What else do you want to do?’ he wondered.
‘Nothing.’
He laughed. ‘No chance of that. Unless you marry Lord Muck.’
Their lives encompassed no Lord Mucks, although Denzil Stone’s dad, over Clare way, was known to be comfortable. Ruth had never fancied him or any man and as far as she knew no man had fancied her. Except Andrew Hillier, but he had been interested only in the flesh, not what lay within. Whatever that might be.
‘A profession, maybe?’ her mother ventured.
Ruth was careful about how to reply. If she said medicine, or the law, she suspected they wouldn’t like it. She knew they saw her married to some farmer, shelling grandchildren like peas. Medicine or the law would sound too serious, too permanent. ‘Perhaps nursing?’
She thought they would accept the idea of a three-year course. Three years was not long enough to imply permanence. From her own point of view it would buy freedom at the cost of three years’ servitude.
Her father said, ‘Better than that other nonsense, anyhow.’
She slaved and studied and, eventually, when she had learnt enough to be permitted, was allowed near the patients. It was a calling to be proud of, high in honour and duty if low in pay, but Ruth’s calling, as she had known from the first, was elsewhere.
