A Penny in Time

by Anna Bartlett

  ‘One whole prisoner of war?’ the lady said with a cackle as she delved into her purse. ‘Well that’s impressive, isn’t it?’

  Betty was glad the money they raised would be going to the Prisoner of War Fund. Her family had found out only the week before that Les, Betty’s cousin, who had been fighting in North Africa, was now a prisoner of war in Germany. She didn’t like to think of easy-going Les locked up somewhere overseas – she remembered him carrying her round on his shoulders when she’d been younger.

  When they weren’t serving customers Betty and the other girls pulled out their knitting to keep them busy. Betty was hard at work trying to turn the heel of her sock when she heard Jocelyn give a cry. She looked up to see that Harry Holthouse had come over from the boys’ stall and grabbed the girls’ jam jar of money.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Jocelyn asked. ‘Put it back, Harry.’

  ‘No,’ said Harry. ‘You can’t make me.’

  ‘If you don’t put it back I’ll tell Miss Shaw.’

  ‘Don’t be such a girl,’ Harry said. ‘I only wanted to see how much money you’d made.’

  ‘Five and six pence,’ Betty said. ‘You could have asked.’

  ‘Ha!’ said Harry. ‘We’ve got eight shillings already, that’s loads more than you have.’

  Betty frowned. ‘It’s not loads more,’ she said. ‘Anyway, it doesn’t matter. It’s all for the war effort.’

  ‘Besides, vegetables cost more than flowers, because you can eat them, you know. And you can’t eat flowers,’ said Jocelyn.

  ‘Well, I bet we sell more vegetables than you do flowers, anyway,’ Harry said.

  Betty crossed her arms. ‘So what if you do?’

  ‘So then we’ve done more for the war effort than you have, just like I did more last week, because I brought in the most old tyres. Not like you, Betty Fletcher. You didn’t even bring in any.’

  He thumped the money container back onto the table and strode off to the boys’ stall, leaving Betty glaring after him. She had felt bad the previous week when she hadn’t brought any old tyres to school, but her family didn’t have a car so she simply hadn’t been able to find any.

  Jocelyn slipped her arm through Betty’s. ‘Just ignore him, Betty,’ she said. ‘He’s such a horrid boy. You know he only found so many tyres because he sneaked into the car yard down the street from his house and stole them – I heard him telling Eric.’

  Betty wasn’t sure if this was true or not – Jocelyn sometimes told fantastic stories – but it made her feel better anyway. She tried to go back to her knitting but couldn’t remember what she’d been up to, so she was glad to see a plump woman in a flower-print dress wander towards their stall. She wound the sock around her knitting needles and slipped them into the long cardboard container that was slung over her shoulder.

  ‘Would you like to buy some flowers?’ Betty asked.

  ‘There are seeds as well,’ Peggy, one of Betty’s classmates, added. ‘So you could grow your own flowers if you like.’

  ‘And the boys have vegetables,’ Jocelyn said. She paused. ‘But our flowers are prettier, don’t you think?’

  The lady smiled. ‘Yes, they certainly are pretty. But I might go and have a look at the vegetables all the same.’

  She moved up the platform towards the boys’ stall. Betty watched her go, disappointed. She knew she’d told Harry it didn’t matter which stall sold the most – they were going to combine the money at the end, anyway – but now she wished more people would buy their flowers, to show just how much she and the other girls were helping with the war effort.

  ‘Oh well,’ Jocelyn said, ‘perhaps she’s just a vegetable-y sort of person. Some people are, you know.’

  The others went back to their knitting but Betty stared after the plump woman, watching as she inspected the different vegetables at the boys’ stall then finally bought half a dozen potatoes from George Morrissey. At least, Betty thought, she didn’t buy them from Harry.

  ‘Thirty-seven, thirty-eight, thirty-nine,’ Jocelyn muttered. ‘Oh bother, I’ve dropped a stitch.’

  Betty watched the plump woman pick up her bag of potatoes and shuffle back down the station platform. She was holding the brown paper bag in one hand, and with the other hand was trying to slip her change into her purse. As Betty watched, three coins fell out and skittered across the concrete. The woman looked down and scooped up one of the coins but didn’t seem to notice the others, which had come to rest under a nearby bench.

  As the woman began walking down the platform once more Betty glanced around to see if anyone else had noticed. Harry saw her looking towards the boys’ stall, rattled his money jar at her and poked out his tongue, but no-one seemed to be paying attention to the plump woman.

  Betty shot Harry a glare then slipped out from behind the table and ran down the platform to the wooden bench. She bent down, picked up the two fallen coins and hurried to catch up with the woman.

  ‘Excuse me,’ she said, ‘but you dropped these.’

  The plump woman looked around. ‘Oh, did I? Thank you, dear.’

  Betty held out the coins – one shilling piece and one penny – and the woman reached down and took the shilling from her hand.

  ‘You keep the penny, dear,’ she said.

  Betty smiled. ‘May I? Thank you.’

  The woman continued on her way and Betty clutched the penny. She thought she might save it to buy sweets: her favourite was toffee and it was a long time since she’d had any. She dropped the coin into the pocket of her frock and hurried back to the flower stall, where Peggy and Jocelyn were selling roses to a young man in uniform. Oh goody, thought Betty. The roses were expensive. That might help them catch up to the boys.

  ‘I bet he’s going to give them to his sweet-heart,’ Jocelyn said as they watched the man stride off down the platform.

  ‘Or someone else’s,’ Peggy said with a grin. ‘He was a Yank.’

  Jocelyn laughed. ‘Do you know, my cousin Daphne was once asked to a dance by a Yank, but Aunt Beryl said she wasn’t to go. Don’t you think it strange how they talk, though? They use all sorts of queer words. Betty, do you think my scarf is long enough now, or shall I add a few more inches?’

  As the morning went by Betty kept hoping that everyone who passed would buy their flowers – and, though she felt naughty, now she also hoped that they wouldn’t buy from the boys. She couldn’t help but notice, though, that the boys were selling more than the girls were. She watched a brisk young woman in tailored trousers striding along the platform, and hoped that she would turn towards their stall. But when the woman grew closer and did turn towards them, Betty caught her breath and crouched to the ground.

  ‘Whatever are you doing down there, Betty?’ Jocelyn asked.

  ‘Um… tying my shoelace,’ Betty said.

  ‘Oh,’ said Jocelyn. ‘But you haven’t any laces. You’re wearing your party shoes.’

  ‘Be quiet. Don’t look at me,’ Betty said as the lady approached. She pinched Jocelyn’s ankle. ‘I said don’t look at me, Jocelyn.’

  Jocelyn gave a squeak and turned her attention to the young woman, who had now stopped in front of their stall.

  As Jocelyn served the woman, Betty knelt behind the table and pretended to adjust her socks. She listened to Jocelyn’s chirpy voice and the woman’s brief answers, heard the clinking of coins then gave a sigh of relief as the woman moved away.

  Betty climbed to her feet to find Jocelyn staring at her.

  ‘Whatever was that about?’ she asked.

  ‘Do you know that lady?’ asked Peggy, who was also looking at her.

  ‘No,’ said Betty. ‘I don’t know who she is. Not really, anyway.’

  ‘Then why were you hiding?’ asked Jocelyn.

  Betty bit her lip. ‘She stopped my dad once when we were at the post office and asked why he hadn’t joined up.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Peggy. ‘That’s right. Your father’s not fighting, is he?’

 
Betty wished she hadn’t spoken so loudly. Now all the boys had turned to watch too.

  ‘No, he’s not fighting,’ Harry called. ‘He’s not fighting, is he Betty?’

  Betty glared across at the boys’ stall. ‘Well the prisoners of war aren’t fighting either,’ she said. ‘They’re just sitting around doing nothing. At least my father’s being useful at home, making sure we have enough food to eat.’

  ‘Really, Betty,’ Miss Shaw said with a frown, rising from her seat beside the boys’ table. ‘What an unkind thought. You know our prisoners of war have risked their lives for this country.’

  ‘And they’re not just sitting around doing nothing,’ said Jack Hunter, whose father had been in a camp for the last nine months. ‘They’re trying to escape.’

  Betty dropped her head and stared at the chalky concrete. She hadn’t really meant it. She knew that her cousin Les and the other prisoners like Mr Hunter were brave men who would now be lonely and discouraged, and she was glad really that the money from their stall might help to cheer them up. But Harry Holthouse could be so infuriating. Betty pulled her knitting from her cardboard container and pretended to be engrossed in counting stitches, and as the rest of the morning passed she tried not to watch the customers who stopped at the boys’ stall.

  By midday, when the stalls were to end, the girls had sold most of their flowers and the boys all of their vegetables. Betty, Jocelyn and the other children crowded around while Miss Shaw counted the change from their money containers.

  ‘Well, that’s sixteen shillings and five pence in the first one,’ Miss Shaw said once she’d finished sorting through the coins in the girls’ jar. ‘Dorothy, you remember that for me – sixteen and five.’

  ‘Sixteen and five,’ Dorothy repeated.

  ‘Good. And now the second one…’ She tipped the second jar of change onto the table with a clatter and began sifting through it quickly, muttering to herself. ‘Twelve, fourteen, sixteen… sixteen and six, seventeen… that’s eighteen and nine pence, twenty and six, that’s twenty-two shillings… twenty-three shillings and six pence altogether.’

  ‘Yes!’ said Harry Holthouse. ‘Loads more than the girls. I told you we’d make the most, didn’t I, Betty?’

  Betty pressed her lips together and tried to ignore him.

  ‘Now,’ Miss Shaw said, ‘that was – how much in the first jar, Dorothy? Sixteen and five? So that’s twenty-three shillings and six pence plus sixteen shillings and five pence… that’s thirty-nine shillings eleven.’

  ‘And we’ve done the most for the war effort,’ said Harry. ‘The boys have done the most.’

  ‘Now Harry, that’s quite enough,’ said Miss Shaw. ‘You’ve all done very well. Thirty-nine shillings eleven. That’s almost forty shillings. If we’d made one penny more that would have been enough to support two prisoners of war.’

  One penny more… Into Betty’s head came the thought of the penny the plump lady had given her – the penny still sitting in her pocket. She slipped her hand down and closed it around the coin. One penny more would give them forty shillings: enough to support two prisoners of war. Enough to support both Jack Hunter’s father and Les, or two other men lucky enough to receive the parcels that would be bought for them with this money.

  ‘Miss Shaw,’ Betty said, bringing the penny out of her pocket, ‘I’d like to buy something from our flower stall, please.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Miss Shaw, ‘of course, Betty.’

  Betty walked over to the trestle table and looked at the flowers that hadn’t been sold. They were slightly wilted now, and most of them cost more than a penny. She had just decided she would have to be content with some droopy daisies when she spied a heap of little white packets – the flower seeds Peggy had been selling. Betty picked up one of the packets and saw that on the front in uneven cursive was written “Sweet pea seeds, twenty a penny”. She smiled. They didn’t have any sweet peas in their garden, but she was sure her mother would like some. She took the small packet back to her classmates and handed her penny to Miss Shaw.

  ‘Why thank you, Betty,’ Miss Shaw said, ‘that was very thoughtful of you.’

  The penny landed on the mound of coins with a tinkle, and Betty felt a surge of pride. She knew one penny wasn’t much. It wouldn’t win the war. But it was the best she could do, and her mother always said that doing your best was the important thing.

  ‘Well,’ said Miss Shaw, ‘that takes our count to forty shillings. Well done, children.’

  Jocelyn nudged Betty and grinned. ‘Two whole prisoners of war,’ she said.

  ‘Yes,’ said Betty, slipping the seed packet into her pocket, ‘two whole prisoners of war.’

  They made their way down the station platform towards home, knitting as they walked. The packet of seeds was rattling in Betty’s pocket, and although she knew she wouldn’t be buying sweets today she was sure to get some for her birthday. Just at the moment she didn’t care what people thought of her or her father; she had done her bit for the war effort today.

  ‘Well,’ Betty said with a smile, ‘that Harry Holthouse can’t talk now. He didn’t spend any of his own money at the stall, did he?’

  ‘No,’ said Jocelyn as she tried to untangle her wool. ‘And you know, whatever he says about his beastly old vegetables, flowers are so much cheerful-er.’

  That night Yared dreamt of knitted socks, fighter planes and school children who threw giant flowers at each other.

  Big Brother Always Knows Best

  The next evening Yared’s nanna gave him the penny without him having to ask.

  ‘I hope you’re going to take better care of it tonight,’ she said. ‘You fell asleep before I’d finished the story yesterday; I had to rescue it from under your arm.’

  ‘No I didn’t,’ Yared said, wriggling down under the covers. ‘I heard the end, Nanna.’

  ‘You did, did you?’

  ‘Yeah. She bought some flowers. Some seeds.’

  ‘Hmm,’ said his nanna. ‘Well you certainly looked asleep.’

  ‘I was pretending,’ said Yared.

  His nanna smiled. ‘Oh yes?’

  She sat beside him on the bed and he shuffled over to give her room.

  ‘Now,’ she said, leaning back against the wooden headboard, ‘this story is set in the 1950s, and the boy in it is like you in some ways, Yared.’

  ‘Why?’ he asked.

  ‘You’ll see.’

  Aleksandar shifted from foot to foot and tried again to peer through the wall of legs and coats that blocked his view of the street.

  ‘She won’t be here for ages yet,’ his brother Vasilis said from beside him, hands shoved in his pockets and a bored expression on his face.

  ‘I know,’ Aleksandar said. ‘I just want to be ready.’

  ‘In case she comes early? She’s not going to.’

  ‘She might.’

  Vasilis shook his head. ‘She won’t.’

  Aleksandar sighed and looked around at the crowds lining the footpath in each direction – men, women and children, young and old, standing or squatting or sitting as they waited – and at the streamers, banners and decorations hanging from the buildings behind him, or strung across the street on wires.

  When he and Vasilis had arrived half an hour before, the streets had already been packed with people filling the footpaths throughout the city centre. Aleksandar knew there’d been many people waiting in position since early morning, and he’d even heard of some families who’d been planning to camp out so they’d be sure of having a good view this afternoon. He wished he and Vasilis had been able to come earlier, though he knew he was lucky to be here at all.

  ‘Why do you want so much to go and see this English queen?’ his mother had asked one night the week before, as they sat around the dinner table. ‘You will see her with your school class anyway.’

  ‘I know,’ Aleksandar said, ‘but I want to see her on her first day in Melbourne. That’s what everyone else is doing.’

&n
bsp; ‘But surely to see her once is enough?’ his mother asked. ‘Why is it so important?’

  ‘But it is important, Mama,’ said Aleksandar. ‘She’s the first reigning monarch to visit Australia.’ He didn’t know the words “reigning monarch” in Greek, so he spoke them in English. ‘We have to show her our support.’

  ‘And for this you want to miss your evening class? I don’t know, Aleksandar,’ his mother said with a frown. ‘It is for your father to say.’

  ‘Please, Babbas?’ Aleksandar said, turning to his father.

  He had known his parents wouldn’t be happy about the idea of him missing one of his evening classes with Mr Stavropoulos, where he and the other Greek children who lived nearby learnt more about Greek culture, language and values. He knew how important they thought it was for him to know his origins. So when his father took his time to consider, instead of forbidding him outright, Aleksandar was very surprised.

  ‘Very well,’ his father said at last, after swallowing his mouthful of meatballs and rice. ‘We have made this our home, have we not? This one time you may miss your evening class to go and see the Queen. Vasilis will take you.’

  Vasilis looked up from his plate with a start. ‘But I don’t–’

  ‘Enough,’ said their father. ‘You will take your brother to see the Queen.’

  And so Vasilis and Aleksandar had travelled into town to see the young Queen drive past with her husband and give a speech of welcome at the Town Hall. Their father had drawn the line at letting them miss school though, so by the time they reached the centre of town it was nearly four o’clock, and crowds were lining the streets up to twenty people deep in places. Vasilis and Aleksandar had found a place at the back of the crowd further up the street from the Town Hall, where there weren’t quite as many people as on the opposite footpath, and there they had been waiting for the last half hour.

  Nearly everyone was dressed in their best clothes, the men in suits and the women in dresses and coats. Many people were standing on fruit boxes, stepladders or chairs they’d brought with them, and others had cardboard periscopes to see over the heads of the crowd. A catchy song played over the loudspeakers attached to poles along the street.