The Year It All Ended

by Kirsty Murray

Ida began to weep, her face in her hands. Tiney had never seen her cry, not even when Ida had told them of Charlie’s death. Gently, she hooked her arm around Ida’s waist and guided her away from the heat and noise.

  As they wove through the crowd, Tiney heard snatches of conversation. The school examinations were cancelled. Twelve thousand school children were to march from Adelaide Oval to the City Baths. A young woman talked shrilly of the Victory Balls that would crowd the year’s social calendar. For four years, most conversations in Tiney’s home had revolved around the events of the past months. When they received news of Louis’ movements, it was always months old. It was impossibly strange to think that every conversation from now on would be about the future.

  By the time they returned to the Cheer-Up Hut, Ida had recovered. Another shift of workers was arriving and Ida chatted to them excitedly, as if she had been cheering rather than weeping a moment ago. Tiney went in search of Nette. She looked for her in the servery. She checked in the big kitchen where meat was being carved and in the small kitchen where women were peeling and cooking vegetables, but Nette was nowhere in sight. Finally, Tiney climbed down the stairs to the underground cellar.

  It was cool and dark in the cellar. Huge cuts of meat hung from the rafters. Wire baskets full of smaller cuts and hundreds of sausages lined the shelves. Beside the marble bench on which slabs of butter rested, Nette stood hunched beside a crate of milk bottles.

  ‘What are you doing down here?’ asked Tiney. ‘I’ve been searching for you everywhere.’

  ‘I needed to be somewhere peaceful for a moment,’ said Nette, straightening her wimple.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  Nette hesitated before she spoke. ‘Do you think Vera will ever forgive me?’ Her expression was more bewildered than questioning. There were two faint frown lines on her forehead.

  Tiney took her sister’s hand and squeezed it tightly. ‘Of course she will,’ said Tiney, though it almost felt like a lie. ‘But I don’t know if anyone is ever the same once they’ve lost someone they loved.’

  ‘I’ve longed for peace as much as anyone,’ said Nette, as if she were speaking to the air, rather than to Tiney. ‘I should be allowed to be happy. We should all be happy now.’

  Tiney felt a flicker of guilt. The Flynns were among the lucky ones. Louis was coming back to them.

  Although their shift was nearly over, Nette and Tiney didn’t go home. They shared a sandwich and then pitched in with the four o’clock shift to help decorate the hall for the evening’s celebrations. Friends of the Cheer-Ups kept arriving with armfuls of flowers. Even Thea came by to help Ida and her team fold streamers and crepe paper to make bunting for the stage. Lastly, Minna arrived amid a crowd of soldiers returning from the street celebrations and joined in making red, white and blue fans to trim the dais from which the patron of the Cheer-Ups, Colonel Price Weir, would make a speech. Tiney stood watching her sisters at work. This is what peace will look like, she thought, everyone working together for a single purpose.

  That night, to hundreds of soldiers, volunteers, and their families, Colonel Price Weir made a toast, ‘To the day after and to the boys still on the battlefields.’

  The Flynn sisters raised their glasses high in the air. Every thought, every vision in Tiney’s head was of Louis and of the day, so soon, when he would walk through the front door of Larksrest again.

  News from the Front

  Every window in Larksrest was thrown open to the December sunshine. Minna and Nette dragged all the rugs outside and beat the dust out of them. Floors were mopped and then waxed, furniture polished and skirting boards dusted and scrubbed until it was as if the house had shed an old skin. Mama rearranged every ornament in the sitting room and had one of Thea’s paintings framed to hang in pride of place above the mantelpiece.

  ‘It could be months before he’s home,’ said Papa, a little annoyed by the family frenzy of cleaning. ‘He may have been demobilised but I don’t believe he’d be in London yet. I’ve read there are boys in isolated trenches that don’t even know the war is over, and German snipers still at work picking them off because they don’t believe the peace is final. Louis may stay on to help. There’s a lot of reconstruction to do out there and they may want his talents.’

  It was three weeks since the war had ended, but they’d had no news of his movements. Papa pored over the papers every day, looking for information about Louis’ battalion. Troopships carrying thousands of men were leaving Europe. The government had promised that the last Australian troops would sail from England by the end of July 1919. Some reports said the first to sign up would be the first to return, and Tiney’s heart swelled with hope because Louis had been among the first to sign up back in August 1914.

  Tiney couldn’t bear the thought that they might have to wait until July for Louis. Every morning, first thing, she’d slip into his room and sit on his bed. Sometimes she would read a poem from one of his poetry books. Sometimes she took her photo of him, as if she could magically conjure him by sitting in his room and gazing at his image. And sometimes she spoke to the picture, telling him that she longed for his return, and that Christmas was only three weeks away so he simply had to be there to celebrate with his family, no matter how much he was needed in France.

  Then, on a hot December morning, everything changed. Mama was coming in through the back door with a basket of shopping, eggs and plums piled high. The front door rang. It was Thea who answered it and called for Papa. Then Tiney heard Thea cry out and thought, How strange her voice sounds. Not like Thea at all. Papa folded his newspaper and disappeared down the hall. He came back a different person. Tiney barely recognised him as he stepped into the kitchen from the cool, dark hallway.

  ‘Who was it?’ asked Mama.

  ‘It was Father Alison,’ said Papa.

  ‘But why didn’t you ask him in?’

  Papa didn’t reply, nor Thea, who was standing behind him, staring at the kitchen linoleum. And then Tiney knew. She knew before Papa even spoke. And so did Mama. Because Father Alison had never come to call before. Because the Flynns were not members of his church, or of any church in Medindie. Because there was only one reason why Father Alison had come to their door. In Adelaide, it was always the local minister who was the bearer of bad tidings.

  ‘Louis?’ said Mama.

  ‘We’ve lost him,’ said Papa, his voice breaking as the words left his mouth.

  For a split second after her father spoke, Tiney felt as though she was out of her body, above the room, watching the scene unfold. Mama crumpling, folding over and crying out. The basket falling from her hands, the eggs breaking as they hit the freshly waxed floor, the plums tumbling onto the linoleum, the blood-coloured juice staining the pale yellow squares, Mama on her knees calling out, ‘Mein Sohn, mein einziger Sohn, mein Liebling, mein liebster Sohn ist verschwunden.’

  Nette coming through the back door, frowning with disapproval at their mother speaking German, not listening, not realising. Opening her mouth to admonish and then seeing Papa and Thea and Tiney, their faces frozen. Nette letting out a low groan and collapsing onto a chair, calling out, ‘Louis, not Louis!’ Minna following behind her and screaming, screaming as she stood in the doorway, then covering her mouth to stifle her screams before bursting into tears.

  It was Tiney who moved first, who took Papa by his arm and led him to a chair, who knelt on the floor and put her arms around Mama and helped her gently to her feet. As if the spell was broken, Minna began gathering the bruised plums and putting them back in the basket, while Nette fetched a cloth and a pan to clean up the mess of broken eggs.

  Then everyone was still, sitting around the old table, numb with shock. Papa’s face was drawn, his mouth strangely loose, his head in his hands. Mama was trembling, ripples of agony shuddering through her.

  Thea, ashen but calm, was the first to speak. She put her arms around their mother and held her firmly, as if to stop Mama from crumbling into small pieces. ‘Father Alison
gave Papa a telegram from the War Office. Louis died of wounds in a field hospital at the front in September.’

  ‘He’s been dead for three months?’ said Nette.

  Papa pulled a crumpled scrap of pink paper out of his pocket and laid it on the table. Nette seized it, smoothed out the paper and stared at it disbelievingly. ‘Father Alison should have come in and comforted us,’ she said, her voice small.

  ‘What comfort can a stranger bring?’ said Papa. ‘I didn’t want him in my house. There’s nothing he could say that would comfort us.’

  Tiney looked at her father. His blue eyes were glazed and his beard seemed more peppered with silver than she remembered. He looked like an old man, not her Papa, as if the words Father Alison had spoken on their doorstep had robbed Augustus Flynn not only of the dream of his son’s return but future years of his life.

  ‘Ich will ins Bett gehen,’ said Mama.

  ‘Don’t, Mama. Speak English, please,’ said Nette.

  ‘What does it matter?’ said Minna. Bitter, bitter was her tone, like sour limes. ‘The war is over and even if it wasn’t, there’s no one to hear us. No one can shame Mama now. Not now we’ve lost Louis . . .’

  Then the numbness descended again, like a shroud over the room. Thea helped Mama to her bed and Minna made a pot of strong tea, but when Tiney drank a cup it tasted salty, as if her tears and the tears of her sisters had tainted the brew.

  Winged letters

  Before he went away, Louis had carved a wooden wing and attached it to the letterbox. Every time even a card was delivered to Larkrest, the wing flew skywards. ‘So you’ll know that my letters are winging their way to you,’ he’d said as he fixed it in place the day before he left Adelaide.

  Before the news of Louis’ death arrived, Tiney would sit at the window and stare at the letterbox for hours, even after the postman had been and gone, sailing straight past Larksrest on his bicycle. She liked imagining that a letter for the Flynns had been posted into someone else’s letterbox by mistake and that any moment the postman would come cycling back, because there had to be a letter from Louis. And when the carved wing did fly skywards, Tiney would be down the path like a rabbit, the first to check the post. But since the news, no one watched the winged letterbox.

  Back in 1914 and 1915, Louis’ letters had arrived every few weeks. From on board the SS Euripides, from Egypt, the Dardanelles, England and later France. After he reached France, the stamp of the censor began to appear on the envelopes, and great sections of text were blacked out. As the war years dragged on, his letters grew shorter, his messages briefer. Sometimes there would only be a Field Service postcard. One year, 1916, they didn’t hear from him for six awful months. Finally, Papa wrote to the Ministry of Defence, begging for information. When the letters began again, it was as if they were written by someone else, so removed were the stories he told. He didn’t ask after anyone at home any more. It was as if he couldn’t remember them, as if they had all become strangers to him. There was only the war. The war and the mud. The war and the men who fought it.

  Every week during the war years, without fail, each of the Flynn sisters wrote to Louis. Then Pa would take all their letters and put them in a single envelope and send them off. They’d even sent one from all of them after Armistice Day. Tiney hated to think that Louis had never read those happy notes. She stopped watching for the postman. She couldn’t open her letter-writing folder for weeks. The pale blue stationery was painful to look upon and, of course, since the news, the ritual of writing to Louis had died.

  A week before Christmas, on a hot, airless afternoon, Tiney sat in the inglenook of the parlour window, trying to write a poem. She looked out and saw Louis’ wing pointing skywards. Suddenly, grief pierced her heart so sharply she could hardly breathe. She got up and walked slowly to the hallstand and put on her gardening apron, as if she was pretending that it was the garden that called her and not the letterbox. She hadn’t ventured to collect the mail since Father Alison’s visit. Perhaps a deeper instinct called her. Because there was an envelope addressed to Tiney in the letterbox. A single letter postmarked from France. A letter in Louis’ firm, copperplate handwriting.

  It made Tiney’s fingers burn to hold it. A fleeting hope that perhaps there had been a terrible mistake flared inside her. Perhaps Louis was alive. Perhaps he’d only been missing in action, not killed. Her first instinct was to race inside with the letter before she’d even torn the envelope, to wave it in front of her sisters, to spark some hope in them too. But her rational mind arrested her urge to share the letter. It would be cruel to ignite such an impossible hope and then extinguish it. Instead she sat on the front step of Larksrest, beneath the tiny portico verandah, feeling the coolness of the stone beneath her. She took her secateurs from the pocket of her apron and used the tip to slice the letter open.

  Inside were four sheets of fine paper.

  Dear Titch,

  You’ve written me so many letters and I so few to you – it’s time I set things straight. I’m wearing those socks you knitted. The green and blue ones, and thinking of you as I write.

   This last twenty-four hours I’ve been at a post – a chateau very close behind the lines. There’s a moat around the place and, despite the fact you can hear bombs falling all day, there’s a swan on the moat. It’s white and beautiful and it glides around the chateau as if nothing in the world is troubling it.

   Last night I slept, or rather lay down, in the chateau wine cellar. At 2.00 a.m. we were warned of gas and had to put on our masks. When that was over there was Coup de Main and a tremendous noise; torpedoes and shells and glass falling from already broken windows as the chateau shook and rocked. But in the brief moments of silence I snatched a few minutes sleep and dreamt of you and Nette and Minna and Thea. In my dream, you weren’t girls but beautiful swans.

   Did you know that when I was a boy, I used to think of my sisters as swan maidens? I was always afraid that one day someone would come and steal your feathery gowns and take you all away from Larksrest. You must be so grown-up now, little Titch. Do you still wear your hair long? You must never cut it. When I come home, I want to see those long blonde plaits flying as you pedal your bicycle through the park. Save me a little bit of the girl version of you. Don’t grow up without me.

   After the sleepless night in the wine cellar there is not much left of the ruined chateau – no doors or windows and not much roof. Rain is pouring in, half drowning the poor blokes on the first floor. Luckily, I am writing this in what must have been the chateau’s library, a fancy room with the ceiling mostly complete, though bits of plaster are falling from above the long windows. It is sad to see these nice houses and grounds destroyed – presumably they were nice once. Now it’s all desolation and ruin.

   But you would love France, Tiney. Not this France – the one of mud and suffering – but the one that will grow green again once peace is made. One day we will come here together, you and I and all the family. When there are no more bombs we’ll walk through green fields and picnic beneath a laurel tree. At least, that’s what I imagine us doing, when I’m lying watching the rain drip through the broken ceiling.

   I won’t be here in the chateau much longer – perhaps until Monday. And then I’ll be closer to the front again where there are no swans, nor even the ruins of buildings, but I will be thinking of you.

  With love from your brother,

  Louis

  Tiney folded the letter carefully and laid it in her lap. She shut her eyes and pictured Louis sitting in the ruined chateau with the lonely swan, thinking of his sisters. The letter was dated two days before his death; it felt as if it had arrived from the other side, from a vale of shadows. She thought of Louis lying beneath the cold winter ground, on the other side of the Earth, far from everyone who loved him, and an instinct to find him, to find his grave, to be with him and see the place where he died swelled inside her so powerfully that she covered her mouth with her hands to stop a cry of longing
escaping.

  She looked up to see Nette walking through the front gate in her Cheer-Up uniform. A corner of her crumpled wimple poked out of her handbag like a broken bird’s wing. Her face was so melancholy that Tiney couldn’t bear to add to her unhappiness. She shoved the letter into the pocket of her gardening apron and jumped up to hug Nette.

  Nette smiled and hugged her back.

  ‘What was that for?’ she asked.

  ‘It was just for you,’ said Tiney.

  Tiney sat on the end of Nette’s bed and watched her take off her uniform. She stripped down to her slip, her pale skin shiny with sweat.

  ‘I wish I’d had a shift today,’ said Tiney.

  ‘No, you don’t,’ said Nette. ‘It was unbearably hot in the kitchens. What did you do this afternoon?’

  Tiney fingered the letter in her pocket. She wanted to share it, but she didn’t want any of her sisters to be jealous that she should be the one to receive Louis’ last letter. Some days, he was all they talked of, others they could hardly bear to speak his name.

  ‘I wrote a very ordinary sonnet. I wish I could sell my poems. I don’t suppose writing poetry is a way to get rich. I wish I had a job and could earn some money.’

  Nette turned to look at her and smiled. ‘Why so restless?’

  ‘Because,’ said Tiney, only realising it as she said the words, ‘I have a plan. A plan for all of us. I just need enough money to make it come true. I want us to go to France – the whole family. To see the things Louis saw, to stand together by his grave and say a prayer for him, to sit beneath a laurel tree and remember him. Oh Nette, wouldn’t it be wonderful?’

  Nette’s eyes brimmed with tears. ‘Tiney,’ she said, ‘What an impossible dream.’

  ‘The Alstons are going.’

  ‘The Alstons are rich. Join one of the Memorial Committees. That’s all we can do.’