The Year It All Ended

by Kirsty Murray

‘It’s not the same. Perhaps I could be a teacher? Then I’d save up, every penny I earn.’

  ‘I thought you were going to be a penniless poet?’

  ‘I could be a poet and a teacher as well.’

  ‘First you’d have to sit the examinations for Teachers College. And even if you did get a job, you’d never be able to save enough for a single fare on a teacher’s wage, let alone the fares for our whole family. Don’t be ridiculous.’

  Tiney caught her breath. Rage flared in her like a flame, but somehow she knew it wasn’t anger but grief, that searing, burning pain that had tormented everyone at Larksrest since the news of losing Louis. She jumped down from the bed and ran from the room.

  In the back garden, she scraped up a scattering of wilted jacaranda blooms and flung them into the parched flowerbeds. Even the roses looked bedraggled, their fallen petals rotting among the weeds. No one had touched the garden since the news.

  Tiney knelt down beside a white rosebush and began pulling out dandelions. She worked alone, sweat dripping down her neck. Her hands grew raw but she tore at goose grass and clumps of oxalis until the sun moved low onto the horizon. All the while, her mind churned. No matter what it took, somehow, some way she was going to get her family to Louis’ graveside.

  Inheritance

  On Christmas Eve, an uneasy silence settled on Larksrest. Papa and Mama had gone to the station to collect Cousin Paul, and Tiney wondered if it was because of Paul that no one spoke all afternoon. In 1914, Paul had been sent to Torrens Island, along with four hundred other German South Australians, and then to Holdsworthy in NSW where he and thousands of other detainees had spent the war years.

  The quiet in the house made Tiney’s ears ring. In other years, she’d stood with her sisters around the piano and sung Christmas carols. Minna would be at the keyboard, Nette singing loudest, Thea humming along and laughing at them. Then Nette would bring out a plate of fried sugar buns or gingerbread fresh-baked that afternoon, no matter how hot the day. There had been four Christmases celebrated in Larksrest without Louis, but Christmas 1918 would be the first without hope of him returning, and their cousin Paul was a poor replacement.

  Tiney pulled open her bedside drawer and stared down at the present she’d bought for Louis in late November, before the news had arrived. She fingered the blue silk bow and thought of Louis lying lonely in his grave on the other side of the world with no memento from her, or from any of his sisters. A fat tear rolled down her cheek and landed on the red wrapping paper.

  Minna and Nette lay stretched out on the cool linoleum floor in the side hallway, escaping the heat of the afternoon. Tiney sat down in the doorway of her bedroom, resting her chin on her knees, and said, ‘I wish Paul would hurry up and get here.’

  ‘I wish he wasn’t coming at all,’ said Nette. ‘He should have been sent straight to Nuriootpa.’

  ‘It’s only for the afternoon,’ said Minna, fanning her skirt to make a breeze.

  ‘They shouldn’t have let him out of the internment camp. Hardly anyone else has been released. It’s an armistice, not a peace. They can’t go letting them all out as if the war had never happened.’

  ‘Nette, don’t be awful. Paul is an Australian, not a German. And he’s our cousin,’ said Minna.

  ‘He may have been born here, but Paul has always been a snob about Kultur and Alldeutschtum. You can see why they arrested him. He was so loud about it, so stupid to be trumpeting about German rights when there was a war on. Onkel Ludwig must have moved heaven and earth to get him released early.’

  ‘They never should have locked him up in the first place,’ said Minna. ‘He was only seventeen. Like Tiney. He wasn’t old enough to go to war. It would have been as bad as Tommy Destry signing up.’

  Nette bit her lip and glowered at Minna.

  ‘You used to like Paul,’ said Tiney.

  ‘I had to pretend to like him,’ said Nette. ‘But I always thought he was a hothead. What was he thinking, writing all those silly letters to the papers about British war crimes when the Germans had committed so many atrocities? No wonder they arrested him. Though I suppose it didn’t help his case having a brother in the German army.’

  Tiney felt as though the hall had suddenly grown too hot, the air stifling. She stood up, stepped over her sisters, and went in search of Thea.

  She found her in the garden, painting in the shade of the jacaranda tree.

  ‘It doesn’t feel like Christmas at all,’ said Tiney, frowning at the soft watercolour painting to which Thea was adding the final touches, as if studying it would hold back her grief. ‘I can’t believe there will ever be another Christmas again. Not a real one.’

  Thea rinsed her sable brush and wiped the bristles clean on a painting rag. ‘We mustn’t give way to despair,’ she said. ‘We must hope that it will feel like Christmas. If we lose hope, then we have lost everything good, every last bit of Louis.’

  Thea’s face had grown paler and her cheekbones sharper. Blue smudges lay like shadows beneath her eyes and there was nothing bright or hopeful in her face, despite her words.

  ’Well, then,’ said Tiney, ‘I hope you’ll win a prize with that painting. You should enter it in a competition. If I was the judge, I’d give it a medal. Are you going to hang it in the next exhibition at the Society of Artists? Someone is sure to buy it.’

  ‘I’m only an associate member of the Society, Tiney. I can’t tell them what to hang. I can only submit it.’

  ‘If you sold it, we could put the money towards a fare to England. A second-class return fare is just over a hundred pounds. If we travelled third class, it would be even cheaper.’

  ‘Oh, Tiney,’ said Thea, almost scolding. ‘You can’t be serious.’

  ‘But I am serious. You know I think we should all be saving up to go over.’

  Thea was silent for a moment. Then she changed the topic. ‘I thought I might give this one to Paul, as a Christmas present.’

  Tiney sighed. ‘Nette said we shouldn’t bother with presents for Paul. She said he probably wouldn’t have any for us.’

  ‘One doesn’t give presents simply to receive them,’ said Thea.

  ‘So you’re pleased that Paul is coming?’

  ‘I’m sure Tante Bea thought she was doing us a kindness and that we’d like to have a young man visit on Christmas Eve, especially this year.’

  ‘He can’t replace Louis,’ said Tiney.

  ‘No one can replace Louis,’ said Thea. ‘But Paul is our cousin and we should help him to fit in again. He’s been locked away for four years. It won’t be easy for him.’

  ‘Nette says they shouldn’t have let him out yet.’

  ‘He was never a criminal,’ said Thea. ‘He was a prisoner of war. There is a difference.’

  When Tiney opened the front door to her parents and cousin that evening, she was both surprised and disappointed. Paul seemed so much smaller than when she had last seen him in September 1914. His skin was bronzed and his light brown hair was streaked with blond, but there was something about him that was diminished, less imposing than she’d remembered. He sat on the edge of the sofa in the parlour and stared at his circle of girl cousins.

  Nette shifted restlessly on her seat, as if ants were crawling up her stockings. Finally, she left the room to prepare tea and everyone let out a collective sigh of relief that there hadn’t been a fiery argument. But when she came back with a tray of buns, she lit the fuse.

  ‘Would you like a Kitchener bun?’ asked Nette, offering Paul a plate stacked with sugar-coated buns oozing jam and cream.

  ‘Berliner,’ said Paul, taking one from the platter and setting it on a smaller plate.

  ‘We call them Kitchener buns now, and so should you.’

  ‘Why would you want to name anything this delicious after the man who invented the concentration camp? The man who was responsible for all those deaths at Gallipoli?’

  ‘He was a war hero,’ said Nette, slamming the plate of buns down on the ta
ble.

  ‘He was a British warmongering imperialist,’ said Paul.

  ‘You’re a fine one to criticise imperialism after all that waffle you wrote about the Kaiser.’

  Paul snorted. ‘I was a boy when I wrote that. I’m a socialist now. Capitalist imperialism pits the workers of one country against another and profits on war. The only way to end war is to embrace socialism.’

  Paul shifted to the edge of his seat and glared up at Nette as she stood over him, hands on her hips.

  ‘Did you learn all that on your holiday in the internment camp?’ snapped Nette. ‘While our boys were dying at the hands of the Germans?’

  ‘Children, please!’ said Mama, raising her hands in alarm. ‘We must have no more talk of war or politics. We are family, it is Christmas. Bitte!’

  Nette was so startled at Mama’s outburst she forgot to scold her for speaking German. Silence hung in the air like a cloud of sour smoke. Nette sat down, her arms folded across her chest. Paul’s gaze skittered across the faces of his cousins and then he sighed and stared at the ceiling. Tiney stood up and excused herself from the room. She returned with the book of poetry she had bought for Louis. She smoothed the silk ribbon and handed the gift to Paul.

  ‘Merry Christmas, Paul,’ she said.

  Paul looked at her quizzically. ‘Thank you, little cousin.’

  He untied the blue ribbon and folded back the wrapping paper, then smiled as he read the title of the book printed in soft brown against a pale green cloth cover, The Passionate Heart.

  ‘It’s a book of poetry, by Mary Gilmore. I hope you like it. She’s very fierce and I think she’s a socialist too, just like you.’ Tiney was suddenly conscious of how many poems in the book were about the war. ‘One of my favourite reads, “The fruit is never the tree, The singer is never the song.” It’s called “Inheritance”.’

  Paul looked at Tiney as if he’d just seen something in her that he’d never noticed before. ‘Danke,’ he said. ‘Wir dürfen nie unser gemeinsames Erbe vergessen.’

  Nette pursed her lips. ‘Cousin, we are Australians and we do not speak German at home.’

  Paul laughed bitterly. ‘Don’t worry. It’s only illegal in public places.’

  ‘Let’s not start again,’ said Nette. ‘Can’t you put the past behind you?’

  ‘Annette, do you know how many homes of innocent German-Australians were set alight and businesses looted because of their “past” – their German ancestry? What about the thugs who burnt down the Lutheran churches at Edithburg and Netherby? Did you know Dieter Gebel enlisted to stop his mother and father being persecuted? The authorities took him but they still tormented his parents. Dieter’s dead now. The warmongers wanted all our young farmers.’

  ‘But you didn’t have to face the trenches, did you, Paul? You spent the war in comfort.’

  ‘Comfort? Have you already forgotten what happened on Torrens Island?’

  Paul rolled up his right trouser leg. The older girls turned away, averting their gaze, but Tiney stared hard. Purple scars covered the back of Paul’s calves, like strange, dried sea slugs, dark against his white flesh.

  ‘Look at it,’ he said. ‘That’s the sort of comfort they showed us with their bayonets.’

  ‘Please,’ said Mama. ‘Cover it up, Paul.’

  It felt like the longest afternoon of Tiney’s life. Everyone was relieved when the doorbell rang and Papa opened the door to Onkel Ludwig, who had driven down from the Barossa to collect his son. Tiney heard their deep voices murmuring from underneath the portico and then Papa let out a low moan. Tiney ran to the door. Onkel Ludwig and Papa were embracing, as if they were holding each other up.

  ‘Papa, Onkel,’ said Tiney, afraid.

  Papa kept one arm around Onkel Ludwig, supporting him. As he turned to Tiney, she saw his face was streaked with tears.

  ‘Your uncle has just had news from the Red Cross,’ said Papa. ‘Your cousin Will died at Ypres in April. Both our wolf cubs are lost to us.’

  The McCaffreys return

  The floorboards in the front hallway of Larksrest had a hard, glossy black finish. When no one was around to see her, Tiney still liked to make a running leap in her stockinged feet and glide along the slippery boards. When the doorbell rang on a January afternoon, she slid down the last few metres of hall and opened the door to the youngest McCaffrey brother. It was three years since she’d seen Frank and it took a moment for her to recognise him. He was dressed in civvies: a clean-cut, pin-striped suit, a grey fedora hat and shiny black shoes.

  He took off his hat and made a little bow. ‘Hello, Tiney Flynn,’ he said. He glanced down at her stockinged feet. ‘I hope you and your sisters are at home to visitors?’

  Tiney remembered Minna once saying, ‘No girl could say no to a McCaffrey,’ and she smiled shyly.

  Before the war there had been a McCaffrey brother for three of the Flynn sisters. Tiney used to count them off on her fingers. Percy for Nette, George for Minna, and Frank for Thea. Mrs McCaffrey had fretted that the Flynn girls would steal all her sons. In the end, it wasn’t the Flynn girls who stole her boys away from her but the war.

  ‘When did you get home?’ asked Tiney. ‘Me and Nette, we’ve been watching out for you and George at the Cheer-Up Hut.’

  ‘We’re here for you to cheer us up right now,’ said Frank. ‘Got home three days ago. Me and George both.’

  That’s when Tiney realised Frank wasn’t alone. Standing at the bottom of the front steps was Frank’s older brother, George. How had she not noticed him? He was still in uniform, as if he had come straight from the barracks, as if he would always be a soldier.

  ‘Hello there, Bubs,’ he said, climbing the steps. ‘I’d like to say you’ve grown since I saw you last but you’re still a little squirt, aren’t you?’

  ‘Actually, I’m seventeen,’ she said.

  George simply stared at her. Tiney wished she’d kept her shoes on. She felt twelve years old again, looking up into George McCaffrey’s blue, blue eyes. They seemed bigger and glassier than she remembered. There was something hypnotic about George.

  ‘Any of your sisters at home?’ he asked, at last.

  ‘A couple,’ she said, unable to look away from George’s face. ‘Minna! Thea! Guess who’s here?’

  Minna came up behind her, shielding her eyes against the light.

  ‘George and Frank,’ said Minna, almost as though she were disappointed.

  ‘Don’t leave our guests standing on the doorstep like a pair of travelling salesmen,’ said Thea, hurrying up the hallway. ‘It’s good to see you home.’

  They led the McCaffreys into the parlour where Mama was sitting on the sofa. She laid her embroidery hoop to one side and stood to greet the boys.

  ‘Welcome, Francis and George,’ she said stiffly. ‘Your mother must be so happy to have you home.’ There was something brittle, too composed, about Mama’s politeness, as if the presence of young men in the parlour made Louis’ absence more painful than ever.

  Thea brought tea and slices of seed cake and set the tray on the sideboard, and Tiney helped serve the guests.

  George kept fiddling with his cup, lifting it up, putting it back on the saucer, switching hands, as if he couldn’t decide how best to hold it. When he wasn’t fiddling, just holding the cup, it rattled slightly. Tiney couldn’t understand why his hands were trembling. How could George, smooth, handsome George, possibly be nervous?

  Before the McCaffrey boys went away, George had been the one that everyone secretly loved. Poor, dead Percy had been tall and kind but George had been dashing, while Frank was forever in his older brothers’ shadows, waiting to be noticed. Tiney liked him for that, the way he was always good-humoured though he was often overlooked.

  ‘And now that you’re home, what are your plans?’ asked Mama politely.

  ‘Oh Ma, they’re only just off the boat,’ said Minna. ‘They shouldn’t have to know the answer to that question.’

  George shrugged.
‘I’ll take whatever I’m offered. If anyone will have me.’

  ‘Of course everyone will have you,’ said Mama. ‘Everyone wants our boys to get straight back to work, in good jobs.’

  ‘I’m going to try for the civil service,’ said Frank, running his fingers around his hat.

  Tiney felt confused, as if they had all walked through a mirror where everything was backwards. Frank seemed so much more at ease than before, while George’s gaze flicked back and forth across the room from Minna to Thea to Tiney, as if he were trying to remember who they were exactly. Then he turned his focus on Minna.

  ‘Oi there, Minna, you fancy coming to the pictures with me?’ he asked, as if they were alone in the room.

  Minna smiled, a tiny curve of her lips, but she looked to Thea, not George. ‘Frank should come along too. And Thea,’ she said. ‘We could make it doubles.’

  Thea raised her eyebrows. ‘We should take Tiney as well.’

  ‘Righto,’ said Minna. ‘That would be fun, wouldn’t it? Your very own gang of Cheer-Up girls.’

  George blinked, visibly annoyed. He slapped his hand against his knee and looked at the floor. ‘If you must, bring the whole damn family. Whole bloody lot of you.’

  ‘George,’ said Frank, putting his hand on his brother’s shoulder and glancing at Mama apologetically.

  ‘Nette could join you as a chaperone,’ said Mama, as if she hadn’t noticed George’s rudeness. ‘Her fiancé, Ray Staunton, is due home any day now.’

  ‘Nette’s getting hitched?’ said George. ‘Got over Percy pretty quickly, didn’t she?’

  There was another awkward silence.

  ‘We were sorry to hear about Louis,’ said Frank. ‘He was a great bloke.’

  Mama nodded, as if she could not speak another word. But Minna turned and gazed at Frank with gratitude. ‘Thank you, Frank. We miss Percy too.’

  On the evening of their trip to the picture show, Tiney stood in the bedroom buttoning her summer coat. It was really too warm to wear it but she didn’t want Frank to think she was under-dressed in her simple black cotton dress. She scowled at her reflection as she stood beside Minna in front of the mirror. Minna looked stunning in a very simple smoke-grey dress with a white collar. Tiney noticed its hem fell only just below her knees, revealing Minna’s beautifully turned ankles.