Empire Day

by Diane Armstrong

  Meggsie crept through the darkened house, stopping and holding his breath each time the floorboards creaked. They creaked extra loud just outside his mother’s bedroom where his little brother Pete slept in a fold-up bed.

  He glanced in as he passed. Pete was on his back with his arms on either side of his head on the pillow in a gesture of surrender, his pink mouth wide open. His mother was lying on her side, with the blankets pulled up and her hair over her face. He imagined how proud she’d be when she read about him in the paper. He might even receive a bravery award from the police.

  He opened the front door very slowly, pausing every few inches until it was just wide enough for him to slip through. The night air wreathed his breath around his face, and he shivered, wishing he’d pulled on his woollen socks. Now that he was outside his neighbour’s place, he didn’t know what to do. Perhaps he should wait and ask Ted. But now he’d got this far, he had to see it through. Once you started something, you had to see it through — that’s what Biggles always said.

  As Meggsie pushed open the gate, it dragged along the ground with a grating noise, and one of the dogs down the road let out an angry growl and started barking. It was Timmy, Pop Wilson’s flea-bitten mongrel. Meggsie crouched beside a clump of spindly mauve hydrangeas until the barking stopped, then ran towards the front door. He tried turning the handle but the door was locked, and when he tried to raise the front window it didn’t budge. Meggsie tried to rally his flagging spirits. You couldn’t expect a spy to leave his front door and window wide open for anyone to walk in and see what he was up to.

  A wooden gate secured by a metal bolt led to the side passage. He slid open the bolt and tiptoed down the passageway until he was standing outside the room where the light was coming from, but the window was too high up for him to see inside. An iron bucket stood at the end of the passage. Placing it upside down, he climbed onto it and looked over the edge of the weathered windowsill.

  The Holland blind covering the window obscured the room, but there was a small hole in the blind a few inches above Meggsie’s head. By standing on tiptoe and squinting, he could look through it. Mr Emil was bending over a work table, with his back to the window. In one hand he held a long thin metal tool which might have been a chisel or a pick, and in the other he held a small hammer with which he was tapping the chisel. There was no receiver or wireless in sight, and no matter how he craned and squirmed around for a better view, Meggsie couldn’t see what his neighbour was doing.

  He was ready to admit defeat and jump down when Mr Emil moved away. Meggsie’s mouth dropped open. He was looking at a wooden box shaped like a rectangle. It tapered a little towards one end and then squared off. It was a coffin, and its lid was carved with flowers and fancy leaves. He pressed his face against the glass and saw another coffin lying on a pile of wood shavings on the floor. So that’s what the hammering and tapping had been for. Meggsie shivered again, and this time it wasn’t from the cold.

  He stretched as high as he could until he was clinging to the windowsill with his fingertips and standing on the tips of his toes. Suddenly the bucket overturned with a clang and he fell to the ground. A moment later he heard the snap of a blind being rolled up and the window opening. He flattened himself against the wall, nursing his bleeding knee, and held his breath, praying that his neighbour hadn’t seen him.

  When it seemed safe, he pulled himself to his feet and began to hobble down the passageway. He’d almost reached the side gate when he felt himself being yanked backwards. Too terrified to scream, he tried to bolt, but the man’s grip was too strong, and he felt like a fish wriggling helplessly from a hook.

  ‘What you want?’ Mr Emil said.

  ‘Nothing,’ he stammered.

  ‘Why you are here? You come to steal something?’

  Meggsie shook his head, appalled at being taken for a thief.

  ‘So tell me. What do you look for?’

  Meggsie was shaking, terrified by what he’d seen in the room, and his teeth were chattering so much that he couldn’t speak.

  Mr Emil was looking at him with piercing dark eyes and Meggsie was scared by the sudden transformation. It was as though he’d become another person, like those split personalities in the films, who were smiling one minute and killing people the next. He had a funny accent and there was something shifty about him. Maybe he was a Nazi.

  Finally Meggsie found his voice. ‘I won’t tell anyone, honest,’ he stammered.

  The man was still staring at him, probably weighing up whether he could be trusted. ‘You have good mother,’ he said.

  Sensing a threat, Meggsie repeated, ‘I won’t tell. Promise. Anyway,’ he added, ‘I didn’t see nothing.’

  ‘Good,’ the man said. ‘You see nothing and I see nothing. Go. Next time, ring bell. Not like thief.’

  Meggsie ran home, threw himself into bed without taking off his pullover and covered himself with his blankets, but he couldn’t stop shaking. He couldn’t get the two coffins out of his mind. He’d heard on the news that two little kids were missing. They’d been playing on the swings in Waverley Park, but when their mum looked for them, they were gone. It all added up. Two coffins and two missing kids. So that’s why he kept to himself and never talked to anyone. Who knew how many people he’d killed and buried in his coffins?

  He tossed and turned, trying to figure out what to do. He longed to tell his mother but he’d promised Mr Emil he wouldn’t tell. He’d made that promise on the spur of the moment, to save his skin, so did that count? But if he told, he’d have to admit he’d sneaked out of the house in the middle of the night and gone to spy on their neighbour, and his mum would tan his hide with the leather belt she kept on the hook in the hall. Worse than that, she’d look at him with that sad face and say she was disappointed in him. But if he kept his promise and said nothing, wasn’t he guilty of being an accomplice, or an accessory, or whatever they called people who knew something and didn’t tell the police?

  On the way to school the next morning, he was relieved to see Hanny walking by herself. She wasn’t silly like the other girls who were always whispering secrets and giggling behind their hands, and he was fascinated by her funny accent. He caught up with her, but whistled, kicked pebbles and swung his school case around as if he hadn’t noticed her in case some of the bullies saw him walking with a girl.

  As they were passing the Waverley Police Station, he blurted out what he’d seen through Mr Emil’s window last night. The notices pasted on the wall, all headed WANTED in large capitals, included a poster about the missing children.

  ‘Should I go in and tell them?’ he asked, and added, ‘But if I do, I’ll get into trouble from my mum.’

  She thought about it. ‘We can’t let him get away with it, but I don’t think policemen would believe us. They only believe grown-ups.’

  As soon as she said ‘we’, he shot her a grateful look.

  They were at the school gate and he was about to go into the boys’ playground when she said, ‘I know. We’ll write a note to one of the grown-ups and tell them about it. Then they can tell the police.’

  He looked dubious. ‘But then they’ll know it was me.’

  ‘No they won’t,’ she said. ‘We won’t sign it.’

  ‘But what if they don’t do anything about it?’

  The school bell started clanging, and as they ran through the schoolyard, she called out, ‘Don’t worry, they will. I know exactly where to send it.’

  Chapter 15

  Sitting in her straight-backed wooden chair in the kitchen, Maude McNulty reread the note she’d found in her letterbox. The first thing that struck her about it was the paper. It was lined and had obviously been torn from a child’s exercise book, so the writer probably had school-age children. As it was written in printed capitals and had some spelling mistakes, she figured that the writer wasn’t well educated. Also, it wasn’t signed. People had various reasons for choosing anonymity but she guessed it was because the writer had som
ething to hide.

  The melodramatic style of the letter, which began TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN, and contained phrases such as Be warned! made her suspect that the person who’d written it spent too much time listening to popular serials on the wireless or reading trashy novels. But the message itself was intriguing, and Maude McNulty reached for the tea caddy and brewed herself another pot of Kinkara tea before settling down to read it for the third time.

  A warning! The man in the house across the road makes cofins at dead of night. Rember the missing kids?

  Be warned! Whose next?

  Bing Crosby was crooning one of her favourite songs, ‘I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas’, but she turned down the volume to concentrate on the note.

  Everything pointed to the barmaid: the handwriting, the style, the paper, and the fact that the man accused of the crime lived right next door to her.

  A triumphant half-smile played across Maude McNulty’s face. From the moment she’d heard the hammering coming from the foreigner’s place, she’d known he was up to no good. You only had to look at him, with his odd little hat, shifty glance and peculiar way of walking, to know that.

  All her life Maude McNulty had felt that people looked down on her, and of course they had, and she knew why. All through her life she’d had the feeling that people were gossiping and tittering behind her back. Well, now they might stop.

  She took off her apron and hung it on the hook at the back of the kitchen door, put on her lace-up shoes over her beige lisle stockings and buttoned the herringbone tweed coat she’d bought the year Jack Lang opened the Harbour Bridge. Hurriedly ramming a felt cloche hat on her head, she placed the letter in her worn leather handbag and, switching off the wireless while Dinah Shore was singing ‘Buttons and Bows’, went out.

  At the end of the street she passed the new foreign woman standing in front of the boarding house. ‘They’re overrunning the place like a swarm of locusts,’ she muttered to herself. She inclined her head slightly in greeting, just enough to show that she was polite but not sufficient to encourage conversation.

  But politeness was in short supply at the police station. In fact, the officer behind the desk barely deigned to lift his head when she told him she had some important information.

  ‘Got a note in the letterbox, did ya?’ He yawned, showing the inside of his cavernous mouth.

  He was very young, as all the policemen seemed to be these days. Young and incompetent.

  ‘Young man,’ she said in an icy tone. ‘If you can’t see the importance of this letter, I’ll speak to your superior who will explain it to you.’

  ‘Okay, Grandma, let’s have a gander at it.’

  Pursing her lips in disapproval, she handed it to him with a look that indicated she didn’t expect him to understand its contents.

  He took so long reading it that she was tempted to make a comment about his reading skills, but she thought better of it: it probably wasn’t wise to get a police officer offside, however young and incompetent he might be.

  He rubbed his hand over his chin. ‘Who did you say sent this?’

  She let out a hiss of exasperation. ‘It’s anonymous,’ she said, enunciating the word very slowly. ‘A-non-y-mous. That means —’

  ‘I know what it means,’ he said. ‘Any idea why someone would send this to you instead of coming straight to us?’

  This had occurred to her as well, while walking to the station. Perhaps Kath felt, quite rightly, that the police would be more likely to listen to a respectable old lady like her than to a barmaid.

  ‘Perhaps they thought that being a respectable member of the community, I was the right person to —’

  He cut her short again. ‘Just wait here, will you? I’ll be back in a minute.’

  He disappeared behind a swinging door and reappeared a few minutes later with a blank form. ‘Your full name and address, please,’ he said.

  She was taken aback. She preferred lighting the fire to standing near the flame. ‘What do you need that for? I’m not the one with the coffins in my house.’

  ‘You’ve lodged a complaint so we need your details. We’re not putting you in jail. Not yet, anyway,’ he added jocularly while she filled in the form.

  He glanced down at the note. ‘This man lives in your street. Have you seen or heard anything yourself that could help us with this?’

  ‘Well he’s foreign,’ she began.

  ‘So’s most of Bondi these days,’ he chuckled.

  ‘I’ve heard funny noises coming from his place late at night, when decent people are sleeping. It’s been going on for weeks now. From the moment I heard that hammering I knew he was up to something.’ She hadn’t meant to say any of this, and rummaged in her handbag for a handkerchief to stop talking.

  ‘Did you ever ask him what he was doing?’

  She stared at him. ‘I told you, he’s a New Australian gentleman. He never talks to anyone.’

  The policeman gave her a shrewd look but said nothing. After asking a few more asinine questions, he thanked her for coming in and told her they’d look into it.

  When Hania came home from school that afternoon, she threw down her school case and ran outside. She couldn’t wait to talk to Meggsie. If only there was some way of knowing whether Miss McNulty had read their note and done anything about it.

  Meggsie was nowhere to be seen, but Beverley was leaning over her gate, waving to her.

  ‘Come and play jacks,’ she called out. ‘I’ve got a cold and Mum said I have to stay inside.’

  In the kitchen, Aunty Muriel was cutting a loaf of crusty white bread and spreading the spongy slices so generously with golden syrup that the thick amber liquid oozed over the edges.

  ‘Come on, love, have some,’ she said as soon as Hania came in.

  Aunty Muriel had a merry laugh and brown eyes that looked straight into Hania’s in the kindest way. As Hania bit into the soft bread and licked the malty treacle from her fingers, she envied Beverley.

  While they were playing, Hania stole guilty glances at her friend, wondering whether to tell her about the note she and Meggsie had concocted. In the end she decided to keep it their secret — the fewer people who knew about it, the better.

  She kept glancing out of the window, and as soon as she caught sight of Meggsie’s red hair, she made an excuse to finish their game and ran outside.

  ‘Do you think she’s seen it?’ he whispered.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she whispered back. ‘How can we find out?’

  While they were trying to work out what to do, Miss McNulty appeared on her verandah. Hania whispered something to Meggsie and a moment later they ran across the road.

  ‘Can I run a message for you, Miss McNulty?’ Meggsie asked.

  ‘I could do with a shilling’s worth of devon, some Kinkara tea, two eggs and a jar of Kraft spread,’ she said, handing him a pound note. ‘And you can keep a penny for yourself.’ She looked at Hania. ‘I suppose you’d better have one, too,’ she added.

  At the corner shop they took a long time deciding between the humbugs, jelly beans, musk sticks and liquorice all-sorts that Mr Johnson the grocer kept in large glass jars on the counter. When they’d finally made their selection, he counted out the sweets and placed them on a small square of brown paper which he twisted into a cornet. All the adults let the kids spend a penny on lollies or ice blocks, but they liked running messages for Pop Wilson the best because he always gave them threepence, which was enough for a packet of chips or an ice cream at the Saturday matinee.

  Sometimes Pop Wilson would hand Meggsie a small wad of money wrapped in newspaper, and tell him to run to Birrell Street where the SP lady lived. She kept chooks in the yard and he always thought she looked a bit like a chook herself, with her fluffy orange hair, bright red mouth and fat little body. Meggsie always hoped Pop’s horse would win because then he’d get a shilling.

  Sucking their humbugs, Meggsie and Hania walked back to Miss McNulty’s place with the shopping. Befor
e ringing the doorbell, Hania raised the lid of the letterbox and looked inside.

  ‘It’s gone!’ she whispered. ‘She must have read it. I wonder what will happen now?’

  Standing by the gate of the boarding house, waiting for Szymon to come home, Sala saw Eda’s daughter and the redheaded boy hovering around the house of the cranky old woman. She wondered what they were up to. For Sala, Miss McNulty personified everything that was wrong with this suburban existence: its complacency, hypocrisy, monotony and xenophobia. People were courteous and pleasant, but you could never tell what they were thinking behind their polite greetings and false smiles.

  Szymon came around the corner and she saw him stop by the house of the man they called Pop Wilson. A moment later she heard them laughing. Unlike her, Szymon took the neighbours’ greetings at face value, marvelled at the good nature of Australians and, undeterred by his broken English, chatted about the weather, the housing shortage and the Communists. And everybody loved him.

  ‘The foreman said I wasn’t a bad bloke for a reffo,’ he told Sala with a laugh when he came inside.

  ‘Was that supposed to be a compliment?’ she asked.

  ‘Coming from him, it was.’

  She watched his face light up when he saw the table. For once she’d covered it with a cloth, and a loaf of white bread sprinkled with poppy seeds lay on a cutting board. As soon as he sat down, she lit a match and held it against the base of two candles until the wax started to drip. Then she stood them on a plate.