The Tillerman's Gift

by C J Brown

CHAPTER 2

  Sunday June 30th - Sydney

  The sound of gunfire is deafening. Thud! Thud! Thud! Bullets from invisible guns ricochet off rocks and slam into sand. It is impossible to see the shooters. They blend in so well with the hills that they seem to be one with their surroundings. All the soldiers can do for the present is bunker down behind any small cover they can find and hope and pray that they live to see another day.

  Captain Peter Katz screams into his two-way radio: Backup! We need backup!

  There is no backup! comes a crackling reply. You’re the only one left! The radio goes dead. Katz slowly lifts his head and peers around the rock that lies between him and death.

  They’ve gone. His mates have all gone! They were just there and now they’ve gone. The voice was right. He is the only one left. It’s hopeless.

  Without another thought, Katz stands in full view of the hidden enemy, raises his F88 to his shoulder and aimlessly empties the magazine into the hills. His gun finally falls silent and he drops it onto the ground. Five figures appear as if by magic from the hills. Each has an AK-47 trained on Katz.

  “You have fought bravely,” says one. “But now it is finished.”

  Bang!

  The loud noise of a window slamming shut from a sudden burst of wind and an ear-piercing scream woke Mia with a start. She and her grandmother arrived at Alison’s bedroom at the same time.

  “Mum, wake up!” Mia grabbed her mother’s shoulders and shook her.

  “I’ll fetch a glass of water,” said Tess hurrying off to the kitchen.

  Despite the winter temperature, Alison’s pyjamas and sheets were wet with sweat.

  “It’s okay, Mum,” soothed Mia. “It’s just one of your dreams. Sshh… It’ll be alright.”

  Alison opened her eyes and looked around. Mia knew what her mother had been dreaming. The same thing she had dreamt most nights for the first twelve months after that phone call from Canberra.

  “Ms Turner? Ms Alison Turner? It’s Major General Geoff Bowden, here. I hope I haven’t caught you at a bad time…….”

  Now, nearly two years later, Mia still remembered watching her mother’s face turn from smiling and rosy-cheeked to sullen and deathly pale as the voice on the phone reported Captain Peter Thomas Katz as MIA – Missing in Action.

  The term Missing in Action certainly wasn’t new to her. “Mia is MIA,” her mother and grandmother used joke when she conveniently disappeared at washing-up time or skipped some other chore. Even her teachers would use it good-naturedly if she were late for class or for athletics training.

  That stopped after the phone call. Her friends and teachers knew that she and her family needed no reminding of the pain of their loss.

  Initially Mia understood this expression literally. Missing – that’s alright, he’ll turn up sometime. Just like when the neighbour’s cat, went missing and turned up three weeks later, fit and well, but badly in need of a good brushing and lots of attention.

  It wasn’t until she had overheard her mother and grandmother talking about it late one night that she knew MIA had another possible, and even much more likely, meaning. Her grandmother’s house was an old, double-story place with lots of timber joints that creaked. Like me, Tess often joked. The staircase was particularly prone to complaining about being walked on. Mia had quickly learned how to negotiate the stairs to avoid the sleep-disturbing squeaking of tread against riser. As she tiptoed towards the kitchen she heard the hushed conversation and the soft sobbing.

  “I know, it’s hard, darling,” her grandmother soothed as she placed a comforting hand on her daughter’s arm. “Let me top up your tea.”

  “I don’t want more tea, Mum.” Alison fondled the ring on her left hand. “And I don’t want more calls from the army saying how they haven’t given up and telling me to stay positive. I just want him back. Why can’t they find him? Afghanistan isn’t exactly a jungle – it’s not Vietnam.”

  The reference to Vietnam bought a pained look to Tess’s face.

  “I’m sorry,” Alison apologised, “but there is nowhere to hide where he is and the thought of him lying in a hole in the desert covered with sand. It’s not right. It’s not how it should be. I want him back. Back here with us. With me.”

  “Nowhere to hide? Ali, those mountains are full of caves.”

  “Yes and each one of them is probably home to a terrorist cell. What’s he going to do? Sit still and pretend he’s a rock!” Alison knew there was no logic to her words as she wavered between accepting that he was dead and hoping beyond all hope that he was alive, hiding until he was rescued or until the war was over. Alison’s tears flowed freely and her soft sobbing grew louder.

  Tess moved closer to Alison and put her arms around her. In her mind she pictured the dry desolation of an Afghanistan desert. “Maybe it’s time to move on,” she said softly. Then, picturing the hot, wet jungle of Vietnam she softly added, “Maybe it’s time we both moved on.”

  Mia crept back upstairs, buried herself in her blanket and quietly cried herself to sleep.

  “Here’s some water for you, dear.” Tess trotted back into the bedroom, looking particularly inelegant in her sheepskin boots and beanie.

  “Thanks, Mum.” Alison blinked the tears from her eyes. “Sorry for waking everybody.”

  “Don’t worry about us,” Mia reassured her. “We’re alright.”

  Tess frowned as only a mother can. “You haven’t had one of your nightmares for a while, Ali. Have you been taking your medication?”

  “Yes, Mum. I have,” replied Alison. “It’s just that… things have been so busy lately...’

  “And we’re off on a holiday…perfect timing for everyone. So you tuck yourself back up and try to get a little more sleep. We have a big drive ahead of us.”

  Mia smiled to herself. Every now and then she was reminded that she wasn’t the only child in the house. She had always admired her grandmother but never so much as now. She had problems with her heart but here she was fussing over her own daughter as though that were her only problem in the world.

  Alison sipped her water.

  “Actually, since we’re all awake and it’s already 4:30am, how about we start out early, beat the traffic.”

  Mia and Tess looked at each other and nodded their agreement.

  “I’ll put the kettle on,” said Tess.

  They had packed the station wagon the night before so that all they needed to do was have a quick breakfast before setting off for Clowder Bay.

  By Tess’s estimate they were in for a ten or twelve hour drive. They had decided to do the trip over two days, driving about six or seven hours on the first day before staying the night in a motel. Even though it was the beginning of the July school holiday break they had decided to take the risk of not booking a stop-over room ahead of time. This was mainly because they weren’t really all that confident of how far they would go on the first day. Also Tess, with her ill-health, was beginning to lack a lot of the driving stamina she used enjoy.

  “We’ll play it by ear,” Tess had said when planning for the trip a few months earlier. “We’re not tied down to a schedule.”

  “Good idea, Nan,” offered Mia, a little sarcastically, “That should cheer us up when we find ourselves sleeping in the car in the middle of nowhere. I bags the back seat!”

  “Have a little faith, darling,” Tess had replied. “Why don’t you get out the roadmap and I’ll put the kettle on.”

  Mia rolled her eyes. “Nan, I swear one day I’m going to hide your precious kettle, sit back and watch the chaos unfold.”

  “Hide the kettle? What a strange child you are, tormenting your old grandmother like that.”

  “Old! You’re not old, Nan. Well, not that old, for a granny that is.”

  “Anyway,” continued Tess sounding unconcerned, “I have plenty of spare kettles hidden where you will never find them, missy. So go ahead and hide it.”

  She’s done it again, thought Mia. Turned from tease
e to teaser. Now I won’t rest til I find all her hidden kettles! And she knows it!

  A final check that the grownups had their pills – Tess for her heart, Alison her sleeplessness, and an assortment of other lotions and potions to address every conceivable complaint and ailment - and they were off. By 8am they had left the city behind and were cruising north on the highway in Tess’s big Chevrolet. Once on the open road it didn’t take long for Mia, wrapped in her blanket on the back seat to get lost in her own thoughts leaving her mother to do her job of chatting incessantly to Tess to keep her alert behind the steering wheel.

  Mia wondered if she would ever see her friends again. Her mother and grandmother sometimes spoke of wanting a change. At other times they spoke of wanting a holiday. And recently Tess had been speaking of wanting closure. So Mia didn’t really know what to expect. But it occurred to her that she really didn’t mind. She had said goodbye to her friends, just in case and, of course, they had made a fuss of her, but she wondered if she should be feeling sadder. She thought of her mother and how she was so down all the time. Of course she would be. Mia’s father left them when Mia was only three years old. Mia wasn’t sure if she remembered him or if it was just the photos she had seen that tricked her mind into thinking she remembered. Her mother had discovered that nearly all of their savings had disappeared from their joint bank account. It turned out Mia’s father was a compulsive gambler. And not a successful one either. Alison tried to get him help but he either wouldn’t or couldn’t change. He always argued that the big win was just around the corner. When Mia’s mother put what was left of their savings into an account that only she could access, he left, without a word. They eventually divorced and even though he had virtually stolen their life savings, the magistrate still thought he deserved a share of the little they had left. Even so, Mia’s father continued to make occasional contact by phone to hassle Alison for more money. It would always end up with Alison in tears telling him that she had nothing left to give. He would become abusive and she would hang up.

  Although Mia was excited at the time to be moving in with her grandmother, she didn’t understand until she was older that it was because her father had left them with so much debt. They had to sell their home to pay back money to people they never knew.

  Mia didn’t even know her mother had a new boyfriend when, three years earlier, Alison introduced her and Tess to Peter. He was so tall and handsome in his officer’s uniform that it was easy for an eleven-year-old to imagine that he had jumped out of the pages of an action-hero comic book. And while she was most impressed with the rows of multi-coloured ribbons displayed on his jacket, she was really won over when he handed her a copy of the latest, just-released Harry Potter book. And he somehow knew what chocolates were on top of Nan’s list. He quickly found a place in their hearts and became a regular visitor. He was also quite a talented and entertaining amateur magician. Even Mia, as clever as she was, could not work out some of his tricks. How could he pull a whole red handkerchief out of Nan’s ear? How could he snort a strand of cooked spaghetti up his left nostril and pull it out of his right one? How did he turn a scrunched up tissue into a twenty-dollar note? Although this last one didn’t bother Mia so much - she figured that since it was her tissue it was now her money. Peter was, they all agreed, a lot of fun to have around. That is until his regiment was deployed to Afghanistan. That was two years ago.

  He broke the news to Mia’s mother on the anniversary of their first date. “Everything will be fine,” he assured Alison. “I come from an army family. We’re all still alive and well. I’ve been to Afghanistan twice before. Six months and I’ll be back annoying you all again. That is, I mean, unless you find someone else you prefer in the meantime.”

  “Someone else?” Alison raised her eyebrows. “Peter Katz, it’s taken me too long to find you to give you up in six months. But, if you’re not back in seven, well….”

  “I was hoping you felt like that. But just in case, I’ve bought a little insurance.”

  “Insurance? What do you mean?”

  Peter took a small box from his pocket. “Will this help you to not forget me too soon?”

  Alison held her breath as she carefully untied the white ribbon and opened the lid.

  “Oh my goodness!” she gulped. “I didn’t think they made diamonds this big.”

  “Yes?” he asked hopefully.

  “Yes,” Alison smiled.

  As he said goodbye a fortnight later Alison presented Peter with her own piece of insurance; a smaller, silver version of Tess’s promise key.

  Peter looked closely and read Alison’s name engraved in tiny letters on the key’s bow.

  “Just like your mother’s. I thought you didn’t like the idea of a promise key,” Peter said, removing the chain from around his neck.

  “Only because she can’t let go of it even after forty years,” Alison replied. “But this one is different.”

  Peter added the key to the two aluminium tags that already swung on his neck chain. Each was etched with his service number, his name and his blood group. He didn’t explain to Alison that, in the event of his death, one tag would be removed from his body and the other placed inside his mouth. Some things you don’t need to think about.

  “Now you have to come back,” Alison whispered as she replaced the chain around Peter’s neck. “You have my key.”

  They deliberately avoided watching or listening to any news about the war, although all of a sudden the other side of the world didn’t seem so far away. Mia busied herself with school work and sports, Tess took on some extra teaching days at the high school and Alison tried to pretend her work as Catering Manager at the International Conference Centre was all important. Of course, it wasn’t. The only thing that mattered was the life that lay ahead for them once Peter returned.

  But that phone call from Canberra had changed everything. Alison’s boss was understanding and patient, but eventually Alison had to concede that she was not up to the job and resigned. A few days a week, making coffee and waiting on tables at a friend’s café was all she could manage.

  Mia’s teachers were concerned about her falling grades. Of course, in Mia’s case, falling grades just meant that she was achieving an above average standard instead of well-above.

  Only Tess, up until her heart forced her to stop working, continued as before, burying herself in marking and lesson preparation.

  “War does that to families…” she said cryptically one evening as though suddenly putting words to her private thoughts. Alison and Mia looked at her expecting more. They knew a little bit about Alison’s father, Mia’s grandfather, but Tess rarely spoke of him. They didn’t even know what he looked like. Tess had no photos. The only material reminder of the man she so deeply loved was the key, she called it her promise key, that had, for as long as Alison could remember, hung on her mother’s bed post every night and went into her handbag whenever she left the house. The key had been passed on to Tess by the Army after Alison’s father had been killed during the Vietnam War. Apart from his civilian clothing, it was, they had informed her, all he had taken with him into the army. If he did have any personal items on him when he died, the messenger had added with as much tact as the facts allowed, they would have been destroyed in the explosion that took his life on April 25th 1975. Since Tess was listed in their records as Next of Kin the key became hers.

  T&CM 72 was engraved into the key’s triangular bow. As she ran her finger over the engraving Tess remembered Fudge’s promise, the promise that, when he returned from the war in 1972, they would become Theresa and Charles McFudgen.

  “War does that to families…and history repeats itself.” Tess’s words hung in the air as she stood and moved into the lounge room. After throwing another log into the fireplace she reclined in her favourite chair and stared silently into the dancing flames.