He opened the letter.
Dear George,
Merry Christmas! I know it must seem strange to get a letter from a chap you’ve never met, but I just wanted to say ‘welcome’. I know Mum and Dad are chuffed about having you, and I am glad for their sakes. I always wanted a younger brother too. I know it’s just till the war ends and we have Jerry on the hop, but I hope we can meet then and, you never know, I might be posted somewhere I can get home leave too. You might even decide you want to stay in Australia and bring your auntie and mum out too! Tell them the Aussie sun would be good for them.
By the way, there’s a box under my bed. I’d like you to use what’s in it. Some things don’t deserve to be hidden away in the dark. Have fun with it.
I hope you and the old folks have the best of Christmases.
All the very best,
Your ‘older brother’,
Alan
Georg glanced up at Mrs Peaslake. The pancake was cooked but she still said nothing.
‘It’s … it’s from Alan.’
‘I know,’ she said.
All at once he knew she was desperate for him to read it aloud, even though she was respecting that the letter was his, and might be private. Mutti would feel the same if she knew someone had a letter from him.
But he was safe here, and Alan Peaslake was far away, facing the enemy. For the first time the son of the house seemed real: not just an empty place in the Peaslakes’ home and hearts. For the first time too he knew that he liked Alan Peaslake. The man who wrote this letter was a good one.
‘Will I read it to you?’ he asked, as Mr Peaslake’s shape darkened the kitchen doorway.
‘Yes, please,’ said Mrs Peaslake softly.
He read the words, there in the quiet kitchen, the dogs snuffling around under the stove for drips of pancake batter.
No one said anything at the end. Finally Mr Peaslake said, ‘Thank you, lad. Pancakes ready, Mother?’
‘Yes,’ said Mrs Peaslake, a scrap of batter dropping from her spatula; Delilah leaped eagerly to grab it. Mrs Peaslake took a pancake and divided it between the dogs. ‘Merry Christmas,’ she added quietly.
And, somehow, despite the empty places at the table, it was.
They went into Alan’s bedroom after breakfast. The dogs snored on the kitchen mat, but with their ears alert in case anyone tried to steal the Christmas dinner they could smell in the food safe, the refrigerator and the oven.
Alan’s dragon kite gleamed on the bedroom wall. The dragon face smiled to itself, as though dreaming of the wind.
Georg crawled under the bed. He’d expected it to be dusty — he’d never seen Mrs Peaslake clean this room. But it wasn’t: she must clean it when the house was empty and when she could be alone in here with memories of her son.
The box was big. He tugged and pulled; and at last he got it out. He looked up at the Peaslakes. ‘You know what’s in it?’
Mr Peaslake smiled, though there was pain there too. ‘I know.’
‘Alan’s right,’ said Mrs Peaslake. She still carried her knitting, the tips of her fingers flicking while the rest of her hands were almost still. Georg knew enough about the things she knitted now to see it was turning into a balaclava. ‘Things need to be out in the light.’
Georg opened the box. It was a train set: tracks, some long, some rounded; a tiny engine, painted green and black; train carriages — six passenger carriages and one that looked like a cart and, under that, tiny animals to put in it; and train signals, little houses and a train station, signal boxes and model hills, one with a train tunnel through the middle.
‘Electric,’ said Mr Peaslake, staring at it. ‘I gave it to Alan on his twelfth birthday.’ He glanced at his wife. She nodded, as though she knew the question he hadn’t spoken. ‘Better put it together in your room so no one treads on the pieces.’
‘Will you help me?’ He could put it together by himself. Part of him would rather have done it that way: spend hours just working out what bit went where. But he knew that this was what Alan Peaslake wanted.
‘We both will,’ said Mrs Peaslake, so quietly her husband could not have heard. But he nodded, knowing exactly what she would have said.
Chapter 25
They opened presents after church. The Peaslakes gave him a giant kite with a sea eagle’s face and fierce sea eagle eyes. Even the rags on its tail were brown and white, like sea eagle feathers. There was a tin of home-made honeycomb and a wooden pencil case made of different coloured woods.
‘Every sort of tree that grows around here,’ boomed Mr Peaslake, anxious but proud at the same time, so Georg realised he must have made the pencil case as well as the kite.
‘I love it,’ he said honestly.
They gave him a bicycle too: an old one but painted to look like new. It must have taken ages to paint the bike, to make the kite, the honeycomb, the pencil box. He loved them all. But somehow the gifts were almost too much. He thought of Mr Peaslake in his shed, painting the bicycle, working for hours on the kite just for him, Mrs Peaslake making the honeycomb in her kitchen. They’re trying to fill up Alan’s space, he thought.
Would Mutti be able to celebrate Weihnachten this year?
It was good to have the presents, he realised. Not just because they were things and belonged to him but because for the first time his room would look like a normal boy’s room now, with the football, the new kite.
He looked at the Peaslakes’ faces. Some of the strain that he had always seen on them, the strain they’d never explained or discussed, had gone. Instead they looked happy. Christmas happy.
Their happiness in his pleasure at the presents had done that. His own happiness grew — a sort of giddy wind so he could almost see it curl out the door and wiggle into other people to make them feel ‘Merry Christmas’ too.
He raced the bicycle against Mud and her horse when she and her parents came over after church. Mud won.
He didn’t mind.
Mud still wore her best dress, even though there’d been time to change and she’d taken off her good shoes and frilly socks. She’d curled her hair too. It was funny seeing Mud with curls.
Mr and Mrs Mutton gave Georg a pair of riding boots — Mrs Peaslake must have shown them the right size — and a stockwhip Mr Mutton had plaited himself. Mud looked at the whip jealously. ‘Why can’t I have a whip?’
‘Because you’d use it,’ said Mrs Mutton. She was long and thin with brown curls that never moved, even in the wind. ‘You’re too much of a tomboy as it is.’
‘I am not a tomboy!’
Georg snorted, but swallowed his laugh. Mud stared at him, then grinned. ‘I’ll borrow yours.’
‘No, you won’t,’ he said. But he knew she would.
He gave everyone their hankies. He’d got Mud a big one — not a tiny girlie one with lace — and she grinned at him again. She had knitted him a jumper. One sleeve flopped over his wrist and there were so many holes it looked like the moths had been in it already.
‘Thank you,’ he said politely, a bit embarrassed because her present to him was bigger than the one he’d given her. ‘It’s very nice.’
Mud’s grin got wider. ‘Mum says it wasn’t good enough to send to the refugees.’
‘Mud!’ said her mother.
‘Well, you did. But it’ll keep you warm and no one will see it when you’re helping with the cattle.’
‘Except you,’ said Georg.
‘I don’t mind,’ said Mud generously.
Mud and Mrs Mutton had silver bracelets Mud’s brothers had sent from Singapore in Malaya. Mud stared at the bangle, then slipped it on her arm, her finger stroking its pattern. He had never realised Mud liked pretty things as well as things like stockwhips. Mud’s brothers must understand Mud well, thought Georg, to know she did. Perhaps he should have given her a pretty hanky instead of a big man’s one.
They ate Christmas dinner in the dining room. Georg and Mrs Peaslake had decorated it with more of the red str
eamers. Mr Peaslake had hung mistletoe over the door, though this mistletoe looked like gumtree leaves, not like the mistletoe from home.
Mr Peaslake kissed Mrs Peaslake under it, and Mr and Mrs Mutton kissed each other too. Mud’s dad was as long and thin as his wife, though he was bald instead of curly-headed.
Georg wondered warily if he was supposed to kiss Mud, but she went through the door so quickly he didn’t have a chance.
Mud’s mum had brought over trifle to add to the Christmas feast: the two roast roosters filled with thyme and lemon stuffing (they didn’t look like birds any more, just meat); giblet gravy, roast potatoes, parsnips, carrots and pumpkin (it still seemed funny to eat roast cattle food but Australians ate lots of it and he had to admit it tasted good); boiled beetroot and beans from the garden and cauliflower cheese; then the Christmas pudding with threepences in it and the trifle with fruit and yellow custard and red jelly; and finally mince pies and nuts and dried grapes called muscatels.
Mud’s mum played the piano later and the grown-ups sang carols while he and Mud played fiddlesticks.
Mud had just won for the fourth time when Mr Peaslake cleared his throat.
‘Now we’re for it,’ whispered Mud. But Georg had the feeling that she’d pinch anyone else who made fun of Mr Peaslake’s poems. Mud’s pinches hurt.
Georg waited for Mr Peaslake to recite the Christmas poem again, so that he and Mud could join in. But this poem was new to him.
‘Our Andy’s gone with cattle now,
Our hearts are out of order —
With drought he’s gone to battle now
Across the Queensland border.
‘He’s left us in dejection now,
Our thoughts with him are roving;
It’s dull on this selection now,
Since Andy went a-droving.’
The adults were quiet. Mrs Peaslake’s hands were still in her lap, her knitting forgotten. Tears glistened on her cheeks.
The poem isn’t for Andy, whoever he had been, thought Georg. It was for their sons, for all the men and women facing the enemy.
‘Oh may the showers in torrents fall,
And all the tanks run over,
And may the grass grow green and tall,
In pathways of the drover.
‘And may good angels send the rain,
On desert stretches sandy,
And when the summer comes again,
God grant it brings us Andy.’
Later, in bed, listening to the big wireless play softly from the lounge room, he sent a silent ‘Fraulich Weihnachten’ to Mutti, and ‘Merry Christmas’ to Alan Peaslake too.
He had the strangest feeling that his words whispered above the gumtrees, across the ocean; and that somehow, wherever they were, Mutti and Alan Peaslake heard them, and whispered back.
‘Merry Christmas,’ came the whispers. ‘Fraulich Weihnachten to you too.’
Chapter 26
MARCH TO OCTOBER 1941
Dear Mum and Dad and George,
So much has happened since my last letter to you that it’s hard to know how to bring you up to date. Best news of all — mail finally caught up with us and I got four of your letters, and one from Auntie Edie.
I’m finally settled in camp now, in a barren sandy desert, but I’d better not tell you where or the censor will start chopping up this letter. The tents are placed far apart to minimise the damage if we’re bombed. No beds or stretchers, and sand makes a poor mattress. But we found an Italian rubbish dump with wood, canvas, camouflage netting and the like. Good old Australian ingenuity got to work and, with the help of a lot of string, we now all have beds, camp stools, boxes as chests of drawers, a rush carpet and a Milano hurricane lamp.
There are nine of us in the tent, all the old mates from before. At the moment a sandstorm is blowing, and I’m blowing too to get the grit off this letter. It seeps into everything. No landmarks outside — just sand.
Funny thing happened yesterday — we’d just come out of the mess hut after a breakfast of sausages and sand and there was this straggle of dusty, unshaven men, mostly hatless, some without rifles, but somehow you could tell just by looking at them that they were Aussies.
Turns out they’d been caught and had to fight hand to hand with the enemy. But they made it through.
Hope old Eileen is still sleeping in front of the wood stove. Give Auntie Edie and Uncle Don and Mud my love. Hope Ken and Len are going all right. Give my love to the old place too, and love to all of you,
Alan
Mrs Peaslake’s voice cracked as she said her son’s name. She put the letter down.
‘He’s safe and well, love,’ said Mr Peaslake, his hand on hers. ‘At least we know he’s in Egypt now.’
She nodded.
Safe when he wrote that letter, thought Georg. But how long did it take to get here? ‘How do you know where he is?’
Mr Peaslake smiled. ‘Worked out a code before he left. “Hope old Eileen is still sleeping in front of the wood stove.” Eileen means Egypt, Enid means England, Furry means France, Gertie means Greece. Some chaps have so much cut out by the censor you can only make out a sentence or two. But not our Alan.’
Everyone in Bellagong watched old Mr Finnigan the postman as he cycled from house to house now. Every family had someone in the army or navy or air force or nursing overseas. Letters were longed for, with a small private sigh each time Mr Finnigan passed a letter box without dropping anything in.
But most days there was at least one letter in the Peaslakes’ letter box. Alan wrote every week, though sometimes there’d be weeks with no letter then two or three would come at once. Mrs Peaslake seemed to knit even faster those weeks, her smile visibly bright.
Every Friday night Georg and Mrs Peaslake sat at the dining-room table, the nibs of their pens scratching at the paper, writing their letters too.
Bellagong
30 March 1941
Dear Aunt Miriam,
I hope that you are well and that your work is going well too.
The School Inspector came today. He gave us tests and Mud and I did so well that he says we are two years above our age. I have a certificate now. Mr Peaslake is making a frame for it to hang above my bed.
The Inspector is really old. He was retired like Mr Peaslake but has come back to work because of the war. He has a moustache like Hitler, but his is grey, and he said he won’t shave his off because he had his moustache before Hitler grew his.
The Inspector also said that Big Billy has to stay at school till he is fourteen, even though there is a war on, and not work on his uncle’s farm all the time like his uncle wants him to. Big Billy is going to join the merchant navy when he is fourteen. He says he does not want to ever see a cow again and there are no cows at sea.
I like having cattle around though. They make all sorts of sounds, not just moo like in books. There are happy sounds; and sad sounds that the cows make when Mr Mutton and Mr Peaslake take the weaners off to the cattle sale up at Yerralong.
Mr Mutton has bought a new bull. Mud said that they should call him George but Mr Mutton grinned and said ‘no way’. I said we could call him The King, because the King’s name is George, and everyone laughed and said yes.
The King is in the paddock next to the house because he cost a lot of money and so we have to make sure he does not fight the other bulls. I asked Mr Mutton why they fought, and he said, ‘Just because they are bulls, mate.’ Mr Mutton knows everything about cattle. He can ride without even holding onto the reins and just sort of nudges his horse to tell it where to go.
I can stay on a horse now but Mud says that isn’t riding, that is just staying on.
I had better go and set the table for tea. It is rabbit pie tonight. I wish I could send you some. Mrs Peaslake has packed up a cake and a tin of dripping for you though. She says she has boiled the dripping so it won’t go off and flavoured it with rosemary.
Your loving nephew,
George
; Letters mattered now. Telegrams would tell you if someone you loved died; letters could tell you if they were well, or happy, or just … doing all right. He thought that in a funny way both Alan’s and Aunt Miriam’s letters sounded happy. Whatever the hardships they were experiencing, they felt that what they were doing was good.
Every month he was allowed to exchange a cable message with Aunt Miriam at the post office. The post office was the end of the counter at the shop, next to the cheese. He told Aunt Miriam about the new calves and learning algebra and how he had helped pack hampers for the troops in Egypt and in Singapore.
Georg didn’t say how ships had been sunk by mines in Bass Strait, where the ship that he had been on had passed on its way to Melbourne. Neither he nor Aunt Miriam mentioned to each other that there were no more evacuations of children to the Dominions now, after two ships laden with children had been torpedoed on their way to Canada.
There was a lot that no one mentioned these days, not just things that spies might pass on to the enemy but things that might hurt if said aloud. No one in Bellagong ever spoke about the pictures in the newspaper of London ablaze in front of Georg, how London endured night after night of bombing: a city consumed by flames and rubble but fighting on.
Perhaps the Peaslakes thought that Georg didn’t read the papers, because he waited till there was no one around before he leafed through them, looking for news not just of London but Germany too. Or maybe they knew he read the papers, but guessed it would hurt him to have to talk of the bombings of what they thought of as his home.
Sometimes Georg felt there was so much unsaid inside him that he’d bust, not just his German life, the loss of Papa and the worry for Mutti, but things he too had to pretend not to see, even in Bellagong. Mrs Peaslake’s tears as she sat in the kitchen reading and rereading Alan’s letters; the way Mr Peaslake sometimes stared at the photo of Alan on the piano too; like Georg himself looked away from Mud’s face when it seemed as though he might beat her in the school spelling bee.
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