Pennies For Hitler

by Jackie French

  I hope your training is going well.

  Lots of love,

  Mud

  PS I miss you.

  Georg stood in Bellagong’s small shop as Mrs Peaslake bought three yards of blackout paper. ‘No, better make that four,’ said Mrs Peaslake to Mrs Peters at the counter. ‘We’d better cover Alan’s bedroom window too, just in case he is posted back. I’d hate things not to be ready for him.’

  Georg didn’t think there was any danger of that. Even the sheets on Alan’s bed were changed every Monday, just like all the other sheets in the house.

  Mr Peaslake made plywood shutters for the bottom part of the bedroom windows. When the light went off the plywood could be pulled back to let in air, or left open during the day and only closed off when the lights went on. Lights that might lure the Japanese bombers to Bellagong.

  Mrs Peaslake made proper blackout curtains for the lounge room and kitchen, pedalling the treadle sewing machine. It was hard to get the needle through the thick black leatherette. The curtains were so heavy it took the three of them to put them up after they’d been threaded on the rails. But when they went outside not a crack of light showed. Not a speck of light in the whole town.

  The worst problem with the blackout was getting to the dunny at night. After one night when Mr Peaslake had put his foot in the chook’s bucket (accidentally left by Georg on the path between the house and the dunny), Mrs Peaslake rummaged out three old chamberpots from the back of the shed, and crocheted cloths to put over them to cut down the smell.

  It was a bit embarrassing to carry your chamberpot down to the dunny with you every morning, but better than tripping on your way there in the dark or, worse, sitting on a spider.

  Only Mr Peaslake was allowed to use a torch outside now when he checked the town as air-raid warden, to see that no slice of light was visible. And even then, he could only use it in an emergency. But the pale dirt roads glowed in the starlight and, as Mr Peaslake said, he knew the town so well he could get around blindfolded — as long as no one left a bucket in his way.

  Georg carried the rolled-up blackout paper as they walked back home with Mrs Peaslake carrying the flour and sugar and Vegemite in a string bag. He remembered Aunt Miriam’s cans of baked beans and salmon, the string bag of bread. The world could vanish but Bellagong could feed itself from its gardens and paddocks almost without noticing.

  ‘Going to be a storm,’ said Mrs Peaslake, looking at the black bulges on the horizon. ‘Good thing you and Mud got the hay in.’

  Georg nodded. His hands had blistered at first, the hay-bale ropes cutting into them. But they were as tough as his feet now.

  ‘Better get a move on,’ said Mrs Peaslake, with another glance at the sky. ‘Don’t want to be out in it when this hits.’

  The storm still hadn’t come by dinnertime, though the air felt as thick as soup. Drawn by the last of the sunlight reflecting on the glass, big-winged moths flapped against the windows, till Mrs Peaslake drew the blackout curtains.

  It was stuffed mutton flap for dinner tonight. Before the war the mutton flaps had been given to the dogs but now, even here in farming country, meat was more precious. Samson and Delilah slobbered over their bowls of chopped heart and liver, then wagged their tails and waited for the leftover mashed potatoes and gravy.

  Georg went to bed straight after dinner and his bath; he had only three inches of bath water tonight as the house tanks were half empty. Mr Peaslake’s cousin in Sydney had sent him down a whole box of old books she’d bought at a Red Cross jumble sale. One of them was even a John Buchan book he hadn’t read.

  The storm struck when he was on Chapter 17: a scatter of hail on the tin roof like sheep pellets; and then the rain sweeping and pounding, the water gurgling down the pipes into the tanks.

  A full bath tomorrow night, he thought, as he turned off the lamp. Green paddocks instead of brown. They might even get another cut of hay.

  He wasn’t sure how long he’d slept when the roar woke him. For a second he thought he was back in London, the bombs ripping through the streets. Then he realised it was only thunder.

  It boomed again, but not frightening now that he knew what it was, like Mr Peaslake at a dramatic bit in one of his poems.

  He was thirsty. The stuffing at dinner had been salty. He slipped out of bed and opened the door. No need to turn the light on as someone was in the kitchen and there was enough glow from there to see.

  He padded along the corridor and through the kitchen door, then stopped.

  The table was covered in guns. Shotguns, rifles, a long grey pistol …

  He stared at them, then at Mr Peaslake and two of Mr Peaslake’s friends from the Bushfire Brigade.

  ‘George, what are you doing out of bed?’

  ‘I’m thirsty and wanted a drink.’ He couldn’t look away from the shotguns.

  ‘Just giving them a clean,’ said Mr Peaslake easily. ‘What with the boys and Mud’s dad being away next door. Need to be cleaned regularly, that’s all.’

  Georg nodded. He made his way awkwardly past the men and the laden table, ran water into a glass and drank.

  ‘Good night,’ he said quietly. He shut the door behind him, aware that the men stayed silent till he was halfway down the corridor, too far away to hear their words. He wondered if Mrs Peaslake knew they were there, or if she was asleep too.

  Guns did need to be cleaned after you used them. But no one had ammunition to spare for hunting rabbits or roos these days, though he knew that Mr Mutton had collected used lead pellets to melt into moulds to make new bullets.

  He supposed Mr Peaslake knew how to do that too.

  But he didn’t think they planned to hunt rabbits.

  The war dragged on, dragging the year with it. A bad year, across the whole world. The Japanese had bombed Darwin again and again through February. They’d bombed Wyndham and Broome over in Western Australia in March. General MacArthur and American troops would be coming now. At last Australia no longer had to defend itself alone, but the Japanese Empire was so big now. Could even America be powerful enough to stop them?

  Even the dogs were motionless when Mr Curtin spoke on the wireless now, as though they knew from their humans’ silence that they must be quiet. ‘… and we will advance over blackened ruins, through blasted and fire-swept cities, across scorched plains, until we drive the enemy into the sea.’

  The enemy was near.

  Chapter 33

  APRIL 1942

  Dear George,

  It was good to get your letter, mate. I reckon we eat ‘sandwiches’ here too.

  I’m writing to Mum and Dad separately but give them a hug from me. I reckon they’ll need it. I wish I could be back defending my own country but I reckon we’ll have the Jerries on the run here soon, no worries about that, and maybe they’ll let us come home then to share the job with all of you.

  Give the dogs a hug from me too. I’ve got a good lot of mates here but I miss the dogs. There was a poor starved mongrel around a week ago. Some of the blokes and I gave him some tucker but I haven’t seen it for a while. Maybe it likes the Jerries’ sausage better. Doesn’t know it’s better off with Aussie corned beef.

  It’s funny the things you miss sometimes. Mum’s roast mutton and her apple crumble, but mostly I miss the sound of the cicadas. Seems strange to be hot with no cicadas shrilling. I’ve been thinking that when this is all over I mightn’t go to university like I’d planned, but to agricultural college, learn how to look after the land properly so it doesn’t erode away or go to the bunnies, put my deferred pay into some decent land near Bellagong. But we need to beat the Jerries and the Nips first, don’t we?

  Tell Dad from me to make sure he doesn’t blow his false teeth out when he sounds the air-raid warden whistle — but better tell him when Mum isn’t around. Tell him I’m proud of him and every other bloke from Bellagong in the Volunteer Defence Corps.

  Fly the kite high for me, mate, keep your chin up, and don’t forget those h
ugs.

  Your loving foster brother,

  Alan

  Overnight the road signs and the signs at the railway station vanished so the enemy, if they landed, couldn’t find their way around the country.

  At school Mrs Rose made them practise evacuation drill, in case all the kids in Australia had to be sent to Alice Springs to escape the enemy, marching back and forth across the paddock, singing ‘to keep your spirits up’. Singing ‘Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag, and smile, smile, smile …’

  Mud marched with the rest, but Georg was pretty sure she would refuse to leave her land to go to Alice Springs. He wondered if he’d go this time. He’d been sent away twice, for his own good, and to help keep those who loved him safe and worry-free.

  But he was older now. Too old to be a parcel. Even for Mr Curtin.

  The newspaper said that already women and children were leaving big cities like Sydney and Wollongong — a hundred thousand children might be evacuated soon in New South Wales alone. Georg remembered the child army with their labels around their necks back in London. At least here it sounded like the mums and kids would go together.

  The newspaper photos showed buildings surrounded by sandbags in Australia now, in Sydney and Brisbane, and barbed wire on the beaches too. Georg and Mud ran down to the cliffs every afternoon straight after school, to see if their beach had been ringed with the stuff.

  But it never was. Georg supposed there wasn’t enough barbed wire in Australia for every beach. If the Japanese wanted to land they could easily find a beach with no defences. But he didn’t say that aloud.

  Summer stayed late, the heat pounding like a fist on the tin roof and the paddocks. The air shimmered like it was trying to get away. But every afternoon the southerly rolled in as though it had been watching the clock, sweeping away the heat and sending the dogs trotting back to the warmth of the stove.

  ‘Pair of sooks that they are,’ said Mrs Peaslake, grating apples for after-school pancakes. The orchard was rich with apples now: red ones and knobbly green ones called ‘twenty ouncers’ the size of footballs and striped ones and some an almost black-red called Democrats, that had to wait for winter to be picked.

  Georg had learned how to flip pancakes now, to wait for the bubbles on top that meant it was time to turn them over.

  ‘Pancakes!’ Mud slammed the kitchen door against the wind.

  ‘I reckon you can smell pancakes a paddock away.’ Mrs Peaslake added lemon juice to the mixture to stop the apple turning brown. ‘I thought you had to make the butter for your mum today.’

  ‘Done it,’ said Mud virtuously, nodding at the tea-towel-covered bowl in her hands. ‘Here’s yours and Mum says can she have two dozen eggs please ’cause she’s making fruitcakes for the boys tomorrow.’

  She grabbed a plate and held it out for the next pancake. Georg flipped it to her, then poured in more batter. Mrs Peaslake looked at him with fond approval. She poured herself a cup of tea from the pot that brewed on the stove all day, added hot water to weaken it a bit, and a splash of milk, then sat back with a sigh and picked up her knitting again.

  She must have been planting cabbages all morning, bending over in the heat, thought Georg. There’d been six new long rows of them when he’d come home from school.

  ‘Can’t go wrong with a good fruitcake,’ said Mrs Peaslake. She glanced at the new row of bottles of chutney on the bench. ‘No need to say they’re choko,’ she said. ‘What people don’t know won’t hurt them and it’s for a good cause.’

  ‘Which one this time?’ asked Mud.

  ‘Relief for Soldiers’ Families,’ said Mrs Peaslake.

  ‘Did you hear about Mrs Cousins?’ Mud spoke through a mouthful of pancake. ‘She posted poor Mr Cousins rock cakes. He said they really were like rock cakes when he got them in Egypt. He said when they run out of hand grenades he can lob the rock cakes at the enemy.’ She passed her empty plate to Georg again. ‘Hey, I had an idea.’

  ‘Hay is what horses eat,’ corrected Mrs Peaslake while Georg asked cautiously, ‘What?’

  Mud rummaged in the pockets of the dress her mum insisted she wear to school, even though Mud mostly tucked the skirt into her bloomers so it looked like shorts anyway.

  She pulled out an already grubby pamphlet. ‘I found it at the post office. It’s for schoolchildren! It says how to find a German spy.’

  Georg froze.

  ‘You have to listen to anyone who asks lots of questions,’ said Mud, ‘like where your dad or brothers have been posted, and then you have to ring this number and report them. It’s got lots of other great ideas. Look!’ She held it up.

  Georg looked at the drawings. ‘What’s that kid doing?’ He tried to keep his voice normal.

  ‘Spying on suspicious characters. See, if you’re behind a bush you have to keep your bum down —’

  ‘Language,’ warned Mrs Peaslake, not looking up from her knitting.

  ‘Bottom then. The pamphlet says every school needs to have its own Junior Volunteer Defence Corps in case we’re invaded.’

  Is she really so brave the idea doesn’t scare her? wondered Georg. Or doesn’t she realise what it’s like when enemies try to invade your home?

  He watched her reading out more of the pamphlet in between bites of apple pancake. Knowing Mud, maybe a bit of both, he thought.

  What would she do if she knew he was German? Would Mud — even Mud — think he was a spy?

  ‘… and they say we have to think up our own ways of stopping the enemy. Like rolling garbage bins under tanks, but I think tanks would crush garbage bins, so logs would be better. We could wrap them in barbed wire so they stop the tanks from moving.’

  Georg stared at her. Had she ever seen a tank, except on the Movietone News before the pictures up in Wollongong on her birthday?

  He’d seen tanks in parades at home, years ago. He realised her idea might actually work.

  ‘Time enough to start wrapping logs in good barbed wire if the Japs ever do land,’ said Mrs Peaslake, her quiet voice suddenly sharp.

  ‘We can use old barbed wire from the dump! And make stink bombs. You know those eggs Gertie was sitting on and then got off? We can mix those with dog droppings and tie them in balloons and —’

  Mrs Peaslake’s face relaxed. ‘There’ll be no mixing rotten eggs around here or you’ll get sick to your stomach.’

  She got up to stir the stew on the back burner of the stove, then opened the oven to check the Anzac biscuits. A slow-cooked Anzac biscuit lasted almost as long as a rich fruitcake if it was packed in enough old newspaper. Mrs Peaslake reckoned that if you could throw a package of biscuits at the wall and they didn’t break, they were packed well enough to send overseas. ‘Now if you have nothing to do I’ve got two old jumpers that need unravelling and rolling up again.’

  ‘But we have to help the war effort!’

  ‘Good-fitting socks in their boots will help our boys more than rotten eggs and dog droppings. The idea! Now off to the garden with you if you don’t want to unravel the jumpers. There’s the beans to be picked and the cabbage seedlings to be watered, and could you take some of the chutney down to Mrs Finister for the Christmas Box Appeal stall, and some to Mrs Aston for the Refugee Relief raffle, and a jar for your mum while you’re at it, Mud.’

  Mrs Peaslake took a tray of Anzacs out of the oven to cool before she packed them, and put in another. ‘And then you can call in at the shop for another ball of string and roll of brown paper — my purse is just over there.’

  ‘She’s trying to keep us too busy to make stink bombs,’ said Mud, as they took the baskets down from the laundry wall to put the beans into.

  Georg thought of the bombers in the blood-red sky of London. ‘I don’t think stink bombs would make much difference to the Japanese,’ he said.

  ‘I’ve got a better idea anyway.’ She gave him a sideways glance. ‘Did you know Uncle Ron has a pamphlet called Guerillas in Australia?’

  Georg shook his head
.

  ‘I looked up guerillas and they aren’t the animals, they are people who hide in the bush and fight invaders. And he’s got a new book called Shoot to Kill by a man called Ion Idriess.’

  ‘He didn’t show me.’ Georg tried to keep the hurt from his face. Mr Peaslake shared all his books with Georg.

  ‘He didn’t show me either. I saw him take it down to the shed when the postman delivered it. Then I snuck in there after dinner. I don’t think Auntie Thel knows he has it.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because it’s about fighting the Japs if they come here. Real fighting. Not just stink bombs.’

  ‘What sort of fighting?’

  ‘There’s how to make a thing called a Molotov cocktail to blow up tanks and armoured cars. It’s like a bomb. You put petrol and kerosene and tar from the edges of the road in a bottle —’

  ‘There aren’t any tarred roads around here. And no one has any spare petrol either.’ Plus, he thought, it sounded like something that would be more likely to blow up the person trying to use it than kill an enemy soldier.

  ‘I got another idea from it though. A better one.’

  ‘What?’

  Mud grinned. ‘You’ll find out tomorrow.’

  Chapter 34

  Bellagong

  21 April 1942

  Dear Aunt Miriam,

  I hope you are well.

  Guess what? We have formed the Bellagong Junior Volunteer Defence Corps. We will start tomorrow. Mud is going to be the Captain but she says I can be her Lieutenant and Big Billy will be the Sergeant because he is the biggest even if he is younger than me and Mud.

  I have not had any letters from you for two months, but I know not to worry as there is not much room for letters on ships now and that you are safe where you are in the country. But if you sent me any news in the last two months could you send it to me again in case it was on a ship that sank?

  We have lots of pumpkins. They are drying out on the shed roof. It doesn’t seem funny to eat cattle food now: it is very good. Mrs Peaslake makes a pumpkin fruitcake too, but I cannot send you one because it does not keep well like other fruitcakes.