by Kim Kelly
‘All I would like you to do is to see if you can’t draw money from that compensation fund. Our money. But not for now, mind, just to see if it’s possible, in case the strike goes on too long. We have our own funds for shortfalls, for those who need it, but inflation being as it is, I’m concerned we’ll break the bank within the month.’
Inflation, yes, madness. Everyone everywhere is earning boom wages, but the cost of living is outrunning any gain. The price of coal could quadruple tomorrow and it’ll only make me, and Daniel, richer: if the price of flour went up ten-fold it would make little difference to me, who’s feeding two young women, me and Louise, and a baby, who’s not up to bread yet; a fair few of the miners have six or more mouths to feed. As for our money, well, what’s the difference? It all comes out of my share of the profits. I want to argue with Evan, but I say: ‘All right.’ I won’t bother Messrs Stanley and Bragg with a request to find a loophole, though: if need be I’ll just lie when I write to them and tell them someone else has died at the mine. I’ve done that four times now, for war widows; I’m sure my legal angels will think something is amiss, so many deaths and no official enquiries as to what might be killing the miners of Wattle Dell Colliery, but they haven’t queried me. I’ll make up a miner, kill him off, and ask for five hundred quid from the fund, then top up the kitty with my own money. Dippy.
Everything is. Whole country’s gone mad and Billy the Troll PM is the maddest hatter at the party. He’s got a new party, called the National Labor Party, after wrecking the old one over the conscription referendum, which failed, apparently because of our lack of patriotism. He’s got a new best friend too, that liberal, Free Trader, capitalist arse Joe Cook, whom he’s appointed Minister for the Navy. He’s also got a War Precautions Act and he’s not shy about using it: Billy and Joe have got government-contracted labour inside our coal mine right now, taking what coal is necessary for The National Interest, and the miners will bash up any scab they catch in town. Meanwhile, Billy is determined that we give more than our all for Blighty, who is still failing to free us from the evil scourge of Fritz, but has managed to this last Easter murder several Irish rebels in Dublin for wanting freedom for themselves. Really, is there a shred of sense in any of this? Coalminers are going for broke to protect what they should have by rights anyway; the Wobblies are resorting to random acts of arson and inciting riots against the imperialists; and ‘socialism’ is just about the most treasonous word around, not including ‘trade union’, ‘Catholic’ and the very worst: ‘pacifist’.
And My Boy has sacrificed God only knows what for this madhouse?
I’m going to start hyperventilating now.
‘Are you sure you’re all right, love?’
No. A terrible, deep stab of dread drives into that soft centre of me. My heart is banging, belting in my chest and the room is spinning. But it passes just as quickly and I say: ‘Yes, I’m all right.’
Evan says: ‘No, I don’t think you are. But you’ll not do anyone any good if you let the worry make you sick.’
‘How can I stop worrying?’
‘Tell yourself that it’ll be all right. You’ll be all right and so will he. No point thinking otherwise.’
There’s a circle, but it’s true: keep believing that my wishes make a difference. A difference against this feeling that feels like knowledge that something is very, very wrong.
Evan winks: ‘Prayers don’t go astray either. Danny’ll never know what chats we’ve been having with The Boss on his behalf.’
And that gets a feeble laugh from me: I’m sure Evan’s entreaties to Our Lord have been a little less fanciful than mine.
Two more weeks sees the strike end. Miners win, for the preservation of their eight-hour shifts. Which I’ve since learned Billy the Troll, as a state parliamentarian, was instrumental in achieving in the first place. And I haven’t had to lie and fiddle about with the accounts to take money from the company compensation fund, which no other mines have; I’m sure every other hole in the ground across the eastern states has worn down their own mutual funds to nothing too. Raise the fist. What a victory for the workers of Australia.
And I couldn’t care less.
I’ve just received another slow white letter from Victoria Barracks, this one informing me that the award of Sgt D Ackerman’s Distinguished Conduct Medal appears in the London Gazette at such and such a date.
I am livid.
I don’t read the citation; can’t. What I would like to know, all I would like to know, is very simple: how is my Sgt’s health?
I leave Danny with Louise and let my fury take me all the way to the post office, not gathering any sense of obedience to AIF IT BEING UNDERSTOODs along the way. Mr Symes is startled by my air of urgency but most helpful in putting me through. The line is very clear and the cretin on the other end tells me in the most officious tone: ‘You must understand, Madam, that if no further report has been received, then it must be assumed your husband’s progress is satisfactory. Please do not call again.’ There’s a click, then nothing.
I keep hold of my angry, preparing-for-the-worst tears long enough to pay for the call, and get out to the car. Satisfactory? What does that mean? Satisfactorily grave? Satisfactorily bunged up? Satisfactorily gazetted but otherwise vanished?
Not even in the front door and I unravel completely at Louise, and the only thing that stops my incoherent tirade is Danny’s tears. Oh, this won’t do, Francy. Won’t do at all. Keep yourself in check, girl. If no further report is received you must assume that you’re to keep wishing and not upset your child while you’re at it.
Louise says, so simply: ‘It’s not a sin to be angry, Francine. It’s probably a good thing to let it go once in a while.’
‘You never do,’ I tell her, and she’s got more reason for anger than I do.
‘Maybe I’m just more quiet about it,’ she says, then smiles with the gentlest tisky glint: ‘Maybe I won’t be quiet about it if I miss my train.’
Oh good heavens! She’s got to be on the afternoon train to be in Sydney first thing tomorrow for an interview: she’s determined to become a nurse and has applied for a training position. Then shame stings: Louise has every reason to rage at the world, but instead she’s decided to rejoin it, alone. About time for me to do that too, or I will make myself sick.
First opportunity comes a few days later driving out to Bathurst with a Mr and Mrs Henderson and they are just the motor start I need, and also provide, according to my sage mother-in-law, the perfect excuse to spend a day away from Danny so I stop indulging his appetite at the expense of my own flesh, which really is diminishing alarmingly.
The Hendersons are cards, chipper to the enth, and have me in stitches from the first, despite myself. Stan Henderson is twenty-five, wickedly handsome as they come; he’s lost a leg and the hearing in one ear and when he has a bit of difficulty negotiating his way around the car door he says: ‘Don’t worry about me, love, never had a great sense of balance to begin with.’ His wife Lilly says: ‘Don’t listen to him — the only great thing he’s ever had in his life is me, and I’m the fool who married him — and that was after he came home.’
We’re just jaunting, going to the Big Shops so that Lilly can look at the wider selection of dress fabrics, wants to make herself a new skirt for Christmas, and we’ll have lunch in a teashop while Stan meets up with some cobbers at the pub to do some further work on his balance. I’ve met them not through Father Hurley this time, but through the district’s veterans’ league, which exists now that enough of Those Who Help Themselves have returned to help each other in lieu of what they’re owed: help, housing, jobs.
But betrayal is the furthest thing from their minds and mine, and Lilly is giggling away at something Stan has just said about the cows by the roadside as we near Bathurst, when all of a sudden I’m washed over by dread again. Head spinning, heart pounding, I have to pull the car up. In my mind I can see Little Danny in his basket at Sarah’s and I have to get home to be with him. I’m
utterly terrified, but have no reason to be. I wasn’t even thinking of Daniel, for once, but something is wronger than wrong with him, with me.
Lilly says: ‘What’s up, love, are you all right?’
It passes. Of course I am all right.
No I’m not. I put my head on the steering wheel and lose it spectacularly. Breast milk pours out into the padding of my corset — Deo gratia for new and improved feminine undergarments for nursing mothers. I can’t stop it all pouring out of everywhere.
Lilly gets out of the car and comes round to the side of me. ‘Shhhh. It’s all right.’
No it’s not. Nothing’s ever going to be right again. Can’t tell Lilly that — doubt she’d believe me anyway. I force a laugh out and tell her: ‘I’m just missing my husband. Just jealous listening to you two talk.’
‘Ohhh,’ she says, tears quick and real for me.
Stan reaches over and pats me on the back. ‘Let’s just go home, love — we’ll go another day.’
‘Not on your life,’ I turn around and tell him. ‘I should not be left unsupervised today.’ I can’t let these people down because of my overactive imagination.
Stan says: ‘Fair enough.’ But best of all he laughs right at me for the fool I am.
Then I ask him, I suppose just to know some small thing against everything I can’t know: ‘What’s a Distinguished Conduct Medal?’
‘Ah-ha. Your lad got one?’
‘Apparently. What does it mean?’
‘Who knows, but I can tell you this: you get a Military Medal for not losing your lunch, but you get a DCM for asking what’s for dinner.’
‘Oh Stanley!’ says Lilly. ‘What a horrible thing to say.’
But he ignores her. ‘Means your lad’s got a screw loose or two, and you probably should be proud of him.’
‘Have you got one?’ I ask him. ‘I mean a medal, not a screw loose.’
‘No. You get nothing at all for being shot before breakfast, but I’ve probably got more than two loose screws.’
‘You should get a very big medal just for making me laugh,’ I say.
But Stan just wants a very big beer instead, and I’ll need a ladies room shortly to deal with the sticky mess under my blouse.
A few hours later it’s time to head back, Lilly’s chastising Stan outside the pub for becoming so pie-eyed in so short a time, and my breasts have calcified to rock, they’re so full. I’ll leave Lilly to wrestle her Stan into the car, while I stop in on Miriam, who only lives around the corner. I was looking forward to that when we set out this morning, but now I don’t want to hear: ‘Heard any more from that hopeless little brother of mine?’ First thing she says as she opens the door of her big terrace house.
‘No.’ Immediately aching, leaking heart and breasts.
She waves away my angst in her effusive, jovial way, then says, archly: ‘I’ll bet money that he’s only feeling sorry for himself, Francine. He’s a big sook, really. You’ll see.’
‘How’s Roy?’ I ask her, automatically, because I’m lost again in wondering what awful thing Daniel must be feeling sorry about, what awful dinner he must have eaten to get that medal.
‘No idea,’ says Mim as a shrieky squabble erupts from the children inside. ‘Wherever he is, it’s probably quieter than here. Last letter, he was fixing the boilers at some hospital in Belgium — what an adventure! Chippy goes abroad to learn how to tinker.’
She’s so buoyant, vivacious, nothing like her big tough sook little brother; and now she’s pulling a face at me and waving at her chest.
I look down at my own: soaked right through. She hurls me a cardigan to cover it up. ‘You’d better make tracks for home, before you explode.’
January. I haven’t exploded or disappeared and Little Danny loves his mashed potatoes, what a surprise. And I haven’t had a thump- spin morbid moment for a few weeks. Still haven’t heard from Daniel either. But I’m doing a good line in acceptance: whatever’s happened to him, it’s too awful for words. It’s even crossed my mind that perhaps he doesn’t want to come home. That happens sometimes, doesn’t it? Possibilities endless. I’ll leave it one more week before writing to the Red Cross; add my little plea to the thousands of others: To whom it may concern, I wish to make an enquiry as to my husband’s state of gravity…
I must concentrate on what I am doing, though: almost removed my thumb with the paring knife just now. I’m making a special dinner for Louise: a farewell one. She won her training position, and she’s going off on her adventure tomorrow.
She’s in her room now, packing. And I am not going to blubber at the wrench that’s coming. It’s something to celebrate for her, and celebrate I will. Celebrate her courage and her plain ambition: she wants to be a headcase nurse eventually, psychiatry I think it’s called; she’ll probably know more about all that than the doctors. Her Paul might have been ignored, but I have a good suspicion that she won’t allow herself to be.
Knock on the front door: signal for Francy to drop whatever she’s doing and race up the hall hoping it’s mail.
And it is mail, except Mr Symes is holding it; Odysseus’s prow powering across the valley behind him. I’m about to have a morbid moment, thinking he’s brought a special salvo from the AIF. But Mr Symes is smiling. Never seen that before. He says: ‘I recognised the scrawl — must be from your fella. Hope it’s good news. Leave you to it, then.’
Breathe: ‘Thank you.’
I look at it for a moment. It’s Daniel’s scrawly hand on the front, very scrawly. Very deep breath. Open it.
It says, in writing that’s mostly barely legible, even for him:
My France
Sorry I haven’t written, but I’ve not been very good company for a spell, and not a lot I wanted to share with you or anyone I might have got to write for me. Thanks for all your letters, stopped me going all the way round the bend. You should be proud to know that I’m famous over here for having spent almost as much time in bed being a pain than in active service. Well deserved too. Lately I’ve been busy learning what legs are for, slow going, but I’m getting there. I’m in London now, can’t wait to see the place where the big decisions are made when I’m allowed out to practise walking around it. My arm is no good, though, managed to do a very good job of wrecking my elbow. Explains worse writing than usual. There’s a quack here who is going to have a look at the damage, but it’s a doubtful cause. You might get a bill from him if he has a go. Can say that I’ll be on one of the next ships home. You’ll get word from AIF, I suppose. But please don’t bother coming to Sydney, you probably won’t want to anyway. I want to make my own way home and see you there, nowhere else, not ever again. Just you and the kid. Mum and everyone else can wait in line till I find a way to forgive myself. I’m so sorry, France. I love you more than ever, but I don’t know that there’s too much to love about me.
x Daniel
Oh dear. I know this voice, as well as if I can hear it. Tight-jawed, morose, fierce.
First rush of thought: I won’t take this nonsense from you. Not ever again. There was I worried I wouldn’t recognise you. Ha! And you’ve got two legs, which you walk on.
Second rush: scream with joy.
Louise runs into the hall. ‘What?’
Wave letter.
‘Oh! How is he then?’
‘Sounds terrible! Two legs, no good elbow. Wonderful!’
Third rush: oh dear God, maybe he’s on his way home right now. I’ve had no word from the AIF, so telephone call needs to be made, and I’ll camp in the post office armed with Sgt’s name, rank and serial number and one serious demand, and I’ll keep calling till they tell me which ship he’s on. As if I wouldn’t.
In any event, he’s not going to get away with his lone-dog act this time.
DANIEL
If I thought Egyptians were small and scrappy that’s only because I’d never been to London. Anyone who says Australia is the arse end of the world hasn’t been to London either. I know I’m still melanc
holy, very, but this is the saddest place I’ve seen. Full of people pretending to cope, cracking hardy hard as, with a smile, a wave, a joke, got a smoke, but please, Fritz, don’t bomb the Palladium or we’ll be really unhappy. The French just shrug and look tired of it all as they starve and watch whole chunks of their country being razed; I could understand them better, without a word of the language, except for Frogs’ reluctance for shaving and preference for long hair — why would you do that to yourself deliberately when you’re living in a trench? It’s an eye-opener being here, though, in this Old Dart, this great imperial capital. Does something to confuse my anger to see it: seems Blighty’s own are copping it worse than anyone else, and I’m not sure how much that’s got to do with the war. Even if things are bad at home, at least you’ve got the sun, and colour, to remind you that you are actually alive. Here, it’s all little grey shapes in the fog, all of them looking like they need a good long feed. Something must happen when they come and live in Australia that suddenly makes them grow; I know they’ve got food shortages here, but I don’t think you can shrink the overall height of a population by that much in a couple of years, even after culling all the tall ones. I know they’ve got goods shortages here too, but it took half of yesterday to find someone who could sell me a toothbrush: I don’t think Londoners believe in that sort of thing; might make their cheery smiles more convincing if they did. And I love the cold, I really do. I love the sleet and the snow and the wind that comes up through the gully at home, but here, although it’s colder by far, it’s more than cold: it’s dismal and filthy, miles and miles of dismal filth around a stinking wide grey river. Not pleasant for creaky bones either, the damp sinks right into you. They should put opium in the drinking water. Maybe they do.
Us animals are certainly popular here, though, at least among young females. We’re the only ones with money, with our six bob a day rattling in our pockets, and a bit extra these days in my case. If another girl looks at me with half-starved eyes, I’m just going to give her the bloody money. My hand’s always in my pocket anyway, since that’s about the position my arm seems to prefer, even when I take off the brace I have to wear on it so it doesn’t get any further beyond repair. I can hear Stratho laughing when the skirts look at me — it’s not funny. I’ve got to go and see this other quack tomorrow, but today, to torture myself, since that’s what I am best at at the minute, I’m going to pay a visit to the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square. I’ve never stepped inside an art gallery, and I suppose it’s time to see what I should see. I still don’t know anything about anything; didn’t get around to further reading, since I fell down that hole full of sedative. When I first caught sight of my legs again I didn’t think I’d ever be able to do without it; they were just bones, so stripped of flesh that I could feel the lump of bone under the scar where my right leg had healed. Pam told me before she said farewell: ‘You might not think you’ll be getting up on them, but stranger things have happened.’ She was right: five minutes in the convalescent hospital here in London and they strapped me into calipers; best way to convince a bloke: no chance I was going home wearing that lot. They still feel strange, though, different, like they’re not quite my legs. They do the job as well as anyone’s now, and I don’t even limp, not really; there’s just half an inch of extra leather on the sole of my right boot to even me up a bit, and I don’t know why it doesn’t feel right, this ambulation. They do the job, they do the job, they’re doing it right now, and here’s Lord Nelson, pigeons shitting on him through the fog.