Brother Sister Soldier Cousin

by Phyllis Johnston

  “All you need is practice. Use the paddock to keep your driving up.”

  Sadness swept over me. “I wish you didn’t have to go back to the war, Harry cousin.” After his three years away, I knew him again now.

  “Yeah,” he muttered. “And don’t worry about being adopted. You’re our girl. Full stop.”

  In the morning Ginger and I walked to the cowshed. He nudged Harry’s neck, as Harry stroked his nose. Harry and I hugged. I didn’t mind his bristles now and when he kissed me on the cheek, I kissed him back. He smelt like Dad.

  “You’re my big little sister cousin,” he grinned. “Don’t forget that.”

  I climbed the rail and slid onto Ginger’s back. Harry carried a calf under each arm and walked with us to the roadside pen. I wanted to howl and my throat felt blocked as though a plum was in it.

  Tears came in my eyes. I swallowed hard. “Goodbye, brother cousin. Will I see you again, before you sail to Europe?”

  “It depends on the army,” he said. He patted Ginger’s neck and waved me off. Before I turned the bend in the road I looked back through blurring tears.

  Harry stood by the calf pen and waved again and I waved back. How had I lost the present Harry brought home especially for me? I wished I hadn’t been so careless with Ahmed.

  “It’s not fair, Ginger, that Harry has to go to war,” I sniffed.

  Ginger chewed in a gargled way around his bit. Hm-grm-mno.

  Lessons dragged that day. The stupid FJC boys annoyed me like summer flies, flicking paper balls and pen nibs at me. I wanted to swat them away.

  “We will go on with our study of the Napoleonic war,” Mr Moore said.

  “Hooray!” The boys ran to the store room to get the wooden swords and axes they’d made. They were blunt and couldn’t hurt anyone but we were forbidden to touch each other with them and if that happened, we were kept inside doing extra maths.

  Today it was my turn to be Napoleon and my French troops were Standards Three and Five. Donny Fromm was a Russian general and Fred Wormy the Duke of Wellington. Their troops were Standards Two and Four. We filed outside to the playground map and found Russia; in our last session, fighting had stopped outside Moscow. We recited battle names and countries as Mr Moore pointed to them, then we fought to get Moscow. My troops had burnt the countryside behind them and now entered Moscow triumphantly. I, Napoleon, would be victorious for a while.

  “Charge!” I yelled, and rushed the Duke of Wellington. We were the same height. Whip, whap, his sword thudded, and jarred my arm as I bashed it with mine. The Russian general rushed up and hacked at my sword with his axe. Mary Smithson howled because Bob Brown struck her arm.

  Mr Moore’s whistle shrilled. We stopped fighting.

  “Bob, inside. Do the sums on the board,” Mr Moore said.

  Bob slunk off and the battle started again.

  Mr Moore told us about Napoleon’s eventual defeat by Russia, and we went inside to write an essay on what soldiers might feel in battle.

  I dipped my pen nib in the inkwell and looked out the window. The lower pane was painted, but grey clouds showed in the top, unpainted pane. Where are you, Barbara? She loved the Napoleonic wars and we had stood back to back, yelling, whooshing our swords in front of us and fighting strongly together.

  Mum was milking the cows again. I set the table and saw there was cold hogget for tea. I scrubbed and peeled vegetables, filled the pots, turned them on low and went to feed the calves. Fifteen percent of them had been kept as replacements for the herd. Mum chased two wild heifers that were to be milked for the first time. They shook off their teat cups, kicked off their legs ropes, smashed their body rope and jumped backwards out of the bail, running around the yard and trying to climb the rails.

  Mum herded them back towards the bails. Dad limped about, arms wide to help. The heifers skittered and slid over the yard into the bails, their hides covered in muck. It was like a Wild West show! Dad leant against them and tied them up.

  Mum leaned over, hands on knees. “I can still run. Tap-dancing stood me in good stead,” she puffed.

  Several times a day, a mean voice spoke inside my head. I felt offended with Ruby, curious about my Australian father, and mad at Mum and Dad. A grizzling, whining anger came to me when I thought of my birth.

  The first calves born were eating grass now and there were only a few more cows to calve. Feeding the calves was easier; the weather was warmer, the fruit trees in bud and birds nesting. I missed Harry and the way he challenged Mum and Dad with new ideas.

  The BBC World News said the Americans were still battling the Japanese and it seemed they would never be defeated. Harry wrote a letter from camp and said he was settled in and would write before he left New Zealand. Mr Moore said the Allies were winning the war and that it would be over next year. Mum and Dad listened to the war news sitting in their chairs, not draped each side of the radio. They were positive the Japanese wouldn’t invade, but I couldn’t forget Mike and Harry talking about the Japs coming, and partisan groups.

  “Harry and Mike are seasoned soldiers,” Dad said. “They could only foresee an invasion, but the American Marines are holding the Japs off our shores.”

  Every day I ran up the house path and looked for a letter from Ruby or perhaps Barbara. No letters came addressed to me. One day I smouldered on my unanswered letter until after tea, then I accused Mum and Dad of keeping Ruby’s letter from me.

  “Girl, that’s a nasty accusation.” Dad said. “Your adoption might still be painful for Ruby. Perhaps she doesn’t want to answer your questions.”

  Mum glared at me. “What have you been reading? Where did you get the idea that we would keep mail from you?”

  I closed my eyelids to slits and glared back. Weeks earlier I had finished reading Caddie Woodlawn and no one in their family hid mail. But they wouldn’t, because when the steamer came up-river with mail, it was an exciting event and everyone was there to collect it.

  “Not receiving a reply from Ruby, it’s a thought I could naturally have.” I stopped slitting my eyes which was quite difficult to do.

  Dad shook his finger at me. “You just have to wait, as Pearl and I do for a letter from Jess.”

  There was a knock on the back door. Wide-eyed, we looked at each other. It couldn’t be Jess because she would have walked in. Dad went and opened the door. A policeman stood in the porch, the light shining on his badge.

  “Charlie Burge,” Dad said. “Come in. Come in.”

  “No, no …” Mum whispered.

  I froze. Harry had died. The police or the vicar came to tell country people of a death.

  Sergeant Burge put his hands up as though he was being arrested. “Now, Mrs Forbes. You know I haven’t come with news from the war.”

  White-faced, Mum stood by the table. Dad gestured to his chair for Sergeant Burge to sit down. He was a big man who towered over Dad and the chair looked small as he eased himself into it. He took his hat off, put it on his knee and smoothed down his grey and black hair. We stared and waited.

  “Is your son here?”

  Dad spoke gruffly. “He is somewhere in the King Country. We don’t know where.”

  Harry wasn’t in camp! So he’d gone to Mike’s hideout, after all. No wonder Mum and Dad had been relaxed about him — except for Mum’s instinctive reaction when the sergeant turned up.

  “Harry has fought enough battles,” Mum cried. “The North African campaigners should be discharged.”

  Sergeant Burge looked at Dad. “This is desertion. You know that, Henry. Harry could be shot.”

  “They should have shipped the division on to Europe,” Dad said hoarsely. “Not given them leave at home.”

  “If it is any consolation, thousands of men did not want to go back to camp,” Sergeant Burge said, “and hundreds haven’t. The police have the job of rounding them up.”

  “The government, the army,” Mum cried, “rounding our sons up, when they know how defenceless we are against the Jap
anese.”

  “Mrs Forbes, the official order at the moment is to take them back to camp.”

  “Just like cattle!” Mum trembled. “Off to the works!”

  Dad patted her arm. “Pearl, Pearl. Charlie doesn’t make the decisions.”

  “They’ve got to go back to camp,” Sergeant Burge said. “And let the army and government sort it.”

  “Harry has gone bush. In the King Country,” Dad said again. “We didn’t want to know details. We could tell no lies that way.”

  Sergeant Burge stood up. “I’ll put that in my report.”

  “Would you like a cup of tea, Charlie?” Dad said.

  “No, thank you. I’m on to another family tonight.”

  I was glad Sergeant Burge wasn’t stopping for a cup of tea. He seemed an enemy and I would have felt like spitting in the tea as I made it. Would he have clapped handcuffs on Harry if he’d been here? It was chill-making to know Harry and Mike were being hunted like criminals. Dad walked Charlie to his car on the road and Mum knelt by the fire, shivering.

  I sat beside her on the mat. “You told me you had a letter from Harry, written from camp. Why did you tell me lies?” They would never treat me as a grown-up

  Mum looked into the fire. “If you didn’t know, Helen, you couldn’t lie.”

  Or I couldn’t tell anyone and let the district know. They didn’t trust me. I was really their niece, a second-hand daughter.

  “Harry didn’t want you mixed up with this decision. He knew the police could come and ask us questions.”

  “Harry should have trusted me! I’d go through torture rather than tell the police anything.”

  “Oh, Helen,” Mum said. “Don’t make a drama of it.”

  She thought I was like Ruby. Well, that wasn’t fair… But then, perhaps I was. Like Ruby, I had to stick up for myself.

  “It is a drama, when police appear in the night and talk of Harry as a deserter.”

  Mum didn’t reply. She turned on the radio and we listened to jaunty music introducing Dad and Dave. It was a humorous programme but I couldn’t smile. Mum started making cocoa and opened the last jar of plum jam as I toasted bread on the embers. The tangy taste of Damson plums was a change from honey but the tartness on our tongues couldn’t push away our concern for Harry. It hung in the living room like an invisible mist.

  Chapter Six

  MUM WROTE HARRY A LETTER ABOUT SERGEANT BURGE’S visit.

  Harry wrote from army camp that they had been captured anyway by the Te Kuiti police, after a police dog had found their hide-out in the bush.

  “Hunted like criminals, handcuffed,” Mum cried. “Men who helped win the North African Campaign.” She passed me his letter.

  We reckon a farmer knew where the hut was and welched on us. It’s no use taking on the law and the police were sympathetic. We were driven through town with the handcuffs off, then they were slapped back on until we reached camp. There are thousands rounded up and we will not do what the officers want. Turn left when Sarge bawls right and stand at ease instead of attention. Some obey orders but there are approx. a third of the men who feel they’ve done their bit for England. It is causing pandemonium. Not many salute.

  “In the Great War,” Dad said, “we would have been called deserters and shot.”

  “The army couldn’t shoot thousands of men,” Mum said. “That would be murder.”

  “No one can defy the army or the government,” Dad replied.

  I felt thrilled that Harry, Mike and other soldiers were defying the army, but with the police involved, I wasn’t sure…

  Thinking about Harry, Mum and Dad couldn’t sleep. Purple shadows like smudged mascara lay under Mum’s eyes. As soon as Dad sat in his armchair in the evenings, he dozed, and Mum said not to turn the radio on and wake him.

  I told Mr Moore about Harry and Mike.

  “The newspapers report disturbance in the army camps,” he said. “It seems wrong that those who have fought and survived must go overseas again. But England is close to Europe and British soldiers have leave there, then go back to the war.”

  “Harry wants to stay here and fight the Japs.”

  “The Japanese won’t invade. The United States Marines are holding them in the Central Pacific.”

  The FJC said Japanese submarines were thick in coastal waters, exploring harbours and landing places. I still looked at corners in the road expecting to see Japanese soldiers marching towards me and Ginger.

  In three months Standard Six were sitting Proficiency examinations. Mr Moore finished reading Treasure Island and Standard Six now had to use reading time to revise our year’s work.

  “Your Proficiency marks reflect on Te Miro Primary School and the district,” he said.

  Behind Mr Moore’s back, Fred and Bob flicked two more pen nibs into the ceiling and stuck their tongues out. If Barbara was here we could ask each other questions on history and geography; we could do maths and check our answers with each other. We could discuss our true parents and why we had been given up to others. Skipping with younger girls was boring and when I hit a good ball at rounders there was no one to cheer for me. Where was Barbara now? She had been my true friend. She had loved Ahmed and had sympathised when he went missing, but had also been sure he would turn up one day. Who at Te Miro School could have been so mean as to steal him? Write to me, Barbara, I murmured to the air. If she wrote me a letter, I would reply on the instant. I was not like Ruby or Jess.

  Two kingfishers sat on the power line and inspected Ginger and me on our way home. They looked like generals; side-on, their beaks were the edge of an officer’s hat, their blue and green plumage shading nearly into khaki. Black, beady eyes watched as I halted Ginger and eyed them back. After a few seconds, their inspection over, they flew away.

  A month after his first letter, Harry’s second letter arrived, with a Te Kuiti postmark. Mum handed it to me. “Harry decided to go back to the war,” she said.

  “He’s done the honourable bit,” Dad said. “And darned if I don’t know whether to be proud of him or think him a fool.”

  Dear Mum, Dad and Helen,

  Mike is going to post this for me when he gets home. I have sailed for somewhere in Europe. Some are not going back to war and will be dishonourably discharged and will lose their gratuities. It has been a hard decision and if I have made a wrong one so be it. I listened to officers and men alike. I am not married and in the end it was clear that I had started a job and it wasn’t finished. I will go back to the Division and help finish Hitler off. Couldn’t stand the thought of saying goodbye again. See you in time,

  Love, Harry.

  Mum and Dad’s stricken faces scared me. I felt heavy with disappointment that Harry wasn’t coming home, that he considered going back to the war the right thing to do. It didn’t feel like it to me or Mum and Dad. Gloomily they went off to the cowshed. I washed silver beet, peeled parsnips and stirred the stew simmering on the back element. I made a rice pudding and stewed some rhubarb with honey.

  Ruby still hadn’t written. Which of my questions were taking so long to answer? She had known I would ask them when I was twenty-one.

  As I went to the cowshed, the thrushes and sparrows settling for the night filled the lawsoniana trees with their chirping. The orchard blossoms were gone and tiny leaves had appeared. The calves were eating grass now but I went to help Mum milk the last of the herd while Dad moved Winston to the gully paddock.

  Mum was stripping Maudie. “Harry’s going is worse than the first time he went.” Her tears dampened Maudie’s side. “He thinks he has to finish the war, though it doesn’t feel right to me.”

  I had had drummed into me that every shortage and discomfort in life was because of the war and like an ostrich I wanted to put my head into the sand and forget about it. Now Harry was overseas again, Mum and Dad would drape themselves each side of the radio. Near the bottom of the world we were surely on our own if the Japs arrived.

  I stripped the last two cows
as Mum cleaned the teat cups and ran hot water through the machines. We scraped the yard free of cow muck and lugged buckets of water to sluice the yard down. Mum said that cleaning the yard after milking was the last straw.

  “Why didn’t I marry a sheep farmer?” she muttered.

  Dad limped in carrying the knobkerry, a thick knotty stick. He was out of breath, and puffed as he propped the stick against the separator room wall. “Winston nearly charged me. The blighter pawed the ground and kicked up his back legs, feeling his oats.”

  That meant Winston was ready to go with the cows in a few weeks.

  “Never go into the bull paddock without this knobkerry, Pearl, and you too Lenny.”

  “Helen, Helen,” I said like a mantra.

  Carrying the jam-jar of cream, I crossed the paddock. The birds were chirping out their symphony. In the twilight, the outlines of the house and trees stood out and the paddock was like a black sea roamed by goblins and trolls. An eerie cackle of laughter might sound at any second. I ran to the back door and switched on the light.

  In the wash-house I scrubbed my legs, feet, arms and hands in the tin bath and changed my cowshed dress for my home frock that was too short and tight on me now.

  Dad came in and poked the fire then sat down in his chair. “Whew! Bossing Winston has winded me. I’ll have a breather before I change.”

  Mum went to wash and change while I set the table. It was at just this time of night that Harry had come home. If only he could walk in again and lift our gloom. Head against his armchair back, Dad snored, gargled in his throat, then slept quietly. Mum came into the kitchen and thickened the stew. I strained the vegetables and Mum served the meal.

  She went to Dad and touched his shoulder. “Henry, wake up. Tea is ready.”

  Dad, his mouth open, was deeply asleep.

  I called, “I’ve made your favourite pudding, Dad.”

  Mum shook his shoulder firmly. “Henry. Wake up.”

  His head flopped down and his body fell to one side of the chair.

  “Nooooo.” That deep, disbelieving sound wrenched out of Mum was worse than the cry of the hound of the Baskervilles.