I went out and sat on Ginger’s grave. “There’s no bike,” I told him. In my mind came Ginger’s “Hmmph!” Walking to catch the bus for high school would take me an hour each way.
“School starts in six weeks,” Mum said. “There are alternatives to walking to the junction.” But we didn’t have petrol to drive there twice a day. Did she mean we would buy another horse? A bicycle?
I milked night and morning as R. Brown wanted the Christmas and New Year holidays off. Waking up at four thirty every morning was torture as Mum pulled the blankets off me and hauled me upright.
“Summer rising is easy,” Jess said. “Early rising in winter is hellish.”
Every hour Jess sniped at me. I ate too much salt. Had I washed my hands before dinner? Why was the jam on the table in its jar instead of a dish? Why did Mum allow my sloppiness? I didn’t scrub the new toilet and bowl properly…
I seethed inside. “I’ll use the long drop then,” I yipped.
Jess smirked.
Sometimes for peace from her flak, I ate my meal on the back door step with Tip gazing at me adoringly. Mum looked grim when I complained about Jess.
“Keep turning the other cheek, Helen. Jess is hard to live with.”
“She is totally unkind,” I sniffed. “I pity her baby.”
“Jess needs her own home but she can’t find a flat or rooms. When the baby is born she’ll be glad to be home, and of our help.”
New Year’s Eve was dismal. 1943 had been a disaster for us. Mum and I played cards with the Oakleys and wished Dad and Harry were there. Jess went to bed early. She was seven and a half months pregnant and looked like a round ball. It wasn’t only aching legs and back making her irritable. It was dislike of me. I liked the idea of my half sisters better than “cousin” Jess, and longed to meet them.
In the hay paddock sun gleamed on the long grass that rippled in waves like permed hair. It murmured of other worlds.
“Henry always tasted the grass,” Mum said. “Knew when it was ready to cut, said it tasted sweet when ripe.” I chewed a blade of grass. It tasted a bit like silver beet.
We were standing by the clothesline, watching Mr Oakley’s mower blade clatter into the tall grass, making it fall in swathes like tiers of tulle.
“How the mighty have fallen,” I quoted.
“Hang up these sheets, instead of gawping at the mower,” Jess snapped.
“I’ll help Jess peg the washing,” Mum said. “Helen, make a billy of oatmeal drink for Mr Oakley.”
Through the week Mum turned the hay, using Crazy Horse on the tedder, then Mr Oakley set up our stacker and grab in the middle of the paddock. Mum cooked two joints of lamb for the hay-makers to have cold, and R. Brown came back for morning milking. Mr Oakley was the haystack builder with R. Brown as the “crow”.
On the ground Shaun Mullins would work the grab and Mum would drive Crazy Horse and sweep the hay from the paddocks. I would lead the other horse, Bob, with the grab.
Mum thought it might rain and every hour watched the sky and clouds. I worried about leading Bob jerkily and making the grab full of hay swing wildly. Hay-making horror stories raced through my mind. A man killed, knocked off a stack by a grab full of hay; the disgrace of a stack going lopsided because it was not built properly.
At mid morning I took Crazy and Bob to the trough to drink. Jess brought out a billy of tea and plates of pikelets, scones and raspberry jam. We rested in the shade of the stack, which was as high as my shoulders when sitting.
Mr Oakley ate a scone. “The Germans are recruiting school children to their army now,” he said.
“The Americans have taken San Vittore,” Mum said. “And where’s my son?” The silence was intense. We stared at the ground and with our hands shooed the flies away. Harry must be dead but Mum didn’t think so.
By lunchtime the stack was nearly over my head and the sun’s rays beat down like an electric stove element, slowly broiling us. Over lunch R. Brown and Mr Oakley talked of the price of pigs and how the Allied bombers were crippling the German aircraft industry. Mum said Harry was probably in a partisan group. Shaun Mullins never spoke, just ate and looked at his plate. They admired the flush toilet, but used the long-drop.
The last hour before milking was endless. I counted the seconds, wiped the sweat dribbling down my face, eased my aching back, had some oatmeal drink, looked at my sunburnt arms and legs, and squeezed at a thistle spike in my hand. The stack was half built when we stopped for milking.
Next day Mum and I slathered on baking soda and water paste before spending another boring day with the sun burning yesterday’s sunburn. The stack towered up and Mr Oakley’s temper got short. “Don’t plonk the grass like turds,” he yelled at R. Brown. “Layer it evenly.” He teased out forkfuls of hay R. Brown had placed. “We’re not building the bloody Leaning Tower of Pisa.” Mr Oakley sprang around like a ballet dancer on top of the stack. He was livid. Sweat ran down his face and he shook his pitchfork at R. Brown. “Get off this bloody stack, now!” Scarlet-faced, R. Brown hung onto the grab. I backed Bob slowly. A pull on the bridle and Bob stopped. R. Brown hung like a trapeze artist, suspended in the air many feet above ground.
“Arrgh, help!” R. Brown’s legs waved in the air. Shaun laughed. I giggled. Bob stepped backwards, the grab went down, and R. Brown fell into a pile of hay, glared at me and slouched across the paddock.
We built another haystack, then I picked nectarines and Mum preserved twelve jars and made jam and chutney. Jess walked with a swayed back now and looked enormous. She spent hours writing to nursing friends and the Newlands in America. When I made a cup of tea and carried it to her on a tray, she was dismissive.
“Put it there.” She tapped the table with her finger.
“Thank you, too,” I snapped.
Mum frowned at me. There were five weeks to go before the birth and Mum had a spare can of petrol saved for Jess’s hospital trip.
Before dark, I stripped the bean fence of beans and helped Mum cut them into long slivers to preserve them in salt and boiling water.
“When are you going to write your book again?” I asked. I wanted to read more about her girlhood with Ruby.
Mum paused in her slicing and looked at her hands. “I don’t feel like writing again,” she said.
Jess walked out of the passage, groaning. “I’ve started labour…” She moaned and clutched a chair back.
Mum jumped up and beans scattered on the floor. “It’s too early,” she cried.
Jess’s fingers dug into the chair. She rocked back and forth. “I’ve had pains every twenty minutes for two hours. Oooh …”
“Hospital!” Mum rushed to put on her second-best dress and cardigan. “Put Jessica’s sandals on, Helen.”
Like a slave, I lifted Jess’s swollen feet and slipped the straps over her ankles and buckled them up. I almost felt sorry for her and decided then never to have a baby.
“Helen, you’ll stop tonight with the Oakleys.”
“I’m all right here,” I protested.
“Not on your own.” Mum was brisk. “Quickly, open the gate for us.” Mum supported Jess to the garage and the Ford was at the gate before I had it open.
Mum dropped me off at the Oakleys’ gate. In the dusk they were picking beans. “Jess having her baby?’ Mrs Oakley frowned. “It is premature!”
We played three-handed Five Hundred. Mrs Oakley said it would be hours, could be days, before Jess delivered the baby. I squirmed inside. All that groaning pain for days? Would the baby be strong enough to squeeze out through that small space? Perhaps Jess would be kinder, now she was going through that.
Mr Oakley raised his eyebrows. “Give the baby thing a rest, love,” he said.
I was glad he said that because I didn’t want to think of Jess or anyone writhing in pain. We jumped when the phone gave a long, short, long ring. It was our phone ring and could be Mum from the hospital, although she knew I wasn’t home.
I answered, “Helen Forbe
s speaking.”
“Is that 21 D–” The voice sounded far away, but not like Ruby or Mike.
“Yes.”
“This is Auckland Central,” the voice said. “Am I speaking to Pearl Forbes at Te Miro?” It was a telephone exchange operator.
“Yes,” I lied. Mum wasn’t here and someone had to take this message.
“You have a cablegram from England,” said the operator. England! We knew no one there.
“Is it a boy?” whispered Mrs Oakley. My eyes felt enormous. I was tensed like a runner at the starting line.
“Here is the message. It reads Red Cross. Stop,” said the operator. “Private Harry Forbes. Stop. Alive. Stop.”
“Harryyyy …” I breathed.
“Yes, it says ‘Alive’,” the operator said. “London. Stop. Injuries letter following. Stop. Signed J. Stanley. You got this message?” The operator asked.
“Yes, yes, yes,” I bleated like a calf.
There was a click and then the hum of the party line. I turned to the Oakleys. “Harry’s alive.” I laughed and cried, repeating the cablegram without the stops.
Mr Oakley looked haunted. “Injured, eh? He got his bullet, but he escaped,” he mused. “Thank God for that, eh?”
Mrs Oakley hugged me. Mr Oakley hugged me. We danced around the kitchen singing, “Alive! Alive! He’s alive!”
Mr Oakley filled their electric kettle with water and switched it on. “These injuries. His letter will tell you all.” He grinned at me and told of war injuries his mates had suffered: “I got off Scot-free, a bit of dysentery, but no injuries.”
“Oh, but Harry is alive,” said Mrs Oakley.
The Oakleys’ spare bedroom looked like coconut ice, with pink-flowered linoleum and pink carnations on the wall frieze. I felt too excited to sleep under the pink satin bedspread and lay awake planning how I would make sure Mum was sitting down then quietly tell her that a cablegram had come and that Harry was alive.
I must have slept because Mum woke me, shaking my shoulder. It was five in the morning. “Jack said you have news for me, but Helen, Jess has a son! Henry Herman Newlands.”
I snapped awake, sat up, and grabbed Mum’s arms. “Harry’s alive! Alive!” I cried. “We got a cablegram last night!”
Mum’s eyes darkened, her face blazed with an unearthly radiance. “My baby, my son.” She pounded her chest. “I knew my boy hadn’t died. God knows that I knew, here!” She rested her hand on her heart.
Like a wraith, Mrs Bradson’s face flitted through my mind.
“But injured, that is all the cablegram said? I wonder how badly?”
Mr and Mrs Oakley came in and Mum was laughing and crying in turns as we discussed again every word and full stop of the cablegram.
We were late for milking, but R. Brown had started without us. We floated from bail to bail in a haze of thanksgiving for Harry’s life and Mum said how pleased she was that I had answered our ring and said I was Mrs Pearl Forbes and taken the message.
The baby, Henry Herman, was premature and weighed four pounds, five ounces. He was baptised by the vicar and it was said that he should be all right, but I didn’t envy my second cousin nephew having Jess for a mother.
Mum made the porridge and went to bed for the morning. I ate my porridge in the porch with Tip-dog since R. Brown had nothing to say and I definitely did not want to speak about Harry to him, though he had heard all the details. He went to dig out thistles in the back paddock and I sliced beans for Mum to bottle and imagined Harry home and eating every sliver.
The fortnight Jess and Henry Herman were in hospital, I put the jam in the jar on the table and we didn’t clean the flush toilet every day. The cablegram arrived in the mail and we read and re-read it for days. “If only we knew his exact injuries,” Mum sighed. “But he will write as soon as he can.”
We had enough petrol coupons to visit Jess twice in hospital. Henry Herman’s face looked smaller than my hand, but he gained ounces, to everyone’s satisfaction. The florist’s bouquet of flowers, ordered by cablegram from the Newland family, was the talk of the hospital and beside it our bunch of yellow dahlias looked trifling. Jess glanced at me and talked animatedly about Henry Herman and Harry and said she didn’t feel the cablegram about Harry would have been sent if he was dangerously ill. I sat through the visit like a mute, though I longed to tell of my part in receiving the cablegram. In Hetherington’s we priced a high school uniform, although Mum said it was too early to buy one.
“It’s only three weeks before school starts,” I said.
Mum looked down at baby singlets. “You may go to Hamilton Girls’ High School,” she said.
“What?” I gulped. “Are we going to live in Hamilton?”
“No. I’m keeping the farm going for Harry. You could board at Sonninghill Hostel and go to Hamilton Girls’ High School.”
“Boarding school?” That would mean leaving home, the farm, and living among girls; teachers I didn’t know… My head whirled with English boarding school stories I’d read.
“What does Mr Moore say?” I knew Mum would have talked to him.
“He thinks it’s an excellent idea.”
“Why didn’t you talk to me about this?” I felt cross, mad that Mum had talked to others and not me.
She glanced at the shop assistant looking at us. “I don’t want you to leave home. It’s taken me ages to accept the idea.”
In a shocking flash, I understood. It was an answer to Jess’s dislike of me.
I felt my temper rise like a pot of boiling milk. “You will have Jess and Henry Herman.” Jess was her true daughter. I was her niece.
“It’s your decision, Helen. If you don’t want to board in Hamilton then we’ll try to buy a good bicycle and it will be high school here.”
“How often would I come home?”
“Every second weekend, depending on team sports.”
As we drove home, thoughts of Hamilton Girls’ High School and the boarding hostel filled my mind. Would I play sport to their standard? Would I be clever enough? I strode off to fetch the cows, annoyed with Mum for not telling me sooner her ideas about high school. Tip-dog sensed my turmoil and barked crazily. I would be a stranger there, but all the other girls in the third form would be new, too.
We were washing cows’ teats when I asked Mum how she could afford to pay my boarding fees.
“Mr Wyatt suggested we use some of the money Henry had in the bank for your fees,” she said. “The cows’ production is up and Ronnie will milk full-time.”
I decided that second to go to Hamilton Girls’ High School.
Mum hugged me. “It’s a wonderful opportunity, Helen. If you don’t like the school, you could come home and try Correspondence School lessons.”
I thought, never — not with sniping Jess in the house.
Every day we looked for a letter from England and Harry, but only two thin airmail letters from America and Australia came for me. I was thrilled. I’d never had an airmail letter before. I ripped open the Australian one.
Dear Helen,
I am your half sister Emily Vale.
“Mum,” I yelled, “it’s from my half sister!”
Mother has died and we have just learnt of your birth. Our lawyer gave us a letter Mum wrote as she was dying, saying how sorry she was at the bitterness she felt towards Dad and Ruby and gave us Ruby’s address. We wrote to her and she passed on your address saying you would like contact with us.
I clutched the letter to my heart and danced around the kitchen.
I am married with a baby, Sam. He is a year old. Jane, your other sister, has a fiancé who is a Japanese prisoner of war. Our father died when we were ten and twelve and now we feel a responsibility to know you.
Yours Sincerely,
Emily Swanson nee Vale.
I hugged the letter and felt ten feet tall. It was unbelievable that my sisters had found me, and there might be more relatives I didn’t know about.
Mum looked pensive. �
��When you were born, I wondered if Mrs Haskell Vale knew.”
I cut open the second letter. It was from George Newland, Herman’s sixteen-year-old brother, writing to me as a penfriend. Herman had sent photographs of our family, and said New Zealand was a paradise. I wanted to see a photograph of George. Did he, like Herman, resemble Errol Flynn? He was in his third year of high school and hoped to get into an Ivy League college. I didn’t know what that meant. His family were very sad at Herman’s death.
“I hope he’s hubba-dingerish!” Barbara would have loved this. I danced around the kitchen again. Mum read both letters before I put them in my top drawer. I wrote to Emily about the shock of finding I was adopted, and saying that I was very pleased to have two sisters. I put two kisses at the bottom and felt in my bones that they were going to be kinder than Jess. When she came home she didn’t comment on my Vale sisters and said that George wrote to me because the Newland family were well-mannered. How did she know? She’d only met Herman.
Jess decided to call the baby by his second name, Herman. He cried a lot. Half the kitchen bench was covered in formula and bottles. Doctor Truby King’s theory was that babies should be fed every four hours and not on demand.
Mum was angry at that. “A baby should be fed when hungry. Being rocked and held is no comfort if they are hungry.”
Jess would not listen.
HRH, my nickname for Herman, was mean, and I wished I hadn’t thought of it because I didn’t approve of nicknames. But Herman was like royalty because Jess and Mum’s days revolved around his feed and sleep times.
Jess did not want me to hold him. “He is a premature baby and mustn’t be handled by all and sundry,” she said.
I wasn’t all and sundry! I was his second cousin aunt.
When Jess bathed him, his tiny pink body looked like a skinned rabbit. I rarely saw his dark eyes open and when his hands were clenched, they were the shape of flower buds. Everyone has to poo, but Herman’s was like calf poo, and we boiled the copper every day for Jess to wash his clothes and napkins. Mum said to give him another four months and he would look alert and be more interesting.
Jess drove to the store for more formula, and though Herman wasn’t due for a bottle for an hour, she said if he cried we could rock the bassinet. Mum went to feed the pigs and I had read six words of the Hamilton Girls’ High School Prospectus when Herman began crying. I rocked the bassinet and he cried harder. He looked red-faced and hot so I picked him up, with one hand beneath his neck and head and the other beneath his back, and sat on the bed with him. He was not much bigger than a football and smelt of talcum powder. His napkin felt wet. He opened his dark eyes, put his fist in his mouth, and stopped crying.
Brother Sister Soldier Cousin Page 11