Trooper to the Southern Cross

by Angela Mackail Thirkell

  I had a pal in France, Eric Hudson, a fine surgeon, who was doing his N.M.E. (Non-Military Enjoyment the diggers were calling it now) in Paris, and he asked me to run down to the Plain some time and send him over a few things he had stored there with his kit. So one winter day I went down, and this is really where my story begins.

  There was another old pal of mine down on the Plain, Jerry Fairchild, a colonel in the artillery he was. We had had some good old times together on the Peninsula, and we shall always remember gratefully that R.C. padre that gave us the whisky during the evacuation. Jerry had married an English girl just before the War. He is pretty well off and lives up north of Adelaide, but I hadn’t met his missis, so I didn’t blow in straight away, but I wrote him a line just to let him know I was about. He then asked me to come over to his place, so as I had a couple of days to spare, I borrowed a horse and rode along in the Colonel’s direction. He had a little house somewhere over Amesbury way, so it wasn’t a long ride from Tidworth. Jerry rode over to meet me, and we were going quite quietly along one of those country roads between hedges when two ladies came in sight. When we got up to them the Colonel said:

  ‘Here, Tom, I want to introduce Mrs Fairchild to you.’

  Then I got the shock of my life, because Mrs Fair-child gave one wifely look at her husband and walked right away from me. I wished the earth would swallow me. I didn’t know what I’d done, but it was pretty plain that Mrs Fairchild had no use for me. Jerry didn’t know what to do either, and the other lady just looked at us both and smiled, but didn’t say anything at all. Finally poor old Jerry dashed off after his wife, and I heard him trying to argue with her, but she just climbed over a gate into a field. His horse couldn’t take the gate in that narrow road, so he had to ride along with his wife on the other side of the hedge, and they were arguing all the time. I had a little mare in France called Dinah who could have taken that gate. She was a wonder. Anything she couldn’t jump over she would climb up. She was as cunning as a cartload of monkeys too. I taught her to do the Guards’ salute with her tail. If we passed any of the Guards, the diggers would all turn out to see Dinah salute, and the Guards were as wild as anything. She was a great little mare, and I have often wondered what happened to her.

  So there I was, all alone with a strange girl. She was a wonderfully pretty little thing.

  It’s all right,’ she said, ‘it’s not your fault, Major. It’s just an argument that the Colonel and his wife have occasionally.’

  ‘I thought something.was wrong,’ said I. ‘Perhaps Mrs Jerry doesn’t want to meet me.’

  My horse was fidgeting all the time, trying to walk on all his own toes at once, the way they do, so I got off, and the girl said we’d walk along after them. When we got round the next corner, there were Jerry and his missis walking back towards us, both looking quite calm and pleased.

  ‘See here, Tom,’ said the Colonel, ‘I want to introduce you to my wife.’

  ‘That’s better,’ said the Colonel’s wife, and she shook hands with me. She was a nice-looking woman, darkish and bright-eyed, and I could see at a glance who was master in that family.

  ‘I’m pleased to meet you, Mrs Jerry,’ said I.

  ‘Well, now you must come back to a meal,’ she said.

  ‘I’m not sure if it’s tea or dinner or supper, but Jerry will see that you get enough to drink.’

  ‘I don’t mind if I do,’ said I.

  Mrs Jerry turned round to the girl and said:

  ‘That means Major Bowen thanks me very much and is delighted to accept.’

  I didn’t tumble to what she meant, but I supposed it was all right.

  ‘Now, old lady, no more leg-pulling,’ said the Colonel. ‘We’ll give Tom a nice homey evening and get some of the boys in,’ and he reeled off a dozen names of men I knew.

  It all sounded good-oh, so we walked along together, the Colonel and I leading our horses, and the girl began to talk to me and asked me if I had any friends in London. I said I had made a few, and I had an auntie there, but as I had forgotten to answer any of her letters I expected she couldn’t be keen on seeing me. Besides, she lived out at Hampstead in the back-blocks.

  The girl didn’t know what back-blocks were, so I had to explain they were way out beyond everything. I asked her if she had read ‘On Our Selection’, because that gives you some idea of the back-blocks. But she hadn’t. And she hadn’t read ‘We of the Never Never’, nor ‘While the Billy Boils’, so I knew she wasn’t literary. That made me like her from the jump, because I’ve not much time for that literary set, though mind you I’ve known some literary men who you’d never have known from anyone else. There was Joe Dickson who used to work for the ‘Sydney Bulletin’, you would just have taken him for one of the crowd. Last time I saw him he was going up Shrapnel Gully. Perhaps the Turks buried him — they were decent enough in that way; we didn’t get the chance. He was a great chap, and I expect his one regret in passing out was that he couldn’t send the story to his editor.

  Anyway, the girl, as I said, wasn’t much interested in literature, but she seemed quite annoyed at the idea of Hampstead being in the back-blocks.

  ‘Why, I live there myself,’ said she. ‘Perhaps we’ll meet.’

  I wanted to say ‘You bet your sweet life we will,’ but I didn’t know how she’d take it. So I only said:

  ‘I’ll go and see my auntie now, even if I didn’t mean to before.’

  ‘What is her name?’ asked the girl.

  ‘Mrs French.’

  ‘But that’s my mother,’ she said. ‘You are the cousin that wrote to her from France and then disappeared.’

  And so I was. I could have kicked myself for not noticing her name when the old Colonel mentioned it, but I had got so tied up with the way the Colonel’s wife had walked out on me that I must have heard the name without hearing it, if you know what I mean.

  ‘Then you must be my cousin Celia,’ I said, ‘but I thought you were only a kiddy.’

  So Celia laughed and said she was twenty-five, but I needn’t let it worry me.

  ‘Well, I’ll believe it, but thousands wouldn’t,’ I said.

  So we had a great old yarn about things. The Colonel and Mrs Jerry had gone on ahead, so I asked Celia to tell me right out what made Mrs Jerry so wild, but Celia said she couldn’t explain, and I must ask Mrs Jerry myself.

  The Colonel and his wife had two bonzer kids, Mary and Dick. Mary was seven and young Dick was five. I never knew a couple of kids I liked better. I daresay you have guessed already that I fell in love with Celia from the jump, so it’s no use trying to make a mystery about it, and when I saw Celia and the kids, and the way she was telling them stories and being just like a kid herself, I thought it would be fine to see her with kids of her own and mine. But we can’t have everything we want.

  Well, we all got very pally over our tea. A real dinkum Aussie tea it was: chops, potatoes, apple pie with cream, biscuits and cheese and celery, and the best tea I’d drunk for donkey’s years — just like being back in Aussie it was. Presently Celia said to Mrs Jerry:

  ‘My cousin Tom wants to know why you walked out on him like that, Frances.’

  The old Colonel looked quite sheepish and tried to change the conversation, but Mrs Jerry was one of those women you can’t stop. It seems she had kept some of her English ideas, and if the Colonel didn’t toe the line about them, he got ticked off pretty quick. One of her ideas was about introducing people. You or I would say to a pal: ‘Here, Joe (or whatever his name might happen to be), I want you to know the missis.’ Or if you wanted to do it very correctly: ‘I want to introduce Mrs Robinson to you’ — that is if your name happened to be Robinson. But it seems this wasn’t right according to Mrs Jerry’s ideas, and she went right in off the deep end every time the Colonel opened his mouth. The idea was that you must introduce your pal to your wife and not your wife to your pal, though where the difference comes in you can search me. I don’t see much in it myself, nor did the ol
d Colonel. But ever since Mrs Jerry had left a garden party at Government House when he didn’t do things the way she wanted, he had been pretty careful, and it was just a piece of bad luck that he got strafed about me.

  Well, I was only down there for three days, but I spent most of them over at the Colonel’s place, and when I went back to town I went up to Hampstead the first day I could. The French’s place was one of those old-time houses, a bit pokey, but nice and homey. I asked for Mrs French, and while I was waiting I had a good look round the room. I could see at a glance that Aunt Mary wasn’t too well off. The room had that bare kind of look. The boards were painted and there was just a small rug in front of the fire. I would have liked to see a nice thick carpet right up to the walls, something your feet go right into. And there were only two easy chairs and a little sofa, and none of the furniture matched. I made up my mind then and there that if Celia would marry me I would make a real home for her. And so I have, and our little home in Sydney has one of the nicest suites of drawing-room furniture you ever saw. There is a nice suite for the dining-room, too, four chairs and two armchairs, all in leatherette, and a dining-room table and a bonzer sideboard all to match. There is quite an artistic window too in the dining-room, in the shape of a horseshoe, with a nice design in coloured glass. And the bedroom has a fine suite too, in Queensland maple with inlay. I always wanted Celia to have the best, and there isn’t anyone who has a nicer little home up the North Shore.

  Presently Aunt Mary came in, and she was quite nice to me, but a little stiff. I expect I had got across her when I didn’t answer her letters. But I just sat down by her on the Chesterfield and had a good yarn about the family, and I told her about the Mater and what a great little woman she was, and she got much more friendly and asked me if I knew some people called Pember in New Zealand. She seemed quite surprised when I told her New Zealand was nearly a week’s voyage from Sydney. As a matter of fact I have never been to New Zealand. They say it can be one of the worst passages in the world, though the people who say that can’t ever have had a bad night in the Bass Straits. When you go across from Melbourne to Launceston you know what trouble really is. I’ll never forget the time I went across in the old ‘Loongana’. I was in a hurry to get over, because Irene — the girl that went back on me and married Dick Parsons — had gone over to stay with some relations, and I knew Dick was there too, and I didn’t want him to get in ahead. It was all in the middle of the tourist season, and the unions were getting ready for their annual Christmas strike, so everyone was rushing to get across before the strike began. I couldn’t get a berth in a cabin, but that didn’t worry me, because I thought I’d doss down on deck. But that day a brickfielder began to blow. That’s a north wind that comes from the interior and you’d say it came straight from hell. It’s as hot as an oven and brings clouds of red dust with it, and the sun goes copper-coloured and sky goes lead-coloured, and all you can do is to get the washing in and shut all the doors and windows and hope none of your pals are out in Port Philip Bay, because if they are the first thing you’ll hear about them is that their boat was found upside down and stove in. And it’s the last thing you hear too.

  By the time we had got through the Rip and had some tea, the old man ordered everyone below. I expect you’ve heard of the Rip. It’s a kind of jumble of cross-currents that they keep at the entrance to Port Philip Bay, and if it doesn’t knock your boat silly one way it knocks it silly another. Of course the big liners don’t notice it so much, but on a boat like the ‘Loongana’, or the ‘Oonah’, or any of those interstate boats, many a passenger that would have stood the rest of the trip is knocked out in the first round. They arrange for you to get your tea before you get through the Rip, otherwise you wouldn’t have a dog’s chance. Well, I had a good tea, and then I went along to the smoke-room and had two or three with some chaps I met there, and then I had to turn in because I wasn’t feeling too good. The steward had found a berth for me in the big saloon. I’ve never seen another boat like that, and I hope I never will. It reminded me somehow of an old picture of the Death of Nelson that the Mater’s people had up at Kurrum-bolong. It was a big low room with bunks all round it and some in the middle, and you can imagine what it was like with twenty or thirty fellows all being ill. I might have kept my end up if it hadn’t been for the others. Anyway, I was soon right down to it, and I called to the steward to get me some brandy, but he wouldn’t bring it unless I paid him first. I went right off the handle at that, and I got up and ticked him off properly. He was a pale chap with a little moustache and that nasty counter-jumper’s manner that I can’t stand. Funny thing, I had him under me as orderly for a spell in France afterwards, and by God I made him jump to it then. But he wasn’t a bad chap when he had learnt to toe the line. I was quite sorry to see the last of him. Not that there was much to see, because the shell-hole was about ten feet deep, but you get a kind of feeling for the chaps that you have under you.

  Next morning when we got into the Tamar the wind had gone down and I got up on deck. It was a bonzer morning with a mist on the banks and the sea all foggy, and the old ‘Loongana’ went up the river as peacefully as if we had never had that bucketing the night before. Presently a fellow came up to me and said:

  ‘You’re a pretty good sailor, aren’t you?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ I said.

  ‘Well, you were quiet all right last night,’ he said.

  I had a good look at him and I saw he was the man who was in the berth above me, and he had been as sick as a cat all night and had let the world know it.

  ‘If you want to know how to be quiet,’ I said, ‘I can give you the dinkum oil on it. Hold your tongue.’

  Then I went away, for I haven’t any use for a man that can’t keep his feelings to himself, especially when they are the sort of feelings that are going to upset everyone else. But I’ll never forget that night in the old ‘Loongana’. She went through the water like a crazy corkscrew. They say she came out from England under her own steam. I’m glad I wasn’t on board.

  As I was saying, Aunt Mary and I got quite pally, and then Celia came in and I knew my number was up. Aunt Mary asked me to come to the house as often as I liked, and that suited me O.K. I’m not much good at writing about love-making, so I’ll miss out all that part, but anyway Celia and I were married not very long afterwards. I had got a new job at a big hospital up in Leeds, and Celia and I went up there directly after the wedding.

  2 – Horseferry Road Dragoons

  I now come to the next part of my story, which leads on to what I really want to write about. It was while we were in Leeds that things began to get moving. Celia and I weren’t badly off, because I had my major’s pay and she had a little money of her own. We spent a few days in the station hotel, and then we found some lodgings just outside of town on the edge of the moors, not far from the tram terminus. The landlady was a nice little woman, but she didn’t cook for us. She let Celia use the kitchen whenever she liked though, and didn’t make any fuss about things. As for Celia, the poor kid didn’t know the first thing about cooking, but she soon got the hang of it, and I can tell you it was good-oh to know there would be a nice hot supper my little missis had cooked, whatever time I got back from the hospital. Our hours there were pretty regular, but there were a lot of our chaps up and down the country on Non-Military Employment, and quite often one or two of them would blow into the hospital to see me, and as soon as I’d finished my work we’d go off somewhere and get a drink and get yarning, and often I’d bring the chap home with me. I often remembered the way we’d come along after a good old yarn about happy days at Bullecourt or at Quinn’s Post, and find Celia waiting for us. It was great to walk into our own little sitting-room and say: ‘What about some tea, babe?’ and introduce her to my pal. Then she would get the food out of the oven and make the tea, and we’d settle down to a real good talk. One thing that I appreciate very much about my little wife is that she doesn’t pick on my old pals, the way some of t
hese English girls the diggers married do. Nearly always she’d go off after tea and wash up the things, and then go off to bed, leaving us to smoke and yarn. Sometimes I’d take my boots off after supper and Celia would give them a shine for me, so that they’d be ready next morning. She was a great hand at polishing boots, as good as a batman, and it’s a job I’ve never liked somehow. When I was in uniform she would turn me out as well as any batman I’ve ever had. Boots you could see your face in, spurs shining, all the brasswork as if a ship’s company had been over it. She is a great little worker.

  We have never had a quarrel yet. Sometimes we both get a bit nervy, but we’d always make it up before things got too far. The nearest we came to a quarrel in those days was about the tomato sauce. Of course at home the Mater used to make ours, dozens of bottles, and it lasted us right round the year. Many’s the good meal I’ve had when I was a kid, chops, or sometimes a parrot pie if we boys had been shooting, and plenty of the Mater’s tomato sauce. Of course we lived quite simply up on the station, and it wasn’t till I grew up and went to Sydney that I found you oughtn’t to put tomato sauce in the soup. But a few meals at the Australia, when I could afford it, soon showed me that for soup you should use Worcestershire sauce. I’ve not much use for this etiquette myself, but there are a few things it’s useful to know. They don’t seem to understand etiquette so much in England. I naturally like things nice about the house, so after we had been in our lodgings a few days, I asked Celia for the tomato sauce. You would have thought I was asking for the Bank of England, the way she took it. She never seemed to have heard of it and said you only had it with veal cutlets. Of course I know things are a bit different in England; for instance the way you get your mustard mixed in the cafes. I know the cafes and the tea-shops in Sydney pretty well, and they always served their mustard just as it comes out of the tin. The other way seems to me extravagant and not half so tidy. But anyway, Celia got me a bottle of sauce, and we had chops one night and some nice fried steaks of fish the next night, and what with that and the bacon and eggs at breakfast, the bottle was finished. So we had to get some more. Celia soon got the hang of it, and she makes it herself now, and it’s nearly as good as the Mater’s. My Aunt Minnie at Pott’s Point is a splendid worker, and she gave Celia some lovely bits of crochet work she had done. There was a cover for a tea cosy, and some doilies for cake, all beautifully crocheted, but the best of all was a white crochet cover for the tomato sauce bottle. You put the bottle in, and pulled it tight round the neck and tied it with a piece of ribbon, and it had the words ‘Tomato Sauce’ worked into the crochet. I must say Celia did appreciate it enormously, and she put it away for fear of getting it dirty. So Aunt Minnie worked her two or three more. They can be boiled with the laundry on Mondays, and just give that artistic touch to the table that I like. And Celia deserves it all. She is the best little pal a man could have.