Orphaned Leaves

by Christopher Holt

  “Thank you.” He pauses. “I liked being in the river. I’ve never done that before. I’ll never forget it.”

  “I won’t either. I think it’s important to make good memories, better than storing up a fortune for one’s old age.”

  From the road, the countryside continues to change: the properties now look even smaller, almost suburban, and the pale bungalows have a better-cared-for look about them. Their iron roofs are painted light green or pastel blue to reflect the sun, and there are ubiquitous window boxes with bright-orange, red and yellow nasturtiums spilling over their ledges. Citrus fruit trees, peaches and nectarines are growing in circular beds. The recently delivered newspapers lie rolled up on the front lawns, cats sleep in the shade and a terrier barks at them through a fence.

  They come to a crossroads, where two young women with broad-checked shirts and American style cowboy hats are thumbing a lift. Brandt pulls over.

  “You going to Tamworth?” one of the girls asks.

  “Yes, jump in the back.”

  They both scramble in, and the interior of the car is so overcome with cheap perfume that Alan starts coughing.

  One of the girls taps Brandt’s shoulder. “You’ve saved our lives, mister; otherwise, we’d be out of a job. It was a big party last night, and we missed our bus for the evening shift.”

  Brandt checks the road sign at the crossroads and drives straight through towards Tamworth, now only eighteen miles off.

  “G’day, mister,” says one of the girls, tapping Alan on the head. “How’re you goin’?”

  “All right, thanks.” says Alan hurriedly.

  “I’m Deliah, you can remember me ’cos I’m the pretty one. She’s Lindsay. So, what’s your name?”

  “Alan.”

  “And your dad?” Alan turns anxiously to Brandt who swallows, then smiles.

  “I’m Otto,” says Brandt. “What do you ladies do for a living?”

  “We’re Wo Wo girls,” says Lindsay.

  Brandt smiles awkwardly. Since he arrived from overseas he’s always had to guess the meaning of the national argot because he’s found that, in Australia, his Concise Oxford Dictionary has its limitations.

  “Excuse me, but what exactly are Wo Wo girls?”

  Lindsay bombards them with information. “We do the backing singing for country music records, we sing the ‘Wo, wo, wo’ to accompany the main vocalists. Don’t you blokes know that Tamworth is the hillbilly capital of Australia? Haven’t you ever tuned in to station 2TM? Don’t you listen to Slim Dusty? Have you never heard of Rich and Thelma, and Joy and Heather McKean?

  “No? Well maybe you’re not country music fans yet, but you will be. You’ll love it, fair dinks. I know you will.”

  “Anyway,” says Deliah, “those big names wouldn’t be anything without us singing ‘Wo, wo, wo’ in the background and helping the big stars out with the high trebles.”

  “Make sure you come to the festival tonight,” adds Lindsay. “It’s in Anzac Park. We’ll be there.”

  At Tamworth, the grateful girls dash up the steps to their recording studio, where they stop briefly to strike cute poses and wave them off.

  Brandt books two rooms at the Golden Disc Hotel, then takes Alan into R M Williams to get him quality clothes that actually fit. The saleswoman wears the same rural attire that the store is famous for and she looks like a well-to-do squatter’s wife. She scrutinises Alan with a matronly eye, but, as she goes over to measure his waist, the boy backs away, his face ashen with fear. It is obvious to Brandt that he won’t let the woman touch him.

  “He’s been living in the Outback,” says Brandt. “He’s a bit shy because he’s not used to buying his clothes in a proper store like this. I’m sure you can make an accurate guess of his measurements.”

  “He’s a young colt,” says the woman. “A bit skittish when he’s cornered, but he’ll be right; I’ll allow a bit for growth.”

  “Thank you,” says Brandt. “Alan will need three sets of shirts and shorts, a jumper and some socks and underwear. He’ll want some good footwear and a belt. I don’t know much about the style of clothes and colours for modern boys. Alan, why don’t you help the lady choose? I am sure you want to look good.”

  Aware that, as an assumed father, he should contribute more to the decisions, he tries to add some esoteric gleanings of his own. “One thing to remember, Alan, a man should never buy a shirt without a top pocket, two are better, and, hmm, he should have a keyring on his belt and he should never be without a pocket knife. While you are choosing clothes, I shall get you one.”

  The woman turns to Alan. “I hope you two will be coming to the music festival tonight. You’ll really like it,” she says.

  “Yes,” says Alan.

  “You’ll need an Akubra hat; is that all right with your dad?”

  “Fine by me,” says Brandt.

  “And you’ll want one too, won’t you, sir?”

  “Yes, all right,” says Brandt. He should have said no, as this trip is turning out to be more costly than he bargained for.

  The woman wraps up all the purchases, except for the wide hats, which they put on their heads. “They suit you very well,” she says. “Make you both look very handsome – like father, like son. Have fun at the festival.”

  *

  If Alan enjoys the stage performances, the same cannot be said for Brandt. Included with the hillbilly items is a medley of folksongs sung by twelve survivors of Auschwitz-Birkenau. They receive deafening applause from the audience and a standing ovation at the end. Brandt surveys the face of each singer in turn, while desperately trying to avoid eye contact. It is a long shot, a very long shot, but some of these survivors might just remember him as the officer in charge in Lödz or some town in the Galicia province, from when they were being crammed into cattle trucks. And if there are no witnesses among the singers themselves, what about their managers and their bus driver? Even the audience might include survivors. At all costs, he must avoid mingling with the crowd after the show. Whatever possessed him to come here this evening?

  But, as it happens and without warning, Alan feels sick and Brandt rushes him off to some thick bushes where he brings up his dinner. Brandt could have kicked himself for not remembering that a child used to a pauper’s diet should not have been given that oversized slab of steak at the café, plus a mountain of chips, then, just before the concert while they were waiting to go in, a chocolate milkshake.

  At the hotel, he takes Alan to the bathroom to wash, and, when he has gained more colour in his cheeks, they play a game of draughts. Alan keeps staring at the door and Brandt assumes that it’s about his earlier vomiting. “You know where I am if you feel sick again, Alan. My room is just next door, number eleven. Tap and I shall wake instantly, I promise you.”

  Alan furrows his brow, and his hands are trembling again. “Will Father Walsh will be coming after us?”

  “No. You will never see Father Walsh again.”

  “You seemed very angry with Father Walsh. I thought you would hit him.”

  Brandt hides his chilling consternation with a smile. “Hit him? No, definitely not.”

  “But how can you say that I won’t be seeing him again?”

  “Because I frightened him.”

  “How did you do that?”

  “I scared the… living daylights out of him, that’s all.”

  “But how do you know you scared him?”

  Brandt looks awkward. “Because he… well, he soiled himself, that’s why.”

  Alan is silent for a moment, then an open-mouthed look of amazement comes over his face. “You mean he…”

  “Yes,” says Brandt.

  Alan smiles, a ghost of a smile and only for half a second, but, for the first time, the German recognises the faintest sign of the cheerfully questioning child he first met on the ship
, and Brandt surprises himself by the welling up of an emotion as overwhelming as it has become unfamiliar: empathy.

  *

  That night, after he checks that Alan is fast asleep, Brandt opens the boy’s file. It consists of only four documents from St Edmund’s: a birth certificate shows that Alan was born in Birkenhead in August 1943, there is a baptismal certificate from the Church of England in Bootle, and a telegram and a War Office letter stating that his father was killed in Belgium in 1944. Brandt reads from the Liverpool Catholic Orphanage report that Alan had apparently been living with his grandmother until she died in 1946 and then he was placed in the care of the Roman Catholic church until it was agreed by the British Government to transport ‘unclaimed’ children to approved institutions overseas. The fact that Alan was not a Roman Catholic had either been overlooked or ignored. More astounding was that his mother merited only one sentence in the report:

  ‘The child’s mother, a certain Mary Gilbert née Watson, is believed to have remarried and emigrated to the United States of America.’

  *

  Next morning, in his hotel bedroom, Brandt is lightning his first cigarette of the day while Alan looks curiously at the manila file on the dressing table.

  “Alan, sit down. I want to talk to you about your future.”

  When Alan is seated, Brandt continues: “I have taken you away from St Edmund’s because it is a bad place run by bad men. Have a look at this.” He opens the file and passes over one of the documents. “It’s an adoption certificate signed by Father Walsh. It means that I can adopt you as my own son, but only if you wish it.”

  Alan bites his lip. “Does that mean you will be my dad then?”

  “Yes, that’s as far as the law is concerned, but we both know that I am not your real dad. Your father was a brave soldier who died fighting for Great Britain and was killed in Belgium when you were a baby. In those days, I would have been his enemy and he would have been mine, but that is war. If there had been no war, then, who knows, perhaps we might have met one day and played football or climbed mountains together.”

  Alan’s forehead wrinkles once more as he ponders this. “Where will I live, if you are my dad?”

  Brandt turns the road map around the right way for Alan to see, and, with the point of his penknife, traces their journey through New South Wales. “Do you see that line of mountains? That’s called the Great Dividing Range. We’ll follow it all the way to the Snowy Mountains and to my farm. In the meantime, we have another two days on the road. Would you like to help a bit?”

  Alan nods but his eyes are anxious. “What do you want me to do?”

  “Perhaps you could make sure the radiator and windscreen reservoir are full of water each morning before we set off. When we stop to buy petrol, I’ll show you how to check the oil and the tyres. The Buick has been lent to us and you can help to keep the car spotlessly clean – inside and out. I’m a farmer, but I never wish to ride in a dirty vehicle and neither must you. They always keep hoses, brushes and rags at the garages. You can do the hosing if you like.”

  “When I meet people, do I say that you’re my dad?”

  “I hope you will, Alan, but, as I said before, you don’t have to make up your mind just yet about staying with me and you do have another choice: I can try to get in touch with your mother.” He points to the second document. “This is your file, which I have taken from St Edmund’s. It says she married again and went to live in America, but perhaps we can find her if we try hard enough.

  “But whatever you decide, Alan, I promise to look after you as my own son, to see that you get a proper education and that you have most things you need for a happy life. I’ve got to tell you, though, that my farm’s a bit run down. It’s called Garigo, I bought it cheap and there’s a lot that needs doing. I’ve already done a bit of work outside, but nothing yet in the homestead. The walls are packed with old newspapers and sacks and then plastered over. And there’s no shortage of spiders.”

  “Have you got a wife?”

  “I had a wife once and also a little girl. They both died in the war. In Australia, I married another lady, a scientist, but she works in Canberra and will soon go to live in America.” His voice hardens, “Her name is Magdalena, but we shall not be seeing her. It will be just you and me on my farm, but I do have a good friend called Milo. He’s the man who lent me the Buick.”

  “Milo? That’s a strange name.”

  “That’s what I think too, but never say that to Milo.”

  “I won’t. Thanks for coming to get me, Otto. I will work hard on your farm. At St Edmund’s, we all had to work on the brothers’ farm – they called it a station – and also on their new buildings.” His eyes drop and his tremors begin again.

  “No, no, Alan, it won’t be anything at all like that with me, I promise. You’ll even get pocket money. I’ll have no slave workers at Garigo.”

  And no slave workers at Sobibor? Birkenau? Lödz?

  Brandt closes his eyes.

  *

  They stay overnight in a truckies’ cabin, and Brandt has the Buick serviced at a roadhouse garage. While this is being done, he teaches Alan to skim stones across the surface of a placid lake. Every now and then a fish slaps the water while a heron stands transfixed on the reedy bank. In the heat of the day, the fish stay in the depths, and Brandt and Alan go over to squat in the shade of an English willow. The heron remains at his post and there is an all-pervasive stillness, which neither of them attempts to break.

  As soon as the car is ready, Brandt buys Coca-Colas in the roadhouse, and they set off again, with the highway now meandering through the crenelated ridges of the Great Divide. Brandt suspects that this journey of escape will linger in Alan’s memories for the rest of his life.

  As for Brandt himself, the images flutter past the windscreen like shuffled postcards: grey cloud shadows fleeing over dams, lofty bluish trees melding with an azure infinity, red and green parrots, silver waterfalls and bright creeks. Through the open windows sweeps the honeyed-mint scent of eucalyptus, while the shrill cicada chorus thrums in his brain.

  Near Mittagong, they lose Radio Tamworth 2TM, and Brandt switches the knob to Sydney’s 2GB as they drive through a rainstorm. The water streams down the windscreen with the wipers straining to keep it clear, while the big car splashes through the flooded intersections. After Goulburn, the rain is heavier and the air colder. Progress is slow as they follow the hissing wheels of the Pioneer coach in front, its driver refusing to give way on the wet tarmac.

  Brandt deliberately skirts Canberra with its memories of Magdalena. Instead, he makes a detour through Queanbeyan. When they reach the Monaro Tableland, there are breaks in the rain clouds and the evening light throws up giant boulders rising out of the windswept tussocks, like whales from a choppy sea.

  At Adaminaby, Brandt turns onto the muddy road to the High Country and to Garigo Homestead, which he is still learning to call home.

  16

  “Thank God, it’s come at last,” says Milo, “All the tanks are two-thirds empty.” They are sitting on Milo’s front veranda. The rain is clattering down on the iron roof and raging down the gutters. Milo has to shout for Brandt to hear him, and he looks around. “Where’s Alan?” he asks.

  The two men go inside to hear themselves speak. “Alan’s in your study,” says Brandt.” He’s reading that Biggles book you got from Gunna’s store. He won’t put it down; I think he’s living in his imagination. He’s still having nightmares about the priest. Alan doesn’t say much, but I think he’s anxious about the other boys left at that place and what Walsh might do to them. The filthy wretch should be in gaol.”

  Or in Dachau. Brandt strangles the thought.

  “Not a chance,” says Otto. “They’ll never prosecute the bastard. The church will see to that, but there’s a few of us lobbying the Catholic Archdiocese to get him out of the country. The c
hurch doesn’t need a scandal, so they’ll probably shift him to Rome in some bureaucratic post to keep him away from children altogether.”

  Brandt nods. “But, of course, they would choose the easy way out, wouldn’t they? But what about St Edmund’s?”

  “That’s a different matter altogether; I’ve still got contacts in state government. I’ll put in the case for surprise inspections. That’ll shake the brothers no end – and, come to think of it, a bit of leakage to the press wouldn’t hurt. Imagine the headlines:

  ‘POMMY KIDS TRANSPORTED TO AUSTRALIA AS SLAVES.’

  “The trade unions would have a field day. Oh yes, Otto, there’s quite a lot we can do, believe me. Now let’s talk about Alan, scared of his own shadow the poor little cobber, but he’s bright, isn’t he?”

  “I think so, and now, in spite of everything he’s been through, I’ve got to find a school for him. He’ll have to be at Island Bend with me during the week. I believe there’s a school somewhere near there.”

  “You may be thinking of Cabramurra, it’s one of the best but it’s only primary. Alan needs to start high school, and the only high schools around here are in Cooma and Tumut.”

  “I won’t send him to a boarding school.”

  “Too right; no, not after what he’s been through. That’s the last thing he needs.”

  “When I brought him here, I didn’t have a proper plan. I just had to get him away from that place.”

  Milo leaps up abruptly. “I’ll be back in a while,” he says, “I want to make a telephone call.” Milo leaves Brandt yesterday’s copy of the Sydney Morning Herald to read, then disappears down the hall. Twenty minutes later, he returns washed and spruced up, wearing a new checked shirt and pressed corduroy slacks. There’s an aroma of sandalwood about him. “Let’s go,” he says.

  “Where?”

  “Tumut. I don’t think you’ve been there yet. Peggy rents a nice weatherboard near the river.” He pauses, “I’ve just been speaking with her. You never know, she thinks she might come up with something.”