1917

by Kelly Gardiner

  ‘We were desperate to sign up, but the local recruiters kept saying they didn’t want us,’ he said. ‘So we went into the city and fooled them easily. Now I’m just as desperate to get home.’

  He chuckled and sipped his tea. ‘Some trick we played on them, eh?’

  ‘Where’s your brother now?’ I asked.

  ‘Killed,’ he said. ‘Last year. Somewhere south of here. Place called Fromelles.’

  ‘Sorry, mate.’

  ‘He was a stretcher bearer. I thought he’d be all right.’

  ‘Tough blokes,’ I said.

  ‘Strong as an ox, he was. Didn’t help him much, though, did it?’

  Seemed like nobody was safe.

  Len and I spent all our tea breaks together. I knew about planes, but he knew more about all kinds of machines than anybody I ever met. In the few years since the war started, so many new inventions had rolled out into the war zone: flying machines, and updated models of weapons that shoot bullets so fast they’re even called machine guns, and tanks and Zeppelins and trench mortars and enormous cannon that fired all sorts of powerful explosives.

  ‘Did you ever dream there were so many ways to kill people?’ said Len. ‘I don’t reckon there’s ever been so many machines made or used in one place at the same time— ever in the world.’

  I reckon he was right. Every few months there was a new model plane, or an advance in tank warfare (which was just as well, said Len, because the first few were hopeless), or some new horror like gas or flame throwers or grenades that bounced. Since there were aircraft, somebody invented anti-aircraft guns. Since the trenches were covered with wire, somebody invented tanks to drive over the trenches and crush the wire. Because the trenches were so close, somebody invented bombs you could detonate and throw across No Man’s Land. People were smart. They had to be. It was brilliant, in one way, but also deadly.

  The war was like one great big machine, Len said. We were all tiny parts in it, along with railways and trucks and weapons. It would just grind on, like one of those automatons that you wind up so it walks or plays the drums on and on until it falls over.

  ‘What if the war machine runs out of petrol?’ I asked.

  ‘We can only hope, cobber.’

  For me, those quiet hours in the workshop were just the ticket. After each flight, every plane was checked over: the fitters cleaned the engine and soaked the carburettor in petrol; the riggers pored over the wires, struts and canvas. Len stripped down all the guns and put them back together again. He didn’t seem to mind doing it over and over, and seeing him in his tiny circle of lamplight was like watching a master craftsman at work, bent over the bench, machining new components and cleaning every tiny piece. If the guns jammed during a fight, the crew would be helpless. We all trusted Len with our lives. Every day. He was the best shot in the squadron, but the Corps still wouldn’t let him in a plane. Fools. Still, he reckoned he was better off on the ground.

  I reckoned he was right.

  In the air, everything was chaos. Even when we didn’t get jumped by enemy planes, there were shells whistling past, heading both ways, and anti-aircraft batteries firing at us. But in the workshop, we scavenged spare parts, mended frayed fabric and bullet holes, and replaced shattered timber. Got covered in oil. There were problems to find and solve. Repairs to make. It was methodical, focused, and intense. There was always something to do, to keep my hands busy and stop me from thinking too much.

  None of us wanted to think about what we’d seen or what we’d done. None of us wanted to dwell on what might happen tomorrow.

  July, 1917

  7 Squadron,

  Royal Flying Corps

  Proven, Belgium

  There’s a whole other world up in the sky, Mags. I never knew. I suppose, in peacetime, it’s full of swallows and bees and all those dandelion seeds we blew into the wind. I wouldn’t know. But here it’s full of different birds. Dangerous ones, like the German Albatros fighters.

  There are balloons that look like enormous saggy elephants. They’re tethered to the ground with dozens of ropes, and some poor mug dangling below in a glorified shopping basket, hoping not to get shot at. Rotten job. It’s not like they can fly off if they get attacked. They just have to sit there. Or jump, I suppose. Either way, they’re dead ducks.

  Around here, if you don’t have any high ground, you have to send somebody up in the air to have a look or take a photograph. It’s either us, or the balloon chaps. Or both.

  When we take off, and climb a bit, we’re in another world. We do see real birds sometimes, crows mostly, and treetops and roofs, and clouds of all shapes and sizes. Once we saw a rainbow, and I was tempted to chase it to the end. It seemed almost as if I could.

  There’s no sound around us, but the machine makes its own ruckus—the engine thumps and whirrs (hopefully more whirring than thumping), the wires squeal in the wind, our scarves and clothes flap, the fuselage quivers, and we can barely hear one another shout over it all. Once Burke had to fire off a few rounds just to get my attention.

  Even now it’s chilly up there. I hate to think what it’ll be like in winter. So thank you, and thank Ma and especially Flossie, for the wonderful socks and mittens. Charlie was green with envy. I fly with my little good luck kangaroo tucked into my top pocket. I’m going to get one of the fellows in the workshop to paint a kangaroo on Matilda too, so everyone who sees us up in the sky knows that it’s us flying there, all the way from the other side of the world, doing our bit.

  Yours truly,

  (Also if Ma could send one of her legendary fruit cakes, that would make me the most popular chap in the Officers’ Mess. I have been boasting about them.)

  A

  It was peaceful at the orchard. But everywhere else, it was a different story. The city, maybe the whole country, simmered. People were hungry and desperate. Everyone was cross. They were sick of the war, sick of the food shortages, sick of the endless political arguments. Even the Women’s Peace Army wasn’t all that peaceful.

  Most of the ladies in the WPA were la-di-da. They wore a different dress every day, with matching shoes, and hats with long feathers. Ma tried to keep up, but there was no point. She was the wife of an assistant railway station master, and all the bits of ribbon in the world wouldn’t make our dresses look like those fancy ladies’ outfits. They probably had nannies to look after their children and maids to do their hair. Ma only had me. Not even that, since I was out at the orchard all week. Some of the women looked down on us, I could tell, but not Vida Goldstein. She called Ma her ‘rock in a turbulent ocean’.

  We spent hours every Saturday handing out leaflets to people coming in and out of Flinders Street railway station. If Miss Goldstein was there, people would stop and chat to her, and men would doff their hats and shake her hand. Not everyone, though. Sometimes people got cranky with her and launched into arguments about the war and conscription and whether or not she was committing treason. But she was always gracious, even when they were horrible.

  ‘Watch and learn,’ said Ma. ‘One day you could be like Miss Goldstein.’

  ‘I doubt it,’ I said. ‘There’s only one of her in the whole of history.’

  ‘Times are changing, Maggie,’ said Ma. ‘Look at you. Riding that bicycle. Working on an orchard. Who would have thought, eh? Before long, a girl like you could be prime minister.’

  ‘Now you’re being silly.’

  ‘Well, maybe not right away,’ she said. ‘But one day. You never know.’

  ‘You should make Miss Goldstein some bloomers,’ I told Ma. ‘Then everyone would want a pair.’

  ‘Vida wouldn’t be seen dead in trousers,’ said Ma. ‘She’s too dignified.’

  Dignified or not, when Miss Goldstein was there, you had to proclaim slogans about saving the children and stopping the war and feeding the poor, and attempt to engage passers-by in earnest conversation. That was what she did, so that was what she expected of us. Once she’d gone, I just quietly handed out l
eaflets to anybody who glanced at me, whether they liked it or not. I wasn’t the proclaiming type.

  Miss Goldstein was a firecracker, but a clever one. Just like Ma. She never gave up, and she kept calling for peace. But a whole lot of other people were spoiling for a fight. Especially Adela.

  Ma didn’t quite approve of Adela. After all, they couldn’t have been more different. Ma was so tall and graceful, with her dark hair swept up under a stylish hat, and her gloves and shoes always impeccably clean. Adela was too wild for Ma. She was only as high as Ma’s shoulder, her hair always straggling free, her head bare, and her gloves quite forgotten. She didn’t have time for all that nonsense, she claimed, which is easy to say when all your clothes are made by the best London dressmakers.

  Ma was the daughter of a Collingwood bootmaker, who struggled each fortnight to make Dad’s pay cover the rent and the groceries. Adela had grown up in England, in the lap of luxury, surrounded by famous men and women. She might have gone to Oxford University, perhaps, or into Parliament—if women in Britain were ever allowed. Instead, here they both were, arguing with the world and with each other.

  When Miss Goldstein made a speech, she held you in the palm of her hand. But Adela brandished her fist in your face. She meant trouble and strife. It was all rather exciting. I wondered if that was why Mrs Pankhurst had sent her to Australia—to keep her out of mischief.

  Well, that certainly didn’t work. Adela made her own mischief.

  ‘Maggie!’ She waved to me from the other side of Flinders Street and sprinted across, narrowly avoiding being run down by an Army truck on its way to Victoria Barracks. The men in the back let out a cheer, and she grinned.

  ‘There you are,’ she said. ‘I’m here to relieve you.’

  ‘Oh, good,’ I said. ‘I do feel quite relieved. I’ve been here for hours. Ma and Miss Goldstein gave up ages ago.’

  ‘They certainly have.’

  She grabbed a handful of leaflets from the box and waved them above her head. ‘Stop the food profiteers!’ she shouted. ‘Down with the government!’

  Oh dear. I really wasn’t made for politics. I would never be another Miss Goldstein or Adela. I’d never even be another Ma. Just not very good at the shouting part. I threw my spare leaflets into the box.

  ‘I’ll be off then,’ I said. ‘Thanks so much for taking over.’

  Adela turned to me. ‘Are you coming next weekend, to the protest?’

  ‘But the government’s banned it.’

  ‘That won’t stop me,’ she said. ‘Do come. It will be an historic moment.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I’ll have to check with Ma.’

  ‘Don’t worry about her,’ said Adela. ‘This is a moment for us, for a new generation of women.’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘Absolutely,’ she said, smiling. The winter sunlight flickered through her hair. ‘You can’t hide away on your orchard forever.’

  ‘I’m not hiding!’

  ‘Wake up, Maggie.’ She waved a handful of pamphlets in my face. ‘It’s time for action.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Only don’t tell your mother I said that, or they’ll try to stop us.’

  Later, I almost wished they had.

  We gathered on the footpath on Spring Street early one afternoon for Adela’s protest against the price of bread. The Lord Mayor had ruled there were to be no protests or rallies of any kind in the city streets until the war was over. That was never going to work, not with Adela in town.

  By three in the afternoon, 2,000 people were jammed into the intersection in front of Parliament House, waiting for Adela to speak. All sorts of people had come along: the younger set from the Peace Army like me, wharf workers, labourers, girls from the textile factories in Collingwood, and lots of people who looked like they hadn’t eaten a proper meal for weeks. I’d never been in such a huge crowd, especially not by myself. I shifted my weight from foot to aching foot, waiting for something to happen and trying not to accidentally elbow any of the people crammed in around me.

  At last, Adela climbed up onto the steps. I couldn’t hear her at first, so I squeezed through the crowd to get closer.

  ‘Parliament will do nothing and it is left to ourselves,’ she shouted. ‘We have only one course open and that is to demonstrate.’

  Everyone cheered, even the people at the back who had no idea what she’d said.

  ‘I am not afraid to fight,’ she said, ‘even if it does come down to the destruction of property.’

  Goodness. A few people cheered that, but not as many.

  ‘Do you know where all the food has gone?’ she asked.

  ‘No!’ shouted a fellow near me. He looked older than Dad, his cheeks hollowed out by hunger.

  ‘I got none anyways,’ he muttered to himself.

  ‘Has it gone to the boys at the Front?’ asked Adela at the top of her voice. ‘That’s what the Prime Minister says. Do you believe him?’

  ‘No!’ The crowd chanted its reply.

  ‘Has it gone to the poor, to the needy, to the hungry?’

  ‘No!’ Everyone shouted that. Even me.

  ‘No!’ Adela cried. ‘It is piling up in warehouses, not far from here, ready to fill the pockets of the greedy, the profiteers, the exploiters. I say we take it back! We break down their warehouses and feed the hungry.’

  ‘Yes!’

  I didn’t say anything then. I felt rather uneasy, as if I had strayed into a world full of arguments I didn’t quite understand. Of course I wanted to feed the starving and all that. But breaking into warehouses? Smashing windows? You could get into real trouble for that sort of thing. Apart from anything else, Dad would tan my backside from here to tomorrow. Adela didn’t care. She was a grown woman, and her mother and sisters had been in prison loads of times when they were protesting for the women’s vote.

  She called out once more, ‘Feed the —’

  Then she disappeared. A scrum of policemen scuffled around her on the steps. I glimpsed one waving hand as three officers picked her up and carried her, still shouting, off.

  The crowd roared its support for her, and everyone pushed forward. More policemen linked their arms and pushed back. People behind me kept shoving. The old fellow fell to his knees.

  ‘Stop!’ I cried. ‘Everyone, please stop it.’

  I clutched at the man’s arm and tried to drag him up onto his feet. A woman tripped and tumbled onto him. Someone else grabbed at my shoulder to stop themselves falling. We both crashed into the legs of the man in front. He twisted around and swore at me. It was madness. And in the distance, Adela was still hollering.

  ‘What were you thinking?’ I was lucky Ma was making bread when I got home. She kneaded and then slapped the dough as if it had done something terribly wrong. ‘Look at you. Dress torn and grubby. Scraped knee. Shoes scuffed.’

  ‘That’s not my fault,’ I said. ‘It was the police.’

  ‘Going into town by yourself to attend a riot,’ she said. ‘What next?’

  ‘But people are starving!’

  ‘That’s no reason to break the law,’ she said.

  ‘But it’s a silly law. You said so yourself.’

  ‘All the same.’

  At that moment, Dad walked in from the station, looked at us both, and froze.

  ‘What’s happened? And why do you look like a scarecrow?’

  ‘Your daughter,’ said Ma—I was always his daughter when I was in really big trouble, as if I wasn’t also hers, ‘has been brawling with the police in the middle of town.’

  Was that a small gleam of pride in my father’s eye?

  ‘Shocking,’ he said. ‘What’s for supper?’

  ‘Bread and dripping for you, if you’re not careful,’ said Ma. ‘Speak sternly to your daughter, please. It was that Miss Pankhurst, disturbing the peace.’

  ‘Were you hurt?’ Dad asked me.

  ‘Only my dignity,’ I said. ‘And it wasn’t a brawl. They carted Adela off, and everyo
ne tried to stop them and we all fell over, that’s all.’

  ‘I always knew she was trouble,’ said Ma.

  I put my hands on my hips and glared at her. ‘You’re the one who taught me how to protest in the streets. You did exactly the same when you were young, campaigning for the vote.’

  ‘I do not rampage,’ said Ma, waving her floury hands about. ‘We hold peaceful processions, not riots.’

  ‘That’s not what the Lord Mayor says.’

  ‘We should never have given you that bicycle,’ said Ma.

  Dad chuckled. ‘Says the one who has dedicated her life to the fight for women’s freedom.’

  He looked me up and down, as if checking for damage. ‘Did you get charged with any serious crimes?’

  ‘No, they only arrested Adela. All these policemen carried her off.’

  At last Ma smiled, a streak of flour on her chin. ‘I should have quite liked to see that.’

  August, 1917

  Appletree Farm,

  Box Hill

  Darling boy,

  The legendary fruit cake was posted to you last week. I hope it arrives safely, and meets expectations in the Officers’ Mess. You have no idea what you ask. Ma had to go begging sultanas from everyone in the neighbourhood. Everything is in short supply now. I don’t know why, since the sultanas only have to come from Mildura. It’s not as if they’d get torpedoed on the way. But the world has gone silly, and there’s your proof. In the pudding, as it were.

  (And fancy you in an Officers’ Mess in the first place. Do you also have a butler?)

  Flossie has knitted you … well, I can’t really tell what it is. She says it’s a scarf. I think it’s more along the lines of a spider web. But never mind. It’s yours now, and you can either use it to keep your neck warm or to catch yabbies. Do they have yabbies there?

  I’m cold. Life on a farm in winter is miserable. I write this with a rug around my shoulders and another on my knees, and my hands in mittens, which makes it very hard to hold the pen. I must ask Flossie to knit me a spider web.