War's End

by Victoria Bowen

  I heard Martha urging her to go. ‘I’ll stay and look after her. She’s been out in the rain a fair bit and it might be just a cold. Look, Mum, I’ve been sleeping in the same room for ever. If I haven’t caught it now, I won’t. Mum, the train’s almost here.’

  They must have left because it was quiet. I was hot and cold at the same time and kept drifting away from Martha’s quiet voice. It was soothing. And so was the damp cloth she kept wiping over my face and down my arms. Occasionally I could hear her properly. She kept saying, ‘Don’t go, Nellie. Don’t go. Dad’s nearly here and we all love you. Don’t go.’ Over and over she kept saying it. Then there was a change in the pattern and I tried to find out why. Mum was there crying again and over her I heard a man’s voice.

  And it said, ‘Get the doctor in, Lizzie.’

  PA TURNED TO ME. ‘THIS IS THE PART YOU DON’T know, Nell, and you need to. Your mum was all a fidget, worried about you, trying to convince herself it was only a cold, and wanting so desperately to see your dad. The train pulled in and for a while your mum forgot everything but looking for your dad. He was the last one out. He stood on the carriage step and searched for us. Then there was a great smile across his face and he pushed his way over to us.

  ‘He asked where the kids were. So your mum told him, not just about you, and Martha staying to look after you, but about Jack and the past weeks. All the time he sat holding her hand stroking it with his thumb.

  ‘He was the first out of the carriage at our stop and, pack on his back, chivvied us along as fast as we could go. “Are they in their old room?” he asked as we came in through the front door. One look at you and he told Jack to get up to the doctor straightaway.’

  ‘He said, “You can’t manage this one, Liz. I’ve seen blokes with the flu in France and ones this colour are in trouble.”

  ‘We were lucky. Dr McKenzie was in and he came immediately.

  ‘“Hospital,” he said. “If I get going now I’ll probably be able to get her on the ambulance train to the isolation hospital at Greenmount.”

  ‘He told us to keep you quiet and cool and to give you some aspirin.

  ‘The ambulance arrived shortly after. Your dad went with them and helped carry you into the station. He sat with you until the train pulled in. Then he came home and we were quarantined.’

  ‘Enough to give you the willies, those ambulance men,’ said Dad. ‘Kind enough under that outlandish gear, but if you’d been conscious, Nell, it would have been an awful shock.’

  I didn’t think it would be sensible to tell Dad that I’d already seen them with Billy.

  ‘For the second time your mum’s plans were ruined,’ said Pa. ‘It was like a return to bad times. I started the copper again. Martha stripped your bed and your mum got the carbolic out. We had sandwiches for lunch and Liz cooked the chook for tea. It wasn’t the best homecoming but at least your Dad was home.’

  And the first thing he did was to send me away! But I have to admit it wasn’t as nasty a thing to do as I thought it was. Perhaps I’m wrong about Dad. Do I have to apologise?

  ‘Quarantine wasn’t too bad, after all,’ said Pa. ‘Jack was allowed out because he’d already had the flu and Doctor McKenzie said he thought your dad would be okay too. He said there was evidence that the soldiers who’d had the flu in France were immune to the Spanish flu. But apart from the wood run, your dad stayed in. He did go into town once, to see Jack’s boss.

  ‘What a puffed-up fool,’ said Dad.

  Pa and I laughed.

  ‘I thanked him for giving Jack a job but said that now I was home Jack was off back to school.’

  ‘Really, truly?’ I asked. ‘Do you mean that?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Dad. ‘The boy’s earned the right to do what he wants. He can’t go back to high school, but I’m sure we’ll get him in somewhere. If that means going to technical school, we can manage.’

  ‘We were out of quarantine in time for the Peace celebrations,’ Pa said. ‘We weren’t worried about you so much by then. Your matron wrote to us, you know. The first time she said it was still touch-and-go with you, but you hadn’t gotten any worse. The second time was to say you had turned the corner and were on the mend. We all relaxed a bit after that.

  ‘The celebrations were a day to remember. The signing of the peace documents, at last! It made the end of the war official. You would have enjoyed it, Nell.’

  ‘Yes, you would have,’ chipped in Dad. ‘It was a good day, Nell. Sunny, and happy. A sense of release hung over the Esplanade. Pity Em didn’t feel up to it and Mary didn’t want to go without you. I met up with some blokes I hadn’t seen since France and your mum said it was fine to go off with them. Martha and Jack found friends so we all went our own ways.’

  ‘To be honest,’ said Pa, ‘it was a relief after being cooped up for the week.’

  We all settled back into our own thoughts.

  Later Jack agreed it hadn’t been too bad. They’d worried about me until Matron’s letters arrived and then they’d settled into a quiet time, a bit like when Jack was getting better. Now they had Dad home and they were rubbing together like a family again.

  Martha spent a bit more time with the family. She helped Mum in the kitchen – ‘Not with the cooking, thank goodness,’ said Jack – and sat with Dad a lot, talking about what he’d seen overseas. He wouldn’t talk about the war itself, but he told her about Paris and how beautiful the French countryside was – where it hadn’t been churned up by the guns. But never once would he have swapped it for home.

  I bet they were also talking about Martha’s future. If Dad was letting Jack go back to school, he might let Martha go to university.

  As we pulled out of the Perth Station on the last leg home, I looked my father in the eye for the first time and asked, ‘Why did you send me away on the Death Train?’ I already knew the answer, but it was my way of letting him know that I’d had a real grievance when he came to pick me up.

  Dad turned to Pa. ‘What’s she talking about? What’s the Death Train?’

  ‘The kids have a theory that those who go on the train to the isolation hospital never come back; that they die and are buried in a huge pit there. Load of tosh. If I’d known that was on her mind, I’d have cleared it up straightaway,’ said Pa.

  ‘Nellie, is that what this whole no-speaking has been about? You thought I sent you away to die? As if I could send any of my children away to die. I sent you away to have a chance to live.’

  And he held out his arms and this time I stumbled over the space between our seats and went into them. After a moment he brushed my hair back.

  ‘The story hasn’t finished yet, Nell. And it’s my place to finish it.

  ‘Just over a week after the peace celebrations, Martha stopped studying late one afternoon and said she needed a rest. Your mum felt her head and she was burning up. Doctor McKenzie came straightaway and said he’d organise to get her on the next day’s train. Mum sat with her all night but she died before morning.’

  There was a terrible silence. Even the train clicking over the rails sounded as if it was in a different world, not mine. My world was an empty one and I was lost in it.

  What are you supposed to think when you’re told your sister is dead? That you didn’t say goodbye? That you don’t believe it? I felt nothing. Then I panicked. There was no Martha in the real world anymore. It was wrong, so wrong.

  Dad folded me into himself while Pa patted me on the back. The train rocked gently on and Dad and Pa took black armbands out of their pockets and put them over their coats. They hadn’t wanted to frighten me, they said, until they’d told me about Martha. I hated the armbands. They were solid and tight and you couldn’t argue with them. They made Martha dead.

  We were one station out when Dad said, ‘There’s a little bit more, Nell. Because we were quarantined again after Martha died, your mum and Pa couldn’t go to the funeral. The ambulance men took Martha away and Dale’s arranged the funeral. Jack and I went
down to Karrakatta together, so some of the family were with her when she was buried. When the new quarantine was over, Mum refused to go down until you were home and we could go as a family. She said we’d wait until you felt up to it.’

  We pulled into the station and Mum and Jack and Billy and Auntie Em and Mary were all on the platform waiting for us. There was nothing to say.

  Mum is older than ever, even a bit ugly. Black doesn’t suit her and she keeps holding her arms around herself. She doesn’t speak much and cooks and cleans like she’s not sure what she’s doing. Dad has tried everything he knows to cheer her up, but no one in the family really felt much like cheering up.

  Finally, one day Dad faced Mum over the table. ‘You can’t go on like this, Liz. We all miss Martha and would give anything to have her here, but that’s not the case. We’ll go on missing her for the rest of our lives but we have to get on with those lives.’

  Mum looked at him as if he were mad. ‘That’s all right for you to say but you didn’t kill her.’

  We were all shocked, then Dad asked gently, ‘How did you kill her, Liz? She caught the flu and wasn’t strong enough to even hold on for a night. Thousands and thousands of souls were the same.’

  ‘If I hadn’t hidden Jack’s flu Martha would still be here,’ Mum shouted. ‘I’m to blame and you should all hate me. I hate me.’

  And she put her head on the table and cried. Howled, more like. A terrible sound dredged up from the bottom of her heart.

  Dad was furious. ‘What on earth are you talking about?’ he shouted. ‘Have you lost your reason? Can’t you count? Don’t you understand no one in this house caught the flu from Jack? Yes, it’s true you shouldn’t have tried to hide it, but by good luck no one suffered for it. It was well and truly over before Nell came down with it and then Martha. I’ll bet Martha caught it at the Peace Celebration. One last blow from that filthy, inhuman, senseless war. It’s got nothing to do with Jack’s flu or Nell’s flu or you. It’s a disease and it has no sense to it. Oh, Lizzie my love, first Nell, and now you, you both seek to find blame where there’s none.’

  Pa signalled and me and Jack left the kitchen with him.

  ‘Let’s go for a walk around the block,’ he suggested. And we walked, not around the block but miles and miles and when we got home the kitchen light was still on and Mum and Dad were sitting at the table having a cup of tea. Dad was holding Mum’s hand on top of the tablecloth.

  We waited a bit longer before we went to the cemetery.

  It came time for Mum’s wedding anniversary rose and for the first time ever she went with Dad to choose it. But they didn’t plant it at home, and a rose was never planted in that spot.

  Next year’s rose started the long stretch down the fence next to old Mrs Grey’s house next door.

  Instead we took that rose on the train down to the cemetery. Dad had his leaving-the-army suit on and Pa had his old one on. Jack was wearing his first grown-up suit. Mum wore her Dad-coming-home dress even though it was a bit hot. Mum and me had taken in and shortened Martha’s best dress for me. I don’t mind wearing her old clothes now. It makes her seem still with us and I’m sure she doesn’t mind. For the same reason, I don’t mind sleeping in our room without her, like I thought I would.

  It was just as well we had the carriage to ourselves because Pa was carrying a bag of compost and Jack held the spade and a bucket. Dad sat between Mum and me holding a hand each.

  We were quiet all the way down and also while Jack led us through the cemetry to Martha. It didn’t hurt too much seeing her grave. It was, I realised, a peaceful spot. The soil was settling, Pa said, and it was ready for the rose. Dad dug the hole at the top of the grave and I wondered if Martha minded us tramping over her.

  Pa looked up. ‘Martha will be pleased to have us all together here. And she’ll be pleased we’re doing this job right. She knew enough about trying to do your best and that your best needs preparation and time. She knows her rose needs a good start and would be happy to think we were giving it one.’

  So I stopped worrying.

  Pa tipped the compost in the bottom of the hole and Dad teased out the roots and settled the rose in before shovelling the sand back in. Jack came back with the bucket brimming and Mum gently trickled the water over the rose to bed it in. Dad rested against the shovel and said it was time to order the gravestone. We stood around Martha and talked about what it should say, glad to be doing something for her.

  We agreed on a plain stone engraved with the words ‘Martha Elizabeth Owen, beloved daughter of Harold and Elizabeth, granddaughter of William Nansen and sister of John and Ellen. Born 2nd March 1901, died 26th July 1919.’ I wanted ‘Spark’ added but Dad said no. That was personal and not for a public place. What would be there was fine and true. She was beloved of all of us.

  TWO OR THREE WEEKS AFTER WE PLANTED MARTHA’S rose Mum suggested I start using Martha’s desk. ‘You seem to be spending more time on your homework, Nell,’ she said. ‘I’ll help you clear it out and you can start keeping your things in it.’

  Mum didn’t know about Martha’s secret drawer like I did, so I waited until she was out of the room before I opened it. All that was in it was a paper bag with seeds in it. I showed it to Pa.

  ‘Well, blow me,’ he said. ‘They’re the poppy seeds your dad brought back from France for Martha. I remember him telling her they probably wouldn’t come up because it was over a year since he collected them, but he kept them because he loved her present so much.’

  ‘What do you think?’ I asked. And Pa smiled.

  ‘We’ll never know unless we give them a go. But let’s keep this to ourselves. It would be a lovely surprise for your mum and dad if they do take and not a disappointment if they don’t.’

  So the next time Mum and Dad were out Pa and me sprinkled the seeds in the empty spot left by Martha having this year’s rose. Pa raked them in and I sprinkled water over them. Pa leant over and put his arm on my shoulders and gave the happiest laugh I’d heard from him in ages. ‘You know those poppies self-seed, don’t you, Nell? If this works we’ll have Martha all around us.’

  SOME YEARS AGO MY MOTHER SPOKE OF ‘THE DEATH Train’ although she had no more information than it was the train that took sick people up to Blackboy Hill during the 1919 Spanish influenza epidemic where they all died. My mother was at the time much the same age as Nell in the story and throughout her life she believed there was a large unmarked pit at Blackboy Hill and in it were all the bodies of those who died at the hospital.

  I began researching the story and found that some of what my mother believed was true, some was not true. There was a train – the ambulance train – and it did run to the old Army Camp at Blackboy Hill that had been reopened by the Public Health Department as an isolation hospital. However, the hospital had a good percentage of recoveries and there was no death pit. But, sometimes the belief that something happened is more ‘real’ than the truth.

  The people of War’s End are all fictitious though the setting and the progress of the epidemic in Perth is largely factual. The first incidence of the Spanish Influenza in Western Australia was the arrival of the ship Boonah carrying soldiers who were en-route to England and France when the Armistice was declared. The ship had turned around at Cape Town but soldiers who had spent time ashore were already infected and they started dying on the way home and were buried at sea. When the ship docked in Fremantle the remaining infected soldiers and volunteer nurses from another ship in the harbour went into quarantine at Woodman’s Point. The influenza was successfully contained though four nurses and twenty-six soldiers died there. It was a foretaste of what was to come and government authorities prepared well for the inevitable epidemic with the result that the death toll in Western Australia was not as horrendous as in other parts of Australia.

  The first person to be home quarantined in Perth was in mid May 1919; the Perth metropolitan area was declared a quarantine zone on 9 June (I have moved this date slightly back to b
etter fit the story); the first ‘Death Train’ ran on 16 June 1919 from Fremantle to the Helena Vale Race Course siding, stopping at those stations where patients were to be picked up. The restrictions on travelling in and out of Perth were lifted on 3 July. Peace celebrations were held on 19 July and large numbers of people attended in the belief that the epidemic was over. It was not and even larger numbers of cases than prior to this date were recorded, peaking in August. By the end of October all the isolation hospitals (some were only wards within larger hospitals) had been closed.

  There is doubt as to how long the ‘Death Train’ operated though an article in the July 1919 issue of the Western Australian Railway Gazette talks of the special treatment for cleaning carriages used to carry passengers suffering from infectious diseases. I have made the assumption that the ambulance train was still running during July. I could not find any indication of how the dead were returned to Perth (many were buried in the Karrakatta cemetery) so the night train is an invention.

  Because little was known about the Spanish Influenza and how to treat it much of the nursing of infected people was based on old home nursing remedies. Hence the use of onion poultices to help relieve congestion and the gargling of diluted Condy’s crystals to kill germs in the mouth (if the solution was too strong it turned teeth and gums brown).

  When Pa talks of Aunty Em having her money aside he is referring to the practice of families paying a small amount for inscriptions on the graves of family members who had been killed in the war and were buried overseas. The War Graves Commission pointed out that if the family could not afford to do so the Australian government bore the cost of the inscription.

  What is apparent from records of the time is that most soldiers returning from France were unwilling to talk about their experiences to those who had not been there – they would not have been able to comprehend such an alien and horrendous experience. This is why Dad’s story concentrates on the immediate post war period and for that time Volumes V and VI of W.C. Bean’s Official History of Australia in the War of 1914– 1918 proved most useful.