‘I’d love to.’ With Georgina in Sydney she wouldn’t be left in the lurch by her non-appearance.
‘I’d better warn you, my husband, Harry, is totally deaf. The shelling, you know. But he lip-reads quite well and even when his conversation is a non sequitur in response to an imagined comment, it’s interesting.’ She smiled. ‘He’s a good man. Kind.’
‘The best sort.’
‘The best sort indeed. I am lucky,’ said Midge lightly. ‘There’s a shortcut to our place, takes a full hour off the road journey. The track goes through the northern end of the McPhees’, the part that will be yours. Now we’ve met I hope you’ll use it often.’
‘I’m sure I will.’ She was suddenly aware she had made no new friends since coming home. Green was a friend now, and Georgina, and her relationship with Maria was a strange mixture of family and friendship. What else did she have, except business and Thuringa?
Midge showed it was indeed possible for a woman to have marriage, children, and a fulfilled life beyond the home too. Lucky Midge.
I am bored, she thought. But I am not bored with Australia. The war accustomed me to living with urgency and drama. I must simply accustom myself to the small challenges of peace. By making choko a desirable canned product? She grinned at herself.
She followed Midge’s car along the road, then around the turn along a smaller but well-used track. Midge stopped at a gate. Sophie waited for Midge to get out — it was convention that the first driver opened the gate, and the second shut it.
Instead, a short man, but solid, with wide muscled shoulders, in old army trousers tied up by rope at his waist and ankles — an army trick to stop rats and mice climbing up your legs in the trenches — and the rags of a shirt ambled out of a bark lean-to and opened it for them. Midge leaned out and handed him a coin. Sophie quickly rummaged in her handbag. Bother! Only a penny, a shilling and pound notes, all too much or too little. She drove through the gate, pulled up and handed him the shilling, and received a well-spoken, ‘Thank you, miss.’
His face was bearded, but the beard was trimmed, though his brown hair was shaggy, probably chopped off with a knife when it became inconvenient; his hands were dusty, the colour of rock, his eyes a startling dark olive green, like the trees above them. His bare feet looked calloused to leather.
‘How do you know it’s miss?’ she found herself asking, smiling at him automatically to make him smile too. Say something he will agree with; ask a question he can answer.
Why was she using Miss Lily’s lessons in charm on this man?
Because he is strong, she thought. Not just those shoulders, the muscles of his brown arms. This ragged man had an air of strength she had not seen in any businessman in Sydney. For the first time in years I feel as if I am a woman, not a business. ‘You are more than corned beef,’ Miss Lily had said. She had not realised the depth of that warning . . .
‘You don’t wear a wedding ring.’ The man’s voice was serious, low and educated, as close to an upper-class accent as Australia produced. ‘Besides, I have heard of you. Miss Sophie Higgs.’
He hadn’t smiled back. She glanced at the lean-to hut, sheets of bark neatly fastened to a framework of poles, like an elongated tee-pee; he’d dug a trench around it, army style, to channel the water that flooded down the slope when it rained away from the living area. A well-made stone fireplace stood just outside the doorway, a billy made from an old tin can hanging above it. A couple of dozen rabbit pelts dried on the fence.
And then she saw them. Cross after cross incised on large rocks, small rocks, far too close together for bodies to be buried there. Surely this man was not making graves for rabbits?
He watched her. ‘One cross for every man I killed,’ he remarked, as lightly as if he were saying, ‘The flies are bad today.’
‘In France?’ she asked gently.
‘Gallipoli, then Belgium.’
‘You counted every enemy?’
‘And the men I ordered into battle. Death is death,’ he said quietly. ‘Every death must be remembered.’
The Riley’s engine in front stuttered, stopped. Midge waited for her. Sophie suspected she had heard this story before, guessed it was being told again now. ‘How many crosses have you made?’
‘Five thousand, two hundred and seven.’
‘How many more must you make?’
‘I think another seven thousand should do it.’
She did not think that he was mad, though she knew she might be mistaken. It was war that had been insane. But she had not been mistaken in his strength. Had any other man the courage to count his dead?
She sat, her hands still on the wheel of her car, her luxurious car with its leather seats and inlaid wood and tiny silver vase with a posy of fresh roses in it. Suddenly she breathed war again, the tang of sulphur, the sweet stench of rotting flesh. The flies echoed the buzz of bullets under the belch of big guns. ‘What will you do then?’ she whispered.
‘Give myself to God.’
Did he mean he would become a priest or a monk? Or kill himself? She could not ask.
Her car stalled — she had left her foot off the accelerator. He bent, without asking, and turned the crank handle for her. The engine caught again. He gave her a half-salute. ‘You saved men,’ he said. ‘I killed them, and gave the orders that got them killed. Go well, Miss Higgs.’
He walked back towards the lean-to. Sophie could see another stone there, the chisel waiting to be used again, on seven thousand more crosses.
Chapter 36
You must know the rules of society to learn how to break them cleanly.
Miss Lily, 1914
Midge Harrison’s house was weatherboard, like most in the district, and painted a yellow cream. It stood high above the river, with wide verandahs around three sides decorated by three red sheep dogs gazing suspiciously down at the sheep, who ignored them, noses down in the clover-rich Moura pasture.
They pulled up their cars out the front and each woman got out. Rambling roses covered the fences about the house, pruned to neatness on one side by the sheep, rampant on the other. The path up to the front door was bordered by roses too, orderly bushes with an understorey of recently trimmed English lavender.
A man in an ancient Akubra hat stood up from his cane verandah armchair as they approached, removing his hat politely. ‘Sophie, this is my husband, Harry. Harry,’ Midge’s words were clearer now, rather than louder, ‘this is Sophie Higgs from Thuringa.’
‘Pleased to meet you.’ Harry’s hand was as warm as his grin, leathery as his boots. This was a true farmer, not a man who owned a farm or ran one. Sophie could smell the fresh sweat of him, the faint musk smell of man. She suddenly envied Midge, who would go to bed tonight with a man like this, a man with kind eyes and strong hands, as well as the self-confidence to have a wife who made the chief decisions for their farm.
She froze at her thoughts, then realised Midge and Harry were staring at her. She smiled, and followed them indoors, trying to hide her shock. She had not thought like this since . . . she tried to remember the last time? Not even with Angus, for that had been half pity, nor with Dolphie. She had wanted both men, but not with uncomplex desire. No, she had last felt like this the day before she had turned Wooten Abbey into a hospital. Had her body suddenly woken from the spell of war, the years when the men’s bodies that she met were broken, and desire a distraction that must be swept away?
They sat in what Midge called ‘the lounge room’, though she too must have lived with ‘drawing rooms’ before coming to Bald Hill, and talked of breeding stock, and the chances of rain, and how old McGraic bayonetted the garbage bin near the cricket ground for an hour each Saturday afternoon, to keep in training for the next time they had to fight the Hun, and his efforts to get other men to join him.
‘Any luck?’ asked Sophie.
Midge shook her head. ‘None. Everyone wants to put the war behind them. And as a mother of sons I say “thank goodness”. The boys are staying
with their gran tonight, which means she’ll be spoiling them rotten making toffee and honeycomb.’
Sophie thought of Germany’s fury and humiliation; of the assumption of both James and Dolphie that another war was inevitable. But she said nothing. Why spoil an evening and the illusion of peace forever?
The housekeeper served dinner. Midge McPherson might live in a prosperous cockie’s house, but she obviously did not feel she needed to do her own housework or all of the cooking.
The meal was simple, as a guest had not been expected: a stuffed rolled rib of mutton, roast potatoes, roast pumpkin, roast carrots, boiled beans, a vast plenitude of extremely brown gravy, slices of white bread like doorstops and butter so pale it must be home-churned, followed by boiled golden syrup pudding, stewed bottled apricots and custard.
Harry ate steadily, as befitted a man who had worked with his muscles all day. He contributed little to the conversation, but seemed deeply pleased to see his wife talk to Sophie with enjoyment and animation.
‘. . . and Anne still goes out to dig in Mesopotamia each winter. You didn’t ever meet her, did you?’
Sophie shook her head.
‘Married an archaeologist. Well, she is an archaeologist too now, even completed her degree, but of course all their papers are published under his name. She says it makes sense, as he is the one who needs the grant money or the academic position. They’d never give either to a woman.’
‘Just like you’re a farmer’s wife.’
Midge laughed. ‘I am a farmer’s wife. I just happen to be a farmer too. And the mother of two junior farmers. Did you see the rams when you came in? We’re finally seeing results from the breeding program. But you won’t want to talk about sheep. You’ve only got cattle, haven’t you?’
‘Can’t make corned beef from sheep.’
‘Actually we do a fresh corned neck of mutton every Christmas, a “collar” rather. It’s excellent, much better than a ham. You’ll have to try it. But I don’t suppose it would sell, if you canned it. You know Sloggers too, don’t you?’
‘Yes, of course. We worked together for nearly two years. You must have met her in France?’
Midge nodded. ‘I hope she gets her tutorship. Can’t wait to tell her I’ve met you. And you know Ethel is standing for election?’
‘No!’
‘That’s what she said in her last letter. Only local government, but I bet she gets in.’ Midge looked at Sophie critically. ‘You should stand for election this year yourself.’
‘Me? Why on earth?’
‘Because otherwise we’ll be stuck with old Underhill for another term. And this year there’s a better chance of votes for a new candidate because we’ve finally got the multiple candidate system and compulsory voting. It means that women are going to have to vote, even if,’ Midge mimicked in an affected, little girl voice, ‘I leave things like that to my husband.’
‘They’ll still vote the way their husbands tell them to.’
‘They might not if there was a woman standing. A woman who opened the factory that keeps so many local families afloat.’
Sophie smiled. ‘So who should I stand for? Nationalist, Country Party or Labor?’
‘I doubt any of them would have you,’ said Midge frankly. ‘You’d have to stand as an independent. Look, old thing, it would be good if you ran. Most women have never really thought about who to vote for. Having a woman candidate would make them sit up and look for a change. Edith Cowan got elected in Western Australia.’
‘That was at state level, not federal! And I’m not Edith Cowan.’
Midge laughed. ‘Don’t underestimate yourself. This new preference system is going to make a real difference.’
‘How?’
‘No idea yet,’ said Midge sunnily. ‘It was just brought in to keep the Country Party from gaining power, but I have a feeling it’s going to mean more than that. Will you do it?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Sophie slowly. Midge was right — it would be a worthwhile thing to do, to show both women and men that the right to vote was not just something you used unthinkingly. Maria would be delighted to see the young woman she loved standing for the cause she had worked for, as a suffragist back in the 1890s.
‘Do it,’ said Miss Lily’s voice in her imagination. ‘You need a wider life than canning factories, and you know it.’
At the very least it would be a challenge. A good challenge, not like the war. Which reminded her . . .
‘The man by the gate. Who is he?’
‘He goes by the name of John.’
‘Goes by?’
Midge nodded. ‘He knew Jamie McPhee in France, before Jamie died at the Somme. I think Mr McPhee knows his full name, and where he’s from. Harry knew him too, which is how I know he changed his name after he came back from Europe, but Harry just says the man is entitled to his privacy and won’t tell me what his real name is.’ She turned to her husband and mouthed, ‘John at the gate,’ clearly.
Harry put down his spoon. ‘A good man,’ he said, in the slightly-too-loud voice used by the very deaf. ‘Would have got a VC but there was no other officer alive to recommend him.’ He paused and added, ‘A great man.’
‘A lot of the blokes who were over there go and have a chat with him now and then,’ said Midge. ‘The ones who need it.’ She didn’t add, ‘The ones who might otherwise get drunk, and bash their families; stay drunk, and kill themselves; who wake up screaming every night but insist their wives tell no one.’ ‘He doesn’t do much but listen, and give a bit of advice, but, well, I’ve seen men change after a yarn or two with John. He does good work, despite his appearance.’
‘Was he a chaplain?’ asked Sophie, thinking of all the crosses, then repeated it, mouthing it clearly as Midge had done.
Harry hesitated. ‘Sort of. Army captain, but when the chaplain got blown to pieces all across the camp he took over the services for a while, till they found us another one. Blokes used to like his sermons too. “I’m not going to pray for victory,” he told us once. “Those Germans over there must be praying just as hard for victory as we are. If God were going to hand victory to anyone, He’d have done it by the first Christmas. I reckon He has given us free choice, and it’s free choice that has landed us all here, even if it’s someone else’s choice. So I’m going to pray for what God can give us: the ability to bear what’s going to happen to us today and tomorrow, to stand by our mates and take pleasure in a cup of tea, if that’s the only good thing we get today.” You should have heard them.’
‘They cheered him?’ asked Sophie loudly and clearly.
‘Better than that,’ said Harry. ‘They were silent and listened. And some of them even smiled.’
The three of them sat in silence too, remembering. ‘Sometimes it doesn’t seem real,’ said Sophie at last. ‘There was so much horror, something new, worse, every day. But you got used to it.’
‘Except none of us really did,’ said Midge quietly, as Harry tucked into his pudding, hidden behind his deafness again. ‘I expect you have nightmares too.’
Sophie nodded. ‘Standing up to my ankles in blood in the surgery. A child, in shattered pieces. Which is funny, because though I saw children who had died, or were wounded and dying, I never saw the one I see in dreams.’
‘Maybe that one stands for all the others.’ Midge began to gather the plates, then stopped as Harry reached for a second helping. Sophie noticed she didn’t offer her own nightmares. Or Harry’s.
‘The man by the gate. John. Is he mad?’ She had nursed enough shell-shock cases to know that the years of stress could make life unbearable, either for the victim, or his victims.
‘No. Or yes, but not dangerous, if that’s what you mean. The opposite, maybe.’ She seemed to be trying to find the right word. ‘Happier, as if he lives in today, not seven years ago, and so can notice the good things, like Harry can now. Like the fact that someone has darned his socks.’ She grinned at her husband. He grinned back, though it was obvious
he hadn’t heard her remark.
‘How does John live?’
‘Forages a lot, I think. For rabbits, at least. Mr McPhee takes the skins to sell for him every few months. I suppose Harry and I need to do that when the McPhees leave.’
Then ‘John’ must be country bred, thought Sophie. Bullets to shoot rabbits cost money, so he must trap them.
‘He gets tips for opening the gate when people use the shortcut for our annual ram sales,’ Midge continued. ‘I sometimes give him a twist of tea, or a cake if Mrs Brinton has been baking. There’s a spare cake in the kitchen if you want to give it to him on the way back. Don’t worry,’ she added, ‘he won’t get the wrong idea. He doesn’t seem interested in women.’
‘I’d like to. Thank you. And I will think about the election.’
‘Come again soon,’ said Midge. ‘You can meet my two beasts. They’re not bad, for children.’
‘I’d love to,’ said Sophie. And meant it.
Chapter 37
There are only four people in the world who know what happened to me back then, and you are the fourth. I hadn’t realised how much it helps, to have another person know — and believe — in the strange and horrible ingenuity humans can use to inflict pain and suffering on each other. Thank you for listening. And for believing.
Miss Lily to Sophie Higgs, 1914
The moon floated like a yellow duck across a black bathtub full of stars. Sophie left the top down on the car, smelling the gum trees, the faint hint of wallaby. Even now she relished the flavours of home.
The man called John must have seen the approaching car headlights. The gate was already open for her. He stood beside it, neither smiling nor emotionless. An almost-smile, she thought. She braked, then handed him the cake. ‘A ginger sponge from Mrs Harrison.’
‘Thank you for bringing it.’ He met her eyes. ‘You want to talk, don’t you?’
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