A Penny in Time

by Anna Bartlett

  Charlie could only stare at the man and shake his head slowly. ‘That’s not what it said in the paper.’

  ‘Yeah? Well, it wouldn’t be, would it?’

  ‘It said they were gallant and glorious.’

  ‘No-one’s glorious in a war, boy.’

  ‘My name’s Charlie. And Jim never says in his letters that it’s like that.’

  ‘I never said it in my letters either.’

  ‘He says he’s had lots of larks, and I wish I was old enough to go over there and show those Huns a thing or two.’

  The man frowned, his eyebrows drawing closer together. ‘It’s not a game, boy. You don’t get your arm blown off in a game.’

  Charlie flushed and looked at his boots.

  ‘And I would’ve died too, if it hadn’t been for the sisters,’ the man muttered, gazing away into the distance.

  Charlie shifted his weight from foot to foot, wishing he was somewhere else. He felt confused and uncomfortable and wished he’d never asked this man anything about the war. He made it sound horrible and scary, not the adventure Charlie had always imagined it.

  After a while the young man slowly turned back to Charlie. ‘You got a brother at the war then?’ he asked.

  ‘Yeah,’ Charlie said. ‘And my father. He’s only gone to New Guinea though. Jim’s gone to France.’

  The man nodded. ‘In the thick of it, eh?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Charlie. ‘He could be. He might have helped them storm Pozières.’

  ‘Ah yes,’ the man said with a slight smile. ‘That glorious rush.’ He stood up slowly and made sure the newspaper was firmly tucked under his armpit. He turned to go, then said over his shoulder, ‘I hope your brother makes it through alright, Charlie.’

  Charlie watched him walk away across the park, then glanced down at the card he still held in his hand. ‘Hey mister,’ he called as the man reached the trees on the other side. ‘Thanks for the cigarette card.’

  The man raised his hand in a wave. ‘My name’s Bill,’ he said.

  Charlie watched until he’d disappeared through the trees, then sat down on the bench Bill had just left. He stuck his hands in his pockets. Things seemed more complicated than they had the day before. He didn’t know what to think. Charlie’s right hand bumped against the spare coins the plump man hadn’t waited for. He pulled out the larger one – a penny, still quite shiny – and ran his thumb over it.

  Charlie stood up and walked across to the fountain sprawled in the middle of the square, with the bronze statue of the old governor and explorer Sir John Franklin standing tall on its stone pedestal in the centre, surrounded at the bottom by shrubs and bushes. Sir John was staring intently into the distance, towards the post office’s clock tower, which was visible above the trees. Charlie knew he wouldn’t get to school on time, and that Mr Barrett would probably cane him, but he didn’t care. He was thinking of what Bill had said to him just before he walked away.

  The water in the bottom of the fountain was dark and slightly rippled, and patterned with occasional waterlilies. Charlie stood on the concrete lip of the pond and flicked the penny into the air. As it fell towards the water he made a wish.

  Yared felt the mattress quiver as his nanna shifted her weight.

  ‘Now I hope you were satisfied with that story?’ she asked. ‘You don’t have any improvements to suggest?’

  He shook his head from side to side on the pillow. ‘No.’

  ‘You don’t think I should have made Charlie a performing monkey, perhaps?’

  ‘No,’ said Yared. That would have been silly. He liked the story better as it was.

  ‘I’m glad to hear it,’ said his nanna. ‘Now goodnight. Don’t stay awake long.’

  She left the room and Yared lay thinking of Charlie selling his newspapers on the street corners while horse-drawn carriages and trams bustled past. Charlie’s life sounded very different to his, Yared thought, and yet some parts were still familiar. Like the cigarette cards, which reminded Yared of the football cards he and his friends collected. Except, he thought as his eyes began to drift closed, that Charlie’s didn’t come from Weet-Bix packets.

  A Little Game of Hide and Seek

  Yared huddled under the covers, curled into a tight ball, and stared across the darkened room at his father’s suitcase. He’d been too busy with school and homework to think of his parents much in the last few days, but since their phone call this evening he hadn’t been able to stop. What were they doing right now? Did they miss him? Had they stopped arguing yet, or wasn’t the holiday working?

  The floorboards creaked as his nanna walked across the room towards him, the old penny clasped in one hand. ‘I suppose you’ll be wanting another story,’ she said.

  ‘Mmm,’ said Yared. ‘I s’pose.’

  ‘Well don’t let me force you.’

  She stopped near the end of his bed and Yared burrowed further under the blankets. He wished he’d brought his stuffed tiger with him, or at least his own doona. Something to make him feel better.

  ‘Can I hold the penny while you’re talking?’ he asked.

  His nanna’s eyebrows rose. ‘It’s not a toy, you know. It’s an antique.’

  ‘I know,’ Yared said. ‘I’ll look after it.’

  She was silent for a few moments then said, ‘I don’t want it lost. You’ll have to promise to be careful.’

  ‘I will,’ Yared said. ‘I promise.’

  She leant over slowly and passed him the coin, then settled on the far end of the bed. ‘Now where were we?’ she said. ‘The 1920s, I think…’

  Yared cupped the penny in his hands and waited.

  Violet’s frock clung to her as she stood over the copper tub and stirred the soggy mass of clothes with a wooden pole.

  ‘Hotter, Nancy,’ she gasped and her younger sister hurried to add more wood to the brick fireplace beneath the tub.

  Monday was washing day, which always meant hours boiling and stirring wet linen, scrubbing it clean, wringing it out and spreading it to dry on the lines Violet’s father had rigged over the nearest vegetable patch. Her mother was now busy filling the rinsing tub with cold water, while Violet and Nancy finished boiling the first load of clothes. Their younger brother Ken ran back and forth keeping Nancy’s pile of wood well-stocked, while four year old Shirley wandered around getting under everyone’s feet.

  ‘I climbed under the table,’ she said, tugging at Violet’s frock. ‘I climbed under the table and I found a money piece.’

  ‘That’s nice,’ said Violet, her arm muscles straining as she swirled the clothes through the boiling water. ‘Don’t come too close or you’ll burn yourself.’

  ‘Into the rinsing tub now, girls,’ their mother said.

  Violet wiped one hand across her sweaty forehead. She twisted her pole among the clothes and heaved on the end, lifting a dripping mass out of the water and onto the draining board nearby. While Violet began lifting out more clothes, Nancy used a second wooden pole to carry the first load to the rinsing tub.

  ‘Watch out, Shirley,’ Nancy said as Shirley stopped in her path.

  Shirley paid no attention. ‘And I will buy an iceblock with my money piece,’ she said.

  ‘Shirley, you’re in the way,’ said Nancy, prodding her with her foot.

  Shirley stumbled away towards the door. ‘I will have an iceblock from the shop.’

  Violet and Nancy dunked the clothes in the cool, clean rinsing water, then pulled them out one by one for their mother to stretch across her washboard and scrub. After rinsing each piece of clothing again, Violet helped her mother, Nancy and Ken to carry the washing to the lines over the vegetable patch and peg it up to dry in the sun.

  Finally the last sheet was secured, and Violet stretched her aching arms. She was used to hard work, helping her mother around the house and her father around the property, but when the weather was warm like today she didn’t enjoy doing the washing. They scrubbed and rinsed the clothes in a makeshift wash
house at the back of the house, and in summer the sun beat down on the tin roof and made the room stifling. Her mother liked everything as clean and neat as possible, though, and never skipped a washing day if she could help it.

  ‘Nancy, put the kettle on while Violet and I tip out the tubs,’ said their mother. She glanced around at the nearby paddocks and vegetable patches, then towards the back steps of the house. ‘Where has Shirley gone? Would you check inside, Nancy?’

  Nancy disappeared into the house while Violet and Ken helped their mother with the tubs. But when Nancy returned she said, ‘She’s not in there.’

  Their mother looked worried. ‘Then where is she? Did anyone see where she went?’

  The three children shook their heads.

  ‘I saw her playing with a coin,’ Ken said.

  ‘Oh, that’s right,’ said Violet. ‘She had a penny. She was talking about buying an iceblock.’

  ‘Oh my goodness,’ said their mother, one hand flying to her mouth. ‘She can’t have headed off to town with it, can she?’

  ‘She probably has,’ Violet said. Shirley was very determined, and once she had an idea fixed in her mind it was hard to distract her.

  ‘She’ll get lost,’ said her mother. ‘She’ll drown in the river. There are so many snakes around, and I heard from Mrs Seabrook that there are blackfellows camping out near the Truscotts’.’

  Violet knew her mother found the Australian bush daunting at times. She had been born in England, and only came to Australia at the end of the Great War, after marrying an Australian soldier. Violet had been born in England too, but had been brought to Australia as a baby, and felt at home in the open spaces of the bush. She knew Shirley could be in danger right now, but she tried to calm her mother.

  ‘She can’t have gone too far,’ she said, ‘and she knows not to go into the river.’

  ‘Someone will have to search for her. Run and fetch your father, Violet.’

  ‘I can’t,’ Violet said. ‘He’s gone out to the back paddocks this morning and he’s taken the horse.’

  Her mother looked around the yard, as though for help. ‘I can’t leave the younger ones alone,’ she said. ‘You’ll have to go after her, Violet.’

  Violet nodded. She knew the sooner they started searching for Shirley the better, and it would take all day to find her father. ‘Yes Mother.’

  ‘Be careful, won’t you? Take your hat and make sure you don’t get heatstroke.’

  Violet promised to be careful, then set off to look for Shirley. But where was the best place to start? she wondered. There were so many directions Shirley could have taken, and Violet knew that the longer she took to find her, the further Shirley might have travelled and the more tired and thirsty she would be.

  Well, thought Violet, if Shirley had been heading for the general store in town, she might have first gone down to the river. The Mostons’ block was on the same bank of the river as the town, but depending on the strength of the current it was often quicker to take the dinghy than to walk.

  Violet hurried along the path that wound across the river flats and down to the water. She never told her mother, but sometimes she saw snakes among the tall, thin reeds near the river. She hoped Shirley hadn’t come across one; her father had once told her that the bite of a tiger snake could kill you in an hour.

  Soon Violet came in sight of the broad, slowly-moving river, and could smell the strange odour of the mud. She came to a stop near the boat ramp her father had built. Shirley was nowhere to be seen, but the old tin dinghy lay pulled up near a tree stump, and Violet walked closer to inspect it. As she circled it she thought she saw small footmarks in the mud, but she couldn’t tell whose they were. Shirley wasn’t big enough to move the dinghy, but she might have tried anyway, Violet thought.

  She looked at the water flowing past, reeds and twisted red gums reflected in its surface. Where would Shirley have gone from here? The track back to the house was clearly visible, but Shirley couldn’t have followed it far or Violet would have met her on the way. And if she’d left the path, which Violet thought she must have done, she could be anywhere by now.

  Violet took a deep breath and tried to think clearly. She knew there was no point in panicking. If Shirley had been trying to reach town but had found she couldn’t move the dinghy, she might have decided to head upstream by land. Violet made her way back along the path until the mud and reeds on either side gave way to spiky grass, then left the track to walk parallel to the river.

  Under her shoes the soil was now dry and sandy, and around her gumtrees and stunted bushes dotted the ground. The land here was too dry for good farming, and the lack of rainfall in the last few years had made things even harder. Violet knew her father didn’t have much farming experience, either. He was a soldier settler – one of the soldiers who’d bought blocks of land when they’d come home from the Great War. Not many of them knew much about farming though, or had much equipment to help them.

  Violet’s mother sometimes told her stories of what it had been like when they’d first taken up their block of land: how hard her father had had to work, how much there had been to do and how difficult her mother had found it living in a rough shack far from civilisation, with two small children to look after. Now Violet helped her parents as much as she could, but she hoped things would be easier for her father when Ken was old enough to do more.

  As she walked through the dry scrub, Violet called her sister’s name. The day was still and warm, and even if Shirley hadn’t drowned or been bitten by a snake, Violet knew there was the danger of her collapsing from dehydration if it was too long before she was found. She looked around at the scrubby plains stretching away, and at the glint of the river off to her right. There was so much space for a four year old to get lost in.

  As Violet scrambled over a dead log she noticed a round, regular object lying in the grass on the other side. She climbed down and picked it up, and when she saw it was a copper penny her heart gave a leap. Shirley must have been this way and accidentally dropped it. She was on the right track!

  But twenty minutes later Violet wasn’t so sure. She felt as though she’d been walking for hours, and she hadn’t seen any further sign of Shirley. She still called her sister’s name as she walked, but her calls were becoming less and less frequent. She plodded on, unsure of what else she could do. She didn’t want to distress her mother by returning empty-handed. She could go back to the dinghy and row up to town for help, or keep walking until she reached there, but she didn’t expect she’d find many men around in the middle of the day. There seemed to be no better option than to keep tramping through the parched countryside calling for her sister.

  Violet rounded a clump of bushes to see a slim dark-skinned girl with a baby in her lap sitting half-hidden beneath the spindly branches. She stopped short. The girl was wearing a light frock but the little boy had no clothes on. This must be one of the girls who was camping on the Truscotts’ land, Violet thought. She had noticed a few Aboriginal women and children cleaning fish in the shallows of the river when she’d rowed past on her way to town for supplies the week before.

  Violet hesitated. She wasn’t sure her parents would want her to speak to an Aboriginal girl, but she knew she had to find Shirley as soon as possible, and there was no-one else who could help.

  ‘Hello,’ she said. ‘Have you seen my sister? She’s four. She wandered off and got lost.’

  The girl frowned at her. ‘You go away,’ she said.

  Violet bit her lip. ‘My sister is lost,’ she repeated more slowly. ‘I think she came this way.’

  The girl said something in a language Violet couldn’t understand, so she pointed to the little boy. ‘She’s only small, like him,’ she said. ‘I need to find her.’

  The girl stared at her for a few seconds then stood up, hoisted her baby brother onto her hip and turned away. Violet was about to call after her when she saw the girl start pacing in a wide arc around Violet, her eyes on the ground. She st
ood still and watched, wondering what she was doing.

  After some minutes the girl returned to Violet and spoke in her own language again, pointing at Violet’s shoes. Violet thought she must have asked a question, as she was looking at her and waiting.

  ‘Do you want my shoes?’ Violet asked, taking a step backwards. ‘I’m sorry, but you can’t.’

  The girl spoke again, jabbing her finger at Violet’s feet. This time Violet heard the word “sister” among the other sounds, and realised what the girl was asking.

  ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Yes, my sister’s wearing shoes.’

  Now the girl pointed towards a sandy patch of dirt several yards away. ‘There,’ she said. ‘Sister girl go there.’

  ‘Really?’ said Violet. ‘Did she? How can you tell? Thank you.’

  She walked across to the patch of dirt the girl had pointed out and glanced around at the scrub. ‘Is she near?’ Violet called, turning back to the girl. ‘Do you know which way she went?’

  The girl hesitated then paced over to Violet and inspected the ground. She began to pick her way through clumps of grass and around trees, her eyes scanning the dirt. Violet followed her, not at all sure how the girl knew where to go, but beginning to feel hopeful that Shirley might be found before it was too late.

  They kept moving through the dry bush, making slow progress. Violet started to feel thirsty, and the baby boy made occasional cooing noises or cries. Violet noticed that the girl seemed anxious and looked up from the ground to glance around at the bush every now and then. She hoped it didn’t mean anything bad about Shirley.

  When they came upon Shirley at last, Violet was taken by surprise. They’d been picking their way between clumps of knee-high grass when the girl spoke.

  ‘There,’ she said. ‘Sister girl.’

  Shirley sat slumped against the base of a red gum, her head drooping forward. Violet ran through the grass towards her and dropped to her knees.