Plum Puddings and Paper Moons

by Glenda Millard

  ‘Wait here,’ said Mrs Ogilvy, taking the Prime Minister’s letter with her.

  Scarlet leaned her back against the grey wall of the corridor and waited. She waited a long time.

  Mrs Ogilvy sat down on a hard plastic chair near the copying machine and read Scarlet’s letter. Then she tried to remember what kind of girl she had been when she was fifteen years old and it was almost Christmas. And she wished she had been brave enough to ask questions about big things, lucky enough to have a grandmother to tell her she could change the world, wise enough to believe it and bold enough to try.

  When she came back with the letter and one warm copy, Mrs Ogilvy’s face was rearranged into soft, sad creases and she said, ‘I owe you an apology, Scarlet Silk, and I hope your wish comes true.’

  12. The Bridge from Gypsy Bend

  When Scarlet arrived at the Colour Patch Café on Saturday morning, Mr Kadri was fussing and flapping.

  ‘Oh Miss Crimson,’ he said, ‘my friends do not wish to be walking in your peace march tomorrow and I am thinking they are afraid.’

  ‘What are they afraid of, Mr Kadri?’

  ‘They will not say, Miss Crimson, but in their homeland, marching is not permitted. No marching of any kind. I am thinking they are afraid Constable Wilson will be locking them up if they come peace marching with us.’

  ‘Have you told them they’ll be safe? Don’t they understand? Where is Anik?’

  Anik was having an end-of-year celebration with the other people from his Advanced English class.

  Scarlet had lived almost every minute of every day of her fifteen years being not afraid of anything. She had not thought this one small step in her plan to change the world could make someone else afraid. But Anik’s family had spent most of the last fifteen years being afraid, so how could she tell them they need not be? Even Mr Kadri had faint memories of fear. Scarlet wanted Anik to be there, certain he still had some of the magic he was born with. A child’s magic is powerful in any land and language, in war and in peace. It allows them to build palaces from packing crates and make dresses for princesses from rags and tatters. Surely Anik had enough magic left to rub off on his family, just enough for them to find a small pocket of peace, enough to let them feel free to march.

  Scarlet put her apron on and wiped tables, washed dishes and waited for Anik to come home from his end-of-year celebration. While she was waiting and wiping, Scarlet thought about all the things still to be done before the march. At home everyone would be busy. Nell would still be baking and Ben … Suddenly Scarlet thought of something which might help Anik’s people not to be afraid.

  At six o’clock Mrs Ogilvy went to church. The preacher wore a wishband over his crisp white sleeve. At the end of the service he said, ‘For twenty-three years I’ve stood in this church on Christmas Eve and prayed for peace on earth. But this year I’ve cancelled the Christmas Eve service. Instead I’ll be walking in Scarlet Silk’s peace march. Judging by the number of black armbands I can see, I’m sure most of you plan to do the same. I’ll look forward to seeing you tomorrow. In case there’s anyone here who isn’t aware of the details, you’ll find a flyer in your hymn book explaining everything.’

  Mrs Ogilvy tucked the flyer in her handbag, shook hands with the preacher and walked home with bells ringing in her ears. She was feeling fearless and free for the first time in her life.

  At dusk the preacher pulled on his old patched jeans and his Cat Stevens T-shirt. He adjusted his leather aviator goggles and fastened the strap of his helmet under his chin, then climbed aboard his Vespa scooter. He had an appointment at the Kingdom of Silk.

  Ben’s table was sticking out both ends of the shed. The preacher saw it as soon as he pulled up next to the Bedford. It was the longest table he had ever seen. Constable Wilson was standing outside the shed, talking to Anthony Elliott, Layla’s daddy, and her big brother Patrick who was practising to be a body builder. A few minutes later Mr Davis arrived with Mr Kadri, Scarlet, Anik and another man. A tall and graceful man with eyes full of secrets. Mr Kadri introduced him to the others. His name was Tansil, Anik’s uncle.

  Constable Wilson stuck his hand out and said, ‘Teddy Wilson’s the name. Pleased to meet you, Tansil.’

  After everyone had shaken Tansil’s hand, the men arranged themselves around Ben’s table. Uncle Tansil stood between the policeman and the preacher and grasped the table with all the other men and together they lifted it and carried it slowly towards the dam. Layla and Griffin shouted directions and encouragement from the tree house. The men sweated and strained and stopped and started and at last set the table down on the grass near the Cox’s Orange Pippin.

  Then the Rainbow Girls came down from the house, carrying plates piled high with watermelon smiles and fruit salad ice-blocks on sticks. Nell and Annie brought trays of tumblers and jugs of juice and Superman skipped along behind them all, singing superhero songs to his shadow, Blue.

  On that hot summer evening before the day of the peace march, Ben’s helpers ate and drank and laughed and listened while Ben told the true tale of the table. For Uncle Tansil’s sake he told things the others already knew and Anik explained the words his uncle didn’t understand. Ben salvaged used timber and made it into chairs and chests, cribs and cradles, banisters and bookcases, pigeon holes and pirate’s legs and rolling pins or other things and sometimes almost everything.

  ‘Remember the old bridge at Gypsy Bend?’ said Ben prodding at their memories.

  Some of the other men nodded.

  ‘Well, they replaced it with a steel bridge last year, so I brought the timber from the old one here. I wanted to use it for something special, but I couldn’t think what, so I kept it in the shed. When Scarlet started talking about her wish for peace it got me thinking about how bridges bring people together. And I suddenly realised that if you turn a bridge into a table, it does much the same thing. So I decided to use the timber from the bridge at Gypsy Bend to make a table, the biggest table I could, to bring as many people together as I could. Thanks everyone for helping me shift it. We’re planning to serve supper on it tomorrow night after the peace march. You’re all invited.’

  Constable Wilson offered Mr Kadri, Anik and Uncle Tansil a ride back to the Colour Patch Café in his police car. He didn’t have a gun and he didn’t search them or put hand-cuffs on them. He just said, ‘In you get.’

  Mr Kadri talked almost all the way home.

  ‘Mr Benjamin Silk is a very good man, wouldn’t you say, Tansil? He has many, many beautiful children and then he brings home another one who is not altogether his. The little one in his magical costume, Superiorman. Benjamin is also taking care of his mother and his beautiful wife. And now he is inviting us all to come again to his house to make celebrations after Miss Crimson’s marching. We are indeed fortunate, Tansil, to have such a good neighbour as Benjamin Silk.’

  As they drew up outside the Colour Patch Cafe, Anik said, ‘Constable Wilson, do we have your permission to march in peace tomorrow?’

  Constable Wilson turned around in his seat and looked at Tansil and Anik and Mr Kadri all sitting in the back with questions in their eyes.

  ‘Permission?’ he said. ‘This is the most exciting thing to happen in Cameron’s Creek for years. I’ll be in the front row. You can march next to me if you like!’

  The café’s neon sign blinked on and all the colours of paradise flooded through the window and onto Uncle Tansil’s smiling face.

  13. Plum Puddings and Paper Moons

  The starting line for the march was outside the Colour Patch Café. Not many cars drove down High Street at that hour of the evening, because the café closed at half-past six and the march didn’t start until eight o’clock. But Constable Wilson put orange witches’ hats and detour signs at both ends of High Street to make everything look official.

  Then he took off his policeman’s jacket and put on one of Scarlet’s screen-printed T-shirts. It was the extra, extra large one, and even so, the white dove was
slightly stretched. But inside that T-shirt was Constable Teddy Wilson who was Katie’s daddy, and a very good man. And besides, as everyone knows, a chubby dove is as much a symbol of peace as a skinny one.

  It was more a meander than a march. More a celebration than a demonstration. A celebration of the right to speak about things you think are wrong. It was also a thanksgiving for people who are brave enough to make big wishes.

  Mr Jenkins led the way, playing the bagpipes. He’d once been a member of the Clan Macleod Highland Pipe band. He wore a kilt in those days and his Juliette fell in love with him because he had such nice legs. But it was too hot for pleated skirts on the evening of the march so Mr Jenkins just wore his tartan socks, and his sporran over his shorts. He played a tune called Amazing Grace three times over because it had been Juliette’s favourite song and was the only one he could remember by heart.

  Perry Angel marched next to his friend Jenkins, beating his soup-pot snare drum with wooden spoons. Ben had loaned him a fur hat with a fox’s tail that Nell made for him when he was Perry’s age. And Annie had coaxed the echidna out of Perry’s gumboot with some worms from Nell’s worm farm. Perry looked very smart in his fur hat and gumboots with his Superman cape flying out behind him. Blue was the band’s mascot and walked between Mr Jenkins and Perry with a ‘P for peace’ sign around his neck.

  Behind the band came the banner-bearers. Annie had made an old sheet into a banner with the words We’ve Declared Peace on the World printed across it in blue. She threaded Nell’s brass curtain rods through the seams at each end and Scarlet and Anik carried it between them.

  After the banner-bearers walked Mr and Mrs Kadri and Grandmother Mosas pushing toddlers in strollers, then Auntie Shim, Auntie Janda and Uncle Tansil proudly wearing new blue T-shirts printed with white doves. In their hearts they carried the sadness of things lost: parents, children, brothers, sisters, limbs and lives and land. But with each small step they took, Anik and his family thought of all the things they had found: friendship, food, shelter, safety, the right to march in peace and a colourful girl called Scarlet Silk.

  Scarlet had spent the rest of her wishband money and some of her pay from her Saturday job on candles and Mr Kadri gave her paper cups to put them in, enough cups and candles for all the marchers to carry one.

  They walked as far as the sports ground behind Saint Benedict’s where they put their coffee-cup candles on the ground and joined hands. Old hands with young hands, dark with pale, small with large and rough with smooth in a long unbroken chain around the football field. Some people sang, others read or recited poems, some said their thankful thoughts out loud and others closed their eyes and made deep and silent wishes. Then the preacher rang the church bell and the children set white balloons free. They floated into the darkening heavenlies as silently as peace does when war ends.

  Soon after, Mr Davis drove his bus through the gates in a cloud of dust and Ben climbed up on the monkey bars with a megaphone. First he thanked everyone for coming and then he said, ‘Refreshments will be served at the Kingdom of Silk. We’d love you all to come. For those of you who don’t have transport and can’t walk so far, Mr Davis has kindly offered to take you there in his bus.’

  Elsie-from-the-post-office was the first to board the bus. She knew the Silk Road well. There wasn’t much more than a lick of tar on it now and she was certain all those loose red pebbles would jam the wheels of her walking frame. Besides, she wanted to have a chat with Mr Jenkins. She was sure he wouldn’t be intending to carry his bagpipes so far on such a hot night.

  The journey from the sportsground to the Kingdom of Silk was another procession. Some people walked, others rode bicycles or drove cars and the preacher rode his Vespa. People came with folding chairs or picnic rugs and many brought food to share.

  Ben cooked pizzas-to-order and Amber’s heart-shaped Armenian Love Cakes were a huge success. So were Auntie Ruby’s rumless rum balls. Elsie ate three. Then she brushed the crumbs off her cornflower-blue cardigan with a lace handkerchief and said she’d better not have any more in case she got tipsy. And before Amber had time to explain that the rum balls were as fake as pirate’s moustaches, Elsie stood up and wobbled her way across to the bridge from Gypsy’s Bend for a nice strong cup of tea.

  When supper was over, Griffin and Layla climbed up on the haystack and lay on their backs watching the stars burn. Perry curled up in Annie’s arms. He’d taken off his cape and his gumboots and Ben’s fur hat. There was no need for a superhero tonight and he was no longer Drum Major. He was simply Perry Angel. He knew now that Perry Angel was a good thing to be and the Kingdom of Silk was in safe hands. His beautiful, scary, interesting teenage sister Scarlet had declared peace on the world.

  Scarlet and Anik sat on the raft, full of magic and rum balls. Coffee-cup candles drifted beside them on the to-ings and fro-ings of the tides as they navigated the dark canals of Venice and glided silently beneath the Bridge of Sighs.

  Being fifteen wasn’t so bad, Scarlet thought. You could be very brave and slightly wise but sometimes scared. When you were angry, loud or mean, you could be forgiven. It was okay to agree or disagree. And you could fight war with peace and fall a tiny bit in love. Scarlet had been and done all of the above but best of all she had made her grandmother proud.

  Nell reclined on her deckchair under the Cox’s Orange Pippin. Voices drifted across the dam. A breath of wind wrinkled the water and rustled the paper chain that hugged the appled boughs. Candles flickered, lanterns danced, an angel face floated in the dark and Nell knew Tishkin was there.

  Her thoughts flew to the deep and silent wish that all the Silks had wished and to the little more as well that Layla had written in her journal. Then to a line from her favourite poem: A time to be born and a time to die. And a pure and perfect thought was born. Nell knew, as surely as day follows night, that when it was her time, she wasn’t going anywhere. Like Tishkin she would stay, forever in the wind and the soil and the sky at the Kingdom of Silk. She smiled in the darkness and promised herself she wouldn’t forget to tell Layla and Griffin in the morning.

  At five minutes to twelve, Ben took out his mouth-organ and played the preacher’s favourite tune, ‘Morning Has Broken’, and Annie sang. Mr and Mrs Elliott danced under the curtsying boughs of the Cox’s Orange Pippin and Layla made a deep and silent wish that every Christmas could be like this one.

  Then someone called out.

  ‘It’s midnight! It’s Christmas Day!’

  Annie shook Nell gently.

  ‘It’s time,’ she said and together they walked up to the kitchen.

  The Prime Minister didn’t come to Scarlet’s peace march, but three hundred and seventeen other people did, which was a lot of people for a small town like Cameron’s Creek. It was almost all the people.

  Not everyone was from Cameron’s Creek. Melody was there with three small girls and so was Sunday Lee. But there was enough of Nell’s leftover-on-purpose plum pudding for everyone to have a slice. On each plate beside the pudding was a small paper doily. In the centre, written in red, was Scarlet’s wish: Peace on Earth. If you held the doily against the sky it looked almost exactly like a moon.

  The Daily Beacon called the peace march a triumph and printed a photograph of Scarlet on the front page. Underneath it said: Miss Scarlet Silk is hopeful that by next year, people in towns and cities all over the world will follow the example of the people of Cameron’s Creek and declare peace on war.

  A note from Glenda

  People often ask me where I get inspiration from. So I thought I’d share some secrets with you. I hope they will help you to discover where I got some of the ideas for things I’ve written about in Plum Puddings and Paper Moons.

  When I was a little girl in primary school, the milkman used to deliver milk to the school in small glass bottles with lids made of silver foil. We used to wash the lids and save them up to make Christmas decorations at the end of the year.

  My younger sister and I used
to love making wishes, especially when it came close to Christmas. But my parents didn’t have a lot of money and often we didn’t get what we wished for. Sometimes my dad would assemble bicycles from bits and pieces of other bikes. Then he’d paint them and decorate them with transfers. My mum would make beautiful rag dolls with scraps of fabric left over from dresses she’d sewn for us. So even when our red-kite kind of wishes didn’t come true, we were just as happy with our rag dolls and second-hand bicycles.

  I used to ride my bicycle to school and on the way home I’d call in to the post office to collect our mail. The people who ran the post office were Mr and Mrs Rasmussen.

  I left school just before I turned sixteen and one of the first things I bought when I got my pay was a white cake tin with cornflowers painted on it. I bought it for my nana.

  In that small country town where I was born and grew up, there was a factory that preserved meats. A lot of the people who lived in my town worked in this factory. It is still there today and now people who are refugees from other lands have come to live in the town and many work at the factory.

  A few years ago, I heard on the news and read in the papers that soldiers from Australia were going to a war in a far away land. Because of this some people in our town arranged a peace march. We all walked up the main street holding candles until we got to the sports ground behind the school. We held hands there and talked and sang and wished that we could change the world. Afterwards we had supper. A lady called Elsie gave me a piece of cake. She said it was called Armenian Love Cake. It seemed right to me to be sitting on the grass under the starry sky, eating cake that came from a recipe from a land far away and wondering how we could change the world. The cake was so delicious that I asked Elsie for the recipe so I could make it myself. And now I’m passing it on to you. Perhaps you could ask an adult to help you make it.