Pennies For Hitler (20 page)

But the Peaslakes didn’t seem poor, even though they didn’t have a maid or gardener. Mr Peaslake had mentioned a car — even the Rektor of the University hadn’t been able to afford a car — and the wireless on the dresser looked new.

‘Come
on
,’ said Mud.

He was leaving his old life behind with his shoes. The bare floorboards felt funny under his toes. He walked out carefully as Mud shoved the back door open. She led the way down to the hens, who saw them coming and clucked excitedly behind the wire.

‘Chooks don’t like orange peel,’ said Mud. ‘So don’t put any in the scrap bucket. Or lemon peel.’ She opened the gate and threw the scraps in. The hens fussed happily around the pile, then settled down to eat.

Georg tried not to look disgusted. ‘They eat in the dirt?’

‘Chooks like dirt. Dirt is good. I told you. They bathe in it too.’

Was she teasing him? ‘You can’t bathe in dirt.’

‘You can if you’re a chook. They fluff up and the dust cleans their feathers. They comb it out with their beaks.’

‘But they’d be dirty!’

‘Do they
look
dirty?’ asked Mud patiently. ‘It doesn’t stick to them. Not unless it’s wet. It takes away mites and fleas and things.’

‘Hens have fleas?’

She looked at him curiously. ‘You don’t know anything, do you?’

He thought a boy from London wouldn’t know about ‘chooks’ either. Or Vegemite.

‘I know lots of things.’

‘Like what?’

He tried to think of all the things in the encyclopaedia, back in Mrs Huntley’s library. It still hurt, to think of the books fluttering in the rubble. ‘Capybaras are the biggest guinea pigs in the world. They’re much bigger than,’ he framed the word
carefully, ‘chooks. They are as big as pigs actually and live in swamps.’

‘Are they really?’ Mud considered. ‘That
is
interesting.’

She’s serious, Georg realised. He relaxed a bit. It was good to find someone who liked knowing about things like he did. ‘Why do you call them chooks?’ he ventured.

‘That’s the sound they make.
Took, took, took
. You can call them and they come too.
Chook, chook, chook
.’

The chooks ignored them, scrabbling and pecking at the chop bones. ‘Well, they come if you call and you’ve got the scrap bucket.’ Mud didn’t sound put out. ‘Come on, we’ve got to get the eggs.’ She led the way into the chook house. It was dark and dusty and smelled of feathers. ‘You need to watch out for snakes.’

‘Snakes!’ He thought of the giant boa constrictor in
The Adventure Book for Boys.

‘Browns. They like eating eggs. They’re
this
long.’ To his relief she only held out an arm’s length.

‘Are they poisonous?’

‘Of
course
. They’re snakes.’

‘Oh,’ he said.

‘Don’t worry. The dogs keep them away. Mostly. If you’re bitten you have to keep still and yell for help.’

‘I will,’ he said sincerely. He reached down and picked up an egg, then nearly dropped it when it felt warm. That egg had been inside a hen — a chook — just like the milk had been inside a cow. And the honey Mr Peaslake had eaten had been inside a bee. He’d never eat honey again. Or a scrambled egg …

But that was silly. He’d eaten eggs and milk and honey all his life. They weren’t any different because now he could see where they came from. But it did
feel
different, just like the grass under his bare feet.

Mrs Peaslake was taking the loaves of bread out of the oven as they brought the eggs back in. She hacked off the crusts at both ends as soon as they were out of the oven and handed them to him and Mud.

Georg copied Mud as she slathered on butter, watched it melt into the bread, then bit into the soft sweet crust. It was perhaps the best thing he’d ever eaten.

They dug up potatoes and carrots for lunch after that — more dirt, thought Georg, looking at his filthy fingernails — and picked baby runner beans from the big trellis at the edge of the garden.

Mr Peaslake put his head out of the shed as they passed. He held up the kite that had been on Georg’s bed. ‘Just adding more rags to the tail.’

‘Can we fly it after lunch?’ demanded Mud.

‘Too right,’ boomed Mr Peaslake.

They walked up the lane to the headland, past Mud’s house, Mud and Georg and Mrs Peaslake carrying kites, Mr Peaslake carrying the picnic basket — in case we feel faint from not enough food, thought Georg, slightly stuffed from breakfast and an enormous ‘baked dinner’ of mutton and vegetables for lunch. Mud had stayed for lunch too. He was already getting used to the feel of the dirt under his feet, though he made sure to avoid any stones. The dogs bounded at their sides, or pretended to find rabbits in the tussocks.

Mud’s house was much like the Peaslakes’, but with even more rooms straggling from both ends of the main building. Perhaps a new room had been added as each child came along.

Georg examined it. It didn’t look like the house of a poor person either, although it could have done with repainting, and the garden was just shrubs and rough grass. But there was a new-looking truck in the shed, and it seemed that Mud’s family owned all the land between here and the beach too. He thought only kings owned as much land as that.

They trudged through a gate and over lumpy land dappled with cow droppings. (‘You’ve never seen a
cow
dropping?’ said Mud incredulously. She picked one up, all dried and flat, and sent it skimming over the grass for the dogs to chase.) The hill rose in front of them so they were nearly at the cliff edge when Georg saw the sea. It almost hurt with its beauty, the blue like the stone in Mutti’s ring, the froth like white lace on the waves. The water washed back and forth on bright white sand, and licked the rocks at either side of the bay.

The wind lashed their backs and the spray spat at their faces. The rocks were black and shiny where the sea had washed them.

Georg looked at the kite in his hand. It was supposed to go up, but how?

‘Like this,’ began Mr Peaslake. His roar sounded right up here in the wind from the sea.

‘Let me show him!’

Mr Peaslake looked at Mud, and smiled. Mud handed her own kite to Mrs Peaslake. ‘Hold the string of yours,’ she commanded Georg. ‘I mean, not the string, the wood it’s wound around so the string can roll out.’

‘I don’t understand.’

She grinned. ‘You will.’ She took his kite and began to run, into the wind. Suddenly the wind tore the kite from her hand. In seconds it had leaped up into the air. Georg nearly dropped the
winder in surprise as the string began to unfurl. The kite climbed higher, and higher still.

It was impossible. It was wonderful. It was like somehow earth and sky were one thing, not two. He pulled the string experimentally and the kite soared even higher.

Mud had her own kite up now, and Mr Peaslake his.

‘Don’t let them get tangled,’ he yelled. ‘If it droops, start running into the wind till it rises again.’

‘Like this!’ shouted Mud against the wind. She began to run, the dogs bounding with her. The kite shadows flickered across the ground.

Georg ran too. He stubbed his toe, but it didn’t matter. Just for a moment he felt like the wind himself.

Suddenly there was a fourth shadow. Georg looked up.

It was a bird, brown and white. It balanced on the wind, just hanging in the blue sky. The kites flew, but this bird owned the air.

‘Sea eagle.’ Mr Peaslake’s kite string grew slack while he stared at it. ‘Alan …’ He hesitated as he said his son’s name, then went on. ‘Alan says that one day he’s going to fly a kite as high as the eagle.’

‘Do you think he can?’ shouted Georg, so the old man could hear above the wind. It seemed that nothing, not bits of string and bamboo and paper, could ever challenge that bird up there. But bits of wood and paper shouldn’t be able to fight the wind at all.

‘I reckon he might,’ shouted Mr Peaslake. ‘After the war is over.’

Mrs Peaslake opened the picnic basket and put out a Thermos of milk and another of tea, more of the fruitcake and big swollen oranges from the trees out the back of the house.

Georg remembered the last picnic basket he had watched being unpacked. It had all seemed so neat, so tame and safe that day — the quiet lake, the smooth green grass, Papa’s playful teasing and Mutti’s blushes — so different from this howling headland and its waves.

But it had not been safe. Neat grass had hidden hatred and secrets too.

‘Who’d like a scone?’ asked Mrs Peaslake. ‘There’s plain and there’s date or pumpkin.’ She picked up her knitting again.

Chapter 22

Bellagong
New South Wales, Australia
30 November 1940

Dear Aunt Miriam,

I hope you are well. Thank you for the money order. I bought a book and a box of chocolates for Mrs Peaslake and some sweets that I shared with Mud. Mud’s name is Maud but she does not spell it right. Or say it right either. Her last name is Mutton which is funny because they have a farm for beef, not mutton, but Mud did not laugh when I told her. She said they do get mutton from their sheep.

I did not need to buy clothes with the money order as Mrs Peaslake has made me shorts and shirts and knitted me a jumper and three pairs of combinations. I wear old clothes from Alan Peaslake and Mud’s brothers when I am on the farm because we get dirty, but do not worry, there is a big bath so I am clean each night.

It is a big farm with lots of cattle. We have to move them from paddock to paddock. I thought they would run over me but then Mud said ‘Yah!’ and they all walked away and through the gate.

Mr Peaslake and Mud and Mud’s dad, Mr Mutton, ride horses. Mud said she would teach me but her dad said maybe next year. You have to be a good rider to chase cattle on a horse so I only help with the cattle when we can walk. Did you know that it is not true that bulls run at red things? Mud has a red hat but they do not chase her. They do what she tells them to do.

It is good here. There are oranges growing right in the garden! They have puffy skins, not like the oranges in shops, but they taste the same.

I have learned to prop a fence post. I have not been bitten by a snake yet. Mr Peaslake says not to worry, it has been years since anyone was bitten by a snake, but I am careful when I collect the eggs. Snakes like eggs.

I am top of the class this week but that does not really count because there is only Mud who is my age too. Mud was top last week but Mrs Rose says we are both precocious which means we are very clever and do our work well. Mud likes books too but only when it is dark and she cannot do things outside or if it is raining. She is all right.

If anyone asks could you say I am very happy here and remember to say where I am, in case anyone does not know where I have gone?

Your loving nephew,
George

PS Here is a gumleaf I dried for you. Mud can play a tune with two gumleaves but it is not much of a tune. The gumtrees look funny and the leaves smell strange but you get used to it.

Georg stared at little Sally and Susie and Mary-Anne skipping in a corner of the rutted school yard. They chanted as they skipped.

‘
Underneath the water six feet deep

Old man Hitler fell asleep

All the little fishes ate his feet

Underneath the water six feet deep.
’

It was hard, even now, to accept that the Führer he had believed in two years before was the same man as the Hitler the kids chanted about now.

‘Hey, George, want to play Spitfires?’ Big Billy picked his nose, then inspected his finger before he ate what was on it. Big Billy was taller than him and Mud, even though he was six months younger and still hadn’t learned how to read or even write his name. These days he mostly just picked up firewood outside for the school’s potbelly stove.

Big Billy didn’t mind. He was happier at school than working on his uncle’s farm, and he got to play with the other kids at lunchtime, and they shared their lunches with him too, because Big Billy’s uncle never packed him lunch.

‘You can be the Spitfire,’ added Big Billy generously. ‘And I’ll be the Stuka and you can shoot me down.
Clakka, clakka, clakka, clakka
…’

A friend of Mr Peaslake’s had shown a newsreel at the town hall the weekend before, so now all the children had seen Spitfires and Stukas fighting above the city during the London Blitz. It had been strange seeing the London he’d once known in black and white, flickering on the hall wall.

‘George wants to play cricket,’ said Mud.

Big Billy shrugged agreeably. Georg nodded. He didn’t want
to be a Spitfire, or a Stuka either, and he’d learned the basics of cricket on the ship. They’d had to make up new rules to make sure the ball didn’t go over the rail, so no one noticed he’d never played cricket before. He knew enough about the game to be able to play a school-yard game now, with a fruit box for stumps and Mud’s brother’s old bat.

Georg liked Bellagong Public School, even if it was nothing like school back home, with its deep bell to tell you when lessons had ended, and neat uniforms and proper marching, and all boys too.

Here the girls sat down one side of the room and the boys on the other, except for him and Mud who shared a desk because they had to share their textbooks. No one wore a uniform, or even shoes, except the teacher, Mrs Rose.

It was more like the school in the church hall back in London, just noisier and with more flies and a water tank that a possum had drowned in last year ‘but it’s all right to drink the water now,’ Mud had assured him. ‘Because when it started to stink Dad and Uncle Ron drained the water out and cleaned it.’