Pennies For Hitler (21 page)

Instead of proper lessons he and Mud were given their textbooks to learn from, checking each other’s answers on the tests at the end of each chapter, while Mrs Rose taught the littlies how to read and do their sums on their slates. Mrs Rose had been a teacher before she got married. Now the real teacher was in the navy so Mrs Rose had come back again, till the war was over.

Sometimes he and Mud helped teach the littlies the five times tables or got them playing ‘sheep, sheep come home’ or ‘defence’ in the playground. Helping the littlies with Mud and playing with children of all different ages felt a bit like being on the ship. It didn’t even matter now that Mud was a girl.

On Saturday mornings he helped Mrs Peaslake put the wet, clean washing through the mangle, squeezing out most of the washing water, then hanging it all out on the big lines propped up by wooden poles in the backyard. Mrs Peaslake didn’t have a servant, just Mrs Purdon who came three mornings a week to ‘do the rough’. They’d had someone who came every day, before the war, but now you were only allowed to employ people over forty-five years old to help with your house or garden.

Georg learned how to sweep a floor properly, even the corners; how to black lead the stove to make it shine; how to swirl sand in the glass vases to scrub away the flower stains, and why flower stems had to be cut under water before you arranged them to make them last.

He learned to tell a carrot from a weed, and how to know when the beetroot were big enough to pull up, and how much mint to pick for the sweet-sour sauce Mrs Peaslake made to go with roast mutton, which was weird but good.

Now and then when he came into a room Mrs Peaslake was there, just sitting, looking at nothing, only her hands moving as they made another sock, a jumper, a pair of ‘combinations’ to keep him warm in winter.

She always jumped up when he came in and bustled off to stir up the stove, or put the dinner on. She never said what she’d been doing, but Georg knew, because he did it too.

She had been remembering. She remembered Alan and he remembered Mutti and Papa, Aunt Miriam and Elizabeth. There was so much they didn’t talk about but only remembered now.

Sometimes it was as though Alan Peaslake was only off down the shop to buy a pound of sugar. His picture stood on the mantel in the kitchen and the living room, on the sideboard and on top of the piano.

Even at the table his place was always vacant, in case he should appear. No one sat in his chair in the lounge room either, or the dining room. Mud knew not to sit there, and Georg learned not to as well, even though Mrs Peaslake never said anything about it.

They had their big lunch in the dining room on Saturdays and Sundays, with roast lamb or beef, slightly blackened roast pumpkin, parsnips, carrots and potatoes, and boiled beans and, over it all, gravy speckled with the bits of roast vegetables left in the pan, followed by apple crumble, because that was Mr Peaslake’s favourite and their Alan’s too.

There were always leftovers, partly so there’d be cold meat to eat with salad at what the Australians called ‘tea’ but the English called ‘dinner’, and so the cold roast potatoes could be fried up with eggs and cabbage for bubble and squeak for breakfast the next morning, or the lamb sliced for sandwiches during the week. But mostly, Georg thought, it was in case Alan suddenly appeared. Alan might be across the sea but there always had to be a plateful more, a tin full of cake or biscuits, in case he magically arrived.

Alan Peaslake was with them too when he and Mud and Mr Peaslake flew kites up on the headland. Mrs Peaslake usually came as well, sitting on the tussocky grass, not flying kites but knitting yet another sock or balaclava, the kites bobbling and laughing down at them, the dogs bounding at the shadows that flickered over the ground.

Each week Mr Peaslake took the Muttons’ horse and cart (there wasn’t enough petrol these days to use the truck except for emergencies) to gather firewood for the fireplaces in each room and the wood stove in the kitchen.

The straggle-branched gumtrees were careless with their branches, dropping them whenever they felt like it, so there was
lots of wood. It burned with a strange sweet-smelling smoke that wasn’t at all like the stuffy smell from the coal in London, or from the wood Lotte had burned in the kitchen at home. Samson and Delilah ran beside the cart, snuffling in the horse and cattle droppings and bringing sticks to throw.

Sometimes Mud challenged Georg to see who could gather the most wood; so they’d race for the long wiggly branches that looked like snakes. Of course, the snakes here were shiny black with red bellies, like someone had painted them to shout a warning — Careful! Poisonous snakes!

Mud always won, whether she was racing him to the cliff or seeing who could play ‘Chopsticks’ the fastest on the piano. It annoyed him a bit: that she always had to be the best. But he didn’t mind too much.

Sometimes it even felt like he was happy in his new life at the end of the earth.

Chapter 23

Bellagong
New South Wales, Australia
2 December 1940

Dear Aunt Miriam,

I hope you are well. It is hot here. Big insects called Christmas beetles fly into the roof and roll down. They make a lot of noise. Delilah, who is one of the dogs, tried to eat one and was sick. Mrs Peaslake says she tries every year and never learns.

It is funny to have Christmas coming and be hot.

Mrs Peaslake is worried that my mother has not sent a letter, but I explained how sick she is and that you will write and tell me how she is.

Mr Peaslake has taught me two poems. They are Australian poems. One is about black swans. Swans are black in Australia, not white. The other is called
How McDougal Topped the Score
and is about how a dog won a cricket match but it was not a proper orderly cricket match. It was a funny poem just the same.

I hope you are safe and that you have a good Christmas dinner. I hope you like this Christmas card. I made it myself at school. I hope you like the chocolates and the cake. I bought the chocolates. Mrs Peaslake gives me pocket money for doing the chores. Mrs Peaslake made the cake. It has a pound of butter in it and eight eggs.

I collected the eggs but I did not make the butter. Mud made it. Mud traps rabbits for their fur. She made twenty-six pounds this year. She said she will show me how to do it but I do not want to but I might next year, as Mud says the rabbits eat all the grass and then the soil washes away and the rabbit skins are useful to make men’s hats and coats for women and I can put the money into War Bonds which will help win the war. So even if I do not want to hurt rabbits I think maybe I should do it too.

I do not know if your friends are where you are now. I hope they are. I know you won’t get this before Christmas, but I hope you have a merry one.

Your loving nephew,
George

‘
Twas the night before Christmas
,’ chanted Mr Peaslake, peeling potatoes at the kitchen sink.

‘
When all through the house

Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;

The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,

In hopes that St Nicholas soon would be there.
’

‘George? There you are. Come and put up the decorations with me,’ said Mrs Peaslake. ‘You too, Father. Just leave the spuds to soak till dinner. We need you to put the angel on top of the tree.’

Georg followed them into the lounge room. It looked even more crowded with the big gumtree branch propped up in a bucket in a corner. He stared at it. How could a bit of gumtree be a proper Christmas tree?

Mrs Peaslake handed him a red crepe streamer from a cardboard box on the floor. Georg stared at it uncertainly, then began to drape it around the tree, in and out of the leaves and twigs, just as he had draped tinsel on a proper pine tree with Mrs Huntley in the library the year before; and all those other years with Mutti and Papa.

Mrs Peaslake nestled a ball of cotton wool among the leaves and then another. She is pretending it’s snow, he realised.

He draped another streamer while the Peaslakes added more ‘snow’. Then Mrs Peaslake opened a small papier-mâché box. She took out a rounded cardboard angel, badly coloured in. She touched it reverently. ‘Alan made that,’ she said softly.

Georg stared at it. Alan wasn’t very good at colouring in then, though he didn’t like to say it.

Mrs Peaslake saw his look and smiled. ‘He was only five. First Christmas at school. It’s been on top of the tree every year since.’ She looked into the distance. ‘I hope the Christmas cake gets to him in time. And the pudding.’

And the socks and bunch of gumleaves, and the card signed by them all, thought Georg. But all he said was, ‘I bet they make a special effort to get the mail to the troops in time for Christmas. Wherever he is.’

‘Probably rather have a beer,’ boomed Mr Peaslake. He reached up and fixed the angel to the highest twig of the tree; it lurched a bit to one side. ‘Mother, have you got the rag bag? I want to make some ties for the new kite.’

‘Can’t send beer through the post,’ said Mrs Peaslake, in the loud clear voice she always used for her husband. ‘The rag bag’s in the linen cupboard, where it always is. Men can never find things.
In the linen cupboard!
No, I’ll get it.’

Mr Peaslake watched her go. ‘Glad you’re here,’ he said suddenly. ‘House has been too empty. Bad for her: an empty house.’

Georg looked at the over-filled room. Delilah had arrived too and was sniffing the tree with interest. Empty? But he knew what Mr Peaslake meant. ‘But you’re here with her.’

‘Not the same. You miss the snow?’

The hairs on Georg’s arms rose in his alarm. Snow? It had never snowed in London at Christmas, but it had at home. Papa had shown him how to fall on his back with his arms out to make a snow angel.

Mr Peaslake was staring at him. ‘What’s wrong? Look, I’m sorry, lad. I didn’t mean to make you homesick talking about snow.’

‘No, I’m all right. It doesn’t snow in London at Christmas. Not often,’ he added, in case it sometimes did.

‘George!’ It was Mud at the back door.

‘Knock politely,’ called Mrs Peaslake from the linen cupboard. ‘You weren’t brought up in a tent.’

‘I did knock. You didn’t hear.’ Mud burst in from the kitchen. ‘What are you doing? Come on,’ she added to Georg before they could answer. ‘We’ve got to practise for carol singing.’

‘Carols?’ His heart lurched. He knew lots of carols; he’d sung them every Christmas at church and at home too. But all the carols that he knew were German.

He followed her automatically onto the road, then down the tussocked footpath towards the school. His feet had toughened so he didn’t even think about stones under his bare feet now.

Carols? How was he going to get out of this?

His heart began to pound. Even the shop had a poster: ‘Beware the horror in our midst.’ Would something as simple as carols be the thing that betrayed him as a German?

‘We sing carols at every house in town every year: every kid in the district. Not just kids either — Ken and Len and Alan, and all the girls. You love carol singing in England, don’t you?’ To his relief she didn’t wait for a reply. ‘But there’s only us at school to sing this year. It’s got to be really good so that everyone puts lots of money in the hat. The money we raise is going to buy rope to make camouflage nets.’ She flung the school gate open.

The other children were already there, playing jacksies on the school-room floor, even Big Billy. Mrs Rose looked through music on the old piano.

‘Right,’ she called. ‘Everyone over here, please.’

‘I’ll conduct.’ Mud began to wave her hands in the air as the music began. ‘One, two, three …’

The smallest kids began to sing.

‘
Silent night, holy night,

All is calm, all is bright …
’

Their voices trailed off one by one, as though they didn’t know the words. Big Billy had stopped after the ‘Silent night’. Georg found them all staring at him.

‘Why aren’t you singing?’ demanded Mud.

He knew the tune.

He knew the words to it too.

German words.

‘I … why aren’t you?’

Mud flushed. ‘I can’t sing.’

‘Everyone can sing.’

‘I can’t.’

Big Billy laughed. ‘You show him, Mud.’

Mud’s flush grew deeper. ‘No.’

‘Go on!’

‘No!’

‘Mud’s a scaredy cat! Mud’s a scaredy cat!’

‘Billy …’ Mrs Rose said.

‘I’m not scared of
anything
!’ Mud clenched her fists. She opened her mouth. A noise emerged. It was like the bullfrogs in the lake back home.

‘
Silent night, holy night,

All is calm
—’ Mud glared at them all. ‘There. Is that enough?’

Georg stared. Mud was good at everything! How could she not be able to sing?

‘I can’t sing either,’ he said, inspired.

‘What? Both of you?’ Mrs Rose threw her hands up. ‘Well, you can’t go carol singing now.’

‘But we always have carol singing!’ Mud’s voice was anguished.

‘Not this year.’ Mrs Rose sounded tired. She sounded tired often these days. She stood up and began to gather the music. ‘The littlies won’t remember the words without at least one of you singing along. Billy can’t read them either.’

‘Nope,’ said Billy cheerfully. He began to pick his nose.

‘But we
have
to!’

‘There’s no have to about it,’ said Mrs Rose.

Suddenly Mud ran from the room.

‘What’s got into the girl?’ Mrs Rose snapped the music into her case. ‘Sometimes I think —’

Georg didn’t wait to hear what Mrs Rose thought. He ran out the door, then gazed around. But Mud had vanished.