Pennies For Hitler (24 page)

Mr Mutton has bought a new bull. Mud said that they should call him George but Mr Mutton grinned and said ‘no way’. I said we could call him The King, because the King’s name is George, and everyone laughed and said yes.

The King is in the paddock next to the house because he cost a lot of money and so we have to make sure he does not fight the other bulls. I asked Mr Mutton why they fought, and he said, ‘Just because they are bulls, mate.’ Mr Mutton knows everything about cattle. He can ride without even holding onto the reins and just sort of nudges his horse to tell it where to go.

I can stay on a horse now but Mud says that isn’t riding, that is just staying on.

I had better go and set the table for tea. It is rabbit pie tonight. I wish I could send you some. Mrs Peaslake has packed up a cake and a tin of dripping for you though. She says she has boiled the dripping so it won’t go off and flavoured it with rosemary.

Your loving nephew,
George

Letters mattered now. Telegrams would tell you if someone you loved died; letters could tell you if they were well, or happy, or just … doing all right. He thought that in a funny way both Alan’s and Aunt Miriam’s letters sounded happy. Whatever the hardships they were experiencing, they felt that what they were doing was good.

Every month he was allowed to exchange a cable message with Aunt Miriam at the post office. The post office was the end of the counter at the shop, next to the cheese. He told Aunt Miriam about the new calves and learning algebra and how he had helped pack hampers for the troops in Egypt and in Singapore.

Georg didn’t say how ships had been sunk by mines in Bass Strait, where the ship that he had been on had passed on its way to Melbourne. Neither he nor Aunt Miriam mentioned to each other that there were no more evacuations of children to the Dominions now, after two ships laden with children had been torpedoed on their way to Canada.

There was a lot that no one mentioned these days, not just things that spies might pass on to the enemy but things that might hurt if said aloud. No one in Bellagong ever spoke about the pictures in the newspaper of London ablaze in front of Georg, how London endured night after night of bombing: a city consumed by flames and rubble but fighting on.

Perhaps the Peaslakes thought that Georg didn’t read the papers, because he waited till there was no one around before he leafed through them, looking for news not just of London but Germany too. Or maybe they knew he read the papers, but guessed it would hurt him to have to talk of the bombings of what they thought of as his home.

Sometimes Georg felt there was so much unsaid inside him that he’d bust, not just his German life, the loss of Papa and the worry for Mutti, but things he too had to pretend not to see, even in Bellagong. Mrs Peaslake’s tears as she sat in the kitchen reading and rereading Alan’s letters; the way Mr Peaslake sometimes stared at the photo of Alan on the piano too; like Georg himself looked away from Mud’s face when it seemed as though he might beat her in the school spelling bee.

He made a deliberate mistake then, so she won the round, and smiled at him in triumph. When you were the only child left at home and your brothers were in danger, you had to be the best.

But there were things everyone did talk about: good things, sometimes, like how the Australians had taken Tobruk from the
Italians in Libya (the British had been there too, somewhere) and then Benghazi; and how more Australian soldiers were sent to Malaya to the north, to make sure the fortress of Singapore was secure in case this war ever came to South-East Asia.

But most of the war news wasn’t good at all. Every evening at seven o’clock they sat in the lounge room together by the wireless to listen to the news, the Peaslakes on the sofa and Georg sitting on the carpet, stroking the dogs’ soft ears. It was easier to listen to bad news when you were together.

Yugoslavia fell to the Nazis; and Greece; then Crete too. City after city after city in Britain became the focus of the Blitz — the German for lightning — where German bombers rained down bombs night after night, trying to break the spirit of the ordinary people. How long could Britain and its Dominions hold on?

It was a strange year for Georg. The urgencies of the news from Europe seemed to matter less than the crows who attacked a sick lamb, or how he could finally stay on a horse well enough to ride to the bushranger’s cave with Mud. The war was worse, was ever-present, but it was also far away.

He was George, who the other kids looked up to because he had seen bombs fall, and had sailed across the ocean. He was George, who loved apple pancakes so much that Mrs Peaslake made them for him and Mud nearly every afternoon after school. He was George, learning to throw dried cow pats like discuses with Mud or reading borrowed books by the fire at night, while Mr Peaslake nodded off as he listened to the wireless and Mrs Peaslake knitted khaki socks and balaclavas.

But it was Georg who looked out his window one morning to see a mob of roos bounding through the winter dew, impossible animals with tails that beat the ground. It was Georg who laid in bed at night and tried to think of stories: stories
where Mutti arrived on the bus tomorrow, in her green coat and flowered dress.

It was Georg too who knew why this story never worked. The story wouldn’t happen in his mind because it could not come true. Not till the war was over.

The war was far away, but still the background to their lives.

8th Division AIF Headquarters
Malaya
5 July 1941

Dear Mum and Dad and Muddy Girl,

I’ve just got back to camp from leave. Three whole days in Singapore with soap that lathers. Had a good time with good mates but it was funny, driving back to camp in the back of the truck, all of us singing, and we passed into a part that was all people’s houses, the lights on so we could see into their windows. I think every one of us in that truck thought of our homes and families just then.

Anyway, enough of all that tripe. How are things at home? What price did you get for the last lot of steers? Sorry old Brindle passed away. He was a good horse.

Wish we were doing a real job of work here, instead of just guarding a patch of rubber and jungle.

Len is well and is writing to you too. He didn’t get leave. Sucks boo. Love to you all, and Auntie Thelma and Uncle Ron too,

Ken

PS Muddy Girl is NOT to use my new skinning knife. Tell her that I’ll know if she’s touched it and I’ll give her three times around the shed if she has.

The new crop of oranges ripened in the winter frost, turning soft and sweet. Frost grew white whiskers on the cattle droppings in the paddocks, and Mud brought in one of her brother’s well-darned old jumpers for Big Billy at school. Mrs Peaslake sent Georg to school with a Thermos of soup to share with Mud. They shared with Big Billy too.

Mr Menzies, the Prime Minister, called on women to take over men’s jobs, so more men could join the army. People were supposed to grow their own vegetables and keep hens for eggs too. But everyone around Bellagong did this anyway, except for Mud’s family, who shared the bounty next door and in return supplied them with butter, cream, milk and meat.

To Georg’s surprise he enjoyed gardening with Mrs Peaslake. Even weeding was all right when you could ask Mrs Peaslake questions, like why is the sky blue and are zebras striped all exactly the same. It was hard to find the answers to questions like that in the encyclopaedia, but mostly Mrs Peaslake knew where to find them.

Picking was best of all: pulling at the green tops of carrots, never knowing if you were going to haul up a whopper or a skinny ’un, all forked and twisted; filling buckets with peas and eating almost as many as he picked with a trick Mud taught him, pulling the pea pods through your teeth so the green peas popped out into your mouth.

He liked the hens, their clucking song, the eggs warm in his hand each morning, the chooks pecking around the scrap bucket. They liked old bread best and cheese rinds or lumps of sodden porridge. The dogs looked on, envious yet contemptuous, knowing that the best scraps were kept for them.

Winter stretched endlessly that year of the war, a high blue sky and gold sun that seemed to have hidden its warmth behind the blue. People were cold in Melbourne, said the newspaper, as there wasn’t enough firewood this year — with few men to cut it and not enough petrol to cart it into the city — and gas supplies ran short. But here at Bellagong an afternoon with the cross-cut saw gave wood for weeks. Mr Peaslake and Mr Mutton sliced through fallen trees while Georg and Mud threw the hunks of wood into the cart.

Clothes weren’t rationed like in England, but shops could only sell three-quarters each day of what they’d sold the same day the year before. Once they’d sold that they had to shut their doors. But, as Mrs Peaslake said, that amount was more nuisance than disaster, and she liked getting her shopping done early anyhow. She’d bought a big bolt of grey flannel before the war, and could ‘run him up’ new shorts or trousers when he wore through the knees or outgrew the ones he had.

The Germans had invaded Russia and were nearing Moscow now, said the newspapers and the man on the wireless who announced the news with an English accent even though he was Australian. Mrs Peaslake made sixty-three pots of lemon and melon marmalade, some for them and Mud’s family but most to sell at the Comforts for Soldiers stall outside the general store, where the lists of the latest casualties were pinned up in the window so that everyone could see them even if the store was closed.

Mr Curtin was elected as the new Australian Prime Minister, which made Mr Peaslake glad, though he didn’t exactly explain why, except to boom that ‘the old man was a good ’un’.

Dear George,

Mrs Martin says I have to write to you to improve my spelling but I want to write to you anyway. It is bonzer here. That is a new Australian word I have learned. We live on a street with lots of houses and no cows! I do not have to get up till eight o’clock to go to school, it is just down the road. We go to the beach every weekend. There is no barbed wire like at home. At school they called me out the front and said I was brave and everyone gave three cheers for England and sang ‘God Save the King’. I won three marbles off Trevor Wilkes.

Guess what? Harris lives in the next street. He is called Harry now.

I hope your family is good like mine is.

Your friend,
Jamie Mallory

Georg was glad Jamie was happy. He thought he was happy too, mostly — except for those whispers in the night.

Sometimes the pain got bigger, like when Mr Justin the vicar gave a sermon on how Hitler had blotted out the good in all the German people and made their children loathsome.

He woke up sweating that night, seeing the loving faces of the Peaslakes turn accusing, staring down at him, Mud spitting at him: loathsome German boy, they hissed. Did you think you could fool us forever? Loathsome. Loathsome.

It took him long minutes to make himself accept that he was safe, in bed; that no one accused him; that no one was even likely to guess, so far away from anyone who had ever known that he was German.

He was safe, with the dogs sleeping by the fire in a house where the inhabitants were so secure they never even locked the doors, even when they were out. ‘What if some poor soul needed to get out of the rain?’ said Mrs Peaslake comfortably. ‘They might get pneumonia without even a chance to make a cup of tea.’

Georg’s world had narrowed now: school and Mud and flying kites. It was only in the cold well of the night that whispers came to him of enemies and hatred far away.

He was safe here. They were all safe. A small safe town with hatred (mostly) far away.

And then it changed.

Chapter 27

Bellagong
2 December 1941

My darling son,

It was so good to get your last letter. I’m glad all the socks have arrived safely. I know you’ve only got two feet and can only wear two socks at once, but I am sure your friends will like the socks you don’t need.

All is good at home. Samson is getting fat — he doesn’t follow Dad out into the paddocks like he followed you, but sits here by the stove. Sometimes I think he plans to sit here till you get back, except for kite-flying of course. He never misses that. But Delilah follows George and Mud everywhere.

It is a great comfort to have George here. I was worried about Mud, when Len and Ken went overseas. She was getting too serious for a girl of her age, and there was no need for her to work so hard, not with your dad and old Mr Hillman to help your auntie and uncle. It looks like they might get a couple of land girls too.

Now George is here Mud plays like a normal girl again. Well, she is always a tomboy so she plays cricket and that terrible game ‘defence’ — I have to darn George’s shorts every time they play it at school — but you know what I mean. Your auntie is relieved and so am I.

There’s not much other news. There’s a bumper crop of peas this year and roses, but you don’t want to hear about my roses! I made thirty-four jars of loquat jam for the Red Cross stall. I didn’t put ‘loquat jam’ on the label, just ‘home-made jam’, so that people who haven’t eaten loquat jam before will buy it thinking it is plum jam and, really, it is just as good or better, and it is for a good cause.