Pennies For Hitler (25 page)

We miss you and are proud of you, always.

Your loving mother,
Mum

Mud and Georg had been picking cherries after school that Monday out in the orchard, bucket after bucketful, trying to get them in before the storm clouds on the horizon brought the rain. They had to push them through the cherry pitter out in the shed because the cherries spat red juice and Mrs Peaslake didn’t want her kitchen spattered.

There were so many pitted cherries that Georg and Mud could scoop up handfuls to eat, staining their mouths and their clothes. They were the old clothes they wore for doing jobs around the farm, so a few more stains didn’t matter.

The rain began to pelt, each drop heavy on the shed’s tin roof. It was getting dark when they raced back to the kitchen with the cherries for Mrs Peaslake to make into jam and bottle. She turned the wireless on and then began to fill the big jam kettle with water and sugar and fruit.

‘…
And we now repeat, Japan has declared war on the United States.
’ Georg listened stunned as the almost-English wireless voice told how on early Sunday morning Japanese planes had destroyed the United States ships at Hawaii, without warning, without even declaring war on the United States first.

Japanese planes had attacked Malaya, Guam, Singapore, Ocean Island, Noumea …

He looked across at Mud, her lips still stained with cherry juice, at Mrs Peaslake, her hands still, at the stunned face of Mr Peaslake.

What did it mean for all of them?

The Allies had won the last war when the United States joined in — but now most of the United States ships had been destroyed.

Noumea was near Australia, wasn’t it? He tried to remember the pink splodges on the map.

The announcer’s voice vanished.

Mr Curtin’s dry tones filled the kitchen instead: ‘
This is our darkest hour, for the nation itself is imperilled.
’

The kitchen was silent, except for the Prime Minister’s voice on the wireless. Even the dogs lay still before the stove. Georg sat back in his chair.

‘
… We shall hold this country and keep it as a citadel for the British-speaking race and as a place where civilisation will persist
.’

Georg looked at the shock on the Peaslakes’ faces, at their dawning anger too. Mud clenched and unclenched her fists. The Japanese had bombed Malaya, where her brothers were. England and its empire were already battered by the German and Italian forces. Now England — all Australia and the empire too — were at war with Japan as well.

‘The treacherous Japanese swine,’ boomed Mr Peaslake. ‘Attacking without warning. Well, we’ll show them what’s what. Won’t we, Mother?’

Mrs Peaslake looked down at her knitting. She didn’t answer.

The enemy was coming here.

Chapter 28

Malaya
14 December 1941

Dear Family,

I am writing this in the darkness of my tent. The blackout is the blackest ever and everything is quiet except when a plane roars overhead. After the bombing of Singapore on Monday everyone stops and listens when we hear a plane.

We are all waiting but we don’t know yet what we are waiting for. We get four hours off in thirty-six. I should be trying to sleep now but am too keyed up to even lie down; and anyway, the mosquitoes are droning loud as aircraft and will have at me as soon as I shut my eyes. Don’t worry, Mum, am drinking my quinine like a good boy so no malaria here.

Bad day today. Could hear gunfire across the sea. Thousands of refugees, Chinese, Tamils, with everything they own on bicycles, in trucks, on foot.

Suddenly I think maybe I do need that sleep. Just to say, don’t worry. Len and I are still in the land of the living. We have clean clothes, dinner in our tummies, and a tent to sleep in. But when this war is over neither of us ever want to see another swamp or rubber plantation in our lives.

Love to all,
Ken

Georg looked at himself in the mirror. George looked back at him.

George wore too-big shorts, discarded by one of Mud’s brothers. His skin was brown; his hair was streaked gold by the sun. His feet were tough, so tough that even bindi-eyes didn’t stick into them these days. His knees were scabbed from playing ‘defence’ in the rutted playground — he’d held the ball yesterday so Mud had dragged him and it over to the fence that was their ‘goalpost’.

He didn’t look like Georg now, but he wasn’t George either.

He headed to the kitchen and took the writing paper out of the dresser drawer, and a bottle of ink, blotting paper and a pen.

Bellagong
15 December 1941

Dear Alan,

Thank you for saying I can call you Alan, not Lieutenant Peaslake. I hope that you are well. Everything is good here but everyone is angry at the Japanese treachery. We are not going to let them beat us.

The hens are moulting so we don’t have so many eggs. Mud and I collected the feathers. Your mum baked the feathers in the oven to kill the mites and has made a new patchwork quilt with them. They are going to raffle it for the Red Cross. Mud and I have made patches too from two of Mud’s old dresses, so it will have to be a quilt for a girl as it has flowers on it.

We flew kites yesterday. I think the sea eagle laughs at us. We are stuck on the ground and can only lift sticks and paper into the sky. But Mud says people can put planes into the sky so we are better than eagles.

I hope it is not too hot and you do not get sand in your sausages. We had a picnic down on the beach and I ate sandwiches. (That is a joke.)

I hope it is a good Christmas where you are. I will wish the dogs Merry Christmas for you and make sure they get a big bone each for Christmas dinner.

Yours very sincerely,
Your foster brother,
George

He was folding the letter into its envelope when Mrs Peaslake hurried in through the laundry. Her face looked strange.

‘George, can you help?’

He nodded. ‘What do you want me to do?’

‘Mud’s up in the pear tree.’

‘What’s wrong?’ he asked slowly.

‘It’s … it’s her dad. He enlisted this morning.’ Mrs Peaslake’s face looked tight as though she wasn’t letting any emotion show; as though, perhaps, she wasn’t yet even sure what she did feel. Mr Mutton is her brother, thought Georg, as well as Mud’s dad. ‘Didn’t even tell the family: just took the early train to Wollongong and announced it to everyone at lunch.’

‘But farmers aren’t allowed to fight.’ Many men who wanted to join up weren’t allowed to if they were in ‘reserved occupations’ — ones that were needed to keep the country going and fed during the war.

‘He convinced the board that the place will be all right without him. He’s arranged for a couple of land girls to help too.’ Mrs Peaslake looked helpless. ‘I’ve called for her to come down. But she pretends she doesn’t hear me.’

‘I’ll go out to her.’

Mrs Peaslake looked like she might cry. ‘Thank you, George. Father’s off at the Bushfire Brigade meeting or I’d ask him.’

Georg doubted Mr Peaslake could get Mud to come down if she didn’t want to. Neither could he.

But he could go up to her.

Samson looked up from the rug by the wood stove as Georg went out. The room felt breathless in the heat, despite the open door and windows. Delilah bounced around his heels, leading the way self-importantly to the pear tree.

Georg stared up into the branches. ‘Mud?’

No answer. She sat with her back to the trunk, her arms around her knees, huddled like a koala like she’d been when she thought they wouldn’t sing carols. But this was worse. Georg pushed his toes against the trunk and grabbed a branch, then heaved himself up beside her, but she kept her face resolutely turned away.

Two brothers facing the enemy, he thought, and one cousin who must be like a brother. And now her father was off to war too.

‘It’s all right to cry, you know,’ he said at last.

‘I’m not crying! I never cry!’

‘I do,’ he said.

She stared at him. ‘Boys don’t cry.’

‘Maybe we pretend we don’t, but we do. I cried for …’ He hesitated again to use anything other than his parents’ real names. But he had no choice. ‘When Daddy died. I cry for Mummy.’

‘It … it’s worse for you too, isn’t it?’ said Mud slowly.

If only he could tell her how bad it really was, not knowing if Mutti was safe or hunted or in a camp; if Papa had really died there on the University lawn. ‘I don’t think it matters which is worse. Maybe it just gets so that it can’t hurt any more … no matter how bad it is or how much worse it gets. But you’ve got to keep going.’

‘Of course I’ll keep going,’ she flared. ‘I can use a cross-cut saw as well as Dad and repair the fences.’

‘I’ll help. But Mud, I meant … your auntie is worried about you. Your mum will be worried too.’

‘Why worry about me?’

‘Because you’re hurting,’ said Georg simply.

Mud made a small sad noise. She knuckled tears from her eyes angrily, glanced at him again, then let them fall.

‘Do you want to borrow my hanky?’

‘No! Yes,’ said Mud.

He handed it over, glad that it was clean and neatly ironed by Mrs Peaslake. Funny, he thought vaguely, to let children run about with dirty feet but make sure their hankies were snow white and ironed crisp.

‘Come down and have some lunch.’

Mud scrubbed at her eyes with the hanky, then blew her nose. ‘I’m not hungry.’

‘I know. But it’ll make you feel better. And your mum and Auntie Thelma.’

‘I suppose it’s not fair to make them worry about me as well as about Dad and the boys,’ said Mud slowly.

Georg nodded. Convincing Mud that what her parents and auntie and uncle needed most was not to have to worry about her too made him feel better about leaving Mutti and Papa. A bit, at any rate.

‘All right,’ said Mud at last. She met his eyes. ‘It’s just … it’s so big. The war, I mean. It just gets bigger and bigger.’

And makes us feel smaller and smaller, thought Georg.

‘I’m going to load the hay bales this afternoon. All by myself. That’ll show Mum and Dad that they don’t have to worry, even if the land girls don’t know what they’re doing at first. City girls never know anything.’

Georg thought of the heavy bales of hay, of Mud’s wiry arms tugging at the strings to get the heavy bales into the cart, then off into the shed.

‘I’ll come with you. We can lift them together.’

She didn’t say anything. He could see when she realised how much easier it would be for two to lift the bales than one. He doubted even Mud’s determination would be enough to bring in a paddock of lucerne hay by herself. But two of them could manage it.

‘Thanks,’ she said. Mud will never be pretty, he thought, not the Elizabeth kind of pretty, but she’s sort of beautiful, when she smiles like that. When Mud thanked you she meant it from her heart.

‘Friends help each other,’ he said. He slid down the trunk, landing on his tough bare feet, and waited for her to join him.

Chapter 29

Bellagong
16 December 1941

My dear Alan,

I hope you don’t worry at getting a letter written by your dad instead of Mum. We are all well, so don’t worry, but it’s easier for her if I write to you about all this, not her.

Your Uncle Don came home yesterday and told his family he had found a way to not get drafted into the army. Your aunt asked how and he said, ‘I’ve joined the air force.’ We are all proud of him, as you can imagine, but he is your mum’s only brother, her ‘little brother’ too, and so of course she worries. More than five hundred blokes joined up just that same day. I only wish I were young enough to join up too. We’ll let the Nips know that we have only just begun to fight.

I hope this reaches you as it leaves us. We are all well, and optimistic, despite the news. The sons of the empire will not be defeated, not by the Jerries nor by the Nips either.

Your cousins are all well and fighting fit if we are to believe their letters, and Johnnie Cooper’s family had a letter from him last week too.

We old blokes left at home have turned the Bushfire Brigade into the Home Guard. I am the air-raid warden, but as it only takes ten minutes to check the whole of Bellagong I can pop out after dinner and be back in time for cocoa. Your mum and CWA are doing wonders with the camouflage nets. They can make a net in eight hours now, and did two last week alone, as well as the Red Cross work and the care packages. Mum even knits when she helps move the cattle. She was going to have a go at spinning wool but there’s been an appeal for ‘sheepskins for soldiers’ so I tan the hides and send the fleeces there instead.

That’s all the news from us. I know Mum will be writing to you next post, and probably young George too. Don’t worry if you can’t find time to put pen to paper, lad. Just know that you are in our thoughts every day.

Your loving father,
Dad

It was a defiant Christmas this year. The Christmas pudding, the cauliflower cheese, the baked pumpkin, even the decorations hanging on the tree declared: we shall not be beaten. We will keep our traditions and our country free.

There were four empty chairs at the dining table now.

On Christmas Day the Japanese took Hong Kong.

Two days later Mr Curtin was on the wireless again, his words thundered in the newspapers too. England wanted Australia’s soldiers and planes to defend England from the Germans, and to defend India from the Japanese.