The Year It All Ended (4 page)

A fresh batch of donated food had arrived from the country and Mrs Yemm was busy sorting what should be used immediately and what could be stored. Tiney and several other girls were sent down to the storeroom beneath the Hut, where dried fruit from Renmark, pickles, bottles of tomato sauce and tins of produce lined the shelves while dozens of legs of ham hung from twine looped across the ceiling. Tiney climbed a stepladder and cut down two hams to be served with lunch, lowering them carefully to the girl waiting below.

At 11.45 Tiney was given permission to join a group of Cheer-Ups who were heading to the steps of Parliament to see Governor Sir Henry Galway formally announce the peace. Nette wasn’t in the group, but Tiney found Ida and they walked through the park, arms linked. Soldiers swarmed around them, hooting and calling out, jostling each other.

When they reached North Terrace, Ida took Tiney’s hand and they broke away from the other girls, weaving their way through the crowd to find a place near where the speeches would be made. Beside a table positioned on the first marble landing on the steps outside Parliament stood the Governor, his wife, the Premier, the Mayor and members of the French Mission. It was hot and tightly packed near the steps and when a woman fainted
from heat exhaustion the crush of people held her upright until she could be carried away.

Tiney wanted to cover her ears, the noise of bands, whistles, drums and shouts was so overwhelming. Very faintly, she could make out the sound of cannons firing in the distance, a signal that the announcements were about to begin.

The Governor began his speech and the crowd cheered at the end of nearly every statement. When he announced that at five o’clock the day before the Germans had signed the armistice, the shouts and cries were deafening.

Ida began to weep, her face in her hands. Tiney had never seen her cry, not even when Ida had told them of Charlie’s death. Gently, she hooked her arm around Ida’s waist and guided her away from the heat and noise.

As they wove through the crowd, Tiney heard snatches of conversation. The school examinations were cancelled. Twelve thousand school children were to march from Adelaide Oval to the City Baths. A young woman talked shrilly of the Victory Balls that would crowd the year’s social calendar. For four years, most conversations in Tiney’s home had revolved around the events of the past months. When they received news of Louis’ movements, it was always months old. It was impossibly strange to think that every conversation from now on would be about the future.

By the time they returned to the Cheer-Up Hut, Ida had recovered. Another shift of workers was arriving and Ida chatted to them excitedly, as if she had been cheering rather than weeping a moment ago. Tiney went in search of Nette. She looked for her in the servery. She checked in the big kitchen where meat was being carved and in the small kitchen where women were
peeling and cooking vegetables, but Nette was nowhere in sight. Finally, Tiney climbed down the stairs to the underground cellar.

It was cool and dark in the cellar. Huge cuts of meat hung from the rafters. Wire baskets full of smaller cuts and hundreds of sausages lined the shelves. Beside the marble bench on which slabs of butter rested, Nette stood hunched beside a crate of milk bottles.

‘What are you doing down here?’ asked Tiney. ‘I’ve been searching for you everywhere.’

‘I needed to be somewhere peaceful for a moment,’ said Nette, straightening her wimple.

‘What’s wrong?’

Nette hesitated before she spoke. ‘Do you think Vera will ever forgive me?’ Her expression was more bewildered than questioning. There were two faint frown lines on her forehead.

Tiney took her sister’s hand and squeezed it tightly. ‘Of course she will,’ said Tiney, though it almost felt like a lie. ‘But I don’t know if anyone is ever the same once they’ve lost someone they loved.’

‘I’ve longed for peace as much as anyone,’ said Nette, as if she were speaking to the air, rather than to Tiney. ‘I should be allowed to be happy. We should all be happy now.’

Tiney felt a flicker of guilt. The Flynns were among the lucky ones. Louis was coming back to them.

Although their shift was nearly over, Nette and Tiney didn’t go home. They shared a sandwich and then pitched in with the four o’clock shift to help decorate the hall for the evening’s celebrations. Friends of the Cheer-Ups kept arriving with armfuls of flowers. Even Thea came by to help Ida and her team fold streamers and crepe paper to make bunting for the stage.
Lastly, Minna arrived amid a crowd of soldiers returning from the street celebrations and joined in making red, white and blue fans to trim the dais from which the patron of the Cheer-Ups, Colonel Price Weir, would make a speech. Tiney stood watching her sisters at work.
This is what peace will look like
, she thought,
everyone working together for a single purpose
.

That night, to hundreds of soldiers, volunteers, and their families, Colonel Price Weir made a toast, ‘To the day after and to the boys still on the battlefields.’

The Flynn sisters raised their glasses high in the air. Every thought, every vision in Tiney’s head was of Louis and of the day, so soon, when he would walk through the front door of Larksrest again.

News from the Front

Every window in Larksrest was thrown open to the December sunshine. Minna and Nette dragged all the rugs outside and beat the dust out of them. Floors were mopped and then waxed, furniture polished and skirting boards dusted and scrubbed until it was as if the house had shed an old skin. Mama rearranged every ornament in the sitting room and had one of Thea’s paintings framed to hang in pride of place above the mantelpiece.

‘It could be months before he’s home,’ said Papa, a little annoyed by the family frenzy of cleaning. ‘He may have been demobilised but I don’t believe he’d be in London yet. I’ve read there are boys in isolated trenches that don’t even know the war is over, and German snipers still at work picking them off because they don’t believe the peace is final. Louis may stay on to help. There’s a lot of reconstruction to do out there and they may want his talents.’

It was three weeks since the war had ended, but they’d had no news of his movements. Papa pored over the papers every day, looking for information about Louis’ battalion. Troopships carrying thousands of men were leaving Europe. The government had promised that the last Australian troops would
sail from England by the end of July 1919. Some reports said the first to sign up would be the first to return, and Tiney’s heart swelled with hope because Louis had been among the first to sign up back in August 1914.

Tiney couldn’t bear the thought that they might have to wait until July for Louis. Every morning, first thing, she’d slip into his room and sit on his bed. Sometimes she would read a poem from one of his poetry books. Sometimes she took her photo of him, as if she could magically conjure him by sitting in his room and gazing at his image. And sometimes she spoke to the picture, telling him that she longed for his return, and that Christmas was only three weeks away so he simply had to be there to celebrate with his family, no matter how much he was needed in France.

Then, on a hot December morning, everything changed. Mama was coming in through the back door with a basket of shopping, eggs and plums piled high. The front door rang. It was Thea who answered it and called for Papa. Then Tiney heard Thea cry out and thought,
How strange her voice sounds. Not like Thea at all.
Papa folded his newspaper and disappeared down the hall. He came back a different person. Tiney barely recognised him as he stepped into the kitchen from the cool, dark hallway.

‘Who was it?’ asked Mama.

‘It was Father Alison,’ said Papa.

‘But why didn’t you ask him in?’

Papa didn’t reply, nor Thea, who was standing behind him, staring at the kitchen linoleum. And then Tiney knew. She knew before Papa even spoke. And so did Mama. Because Father Alison had never come to call before. Because the Flynns
were not members of his church, or of any church in Medindie. Because there was only one reason why Father Alison had come to their door. In Adelaide, it was always the local minister who was the bearer of bad tidings.

‘Louis?’ said Mama.

‘We’ve lost him,’ said Papa, his voice breaking as the words left his mouth.

For a split second after her father spoke, Tiney felt as though she was out of her body, above the room, watching the scene unfold. Mama crumpling, folding over and crying out. The basket falling from her hands, the eggs breaking as they hit the freshly waxed floor, the plums tumbling onto the linoleum, the blood-coloured juice staining the pale yellow squares, Mama on her knees calling out,
‘Mein Sohn, mein einziger Sohn, mein Liebling, mein liebster Sohn ist verschwunden
.’

Nette coming through the back door, frowning with disapproval at their mother speaking German, not listening, not realising. Opening her mouth to admonish and then seeing Papa and Thea and Tiney, their faces frozen. Nette letting out a low groan and collapsing onto a chair, calling out, ‘Louis, not Louis!’ Minna following behind her and screaming, screaming as she stood in the doorway, then covering her mouth to stifle her screams before bursting into tears.

It was Tiney who moved first, who took Papa by his arm and led him to a chair, who knelt on the floor and put her arms around Mama and helped her gently to her feet. As if the spell was broken, Minna began gathering the bruised plums and putting them back in the basket, while Nette fetched a cloth and a pan to clean up the mess of broken eggs.

Then everyone was still, sitting around the old table, numb with shock. Papa’s face was drawn, his mouth strangely loose, his head in his hands. Mama was trembling, ripples of agony shuddering through her.

Thea, ashen but calm, was the first to speak. She put her arms around their mother and held her firmly, as if to stop Mama from crumbling into small pieces. ‘Father Alison gave Papa a telegram from the War Office. Louis died of wounds in a field hospital at the front in September.’

‘He’s been dead for
three months
?’ said Nette.

Papa pulled a crumpled scrap of pink paper out of his pocket and laid it on the table. Nette seized it, smoothed out the paper and stared at it disbelievingly. ‘Father Alison should have come in and comforted us,’ she said, her voice small.

‘What comfort can a stranger bring?’ said Papa. ‘I didn’t want him in my house. There’s nothing he could say that would comfort us.’

Tiney looked at her father. His blue eyes were glazed and his beard seemed more peppered with silver than she remembered. He looked like an old man, not her Papa, as if the words Father Alison had spoken on their doorstep had robbed Augustus Flynn not only of the dream of his son’s return but future years of his life.

‘Ich will ins Bett gehen
,’ said Mama.

‘Don’t, Mama. Speak English, please,’ said Nette.

‘What does it matter?’ said Minna. Bitter, bitter was her tone, like sour limes. ‘The war is over and even if it wasn’t, there’s no one to hear us. No one can shame Mama now. Not now we’ve lost Louis . . .’

Then the numbness descended again, like a shroud over the room. Thea helped Mama to her bed and Minna made a pot of strong tea, but when Tiney drank a cup it tasted salty, as if her tears and the tears of her sisters had tainted the brew.

Winged letters

Before he went away, Louis had carved a wooden wing and attached it to the letterbox. Every time even a card was delivered to Larkrest, the wing flew skywards. ‘So you’ll know that my letters are winging their way to you,’ he’d said as he fixed it in place the day before he left Adelaide.

Before the news of Louis’ death arrived, Tiney would sit at the window and stare at the letterbox for hours, even after the postman had been and gone, sailing straight past Larksrest on his bicycle. She liked imagining that a letter for the Flynns had been posted into someone else’s letterbox by mistake and that any moment the postman would come cycling back, because there
had
to be a letter from Louis. And when the carved wing did fly skywards, Tiney would be down the path like a rabbit, the first to check the post. But since the news, no one watched the winged letterbox.