The Year It All Ended (5 page)

Back in 1914 and 1915, Louis’ letters had arrived every few weeks. From on board the SS
Euripides
, from Egypt, the Dardanelles, England and later France. After he reached France, the stamp of the censor began to appear on the envelopes, and great sections of text were blacked out. As the war years dragged
on, his letters grew shorter, his messages briefer. Sometimes there would only be a Field Service postcard. One year, 1916, they didn’t hear from him for six awful months. Finally, Papa wrote to the Ministry of Defence, begging for information. When the letters began again, it was as if they were written by someone else, so removed were the stories he told. He didn’t ask after anyone at home any more. It was as if he couldn’t remember them, as if they had all become strangers to him. There was only the war. The war and the mud. The war and the men who fought it.

Every week during the war years, without fail, each of the Flynn sisters wrote to Louis. Then Pa would take all their letters and put them in a single envelope and send them off. They’d even sent one from all of them after Armistice Day. Tiney hated to think that Louis had never read those happy notes. She stopped watching for the postman. She couldn’t open her letter-writing folder for weeks. The pale blue stationery was painful to look upon and, of course, since the news, the ritual of writing to Louis had died.

A week before Christmas, on a hot, airless afternoon, Tiney sat in the inglenook of the parlour window, trying to write a poem. She looked out and saw Louis’ wing pointing skywards. Suddenly, grief pierced her heart so sharply she could hardly breathe. She got up and walked slowly to the hallstand and put on her gardening apron, as if she was pretending that it was the garden that called her and not the letterbox. She hadn’t ventured to collect the mail since Father Alison’s visit. Perhaps a deeper instinct called her. Because there
was
an envelope addressed to Tiney in the letterbox. A single letter postmarked from France. A letter in Louis’ firm, copperplate handwriting.

It made Tiney’s fingers burn to hold it. A fleeting hope that
perhaps there had been a terrible mistake flared inside her. Perhaps Louis was alive. Perhaps he’d only been missing in action, not killed. Her first instinct was to race inside with the letter before she’d even torn the envelope, to wave it in front of her sisters, to spark some hope in them too. But her rational mind arrested her urge to share the letter. It would be cruel to ignite such an impossible hope and then extinguish it. Instead she sat on the front step of Larksrest, beneath the tiny portico verandah, feeling the coolness of the stone beneath her. She took her secateurs from the pocket of her apron and used the tip to slice the letter open.

Inside were four sheets of fine paper.

Dear Titch,

You’ve written me so many letters and I so few to you – it’s time I set things straight. I’m wearing those socks you knitted. The green and blue ones, and thinking of you as I write.

 
This last twenty-four hours I’ve been at a post – a chateau very close behind the lines. There’s a moat around the place and, despite the fact you can hear bombs falling all day, there’s a swan on the moat. It’s white and beautiful and it glides around the chateau as if nothing in the world is troubling it.

 
Last night I slept, or rather lay down, in the chateau wine cellar. At 2.00 a.m. we were warned of gas and had to put on our masks. When that was over there was Coup de Main and a tremendous noise; torpedoes and shells and glass falling from already broken windows as the chateau shook and rocked. But in the brief moments of silence I snatched a few minutes sleep and dreamt of you and Nette and Minna and Thea. In my dream, you weren’t girls but beautiful swans.

 
Did you know that when I was a boy, I used to think of my sisters as swan maidens? I was always afraid that one day someone would come and steal your feathery gowns and take you all away from Larksrest. You must be so grown-up now, little Titch. Do you still wear your hair long? You must never cut it. When I come home, I want to see those long blonde plaits flying as you pedal your bicycle through the park. Save me a little bit of the girl version of you. Don’t grow up without me.

 
After the sleepless night in the wine cellar there is not much left of the ruined chateau – no doors or windows and not much roof. Rain is pouring in, half drowning the poor blokes on the first floor. Luckily, I am writing this in what must have been the chateau’s library, a fancy room with the ceiling mostly complete, though bits of plaster are falling from above the long windows. It is sad to see these nice houses and grounds destroyed – presumably they were nice once. Now it’s all desolation and ruin.

 
But you would love France, Tiney. Not this France – the one of mud and suffering – but the one that will grow green again once peace is made. One day we will come here together, you and I and all the family. When there are no more bombs we’ll walk through green fields and picnic beneath a laurel tree. At least, that’s what I imagine us doing, when I’m lying watching the rain drip through the broken ceiling.

 
I won’t be here in the chateau much longer – perhaps until Monday. And then I’ll be closer to the front again where there are no swans, nor even the ruins of buildings, but I will be thinking of you.

With love from your brother,
Louis

Tiney folded the letter carefully and laid it in her lap. She shut her eyes and pictured Louis sitting in the ruined chateau with the lonely swan, thinking of his sisters. The letter was dated two days before his death; it felt as if it had arrived from the other side, from a vale of shadows. She thought of Louis lying beneath the cold winter ground, on the other side of the Earth, far from everyone who loved him, and an instinct to find him, to find his grave, to be with him and see the place where he died swelled inside her so powerfully that she covered her mouth with her hands to stop a cry of longing escaping.

She looked up to see Nette walking through the front gate in her Cheer-Up uniform. A corner of her crumpled wimple poked out of her handbag like a broken bird’s wing. Her face was so melancholy that Tiney couldn’t bear to add to her unhappiness. She shoved the letter into the pocket of her gardening apron and jumped up to hug Nette.

Nette smiled and hugged her back.

‘What was that for?’ she asked.

‘It was just for you,’ said Tiney.

Tiney sat on the end of Nette’s bed and watched her take off her uniform. She stripped down to her slip, her pale skin shiny with sweat.

‘I wish I’d had a shift today,’ said Tiney.

‘No, you don’t,’ said Nette. ‘It was unbearably hot in the kitchens. What did you do this afternoon?’

Tiney fingered the letter in her pocket. She wanted to share it, but she didn’t want any of her sisters to be jealous that she should be the one to receive Louis’ last letter. Some days, he was all they talked of, others they could hardly bear to speak his name.

‘I wrote a very ordinary sonnet. I wish I could sell my poems.
I don’t suppose writing poetry is a way to get rich. I wish I had a job and could earn some money.’

Nette turned to look at her and smiled. ‘Why so restless?’

‘Because,’ said Tiney, only realising it as she said the words, ‘I have a plan. A plan for all of us. I just need enough money to make it come true. I want us to go to France – the whole family. To see the things Louis saw, to stand together by his grave and say a prayer for him, to sit beneath a laurel tree and remember him. Oh Nette, wouldn’t it be wonderful?’

Nette’s eyes brimmed with tears. ‘Tiney,’ she said, ‘What an impossible dream.’

‘The Alstons are going.’

‘The Alstons are rich. Join one of the Memorial Committees. That’s all we can do.’

‘It’s not the same. Perhaps I could be a teacher? Then I’d save up, every penny I earn.’

‘I thought you were going to be a penniless poet?’

‘I could be a poet and a teacher as well.’

‘First you’d have to sit the examinations for Teachers College. And even if you did get a job, you’d never be able to save enough for a single fare on a teacher’s wage, let alone the fares for our whole family. Don’t be ridiculous.’

Tiney caught her breath. Rage flared in her like a flame, but somehow she knew it wasn’t anger but grief, that searing, burning pain that had tormented everyone at Larksrest since the news of losing Louis. She jumped down from the bed and ran from the room.

In the back garden, she scraped up a scattering of wilted jacaranda blooms and flung them into the parched flowerbeds. Even the roses looked bedraggled, their fallen petals rotting
among the weeds. No one had touched the garden since the news.

Tiney knelt down beside a white rosebush and began pulling out dandelions. She worked alone, sweat dripping down her neck. Her hands grew raw but she tore at goose grass and clumps of oxalis until the sun moved low onto the horizon. All the while, her mind churned. No matter what it took, somehow, some way she was going to get her family to Louis’ graveside.

Inheritance

On Christmas Eve, an uneasy silence settled on Larksrest. Papa and Mama had gone to the station to collect Cousin Paul, and Tiney wondered if it was because of Paul that no one spoke all afternoon. In 1914, Paul had been sent to Torrens Island, along with four hundred other German South Australians, and then to Holdsworthy in NSW where he and thousands of other detainees had spent the war years.

The quiet in the house made Tiney’s ears ring. In other years, she’d stood with her sisters around the piano and sung Christmas carols. Minna would be at the keyboard, Nette singing loudest, Thea humming along and laughing at them. Then Nette would bring out a plate of fried sugar buns or gingerbread fresh-baked that afternoon, no matter how hot the day. There had been four Christmases celebrated in Larksrest without Louis, but Christmas 1918 would be the first without hope of him returning, and their cousin Paul was a poor replacement.

Tiney pulled open her bedside drawer and stared down at the present she’d bought for Louis in late November, before the news had arrived. She fingered the blue silk bow and thought of Louis lying lonely in his grave on the other side of the world with
no memento from her, or from any of his sisters. A fat tear rolled down her cheek and landed on the red wrapping paper.

Minna and Nette lay stretched out on the cool linoleum floor in the side hallway, escaping the heat of the afternoon. Tiney sat down in the doorway of her bedroom, resting her chin on her knees, and said, ‘I wish Paul would hurry up and get here.’

‘I wish he wasn’t coming at all,’ said Nette. ‘He should have been sent straight to Nuriootpa.’

‘It’s only for the afternoon,’ said Minna, fanning her skirt to make a breeze.

‘They shouldn’t have let him out of the internment camp. Hardly anyone else has been released. It’s an armistice, not a peace. They can’t go letting them all out as if the war had never happened.’

‘Nette, don’t be awful. Paul is an Australian, not a German. And he’s our cousin,’ said Minna.

‘He may have been born here, but Paul has always been a snob about
Kultur
and
Alldeutschtum
. You can see why they arrested him. He was so loud about it, so stupid to be trumpeting about German rights when there was a war on. Onkel Ludwig must have moved heaven and earth to get him released early.’

‘They never should have locked him up in the first place,’ said Minna. ‘He was only seventeen. Like Tiney. He wasn’t old enough to go to war. It would have been as bad as Tommy Destry signing up.’

Nette bit her lip and glowered at Minna.

‘You used to like Paul,’ said Tiney.

‘I had to pretend to like him,’ said Nette. ‘But I always thought he was a hothead. What was he thinking, writing all
those silly letters to the papers about British war crimes when the Germans had committed so many atrocities? No wonder they arrested him. Though I suppose it didn’t help his case having a brother in the German army.’

Tiney felt as though the hall had suddenly grown too hot, the air stifling. She stood up, stepped over her sisters, and went in search of Thea.

She found her in the garden, painting in the shade of the jacaranda tree.

‘It doesn’t feel like Christmas at all,’ said Tiney, frowning at the soft watercolour painting to which Thea was adding the final touches, as if studying it would hold back her grief. ‘I can’t believe there will ever be another Christmas again. Not a real one.’

Thea rinsed her sable brush and wiped the bristles clean on a painting rag. ‘We mustn’t give way to despair,’ she said. ‘We must hope that it will feel like Christmas. If we lose hope, then we have lost everything good, every last bit of Louis.’

Thea’s face had grown paler and her cheekbones sharper. Blue smudges lay like shadows beneath her eyes and there was nothing bright or hopeful in her face, despite her words.

’Well, then,’ said Tiney, ‘I hope you’ll win a prize with that painting. You should enter it in a competition. If I was the judge, I’d give it a medal. Are you going to hang it in the next exhibition at the Society of Artists? Someone is sure to buy it.’