Pennies For Hitler (17 page)

Georg nodded gratefully. He didn’t want to talk. Talking might mean explaining where he’d come from or where Aunt Miriam was now or what was his mother’s fictitious illness.

The train chuffed above its rails, stopping at each station. A soldier got on, shoving his big khaki kit bag onto the shelf above the seat. He grinned at Mr Peaslake, as though he wanted to talk, even to an old man he didn’t know. ‘Goin’ home on leave. This your son?’

‘Eh, what was that?’ boomed Mr Peaslake.

‘Foster son,’ said Mrs Peaslake quietly.

It sounded strange. He was a son already, and not the Peaslakes’.

The soldier winked at Georg. ‘Look at this, laddie.’

He crouched down on the floor of the carriage, rummaged in his pocket and drew out a handful of pennies, big and brown like the pennies back in London. His hands moved like magic. Suddenly all the pennies stood up on their edges, side by side, despite the jolting of the train.

The soldier grinned. ‘Come on, laddie, knock ’em down.’

Georg bent and touched the nearest penny. Suddenly they all fell into a long shining coppery snake on the floor.

The soldier sat up. ‘Me younger brother loves that trick. No matter how many times I set them up he always wants to knock ’em down.’

Georg tried another polite smile. He thought of Harris on the ship. Harris would have liked the fall of pennies. He’d have liked the clicking false teeth too.

He wondered where Harris was now.

The soldier got off at a station with a long flower garden and pots even on the platform. As the train slid away Georg saw a family run towards him, steps and stairs of children, a cluster of grown-ups, mother and father and aunts and uncles maybe …

… and then they were gone.

The train kept clacking, but the silence grew, despite that noise. Georg glanced at the Peaslakes. Mrs Peaslake was casting off her sock now. At least she had something to do.

He looked out the window again, though it was still just more of the straggly green trees.

Suddenly a voice thundered beside him.

‘
There was a wild colonial boy,

Jack Doolan was his name,
’ roared Mr Peaslake. His face was expressionless, his hands at his side, his voice echoing in the emptiness of the carriage.

‘
Of poor but honest parents,

He was born in Castlemaine.

He was his father’s only hope,

His mother’s pride and joy,

And dearly did his parents love

The wild colonial boy.
’

‘Don’t mind Father,’ whispered Mrs Peaslake. ‘He does like his poetry. He wouldn’t do it if there was anyone else in the carriage. He likes to recite to the beat of the train.’
And he’s trying to entertain you too, but doesn’t know how
. The words could almost have been spoken. Georg and Mrs Peaslake looked at each other with understanding.

‘I … I don’t mind,’ said Georg.

And he didn’t. The poem’s words were about someone else, but somehow they seemed to be about him too, about Mutti and Papa and things that were lost and might never be found again.

‘
Come away me hearties,

We’ll roam the mountains high,

Together we will plunder,

And together we will die.

We’ll scour along valleys,

And gallop o’er the plains,

And scorn to live in slavery,

Bound down by iron chains,
’

recited Mr Peaslake, a gleam of triumph now as he watched the interest on Georg’s face.

That’s Aunt Miriam, thought Georg. And the air-raid warden and … and Jamie and the Joes and even Harris. That’s why they fight this war. They scorn to live in slavery, bound down with iron chains.

‘
At the age of sixteen years

He left his native home …
’

That’s me, thought Georg. I was only ten. Twelve when I left Aunt Miriam. How could a poem be so different from you, but make you feel the right things too? Was this what Papa felt about his Schiller and Goethe?

‘
And through Australia’s sunny climes

A bushranger did roam.

He robbed those wealthy squatters,

Their stock he did destroy,

And a terror to Australia

Was the wild colonial boy.
’

Georg stared. This poem was about a THIEF!

‘
In sixty-one this daring youth

Commenced his wild career,

With a heart that knew no danger,

No foeman did he fear.

He stuck up the Beechworth mail coach,

And robbed Judge MacEvoy,

Who trembled and gave up his gold

To the wild colonial boy.

‘
He bade the judge “Good morning”,

And told him to beware,

That he’d never rob a hearty chap

That acted on the square,

But never to rob a mother,

Of her son and only joy,

Or else he may turn outlaw,

Like the wild colonial boy.

‘
One day as he was riding

The mountain-side along,

A-listening to the little birds,

Their pleasant laughing song,

Three mounted troopers rode along

Kelly, Davis, and Fitzroy —

They thought that they would capture him,

The wild colonial boy.

‘
“Surrender now, Jack Doolan,

You see there’s three to one.

Surrender now, Jack Doolan,

You daring highwayman.”

Jack drew a pistol from his belt,

And fired the wicked toy.

“I’ll fight, but not surrender,”

Said the wild colonial boy.

‘
Now he fired at Trooper Kelly

And brought him to the ground,

And in return from Davis

He received a mortal wound.

All shattered through the jaw he lay

Still firing at Fitzroy,

And that’s the way they captured him —

The wild colonial boy.
’

The carriage was silent again, except for the clack of the rails.

‘Well, what did you think of that, lad?’ demanded Mr Peaslake loudly.

Georg tried to think what to say. Who were these people who made a poem that glorified a thief? But this thief had been brave; and had only robbed bad people. At last he said: ‘I … I liked it.’

‘Good, isn’t it? Dinky-di too. Australian,’ Mr Peaslake added when he saw Georg didn’t understand. ‘One of Australia’s earliest poems.’

‘I reckon Father knows every poem in Australia,’ said Mrs Peaslake, casting on the stitches for another sock. ‘Recites them even in the bath. He’d tell them at dinnertime too if I didn’t stop him.’

‘You like poetry?’ Mr Peaslake looked at Georg eagerly.

‘Yes,’ said Georg. It was the right thing to say. Mr Peaslake’s face relaxed into pleasure. That poem hadn’t been the kind of poetry Papa had liked — the kind you had to think about or that made you shiver inside, not the story kind like this. But Georg liked it. Even — he thrust away a whisper of disloyalty — even more than Papa’s kind. ‘My father used to tell me poems. Every night before I went to sleep and other times too.’

‘Your dad’s dead, isn’t he?’ said Mrs Peaslake sympathetically. ‘And your poor mum is sick too?’

Was that what Aunt Miriam had told the officials? He nodded, even though he wanted to yell ‘No!’ He hoped they wouldn’t ask how his father was supposed to have died or when, or what was supposed to be wrong with Mutti.

‘I’m sorry, lad. Well, I’ll tell you a poem every night too. How about that?’

‘Now you’ve started it,’ said Mrs Peaslake resignedly.

‘No, I really do like poetry,’ said Georg.

‘What did you say?’ Mr Peaslake held his hand up to his ear.

‘I do like poems!’ yelled Georg.

‘Tell me one of your dad’s then,’ said Mr Peaslake. He sat back, as though waiting for a treat.

Georg stared at him. He knew lots of poems. But they were all in German. He had never bothered to learn an English poem, not by heart, although he’d read some.

‘Let the boy be,’ said Mrs Peaslake. ‘No need to go telling poems if you don’t want to, George.’ Her face clouded. ‘Sometimes remembering hurts.’

Suddenly he remembered the last poem Papa had ever told him. It was short, so short he could remember too the translation. He began to speak, tentatively at first; then it seemed like the poem knew its own way from his mouth. It felt funny to have to say a poem about peace so loudly.

‘
Quiet touches the treetops,

The breeze hardly breathes

Through the leaves;

The tiny birds are silent in the forest.

Wait …

Soon you’ll be at rest too.
’

‘I … I’m sorry it doesn’t rhyme.’ He hoped the Peaslakes didn’t ask him who had written it. They’d be shocked to know it had been written by a German. Might even — he bit his lip — suspect there was something strange about him. Maybe he shouldn’t have said it at all.

‘Poems don’t have to rhyme. It’s a good poem,’ said Mr Peaslake. ‘Poems have to make you feel in here.’ He banged his fist against the tweed jacket above his heart. ‘That’s what matters, not the rhymes. “The tiny birds are silent” — yes, that’s a good line.’

Mr Peaslake looked out the window. The trees had changed to fields while they’d been talking. He stood up and grabbed Georg’s suitcase. ‘Next stop’s ours.’

This station was even smaller than the others. It had flowers too, in boxes and baskets and in long beds on either side of the yellow-painted ticket office and waiting room.

They climbed a set of tall metal stairs that led over the tracks and waited at a bus stop, where they ate lamb and pickle sandwiches and slabs of fruitcake, sweet and buttery, that Mrs Peaslake produced from her handbag. Georg wondered if it had a small universe in it, as well as food and balls of wool and the handkerchief she’d used to wipe the soot smuts off his face and Mr Peaslake’s. The bus finally muttered along under more of the strange hanging trees.

The bus was half full. Old or middle-aged men lifted their hats — old hats with hair-oil stains or worn fingerprints at the edges where they lifted it; and women in comfortable floral dresses and straw hats murmured greetings. They stared at Georg with curiosity and friendliness as the Peaslakes got on, Mr Peaslake still holding Georg’s suitcase and coat. They found two seats at the back — one for Mrs Peaslake and Georg and the other for Mr Peaslake.

Georg gazed out more intently now. This was the country where he had to live: strange untidy country, its fields too big, not rectangular enough. The cows stood a long way away beside ponds that looked ragged and unkempt too. Even the trees didn’t have enough leaves. Their bark looked torn and tatty.

Georg got the feeling that this was a land that didn’t care about people. The grass was brown and the green of the trees was faded. Every colour looked slightly wrong — even the too-rich blue of the sky.

He glanced at Mr Peaslake, hoping he wouldn’t break into poetry again. It would be embarrassing with others in the bus.

But he didn’t.

The bus rounded the corner and suddenly he could see the sea, vivid and sparkling, the waves white-capped as they rose and fell onto a slip of beach.

It was the first truly beautiful thing he had seen since Sydney Harbour. The bus trundled past a headland and they lost sight of it, then there was the ocean again, a glimpse, then gone. He craned his head to catch a final look.

Mrs Peaslake touched his hand gently, then withdrew it when he jumped. ‘Like the beach, do you?’

He’d never been to the beach. Never seen it except for the day the ship left Southampton. But an English boy would be expected to have gone to the beach, so he nodded. The memories of playing in the water at the lake’s edge shone through the dimness of the last year and a half.

‘Good swimmer?’

‘No. I can’t swim.’

‘Soon teach you. The beach is only ten minutes’ drive from our place, though we have to walk it now with petrol so scarce. Get the sea breeze at our place too. You’ll need a jumper if there’s a southerly.’

Georg didn’t know what a southerly was, but he nodded anyway as the bus drew to a stop.

He saw a dozen houses, brick or wooden bungalows with verandahs and not much garden, a small stone church, a single shop and two of the long untidy fields before a tiny wooden building painted dull yellow. It had a sign that said ‘Bellagong Public School’.