Tears of peace

On Tiney Flynn’s seventeenth birthday, every church bell in Adelaide tolled, as if heralding a new year, a new era. Tiney stood in the garden of Larksrest, purple jacaranda petals fluttering down around her, and thrilled to the tumbling waterfall of sound. One by one, her sisters came outside to join her; first Nette, then Minna and lastly Thea.

All those bells tolling, the shouts and engine whistles, the beating of drums and saucepans on a warm spring evening could mean only one thing. Peace. Peace swelling up above the town and spreading across a deepening blue sky to reach the four Flynn sisters, as they stood beneath a jacaranda tree holding hands, willing the war to be over.

‘Can it be true?’ asked Tiney.

‘The Kaiser’s already abdicated – you saw the pictures in this morning’s newspaper,’ said Nette. ‘It must be – peace at last.’

‘They’ve been talking about the Kaiser’s abdication for months,’ said Minna.

‘It could be a false alarm,’ said Thea. ‘We mustn’t get our hopes up – let’s not tell Mama, not yet.’

Nette laughed. ‘As if she can’t hear the bells! I’m going into town to find out everything. Right now. I won’t sleep a wink unless I know for sure. Let’s get our coats, Thea.’

‘Someone should stay with Mama,’ said Thea.

‘We’ll come!’ said Tiney. She grabbed Minna’s hand. ‘Won’t we, Min?’

‘Papa will be home any moment,’ said Nette. ‘And he’ll say you’re both too young to be out gallivanting and then he won’t let me out either. You all stay here, and I’ll bring back the news.’ She was already racing into the house to grab her hat and summer coat.

Tiney made to follow her. ‘Let her go,’ said Minna in a low voice. ‘We’ll take the bicycle. We’ll be in town before she climbs off the tram and home again before Pa notices we’re missing.’

The front door banged behind Nette as the others walked into the parlour. Minna bent down and kissed Mama on the cheek.

‘Tiney and I are going too, Mama,’ said Minna. ‘You won’t tell Papa, will you?’

Mama smiled and cupped her hands around Minna’s face. She could never say no to Minna. Tiney sometimes thought Minna was Mama and Papa’s favourite – for Mama, she was the daughter most like Papa, for Papa she was his wild Irish rose. Even when she was bad, even when they knew they should reprimand her, they couldn’t resist her smile.

Tiney wheeled the bicycle down the side path but when they were through the gate, Minna took charge.

‘Climb up behind me,’ she said, as she steadied the bicycle.

‘No! I want to sit on the handlebars so I can see everything. If you dink me on the back, I’ll have to peer around you,’ said Tiney.

‘Can you keep your balance all the way into the city?’

‘So long as you don’t get too tired pedalling!’

Minna settled herself on the leather seat. ‘Oh Tiney, you’re such a scrap of a kid. I could pedal to Melbourne and back with you on board.’

‘I might be small but I’m no baby,’ said Tiney. ‘Seventeen today!’

‘You’re still light as a feather. That’s all I meant,’ said Minna, pushing off from the kerb and sailing down the street.

As they turned the corner into Prospect Road, they dodged a brougham and two cars. The wind whipped Tiney’s plaits out behind her as Minna pedalled like fury.

‘Hold tight!’ cried Minna.

They whizzed past tramstops thick with people, past slow, plodding horse-drawn carts and footpaths crowded with pedestrians. Thousands of Adelaideans were being drawn by invisible threads into the heart of town to hear the news they’d been waiting for these last four long years.

The bicycle hurtled across the bridge over the Torrens and along King William Road, and then Minna steered it into the park. They bumped down the grassy bank of the river and skidded to a stop beside a rotunda. Tiney’s legs trembled as she jumped off the handlebars. Minna laughed and straightened Tiney’s hat and collar for her.

‘I probably look a sight myself, but you know, tonight I really don’t care,’ said Minna, smoothing out her skirts. Her cheeks were flushed, her hair windswept. She put a hand to her throat and laughed.

The two girls ran up to the road and locked arms as they made their way towards North Terrace, hurrying past the thick stream of people pouring into the city. Men and women shouted and yahooed all around them. Tiney and Minna were forced to stop as a procession passed by with three men on horseback and another young man carried high on the shoulders of merrymakers. Girls and young men marched along the street arm-in-arm, singing at the top of their voices while behind them a tin-can band made a racket and a woman stood on a corner weeping with joy.

‘Now my Jim will come back again,’ said a voice close behind Minna and Tiney. The sisters looked at each other at exactly the same moment. ‘And Louis,’ said Tiney. ‘Louis will come back to us.’

Louis had signed up in August 1914, within days of the war beginning. Mama wept but Papa was proud, and his sisters thought Louis in uniform was the handsomest man they’d ever set eyes upon.

There’d been many times when the family thought he was lost, long months where they had waited for any word from him. Then Louis had written in late August to say he was coming home. His division was about to be rested and would set sail from England in October. Just the thought of Louis walking through the front door of Larksrest again made Tiney let out a spontaneous whoop of joy.

Not far from Minna and Tiney stood two diggers in uniform. The taller, handsomer soldier called out to them, ‘It’s a beautiful evening for an armistice!’

Tiney wanted to ask whether they had been in France, like Louis, and how long it had taken for them to be demobbed, but Minna spoke first. ‘It’s the most beautiful evening of my life,’ she said.

The soldiers laughed. ‘The peace isn’t official yet.’

‘I’m sure the Premier will be here any minute to tell us it’s true,’ said Minna. ‘I feel so happy I could kiss someone!’

‘Right-o,’ said the soldier. And before Minna could object, he hooked his arm around her waist and drew her to him. Right there, while the crowds milled around them, Minna kissed him back. Tiney turned pink with embarrassment.

The second soldier looked at Tiney shyly. Tiney’s heart began to hammer so loudly she wondered if he could hear it too.

‘You’re just a kid,’ he said, as if to excuse himself from having to kiss her.

‘I’m seventeen,’ she said.

The soldier grinned. ‘Well, if you’re seventeen . . .’ He stepped closer, sweeping Tiney into his arms. She lowered her head, bumping her nose against his bright buttons. They both laughed at their clumsiness.

As the crowds surged forward, Tiney wriggled free of her soldier’s arms and grabbed Minna’s hand to make sure they weren’t separated as they wove their way onwards to the steps of Parliament.

It was 9.30 p.m. before the Premier arrived. Tiney stood on her tiptoes to see him but all he said was that there was no official news. If a statement from London arrived, it would be announced at noon on the morrow. The crowd let out a sigh of disappointment, but no one could shake the feeling that at any moment, peace would be upon them. Tiney and Minna wandered the streets, drinking in the waves of happiness that seemed to roll over the city. It was only when they heard the Town Hall clock strike 10.00 p.m. that they realised how late it had grown.

They pushed their way through the crowd and ran back to the river. As they stood on the bank of the Torrens, another roar went up from the crowds that thronged the city. Bugles sounded and songs of joy echoed along the river. Tiney and Minna hugged each other.

‘This is the best birthday of my life,’ said Tiney.

‘Peace, kisses, what more could a girl ask for?’ said Minna.

As Minna pushed the bike up the bank, Tiney asked, ‘Was that your first kiss?’

Minna laughed. ‘Ask me no secrets and I’ll tell you no lies.’

‘Minna!’

‘Was it your first kiss, sweet seventeen?’ asked Minna.

Tiney touched her face where the soldier’s buttons and rough wool jacket had grazed her cheek. ‘I didn’t let him kiss me.’

Minna screwed up her nose. ‘Aren’t you proper? Well, don’t you tell anyone about my kiss. Promise?’

‘I may be proper but I’m not a snitch. Of course I won’t tell.’

All the lights of Larksrest were aglow as Tiney flung open the front gate. For a moment, she stopped to admire her home; the golden sandstone cut square and smooth framed by neat red brickwork, with the four tall chimneys black against the night sky. The fanlight above the front door shone a welcome and the night air was full of the scent of spring. Tiney pulled down a branch of blossom and buried her face in the creamy petals.

‘I don’t think I’ve ever felt this happy,’ she said.

As they stepped onto the tiled verandah, Papa threw open the front door. For a minute, the girls braced themselves for his anger at their going out without permission and returning at such a late hour. But Papa was grinning. He picked Tiney up off her feet and whirled her around. ‘It’s the best news in the world, isn’t it, little one?’ he said.

Nette was already back from town, setting the table for supper and smiling. Everyone was smiling. Even Mama was humming to herself. The mood was only broken when Tiney said, ‘Do you think this means Will might come home too?’

No one spoke for a moment. Tiney winced, wishing she could swallow her words. Then Nette looked at Tiney sharply. ‘Cousin Wilhelm is a traitor, Tiney. Of course he can’t come home. He fought for the Germans. He might even have killed some of our boys.’

‘But he was one of our boys, once,’ said Tiney. ‘It wasn’t his fault that he was conscripted.’

‘He could have said he was a conscientious objector.’

‘In Germany? They would have shot him!’ said Tiney.

‘He’s still a traitor,’ said Nette, her cheeks reddening. ‘He shouldn’t have taken a German passport and Tante and Onkel should never have sent him to Heidelberg. There’s nothing wrong with the University of Adelaide. It was good enough for Louis. Wilhelm should have stayed at home. But he chose Germany, and if he’s dead it’s because of his family’s stupid ideas about Deutschtum.’

Mama put her hand over Nette’s and took the soup spoons from her tight clasp.

‘That’s enough,’ she said. ‘I will not have you talk of your cousin and your uncle and aunt like that, Annette. Everyone, please sit.’

They were all seated before anyone realised Thea was missing.

‘Where’s our Dorothea?’ asked Papa.

‘She’s in her cubby,’ said Mama.

‘It’s not a cubby any more, Mama, it’s a studio!’ said Minna.

‘I’ll fetch her,’ said Tiney, glad of an excuse to escape the dining table.

Through the paned window of the weatherboard shed at the back of the garden, Tiney saw Thea sitting on a stool, surrounded by her art materials: tins crammed full of brushes, neatly lined-up tubes of paint, a white china palette, a small folding easel. It wasn’t until she opened the door that she realised Thea was weeping.

‘Thea, what’s the matter? Are you feeling sad because you didn’t come into town?’

‘No, it’s not that. I didn’t want to go. I couldn’t bear to see people celebrating when the world we used to know, the world we grew up in, is so lost to us.’

‘But aren’t you glad the war is over?’

‘Of course I’m glad,’ said Thea, turning her tear-stained face towards Tiney. ‘I feel as if I’ve been holding my breath for four years, longing for it to end. But I can’t stop thinking of all those boys we grew up with – dead or broken. All the ones that will never come home.’

Tiney put her hands on Thea’s shoulders and turned her sister to face her.

‘Stop it, Thea,’ said Tiney. ‘You mustn’t talk like that. Louis is coming home, and Nette’s Ray, and George and Frank McCaffrey and thousands of other boys.’

Even as the name slipped from her lips, she knew she shouldn’t have mentioned the McCaffreys. Percy, the eldest of the three brothers, would never return. Thea looked at Tiney with her soft grey eyes and Tiney felt grief clutch at her heart, to think of smiling, laughing Percy dead and gone.

‘Come inside and have supper with us,’ she said, taking Thea’s hand. ‘We’ll grieve the lost boys tomorrow and every day for the rest of our lives. But tonight, just tonight, we’re going to be happy.’