North Sydney, Australia, the present day
Nick woke with a trace of a hangover that was quickly diminished with a smile as he thought back over his evening with Susan.
He showered and dressed in a polo shirt and jeans and walked from his one-bedroom flat to North Sydney station, eschewing the bus in order to clear his head. He caught the train to Granville, in Sydney’s west. The two suburbs in which he and his aunt Sheila MacKenzie lived were about as different as two places could be and still be in the same city or country.
In half an hour he had swapped the high-rise office blocks and expensive harbourside properties of where he lived for the factories and terraced houses of the landlocked suburbs which had traditionally been a first stop for the waves of immigrants who had sought a new start in Australia. As Nick walked through Granville he saw almost the full spectrum of Australia’s multicultural society in shopfronts, cafes and takeaway joints and in the faces of the people going about their Saturday morning business.
He had been to his aunt’s place only once before – she had bought it after her last divorce when she and her ex-husband had sold their shared house and both had to downsize. The street was leafy and the early twentieth-century terraces and Federation houses were mostly in good condition or being renovated. He knocked on the door.
‘Ah, my favourite nephew.’ Sheila, a foot shorter than him, got up on her toes to kiss him on the cheek.
‘Your only nephew.’
‘Ever the realist.’
‘Wait,’ he said, forcing a smile, ‘it gets worse.’
‘Come in and tell Aunty all about it.’
‘I lost my job.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that, Nick, darling, especially after, well . . . Want a beer?’
He checked his watch. It was eleven thirty in the morning. ‘Sure. What are you having?’
‘Bubbles. It’s Saturday.’
‘Fair enough.’ He went to the refrigerator in the kitchen. Sheila had four cold bottles and he selected one and opened it. She found the glasses, in a box, and he popped the cork and poured.
Sheila raised her glass. ‘To the future. May it be better for both of us.’
‘I’ll drink to that,’ he said. ‘But today it’s the past I’m interested in.’
‘Come outside.’ Sheila led him through the small kitchen to a narrow yard shaded by a pergola festooned with passionfruit vines. ‘I was intrigued by your call. Whenever I’ve tried to talk to you about family history in the past your eyes just glaze over.’
‘Guilty as charged. I met a woman.’
‘Aha. I thought you were too handsome to stay single.’
Nick laughed. ‘It’s not like that. She’s a South African journalist. She’s asking about a great-great-or-whatever uncle of ours who fought in the Boer War.’
She nodded. ‘Cyril Blake.’
‘You’re amazing,’ he said.
‘You didn’t think so at my birthday party,’ she sipped her champagne, ‘when I tried to educate you about our family.’
‘Well, I’m interested now.’
‘Pretty, is she?’
Nick smiled. ‘Maybe. But I’m interested in Cyril Blake in any case. Did you know he fought against the Germans as well as the Boers?’
‘Yes, nephew, as a matter of fact I did. I actually spoke to your grandmother about him before she died. The dementia was already setting in, but she was able to tell me a bit about him. She told me he’d fought the Germans and gone missing.’
‘In Africa,’ Nick said.
Sheila looked surprised. ‘No, I don’t think any Australians were involved in the fighting against the Germans in Africa during the First World War, but there were Boer War veterans who signed on again and fought on the Western Front, so I assumed Cyril was one of them.’
Nick shook his head. ‘No, this was in 1906 or some time like that, in the war between the German colonial powers in South West Africa – Namibia – and the local people.’
Sheila set down her champagne. ‘But Australians didn’t fight in that war. This is amazing stuff, Nick, and really interesting.’
For the first time, when it came to family history, he had to agree with his aunt. ‘I don’t suppose you have any really old family stuff, do you?’
Sheila put a finger to her lips. ‘Maybe. I don’t know. I did get a box of stuff from your grandmother, just before she went into the nursing home. There are all sorts of papers in there and I haven’t been able to go through them all. While I’m trying to put together the whole family history, I’m only up to the mid–nineteenth century at the moment.’
‘What sort of stuff was there?’
‘Letters, old photographs, keepsakes. There are your grandfather’s medals as well.’
‘Really?’
She rolled her eyes. ‘Yes really, Nick. This family history stuff is not all about me trawling the internet for birth and death certificates.’
‘I know,’ he said. ‘I’ve learned that you have to do some real detective work and that it’s not just a mouse-click away.’
‘That’s true, but that’s not what I mean, darling,’ she said. ‘There are real, tangible links to our past, a lot of them in cardboard packing boxes in this house, you know? This is our history, Nick, our people, not just a family tree on a piece of paper.’
He felt bad, now, that he had tuned out of so many discussions his aunt had tried to start with him about where they came from. He was genuinely interested in Cyril Blake, and he was beginning to get an inkling of how his aunt had become addicted to researching their family history. Having lost the person he was closest to he wondered if it was also about having family to cling to.
‘So are there any papers that might have belonged to Blake?’ Nick asked.
Sheila pursed her lips. ‘I’m not sure. There is one bundle that could be of interest.’
‘Tell me.’
‘Why don’t I show you instead? Pour us another drink, and if you want to eat, maybe order us a pizza? There’s a menu on the fridge.’
They got up and Nick found himself a beer at the back of the fridge. He saved the champagne for his aunt and poured her another glass, then found the menu on a magnet and called and ordered a supreme pizza and some garlic bread. They met in the lounge room; she came down the stairs carrying a cardboard removalists’ box.
‘Can I help you with that?’
‘I’m not that old.’
They each took a seat in armchairs and Sheila put the box on the coffee table between them. ‘I think this is the one.’
Sheila opened the box, set the lid down and then carefully began unpacking it. There were black and white photographs, some tied in bundles with string, others in old brown leather frames. Nick saw envelopes with faded elaborate copperplate on them, and folded certificates.
Sheila dug deeper into the box, but she took the time to reverently stack all the items she removed. Nick took a handful of pictures. There were stiffly formal wedding shots and a man in what looked like a light horseman’s uniform, with a bandolier strung across his chest and a slouch hat with an emu feather in it.
‘Your great-grandfather, in Palestine.’
Nick stared into the innocent face, still untouched by war, and thought that Sheila not only knew these people’s names, it was as if she knew them personally.
‘Here we are!’
He set down the pictures and looked up. Sheila was smiling, her eyes glittering. ‘This was what I was thinking of.’
She passed a manila folder to him and Nick opened it. Inside were pages of flimsy writing paper, and as soon as he tried to read them he realised they were not in English.
‘German,’ Sheila said. ‘I went through this stuff with your grandmother years ago,’ she continued, sipping some champagne, ‘and that’s when she mentioned about your great-great-uncle who had been in the Boer War and then gone on to fight the Germans – I assumed in France. She told me she thought those pages were letters or military documents that Cyril might have taken from a dead German. She said she’d found them among her own mother’s possessions.’
‘Wow,’ Nick said. ‘I wonder what they say.’
‘Me too, and it’s been on my to-do list to get them translated, but I’d filed that chore away in my head for when I started researching the family’s involvement in the war.’
‘Do you think I could . . . ?’
‘Nephew, if you want to help your little old aunty and get those letters or whatever they are translated, I would be eternally grateful.’
Nick picked up the first page from the pile of papers. The writing was in German, but there was a date at the top that clearly read ‘1915’. No doubt that was why his grandmother had assumed the papers came from the First World War, but that still didn’t tally with Blake dying in a German colony in Africa in 1906.
‘I’ve got just the person in mind,’ Nick said. ‘Lili, a German intern at my work – well, where I used to work as of yesterday.’
‘Sounds good,’ Sheila said. ‘And it’s great to have you on the team. Let’s have another drink to celebrate.’
*
On Monday morning Nick showered, shaved and dressed for work. When he had first been told he was being made redundant he had almost told Pippa that he wouldn’t bother coming into work the following week, and that she could just give him his payout and he would be off.
After seeing Sheila, he had brought his anger under control. When he thought about it rationally he realised he had not been happy working at Pippa’s PR company for some time. He wasn’t sure exactly what he wanted to do, work-wise, but he realised now that this could be the chance he needed to make a change. While his options and opportunities were not boundless, he reckoned he could find a job elsewhere without too much effort. He would need to put out feelers and have a look online, but his time with Susan and his aunt had given him something else to concentrate on in the interim.
When he arrived at work, early, he used the copier/scanner to make two copies and scan a PDF of the papers his aunt had given him, then found a pre-paid postage satchel in the stationery cupboard, put the originals in the bag and placed it in the outbox to be sent back to Sheila.
When the intern, Lili, arrived, he went to her desk and asked her if she would be interested in translating some papers for him.
Lili had cast a glance at Pippa in her office and lowered her eyes. ‘It might not be appropriate,’ she had said in her formal style of English, ‘for me to do such a task during working hours, Nick, though you have helped me and I feel sorry for you.’
He had to laugh at her characteristic bluntness. ‘Thanks. How about I take you to lunch, Lili, and we talk about it then?’
Again, she looked around her, as if fearing Pippa might overhear. ‘You know I am only allowed forty-five minutes.’
He winked. ‘I’ll make it worth your while. I’m happy to pay you to help me with this, Lili.’
The intern brightened. ‘Oh, well, that is another matter.’
At twelve thirty precisely Nick and Lili, who had been carefully watching the office clock, left work and headed to the historic Greenwood Hotel, across the road from North Sydney railway station. Other office workers were taking tables for lunch.
‘You know they call this place the drycleaners,’ Nick said as they walked in.
‘Why?’ Lili asked.
‘Because it’s where all the suits hang out.’
She didn’t seem to get the joke and he didn’t want to waste time explaining. Seating themselves at a table in the open-air courtyard, they scanned the menu and decided on their meals, Nick assuring Lili that lunch would be his shout. Nick took the folder containing the German papers from his bag and laid it down on the table. ‘While I go and order the food, could you have a look at these for me, please?’
‘OK.’
By the time he got back, Lili was studying the handwritten sheets intently.
‘Anything interesting?’ he asked.
Lili read a few more lines then looked up. ‘I think so. This is like some kind of memoir or maybe even a novel. But he says he doesn’t want it published. It’s very interesting – I want to read more.’
He nodded. ‘My aunt said my grandmother thought they might have been letters from a German soldier to a family member, during the First World War.’
Lili shook her head, still skimming through the first few pages. ‘No, Nick, this is not a letter, it reads more like a story or a history of some kind. The place names are in German South West Africa, which is now Namibia. I have been there with my parents as a child, on safari.’
‘Yes!’
Lili looked up and smiled. ‘You are excited, Nick?’
‘I am.’
‘That is good,’ she said, ‘I have not seen you happy since I arrived at the company.’
He grimaced. Was his dissatisfaction with work that obvious? No wonder he’d been the first one Pippa fired. ‘What else does it say, Lili?’
‘This covering page is a note from the author. You see the date, 1915?’
Nick nodded. ‘Yes, my aunt and I both noticed that and that’s why my grandmother thought it dated from the First World War.’
‘The author says he is writing this manuscript in 1915, but it is about events that happened in 1906. There must be pages missing, or they are out of order, because the story seems to then begin in the middle somewhere.’
‘Please, read some for me, now, if you can,’ Nick pleaded.
‘OK.’ Lili took a sip of her water and her eyes shifted left to right. ‘This man, Blake, seems to have been knocked out. When Blake regained consciousness he found himself locked in a cell . . .’