Gibber’s Creek Gazette, 30 June 1942
New Proprietor for the Gazette
Your editor is delighted to announce that the Gibber’s Creek Gazette is under new management. Proprietor Mrs Matilda Thompson said today, ‘We hope that the people of Gibber’s Creek will continue to subscribe to the district’s only newspaper, and find in its pages inspiration and information and the standard of journalism that all Australians should expect as we fight together to win this war.’
Your editor wholeheartedly endorses Mrs Thompson’s words, and looks forward to a stimulating, prosperous working relationship.
MOURA, NEW SOUTH WALES, AUSTRALIA, 30 JUNE 1942
BLUE
The breeze dusted the river as Blue McAlpine bicycled back along the road from the factory, borrowing some of its coolness as it gusted across the paddocks up to Moura, sheltered in its hills. She and Mah had extra petrol rations for the factory, but it would be a pity to waste petrol when they could go by bicycle. And, in truth, she welcomed the ride — the quietness, seeing the sheep on the side of the road, the crepe myrtles growing in the gardens nearer town. Trying to keep herself focused on today, because thinking of last year, or even next year, hurt too much.
She stopped at the letterbox, tried to slow her heart as she reached in, as she did every day.
Nothing. Nor had she expected anything. Business letters came to the factory; the monthly letter from Aunt Daisy had come the previous week, complaining about the butter ration, the sugar ration, the behaviour of men in uniform with their brazen hussies, not at all like in the last war, my dear.
But she had hoped …
She wanted … anything, except an empty ten-gallon drum pretending to be a letterbox when it couldn’t even produce one page of mail. She shut her eyes. A letter from Joseph, saying he’d been wounded and evacuated with the fall of Singapore to hospital in Darwin, too badly hurt to write to her till now, his records mislaid somehow in the army system, but he would heal and he’d be home with her next week. That would be the most perfect letter of all.
Second best: a Red Cross postcard saying her husband was a prisoner of war. Even, she thought, trying to swallow the agony, even a telegraph boy with a yellow scrap of paper, saying Joseph had been killed. At least then she would know, would not wake at two am with nightmares of horrors the man she loved might be facing now. She could mourn, as she could not mourn now, for that would be betrayal if Joseph was still alive.
But there was nothing. Had been nothing since the letter from Singapore dated January 1942 that had arrived soon after the army informed her he was missing, swallowed up by Malaya after the fall of Singapore with the 9th Division …
Their army shouldn’t have been lost! Not even lost — handed to the Japanese. The British government had assured them that Singapore could not fall. That Australia could and should send its men, its planes, its tanks to the Middle East and North Africa to defend England against the German armies, in the security of knowing that Singapore would hold the Japanese back.
And yet it hadn’t. There had been no Dunkirk-like rescue of troops, just a few who managed their own escape, hiding and island hopping. The Red Cross had notified many families that their men were being held as prisoners of war.
But Joseph had vanished.
His hat hung on the hat stand. His favourite plum sauce was on the table. She had even put away his summer clothes and got out his winter suit. These objects were talismans assuring her that he was alive, that he’d be back with her.
Once she had wanted many things: a factory empire greater than the one her grandfather had built, burning a spot upon the world that said, ‘I may be just a girl but I can leave my mark, and it will be etched deeper than yours.’ She would swap it all now for that one thing — her husband’s arms about her in the night.
Now she was just a woman, not even quite a wife. To be a wife, you needed your husband there, or at least the promise that he would be. Nor was she a mother …
Why had they waited to have children? Mah hadn’t waited: she’d had a boy and a girl within three years of marrying Andy. When the war was over … when Joseph came back to her … she would have a thousand children, as many as the stars. If she only had a baby now, a warm child to cuddle, because when you had a baby your arms always had something warm to hold, not like the cold nights now …
A child was life. When there was life, new life, then you had beaten death. Death might march the world, she thought, but we women will fight back. We’ll give you life. We are the uncounted army.
She squinted at the sun, still an inch from the horizon. She’d chop firewood for half an hour, till dark. Supervising the factory, doing the accounts, managing the army paperwork was no substitute for physical work, the kind she and Mah had shared with Gertrude, Fred and the others in the circus, exercise that left you sleeping deeply and with sweet dreams.
Though her dreams were not sweet now, and wouldn’t be, no matter how much firewood she chopped. But fires were warm, and she craved warmth now. Fires, blankets, feather quilts, draught excluders at the door, as if by keeping out the cold she could make a small safe hole into which somehow Joseph might creep back.
She opened her eyes at the sound of a car. An emergency? Most cars were up on blocks in these days of petrol rationing. The driver came around the corner in a cloud of dust. Mah. She pulled up at the gate. Blue ran to meet her. What was so important that Mah used a car, not her bicycle?
‘What’s wrong? Has something happened?’
Mah held out a letter mutely. Blue took it, recognised the copperplate hand, the only gift of the orphanage where Mah and Fred had spent their early years.
Dear Cousin Marjory,
How are you all up in New South Wales? Just wanted you to know that your old cousin has joined up. I thought they could run the war without me, but it seems they can’t, even though I’ve been sending them instructions every week. So it’s time to put on the uniform and get them doing it properly. I’ll be a General by next week, or at least by Christmas time. It’ll shorten the war by two feet six inches, you’ll see.
Give my regards to that husband of yours and a hug to the nippers. One day you might just see me turn up for Christmas with a teddy bear for them.
Here’s looking at you, kid. Don’t you go worrying about me. Just thought you should know, you being my only family and all, and I have listed you as next of kin, because I had to put something in the space on the form, or they mightn’t have let me in, and then who knows what our boys would do, without your loving,
Cousin Murgatroyd
‘Fred.’ Blue handed it back.
Mah nodded. Blue watched her hold the letter to her cheek as if it was the brother she hadn’t seen in eight years.
Fred, he’d called himself, in the days when they were all in the circus together. But his name was really Robert, and he was on the run from a bank robbery gone wrong. When the police had begun to nose around the circus he had scarpered.
He’d been in love with Blue. Or had he? He’d said he was, but it was hard to know with Fred. He’d said he’d left her for her own good, and Mah too. Hard to know if that was true either. She thought it was, but Fred could have you believing a kangaroo could win the Melbourne Cup.
‘He’s found out I’m married to Andy. And about the kids.’ Mah looked at Blue appealingly. ‘You haven’t been writing to him, have you?’
Blue shook her head.
‘He doesn’t know anyone else here who might have told him. Except Sheba.’
The old elephant seemed as intelligent as a human sometimes, but even Sheba, thought Blue, would find it difficult to wield a pen or send a telegram to tell Fred the news.
‘You know Fred,’ she said instead. ‘Probably made ten friends at the pub on the way out of town. Or more likely reads the Gazette,’ she added.
She and Mah appeared in the local paper several times a year, under the paper’s policy of mentioning everyone in town at least four times per annum and not just in the hatch, match and dispatch notices. And when you owned one of the town’s biggest employers, the biscuit factory, and were members of the CWA, the Red Cross, the Literary Institute, and with Mah teaching at the Sunday school, and both of them riding Sheba in the War Bonds parade, well, Cousin Murgatroyd could learn a lot about his sister and her friend, especially now another woman owned the Gazette, and made sure women’s activities were given due prominence.
‘Murgatroyd?’ said Blue.
Mah’s worried face lifted in a smile. And suddenly they were both laughing, though there were tears there too. Fred could do that, thought Blue, wiping her eyes. Even with a letter he could make them laugh.
Keep him safe, she prayed. For Mah’s sake, and for mine. Keep Fred safe. And bring my Joseph home to me.