Brother Sister Soldier Cousin Read online

  “Jessica. No …” Mum said, and sat down.

  Jess was Miss Iceberg Supreme. “Herman will discuss this with Dad,” she jerked out the words. “I am twenty-three and of age. I do not need your consent. But if you and Dad don’t give us your blessing, I’ll never forgive you!”

  I dared not say a word. I couldn’t think of what to say, and didn’t want to be treated like a child, told to go outside and play. Jess went into my bedroom and shut the door. Mum trembled and tried not to cry so I put my arms around her. We rocked back and forth.

  “Jessy, my baby,” she said. But there was no use talking about Jess as a baby now. Mum stood up muttering about brushing her hair and went into her bedroom.

  I was left standing in the living room. Everything looked shabby and menacing. The radio which gave good and bad news seemed hunched on its shelf, just waiting to announce that the Japanese had landed along the eastern coast of New Zealand. The clock ticked loudly, ticking away the minutes to Jess’s future. Being married to Herman meant she would live in the United States and would never see Mum, Dad, Harry and me again, unless Herman was rich and could afford to send Jess back to New Zealand occasionally. The china dogs at each end of the mantelpiece seemed to sneer at me, so I went out to the car shed where the sacks of bought potatoes were stored, and fetched a basin of them inside. I felt better washing and peeling potatoes at the kitchen sink.

  Imagination. Your imagination, Lenny! I chided myself and then was annoyed because I had called myself by the old nickname. There was still no sound from Mum or Jess.

  When I’d finished the potatoes I went to fetch Ahmed from my school bag. He wasn’t there. I searched the living room, feeling along the mantelpiece, lifting a bundle of newspapers on the settee. No Ahmed. I could have left him at school, but distinctly remembered placing him in my school bag yesterday after lunch.

  I opened my bedroom door and Jess was sitting on my bed. The skin around her eyes was red and she patted it with a dampened lawn handkerchief.

  “I can’t find Ahmed, my camel,” I said.

  “You are such a child, Lenny, for your age.”

  Icicle Jess was so superior, I felt annoyed. “It’s not childish to like the camel Harry brought me. I bet you like the brass vase he gave you.”

  “Herman chooses feminine presents. Stockings, perfume, chocolates.” She looked at her manicured nails. “I am marrying him, you know.”

  Mum and Dad were going to be unhappy with Jess’s marriage. I hoped they’d talk about it while I was away at school. That conversation was going to be worse than the war news and talk of Japanese invasion.

  I brushed my hair back and tied it with my best ribbon. “Are you going to live on the apple orchard?”

  “We haven’t made a definite plan yet. Herman graduated from law school before he joined the Marines. I dreaded bringing him home. Mum and Dad are so old-fashioned, and this house is primitive. I would have married him already without them knowing, but Herman said he’d want his folks at the wedding if they lived here, and that they could not be unreasonable people if I was their daughter.” She lay down on my bed and hugged the pillow. “Oh, he’s such a gentle, honourable man, Lenny.”

  That was the last conversation I had with Jess because when Herman spoke to Dad of marrying Jess immediately, Dad said he felt they should wait until Herman’s next tour in the Pacific was over, then he could come back to New Zealand and marry her.

  “I am sorry, sir, that you cannot see our point of view,” Herman replied.

  They drove off without afternoon tea, plans of staying the night gone. I went to bed wondering where Ahmed was and envying Jess her nylon stockings and hubba-dingerish Herman. I wished I was older so that I could have a Marine for a boyfriend. The war would be over and the Marines gone back to the United States of America before I was old enough for an older boyfriend. Perhaps Jess would introduce me to a Marine. One of Herman’s friends? But she would leave New Zealand and then introductions would be impossible.

  Chapter Four

  WHEN I COULDN’T FIND AHMED AFTER SEARCHING EVERYWHERE, at school and at home, I wanted to cry.

  “You’ll find him one day,” Barbara said.

  Where could he be, though? The last time I had seen him was in my school bag. I told Mr Moore.

  “Your treasures should not be brought to school,” he told assembly. “Apples are still being taken and now Helen’s brass camel is missing.”

  I ached inside for Ahmed. I couldn’t tell Harry or Mum and Dad. They would say I should have taken better care of him. Did the apple thief have Ahmed too? I was positive Ahmed was taken out of my school bag and I gave the boys mean looks. Which one of them might have him? The FJC club discussed forming a Sherlock Holmes Club, but after asking me the details of Ahmed’s disappearance, they couldn’t think of any clues as to who had stolen him.

  Mike came to visit for a week. He was not as tall as Harry and his hair was black and shone with hair oil. Morning and night, he helped Mum and me feed the first calves swaying on their tottery legs. Their tongues felt like slimy cotton as they sucked our fingers when we lowered a hand into a bucket of milk. They soon learnt to drink on their own, but afterwards they sucked the edges of our coats, the bucket edges, and the fence.

  Feeding the calves, Mike yarned about army leave in Cairo. Begging Arabs used to chase after Mike and Harry, crying, “Baksheesh … baksheesh …” They saw posh hotels with swimming pools and glorious desert sunrises and sunsets. Mike thought the pyramids at Giza were disappointing. “Some old geezer planned them. Showing off his knowledge of geometry.”

  I asked Mike what he felt as a prisoner of war, starving and thirsty.

  “I was crook,” he said. “Had belly pains with hunger. Felt weak.”

  In the evenings we played Five Hundred. The last night of Mike’s visit, an aeroplane flew low over the house. We glanced at the blackout curtains but they were pulled across the windows and not a chink of light could show. We sat unmoving, like statues with cards in our hands.

  Harry said, “Now what’s your moniker, Mister Pilot?”

  “Mister Jap?” Mike replied.

  The aeroplane droned off. I had clutched my cards so hard they bent.

  “One of our aeroplanes,” Dad said. “Taking officials to Auckland.” But he turned the radio on early to make sure no catastrophe was announced — like New Zealand under attack by Japanese forces. Sad orchestral music played on and on. Where was that aeroplane flying to? I didn’t want to listen to the BBC News and become jittery with fright, so went to bed and read Caddie Woodlawn. It was written by Carol Ryrie Brink and I chose it out of the Country Library Basket because the front cover showed a red-headed girl who looked determined, and I enjoyed rolling on my tongue the r’s in the author’s name.

  Caddie was eleven but I didn’t mind reading a story about a younger girl because she had lived through a time of war, in 1864 in the United States of America. She had four brothers and three sisters. The back cover read, Caddie does what grown men are afraid to do. She goes into the forest alone to find the Indians and talk!

  I opened to Chapter One:

  She was the despair of her mother and elder sister, Clara. But her father watched her with a little shine of pride in his eyes…

  I wondered if Dad looked at me like that.

  Her brothers accepted her as one of themselves…

  Of course they did, like Harry did me.

  They got into more scrapes and adventures…

  There weren’t Red Indians or adventures like Caddie’s to be had in New Zealand.

  Mum and Dad murmured as they undressed for bed. I read on. Caddie’s Uncle Edmund wanted to take the Woodlawns’ sheep dog, Nero, home to St Louis to train him to be a hunting dog. Caddie didn’t want Nero to go… I wouldn’t like anyone to take our Tip-dog.

  Harry banged about in the kitchen and the smell of toast drifted through my open door. I got out of bed to get a piece, but hearing Harry and Mike talking, I hung bac
k in the dark passage where they didn’t notice me.

  “That was no official aeroplane,” Harry said. “The Nips have New Zealand well sussed out.”

  Mike stuck the two prongs of the number-eight wire fork into bread. “Coming here on the train, a chap told me a true story. Last month his wife and baby daughter went to Christchurch. The ferry detected a Jap submarine and sailed in a zigzag to avoid it. His wife wrote the baby’s name on paper, tucked it in her singlet and asked a sailor to take the baby in case they were torpedoed.”

  “That wasn’t on the news.” Harry poured tea into their cups. “Do I stay, or go to Europe?”

  “Stay! The Japs are coming, Harry. The Home Guard will need partisan groups to help,” Mike said. “The Nips would overwhelm the Home Guard in a week. It’s someone else’s folks in Europe you’d be guarding.”

  “Some Home Guard wives are organised into a roster of cars to pick up families to take to the bush. They’ve got a stockpile of food ready there,” Harry said.

  I tiptoed back to my room, pulled the light cord and lay stone-still in bed. It wasn’t as if Dad, Mum, or Mr Moore and the district thought that the Japanese might come. Harry and Mike worried when they would come. Dad said New Zealand wouldn’t be attacked because the American Marines were fighting for the Central Pacific, and that war was on the turn, in the Allies’ favour, now the Desert War was won.

  We had cheered and done a few steps of “Knees Up, Mother Brown” when the BBC News said the Allied Air Force was defeating the German Luftwaffe. But over here the Japanese were in the Central Pacific and spying on New Zealand. What would happen to us when they attacked? Would we be lined up, shot or bayoneted? I didn’t want to die!

  I dreamt of flashing swords, rearing horses, and English Redcoat soldiers.

  In the morning I felt dreary and pushed myself out of bed.

  “What time did you read to?” Mum asked.

  “I dunno.” I slumped on one elbow on the table.

  “Don’t know, Helen. Take your elbow off the table,” she snapped. “Don’t dwell on the Japs. They are not going to invade us.”

  Mike was definitely not going back to training camp, but Harry was undecided. I thought Mike would go to gaol, but he planned to hide in the King Country bush. Feeding calves with Mike for the last time, I asked what he would do when the Japs came.

  “Form a partisan group. That’s done in every country occupied by the Germans. It’s another way to fight and win the war.”

  As I left for school, I hoped I would see Mike again — alive. I should have asked him if a nearly-fourteen-year-old girl could be a partisan too. Probably not, because of the moral thing. Mum would say it wasn’t moral for girls to live with men in the bush and learn to kill people. No one would be doing anything ladylike or proper when the Japs came, though. I decided to find a partisan group if I could, and help fight with them.

  I told Barbara and the FJC club about Harry and Mike’s views of an invasion.

  “Spot on,” cried Fred. “We’ll join the partisans!” The FJC’s went into an excited huddle.

  Barbara was scared. “Uncle and Aunt say the Japs won’t reach New Zealand.”

  “The grown-ups say that, but Jap submarines have been seen. The Japs have got us sussed out.” I repeated Mike’s story of the Christchurch ferry.

  “What will we do when they come?” she cried.

  “We’ll join a partisan group. If the boys can do that, so can we.”

  For Air Raid drill, in case enemy bombs fell on us, we tied small cotton bags around our necks. In each was a cork to put between our teeth and cotton-wool plugs for our ears. When Mr Moore rang the school bell in the middle of class, it meant a pretend air raid. We ran down the school drive to the pine tree plantation at the gate, and lay face-down on sweet-smelling pine needles. Barbara and I always giggled and the corks fell out of our mouths. We were playing war, but it was no laughing matter now. Thinking of the Japs felt like a lump of undigested suet pudding inside me.

  Now I could back the Ford without Harry’s hand on the steering wheel. The car jumped twice before I got the feel of the accelerator, slowly eased it up, backed out of the car shed and changed into first gear.

  Harry said, “Go down the road to the Oakleys’ gateway.”

  My heart started thumping. I clutched the wheel hard. The paddock was safe compared to driving on the road. Harry opened the gate. I steered carefully through and stopped. Harry closed it and got in. I put my foot down on the accelerator and the car leapt forward. Metal on the road spat from under the tyres.

  “Put it into second,” Harry said. “Keep on the left of the road!”

  I tried not to jiggle the wheel which I knew made people car sick. No other car was on the road. Once in third gear, the Ford gathered speed and in a few minutes we came to the Oakleys’ gateway. It was far quicker than riding Ginger. I stopped, reversed without the Ford jumping, turned and drove home. Harry reckoned the drive had taken five minutes and that I’d drive faster next time.

  “Knowing how to drive is a fighting skill,” Harry said. “Keep practising in the paddock Len, er Helen, when I’m gone.”

  My back felt shivery. Harry was teaching me something positive for when the Japs arrived.

  “Dad’s gun,” I said. “I want to know how to shoot that.”

  Harry ran a hand over his stubbled chin. “Yes, you should learn to shoot the rifle. Mum too.”

  Instead of playing cards that night, Harry and Dad showed us how to load and unload Dad’s old Lee Enfield rifle, and sight along the barrel. My finger curled around the trigger of the unloaded gun. Dad had little ammunition so we couldn’t practise shooting. Mum and I knew about cleaning and oiling the gun and to always hold the barrel upright, even when it was unloaded. There were chill-making stories about shooting accidents and gun barrels not being held up.

  Harry said, “We’ll put bottles up for you to aim at and shoot.”

  Dad looked cross. “Son, I haven’t ammunition to spare.”

  “Mum and Helen have to fire the gun a few times to get the feel of shooting. There’s kick-back in this old gun.”

  Harry spoke at times to Dad as if he was the father. Later, Dad said to Mum that the young were always forward and impatient.

  Six to ten cows calved every day. We fed them morning and night in their shelter, a lean-to built onto the cowshed. Rain poured down in torrents as though a dam had broken in the sky, and windy gusts swept the paddocks. Ginger would plod home through sheets of falling water. Rain spattered my face like hail, bounced off my rain-hat brim, leaked down my neck and under my raincoat until my clothes were wet. The chaff sack oozed water when I moved and Ginger’s hairs stuck to my legs as though they grew there.

  Cows with sodden coats, some with shivering calves, stood under the lawsoniana trees or squelched slowly to the cowshed. Bull calves huddled wetly together in roadside calf pens, their frond-like eyelashes outlining their vulnerable big eyes. Some had pretty fawn and white coats, a few were black, and their bleats sounded like, “Help me.”

  I was glad to be female, and gloomed over what happened to the bull calves. “To be born a male calf is a fate worse than death,” I said.

  “That’s a Victorian phrase.” Harry grinned. “Usually meant for females.”

  “Every animal, male or female, has its purpose in this world, Helen,” Dad said.

  One day as I rode home, thunder cracked above us and forked lightening flickered across the sky. “Please, God, don’t let lightning strike Ginger and me.”

  Ginger flattened his ears back and trotted, almost galloped, home.

  Rain was overflowing the house gutters and swirling down the path. I took off my sopping raincoat and hat and hung them in the wash-house. The rain beat in a frenzy on the corrugated iron roof. I took a towel, my wet shoes and socks, and went into the porch where I opened the back door.

  “Lenny should be told the truth now!” Harry was saying. “She should have been told years ago.”


  Standing in the doorway, I couldn’t move, couldn’t speak. What truth should I know? It was split-second timing. I had opened the door just as Harry said those words. I felt like Lot’s wife turned to a pillar of salt. Appalled, Mum and Dad looked at me and Harry’s face went red.

  Rain pounded on the roof like a drum player beating a roll. The tea pot in its brown tea cosy sat like a bantam hen on the table. The fire hissed with wet wood, bark crackled, and the silence was thick with unspoken words that had something to do with me. Some dangerous, threatening truth I hadn’t yet been told. Were the Japanese definitely coming? Were Mum and Dad trying to hide the invasion from me? Mum’s cheeks crumpled into bumps and her forehead into lines. What was the truth I should know? My back felt icy cold and I felt my own face squishing up like a Pekinese dog’s.

  Mum licked her lips and stood up. “Helen … um … The rain is so loud we didn’t hear you.”

  “We love you, girl,” Dad said gruffly, nodding his head up and down. “Yes, we love you.”

  What did loving me have to do with telling me the truth?

  Harry stood up, and put his hands on top of the table. “There is something you should know, Lenny.”

  If it wasn’t the Japs, it must be Jess. We hadn’t had a letter from her since she and Herman visited.

  Mum murmured, “You were so adorable as a baby.”

  I knew that. My one-year-old baby photograph still hung on the wall in Mum and Dad’s bedroom. I was so adorable starting to talk, I’d given myself a rotten nickname.

  Dad said, “There never seemed a right time to tell you.”

  Mum took my wet shoes and socks out of my hand and placed them by the fire. She nudged me to sit by the fire in Dad’s chair, but I stood firm in the doorway. Rain beat into the porch and Mum reached behind me and closed the door.

  I wanted to yell, “What? What? What could you never tell me?” but my voice wouldn’t come. I thought, Tell me the awful truth now. Why are you talking about soppy things? What is this truth? Will I turn into a frog or something if you tell me? What is so difficult to say?