Fromelles Anniversary: An Odyssey Books Bundle

Chapter 12

Ellen Fletcher stood sentry in the doorway at the far end of the hallway. ‘What time do you call this?’ she asked, pushing a strand of hair away from her face. ‘Where have you been?’

Harry halted, alert to the meaning behind his mother’s words. She was accustomed, if not to getting her own way all the time, at least to having plenty to say about it. Her very blood spoke ‘Fighting Irish’.

‘Work. Met a friend,’ answered Harry. ‘Where’s everyone else?’

‘Holy Mary! I’m not talking about the others, am I now? It’s you I want words with. You just come here a minute.’ Ellen’s brogue was dense with accusation.

Harry strode past her into the kitchen. So she wanted to have her say. Fair enough, it couldn’t be avoided forever. It made no odds. Let her say what she wanted. He glanced around the room. Eight empty chairs crowded together at the table laid for supper. The oven packed heat into the space, a thick smell of lamb chops and onions. He leaned a shoulder against the mantle. On the opposite wall, Christ bared his bleeding heart, seeming startled to have his innards on public view. His eyes met Harry’s with that familiar look of disbelief.

Ellen pointed a finger at Harry. ‘Sit down, boy, I don’t want to be looking up at you.’

‘I’m fine. You sit, Ma, you look tired.’

Ellen’s face flushed. She looked at this eldest child of hers. Not so long ago, she’d marvelled over the perfection of him, his tiny fingers and toes, his cap of soft dark hair. The smell of his skin that had made her breasts ache. The live weight of him in her arms, the ardent intensity in his not-quite-focused gaze. She’d had five more children, but it was Harry who’d made that space, filled it with possibility, Harry who had turned her from a wild girl into a mother. The thought of him going away made her arms feel empty. Now as he looked at her, his face c****d attentively, the light caught bristle on his jaw and down on his cheekbones. A man, a boy. Both. Twenty-two years since she first held him. A boy with no notion of the world and its troubles beyond this seaside town. Not far from the eager baby he’d been.

‘Harry Fletcher, sit down this minute and listen to me!’

He raised his brows and pulled out a chair. Crossing his arms, he sat opposite her. Sweat beaded and ran down his neck and his mouth was clamped shut. Like a mule, thought Ellen. That’s what his father used to say. Well, even mules had ears to listen with.

‘Harry, it’s about you enlisting.’

‘Yes, Ma. I hope you’re proud of me.’ That was a deliberate provocation.

‘Proud is not the issue!’ Ellen slapped the table. ‘There’s no pride in an English uniform, Harry. You’d know that if you’d ever lived in Ireland!’

Harry shifted in his chair, and Ellen pulled herself up short. With half of Australia talking about empire and duty and saving poor little Belgium, and the rest going on as if nothing was happening, no one cared what went on in Ireland. Ellen had railed about Home Rule and occupation for years, so often that her children groaned whenever she mentioned the homeland. For sure, nobody was listening now. In any case, it was no way to reach Harry.

She softened her voice. ‘Harry, what are we to do without you? Isn’t baking a, what’s the word, a reserved occupation?’

Harry had his defences ready. ‘Ah, but it’s Joe who’s the baker, Ma. I’m just the shop boy.’

‘Now you’re talking nonsense! We couldn’t have survived without you, not since your father died,’ Ellen said clearly, determined to move him. Usually, the mention of Henry Fletcher disarmed Harry, sometimes to the point of tears. This time he just tilted his head, ignoring the compliment in her words. The bakery already seemed far behind him.

Ellen pursed her lips. Something about him always reminded Ellen of her redoubtable mother-in-law. Harry’s grandmother Liesl had started the Fletcher family business; she was a German from Silesia who made the best Berliners and strüdel and Kaiser rolls in town. Harry didn’t in the least look like Liesl, but he had her ingrained persistence and determination. A bad combination with the temper he’d inherited from Ellen herself. A dozen, a hundred saints combined would want to strangle him inside a minute’s conversation. Not to be driven or led, Ellen reminded herself, but maybe to be coaxed. She set herself to coax him.

strüdel‘I don’t know where we would have been, on the streets maybe, if not for you. Joe can bake right enough, but he’s no hand at the accounts. He’s not the one to serve, or deal with suppliers, or run the business at all. What will we be doing without you?’

Harry numbered off points on his fingers. ‘Kath can serve in the shop, Ma. You’ll do the accounts yourself, like you did when Pa was alive, and deal with the suppliers. You always talk to them anyway. Business will slow down a bit, with so many away. We discussed it last week.’

‘Discussed it! You mean you told me.’

Harry watched his mother. She was angry all right. He wouldn’t be at all surprised if she slapped him.

‘Harry, son, don’t be stubborn for the sake of it. There’s no need for you to go, sure there’s not.’

‘Need or not, I’m going, Ma,’ Harry said decisively. ‘Just think of the pay. It’s better than any other job I can get, better than when I was at Welsh & Dwyer’s. You know the money will help a lot.’

‘Devil take the money! It’s not the money, is it? We’ve managed fine, so we have, you don’t have to go.’ Harry looked away. Something had gleamed in his eyes, just for a moment. Ellen pounced on the idea. ‘You want to go, that’s it. You want to go to war.’ She stood and leaned over her son. She was growing louder, and he was growing quieter. That signalled danger, as any of the other children could attest. Harry was the only one who could ever outface her.

wantHarry said nothing for a moment. He had enlisted; he was heading for training camp next week. In some ways, he was already gone. His mind had leaped well ahead. He damn well would like to fight something. He didn’t know what or care much why. Everyone knew it was the right thing do. He couldn’t spend all his life in the bakery. He was needed more on the other side of the world. But his mother didn’t want to know that.

would‘Ma, I’m signing over half my pay to you, you’ll get it regular. Two and six during training, and three shillings after we embark. That’s every day. You’ll get three shillings a day, Ma. That’s a lot of money.’

day‘Stop talking to me about money! I’d rather have a son than all the money in the world!’

Harry laughed. ‘You’ve got five of us, Ma—six, counting Eddie, and that’s beside our Kathleen being the best daughter anyone ever had,’ he said. ‘You’ll never want for a son, whatever happens.’

Ellen flipped the side of her hand across his ear, an old reprimand she had yet to forego. ‘Don’t you laugh at me!’

Harry shrugged, getting to his feet. He held the hard wooden chair between them. ‘I’m not. I’m just telling you what you already know, Ma. There’s only three of us old enough to go. Joe wouldn’t think of enlisting. The young ones will still be in short pants when the show’s over. You can spare me and Eddie for a while.’

‘Oh, and what about Eddie? Do you think he should go to war? Do you?’

‘Well, yes I do, but that’s not the point. Eddie can make up his own mind about whether to go or not. Eddie did make up his own mind.’

did‘Hmph! If he did, it’ll be the first time ever.’

‘Ma!’

‘Eddie does everything you do, and always has, since your sainted father first brought him home, all skin and bones and big eyes, the poor lamb.’

The poor lamb chose this moment to open the back door. ‘What do we have here, then?’ asked Eddie, his voice tempered to appease. Eddie didn’t like arguments. ‘Have you started the war without me?’

Harry lifted his chin. His eyes met Eddie’s over Ellen’s head. ‘Eddie’s all right, Ma, you can see that. He’s not a homeless orphan hanging around the back of the shop for scraps any more. Ma, just look at him! He’s twice as big as me, he can pick me up in one hand. He’ll make a splendid soldier.’

Ellen drew a deep breath. Behind Eddie, the younger children crowded the doorway. Ellen smacked her hand hard on the table again, making the cutlery jump. ‘You! Eddie! You come in here and explain this mess to me. The rest of you, out! Out! Now then, you two. You ought to have more sense, to be sure. You’ll neither of you make splendid soldiers. It’s a fool’s errand you’re on, the both of you. You should be leaving these things to the army.’

Harry grinned. ‘We are the army, Ma. It’s too late for all this fuss. This is war and they need us. All Australia has to do the right thing now.’

are‘Holy Mary! The Australians are just kicking up a ruckus in Egypt. It was in the paper. Nobody even knows if our boys can fight. We don’t have war here and we should leave it to those who love it. Let the British do their own fighting, Harry.’ This kind of talk got Ellen into arguments sometimes, but there were enough Irish Catholics around the docks who agreed wholeheartedly. The European war was none of theirs.

‘We’ll fight all right. You watch!’

‘You’ll be proud of us before this is over,’ added Eddie.

‘We’ll show the English army we’re just as good as they are,’ said Harry.

‘How you can even think of helping the English army, and you half Irish, is more than I can believe! And you, Eddie, all Irish!’

That was too much for Harry. He finally raised his voice. Kathleen and the three little boys, listening wide-eyed on the back porch, stood amazed at both the volume and the language. ‘Don’t you dare tell me I’m half b****y anything! I’m not some mongrel. I’m completely Harry Fletcher, and every ounce Australian, that’s me. And if you want to talk about the b****y Irish, tell me what in hell is so grand about them? Eddie’s damn mum was the neatest Irish lass you ever saw, and didn’t she dump her kid without a second thought and run off who knows where?’ Maura Flanagan had been the prettiest w***e on the port, and Harry nursed a bone-deep grudge against her. He knew more about Eddie’s wretched childhood than anyone else on earth. It was one reason he detested his mother’s romantic Irish vision. ‘And who the hell knows what Eddie is—sorry, Eddie—but it’s not Irish, by God. It doesn’t matter one bit who his damn father was. We’re both Australian, that’s what. Don’t talk the b****y Irish to me, Ma. They’ve got their own war to fight, fair enough, but this one is ours.’

‘You mind your language,’ cried Ellen, aiming another swipe at his ear and smacking his cheekbone instead. ‘And this war is not ours. It’s on the other side of the world.’

‘Exactly!’ said Harry. ‘And that’s where we’re going.’ While his mother gaped at him, he took Eddie by the arm. ‘You’d better dish up for the kids before it gets completely burned. Don’t wait up for us, there’s no need. If I see Joe in the pub, I’ll send him home.’ He bent and kissed his mother’s cheek on his way out, ignoring her protests. ‘Good night, Ma.’

They scrambled out the back door where the others made way for them. The youngest, James, grabbed at Harry’s leg and he took a moment to disentangle the little chap and hand him over to Kathleen. Then he and Eddie stepped into a darkness heavy with summer storm.

They walked in silence. Eddie waited for Harry to speak, but Harry was thinking. The wind buffeted them playfully a while before it finally rushed them with cooler air. When sparse raindrops smacked the dusty path, Eddie finally asked, ‘Where are we going?’ Harry shook his head and, accepting that as answer enough, Eddie nodded.

Edmund Daniel O’Connell Flanagan, the Fletchers’ adopted stray, was now well over six feet tall, near a head taller than Harry. His thick hair was such a deep auburn that only the ill-disposed could call him a redhead. He had the green eyes and the firm, bow-shaped mouth of the w***e who had borne him, who had dragged him with her from rented room to street corner and back again, variously smothering, exploiting, and neglecting him.

Harry couldn’t remember that he’d ever set eyes on Maura, but he’d seen so many of Eddie’s nightmares that a bitter, deathless loathing pierced him whenever she was mentioned. Her name made him nauseous with rage. He wouldn’t have treated a dog the way she had treated Eddie. Poor b****y Eddie who at six years old had never seen the inside of a book but who’d been hauled willy-nilly into the sorts of sordid dealings Harry couldn’t rightly name, the ones Eddie still dreamed about. There was no knowing who his father might have been. Harry only hoped it was none of the blokes who still gave Eddie nightmares. Probably a sailor, he supposed, an Irishman or a Scot. No, the Scots he knew were little blokes, all of them, and Eddie got those inches from someone. Ha. A Norwegian Viking, maybe.

It made no odds, not now. It didn’t matter one bit who his b****y father was. Harry minded taunts of ‘bastard’ and ‘w***e’s son’ much more than Eddie ever had. Eddie had learned from the cradle to keep his head down and his thoughts to himself. Pa Fletcher had found him scrounging all alone and taken him home. Just, he said, until they could find his mother.

They never did. Maura was seen going off with a man on the city tram, and she never came back to the port. God knows what happened to her. Maybe she was happy somewhere with a family of her own. Maybe she was dead. Eddie didn’t know. Mostly he didn’t care. Harry heartily wished her in the deepest pit of hell.

The Fletchers’ home was heaven to Eddie. He remembered it that first night as warm and light, and full of kids like puppies. When Pa ushered him in the back door, Ma stared hard at him, and two little kids hid behind her. But Harry came right up to him and pulled him over to the rug before the fire. While Henry and Ellen argued about bringing in strays and feeding more mouths and sins of the fathers and filth of the gutters and charity beginning at home—Eddie could still remember all of that conversation he hadn’t been meant to hear—Harry had sat him down and fetched him the biggest cup of warm, milky, sugary tea he’d ever had in his life. Once that was in Eddie’s hands, Harry sat beside his new brother and had rarely left his side since. That first night, he’d shared Harry’s bed. Even when a few days later a trestle bed was set up for him, it was months before he used it for much more than getting his goodnight kiss from Ma. That done, he’d climb in beside Harry. For warmth, for the comfort of knowing he wasn’t alone. Of knowing he wouldn’t wake up alone.

He didn’t think much about what life would have been like without Harry, without the Fletchers. He lived by taking what was good, avoiding what was bad, and not looking too far into the future. Good and bad were equally temporary. Bad times were rather more usual, like bad weather. You’d always have something to complain about if you had a mind to it. Too hot, too cold, too wet, too dry, too windy. Not many perfect days if you quibbled at every change. That way led to misery. No, it was better to enjoy the good times but at the same time not expect them to last. Just thank God and all the saints for every day and don’t get too attached to anything, or anyone. Anyone and anything might disappear at any time, through nobody’s fault. A big wind could blow the sea in and there’s your sandcastle gone forever. A woman could get on a tram and never come back. It didn’t do to get too attached.

Except he was. Attached, that is. Harry planted certainty into Eddie’s world. He made things last. Eddie knew he could anchor himself right next to Harry and ride out any storm, no matter that most storms were of Harry’s own making. Harry looked calm, but he had a hellish temper and a fierce idea of right and wrong, and he didn’t mind saying what he thought. Earned himself more than a few beltings, both at home and at the parish school, but Eddie had never heard him give in. Harry grew to tolerate foolishness in others—school chums, parents, nuns, teachers, priests—and to keep his mouth shut now and then, but he pretty much thought his own thoughts and went his own way. Eddie never knew anyone with so much decision as Harry. He’d never met anyone who always knew what the right thing was, and just what to do next. It was a relief to Eddie, who let Harry plan the future.

After they’d gone three times up and down the main street and back to the foreshore, getting pretty wet now, he thought it time to bring Harry back to himself. Brooding wasn’t good for him. ‘Harry? Where is it we’re going, did you say?’

Harry checked, as if he’d forgotten he wasn’t alone. ‘Down the beach for a bit,’ he said. ‘Then to the pub for a drink and some dinner. Suit you?’

‘Fine.’

That settled, Eddie walked on, sauntering a bit, looking sideways at the women. Some sat on the front porches of their houses or shops, enjoying the cooler air, while others paraded in small groups under the shop verandahs, walking behind their fathers or brothers, fanning their flushed cheeks and looking right back at the tall redhead and his friend. Harry didn’t notice. Eddie smiled at the women anyway.

Harry and Eddie always paired up at the end of the day and were generally seen together more often than apart. Eddie had become an apprentice to one of the local butchers two years earlier, while Harry was clerking down at one of the shipping companies. Eddie tried a few jobs after leaving school, but nothing suited him like the butcher’s, where he could use his strength on the carcasses and his boyish charm on the customers. Harry went straight to clerking and stuck with it until Pa died, but then Harry was smart. For years he helped Eddie with his schoolwork. Eddie was now as good as anyone needed to be in a butcher’s shop, but he was never going to be much of a scholar. Harry said the world needed butchers just as much. Probably more.

They reached the foreshore again. Harry stepped onto the beach with Eddie in tow like a dinghy. The tide was out, and they paced a long way across the sand, treading on shells and stones. Harry said you never knew where they had washed up from. When he was working at Welsh & Dwyer’s, he used to talk long into the night about the places those ships were going to, or where they’d come from. Part of the comfort of living with Harry was the sound of his voice in the night, telling amazing facts about far-off places: Africa, South America, Canada. Lions and Aztecs and bears. Mountains. Snow. Jungles. Wonderful what Harry knew. Things that made you think, made you forget whatever had bothered you all day.

‘How’s Peggy?’ asked Harry.

Eddie started and then shrugged. ‘Fine.’

Harry peered at him and then took his arm and turned back toward the pub. ‘What does that mean? She’s been keen on you for weeks.’

‘Not now.’ Eddie shook his head. ‘No more kissing and cuddling, she said, or anything else either, if I’m going soldiering. Not unless I want to put a ring on her finger right now.’

‘Oh. And you don’t want to?’

‘Not likely! Peggy? Not marry her, no.’ Eddie frowned. Peggy wasn’t going to chance any mistakes, not if he was going out of the country. He could just think about that while he was trying to sweet-talk her. ‘I couldn’t marry anyone before we go. There’s hardly even time to, well, you know.’

Harry laughed. ‘You might talk her round. She’s a good sort, Peg.’

‘Do you think so?’

‘I think she’s very keen on you, mate.’

‘Don’t know about that. Maybe.’

They stepped into the bar. The reek of beer and smoke and unwashed men was as familiar and comforting as home. Eddie spied Joe across the room and they luffed their way through, expertly avoiding arms and glasses and conversations. Joe was deep into a drinking session, his face brick red, his hand pawed around a cold-sweating glass. Harry swallowed his annoyance and told him to drink up and go home. He supposed Joe didn’t have long, now, to play up; this time next week, he’d be the head of the family. Still, a man who couldn’t hold his share of drink would be wiser to take less of it. Harry was sick of telling him so.

They settled into the lounge bar for a plate of roast beef and vegetables. Harry thought a bit about whether he should be spending money on food this way when there was a good meal waiting for him at home. Then he decided that he had better start thinking about himself and not what he needed to give Ellen. She’d have everything the bakery made, now, besides half of his army pay, and minus the cost of his keep. She wouldn’t have Eddie’s board money, but she wouldn’t have the great streak to feed, either. He hadn’t suggested that Eddie sign his pay over to Ellen; he had an idea that some of it might need to go to Peggy O’Neill. But he didn’t ask. It was Eddie who broached the subject.

‘Harry? You really think Peg’s keen on me?’

‘I do.’ Harry kept his eyes lowered. It wouldn’t do for Eddie to see him laughing. He concentrated on scooping up peas. ‘I just don’t know that you’re keener on her than on any of your other flirts.’

Eddie squirmed a bit. ‘That’s rich. I don’t have any flirts.’

‘Ha.’

‘And anyway, what about you, hey? Won’t you be pining for someone when we’re lonely soldier boys?’

Harry snorted. ‘Nope.’

Eddie let it rest. He knew Harry well enough to note the significance of his heightened colour, and he even knew who Harry would be thinking about. Who he always thought about.

Nora MacTierney, the girl they’d known since they were twelve years old.