Beneath the Southern Cross (36 page)

‘You're mad. You're only nineteen.'

‘So?'

‘And Aggie's only eighteen.'

‘It doesn't make any difference when you're in love.'

Tim had wanted to laugh, but you didn't laugh when Robbie had that serious look on his face, which Robbie often had. Robbie was a serious bloke. Sensitive too. And you didn't want to offend your best friend.

‘So what, are you engaged then?'

‘Yep. I bought her a ring. Not a real one, not gold, but it's got our names carved inside.'

‘Congratulations.' Tim hadn't known what else to say.

‘Is this date of birth correct?' the second-in-command queried as he looked at Tim's medical certificate.

‘Yes.' There was a touch of antagonismin Tim's reply.

‘Yes,
sir!
' the officer barked.

‘Yes,
sir!
' Tim stood to attention.

‘Next.'

As the last of the queues were shuffled through, the regimental officers sorted the men, three hundred or so, into eight squads. They were called to attention, then dressed, numbered, formed into lines and finally stood at ease.

Having been put through the basics, the 3rd Battalion of Infantry, three hundred and thirty strong—twenty acting officers and three hundred and ten men—marched off in columns of four to Randwick Racecourse where they were to be housed, trained and equipped, the plan being that the Australian Imperial Force should sail in one month's time.

There was no housing at Randwick Racecourse however. No tents had as yet been erected, so the infant 3rd Battalion slept on the wooden terraced steps of the grandstand. In their clothes, with a blanket and their civilian greatcoats over them.

‘Cripes,' Tim Kendall whinged loudly, ‘hasn't anybody told
them that winter isn't over yet?' Everyone agreed, but no-one cared, spirits were high and the men were in good humour.

The conditions improved, their training intensified and, as they were equipped with their uniforms and kits, the kindred spirit of adventure grew. As did the ranks, men pouring in from the city and the outlying suburbs, eager to be in on the action. Recruiting for the battalion had commenced in the country, and officers were sent to meet the trains and conduct the country recruits to the Racecourse where the battalion was now camped in tents.

By 3 September the battalion was complete—thirty-two officers and nine hundred and ninety-one men—and on 14 September it marched out for the first time to the heathland overlooking the sea at Maroubra. The battalion was now equipped with waggons, horses, two Maxim machine-guns, the brass band was practising daily and, by 20 September when the men's paybooks were compiled, everyone was raring to go. All they needed now were their orders.

 

‘It's official, they say. Any day now.' Kathleen looked up from the newspaper, but Otto didn't reply as he downed his mug of tea and rose from the kitchen table. ‘It's just as Robbie told us on the weekend,' she continued. ‘They're hoping to set sail before the end of the month.'

Robbie O'Shea had warned his mother that the weekend might be the last leave he'd be granted. ‘The officers don't tell us anything but there's a rumour going round that embarkation orders have been issued.'

‘I must get back to the shop,' Otto said. ‘Young Aggie will be wanting her lunch.'

Kathleen stood and, reaching up her hands, locked her fingers behind the bull-like neck of her husband. ‘Don't, Otto,' she whispered, ‘don't shut me out along with Johann.'

‘
Mijn duif
,' he always called her his dove, ‘never would I shut you out. Never.' He engulfed her in his embrace and, feeling the fullness of her body against him, wanted to make love to her. But then Kathleen had always had that effect on him and eight years of marriage had not lessened his desire.

Otto De Haan loved his wife passionately, he had from the moment he'd met her. Even when he'd been ‘the Dutchie down the
road' who took her out for a drive with her son—in the hired trap which he'd pretended had been his—even then he'd loved her. Never for one moment, not even in his wildest dreams, had he ever dared hope that she could be his.

But he'd never been good at explaining his feelings. He wanted to tell her now that he did not mean to shut his son, his only child, out. It was not anger at Johann he felt, it was fear. It was anger mixed with fear. And disappointment. And frustration, and helplessness. Otto couldn't explain it to himself, how could he explain it to her?

‘I must go,
mijn duif
,' he said. ‘It is unfair to Aggie that I am late.'

Kathleen felt sorry for him as she watched him leave. She knew he was in turmoil and she wished she could help, but Otto was a private man, not one to express his emotions. Not even to his son, who was his very life. No wonder young Johann had run away rather than face up to the father with whom he could barely communicate. The boy had left a note. He'd joined the army. ‘I'm sorry, Dad,' he'd written, ‘but I knew you'd try and stop me.'

Kathleen was disappointed that young Johann had not confided in her. As a child he had talked to her in a way, she suspected, he had talked to no-one else. A strange little boy who hid his vulnerability behind bravado, Johann ached to be just like all the other kids.

‘I don't want to talk Dutch, Kathleen,' he told her. ‘Dad talks Dutch to me in public and it's awful, people look at us. I'm Australian, I'm not Dutch. I don't even know where Holland is.'

Kathleen knew that for years following the death of his wife, Otto had clung to Johann. A foreigner, learning the language and the customs of a new land, his only son had been the most precious thing in Otto's life. And yet daily she watched as he alienated the boy.

On occasions she had been a successful buffer between the two, but not this time. Not now that Johann had run away. This time Otto refused to communicate with him altogether.

On his visits home, Robbie tried to ease the situation. Most of his leave he spent with his fiancée Aggie, who worked in Otto's shop down the street and lived in the room above, but on Sunday he lunched with his mother and stepfather.

‘Don't you worry about Johann, Otto,' he said. ‘Me and Tim are looking after him. He's doing fine.'

‘He is seventeen.'

‘I'm nineteen.'

‘You are a man,' Otto said. ‘You know what you do. Johann is a child. And he is a fool.'

Robbie couldn't really disagree with the Dutchman there. Johann had always been a bit crazy, even as a kid. Forever showing off, pretending to be a daredevil when everyone knew he wasn't. Of course he was always being teased for being a foreigner, which probably had something to do with it. But he was as Australian as the next bloke now. It was time he grew up.

‘Don't you worry,' Robbie said again, ‘the army'll make a man out of him, just you wait and see.'

‘He will be killed.'

There wasn't much a bloke could say to that, Robbie thought, so he changed the subject and tried to brighten things up a bit, for his mother's sake at least. Otto could be a bit dour at times. But Robbieliked him, he always had. Otto was a man who kept his feelings inside and Robbie was like that himself, except with Tim of course, but then Tim was his best mate. Robbie felt that he understood Otto. In fact it had been Robbie who had set the wheels in motion all those years ago.

‘He's shook on you, Mum,' he'd said. He'd been eleven years old at the time.

‘Who?'

‘The Dutchie. Otto.'

‘Don't be silly, he's just a friend.'

‘Sure. A friend who's mad for you.' A little later on he'd said to Otto in a moment of privacy, ‘My mum really likes you. She likes you a lot.' He'd let them work it out from there, but somehow he'd known the Dutchie'd make a good dad.

As the weeks progressed, the situation regarding Johann did not get any easier.

‘Johann gets a weekend leave like you, Robbie?' Otto said one Sunday lunch. It was a rhetorical question and Robbie didn't answer. ‘And yet he does not come home.'

There was no point in lying and Robbie didn't try. ‘I think he's too frightened,' he answered truthfully. He and Tim had tried to
convince Johann to visit his father, but he never had.

‘Maybe I will,' the boy would say airily when his leave came up, ‘but I'm seeing this girl,' a suggestive wink and a leer, ‘might not have the time.'

There was no girl, and Tim and Robbie knew it. Johann was always telling lies, stupid ones too. Neither Robbie nor Tim could quite work Johann out.

‘It is right that Johann should be frightened,' Otto growled, and Robbie and Kathleen exchanged a look. They both knew it was Otto who was frightened.

Kathleen helped her husband the only way she could. By letting him know that, whatever happened, she would always love him. For, incongruous pair as they were, Kathleen did love Otto De Haan. Her love had been born through a series of surprises. The discovery that Otto desired her had been the first. A woman normally alert to the lust in men, Kathleen had been singularly unaware of Otto's desire. He was a widower, a devoutly religious man, and his life was devoted to his small son, he had no place in his life for a lover, or so she had thought.

When he had clumsily confessed his affection, she had allowed him to kiss her, and that had been the next surprise. She'd been aroused by his embrace, the strength of his body and the gentle passion of hiskiss. She'd wanted him to make love to her, but he hadn't. He'd courted her instead, bringing her flowers from his corner cart, taking her for drives in his trap, always kissing her goodnight, always keeping his own passion in check whilst hers mounted to the extreme. She wanted to beg. She wanted to plead ‘make love to me, Otto,' but she daren't for fear of shocking him.

Then, finally, his breathless proposal of marriage, his expectation of refusal obvious, but of course she had accepted him. Otto might not have been the husband she may once have hoped for, but she was thirty-one now, and deeply grateful to find an honest man who would support her and her child.

Then had followed the next surprise. Their wedding night. Otto De Haan proved to be the best lover Kathleen had ever experienced. He was gentle and considerate, attentive and passionate, energetic and powerful. All the love and desire he could not articulate, he expressed with his body and his lovemaking, and
Kathleen, a deeply sexual woman, was left exhausted by the gratification of her own passion.

But the greatest surprise was yet to come. In a matter of months Kathleen realised that she loved Otto. It was not only the sexual satisfaction which she loved, it was the man himself. The big, bullish Dutchman with the guttural accent and the greengrocer's cart on the corner. She loved him and she was content.

Otto, however, was not. A man with a corner greengrocer's cart was not good enough for Kathleen. So he worked hard and bought up the lease on a grocery shop at the end of Bourke Street near the docks.

The shop prospered and Otto built an extension to the old house in Woolloomooloo. It left them with no backyard, but a fine room for Robbie and Johann to share. And when Kathleen's brother Dan moved out, the boys had a bedroom of their own. An unaccustomed luxury for two young Woolloomooloo lads.

Kathleen watched Dan go with mixed emotions, saddened but also grateful. Dan mixed with a bad crowd now, no longer just the push. She supposed she had seen it coming and she wondered if she could have done more. But it was too late; neither she nor Otto could afford to have their young sons influenced by Dan and his criminal associates.

She saw little of her brother these days. He lived at the top of Kings Cross, and rumour had it that he and his woman ran a house of ill repute, and God knew what else besides. Kathleen felt sorry for Dan, but his anger had taken him along a dangerous path and she had the sense to let him go.

 

‘It won't last long, the war, and we'll get married as soon as I comehome. In a church.'

‘And I'll have a white dress, and a long veil, and bridesmaids.' Robbie and Aggie said the same thing over and over, each Saturday of his weekend leave, after they'd made love in the little bedroom above the store and were lying, satisfied, in each other's arms.

‘Oh Robbie, I wish you didn't have to go.' She always said that too.

‘But I do, you know that.'

The planned dispatch of troops aboard the Aberdeen liner
Euripides
had been deferred. The lads were restless. September was
drawing to a close, and still they'd not set sail. Robbie O'Shea wasn't sure how he felt about the delay. It meant he had another weekend leave, another night with Aggie but, like the others in camp, he longed to visit foreign parts and do battle with the enemy.

‘I love you, Aggie.' Robbie kissed her and ran his fingers over the perfect little mounds of her young breasts. She was the first girl he'd ever made love to and there would never be another. ‘I really do.'

The next day they had lunch with Kathleen and Otto. Little was said of the war, and Johann was barely mentioned.

Robbie tried to offer a comforting word, for Otto's sake. ‘Johann's fine,' he said. ‘They work us hard and he's getting very fit.' But Otto just grunted. Robbie decided to leave the subject alone, which was a pity, he thought, because he would have liked to have told Otto that the army was good for his son, that Johann was becoming a man.

‘By crikey, Johann's a different bloke,' Tim Kendall had remarked. ‘The army's doing him good I reckon.'

‘Let's go to the Domain,' Kathleen suggested as they cleared away the dishes. Otto was in one of his dismal moods and it would do them all good to get out of the house.

‘Will we take Ernie with us?' Robbie asked, patting the old dog whose head had rested on his knee throughout lunch.