Chapter 12...
pages 187 - 191
During her spare time, Callie turned her attention to the trunk. As she emptied the contents onto the floor for the third time, she was surprised to find they were now familiar to her, like old friends. Idly she glanced through the yellowing pages of a recipe book, grinning to herself at the old-fashioned fare: coddled eggs, jam roly-poly, tapioca pudding. There was an entire section devoted to bottling fruit and pickling meat, and several pages relating to the skinning and boiling of rabbits.
‘Yorkshire pudding,’ she mused, coming to the end of the index. Bonnie hadn’t made that in years, though it had been one of Callie’s favourites as a child. Perhaps she would pick up a decent piece of beef from the supermarket later and surprise Stuart with a baked dinner for tea. She loaded the cards, invitations and newspaper clippings into an old shoe box, planning to go through them later, then replaced the school copybooks in the bottom of the trunk. The pages were brittle, breaking away at the edges, and shouldn’t be touched. It was the letters that interested her most. By the end of the first week she had sorted them into chronological order, using the postmarks on the front of the envelopes as a guide, arranging them in piles on the carpet. They carried three definite sets of handwriting: Ben’s, Hannah’s and someone called Jack. Jack’s letters were distinguishable by his signature on the back. They made only a small bundle, and the postmarks were dated much later than the others, so Callie put them aside and retied them with blue ribbon. That left Hannah’s and Ben’s correspondence, and she deliberated over which batch to tackle first. Ben’s first letter addressed to Hannah bore a South Australian postmark and return address: Mitcham Camp, near Adelaide. The date was the first week of May, 1916. Curious, she drew out the pages.Dear Hannah, he wrote. Training is in place for the whole company while the remainder of the stores and equipment are collected. We have horses at last - not from the remount depot but hacks to train on while we’re here, which is a sight worth seeing because they’re not fully broken and at the moment we’re getting more practice at buckjumping than horsemanship. Word’s out that we’ll be gone before the end of the month. Most of the stores are in - tool carts, pontoons (which have just arrived from the Cockatoo Docks in Sydney), and other sundry items, though we’ve yet to get the Weldon trestles, bridging wagons and water cart... Callie skimmed the remainder of the letter. Several pages in length, it contained information along the same vein, details of the Company’s technical stores and training, amusing anecdotes of the men. Not until the last line did Ben give vent to any personal feelings. I miss the soft touch of you he had scrawled, before signing his name. She re-read the words, pondering over the meaning. I miss the soft touch of you. Were Hannah and Ben lovers? Before he left, had they shared that most private and intimate of unions, bonding themselves to each other the only way time and space had allowed? She shook her head, not knowing, and pulled the next envelope forward. It contained a postcard that bore a photograph of a ship and carried the title H.M.A.T. A29 s.s. Suevic. The writing on the back of the card was cramped and it took several minutes to decipher the words. My dearest Hannah,
We embarked at Outer Harbour on the 31st, along with the 11th Field Ambulance. The blokes are a good bunch and we mostly seem to get along all right. There is a bit of ribbing between the ranks and a few practical jokers on board too. We had a rough passage through the Great Australian Bight - the worst few days of my life, I think, with seasickness laying low all but the hardiest. At Fremantle the 44th Battalion embarked also, making the living conditions much more crowded. Drill still goes on - two hours per day, missing you terribly, love Ben. P.S. What do you think of the tub? Callie turned the postcard over and stared again at the photograph of the ship. The image faced back at her, not exactly black and white but varying shades of grainy grey: the bulk of the steel was etched dark against the chop of the waves, three of the funnels - she could count four in total- spewing angry plumes of smoke that trailed away until they faded into the lighter tone of the sky. A white spray enveloped the front of the hull as the vessel made the descent into a windswept trough of water, listing slightly to one side. Staring at the photograph, she had the oddest sensation then of being pulled back through time, of being bodily implanted on the deck of that ship as it plowed its way across the sea, decades before. For a brief moment she imagined the taste the salt on her lips, heard the thud of the waves and saw the dark hulking shapes of the men as they moved like ghosts around the deck. Silent ghosts with bleached, fleshless faces, as grey and ethereal as the sky above. A pale haziness shrouded the day, either mist or salt spray, though which Callie wasn’t sure. It settled around her, fashioning an eerie veil of white. And over it all, the rotten stench of death, or the imagined threat of it, permeated the air, whirling and pressing its foulness into her nose, her face, until she almost gagged with the smell of it. ‘Callie, are you home?’ She started at the voice and the sound of the front door closing, blinked and stared down at the postcard in her shaking hand. s.s. Suevic. Silly, she admonished herself as she laid it on the study desk. It wasn’t June 1916, but a sunny October day over eighty years later, and the images were merely a product of her overactive writer’s imagination. Despite that realisation, and the warmth of the day, her body gave an involuntary shiver. ‘Callie?’ The voice was coming closer, more insistent. Stuart, she realised, home early from work. She shook her head, pressing the images into some distant place, bringing herself back to the present. ‘Oh, Cal, there you are.’ He was bending down beside her, his eyes carrying an expression of excitement, like a child’s. ‘Do you think you could manage a few days off? A two-day conference is scheduled and there’s been a last minute hitch. The boss can’t get away, so he wants me to go instead.’ She stared at him, bewildered. ‘I... I don’t know. Where is it?’ ‘A few hours up the coast. Resort. Five star. All expenses paid. We’d be crazy to pass up the offer. We can drive up tomorrow. I’ll be busy on Thursday and Friday with the conference, but I thought we could stay on for the weekend, spend a bit of time together.’ Callie nodded, mentally rearranging her own schedule. There was no pressing work, nothing that couldn’t wait. Besides, it would be nice to get away, even for a few days. ‘Sure’, she said, awarding him a kiss on the cheek. ‘Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll just go and pack.’
© Robyn Lee Burrows 2000
The above text is for personal use onlyand may not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher.