This is an edited version of "A War Story". I was moved to do some polishing for this year, which is the centenary of the start of that terrible, terrible event known as "World War One", or "The Great War".

Souls and Soils

This story has been written to explore some story-telling ideas, and a point or two. I have made no effort to check the historical accuracy of the details – including agricultural techniques and military issues, such as whether any formal trials were made by Australian forces of infiltration tactics (which had, in reality, quite a complex history), and, in the case of the references to the Second Anglo-Boer War, I have deliberately changed the actual timeline of historical events to suit the story telling.

This is dedicated to my Uncle Clive, one of the Second World War’s “choco’s” on New Guinea’s Kokoda Track.

1

The two boys were as brown as the land – tanned by the sun their forebears had thought harsh, the sun they barely noticed. They were of an age their descendants would call teenagers, but their time didn’t have room for such niceties: in their world, harsh necessity meant they would be boys till they became men, men hoped to be as hard as the land they would ferociously try to scrape a living from.

But that time was yet to come. This day … this day they walked, carefree, on the dirt road, carrying sticks they described – more in hope than anything else – as fishing rods, stirring dust with their bare feet, and each other with humour as dry as the land. They walked, blending into the shade of the occasional grey-green, scrubby tree as they passed, till they reappeared - apparitions of dust and shade, the deeper brown of their bodies limned by the red tinged dust as it danced with the sparse gusts of swirling wind from tree to tree, dodging the occasional shaft of light, looking for all the world as if some dust devil played with their image – or, perhaps, their souls.

As they neared the line of greener, taller trees that marked the creek, the ‘creek’ being a connection of mud-holes and the occasional deeper pool which combined to create a hope of water, their talk turned to more serious matters. One struggled during this: his soul had words his brain did not, and eloquence suffered for the lack.

“Ah yer mad, cobber!”

“Why? You tell me what’s wrong with it?”

“No-one’s ever done it – that’s what’s wrong with it!”

“But they had to start somewhere. You ask Mr Fitzgerald – agriculture started when people picked up what they were eating, and started growing it on farms.”

“Bu that’s hundreds of years-“

“Thousands.”

“-yeah – a long time ago. Why do you want to change what we’ve done for hundr-thousands of years?”

“They haven’t here – we’ve only been here a bit over a hundred years. And I saw old McGuire’s back paddock blow away last year.”

“Yeah, but that’s just old McGuire - he’s ... odd.”

“He doesn’t farm any different to anyone else – they all tear the soil apart, and grow it all different to what happens in the wild.”

“So … what: you want - us to eat wild wheat?”

“Well, that’s how it started – and it can still be grown that way.”

“Yer talkin’ about that scraggy patch of rubbish you grew last year?”

“It wasn’t rubbish!”

“Was too!”

“Was not!”

“Was-was-was!”

Their discussion descended into a short game of throwing stones at each other, an early version of the game later known as brandy, but as played in the bush.

After a few minutes, they picked up their fishing sticks, and kept scuffing through the dust down to the creek. They slid down the bank, conveniently about their height, and paced the dust-free shade under it til they found a deeper water hole that they decided was promising. They had a tin with a few worms, which they casually sacrificed to a couple of improvised and very rusty hooks, tossed in the creek, and settled back against the bank under a convenient tree. Frank had been going to join them, but was collared for chores by his mother – at least he’d got the worms to them before being caught.

The proto-soil conservationist was Clive; his friend, Gary.

After a few minutes of pretending they knew what they were doing in the muddy, stagnant water, and sagely consulting each other about casting in different places and changes to hook, line and worm, they settled down to celebrate their unexpectedly free afternoon.

“So”, Clive began, “how’s your sister?”

Silence.

Clive nudged his friend.

“Two flamin’ odd ones in my life – you and yer save the flippin’ soil campaign, and Helen and her mad ideas about changing the world even more.”

“Well, you have to admit, the world hasn’t ended since women got the vote” said a smiling Clive.

“Ah, you reckon! I’ve got to listen to Helen, me Mum and all their friends talkin’ about who they should vote for, and why – and they try to drag me into it.”

“Well, who do you reckon we should vote for?”

“Well, what’s wrong with the ones we got now?”

“Well, Mr Deakin’s Commonwealth Liberals are alright, but Mr Fisher’s Labour-“

“Oh hell – you bin talkin’ to my sister?”

“… might have.”

As a light went on in the dim mustiness that was Gary’s still forming brain, he shrilled “Oh no – you can’t do that. Yer me cobber – you can’t go and get all sweet on me SISTER!”

After a few moments, Clive almost whispered “I might, you know.”

They fished in silence for a few minutes more, until Gary’s attempts to mull things over was relieved by a strike. Excitedly, the two played it to the bank, and landed it in a flurry of elbows, slippery hands and scales, and dust turning to mud.

They laughed – cackled, would maybe fit better - at the mess and at each other.

Then Gary spoke “Yeah, ‘spose you could do worse than be me sister’s sweetheart.”

Clive smiled back: “Yeah, I reckon so.”

2

That evening, after they ate the fish Clive had solemnly presented to Gary and his sister Helen’s mother, against his will, Gary found himself listening to his mother and her friends talking. They were sitting on hard, rough made wooden chairs, round a rough table, all crammed into a small, poorly lit room – they couldn’t afford the new electric, even if it had come out their way, which it hadn’t yet, so they made do with a hurricane lamp turned low - with the odd gasp of wind struggling through their one, open, small but valiant window. The talking was a worried talking, all about the growing clouds of war in Europe, and the aggression of the German Kaiser. After her friends had left, Gary’s mother kept the conversation going with their father as they prepared and began to serve their evening meal of stew, with a taste of meat in it, and vegies.

At a pause in the conversation, Gary piped up, brash and eager, “Good – we’ll be able to go off and fight them Germans and teach them a lesson, eh?”

“What?! Don’t you think-”

Helen was cut off as their mother lifted the pot of mashed spud and smashed it down on the table. She stood silently, quivering, her routine terseness replaced by an uncharacteristic, overt anger, and began, her wooden serving spoon waved to emphasise her points with motion and the occasional spray of the rich, soft mash Gary so loved.

“Think! Yes – think! You THINK on it, and think WELL upon the matter. War’s not a game – and don’t you ever think it’s just a case of ... of going off and teaching anybody anything!” She was practically snarling now, and started thumping great spoonfuls of potato on Gary’s plate, which his eyes matched – the roundness of the plate, that is, not the potato, nor the bare wooden table plate and potato sat upon.

As she pounded potato onto her husband’s plate, his fingers, as if by accident, gentled the wrist on her angry hand, and his gentle eyes stroked her soul when she glanced back. She sighed, and put spoon and pot down to speak.

“You two don’t know I had a sweetheart before I met your father. Oh yes, we each had lives before our life.” They smiled at each other fondly, before she continued “He was older, a bit of a wild Irish lad – very glamorous to the young, impressionable lass that I once was.”

Gary and Helen sat quietly, Helen motionless and holding her breath, Gary with the restrained fidgeting of a young lad that passed for being still, both surprised by both the revelation and the way it had come about. Gary glanced at his father, unsure about how he should handle this turn in events, but he couldn’t read anything from his father’s strange face with the unfocused eyes, staring as if the other side of the table had a distant, vast vista. He looked back to his mother, now leaning back against the wall, wooden spoon in hand like a weapon, a rifle to be armed with potatoes but, for now, held safely over her shoulder, the remaining mash safe.

She knew both her children well, of course, and chose which unasked question to answer with characteristic unseen care and tenderness.

“Oh your father knew him too – he was older than your Da, but they were friends, of a sort.”

Their father smiled, and added “He was our king, king of our town, like – all the lads from the town looked up to him, and what he said went. Mind you, knowing what I do now, I don’t endorse what we got up to.”

Gary’s brain was stunned and struggling by all that was happening, but then another matter overwhelmed his mind. The kids from the town, not the bush?

“But Da, does that mean you weren’t always a farmer?”

“No, son, I wasn’t. I learned that for the sake of your mother, out of love for the good woman she was – and still is, and so she could keep the farm.”

So MUM could keep the farm. As his world – or its values, at any rate - started to cartwheel, Gary spoke. “But Mum, you’re…”, and Gary stopped, unwilling to risk the censure his thoughts were leading to.

“A woman? Yes, I am. How did I come to have a farm, that’s what you were going to ask, isn’t it” – and she gestured for a pause from her husband, who was about to rebuke their son for his cheek. “It’s alright, Jack, they have to know some time, and better that it come from us.”

After a few moments of dark reflection, Jack raised his head and nodded acquiescence, and she continued.

“Daniel and I married, and he started working this place with his Da. But then came the war against the Boers.”

“They were rotters!” piped up Gary, eager to show his knowledge of world events.

As their father shook his head under the steady gaze of their mother, Helen wanted to put her younger brother in his place – she guessed neither parent saw those long-past-cast-as-devils as being anything of the sort, but she had a more important question, one that bore directly on her social standing – limited though that be, and one, she thought, that might unravel this mystery at the nub.

“Mum … what happened?” She paused, and flushed with the moral horror of the prospect, whispered “Did you … did you divorce?”

“No, it was worse than that” she answered, then added “Although it did lead to your father and I getting together. Don’t worry Helen, we’ve given you no skeletons to embarrass you with that young Father at church.”

Helen flushed and mumbled.

Impatient with Helen’s girly rubbish, Gary asked “What happened? Those rotters needed a good lesson, didn’t they?”

His mother looked at him, distraught, and answered “Lessons! Lessons!! He went to WAR – they all did, all that were old enough. Your father missed by a year or two, which he rued at the time. I watched them leave, larking about on the train, and them all thinking it would all be over soon, and being typical, brash young men. Don’t you talk about teaching anyone a lesson through war, young man – don’t you!”

They were silent. This show of emotion by parents in front of children was unheard of in that era, and Helen and Gary didn’t know whether to offer sympathy, accept it in silence, or – in Gary’s case – flee out the back door.

Helen took a guess: “Did he not come back, Ma?”

Their mother sobbed, and choked out “He did – he did”, and then she fled - to her and Jack’s bedroom.

Their father motioned for silence, and went into the bedroom. After a few minutes of Gary’s tense fidgeting and Helen’s tense staring at the door they had gone through, he came out.

“Your mother will be fine. As she said, Danny did come back. He’d been attached to a British infantry regiment, and was wounded at Spion Kop. He came back – disfigured, crippled and half mad and full of hate for what he’d lost, and for all the pain.”

“Tell them, Jack. Tell them!” They hadn’t noticed their mother standing in the doorway, half hidden by the flickering shadows of the hurricane lamp, her plain dress and drawn face matching the harsh, bare, wooden wall.

“They’re young, Molly.”

“Gary’s old enough to be talking about going off to war as if it’s some … some thing of glory - and Helen’s older!”

Jack paused, then spoke carefully.

“Daniel had a face injury-“

“His jaw, his tongue, and half his face were blown off!” Molly snapped out.

Helen gasped, and Gary was almost in tears - at the tension as much as the disclosures.

Jack sighed, and continued “He couldn’t eat. We fed him soup, and gruel, and whatever we could make soft enough to get down.”

Molly sobbed out “They said it was a miracle he hadn’t died of an infection – they said we should pray to God to give thanks he was returned to us!” The last was almost spat out.

Helen was silent at this. She saw the church as an inspiration in her struggle, and had wondered why her mother seemed to attend so grudgingly, and to only tolerate her enthusiasm.

She started at another thought, and asked “Who fed him?”

Their parents glanced at each other, and Jack continued “We both did. I was the only cobber left who would have anything to do with him.”

Molly spoke as she returned to the table “Daniel had changed. The boy who was the life of the town was gone, and all that was left was a raging tyrant who would fly off the handle without any reason we could see – a tyrant who would cry himself to sleep and then scream with the pain and nightmares when he was asleep.”

Jack added “One small part of the problem was that he couldn’t speak properly, and he’d never learned to read and write well, just enough to get by, like. “

He nodded as his wife added “That’s why we’ve made sure you two get as much schooling as we can get you.”

Helen loved school and learning, and was grateful for it even if her brother was too foolish to recognise what he had been gifted with, but she was still feeling substantially on very shaky moral ground.

“So did you and Da ... become sweethearts while you were looking after him?”

Gary was shocked – were they suggesting being unfaithful? He’d heard of such a thing, and he and some of the lads had thrown stones on the roof of a widow who was supposed to be open to such things.

“No, we were quite proper. Nothing happened until a decent time after Daniel had been buried. … He starved to death, they say – we couldn’t get enough of what he needed down his throat.” Although not knowing the efforts being made in other places to discover and isolate “vitamines”, she shook her head and added “I don’t think the doctors ever really knew what he needed.”

She glanced at Jack, and continued “But I think what really killed him was having his heart torn out at Spion Kop. He’d written, of course, and even through the bravado and the censorship I knew he was unhappy with how the war was being fought – terribly, terribly unhappy.” She paused to take a few breaths, and stood, fists clenched, the spoon now a rifle en guard, and continued. “Do you know, Gary, Helen, what the British did to women and children? Do you? They locked those innocents up in appalling conditions – and watched, while they starved to death – HUNDREDS of them. Women and children! We watched Danny become a living skeleton, him knowing what was happening, and he’d seen the British do that to women and children, and it tore him apart!”

She shook her head, laid her spoon down, and paused to take a few more breaths before continuing “It’s a horrible death, to die by starvation. It leads to … other diseases, and robs the body of every dignity. Six months after Daniel died, his father died – of a broken heart, though the doctors wrote pneumonia on the Death Certificate. Pneumonia – here, in this half desert of a place. Since he had no other family left, he left the farm to me.”

Jack started “Daniel had even asked us to-“, but stopped at Molly’s small shake of her head, almost imperceptible in the gloom. Suicide, let alone euthanasia, was a moral bridge too far, even for their progressive souls, and their children were nowhere near being ready to consider such things.

Helen thought, as her world shattered, disappearing into the gloom and dark dancing round the walls of the lamp lit room. She didn’t know what to grapple with first, so she chose the last, as it was freshest, and maybe easiest. Her conscience fidgeting uncomfortable, Helen almost whimpered “Ma, did they really do that?”

Their Da answered “Yes, children, it’s true – and known to many in this town, and through the Empire, in fact. Women and children, innocents all, taken away from home and hearth, put behind barbed wire, and left to starve if they couldn’t fend for themselves. ” It wasn’t quite right, being a bit of a simplification, but it was all he knew, and conveyed the horror ably enough.

Helen, tears of horror at the atrocity and shock and the learning of it, continued “How could they do that … to women, and ... and ... to children – and they’re British?”

Molly shook her head, and Jack answered for her.

“It’s hard to say. Your young father at our church would most like talk of the struggle with evil, with the temptations of the devil. I’m not so sure. Maybe there are flaws in men, maybe there are weaknesses in some which lead to them doing evil.”

“Hah!” spat Molly.

“Molly, you well know that the young Tommies were out of their depth in that war – in that whole colony.”

“It’s not just them – you heard our son – our son! – saying-“ and she fled again to her bedroom.

Jack sighed: “This is hard for your mother. She lost someone she loved to a war, and she hates all violence in consequence. Gary, you talking about teaching people ‘lessons’ through war has upset her. We wound up together as a result, and some in the town looked askance at that. Others aren’t too happy at what they see as your mother’s lack of patriotism. You, young Helen, will be tarred by the same brush in some eyes. You’re young, you’ve the enthusiasm of youth – and the one sightedness.” Unconsciously ironic, he added “You may not see this yet.”

He looked from one to the other, and automatically adjusted a lamp wick with barely a glance.

“Your young friend Clive … his family isn’t tainted by any of this sort of history. I can see, Helen, how you’ve been influenced by your mother, and I can see why she has the beliefs she does – I even share some of them, and view most of the rest with some favour myself, but where he gets his ideas from … I don’t know.”

Helen held her chin up, and with some pride said, “Maybe he’s just a decent man.”

“Then God forbid he should ever go to war, lest the indecency of war drown his!”

She was silent.

“Da.”

“Yes, Gary.”

“Weren’t the Boers … weren’t they …”

“What?” He continued in a kindly tone “Spit it out boy.”

“Didn’t the Boers fight without honour?”

Jack replied softly “There’s not much honour on either side in war, boy.” He reflected for a moment, and continued. “Daniel told us about Spion Kop. The way he told it, the Boers fought cleverly – fought, well, like demons defending their land, he said.”

Jack shook his head, and whispered, mostly to himself “Said! He had to try to write everything. He learned that mostly after he got back, in a few hours of extra hell every day for a few weeks.” He tilted his head, and reflected “The learning helped for a while, but the pain and hunger claimed him back again soon enough.”

After a few moments, he added. “Daniel said the Empire was let down by some of its officers. Our soldiers fought bravely, but they went into a situation as bad – or worse – as that of the Light Brigade at Balaclava.”

He looked thoughtfully at each of his children.

“It’s late, and we’ve talked about much.” He smiled, “Finish your tea, and then time for bed – and I don’t want to hear any nightmares tonight!”

They were hungry enough to eat quickly anyway, as their father finished serving their sparse repast, and obeyed the command to go to bed without any protest: Helen to her room, until a few years ago shared with her young brother, and Gary to his bed in the corner of the main room. As he settled down, he comforted himself with the thought that he would fare differently – he wouldn’t be caught out by any Boer or any German; he would be too brave for that to happen.

3

Some months later, after the harvest had been gathered, he wasn’t so sure of his courage.

He was watching Clive and Helen try to talk to the Shire Chairman at the town’s annual show. This was nothing like the big city shows, but it drew the farming folk from the region – and a few of the now rare aboriginals, dispossessed and oft despised in what had been their own land, although Helen know nothing of their presence - nor their history. What she did know was that their show had a vibrancy and excitement of rare human contact that gave even the dust an energy the more sophisticated city shows lacked. There were a few simple rides and entertainment stalls, but the main focus was on the livestock and produce on the co-opted oval, normally used for cricket and football, and the few sheds nearby.

Gary was lurking near the corner of one of the sheds, trying to hide in the dust and milling people. He had grudgingly agreed to come along as moral support as the two, now acknowledged as sweethearts, tried to talk to Chairman into either supporting some “agricultural trials” or allowing a woman onto the Shire Council – the two young idealists, in the bloom of first love, cared little which got up first, as long as the Shire became, in their love-struck eyes, more modern. As he tried to edge a little further away– and prayed that he was invisible if he wasn’t far enough away to get lost in the dust and confusion and smells - the two were trying every high sounding moral argument they knew of to convince the pragmatic and politically skilled man. So, long before distant America’s dustbowl, the far sighted two talked - but against such a wily old fox that they had little chance on the agriculture and, so close after women had gained the vote, little chance of more gain for the ‘fairer sex’.

Helen was trying “Elizabeth was Queen at a time when the Spaniards were trying to invade: if it hadn’t been for her leadership, the Empire would be speaking Spanish.”

“Yes, well that was a long time ago. We’ve now settled into ways that have taken the Empire well beyond the borders of good old England – and further than we ever could have under the Spanish” he chuckled. More sombrely, he continued “Are you unhappy with our good King and all that he is doing for our glorious Empire?”

“N-no, of course not”, stammered Clive. “We’re loyal citizens of the Empire – that goes without saying, naturally.”

Helen could see through this argument, and resolved to speak to Clive about being duped by irrelevancies - later. “But the principle of leadership by women being beneficial for the Empire was established by Queen Elizabeth. That principle still stands today.”

“Ah well, young lady, unfortunately it doesn’t. When you have some more life experience, you’ll see. When you marry – and that could maybe even be to this young man here with you – you’ll find you want to keep a house for your husband, and you’ll see that as the highest duty and honour of any woman.”

She flushed, and the Chairman furthered his advantage.

He turned to Clive. “Well, young man, I hear your oldest brother has joined the navy. Off to do his bit for the Empire against the Kaiser when war comes – good on him!”

Clive, who had listened to his brother as he worked through ever more half-baked schemes to escape the Shire and what he saw as it’s backwardness, replied “No”, and cut himself off. He and Helen had agreed to try not to get the Shire Chairman off side, and Clive was, in any case, reluctant to talk about such personal matters to people who weren’t family.

“Come, come – of course he has! Why, I saw him talking to young Ferguson’s lad just the week he left. We all know how loyal Ferguson is to the Crown – and Ferguson quite clearly told the town he intends to be ready to do his bit when war comes.”

This was true – Clive’s brother had talked to Andrew Ferguson, and then Clive had heard his brother mumbling about half-wits who had never had an independent thought and wanted nothing better than go and kill people.

“Now, you young people have had enough of my time. I must attend to my duties as Chairman of this Shire.”

A few moments later, disheartened, Clive turned from the Chairman’s departing back to Helen. “Well, that didn’t work.”

“Nonsense – it took the suffragettes years before they won, and some of them had to die first.”

“You want some of us to die?”

“No – of course not.”

Clive smiled at her “We could always sacrifice our most loyal supporter, your younger brother looking at that automobile with what our local Father would say is unseemly desire.”

Against her mood, Helen laughed. She turned back to Clive. “Well proposed, sir. But, in the meantime, I will plan and plot my best to free all women from drudgery while I wash my future sacrifice’s clothes.” Feigning a sweet innocence, she continued “After all, some day I may wish to marry, and such duties shall become my greatest desire.”

At this stage, Gary judged from the laughter that it was safe to re-join his friend and sister. “Sorry – old Brown wanted me to look at his automobile. Ended well, did it?”

Mr Brown was the car’s owner, a severe, elderly gentleman who believed children should be seen and never heard, who had been 200 feet away from his car, looking at some stock which were for sale, while Gary had been examining his car. If Mr Brown had seen anyone under 30 years old within ten feet of his new pride and joy, he would have stormed over waving his cane and fuming at their impertinence.

Clive looked at him solemnly, and replied “We’ve decided, on the advice of the Shire Chairman, that we should sacrifice a supporter or two.”

While Helen giggled into a handkerchief, Gary said “Er …” and started to edge away. What had his mad sister and his equally mad cobber got themselves into now?

Helen saved him “It’s alright, Gary. He didn’t really – but we do have some more to plan on our campaign, and we really must meet to prepare our next steps.”

At this, Clive interjected “But not today. Today, I shall escort you around this Great Annual Event, while we allow Gary here to escape into whatever mischief he may find.”

Gary protested so vehemently that he wouldn’t find any such thing, that Helen’s protest at wasting time died on her lips, drowned in laughter, and she agreed.

The hot day passed pleasantly for the three, and contentedly they went their various ways as dusk claimed the show for another year.

4

A few months later, Clive started an iron working apprenticeship, and had little time for planning and plotting with Helen – though they eagerly sought every chance to call on each other. It seemed little would happen for either’s plans for changing the world, until one slightly cooler, clearer day in what passed for ‘winter’ in their hot, dry and dusty town.

Clive was sweeping the shop floor when he heard an automobile passing along the street. He paused to watch this rare, fascinating, strange, noisy machine, it’s smoke almost hidden by the dust stirred by its wheels from the gravel road. As he watched, the driver looked in his direction, slowed and then stopped in front of the shop.

“Yer not here to learn ‘ow to stare – get on wi’ yer work” grumbled Clive’s master as he stumped out to the car’s driver.

As Clive resumed his sweeping, and prepared to clean some tools, he contrived a glance or two, and surmised that the car driver wanted some ironwork repaired - for a wrought iron gate, it looked like.

“Hey! Boy!”

Clive glanced up at his master.

“The gentleman wants a word with you.”

Clive placed his broom against the wall with the extreme care born of nervousness, and emerged from the dark heat of the cave-like shop to the bright warmth outside, brushing his hands on his worker’s apron as his perpetually unhappy master steamed back into the shop, carrying the lump of iron as if it were no more than a paperweight.

“Yes, sir?”

The driver had removed his driving goggles, and looked appraisingly at the young apprentice. He nodded at his car, and asked “What do you think of her?”

‘She’ has an open, four seater with a low windscreen, a Stanley Steamer, rather than one of the noisier petrol driven cars, or the electric cars which were to be also found in the big cities. Built using high class carriage skills, she was narrow, but surprisingly comfortable, albeit so quiet pedestrians had to be warned by the car’s whistle.

“Very impressive, sir.”

The driver half smiled, and said “I see your master has schooled you well in manners to your customers.”

“Yes sir.” Then, wishing to do justice where it was due, Clive added “My parents also taught me manners in a general sense, sir.”

“Our Shire Chairman seems to think you tend towards being a bit of an upstart.”

Clive was silent: he hadn’t thought his and Helen’s approach would come back to haunt him later.

The driver smiled openly, and said “It’s alright, young lad, I’m Patrick Fitzgerald’s uncle – your former teacher’s uncle.”

Clive sighed as he relaxed, but he was still puzzled.

“Patrick’s – I suppose I should say Mr Fitzgerald in your presence. Well, Mr Fitzgerald has told me of your plans to try a more natural way of growing crops, of trying to save the soil. Now, it just so happens that I have some land up here – in fact, I was the downwind beneficiary of Mr McGuire’s misfortunes which I understand you’ve used as an example of poor soil management.”

Clive’s ears started burning, and he resolved to leave names out when he was talking in future, but he nodded.

“Now, I’m planning on developing the land I have up here for a new Contract I have secured with the army for wheat. I’ll be back next spring to oversee the sowing.”

Clive nodded, wondering where this was leading.

The driver continued: “Some in the army are interested in modern developments which may be of benefit to it in all matters, including provisioning, so I am proposing to conduct a number of scientific trials into various ways of growing crops to determine what methods are truly of greatest effect.”

The driver stared, intense and stern, at Clive.

“I am a great believer in the benefit of modern scientific method – indeed, my passion for this is what led Patrick into a career as a teacher, so he could pass our mutual passion on to future generations.

“It is my opinion, young man, that you have been somewhat unsuccessful in your efforts to date because you have failed to combine your passion with due regard for scientific method.

“However, despite that, I am prepared to include your proposals as one of my trials when I come back in the spring.”

At that, the driver smiled, as did Clive when his nervous brain realised he had had a win.

“You’ll have to continue your apprenticeship, of course, young man. An honourable trade is a fine way to train and occupy the mind, and young lads of your age are impressionable, but in due course I’d see you being a part of this work – but only after you’ve done your duty here by discharging your apprenticeship.”

He paused, gazing intently at Clive – who felt his soul was being examined from within its innermost recesses by this unnervingly knowing stranger.

“I’ll have my foreman attend your parent’s house from time to time to discuss this matter – if that is agreeable to you, of course?”

“Y-yes, sir – oh most definitely, sir!”

The driver smiled: “Very well. I shall have young Pat-er, Mr Fitzgerald call on your parents to make the necessary arrangements. Good day to you, young esquire.”

The driver carefully settled his goggles into place, realighted his vehicle, and meticulously began the somewhat complicated procedure for starting it. Clive would have happily wound the starting crank if the car had had one, but that was one of the benefits of steam - at least, until electric start, and a benefit that had to be weighed against disadvantages.

After a few minutes, the car slipped silently away.

For the rest of the day, his master found Clive a most unsatisfactory apprentice. They came close to words, and both were glad when the time came for Clive to be dismissed for the day. Eagerly, he ran through the dusk to find Helen, as she was leaving her afternoon’s work in the garden for the verandah, carrying freshly picked vegetables for their evening meal.

“Helen! Helen! Oh – it’s just so wonderful!”

“What is?”

Words tumbling over each, he explained the miracle of philanthropy which had come his way. Helen was pleased for Clive, but he could see there was an element of sadness there as well.

“Helen: you are my sweetheart. It’s right and proper that we share our thoughts. I can see you’re unhappy at something: what is it?”

“Oh Clive, I don’t wish to take away from your happiness today, but I was just wishing some such benefactor might look my way, and have a care for my aims for the world.”

Clive did feel deflated, but he hid it, and sought to comfort Helen as best he could.

“Maybe-“

“No, my sweet, don’t say anything. If by some miracle, some act of philanthropic care comes the way of women, I hope to be alive to see it, but I’ll not hold any hope against that miracle. Let us think for now on your success.”

The rest of their brief time together, marked by behaviour that in a few decades would be considered unbelievably restrained, was a time of pleasure, and dreams, and certainty that this good fortune would come to be.

But it would not.

As spring prepared itself in Clive and Helen’s land, on the other side of the world, in a distant autumn, a prince was assassinated, and the guns of August began their slavering feast.

5

Clive was enthused with eagerness for the coming crop trial, but the pressure to join the army was intense – especially from his master. Ferguson had joined first, but that was only because some of his henchmen had held others back to allow Andrew that ‘honour’. Finally, believing the claims that they would beat the Boche and be home by Christmas, Clive consented to join – if his master would consent to release him. That release came even quicker than the foul temper.

Helen cried and refused to be comforted when he told her, and she wouldn’t say why. She could recall the story her parents had told her, but she could also see the machinations of Clive’s former master and the Shire Chairman and his allies, and declined to expose Clive to doubts – after all, everyone was so sure this would be over by Christmas.

Clive had no way of contacting Mr Fitzgerald’s uncle: he tried to get to see his former teacher, but the town’s mad desire to be seen to be supporting England and ‘The Glorious Empire’ swept the best of the town’s lad on to a train in an almost indecent haste. It would matter little, though, as even the foreman who was to speak to Clive had volunteered, and Fitzgerald’s uncle would be forced to hire McGuire, with his ways so wasteful of soil, to fulfil the now urgent contract with the Army.

After the dust from the haste settled, a prescient letter, mailed before the assassination, came from Clive’s older brother. In it, he urged caution and patience, for the Hun was going to be a fiercer foe than many knew or cared to admit.

Clive didn’t find this out for some time: a broken leg followed by illness meant he missed the horrors of Gallipoli, and it was in a hospital in Egypt that the letter, by now old news, caught up with him. Clive first found himself in action on the Western Front. It wasn’t the action he had expected, though – days spent mostly cowering in mud or dugouts trying to live through bombardments. They all got used to everything being cold and dreary – grey sky with an insipid shade of a sun, not the bright searing Sun he had grown and lived under, grey muck for food, grey mud - rich smelling and thick, grey corpses, and the occasional bit of blood providing a macabre, mocking relief from the dreariness, as if to say “You’re here for me – for the blood and hue and cry of battle, so I’ll rob you of all other colour so you can see and appreciate me all the more”.

Clive smelt and saw the richness of the soil, and marvelled: before it had been torn to shreds, this land would have been a joy to farm – and the plentiful rain and green plants held the soil most wonderfully. When he was travelling on troop trains he saw some of what could be achieved, but, in Europe to serve, his time was divided between cities, trains and the torn up goop of the front. It was the smell he noticed most when going back to the front –the stink of the rich mud, a source of life-giving nutrients coming from decayed life, blended with the stench of death itself - rotting corpses, human, horse and the occasional dog, all of which created fear of a future nightmare of guilt to be triggered, he mused, by every post-war use or even whiff of blood-and-bone fertiliser – if he lived long enough to get home. For now, the lead-tainted fertility of the land would become renowned for flowers, especially the poppy, rather than crops …

At the front, a zone many miles deep across its whole width, he experienced some patrolling, but was spared major attacks for a while. Despite that, in time their numbers grew thinner, and then the ranks would be filled with new recruits and the cycle would begin again.

During this time came a time he thought afterwards of as “The Day”. A pre-dawn patrol was returning in the early light. The last man was shot, and fell into a shell hole near to their trench, a hole that was covered by a German machine gun. He was alive – they could see him, if they were careful, from the firing step of the trench, but they could not get to him. He had screamed when he was hit, and then fallen silent. They thought him dead, but after a half an hour, they heard moans. A few minutes more, and he was screaming with the pain: that was when they found they could see him.

There was half a company in that section of the trench, and some of them hesitantly started talking about what to do.

“Nothing. You will leaf him there, or throw a grenade and finish heem – the quicker the better.” The speaker was a grizzled French veteran, there partly by accident, partly to ‘liaise’. That was the official euphemism for having him there, ostensibly to teach them the new French ‘infiltration’ techniques.

He’d left Clive unnerved the night before. A piece of timber had been dislodged by the nightly bombardment as they sheltered in their dugout, and it had struck Clive on the head. When he swore, the French veteran had taken his cigarette out of his mouth, and laid it on his arm, waiting without flinching while it burned to the end. Then the Frenchman had smiled grimly, and said “You think that little steek hurt? You wait till you get shot, boy. You find that little bit of metal – you know how hot your gun gets? The bullet is hotter – you wait till it hits you, and burns its way through your guts.”

At that, the veteran stood, and lifted his coat and shirt to show the scars in his side.

“You think that stick hurts, eh? Maybe you think that cig-a-reet hurts? No? You wait till you get shot, boy! Then you know what hurts!”

Clive glanced at a few men who had returned from wounds, mostly shrapnel, but some shot. Most ignored him, one looked back and nodded in agreement with the veteran’s words. “I wouldn’t have put it quite that way, cobber, but he’s right enough – it hurts like all hell!”

And now Clive was looking at it.

He could see the fallen man – his mates called him Whitey – writhing, trying to get comfortable, trying to ease the pain, able to move but not to stand. As he moved he would sometimes scream, sometimes sob. At times he would scream for them to come and get him.

Around mid-morning, he begged for water. Their lieutenants had come by now; they shook their heads. They all knew he could be wounded in the belly, and that meant no water. One shouted back to him: “Cobber! We can’t get to you yet, mate – you’ve got to hang in till nightfall! And we can’t give you any water – you know the drill!”

At that, Whitey had screamed curses on them and called their mothers all sorts of insults.

It made it harder when it was like this, when they couldn’t get to him.

Around midday, the trapped soldier Whitey started to sound like he was going insane. He started to talk to his parents as if they were there, and then he started to bargain with God. He said he wouldn’t go out on that patrol last night, if God would take away the pain. He even promised, at one stage, to go and talk to Kaiser Bill himself, and tell him whatever God wanted, if only God would let him be comfortable for just one damn minute. He screamed with pain and writhed in that slow way he had after that, and then he apologised to God for swearing.

Clive avoided all eye contact – hard to do, in a trench, but he knew they would share the same haunted horror he felt. Afterwards, he thought if they had made eye contact, maybe they would have seen the horror in the new young recruit in last week’s batch of replacement cannon fodder, seen him reach breaking point.

“If you bastards won’t do anything, then I will!”

And he was gone, over the edge, straight into a sharp burst from the German gun, and straight into the same shell hole, to join his anguished, frenetic screams to Whitey’s. He went straight to begging for someone – anyone – to stop it hurting.

And now the French veteran handed a grenade to one of the lieutenants.

“You know what you haf to do.”

Without a word, the officer took the grenade, herded a soldier from the firing trench lookout, sighted, pulled the pin, and threw. Moments later, after the blast, all was silent. It seemed that even the far away guns had fallen silent in horror, but that was just a moment’s deafness brought on by the blast – and the relief. The guns had seen too much horror for this small side show to have any impact.

The next day, Clive experienced making his first moderate sized attack. They were trying the new French tactics of infiltration in small numbers – new, raw ideas which would later become almost universal, but at that time still full of flaws and misunderstandings. It wasn’t a large attack – two battalions aiming to knock out an observation post used to direct artillery bombardments, and then withdraw before the inevitable counterattack. The aim was to take some of the sting out of the bombardments, while trying out the new tactics.

He thought he’d experienced the limits of fear - until that attack. He didn’t talk to anyone else – they were all too tense to talk much, except for a few of the new replacements who were too nervous to shut up. There was no heroic climb out and advance across no-man’s land: it was strange, like a big, coordinated patrol. To a timetable, their officers directed them to move out, or to provide support, in groups of a platoon or two – scores rather than hundreds, as the barrage thumped the air and earth, a barrage like a living thing made insane by what it was doing, playfully grasping his chest with each concussion, saying “I am here”, playfully tripping his feet as it rolled the earth, saying “See? Nowhere to hide!”.

There was no line abreast advance this time: they found gaps in their own wires, and crawled through the shell holes, past the stinking corpses of those who had fallen recently, and the scattered, macerated bone fragments of those who had fallen some time ago, bones and flesh decaying and adding that terrible blood and bone fertiliser to the already rich land, a land to finish the war blessed with richness and cursed with lost shells, ghosts and horrors known and unknown. Carefully, they moved up to their enemy’s wire, to wait where they found gaps.

It was terrifying to get so close to the exploding shells – no matter that they were their own – without the shelter of even a trench. While sheltering in dugouts they could hear the explosions, and feel the ground shake, but the air didn’t punch at them the way this did. After an eternity of minutes, the barrage stopped – and they were up and scrambling desperately, praying to avoid getting snagged on any stray wire, or stumbling in any of the mud-glue, hoping against hope to get to the German trenches before the Huns could get out of their dugouts. They didn’t make it quite in time – the close coordination needed for that would come later, and the Huns were back in their trenches, firing and raining grenades as Clive’s unit laboured through the mud and shell holes of the last score of yards.

Clive could hear the bullets, but he could also hear his cobbers – and he wasn’t going to have the humiliation of not being there with them. It could be called a courageous advance: it could also be called sticking to the cloud of silently shared fear round you and your mates so you weren’t alone with your own, unshared fear.

At one stage, two men, one on each side of him, fell; heart in mouth, he waited for the punch and burning pain, but it didn’t come. And then he was on the enemy trenches. A man was looking up at him, anger hiding any fear he might have had, and swinging his rifle towards Clive. Clive’s rifle was closer, and – still afraid of that punch and burning pain – he shot first. And then the rage and horror of the previous day took over, and he was killing, shooting and bayoneting, whether they were looking at him or not. The last German he shot had just split open the Frenchman’s head with a trenching shovel. After Clive shot, the German fell silently onto the still screaming Frenchman, and they made a pile of gore, enemies united in horror, blood seeping into the rich mud, reflecting the tangle their comrades and nations were making throughout these fields.

Later, the Frenchman would be missed: he spoke a different language, and his English was scarred by a thick accent, but he had shared the diggers love of cards, humour, booze and women; of life.

Their officers were shouting now, and they set up a defence while the artillery post’s equipment was destroyed. Five minutes, and they were taking rifle fire; ten, and a machine gun had been moved and was spraying their left flank – on the other side from Clive’s platoon. The barrage would be coming soon, and after that the counterattack.

The orders now were to withdraw. According to the officers report that night, the withdrawal went well: ‘only’ ten men died in that part of the operation, and another twenty had wounds of some sort. Clive was one of those – as he slid into the trench, he felt a burning slice along his calf. It was a relief really – it wasn’t too bad, and he felt like he’d built up a store of waiting bad luck, and it had just been bled out with a cut from a modern lead version of the sword of Damocles.

He even took little notice of the body which came in behind him as he slid into the trench – actually, the body flew across the trench, raining blood, and slid down into an impossible heap of limbs and twisted torso on the other side.

It was only later that he was told that the last body had stumbled and taken “his” burst of machine gun fire: if it hadn’t been for that chance, he would have taken a dozen bullets in full, not a minor graze.

Later, as he ate some lukewarm gruel at the first aid centre, he realised the first man he killed had been the first German he had seen close up, after weeks of bombardments and firing at scurrying shades of grey in the hills and holes of the grey muck of No-Man’s Land. The man hadn’t looked evil – he’d looked the same as Clive saw himself when shaving: fear and horror, locked up inside something else.

The next day, the artillery post was re-established.

6

After those two days, his letters to home changed. He’d written once a month to his parents, and another letter to Helen. They’d been optimistic, and reassuring: don’t worry about me, I’m OK, I’m here, and I’ll do my bit for King and Empire.

Now the horror had killed that. Helen felt a chill come over her as she read the letter he’d written after “The Day”. They hadn’t known the details, or that there was “The Day”; all they’d known was that there had been a long gap between letters, after which the letters all started getting tense – although they’d always had a tension over his struggles to survive anyway, just that it used to be better hidden.

“It was a fair day yesterday – four dead, two wounded, and we got some warm food. The ice is a bit much – and I don’t know if I should wish to still be here to see it melt in the spring. Then again, maybe we’ll all be lucky and there won’t be a spring. It feels like the world’s stuck in a bleak winter that won’t lift.”

The rest – or what hadn’t been blacked out by the censor’s heavy pen – was similar, and she chilled at the suicidal tinge behind the words. She pulled out his previous letter.

“We had a good hot feed last night – it makes a pleasant change from eating what we can get in the trenches. What you eat back home would seem like a feast to us.

The French winter is coming on us now. It’s colder than home by a long shot, so I’ve now been in the heat and dust and flies of Egypt, and soon the snow of Europe. It will be nice to enjoy the weather at home when I do get back – I’ll not complain about anything, even the dust storms.

We lost another six chaps from our company last night. It was amazing in a horrifying way: the concussion from a shell got them, but they had not a mark on them. It was quick: I hope if my time should come I will go as easily. I will still do my duty for the Empire, of course.

I won’t end this missive on such a sad note: I hope instead that you are well, and pray that you will pass on my good regards to your parents, and to young Gary.”

No farewells or good wishes this time. His previous good wishes were ironic: they were struggling, and life was the worst she could remember. Gary had given up school, and they were working their small patch of land – Gary grudgingly, as he wished to escape from mundane desperation to the “glorious” desperation of war - and any stray job they could find, but McGuire’s sales were going up. He was building a small empire, gobbling up small holdings as they went under – and doing all the damage that Clive had talked to her so eloquently about – even she could see it, and wondered how supposedly intelligent and skilful men could miss it. In the process, almost no-one wanted their produce when McGuire was undercutting them. Today was going to be the critical day for Helen’s family: today the Bank Manager had called them in to a meeting.

For a moment, she imagined that sitting in the cool, dark house must be a little like Clive and his comrades sharing their last moments of safety in their dugouts before going out into the harsh dangerous reality of warfare. She gave herself that luxury for a moment, and then chastised herself severely: her life was not at stake – she wasn’t going to risk death when she went out the door. It still felt terrible, though, and as she shut the gate she had to force herself to straighten her back and ignore the sniggers from the pack of young boys who made unfeeling fun of seeing a house led by a woman come to grief. She wished she could overcome her anguish and think quickly enough – and be calm enough and strong enough – to chastise the boys and put them in their place, but all she could do was keep her back straight and pretend to not have heard them.

She had to clear her mind, and focus on the task at hand, she told herself. Gary was meeting her at the bank – hopefully with her mother, if she had been able to get some time off from her scullery maid work. Her father wouldn’t be there: they’d talked over the previous nights, and decided that him keeping his job at the smithy’s was more important than trying to create an illusion for the bank that everything was well and the family was united and confident. They had no illusions that they were not going to be kicked out, and had already found another house, in the town itself, to live in.

At least their small holding had the house close to the public road, so they could gather their few possessions fairly easily, and the humiliating journey would not be too long.

Ah, the bank, with its obligatory public institution façade, trying to look noble despite the tendrils of red dust. Gary was leaning sullenly against one of the columns, a column that was –as with the rest of the exterior – a poor copy of the riches of Bendigo and Melbourne’s buildings, and their mother was fanning herself in the shade of the verandah.

“Hello.”

“Hello dear. ... Gary!”

Prompted by their mother, Gary grunted something which could have been hello, or equally, could have been the number of dogs he’d passed on the way there. Helen and her mother decided to take it as the former.

“Alright, let’s get this done” declared their mother. At that they strode in, backs straight and heads proud and up – Helen and her mother, with Gary scuffing along in their wake. They sailed serenely through the cool, dark interior, panelled with rich timbers, to the counter, with its panes of frosted glass and frosty tellers.

“Good morning, young lady, would you please be so kind as to tell Mr Whitehead that the Sutton family is here to see him.”

The “young lady” wasn’t fooled by their bravado – she’d seen that before, and would come to see it even more in the decades to come. She politely, but without any friendliness, asked them to wait, and went to tell Mr Whitehead that his next victims were here.

After a few minutes wait – exactly the right length of time to ensure they knew they were not royalty – Mr Whitehead strode to the counter, opened the access panel with a thud, and smiled and gestured for them to enter. As they did, and all walked to the Manager’s office, “Thank you most kindly, Mrs Sutton for being so kind as to come in. Er, I see your husband – Jack, I believe? - has not arrived yet?”

“No, Mr Whitehead, Mr Sutton is engaged at work, and unable to spare any time.”

“Hmm. I had rather expected your husband to be present. The matters of this meeting are of considerable importance, and, frankly, may in fact be beyond the constitution of a woman to bear.”

Helen and – to his credit - Gary bristled at the public insult, but they had been well prepared, and held their tongues.

“My husband has every confidence in me, Mr Whitehead, and has vested in me the authority to act on our entire family’s behalf in this meeting.”

“Hm.”

“Do you wish to dispute my husband’s authority within his family?”

“No, no – of course not!” Irritation at being outmanoeuvred flickered across his face. Never mind – the meeting was not yet properly underway.

He paused outside the office, and made a show of conducting them in. There never had been any doubt about whether he would accept the authority of whoever was there – none of them had any authority, and he knew what was going to happen, just as had happened to others as McGuire built his empire and squeezed them out.

After he, Helen and her mother were seated, with Gary standing protectively behind them, he began.

“I’m glad you’ve come in Mrs Sutton, as we have noticed some irregularity in the subject of your payments on your mortgage. Perhaps you would be most kind as to explain the matter of this ah, apparent ... problem to me ... please?”

“Mr Whitehead, I’ll save us all some time. As you know, Mr McGuire has been doing exceptionally well with his recent ventures, and sales of our produce have not been favoured. We cannot compete with his prices, despite having better produce. As a consequence, our income has declined.”

“Mrs Sutton, I am afraid this leaves me in a position of, to not be too indelicate, some difficulty. I am in the situation of being accountable to my superiors, and, being somewhat distracted by the terrible events in Europe, they are somewhat disinclined to pay much more than cursory attention to matters in our little village. I am dealt with somewhat peremptorily, and given not much flexibility in these matters.”

None of Helen’s family believed a word he was saying: his ambition and desire to climb on the image of being hard was legendary. Other towns were blessed with bank managers who saw themselves as agents of help or maybe even change for the better, and fought tenaciously for their customers: the Suttons had had the misfortune to live in a town with a martinet for a manager.

“Mr Whitehead, my husband and I have both taken other employment, as has our daughter and our son.”

“But Mrs Sutton, when do you work your land?”

“In the evenings, and the mornings.”

The manager paused – and Helen’s family vainly hoped they had impressed him with their frugality and thrift and simple genuine hard work. “I am sure that is quite admirable, but it is somewhat arguable as to whether it is in the Bank’s best interests to accept your pleadings and give you yet more leniency. You have been somewhat remiss for some time.”

“Mr Whitehead, we have been no worse than others in other towns, and considerably better than many.”

His eyes narrowed, displeased at having been so directly confronted.

“Mrs Sutton, I can assure you I am in touch with our other branches, and in fact, your situation is amongst some of our worst debts.”

More barefaced lies, they knew, but the bush telegraph was hardly going to be given credence in this plush room.

“I really do feel it was most unfortunate that your husband didn’t accompany you on this trip. I am sure he would have had the understanding of such matters that I have found the fairer sex”, with a poor attempt at an ingratiating smile, “to regrettably lack.”

“Mr Whitehead. I have managed our finances for all the years we have been together. I am not an idiot-“

“Mrs Sutton, I am sure you are a most capable woman in your affairs-“

“Sir! I am indeed quite capable in my family’s financial matters.”

“Madam: please do not bring an element of ill-will to this meeting, which has been, I am sure you would agree has been most civilised and pleasantly conducted to date, by interrupting me.”

“Sir, kindly do not patronise me.”

“Mrs Sutton, I would enjoin you to please be aware of your place in our society - your God-given role is vital, but women are simply incapable of truly understanding such matters no matter how much they feel they do!”

They didn’t know the word psychopath – but they did know the manager was getting considerable pleasure from their pain, and from hiding the threats behind a façade of civility. They were still fighting to survive, however, so held their tongues – Helen and her mother knowing full well that, like bullies and baiters throughout history and in all societies, he would relish and feed on their pain and fine tune the savagery and subtlety of his attack in response to their reactions.

Gary held his tongue because he had been well briefed – and he wanted to be able to join up without any questionable charges from having indulged in fisticuffs with one of the town’s major officials.

“Mr Whitehead, I suggest you send a message to my husband’s workplace, and have my husband asked for the truth of this matter.”

She had called his bluff. Irritated, he decided to end the matter.

“Mrs Sutton, I am not prepared to send vital resources of this bank on such errands – and it regrettably matters not, as your family is in such a difficult situation on the matter of payments for your farm that I have been instructed to foreclose on the mortgage today – immediately. I am most sorry, but I will have to declare you as defaulters.”

They’d lost – and there was little point fighting the war of words further. If they kept him on side, perhaps they would get some leniency on the time they had to move out.

“Very well, Mr Whitehead, so be it.”

“I have taken the liberty of having the appropriate forms drawn up in case of such an eventuality. Unfortunately, Mrs Sutton, I will have to obtain your husband’s signature on these forms.”

She knew this was true.

“Very well, Mr Whitehead.”

“I have some staff who are in a position to begin the process of taking possession of your farm immediately. I am sure you would not wish to prolong this unpleasant matter any longer than is necessary.”

“Mr Whitehead! Are we to be allowed the decency of obtaining our possessions? You must be aware that you are not entitled to everything – or do you wish women and children to be turned out onto the street without so much as a decent change of clothes?”

This wasn’t quite true: they had moved some of their most treasured possessions already.

“Of course, Mrs Sutton. I will arrange some men to escort you to ensure you are able to recover your possessions, as you may be entitled to, in safety and decency.”

So they were to have a guard to make sure they didn’t sneak off with any implements.

The rest of the day was as unpleasant as they had expected. The escort took them out of the bank, past some of the bank’s “valuable resources” – young boys scratching, yawning and tittering with a pretence of being quiet about it, already apprentices to their master’s underhanded viciousness. As they all marched through their gate the boys were there at the gate, unhindered in their remarks by their guard, until Helen’s mother silenced them and sent them on their with a few well-chosen remarks, finished with a comment about calling the police with regard to vagrancy and loitering.

Helen was almost in tears, wondering how a loving God could allow such bullying and abuse of authority – was she really meant to turn the other cheek to this evil manipulation? As she worked, she looked at the vacant expression of their guards, and realised that not all the abuse was deliberate. She had no doubts that Mr Whitehead was as evil as the Kaiser, and started to form a coldly furious determination to right this wrong.

After several hours of labouring in front of their guard, who had shown no inclination to lend a hand, they had moved to their new lodgings. It was late, and their father had helped after he had finished work. They were all exhausted, hungry and thirsty. As Helen and her mother quickly cooked some food, they heard a knock on the door.

Their father picked up a hammer before he went to the door – it had been a bad day, but none of them would put it beyond Mr Whitehead to do some more mischief, even at this late hour. As he opened it, he relaxed and asked, surprised, “Jim! What brings you here at this God-forsaken hour?”

Jim, one of Clive and Gary’s band of friends who had been returned because of his wounds, seemed distressed.

“May I come in?”

“Of course.”

He entered, and stood, head down, hat in hand, fidgeting.

Helen’s mother asked, with a sense of foreboding: “Jim, please tell us: what brings you here at this hour, on this, the most awful day of this most awful war?”

“I’m ... sorry – I’m sorry. The boys all thought I should be the one to tell you, and Miss Helen ...”

Helen paled.

Her father put his hand on Jim’s shoulder.

“It’s alright, lad. We don’t judge the bearer of the message.”

“I’m sorry, but Clive’s missing.”

Helen sobbed, and half fell before Gary caught her.

“But he could be a prisoner, couldn’t he?” asked Gary.

“He could be” Jim replied.

Helen’s father spoke again “Lad, we’d rather know the truth, hard though it may be.”

“I’m sorry. It was a major attack, and we already have the names of the prisoners the Huns have taken. Clive’s not amongst them. With the sort of bombardments that happen in those attacks, there’s not much chance.”

They gave Jim a drink, and shared reminiscences, and then bade him farewell into the night.

Helen had held her feelings in, but they would hear her weep that night. Gary was the bigger worry, though: he continued to say “Clive could still be alive.” Two days later he vanished, and a few days later they received a note saying he had enlisted.

7

They would get a few more notes as Gary completed his training. Then they heard he had been posted.

Some months later, after a passage on a crowded ship and yet more training, more intensive than they had had in Australia, Gary’s unit was marched to the front. It wasn’t much of a journey – marching through trenches and a confusion of movement with their view limited to a few yards ahead and behind, the occasional sound of a shell, and the occasional grim faced veteran, or perhaps a group of veterans. There was no laughter, no smiles, no sense of being welcomed – not even a sense of doing one’s duty. Just a grim faced survival that shook Gary’s fervour.

They knew they were at the front because they were told so. As they looked uncertainly at each other and their new temporary home, just a score of yards of trench, unable to see any of the field of conflict, not even sure where to drop their gear, a couple of shells exploded, one on each side of the trench. None of them heard the shells coming, but the shrapnel from each blast must have combined to deflect the violently burning, jagged piece of metal.

Quite by chance Gary had been looking at a soldier when his face was torn off and his stomach open by the fragment. The soldier’s screams, slurred through the disfigurement, didn’t make much sense for a while. Maybe, if the greenhorns hadn’t been there, some one would have ended it: maybe there was a hope that the doctors would be able to do something, but even if someone had been able to put the man back together again, contact with the slush of mud and muck would have poisoned his insides beyond all hope of recovery.

Gary found that out later: for the time being, all he could see was a stranger, a human being, dying and being driven insane by the pain while those around seemed to ignore him. Gary had not yet developed their protective barriers to horror.

A stretcher bearer arrived and looked at the unfortunate man, who was on his knees now, leaning back as if by balance and leverage to keep his intestines out of the poisonous gruel. The bearer also shook his head, and looked at a nearby sergeant, who inclined his head towards those of Gary’s company, and shook his head. It didn’t matter, blood loss and shock soon silenced the screams, and the stranger sank back further and died in the mud, no longer colourless.

It was about half an hour later someone noticed that the soldier sitting on the firing step was staring a little too fixedly: the same bursts that had killed the stranger so noisily had killed this soldier, quietly, instantly. No mutilation – just a small hole in the skull.

Gary was to see much of this arbitrary chance of war over the coming months. He found no signs of Clive, nor even any willingness to talk of the missing amongst the few surviving shared friends. Eventually, the desperate struggle to survive pushed aside his vain quest, and he pushed thoughts of his friend to the furthest reaches of his soul.

8

Helen would have pushed thoughts of Clive there as well, if she had been able. They stayed in their little home town for a few more weeks, but she was being haunted by thoughts of what her Clive could have done to make the town a better place. It was bad enough seeing what the greed of McGuire had done to the land around the town, but Ferguson had also returned – mildly injured, still a pain the backside, and all too willing to cash in on his new-claimed hero status.

She had the misfortune to have a run in with younger Ferguson just before they left for the city, where they were going to try for better work. She was tending the counter in Mrs Jones’ general store when he came in.

“Well, well, if it isn’t young Helen Sutton!”

“If you don’t mind, there’ll be not too much of the young and the familiarity, thank you Master Ferguson.”

“Now, now – don’t get uppity with me young Helen.”

“I’ll thank you, sir, not to treat me with such familiarity!”

“And I’ll thank you to mind your place there, behind the counter!”

“Andrew! Mind your manners, cobber – you’re talking to a woman!”

This last came from a slender figure who had just come in: Helen knew him as one of Ferguson’s pack, and was surprised to hear support from him, albeit delivered with a pronounced wheeze, as if struggling for air.

“Ah, no Don, this is-“

“Now a young lady. Speak to her as such. I know who she used to be, and I know who you and I used to be. Hold your tongue if you can’t speak a civil word!”

Ferguson glared at Don, who coughed a couple of times but stood proud and erect, and then Ferguson limped out, stamping his feet as best he could.

“I’m sorry, ma’am.”

“Don ... I would never have picked you as one to stand up to ... Andrew.”

“Well, I’ve changed” he replied, with a light cough and a wheeze.

Helen moved so she could see Don more clearly, and saw the tangle of scars leading across his jaw to where his ear had been.

“Turned my head at the right moment. If I hadn’t ... I heard about Clive. I’m sorry.”

“Yes. Gary went to look for him.”

“Any luck?”

She shook her head.

“I’m sorry to hear that, ma’am.”

She smiled, and said “You can call me Helen, you know – I don’t bite, and well, with the war, somehow some of the old rules seem ... silly.”

“Yes, that’s true. Reckon there’s quite a few things’ll never be the same.”

“And is that a good thing, Don, or bad?”

“Well, in the case of myself, apart from my ear, I’d say good. Seeing what we saw, hearing what we did, well ... it just makes the old ideas seem ... stupid. And I am embarrassed to think how I used to be such a bully.” He coughed again, more deeply.

“Well, we all survived that, Don.” Although the nightmares of Whitehead and their eviction were still too raw to be even acknowledged, let alone talked about.

He smiled, and then sighed. “I better go and find Andrew. Everyone can see the limp, but there’s a few other things not quite right with him, and he does need a bit of looking after. If it was just the leg, he’d have been back doing something.”

“And what of you, Don. Will you be going back?”

“No, apart from my ear, I’ve got a few other problems and have been declared unfit for duty.”

“You say that without the shame that other young men would.”

“I’ve seen more than those as would be ashamed of saying that.”

“And been blessed enough to learn from it.”

He nodded, “Aye, ma’am-Helen, that I have.”

“I hope Gary learns as well. Do you think that’s possible?” She searched his face for hope.

“I’m sorry, Helen, I can’t say one way or another.” He paused, coughed, and continued.

“I saw men who would be brilliant elsewhere, men who everyone thought would be great leaders, who fell to pieces – a cruel thing to see, when they would have been great anywhere else, while others .... well, I would have called myself mean-spirited before the war, and it changed me for the better. Left me scarred in many ways, but a better human being. I saw others who you would never have thought twice of who saved men, or turned an attack with their daring and courage.”

He looked at her, and added “But ma’am, I’ve seen your family, and I think you could well be surprised by what young Gary does with himself.”

As he turned to leave, Helen said “We’re going to the city soon – to look for work. I might come back from time to time. If I do, I’d care to look you up, Don.”

His face looked pained, and he paused at the door. “Helen, I would be pleased if you would do so. But don’t be surprised if I’m not to be found. Some of the other problems are damage inside, from gas, and my chances of seeing the year out aren’t the best. I’m sorry. I have to go Helen, I can hear Andrew getting into more trouble. It’s been a pleasure.”

“It has.”

That night she cried herself to sleep again – something her family had heard her do often in the last few months, and something they thought she was starting to get over.

9

Helen’s family had hoped the new start in the city would help her to move on, and it seemed to give her new focus, for a while at least.

She found, of all things, work in a munitions factory. She’d fought long and hard to find some other work, and thought of becoming a conscientious objector, but they needed the money, and fairly quickly she had relented.

It was a grey world, living in the city. She’d been there before, and admired the solemn, dignified Victorian architecture from the boom of the 90s. The people, she thought, looked dignified and stately. Now, she felt as if one of the dust storms from home, or the clouds of the moody, unpredictable weather here, had moved into her skull, and all she could see was dreary, dark and sombre.

But the grey cloud of the factory had a silver lining or two in store for her. All her life she had wanted women to have a modicum of independence, self-respect and enough respect to be able to take their place in this modern world. In her small, dusty home town, she had few fellow souls to share her dreams with – Clive, of course, but few others. Here, in this noisy, smelly factory, making the instruments of death being used so far away, she found some kindred spirits – women who were asserting themselves, women who wanted the world to grasp the tail of the currents of change and share the world with its so-called ‘fairer half’.

Occasionally she laughed at her thoughts – they were so like the pamphlets she, Mary and Clare so earnestly crafted, conjured out of their burgeoning free thinking. She often thought of one of Clare’s phrases, about people being shades on the path that history trod with the choice as to what shadows they would leave on history’s pages: she would occasionally stir Clare about history being more like a dust storm which covered those stuck in its path with its dirt.

Helen was smiling now, thinking of her friends as she curled into herself in the corner of the tram, comfortable on the wood slat seat, as she made her way to the factory. They shared their ideas – and Helen, with her determination and her experience, had much to share. Her friends were particularly touched by her awareness of the bullying that those in power could exercise, although Helen took pains to make sure they knew she didn’t know how best to deal with such abominable behaviour.

There it was: grey from head to toe, smoke indiscernible in the city smoke and coastal mist. There was a crowd of women milling round the entrance hall – one of those scenes where one knew movement was happening, but without being able to pick out any details.

As she alighted the tram, a surly man glared at her: for a moment she was taken aback, but then the man’s companion spoke “Never mind him, luv – he’s just sour ‘cos he can’t get a job, and the army’s been slow in takin’ ‘im on.” He winked, and continued “I reckon you’re all doin’ a wonderful job, helpin’ our boys stay over there .” The tram was moving away now, and he yelled back “I’ll be off in a week, too – I’ll think of you, miss!”

She stared at the tram. Which was worse – the hostility of a man seeing them as having taken a job he could have had, or the man who blindly related to what they were doing only in terms of what he – and other men - could do?

It was what would later be called a ‘no-win’ situation, and, in the moment, it was enough to bring tears to her eyes.

She was glad to see Mary and Clare waiting for her. They were anxious to know what had upset her, but they had no time to talk until their morning tea break. Then over steaming cups and sweet biscuits, she relayed the morning’s events, and was saddened when Clare missed the point and thought it was nice the second man had been supportive.

Mary, however, saw why Helen was concerned straight away.

“No, my sweet, he stood against the first one’s rudeness, true, but he was still seeing the work we do, and thus what we are … only in terms of the service it provides to men.”

“I don’t understand”, replied Clare. “We’re doing this because it supports the war, aren’t we?”

“In the short view, yes. There is, however, a bigger view where one may dare to hope that the work a woman does is valued for the same inherent value that any man’s labour has.”

Clare thought for a few minutes, sipping and nodding to herself, and then replied, cautiously “Well, I think I understand the issue, then. But mayn’t we appreciate the support of the nicer man along the way?”

She smiled, and Mary and Helen smiled back.

Mary was clever with words and ideas, but as they all trooped back to the factory floor, it was Clare who asked Helen “Any news of your young man, dear?”, and at her silent shake continued “No? Don’t worry – you’ll find him on your doorstep one day, just like my ma found my pa back from fighting the Boers without any news or warning.”

Helen smiled thinly back at her, and tried to let the thought comfort her as she went home - well, to the rented room that was hers for now. Home she still thought of as in the hotter, dustier plains she had come from, but the family was returning home for a few days for the annual show, and they had arranged a few days off – which was quite a miracle, she thought, and one that helped to offset the morning’s unpleasantness.

10

The next morning dawned surprisingly clear and was almost warm, and the long journey by train was almost pleasant. They were staying in a room at the pub – after bankruptcy, none of their former friends wanted to risk having them stay. Maybe those people feared a financial taint would drift off them – or maybe they just feared the bank knowing what sort of people they drew their friends from.

But the next day, the day of the show itself, was a pleasant day – even the dust was as settled as if Clive had been able to get the district to adopt his strange ideas. In the crowds, people were bolder, and Helen found she was able to chat happily with the people she knew. Don had indeed died, but she’d had some practice at hiding the pain of that sort of loss, and kept the conversations moving along The town had prospered since they’d left – mostly due to McGuire’s growing empire, though he was a tight-fisted as he had ever been. The town muttered about the Irishman with Scottish blood, but they took care to keep their jobs.

They was a stir now, and Helen found herself drawn close to the hub of the activity. A dais had been constructed, and what she thought of as the evil trio – the Shire Chairman, and the two Fergusons, elder and younger – were standing on it. The Chairman was puffing himself up, believing that fuller lungs improved the quality of his pompous voice. She hid a smile at his antics, and then listened to a platitude-filled speech about patriotism. It took a few moments past the actual announcement before the crowd realised that a memorial to the fallen and their sacrifice was being proposed. Then the Shire Chairman spied Helen, and cried “And here we have one of our town’s young women, bravely off supporting our nation’s war effort in the city, helping to keep our way of life safe, despite her young sweetheart having so gallantly sacrificed himself to the call of duty.”

Helen was appalled.

“Sir! I ...”

What could she say? It would take an hour just to get an understanding of the concepts, before she could start talking to this fool about how she was hiding from her pain – and how could she say that anyway, in such a public gathering?

The Chairman was continuing. Helen called, as strongly as she could “Sir! SIR!! I wish to speak!”

Annoyed at the interruption to his greatness, but aware that others had heard Helen’s request, the Chairman gracelessly acceded to her request. “Very well young lady, in view of your most unfortunate loss, I will permit you to address this patriotic and loyal gathering.”

No, you idiot, she thought as she climbed the slightly shaky stairs, I’ll not be taking your threat to heart.

She stared at the crowd, some laughing at the upstart girl, well known for her strange ways, others just bored with the whole deal, and – here and there – a face which looked as if it might have an interested soul behind it. She addressed herself to those scattered few.

“Our esteemed Shire Chairman dares to presume too much. My sweetheart is not dead – he is missing, true, but he is not dead. He did not go off to die – he had too much to live for. He had dreams – dreams which some of you knew, and lived for those until he was caught up in your vainglorious lust for Empire, against his better judgement!”

“Now, now, young lady – I didn’t invite you up here to spout your ridiculous gibberish!”

“Sir! I will have my say! and you did not ask me up here of your own free will.”

“No – and I do not have to permit this disruption of a Shire meeting!”

“This is not a council-“

“No, but it is a Shire event! Shall I call that constable?”

“I will not permit Clive’s name to be added to your offering to Death. They are saying we have lost an entire generation – and you want to build a memorial to this savagery, this slaughter?”

By now most of the crowd was clearly baying for her blood – it had gone so much worse than she’d thought it would, and she hated herself for losing this chance – and even more for being stupid enough to get up here. She was jostled as she climbed down and tried to leave, and ended up in the dirt, in tears, and was rescued by the constable the Chairman had threatened to set on her. The constable had even helped her find her family, but he was talking to them when the younger Ferguson, Andrew, red and shaking with anger, found her.

“You filthy strumpet!”

She staggered backwards, wide eyed with shock and fear.

“Come here you slut!” One hand clamped her arm, and he started shaking her as he spoke.

“How dare you spout that evil rubbish, you filthy jezebel! I didn’t go to the Western Front and get wounded and go through campaigns and battles to come back and have you start on your seditious idiotic tripe! I know you and the rubbish you think – you want to change everything, when this is what suits the world best – this is the way things should be!”

She was trying to talk back, to tell him of the poor, and the women in all classes of society, who were deprived and kept virtually in servitude; she tried to tell him of the benefits Clive’s ideas would bring; she even tried to tell him that there hadn’t need to be the war and all its suffering. She tried, but all her words were lost in the onslaught of the young Ferguson’s blind rage – he was a nasty piece of work as it was, but now he had a helpless victim he could let all his battle rage and fear onto.

But the constable was there now, yelling at Ferguson, and after a moment using his baton to bring the raging man to his back.

“Unhand me – how dare you! Don’t you know I am a returned soldier!”

“SO AM I!”

At that Andrew was startled into silence.

“Yes, I was repatriated back from Gallipoli – and even if I hadn’t been, I’d still treat you the same way. You have committed an assault upon the person-“

He raised his voice as the younger Ferguson tried to remonstrate.

“YOU HAVE COMMITTED AN ASSAULT UPON THE PERSON OF A YOUNG LADY WITHIN THE WITNESS OF A POLICE OFFICER – SHALL I HAVE YOU CHARGED?!”

Ferguson was quiet. “No sir, I shall leave now.”

“And you shall stay away from this young woman – and her family!”

By this time, the elder Ferguson and the Shire Chairman had arrived. The Chairman was wise enough to stay back, but Ferguson wasn’t.

“What are you doing to-“

“I am cautioning your son –“

“It was all that filthy strumpet’s-“

“DO NOT INTERFERE WITH THE WORK OF A POLICE OFFICER, SIR, OR I SHALL ARREST YOU!”

Stunned, the Fergusons – and the Shire Chairman - listened.

“Sir, I am cautioning your son that I have witnessed him commit a vicious assault on a young woman. SHALL I HAVE HIM CHARGED?”

The father shook his head, and the trio retired to the restive crowd, a crowd who wanted the cheap entertainment to continue.

The constable ushered Helen to her parents, and glared but once at some nearby bystanders, who decided they had more entertaining matters to attend to elsewhere.

“Ma’am”, he addressed Helen, “Are you alright?”

She nodded.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes – though I’ll have some bruises.”

Her father spoke, tense with stress and anger “Why didn’t you charge him?”

He just shook his head, thinking of the closeness of Fergusons to the town’s magistrate, and something of this must have communicated itself to her father, who nodded.

Then the constable turned to Helen.

“You know, ma’am, there’s different sorts of courage, and I’d be proud to have as much as you do.”

“I’m not brave.” She was almost in tears.

“Actually, ma’am, yes you are. As I said, there’s different sorts of courage. It takes courage to get up on that dais and speak from the heart that way – and I heard you trying to talk to Ferguson as he attacked you.”

“I’m almost in tears, I feel a total failure, and you call me brave?”

“Aye, I do. There’s no shame in tears – I’ve seen enough brave men reduced to tears, mostly in hospital, and they were happy to take the care and comfort of the women nursing them. Those nurses had courage – they saw all the wounds, they heard the screams, and they kept the place together. You, you stuck to it against Ferguson’s foul attack. I’ve seen enough courage and fear, and you’ve got courage, ma’am.”

They were all staring at her now and she blushed, and managed a quiet thank you.

He continued “You know, we have lost a generation of young men – and their ideas. Even the survivors like me have as many unseen scars as seen.”

The constable looked directly at Helen: “But maybe we’ve gained a generation of women, and your ideas instead of ours.”

She said “Maybe, but that’s only half a comfort for all we’ve lost.”

“Aye, that’s true, and I’m sorry for it.”

“And change is not easy, no matter how good the ideas.”

He smiled wryly back at her “I think we’ve seen that today.”

Tears flooded Helen’s eyes, and her father put an arm round her shoulders.

“I’ll be alright – the shock’s still a bit of a fresh.”

The constable looked sombrely at her, remembering his own trauma.

“Ma’am, take care – you’ve got the respect of more decent people than you realise.”

His words comforted her over the next few days, but the scars of the day were also fighting for her soul – was was the pain of not knowing what had happened to Clive. During this time, she had received another terrible letter from Gary, a toneless missive which didn’t even mention Clive. She knew she shouldn’t, but she raged against Gary for being so thoughtless, for forgetting why he had gone there.

After that, she began to close off to her friends at the factory. Desperately, they both tried to cheer her, but to no avail. She even began to lose interest in their quest for a better society. After a few weeks, Clare found a quiet moment to speak to Helen.

“Dear, you know you’ve got us all concerned.”

“Have I?”

“Yes. What’s wrong – is it Clive?”

She wanted to say no, she wanted to rant and rage, but all she could do was burst into tears.

As she sheltered in Clare’s arms, Clare whispered “You know, we need you – you’re so clever, and so brave.”

At that, her tears dried up.

“No, I’m not brave. And .. and I don’t think I’m clever. I try, but … things just always go awry. I’m not the brave one, the clever one you’re clever – no, let me finish, please. I think of – of Don, and Clive, and even Gary, and maybe they’re brave, but mostly I just hurt, and it’s getting too much. Everything hurts, and I think … I think I should leave your struggle.”

With that, her world shrank again, into her pain. Despite Clare’s entreaties, she couldn’t find it in herself to care any more. She didn’t mind, she didn’t need anything else. She didn’t even mind losing her job, and the painful struggle to find work helped her nurture her pain.

But a day finally came when people danced in the streets – strangers kissed, and no-one cared, for the war, the Great War, the war to end all wars, was over. She shook herself mentally, and started taking notice of what was happening around her. Her parents were talking of moving, not to their home town, but to another where her father could find work, and where living was cheap.

The day finally came when Gary came home – so stiff and withdrawn that Helen could see and recognise his pain. In that recognition, she knew, at last, that Clive wasn’t going to come home, and she knew how wounded she, too, had become.

She would cry that night, but not now – now, there was work to do. She didn’t have enough hope to dare try to make the world a better place – that would be left for others, people like Mary and Clare, the constable, and those soldiers, angry at the waste of life, who now saw themselves as Australians, not members of the British Empire. For Helen, for now, she would do what little she could, when and where she could, and survive.

And the soils lost or maimed through the still-birth of Clive’s theories would, as with so many other things, be unsung fatalities of the war, offset to some measure by some of the changes which had invaded a society at war, and not been thrown back by the counter attack of the Armistice.

Epilogue

The room was dusty, and plain – Gary could afford no better, in the struggle to survive this evil they called the Great Depression. He’d survived the Great War, he’d survived the terrible Spanish influenza which had killed as many people as the war, but he was struggling to survive this.

His family wanted him to come home. Helen had a collection of returned soldiers there that she mothered, knowing they couldn’t fill the void Clive’s - finally presumed by all - death had left, but looking after them should - had - to be done, so she might as well look after some of the other casualties of war. She even had a German soldier there, brought out by a German family - from whom she’d learned of the ‘internments’ within her own country.

His family wanted him to go home and be comfortable with the other cripples – even his enemy (although he didn’t think of the man as a former enemy), but he couldn’t stay anywhere for long. When he stopped, the nightmares caught up with him – and if he persisted in staying they would take him even when he was awake.

But for now, the little town he had drifted to was having its annual show, and there would be fireworks tonight. He switched off the electric light – so easy to turn on later, and without the flickering shadows - and went to the window: maybe that joyful, trite display would bring some relief to his scarred soul. He could hear the crowd, and then they hushed – the big finale was coming.

He saw the fireworks leap to the night sky, and explode. Then he heard the distant sounds - cheering, and the whizzing sound like one of the German shells he’d dodged for so many months. He vomited as he fell, and scrambled to curl under his bed, shaking and crying. There’d be no rest tonight, and he would stay there till Helen found him, two days later, and coaxed him out, like rescuing a frightened kitten, and took him home – home, to join the other tarnished souls surviving there: scarred souls in an increasingly scarred land, passing a monument as they left, one of many to ‘the fallen’: not the blown to bits or tortured, maimed and disfigured beyond reason, the nobly, neatly ‘fallen’.

Copyright © Kayleen White, 2014 (where this date is different to the year of publication, it is because I did the post some time ago and then used the scheduling feature to delay publication) I take these photographs and undertake these writings – and the sharing of them – for the sake of my self expression. I am under no particular illusions as to their literary or artistic merit, and ask only that any readers do not have any undue expectations. If you consider me wrong, then publish me – with full credit, of course :)

Musings of Kayleen

30 January 2014

[Content Warning] Souls and Soils

Souls and Soils

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

Epilogue

Translate

Blog Archive

Popular Posts