‘I don’t know, Papa,’ said Edie, ‘but I will do what I can to help the ones who have gone,’ thinking of the one solider she wanted to help most. She folded up the paper and put it in the basket. ‘Well, Papa, I am going to leave you to your speech because I’m going to go on with my own little project for the boys.’ She walked down the hallway past the portraits of those who had gone before that inevitably filled her bones with the sureness of death, and felt as if she had eaten something rotten. She held her breath for a moment, her arms clasped tight across her chest, hoping and praying that Theo was safe.
Gracie was already in the kitchen, sitting at the table writing. The kitchen had become a packing room. There were three towers of cardboard boxes piled four and five high. One tower was empty boxes that wobbled and threatened to fall over, the second tower was boxes that sat heavy and firm on top of each other, full of brown glass jars that Edie had bought from the grocer. The third tower was filled boxes, glued, tied up and addressed, ready to be sent to the Comforts Fund, who would then send them on to the soldiers. Edie, Paul, Gracie and Beth when she was there, had to manoeuvre around the boxes to get to the stove or the pantry, but no one complained because it was all for the war and their sacrifice of a kitchen was nothing compared to the sacrifice of women who gave their sons and husbands.
Edie squeezed sideways between the table and the boxes until she got to the other end of the table. She took a cardboard box from the top of the empty box tower and put it on table. Then she reached for a newspaper from the pile that sat under the table and scrunched up the sheets of newspaper to make a nest on the bottom of the box. Next she took the top box from the tower of glued boxes, sat it on a kitchen chair and opened it, sliding a knife under the flap to unseal it. She put the box on the floor at her feet and took out a jar of Bovril. The brown glass jar was round and bulbous at the bottom like an onion, with a short neck shut tight with a screw-on lid. The words Bovril Limited 8oz were embossed in the glass like braille. Edie shut her eyes and ran her fingers over the raised letters that felt like scars on the smooth glass. She rolled the jar up in two sheets of paper in one direction and then two sheets of paper in the opposite direction and laid the jar with its protective newspaper in the carton on the nest of scrunched paper. She kept going until she had filled the carton with twenty-four jars of Bovril facing each other head to head, in four layers of six jars, and then she took the pot of glue from the stove and pasted the flaps of the box down. She cut a good length of string, strung it right around the box several times in both directions and tied it tight. Finally she took a sheet of plain brown paper and a pen and wrote To the Australian Comforts Fund, Ballarat City Branch and glued it to the top of the box. She heaved the box into her arms and carried it to join its brothers, the tied-up boxes, all filled with jars of Bovril. Then she started a new carton, another twenty-four jars to be sent to the men at the front.
‘Who are you writing to, Gracie?’ Edie asked as she scrunched up paper for the bottom of the new box.
‘To Queen Mary. I’m telling her about your boxes of Bovril. But this is the third time. I want my writing to be neat.’
‘Well, as long as she can read it I expect that is all that will matter. Can you pass me some newspapers from under the table and save my old back from bending over again?’ She wasn’t going to ruin Gracie’s fun by telling her that her letter would most likely never even get to the Queen. Hardly any letters were getting across the oceans, let alone a letter to the Queen. If it did get all the way to the Queen no doubt it would be read by one of her many aides who in all likelihood would toss it out.
‘Gracie, you need to do it without all the bouncing. I’ve told you before if you keep bouncing every time you move you will bring all the boxes tumbling to the floor. They might even crash on top of you.’
Tomorrow Laidlaw would come and collect all the boxes that were ready to go.
‘Why is Bovril good for the soldiers?’ Gracie asked so she could write it in her letter.
‘Like I said before, because “vril” means “an electric fluid” and bovine means “cow”, so it’s called Bovril. The electrical quality of Bovril maintains your bodily fluids in their natural equilibrium and the meaty beef provides strength for the liver. Bovril can cure diseases that are common in the trenches, where the men don’t have access to a good hot cooked meal like you and I have. If you don’t eat meat every day you die and the electric quality of Bovril means it is better absorbed and therefore better for you. There,’ said Edie, ‘so far I have sent enough Bovril for sixty-two thousand cups of broth for the soldiers.’
Gracie wrote My sister has sent sixty-two thousand cups of Bovril in her letter to the Queen.
‘That will keep them in good health as they fight for our freedom on the other side of the world. Pass me another newspaper,’ said Edie.
Gracie reached down and pulled up a wad of newspapers and something on the top sheet caught her eye.
‘Don’t
