If she did love him she should want the best for him, and that was Beth. But she still yearned for him. So she made a plan to help him and packed Bovril to keep him safe while he was in the trenches.
‘Pass me a jar of Bovril, Gracie, I can fit in one more jar.’
Gracie passed over a jar and neither of them noticed that a tear for the English boy that had been sliding down Gracie’s cheek had spilt onto the label and smudged the ink.
Edie took the jar and wrapped it in newspaper and put it into its bed in the box with its brothers and sisters. She glued the lid down, tied the string and reached for the paper and pen to address the box. As she held the pen mid-air she stopped and thought for a moment. Then did something she had never done before. Instead of just writing To the Comfort Fund, she wrote:
To the 8th Battalion
Australian Imperial Forces
C/o The Australian Comfort Fund
Twenty-Seven
The Afternoon Tea
Saturday, 4 December 1915, when all the town can hear Gracie yell.
Edie asked Gracie to check the afternoon post. Gracie sighed but she put down the scarf she was knitting and did it anyway.
Edie smiled at the scarf looped onto the large wooden size-eight needles, full of holes where Gracie had dropped stitches and then picked them up again several rows later. It looked more like a fishing net than a scarf but she would help Gracie fix it up and it would still keep some poor soldier’s neck warm.
‘Though with all those colours he’s likely to become a sitting duck,’ she said to herself. She picked up the needle and held it up and the scarf hung down like an abstract tapestry. The wools were different sizes and colours, the edges meandered in and out like waves, but the scarf sang with all the determination and enthusiasm that children put into their creations. Edie could hear it and she hoped whichever soldier got the scarf would hear it too. She rubbed the soft wool against her cheek. Suddenly the scarf’s song was drowned out by hollering coming from out the front of the house. Edie dropped the scarf back onto the table and ran, her heart thumping, to the front door. In his study, where he was writing a speech in support of the election of Vida Goldstein as the first woman in parliament, Paul heard the yelling and put his hands to his ears. He rushed out into the hallway where he nearly collided with Edie.
‘Come on,’ said Edie, ‘that’s Gracie — something must be really wrong.’ Paul ran out of the house behind Edie. Nothing could happen to Gracie, it just couldn’t. She made Edie’s life whole. Gracie’s voice rang out in high-pitched squeals and the men preparing the lake for the upcoming aquatic carnival to raise funds for the Red Cross dropped their tools. The folk walking around the lake enjoying their Saturday afternoon stopped still in their tracks and people up and down the street dropped their cups of tea and their books and ran out of their houses. Jack Puce dropped the screwdriver he was using to hang a new photograph of the boys. Daphne Puce dropped the apple she was peeling for the crumble and it rolled along the floor and under the table. Arthur dropped the cricket bat that was really an old paling and Geoffrey dropped the tennis ball they were using as a cricket ball and they ran to the street with John following behind to see what the noise was all about and who had died. Laidlaw, Dottie and Beth dropped the bread they were rationing to the swans and the swans flapped and greedily gobbled the meal that was now a smorgasbord. The three of them ran towards the Cottingham house leaving the swans to fight it out. Nurse Drake, hiding in the tall grasses in Fairy Land, shook herself off George, held out her hand to yank him up and together they ran toward the Cottingham’s.
Edie saw the crowd gathering as she ran down the driveway towards the letterbox. Her heart had stopped now, she was sure of it. Gracie had to be in the middle of all those people. Had she been hit by Doctor Appleby’s car? He always drove like a maniac, tearing along at at least twenty miles an hour. No one would have a chance if they got in his way. Had a snake or a spider bitten her? There were tiger snakes that made their way into people’s backyards — she was forever telling Gracie to keep an eye out over summer, and there were red-backs that hid in letterboxes. What if she had killed Gracie by sending her to the letterbox? Had Gracie fallen and smashed her head on the hard road? All these possibilities raced through Edie’s mind and they all ended with a vision of Gracie sprawled bleeding and dead. She pushed her way through the throng and Paul followed close behind.
And there was Gracie in the middle of the crowd of neighbours, jumping up and down, flapping her arms in the air and holding onto an envelope. As soon as Edie saw Gracie’s face she knew that all the noise was excitement. Some of the other children started jumping up and down and squealing too, even though they had no idea what about. So Gracie wasn’t dead or injured, she was well enough to be bouncing as always, and the noise she and the children were making was building. Edie looked at her father for help. Paul put his hands in the air and called for silence like a judge in an unruly courtroom. Everything became quiet and Gracie stopped jumping. Edie put her arms on Gracie’s shoulders to keep her still.
‘Now what’s all this fuss? Are you hurt? Are you injured? Tell me quick.’
‘I have a letter
