At eight Edie reminded Gracie it was her bedtime and Gracie complained and said, ‘But if it keeps snowing there won’t be any school tomorrow,’ and looked at her hopefully.
‘Half an hour longer,’ said Edie and Gracie smiled triumphantly.
Paul said, ‘You two girls can go and do whatever you want to do. Lilly and I are fine here chatting,’ and he smiled at Lilly and she smiled back and he added, ‘I’ll see Lilly safely home in a cab.’
Edie threw him a questioning look and he looked at her steadily in return. So she took Gracie’s hand and Gracie groaned because it meant she was going to bed after all and Edie stopped at the kitchen door and gazed back at Paul and Lilly sitting engrossed in each other’s words. Edie sighed, she felt bothered by her father’s attention to Lilly. It was as if he had been lit by something, and he was happy about it, and she had to admit that if Lilly could do him this much good over one meal then she would have to invite her for dinner more often. After she had tucked Gracie into bed she went to her writing desk, took her notebook out of her pocket and she wrote:
First November Sixteen
Plan — Make Papa happy. Invite Lilly for dinner every Friday night.
And she knew that once it was written in her notebook it happened, unless she wrote a new plan that cancelled it out.
Thirty-Three
The Kiss
Saturday, 11 November 1918 — no planting today.
Sixty thousand Australians were killed in the four years of the war. Three thousand nine hundred and twelve had left the wide streets of Ballarat where they had played cricket on Sunday afternoons, stopping mid-game to let traffic go past; where they had swung on lampposts after a few, or carried their mother’s shopping, griping when she stopped to chat because they wanted to get back to their mates. Of those Ballarat boys, eight hundred had died, never to return to have that drink at the Bull and Mouth now it was all over, or to marry that girl who had been waiting so ardently, or to say, ‘See I told you that you were worrying over nothing,’ to their mums. The five hundred girls employed at the Lucas clothing factory sold cloth dolls and held fetes and asked management to hold a portion of their wages each week for a special fund. The money would build an impressive heroes’ arch to announce the beginning of Australia’s first Avenue of Honour. The money would pay for the trees to form the avenue. The girls had approached Mister Smith, who was head of the Art School, and he had drawn up a design and an architect’s plan. The arch would span the width of the road, and was to be crowned with a rising sun and flanked by two large columns. Over the past year the girls and the townspeople had forgone their walks around the lake and instead spent their weekends planting elms, ashes, oaks, maples, alders, birches, limes and poplars.
The result would be thirteen miles of trees on either side of the main road out of town. A tree for every man and woman from Ballarat who had answered the call and gone to war, planted in order of when they enlisted. Each tree had a plaque with the soldier’s or nurse’s name and number. The avenue would be a small way to honour the dead, who made up more than a tenth of the town’s population, and it would also honour those who had returned. The Lucas girls started a trend that swept the country and towns everywhere began planting avenues of honour. But everyone knew the idea had begun in Ballarat with the Lucas girls. Three thousand nine hundred and twelve trees were to be planted. It was nearly finished — just a few more Saturdays and the job would be done.
But there was no planting today.
The Lucas girls were with everyone else, jostling in the middle of town at the intersection of Sturt and Armstrong Streets outside the Town Hall, whooping and hollering and hugging. The war was officially over.
The crowd spread all the way from Drummond Street down to Grenville Street. The Town Hall bells rang over and over. Whistles blew and the brass band played and everyone whooped and hollered and the noise could have been heard in Bacchus Marsh if the townspeople of Bacchus Marsh hadn’t been making their own cacophony. Boys swung girls they didn’t even know over their arms as if they were about to tango and kissed them as though it would be their last kiss. The women Beth had recruited into the Women’s Peace Army smiled satisfied smiles and acted as though it was their efforts alone that had ended the war. Women who had been working wondered what would happen to them now and whether they would still be able to have jobs and earn their own money. Boys grabbed the twirling streamers flying from the roof of the Town Hall and tied each other up and yelled grandly that they had captured the enemy. Girls took strands of broken streamers and danced around lampposts as if they were princesses or tied streamers in their hair. Mothers gave thanks to
