Pennies For Hitler by Jackie French

Author:Jackie French [French, Jackie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2012-12-19T11:00:00+00:00

‘Quiet touches the treetops,

The breeze hardly breathes

Through the leaves;

The tiny birds are silent in the forest.

Wait …

Soon you’ll be at rest too.’

‘I … I’m sorry it doesn’t rhyme.’ He hoped the Peaslakes didn’t ask him who had written it. They’d be shocked to know it had been written by a German. Might even — he bit his lip — suspect there was something strange about him. Maybe he shouldn’t have said it at all.

‘Poems don’t have to rhyme. It’s a good poem,’ said Mr Peaslake. ‘Poems have to make you feel in here.’ He banged his fist against the tweed jacket above his heart. ‘That’s what matters, not the rhymes. “The tiny birds are silent” — yes, that’s a good line.’

Mr Peaslake looked out the window. The trees had changed to fields while they’d been talking. He stood up and grabbed Georg’s suitcase. ‘Next stop’s ours.’

This station was even smaller than the others. It had flowers too, in boxes and baskets and in long beds on either side of the yellow-painted ticket office and waiting room.

They climbed a set of tall metal stairs that led over the tracks and waited at a bus stop, where they ate lamb and pickle sandwiches and slabs of fruitcake, sweet and buttery, that Mrs Peaslake produced from her handbag. Georg wondered if it had a small universe in it, as well as food and balls of wool and the handkerchief she’d used to wipe the soot smuts off his face and Mr Peaslake’s. The bus finally muttered along under more of the strange hanging trees.

The bus was half full. Old or middle-aged men lifted their hats — old hats with hair-oil stains or worn fingerprints at the edges where they lifted it; and women in comfortable floral dresses and straw hats murmured greetings. They stared at Georg with curiosity and friendliness as the Peaslakes got on, Mr Peaslake still holding Georg’s suitcase and coat. They found two seats at the back — one for Mrs Peaslake and Georg and the other for Mr Peaslake.

Georg gazed out more intently now. This was the country where he had to live: strange untidy country, its fields too big, not rectangular enough. The cows stood a long way away beside ponds that looked ragged and unkempt too. Even the trees didn’t have enough leaves. Their bark looked torn and tatty.

Georg got the feeling that this was a land that didn’t care about people. The grass was brown and the green of the trees was faded. Every colour looked slightly wrong — even the too-rich blue of the sky.

He glanced at Mr Peaslake, hoping he wouldn’t break into poetry again. It would be embarrassing with others in the bus.

But he didn’t.

The bus rounded the corner and suddenly he could see the sea, vivid and sparkling, the waves white-capped as they rose and fell onto a slip of beach.

It was the first truly beautiful thing he had seen since Sydney Harbour. The bus trundled past a headland and they lost sight of it, then there was the ocean again, a glimpse, then gone.

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