第17章 ONE 1915-1917 MEGGIE 1(17)
The other Cleary boys gathered around, and they sat guarding Meggie until the bell rang.
Teresa Annunzio came to school briefly at lunchtime, her head shaven. She tried to attack Meggie, but the boys held her off easily. As she backed away she flung her right arm up in the air, its fist clenched, and slapped her left hand on its biceps in a fascinating, mysterious gesture no one understood, but which the boys avidly filed away for future use. "I hate you!" Teresa screamed. "Me dad's got to move out of the district because of what your dad did to him!" She turned and ran from the playground, howling.
Meggie held her head up and kept her eyes dry. She was learning. It didn't matter what anyone else thought, it didn't, it didn't! The other girls avoided her, half because they were frightened of Bob and Jack, half because the word had got around their parents and they had been instructed to keep away; being thick with the Clearys usually meant trouble of some kind. So Meggie passed the last few days of school "fin Coventry," as they called it, which meant she was totally ostracized. Even Sister Agatha respected the new policy, and took her rages out on Stuart instead. As were all birthdays among the little ones if they 51 fell on a school day, Meggie's birthday celebration was delayed until Saturday, when she received the longed for willow pattern tea set. It was arranged on a beautifully crafted ultramarine table and chairs made in Frank's nonexistent spare time, and Agnes was seated on one of the two tiny chairs wearing a new blue dress made in Fee's nonexistent spare time. Meggie stared dismally at the blue-and-white designs gamboling all around each small piece; at the fantastic trees with their funny puffy blossoms, at the ornate little pagoda, at the strangely stilled pair of birds and the minute figures eternally fleeing across the kinky bridge. It had lost every bit of its enchantment. But dimly she understood why the family had beggared itself to get her the thing they thought dearest to her heart. So she dutifully made tea for Agnes in the tiny square teapot and went through the ritual as if in ecstasy. And she continued doggedly to use it for years, never breaking or so much as chipping a single piece. No one ever dreamed that she loathed the willow pattern tea set, the blue table and chairs, and Agnes's blue dress.
Two days before that Christmas of 1917 Paddy brought home his weekly newspaper and a new stack of books from the library. However, the paper for once took precedence over the books. Its editors had conceived a novel idea based on the fancy American magazines which very occasionally found their way to New Zealand; the entire middle section was a feature on the war. There were blurred photographs of the Anzacs storming the pitiless cliffs at Gallipoli, long articles extolling the bravery of the Antipodean soldier, features on all the Australian and New Zealand winners of the Victoria Cross since its inception, and a magnificent full-page etching of an Australian light horse cavalryman mounted on his charger, saber at the ready and long silky feathers pluming from under the turned-up side of his slouch hat.
At first opportunity Frank seized the paper and read the feature hungrily, drinking in its jingoistic prose, his eyes glowing eerily. "Daddy, I want to go!" he said as he laid the paper down reverently on the table.
Fee's head jerked around as she slopped stew all over the top of the stove, and Paddy stiffened in his Windsor chair, his book forgotten. "You're too young, Frank," he said.
"No, I'm not! I'm seventeen, Daddy, I'm a man! Why should the Huns and Turks slaughter our men like pigs while I'm sitting here safe and sound? It's more than time a Cleary did his bit."
"You're under age, Frank, they won't take you."
"They wilt if you don't object," Frank countered quickly, his dark eyes fixed on Paddy's face.
"But I do object. You're the only one working at the moment and we need the money you bring in, you know that."
"But I'll be paid in the army!"
Paddy laughed. "The "soldier's shilling' eh? Being a blacksmith in Wahine pays a lot better than being a soldier in Europe."
"But I'll be over there, maybe I'll get the chance to be something better than a blacksmith! It's my only way out, Daddy."
"Nonsense! Good God, boy, you don't know what you're saying. War is terrible. I come from a country that's been at war for a thousand years, so I know what I'm saying. Haven't you heard the Boer War chaps talking? You go into Wahine often enough, so next time listen. And anyway, it strikes me that the blasted English use Anzacs as fodder for the enemy guns, putting them into places where they don't want to waste their own precious troops. Look at the way that saber-rattling Churchill sent our men into something as useless as Gallipoli! Ten thousand killed out of fifty thousand! Twice as bad as decimation.
"Why should you go fighting old Mother England's wars for her? What has she ever done for you, except bleed her colonies white? If you went to England they'd look down their noses at you for being a colonial. En Zed isn't in any danger, nor is Australia. It might do old Mother England the world of good to be defeated; it's more than time someone paid her for what she's done to Ireland. I certainly wouldn't weep any tears if the Kaiser ended up marching down the Strand."
"But Daddy, I want to enlist!"