Turn Turn Turn

Mike Berry

Description

Wars, pandemic, and the Great Depression. This is a novel about personal triumph against adversity in a rapidly growing suburb of Melbourne Australia, during a time when the nation's very existence was in peril.The narrative flows from World War I through a global pandemic, the Great Depression, World War II and the Cold War. The Jenkins family, their friends and neighbours confront world-shattering events from the cocooned existence of an isolated island dragged into a global present. Not only must they deal with the intimate realities of domesticity, the conflicts, the anxieties and the fears, their lives are buffeted by forces beyond their control and comprehension.

Sujets

• Historical fiction

Informations

• Publié par: The Conrad Press
• Date de parution: 07 juillet 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781839783067
• Langue: English

Extrait

Turn Turn Turn
Mike Berry


Turn Turn Turn
Published by The Conrad Press in the United Kingdom 2021
Tel: [phone] www.theconradpress.com [e-mail]
ISBN 978-1-839783-06-7
Copyright © Mike Berry, 2021
The moral right of Mike Berry to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved.
Typesetting and Cover Design by: Charlotte Mouncey, www.bookstyle.co.uk
Cover designed with public domain images courtesy of Museums Victoria:
https://collections.museumsvictoria.com.au/items/1689453
https://collections.museumsvictoria.com.au/items/1688873
https://collections.museumsvictoria.com.au/items/1689515
And aerial view of courtesy of Kodak (Australasia) Pty Ltd
https://collections.museumsvictoria.com.au/items/2062621
The Conrad Press logo was designed by Maria Priestley.


To everything …
There is a season …
And a time to every purpose under heaven
To my life’s companion, Deirdre Berry


Autumn


May 1920
L ast night I dreamt of a time long past. Before the bulldozers. Before the cars. Before the hustle of city life. I saw again the sweeping plains to the edge of the world where the hills rose up towards the sky. I saw the sun glinting on the blue-grey bay, heard the birds singing. Then I woke with the pre-dawn chorus still echoing.
As the grey light crept down the road, other life began to stir. Young Jim from number 32 was out and about, striding stiff legged up the hill towards the local shop that sold many things, including the daily newspaper that he devoured, starting at the sports section at the back, and reading forward until he reached the front page which he read several times before grunting and throwing the paper on the kitchen table in disgust.
‘Bloody useless idiots, wouldn’t know a fact if whacked them in the eyes.’
It was never clear who the idiots were. There were so many. Jim had a very poor view of his fellow man. Local shopkeepers, nosey neighbours, noisy kids, bank tellers, estate agents, used car salesmen, gossipy women, tinkers, rabbitohs, bread carters – and their draught horses – politicians. Above all, politicians. Self-servers, shirkers, stayed nice and safe while sending good men off to war. Wouldn’t know their elbow from their arse, useless in a fight. Cowards, every last one of them. Made a packet along with their business mates while he and his mates slogged through the mud and gore of Northern France. Peronne, that bloody fortress town on the Somme where he lost seven mates before the Fifth finally threw the Boche into the foul waters.
The only ones he trusted were men like himself who had, against all odds, survived and returned home. Survived! Ha! What did he and his kind come back to? A people that looked the other way when he limped past. A community that silently grieved for those who lay unknown and unloved in the mud and blood of Flanders – and rushed to forget. A boss who refused to give him his old job back. ‘Sorry mate, you just can’t manage the lifting. I’d like to help but times is tough, what with the taxes and the weather.’ What the hell did the weather have to do with it? No, the boss did all right out of the war. Sitting back and supplying the AIF with bedrolls and canteens. Bloody idiot, no bloody idea!
In the house two doors down and opposite from Jim, Elsie was bustling around her kitchen. A sprightly seventy-year-old, Elsie Hubbard had plenty in her cupboard. Enough to regularly take Jim a home-cooked meal. Have to keep the poor man alive, all skin and bones he was when he came home from over there. ‘Over there’ was a vague concept in Elsie’s mind. Vague and altogether unpleasant. So many foreigners, bloodthirsty lot, they were, taking our boys.
She had known Jim since he moved to the street with his widowed mother twenty years before. So sad, Mrs. Johnson, barely forty when she died the day before Jim’s thirteenth birthday. Poor lad. Went to live with an uncle until old enough to come back to his mother’s house. A lively, cheerful boy. A bit cheeky but no harm in him and his mates. So proud they all were when they joined up. The whole street came out to wave them off. Tommy, John, Trevor and Billy. Only Jim returned. But not to a joyful reception. Every time a parent saw him, it was a reminder that their son did not come home. So only Elsie, childless spinster, looked after Jim.
Elsie stood a little over four foot ten inches and weighed little more than six stone. She had grey-blue rinsed hair courtesy of the local hairdresser Ginny who acted as the distributor of tasty titbits concerning the recent tribulations of her clientele. Elsie presented an incongruous sight when standing next to Young Jim, all six foot and twelve stone, though his war wound caused him to bend forward, even when stationary, somewhat blunting the height and bulk contradiction. His sandy hair contrasted with dark brown eyes, eyes that seemed to be ever vigilant, as if on guard, waiting for the next German attack by men or shells or gas.
He had been lucky, if that epithet could ever be bestowed on those who went ‘over there’. He and his rotation had been on respite behind the lines at Ypres when the chlorine gas had first rolled over no man’s land, to burn and terrify unsuspecting diggers. By the time he had returned to the frontline, initial defences against the lethal clouds had been instituted, inadequate as they were. He was saved for later sacrifice. He didn’t even hear the shell that burst though the flimsy wooden ramparts and took half his leg with it. They later told him that they found his boot buried in the chest of another digger who’d been crouching next to him.
Up the road in the other direction the household was stirring. Ted Jenkins was busy finishing his morning ablutions. His wife Betty came into the bathroom, stood back and examined him critically. He was a tall, slim man of average though athletic build, with a full head of dark brown hair, parted on the left and combed back from a wide forehead. An adolescence dominated by sport had instilled both confidence and a competitive drive. His wife was petite, but her small stature belied a spirit of determined mission in life, focused on her husband and only child.
‘You’ve dropped egg all over your tie, you silly man. Here, let me, you’ll only make it worse.’ Betty skilfully wielded a tip of her apron and despatched the offending stain.
‘It’s no good, you’ll have to change it. Another addition to the wash. I don’t know how anyone can be so clumsy.’
‘Haven’t time, old girl. Can’t miss my train. It’ll have to do.’
Ted grabbed his hat, picked up his lunch carefully packed into a brown paper bag by Betty, and shoved it into his briefcase. With a quick kiss on Betty’s rosy cheek, he leapt out the front door, bounded down the pathway and through the front gate. Without breaking stride, he raced up the road, turned right and slowed to a fast walk. Should be at the train station in time. Wouldn’t do to be late at the office. That bastard Ron Reilly would be only too glad to point up any laxity on his part. In the struggle between them for promotion to level 3 in the state public service, any tactic was in play. By rights of seniority, he, Ted, should be a shoe in. But Ron was clever, assiduously planting doubt in the supervisor’s mind about Ted’s ability to do the job. Pity about that small arithmetic mistake Ron had picked up in my last report on the inventory costs. Got to be more careful, old man. Eternal vigilance. That’s what the new returned serviceman’s league insisted. Can’t let the enemy sneak up on us.
He heard the train whistle just as the railway station came into view. Breaking into a run, Ted climbed the steps two at a time and dashed across the overpass. He arrived on the platform in time to see the engine chug into the station, followed by the soot coloured carriages. Thank God, the old steamers would soon be replaced with electric locomotion. Pretty soon all of Melbourne’s boom-time rail network would be electrified and copping an eyeful of cinders and coming home with filthy hands and coat would soon be but a distant and distasteful memory. Pondering the wonders of modern technology, he walked along the platform until he found a carriage slightly less crowded and clambered aboard. Wedged between an old man holding a large bag on his lap and an even larger woman who was busily chatting to the lady sitting opposite, Ted leaned back with a sigh and opened the morning paper he’d grabbed from the letter box as he departed the family home. Now for a bit of peace.
Back at number 24, Betty had finished clearing away the breakfast remains and turned her attention to her other charge.
‘Patty dear, time to get dressed for school.’
In a small room at the end of a corridor, seven-year-old Patty Jenkins groaned. She put her doll Daisy carefully back into her small pram, laying her on the soft sheet embroidered by Aunty Dot. There followed a well-practiced process of covering Daisy with a second sheet, also courtesy of Aunty Dot, precisely tucked in in the manner Patty had seen her mother carry out daily on the big beds. Finally, a special blanket with fancy crocheted edges was laid on with small, loving hands. Patty stood back and surveyed her handy work with pride.
‘There, Daisy. You be a good girl while I’m at school. If you are, I’ll take you for a long walk when I get home.’
‘Patty!’
The little girl grabbed her blue and white checked tunic and pulled it over her head. Socks and shoes were quickly added.
‘Come here dear and I’ll do your hair. Have you cleaned your teeth?’
Betty brushed Patty’s long red hair in slow practiced strokes, parted it and expertly wove the two strands into tight plaits.
‘There, you loo