The Tillerman's Gift Page 8

PARTMENT OF LABOUR AND NATIONAL SERVICE

  National Service Registration Office

  The Commonwealth Centre

  Cnr Phillip and Hunter Streets

  Sydney

  24th October 1969

  Dear Sir,

  I am writing to inform you, in relation to your liability to call-up for national service, that you are required, in accordance with the provisions of the National Service Act, to submit yourself to medical examination before a Medical Board.

  You are therefore required to attend for this purpose at Sydney District Employment Office, Grace Building, 77 York Street, at 6:15 p.m. on the Seventeenth day of November 1969.

  At the same time you will be interviewed with regard to your suitability for the various postings in the Army and other matters concerning national service.

  Fudge’s hand was shaking visibly. He had, in accordance with the law, registered for National Service and now that he had turned twenty, he knew that being called up to the armed service was a possibility.

  A month earlier, over six hundred miles away, in a gas-heated Canberra office, a bespectacled, grey-haired man in a well-pressed grey suit had leaned over a large table and placed his hand into a small, polished lottery barrel containing smooth, brown marbles. It was the second time that year that he had performed this same duty and, just as he had done once before that year, he offered a silent prayer for the young men whose lives were about to be so severely disrupted.

  The marbles were numbered 182 to 365 representing the days from July 1st to December 31st. He tumbled the barrel, thrust his hand into the chamber and held the pose for the assembled media.

  Television camera whirred. Newspaper cameras clicked and flashed. The grey-haired man in the well-pressed suit withdrew his hand and held the first marble secreted in his fist as a security guard ushered the media from the room. “Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, clear the room, please,” he urged politely. “We’ll see you again in the new year.”

  With the media gone, the grey man ceremoniously placed the small wooden marble into a special tray. “Three hundred and fifty-nine. That’s December 25th,” one quick-minded witness calculated. Within a month every Australian male born on Christmas Day, 1949, would receive a letter.

  Then, under the watchful eyes of a handful of military witnesses a further twenty-nine marbles were drawn.

  Less than three minutes later he held the final number aloft. “And finally, number 221.”

  August 9th, Charles McFudgen’s birthday.

  “You can’t go. You can’t,” sobbed Tess holding him tighter than she ever had.

  “You know I have to. The country’s at war and, well, I’m prepared to do my bit.” Fudge stroked Tess’s hair. “Besides, if I don’t sign up I go to jail and it won’t be for not paying my bills. See this bit.” Fudge re-read the last part of the letter:

  … failure to comply with this notice or to submit to medical examination is an offence…

  “And they’re serious too. I read in the papers blokes are going to jail for refusing to enlist. Even Normie Rowe got called up and went. He’s already a Lance-Corporal.”

  “Great, you can join him in the chorus of Que Sera Sera while the Viet Cong are chasing you through the bush. I’d rather you home in jail than dead in a foreign jungle. Besides, what about us?”

  “Tess, it’s two years of service, and I might not even be sent overseas. Besides, the war will probably be over well before that anyway. I’ll be fine.”

  Tess suddenly pulled back and looked into his eyes. It was something in his tone.

  “You’re shaking,” she said.

  “Of course I am. This is a big deal!”

  “Yes, but you’re shaking with excitement. You want to go, don’t you?”

  Fudge sighed and leaned back against his new car. “Well, to be honest, yes. It will be exciting. I love you, you know I do. But I don’t want to look back in forty years and see that this is all I’ve done. I’m not my father. Clowder Bay was all he knew and all he wanted. I know dad worked hard here all his life so he could put some savings away and leave me with something but the fact is he was born here, pumped petrol and fixed cars for thirty years, served as a town councillor for a while, then died. Bloody heart attack! He went to Brisbane once for a wedding but apart from that he never strayed more than a hundred miles his whole life. That’s not me, Tess. You know I can’t do that.”

  “Fudge, Vietnam is not a holiday – it’s a war.”

  “Well what do you want me to do? Tear the letter up then lock myself in the car when the military police turn up? No thanks. I’m no coward.”

  He stood and moved closer. He took a handkerchief from his pocket and gently wiped the tears from Tess’s cheeks. She pressed her head against his chest.

  “The thought of you waiting for me back here will make the time fly.” After a minute’s silence Fudge took a deep breath. “Theresa Tess Newell, will you marry me?”

  Tess eyes widened. Marry him? Did he say marry?

  “Um… pardon?”

  “Will you marry me?”

  Tess instantly broke out in a sweat. Swallowing hard she finally found her voice. “Fudge, that’s ridiculous.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, for a start I’m only seventeen. I’m still at school. You’re about to join the army. My father would never approve…. And fifty-seven other reasons I can’t think of at the moment. Charles Fudge McFudgen, You’re crazy.”

  “I don’t mean now. I mean when I get back. In two years things will be so different. And all those reasons you just gave, well, except for the father thing, they won’t be valid anymore. And who knows,” he joked, “I might come back a general or even a war hero. Your dad would have to approve then. And we’ll have the biggest wedding Clowder Bay has ever seen. The whole town will be invited. And I’ll have this business and you can have a little shop …”

  “Fudge, don’t be silly. We wouldn’t be able to afford a big wedding.”

  “You’d be very surprised what I can afford, Miss Newell,” he smiled cryptically. “So, is that a yes?”

  “I will wait for you, Fudge, I promise.”

  “That’s all I wanted to hear. And I don’t have to be in Sydney for a couple of weeks, so we still have some time together.”

  Tess looked into his deep blue eyes. “Let’s make it special,” she whispered.

  Fudge pulled Tess close. They could hear Diana Ross on the car radio: You possess my soul now, honey, and I know, I know you own my heart…

  And Tess and Fudge had no doubt it was true.

  It was well past eight o’clock when Tess walked up the stairs to her bedroom.

  “What about dinner?” she heard her father call.

  “Go next door and buy fish and chips,” she snapped before closing her door and crying herself to sleep.