Telegram

• Katie Marshall, Grade 9
• Short Story
• 2010

Gathering her shawl tighter, Elizabeth Anne Gray lifted the latch on the door and stepped outside; the rusty hinges creaking as she let it close gently – it still nudged the door-frame with a soft bang.
Turning her gaze forward, she saw the dust kicked up by the postman’s bicycle as he pedalled oh-so-slowly down the road – at his appearance she felt as if she were inwardly composed of dozens of tight knots of tension.
Her gaze never left the postman’s slow-moving form as he approached – her tension mounting with each house he passed down Forest Avenue. The two-wheeled contraption trundled past number thirteen without stopping… number eleven…
It halted abruptly outside her house.
The postman rang his bell.
The sound seemed to waver for an eternity –the postman’s bell had been the equivalent of the toll of a funeral bell for the past two years all across Australia.
Ask not for whom the bell tolls…
Elizabeth tried to hold what little shreds of a collected temperament she had left as she drifted down the front steps to the postman, who had the condemning paper held out in his hand. Ceremoniously; as if she were a china figurine, he placed it in her outstretched palm and fixed her with a sorrowful stare before continuing down the road.
She refused to look at it out here where she could be seen; instead she turned and mechanically made her way back inside.
The six children - Mena, William, Bernard, Irene, Raymond, and Mary were not present in the kitchen – thankfully.
Already knowing what it would say, Elizabeth lifted the telegram to her eyes and began to read the practiced scrawl it comprised, her eye catching on the second sentence alone.
I regret to inform you that your husband, J.J. Gray, has been reported missing in action.
The world seemed so subdued that she swore she could hear the gunshots of that damned war halfway across the world.
Missing in action. Simply another way of saying ‘He’s dead.’ Of saying ‘We sent off your husband and the father of your children to die for us in a war that wasn’t his responsibility. We’re so very insincerely sorry, since we don’t really give a damn. He’s just another number.’
The page quivered in her fingers before fluttering from them completely to land on the floor. Her knees followed, the thud of cloth-covered knee meeting timber obscured by the sound of the sobs wracking her body. Her shoulder fell onto the wall as the tears streamed down her face, a quiet proclamation of her grief.
Bluey, the children’s kelpie stray was snuffling around the kitchen floor, searching for some miniscule scrap of food that had been overlooked. None of the members of the household ever got a properly filling meal – least of all this bony, scraggly, dirt-covered mongrel. He jumped at the sudden arrival of the telegram that had joined him on the floor and scuttled over to it, sniffing inquisitively in case it was edible.
“Oh, get out of it Bluey,” she said as she shooed the dog out of her face, which he had decided needed licking. She snatched up the telegram from the floor before Bluey could gulp it down whole, edible or not, and placed it on the table. He slunk dejectedly out the door and she shut it after him.
So many facets of change lay in a collection of words five syllables in length. In the same blow, they had made her aware that her husband no longer existed, taking away her children’s father and making her a widow. It was now that much more impossible to keep her family above the poverty level without his pension. It had been her only source of income.
“Mam?”
Elizabeth looked up to see the figure of Mary in the doorway.
After slipping away from her siblings, she had crept bare-footed along the wooden floorboards with a self-righteous conviction that only six year olds can master, victoriously avoiding re-capture from Mena.
Her dark eyes were shimmering and her arms were huddled into her chest, as if she were trying to defend herself from some unseen, omnipresent adversary.
Her gaze drifted to the kitchen table, where the telegram sat. She wasn’t too confident a reader, but her eyes caught on the official-looking stamp on the top of the slip of paper, and realisation dawned.
Her face took on a sadly pensive expression. The person called Da, that she didn't quite remember, but was linked with the important-looking mark, wasn't faring so well. She only recalled little bits of him– being hefted up onto someone's knee; being sung songs in a gravelly voice; playing with a pair of enormous hands, and tackling a pair of legs that she couldn't quite see the entire owner of.
“Mary?” Called Mena, the eldest, from the hall, before she appeared behind Mary in the doorway.
“I told you to leave Mam…”
Mary turned, her little fingers reaching out to grasp at her sisters much larger hand.
“Da isn’t coming back, is he?”
The sentence rang around the room, both women taken aback by the abruptness of the statement.
Mena looked from her little sister to her mother’s distraught face. Elizabeth slowly shook her head at the older girl, not trusting her voice.
Mena went cold.
Wordlessly crossing the room, she wrapped her arms around her, stroking her back reassuringly.
Mary wandered over and gathered a fistful of her mothers’ skirt. Elizabeth's head fell to Mena's shoulder and her hand trailed down to run through Mary's dark locks. Her other hand mirrored her eldest daughters movements and she patted Mena’s back slowly.
“We'll manage,” Mena's whisper came. “We have to.”
Scenes like this played out in thousands of households for three long years. Millions of tears were shed for the ones who never came home – thousands of unmarked graves were plotted. Thousands of people pondered the question of 'why' and never really received a satisfactory answer. They called it 'the war to end all wars' and indeed, for a while, it was.
Twenty years later it happened all over again.

Authors Note: This is based on a true story, although artistic license has been taken. Private J. J. Gray, Elizabeth Gray, Mena, William, Bernard, 'Rene, Raymond and Mary all existed, and they did live on Forest Avenue.
Private J. J. Gray was reported killed in action, and although Elizabeth did end up sending a correspondence to the Australian Imperial Force Office, he was never recognized as the Lance-Corporal he was promoted to until six years later. He is now buried in Ypres, Belgium.
J. J. Gray was my great, great grandfather. Mary Gray was my great grandmother.
By Katie Marshall.