The Year It All Ended Read Online Free PDF

sisters had tainted the brew.

Winged letters
    Before he went away, Louis had carved a wooden wing and attached it to the letterbox. Every time even a card was delivered to Larkrest, the wing flew skywards. ‘So you’ll know that my letters are winging their way to you,’ he’d said as he fixed it in place the day before he left Adelaide.
    Before the news of Louis’ death arrived, Tiney would sit at the window and stare at the letterbox for hours, even after the postman had been and gone, sailing straight past Larksrest on his bicycle. She liked imagining that a letter for the Flynns had been posted into someone else’s letterbox by mistake and that any moment the postman would come cycling back, because there had to be a letter from Louis. And when the carved wing did fly skywards, Tiney would be down the path like a rabbit, the first to check the post. But since the news, no one watched the winged letterbox.
    Back in 1914 and 1915, Louis’ letters had arrived every few weeks. From on board the SS Euripides , from Egypt, the Dardanelles, England and later France. After he reached France, the stamp of the censor began to appear on the envelopes, and great sections of text were blacked out. As the war years dragged on, his letters grew shorter, his messages briefer. Sometimes there would only be a Field Service postcard. One year, 1916, they didn’t hear from him for six awful months. Finally, Papa wrote to the Ministry of Defence, begging for information. When the letters began again, it was as if they were written by someone else, so removed were the stories he told. He didn’t ask after anyone at home any more. It was as if he couldn’t remember them, as if they had all become strangers to him. There was only the war. The war and the mud. The war and the men who fought it.
    Every week during the war years, without fail, each of the Flynn sisters wrote to Louis. Then Pa would take all their letters and put them in a single envelope and send them off. They’d even sent one from all of them after Armistice Day. Tiney hated to think that Louis had never read those happy notes. She stopped watching for the postman. She couldn’t open her letter-writing folder for weeks. The pale blue stationery was painful to look upon and, of course, since the news, the ritual of writing to Louis had died.
    A week before Christmas, on a hot, airless afternoon, Tiney sat in the inglenook of the parlour window, trying to write a poem. She looked out and saw Louis’ wing pointing skywards. Suddenly, grief pierced her heart so sharply she could hardly breathe. She got up and walked slowly to the hallstand and put on her gardening apron, as if she was pretending that it was the garden that called her and not the letterbox. She hadn’t ventured to collect the mail since Father Alison’s visit. Perhaps a deeper instinct called her. Because there was an envelope addressed to Tiney in the letterbox. A single letter postmarked from France. A letter in Louis’ firm, copperplate handwriting.
    It made Tiney’s fingers burn to hold it. A fleeting hope that perhaps there had been a terrible mistake flared inside her. Perhaps Louis was alive. Perhaps he’d only been missing in action, not killed. Her first instinct was to race inside with the letter before she’d even torn the envelope, to wave it in front of her sisters, to spark some hope in them too. But her rational mind arrested her urge to share the letter. It would be cruel to ignite such an impossible hope and then extinguish it. Instead she sat on the front step of Larksrest, beneath the tiny portico verandah, feeling the coolness of the stone beneath her. She took her secateurs from the pocket of her apron and used the tip to slice the letter open.
    Inside were four sheets of fine paper.
    Dear Titch,
    You’ve written me so many letters and I so few to you – it’s time I set things straight. I’m wearing those socks you knitted. The green and blue ones, and thinking of you as I