A Soldier’s Cake Tin, by Joan Sloane
When my father came home from the war in New Guinea in August 1945, he brought with him three mementoes of his time in service there. One was a shell necklace, which my father used to say meant we were wealthy beyond measure. The coastal villagers who gave this necklace to my father used the shell as traditional currency, I believe. The second was a Japanese sword, which our family returned to the Consulate-General of Japan in Brisbane when we learned of their program to restore World War Two artefacts to the families of the original owner. (Our family would like to restore the kula shell from New Guinea, also, if we knew to whom it should go.)
The third item was the one most precious to my father and so, by extension, to all of us. It was a cake tin, known colloquially as the Soldier’s Cake Tin. Some amateur research on my part informs me that during the war, the Willow company manufactured these ‘in their thousands’. Women on the home front baked fruit cakes according to their family recipes or, when rationing kicked in, using recipes shared in the newspapers of the time, where such substitutions as lard for butter or glycerine for brandy were recommended. Housewives shared tips on how best to wrap and tape the tin to ensure it arrived in as best a condition as could be hoped, and handmade calico bags were used as postage parcels, the addresses (via Townsville, or later Port Moresby) written onto the calico in ink.
My mother did not bake. At least, not beyond what was needed to feed us six kids. She did not bake my father a fruit cake and send it to the 2/9th Infantry Battalion, which begs the question: where did my father come by his cake tin?
This is where our story takes a sad turn. War, after all, is mostly sadness.
Dad had a mate that he wrote of in his letters home to Mum. Bluey. She didn’t recall Bluey’s proper name, but she did know that his family was from Clarence, NSW, which was not so very far from Kyogle, where we lived as children. We also knew that Bluey’s wife had sent him a soldier’s fruit cake, which he shared with his mates. Dad loved the cake so much, he asked Bluey to tell his wife to write down the recipe and send it to them up there in the jungle, so Dad could copy it out and send it to Mum. Possibly he was just being a cheeky bugger, because like I said: Mum didn’t bake. War’s sadness, after all, is often leavened by jokes.
Bluey was killed in New Guinea. He was twenty-two. According to Mum, Dad kept the cake tin and some buttons from Bluey’s uniform. He also wrote out the recipe, which had arrived at the battalion in a letter call for Bluey just before he died.
Dad talked to Mum about looking for Bluey’s family when he returned to Australia, but he struggled after the war. His head wasn’t right for a long time, and certainly by the time I was old enough for Mum to tell me this story, the cake tin had become less a part of his war story and more a part of our family story.
But time brings sadness to us all, in her way, and so when it fell to me, as the last in my family, to sell the family home and pack up the Sloane mementoes, I decided it was time for the soldier’s cake tin to pass from our hands into new ones. I had ended up in Clarence myself upon retirement—perhaps Bluey’s role in our family story had taken a hold of my subconscious—and so I donated it to the Clarence Museum and Historical Society, along with some other family mementoes of a bygone era.
My hope is that the tin and the recipe can now form part of Clarence history, the way it should have done, had that young man of twenty-two been spared to bring his tin home.
I was asked, recently (well, not so much ‘asked’ as ‘challenged’), where I got my recipe for my Christmas cake. It was a question that couldn’t be answered in a hurry or in a moment, as the answer involves a walk down memory lane. But now, here, I can tell you: I got it from my father, who first had it from a letter written in January 1944 to a young soldier from Clarence named Bluey.
Jodie needed a tissue. She needed a whole freaking box of tissues. None were in sight (not that she could see much, her eyes were so full) so she snaffled the tea towel from its spot on the oven door and wiped her face.
Should Carol see this?
Of course Carol should see this. But should she see itnow? While she was so uncharacteristically low?
Jodie sucked a shuddery breath through her teeth. This was too big a decision for her to make; she and Carol might be relatives, and they might have been sharing a house for almost a month now, but they didn’t have a lot of adult history together.Realhistory.
So who did? The idea of calling her mother came and went in less than a heartbeat. Janelle had her moments; this would not be one of them.
Who did know Carol, then? Who was on a committee with her? Who had rebuilt her front steps, for heaven’s sake?
Will.
Jodie folded up the newsletter, stuffed it down the waistband of her shorts and pulled her blouse out over the top of it in case Carol caught her sneaking out the front door with it, and took off. Feeling like she could finally do something to help was exhilarating.
And having an excuse to see Will twice in one day?
Superexhilarating.
Chapter 10
While Will was scrubbing paint off his fingers with the aid of turps and a clump of old steel wool, he made his decision: next time he saw Jodie, he was going to ask her out.
In many ways, she was the perfect candidate for him to test drive his emotional state with. For starters, they liked each other. Also, he’d known from the moment she’d tripped over and his and her limbs had tangled like spaghetti that the two of them had chemistry. And—and this was maybe the most important part—she wasn’t planning on sticking around in Clarence.
If it ended badly (he closed his eyes and willed himself not to remember Tweed Valley Hospital) then he wouldn’t have to up stumps and find somewhere else to live. He loved being the Clarence publican. He never wanted to leave.
And, as fate would have it, Jodie had taken to dropping in to the pub each morning and then hanging around to chat.
At first, sure, she was visiting to make him do hideous stuff like stand face to face with a wall and lever his leg backwards with a rubber band, or practise balancing on one leg, but lately her reasons for dropping in had been little ‘chores’ Carol had dreamed up for the two of them to do to get the place ready for the Twilight Markets. The pub had never been so ready.
But she’d already been by today and helped zhoozh up some signage, so he wasn’t expecting to see her again until tomorrow. He could suggest a ramble along the riverbank, maybe. Accompany him to the vet clinic to help him pick out a collar and worming medicine for the ginger cat. Worming medicine was romantic, right?
He was smiling to himself as he walked out of the men’s bathroom back into the beer garden, but stopped as he saw the very woman he’d just been thinking about sitting on a chair in the shade of the party tree. ‘Oh! Hello again,’ he said.
‘What’s got you looking so pleased with yourself?’ she said, smiling at him.