A/N:

I wrote this about a year ago for a grade in Literature, in my final year no less. All I can say is it was the highest mark I got in that class that year. I did change their surnames when I handed this in, and changed it back here, so if you see Hamilton or Weiss in here anywhere, whoops.

The context behind this was that we had to write a piece of fiction emanating the style and themes of an author from the collection The Best Australian Stories and my author of choice was Nam Le with themes of complicated familial relationship.

The exact story featured in the book was titled Love and Honour and Pity and Pride and Compassion and Sacrifice, but you don't have to have read it to understand what happens in this fic as it only loosely follows the themes.

Mildura - A small city located in the north-west of Victoria, Australia. A six hour drive away from Melbourne.

Ghosts Gums and Stretching Fields

The whiskey glass before him was drained, the barest trace of dark amber liquid staining the bottom. Arthur Kirkland – twenty-nine and recently jobless – sighed and reached for the bottle, watching as the dark liquid – so alluring in the fading light – sloshed against the glass walls. He sighed again and replaced the bottle upon the table with a decisive thunk. He'd had too much already, far too much. How many glasses? Four? Five? He was beginning to remind himself of his father – hunched over in the armchair, nursing a bottle of whisky when the nights got bad, growing more and more distant from his family. But perhaps his father had been right, journalism had gotten him nowhere.

Journalism, boy? His father had questioned, unnervingly calm. I am not a boy anymore! Arthur had replied, and to this day he did not know where the courage to say that had come from. His father had shaken his head. You would have done better to join the military.

That's where his father was wrong, the military wasn't for Arthur, he wasn't his father. He didn't want to be his father – not after Maria.

Maria, what was her last name again? Her surname had slipped his mind, it had been so long – almost two decades – since he had seen her. Beilschmidt, he suddenly remembered, it was Beilschmidt.

He'd lived in Mildura back then, that small, dusty town along the Murray that was so different to bustling metropolitan Melbourne. As the fifth and youngest in a family of boys, none of his brothers had much time for him. The eldest – Scott – had been considered studious enough by their parents to be allowed to continue his studies in the big city before Arthur had even been born. He'd had never returned, and Arthur didn't blame him. After all, when it had come to him, Arthur had done the same. By the time he was born, his mother had begun to ache for the English countryside she had left behind for her husband. His father –as Arthur knew now – had begun to sink into the past, into the horrors of war. He had refused to speak to anyone, rather finding refuge in drink.

Maria had entered the scene in the middle of one particularly hot summer. Arthur had been eight then, watching a family of three move into the previously empty house next door. The family spoke softly to each other, the mother hushing the child in a language Arthur did not recognise. His father did however – eyes becoming distant.

'None of you are to talk to them,' he commanded to his sons.

'Why not?' Arthur asked petulantly, ignoring the looks his brothers sent him.

He wanted a friend, someone he could talk to when his brothers pushed him around and laughed at him.

'They're German,' his father replied as if that explained everything.

In a way it did, while he was younger still his brothers had occasionally whispered to him about the exploits of their father during the Second World War. Arthur did not press further – his father's face was closed and his tone allowed no questioning.

So Arthur reluctantly obeyed, every so often taking a surreptitious glance from his bedroom window into the neighbouring yard as he sat reading on the windowsill. While he shared his room with one of his brothers, all of them were rowdy and would not stay indoors for long, which suited Arthur just fine. He didn't see much from the window, just the ghostly pale gum tree stretching its slender branches into the sky. Only occasionally catching a glimpse of the pale haired girl or her parents.

The first time he fully disobeyed his father came as he sat upon the windowsill, reading yet another book. His peace was disturbed as something small hit the window with a clack. Arthur ignored it the first time; believing it was one of his brothers – intent on tormenting him. After the fifth clack Arthur could bear it no longer, whether it was curiosity or annoyance he did not know, but he closed his book – carefully noting the page – and peered out of the window. The neighbour girl stood outside, hands full of small pebbles, her dress stained with dirt and grass. She noticed him and grinned – revealing a missing front tooth – then dropped the pebbles to wave. Arthur hovered his hand over the window, momentarily frozen by fear of his father finding out, then the urge of finding a friend won over and he pulled it open.

'Hello,' he called out cautiously, certain his father would suddenly appear in his room.

'Hallo,' the girl began, allowing Arthur to hear the accent that coloured her words. 'I'm Maria. I've seen you looking at me from here, why don't you ever come out to play?'

'I'm not allowed to,' Arthur admitted, colouring as the girl – Maria – frowned up at him. 'My father won't let me.'

Maria continued to frown, then her eyes sparkled with mischief.

'He doesn't have to know,' she offered. 'Don't you want to be friends?'

Friends. The word gave Arthur a sense of excitement, it was exactly what he wanted. He nodded.

'Then come on down,' Maria called impatiently.

The house was empty, save for his mother in the kitchen. Arthur left it undetected, and Maria greeted him with another gap toothed grin. He took his first close look at her. She was much paler than him – her delicate skin as nearly as white as the bark of her gum tree. While his hair was deep gold, hers was the palest silken blonde, furthering the contrast to her shockingly blood red eyes. Despite her fragile features, there was something reckless about her. Her feet were bare, the hem of her dress was torn and her face smudged with dirt.

'You never told me your name,' she said in response to his scrutiny.

'Oh, it's Arthur,' he replied sheepishly.

Maria repeated his name to herself.

'I like it,' she informed him moments later, tracing a circle in the dirt with her big toe.

'How old are you?' he asked; hoping that she would not be older and side with his brothers against him.

'I just turned seven,' she spoke with a hint of pride.

'I'm nine in April,'

Maria shrugged, not seeming to care.

'Is there a farm near here?' she asked moments later, another mischievous smile lighting her face.

'There's one down the main road, but father says I'm not to go near it,' Arthur ignored the fact that he'd already disobeyed his father, wary of Maria's smile.

'Come on,' she tugged on his arm. 'Vati said I wasn't allowed to climb the tree but I still did it. Of course then he and Mutti were upset when I fell out and lost my tooth.'

She shrugged and stuck her tongue where her missing upper tooth would have been to show her point. Arthur was confused by the foreign words she had used and told her so.

'Vati and Mutti,' she began to explain. 'You would say father and mother.'

Arthur nodded, taking careful note of it in his bookish mind.

'Now let's go to the farm,' Maria demanded. 'I want to see some sheep.'

Arthur took a glance back towards his house, seeing no one he nodded again, willing to take a risk for his newfound friendship.

Somehow when they reached the seemingly endless fields of the farm, Maria convinced him to help her clamber onto a sheep's back – lending her his knee as a step.

'Come on up,' she giggled, her accent growing stronger in her excitement.

Arthur refused, settling with following the sheep around as it carried Maria on its back. That night he barely got home in time for dinner to avoid suspicion from his parents.

From then on he and Maria were friends. They spent afternoons together, either talking under the tree in Maria's backyard or petting sheep at the farm. Sometimes even wading in the shallow waters close to the banks of the Murray, throwing the muddy water at each other. After day of particularly vicious sunshine Maria would point out Arthur's increase of freckles and in return he would comment on her reddened sunburnt skin. Arthur learnt that Maria's family name meant axe smith, that it had come from the generations of weapon makers before her. In return he told her the tales his mother had told him – the tales of the mythical king he'd been named after.

His father had eventually found out. He was livid, with the quiet rage that always terrified Arthur.

'I warned you, boy,' he said, lowering his face to Arthur's. 'Mark my words, you can't trust those Jerries.'

Arthur didn't say a word, but he silently disagreed. Whatever his father had seen in the war, he knew Maria wasn't like them.

Besides, school had begun and his father could not control him there. He could talk to Maria however much he wanted.

The years passed and Arthur continued visiting the stretching paddocks of the farm and the gum lined riverbank with Maria. One time – emboldened – he even rode a sheep with Maria, only to lose his balance and slide off. He clung the animal's underside, stifling his panicked scream in the wool as Maria laughed before she too slid to the ground to help him. As Arthur finished primary school his second eldest brother left town and joined the army. Remembering his father's dislike of Maria, Arthur promised himself to never do the same.

Then one day Maria was unusually quiet as they sat together, Arthur wondered if him beginning high school was driving them apart.

'I'm leaving,' she said softly.

'What?' he was uncertain as to whether he'd heard right

'Vati says we have to. Mutti agrees. She wants me to meet Großmutter – my grandmother.'

Her accent – which had faded somewhat – suddenly became more pronounced, something Arthur noticed was prone to happen when Maria was excited or upset. He didn't know how to respond.

A week later Maria pressed a tightly folded wad of brown paper into his hand.

'Auf wiedersehen,' she whispered, voice quavering, before she ran back into her house.

Minutes later she re-emerged with her parents, they left as they had come – silently.

The year was nineteen ninety-one, it was only later that Arthur would realise it was the fall of the Berlin wall that had prompted the Beilschmidt family to leave. That Maria's grandmother must have been in East Germany.

Upset and almost enraged with the departure of his closest friend, Arthur never opened the paper, but he could never bring himself to throw it away either. Instead he'd kept it with him even after he moved away from Mildura.

Looking back Arthur realised that the fields in the farm had never stretched on forever; it was only painted so in his mind. That the gap between the sheep's belly and the ground had never been so great. The trees were not ghosts, but perhaps Maria was, she was merely a memory now.

But Arthur had already lost a lot of things, he had nothing to lose by revisiting his past. Taking a deep breath he reached for the box at the centre of the table, retrieving the wad of brown paper. Slowly, with shaking hands, he opened it. Breath catching as he read the first lines of faded childish writing.

Notes:

- If you thought the imagery was weird, that was a part of the source material

- This is set in the GFC of 2007, the modern part that is

- The parts set in Mildura occur during the 1980s, with the exact year of their first meeting being 1986

- I remember digging up records of post war immigration to Australia for this, and they often settled in rural areas such as Mildura

- Quite a few of the immigrants were German, and immigrants were still coming here up to the 80s, so this basis of this fic is quite plausible

- Most translations are provided in fic, but 'auf wiedersehen' means 'goodbye'

- I'm sure you already knew that last point from Auf Wiedersehen, Sweetheart anyway

- This point isn't particularly relevant to anything, but these two would have the strangest accents

- If you're wondering what Maria/Prussia wrote in that letter, stay tuned for the sequel to this to find out

I got a B+ for this, please tell me in a review what you liked about this fic and if you agree with my teacher!