The embers emitted a soft, welcoming glow on the cool Spring evening. Lucien lovingly gazed at his wife, her attention fixed on her knitting: a jumper for their granddaughter, Amelia. The pale, blue-gray Merino wool matched the child's eyes perfectly, and since it was October 6, the present would be finished in plenty of time for Christmas. Jean was so organized, a red jumper in the same pattern had already been posted to their other granddaughter, Zhao Lin, who lived with her mother Li Mei, and grandmother, Mei Lin, in Hong Kong. Lucien lowered his newspaper, "The Chronicle," and addressed his love. "Jean?" The circular knitting needles danced in her hands. "Hm?"
"Who taught you how to knit? Was it your Mum?" he inquired.
"Mum? Oh mo! She was too busy helping my father with the farming and feeding the workers at sheep-shearing time," she replied.
"Did you learn it at school?" He placed the folded "daily" on the side table.
"The nuns! Good Heavens, no! They drummed maths, composition, and the fact that since we were descended from convicts, our souls were crushed by Original Sin." Jean lowered her knitting. "Lucien, why this Knitting Inquisition?"
"Well, my mother never knitted or sewed and if my Aunt Dorothy or her daughter Catherine ever did I would never have known. The family disowned my parents when they married. I just wondered who taught you." Lucien's tone was apologetic.
Jean took a conciliatory tone. "Do you remember me ever speaking of my father's younger brother, Collin. He fought in Belgium during the Great War and returned to Ballarat with a bride, Marie Thérèse Pretot Randall. They were unable to have children, which was a shame. She would have been a wonderful mother. Instead she lavished all her love on me and my sister. It was like having two mums; and since their farm was only two miles from our own, we saw Tante Marie Thérèse regularly. She taught us to knit and crochet and even to tatt lace. My sister mastered lace-making; I never had the patience. And Tante made the most luscious hot chocolate."
Lucien smiled devilishly, "Yes, I seem to remember her special recipe!"
"Well, perhaps I'll fix some for us later tonight," she answered seductively. "Tante Marie Thérèse was quite a lady. You would have appreciated her. She wanted more excitement than a farm could provide, so she moved to a nearby village and found work in a button factory. She was working there when the Germans overran the area. They stormed the factory, stealing all the buttons and stripped the building of anything of value: the machinery, the typewriters, the work tables, and lamps. They even tore the plumbing out of the washrooms and ripped the copper wiring from inside the walls. They raided the nearby farms confiscating all the farm machinery and carried away all the livestock, the meat in the smokehouses, and the produce in the cold cellars. What they didn't personally use, they shipped back to Munich or Dresden. They were so smug, but they hadn't factored in Marie Thérèse Pretot, spy," Jean said proudly.
"Wait, she was a spy? What does that have to do with knitting?" Lucien was absolutely baffled.
Jean explained, "As I said, she was quite a woman. Her home was near the border between Belgium and Germany. She could speak German fluently and organized other women who understood the language, to eavesdrop on the enemies' conversations. It wasn't unusual for women to sit in their front window, or their garden, or even in a café and knit. They would knit a coded message into a scarf or socks based upon information they had overheard. Then they'd pass on the garment to people in the Resistance. Even the local parish priest played a part in defending the town. If a woman 'admitted' in the Confessional that she had had relations with four men outside the village over the last three days, it meant that four platoons were a three day march away."
"Tante Marie Thérèse was proficient with both a rifle and a shotgun, you know country women usually are. She could have harassed the Germans with their few guns, but she realized their firepower would be minuscule at best. Only a few Germans would have been killed and the enemy's retaliation would have been brutal. So the women did what women do best: they listened to the Germans brag in the cafés and pubs, and knitted the messages into clothing. The German Army took the town with rifles and cavalry, and they were defeated by knotting needles. When Uncle Collin and The Diggers liberated the village, he kept hearing about this mythical figure, 'Madame la Générale.' He expected to meet an Amazon wearing a Belgian Army officer's uniform. Instead he was introduced to a twenty-one year old, four foot ten inch farm girl wearing a code-jumper and matching brown wool skirt. They were married ten days later by the Resistance priest."
Lucien was reflective. "So the woman who didn't want to spend her life on a farm, married an Aussie farmer!"
"Yes, but she said her life here was more exciting than her life in Belgium. She didn't mind living here at all; in fact, she loved it."
"And she's the one who taught you to knit. I suppose I should be thankful that she didn't teach you to fire on of those Browning Automatic Rifles that the Americans left after the war," he teased.
"What makes you think she didn't?" Jean returned to her knitting.