Free Swords and Crowns and Rings by Ruth Park

a fit of suffocation after ten minutes alone with her sister. Mrs Moy shook her head.
    â€˜But I don’t like your going by yourself, either,’ she said. ‘There might be hooliganism, goodness knows what. Intoxication,’ she added with restraint.
    â€˜Mama!’ cried her daughter in an agonised tone, ‘I might never have another war!’
    A manic din on the firebell commenced. A long spiral of smoke ascended from the bonfire, prematurely ignited.
    â€˜They’re going to hang the Kaiser! They’re going to have fireworks and I won’t see any of it!’ begged Cushie. Mrs Moy hesitated, but before she could give the child a reluctant refusal, Jackie Hanna bowled through the gate, seesawing excitedly beneath the veranda.
    â€˜Mrs Moy, Mrs Moy, can Cushie come and watch with me and Dad and Mum? Oh, it’s grand, Mrs Moy!’
    â€˜Mama, now I may go, mayn’t I?’
    To Mrs Moy there was something uncannily simian in the way the boy bent forward and looked upwards, tilting his large head back horizontally on a delicate neck. She marvelled that Cushie was not repelled by him. But the girl was flushed with excitement.
    Suddenly Mrs Moy became indifferent. It was only the kind of vulgar tribal celebration to be expected in this dreary town.
    â€˜Stay with Jackie’s parents,’ she instructed her daughter. ‘And don’t stay out too long. Jackie, if people become rowdy, you must promise faithfully to bring Dorothy home immediately.’
    Mrs MacNunn was pleased to see Cushie. She had a simple fondness for the child she had known since a toddler. The child was plump and rosy, perfect, yet the astute instincts of the woman recognised the anxiety or uncertainty behind the doll-like face. Now she squeezed her cheerfully, saying, ‘Thanks be there’s a girl to look after me, because I tell you straight, I’m going to be a wild woman tonight. I’m going to take a nip or two, no matter what his lordship over there says about it.’
    She gave Jerry a roguish look.
    â€˜You’ll get home by yourself if you keel over, I’m warning you,’ he said. ‘I’ll not be seen with any drunken old biddy and that’s flat.’
    Jerry’s leg was giving him jip.
    Yet he grinned with spontaneous pleasure to see his wife capering about the kitchen, overflowing with high spirits not because of the War’s end but because it gave her a chance of a bit of a shindig.
    â€˜Wear your new hat, love,’ he said. ‘You look a treat in it.’
    From afar came the halting sound of half a band. Seven of the younger players were marooned in Ghinni Junction, staying over after the cricket match.
    â€˜Run along, you kids!’ cried Mrs MacNunn. ‘You don’t want to miss a skerrick of it.’
    She pinned on her dress the Nun’s service medal from the Boer War.
    â€˜Someone’s got to wear it on a night like this,’ she said. ‘And I’m proud that you went and did your bit, young devil that you were.’
    The Nun smiled. ‘You go on ahead with the youngsters, Peg,’ he said. ‘I got to scrape off the whiskers.’
    As he shaved, he kept sipping at a medicine glass of painkiller beside him. Some said it was laudanum. All Jerry knew was that it sometimes euchred the pain in his leg. To help him get through the evening, he filled his pocket with Hean’s Tonic Nerve Nuts, which promised nerve health for threepence a day. They couldn’t do him any harm, he supposed.
    As he left the house he noticed how bright everything was. People had left all their lights turned on. The Salvation Army marched past, all six of them. Their one lassie was a stout old duck who’d been a naughty barmaid in Sydney in her youth and had repented it ever since.
    Jerry was astonished that his little town had so large a population. The main street was so crowded that no one could move. They fought, wriggled,