Jack's Island by Norman Jorgensen Page A

cards arrived Mum would sit at the kitchen table with a cup of tea, preoccupied, reading the few precious words over and over and obviously remembering other times when she and Uncle Alf were younger.
    I cleared a chair and sat down at the table.
    She smiled at me, sadly. ‘I got a card from your uncle Alf. He says he’s all right and they’re looking after him. The Red Cross has sent him a parcel and a balaclava. He says he needs it because it’s been snowing. Can you imagine that, Jack? Snowing?’
    I could easily imagine it. In Lost Horizon Ronald Colman had to trudge through the snow in blizzards and avalanches to get back to Shangri-la. It looked incredibly cold and no fun at all. Though they did all get to live for hundreds of years.
    â€˜I do hope he’ll be all right,’ Mum said. ‘It must be terrible for him, locked up like that so far from home.’
    I didn’t know about that. When Uncle Alf was at home he spent most of his life wheeling and dealing, barely one step ahead of the law. Dad said Uncle Alf had got his just desserts, being locked up in Germany. It saved the local police from having to do it here. Though he didn’t say that in front of Mum. I think Uncle Alf might’ve gone off to the war owing Dad some money as well. Dad reckoned there wasn’t a person in the entire world Uncle Alf didn’t owe money to. Now he was in Germany, Dad said, he’d probably have the hide to borrow some from Adolf Hitler himself. And that is not that funny.

Mr Palmer Threatens Mr Paterson
    At the pub on Friday nights after payday, we kids were allowed in the beer garden for a lemon squash if we behaved ourselves. Banjo and I were sitting at a table near Dad and his friends when Mr Palmer limped through the pub and out onto the verandah where we sat, his walking stick tap-tap-tapping on the paving. He had on his best pin-striped suit and a starched collar. Under his arm he held a large manila envelope. He walked up to the men’s table.
    â€˜Mr Paterson,’ he began quietly.
    Banjo’s dad looked at him in surprise and nearly knocked over his schooner. The conversation and laughter stopped instantly and the place fell completely silent. Everyone turned to watch and listen. They sensed something was up.
    Every single person on the island had heard of Mr Palmer’s argument with Mr Paterson and John Steinbeck’s part in it, though none of them knew who John Steinbeck was. They thought he must’ve been a German with a name like that. And hitting a defenceless boy in the face with a book was exactly the sort of thing a vicious German would do.
    â€˜Mr Paterson,’ Mr Palmer repeated. ‘I am a patient man, as you well know, and I am a gentle man, but you, Mr Paterson, have behaved badly and you have stretched the limits of my patience.’
    Mr Paterson looked dumbfounded. This was the last thing he expected on a Friday night at the pub.
    Mr Palmer continued. ‘In my hand I have the application papers for a scholarship for your boy to attend Perth Modern School, one of the most respected institutions in the entire country. And, Mr Paterson, your son has the brains and the character to win one of these scholarships, with a little hard work. And I’ll be damned—damned, I tell you—before I will let you stand in the way of such a fine mind. A criminal waste of a God-given talent cannot be allowed to go unchallenged. Mr Paterson, you will sit down here and you will sign these papers.’
    He leaned forward and looked directly into Mr Paterson’s eyes. He lowered his voice very quietly. ‘Or I will quite literally beat you to within an inch of your life. Do you hear me?’ He paused for a moment. ‘I am not a man of violence, but...’
    Not a man of violence? Tell that to the back of my legs.
    â€˜I saw far too much brutality at Gallipoli and at the Somme to be a violent man. But Mr Paterson, you are giving me no