Stars Over the Southern Ocean

by J. H. Fletcher

  The siren sounded as she was passing the fire station. Fire? After all the rain they’d been having? She paused and looked about her. Saw other people doing the same. A clang of bells from the white-steepled church. Bells? A siren. She did not dare hope but hoped anyway. She was running, no idea where. People were coming out of the shops, standing in the street. Looking about them. Bewildered, as though waking from a nightmare. The siren continued to blare, the church bells to ring.

  Could it really be …?

  Yes, Marina thought. It really is. At last. Tears and laughter, something close to hysteria. A young man she didn’t know grabbed her and began an impromptu waltz down the middle of the street, both of them laughing.

  Thank you, God.

  ‘We’ll stay open late tonight,’ Horace Pope said. ‘The way people are feeling, we could really cash in.’

  ‘Do that, you do it alone,’ Alice told him. ‘I’m going to celebrate.’

  She had a bottle of whisky, not saying how long she’d had it or where it was from, but she brought it out now. She opened it and poured a big glass for Marina, another for herself.

  ‘Haven’t had a drink for years,’ Alice said. ‘Tonight we drink.’

  Marina had seldom drunk alcohol at all. She looked at the glass Alice had poured.

  ‘Drink all that, I’ll be on my arse,’ she said.

  ‘Me too,’ Alice said. She raised her glass, giggling like a five-year-old. ‘Death to god-rotting Japan emperor.’

  ‘I’ll drink to that,’ Marina said.

  The news had made her drunk already; the whisky could only add to what she felt. By the time she’d finished her glass she knew all about it.

  ‘Japs cause us big headaches in the morning,’ Alice said.

  ‘I’ll bet the emperor has a bigger headache than us,’ Marina said.

  They laughed as though it was the funniest joke ever made.

  ‘I must be getting home,’ Marina said. ‘Hope I don’t fall off on the way.’

  That, too, was worth a laugh, but riding up to the ridge and then, trickier still, all the way down the other side, was nothing to laugh about, yet somehow—day of miracles—she made it intact. Where Charlotte and the doll Alice and Marrek and some of Marrek’s home brew were waiting to greet her.

  ‘Now we better hope he made it through all right,’ Marrek said. ‘I’ve heard bad things about those blokes.’

  You could always rely on Jory’s father to look on the bright side of things.

  ‘He will come home. He’ll be safe.’

  ‘You don’t know that.’

  ‘I do. I do.’

  After the excitement, the euphoria, the unfamiliar booze with its inevitable headache the following day, came silence.

  The world, it seemed, was waiting. Because the war, which they’d been told was over, was not. It would never be over until the boys were home. Possibly not even then. Those who had fought and won; those who had fought, or attempted to fight, and been taken prisoner. Prisoner of the Germans or, even worse, the Japanese, of whom terrible tales were emerging. Tales with the ring of truth that no one wanted to believe, because if they were true the horrors of the past could easily be outmatched by horrors still to come.

  There were reports in the newspapers; photographs of skeletons masquerading as men—courtesy of the emperor of Japan, the papers said. A man whom every inhabitant of Boulders would have hanged twenty times over, given the chance.

  Day by agonising day, Marina waited, hoping and praying for good news, dreading what she increasingly feared might be the truth.

  ‘He’ll need feeding up,’ Marrek said. ‘You can bet your life on that; POWs are always last in the queue when it comes to tucker. But you don’t write off a Trevelyan as easy as that, missy. We may’ve been born here, but we’re still Coverack men at heart, tough as guts. A few square meals will see him right. Better be: he got a living to make. And I want you back on the breeding trail, soon as you can make it. I want a grandson out of you before I kick the bucket.’

  Two weeks later she was busy in the newsagency when Alice came running.

  ‘Phone call for you.’ Alice’s eyes were dancing, voice squeaking with excitement. ‘It’s Jory.’

  Ohmygod.

  Now Marina was the one running.

  ‘Hullo?’

  ‘Marina?’

  She could barely recognise the once stalwart voice that seven years before had charmed her out of the forests but now was as wispy as spider’s silk. A bold front was clearly called for.

  ‘Hey, how you doing?’ Smiling like a gargoyle, phone clasped in a trembling hand.

  ‘I’m alive. More than you can say for some.’

  The whispered words were enough to make her weep, but she was having none of that. ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Sydney. We docked last night. Wouldn’t let us ashore till now.’

  ‘How are you?’

  ‘Fighting fit,’ he whispered. ‘Can’t you tell?’

  Enough to break your heart. ‘You taking the ferry to Burnie?’

  ‘Leaving three days’ time, they tell me. Should be in Burnie Friday.’

  ‘We’ll be there,’ Marina said. ‘Me and Charlotte. Take care of yourself, okay?’

  She put down the phone and looked around the shop at the people buying newspapers, stationery and what birthday cards were still available, all the odds and ends that made up their stock. Many of them were faces she knew, yet now she felt she was looking at strangers. The world itself was strange. Because at long last, after the empty space in her life where he should have been, Jory was coming home.

  ‘Just fancy,’ she told Charlotte, ‘your daddy will soon be home. We’ll go and meet him, shall we? That’ll be fun, won’t it, a real adventure?’

  While three-year-old Charlotte stared, not knowing what an adventure was. Or a daddy, either.

  They took the bus from Boulders to Burnie, stayed overnight with a friend and Friday morning were on the wharf two hours before the Nairana put in, her funnels belching smoke that Marina could see fifteen minutes before she came into view. They weren’t alone; dozens more were waiting in the fresh and breezy morning, the early sun casting long shadows of cranes across the gritty surface of the wharf. Everyone had been patient through the empty years when patience had been needed to survive or even stay sane, but they were impatient now because the ferry was bringing the promise of a return to normality. Whatever that might mean.

  As the Nairana entered the harbour it let off a blast with its siren that stirred the waiting crowd like leaves in a storm. Until that moment there had still been a hint of unreality about the morning but now it was true, they all knew it was true, and excitement, impatience and—yes—maybe a measure of apprehension, spread through the watchers on the wharf. Because, as the Nairana’s propellers churned the waters of the harbour to a dirty froth, there was a last-minute opportunity to wonder what was waiting to disembark. The future, certainly, but after all the years away, after all the things the boys had done and seen, would they be the sons, husbands, lovers they’d been when they’d left, or strangers trying to size up an unfamiliar world and, in some cases, an unfamiliar kid they’d be meeting for the first time?

  ‘My son? My daughter? Stone the crows!’

  Marina was nervous, too, remembering the wispy voice that might have belonged to a stranger and not the man she knew and wanted, now, with every atom of her being.

  The ferry drew alongside the wharf. Warps from bow and stern were secured to bollards. Gangways were lowered. The passengers began to come ashore. Civilians first, then a steady stream of uniformed men: waving and exuberant, slouch hats cocky on close-cropped heads, or stoically trudging, kitbags shouldered, cheerful or morose. Into the milling crowd. Shrieks of joy, of reunion, arms clutching. Thank God, thank God. Scared babies were thrust into the faces of strangers; children, one foot on the other, stared awkwardly at men claiming to be their dads. Charlotte was on the edge of tears, while Marina, tiptoe-watchi
ng over the heads of those obscuring her sight, saw others disembarking, limping, lurching awkwardly, in some cases on stretchers. The human detritus of war.

  She saw a man clutching the gangway rail as he made his painful way off the ferry. Every step was a knife in her side. His uniform hung like a curtain from his wasted shoulders, his eyes pits in the gaunt face. Eyes that found hers and held.

  Jory.

  Dear God.

  1945–46

  CHAPTER 40

  Charlotte on her shoulders, Marina fought her way through the mob to get to him before he fell over, to overcome the weakness that threatened to overwhelm her. Marrek’s voice in her ear: Women of Coverack men don’t faint.

  She reached him.

  ‘Took your time, didn’t you?’ Her voice at once gentle and robust, to conceal her weeping heart. She didn’t wait for an answer. ‘Good trip, was it? Get some food in you, okay, then we’ll get on home. Charlotte, this is your daddy, home with us again. Isn’t that wonderful?’

  Gabbling to drown the silence that lay like a barrier between them, while Charlotte had a look of horror on her face.

  Please God, don’t let her cry.

  She grabbed the kitbag that Jory had somehow dragged down the gangway behind him; the fact that he allowed her to do so showed more clearly than words how weak he was.

  He had a smile of sorts for her and Charlotte, clinging tight to Mum, but not a word to say for himself, with every step taking a quick look to left or right, eyes peeled for danger. Which now, mercifully, existed only in his mind. But …

  Dear God, what have the bastards done to him?

  The cafe was a steamy refuge, tea urn bubbling behind the counter. Other arrivals had beaten them to it. A lost feeling as Marina looked around her but a bloke in uniform took one look at Jory and stood up from his seat.

  ‘There you go, mate.’

  ‘I’m right where I am,’ Jory said.

  ‘I was just leaving,’ the soldier said, and walked away.

  Jory with his mulish look.

  ‘Don’t be daft,’ Marina said. ‘Grab it before anyone else does.’

  She more or less pushed him onto the chair.

  ‘What about you?’ Jory said.

  ‘Not hungry.’ Although her innards were a gaping hole. ‘I’ll grab a bun or something for Charlotte, then she’ll be right.’

  Tea, then, for the returned hero, in a mug big enough to swim in, and a couple of eggs on toast. He managed only half of it; the rest Marina polished off.

  ‘You said you weren’t hungry.’

  ‘Can’t let it go to waste, can we?’

  After that the bus, with Marina helping him board, Jory stony-faced and battered, but alive. Charlotte, who could be quite a gabbler, had nothing to say for herself either, watching this stranger with apprehensive eyes; Marina had quite a job on her hands, trying to comfort the pair of them, while the journey seemed to take forever. By the time they reached Boulders she felt as worn out as Jory looked. She managed to grab a taxi, the driver a new bloke she’d never seen before, and, at last …

  Home, with Marrek standing in the doorway.

  ‘Licked ’em, then?’

  ‘Somen like that.’

  ‘Took your time, didn’t you?’

  Marina had thought it would feel as though he’d been away on a long journey and was now home again, but it was nothing like that. The man who’d come home was a stranger, bearing the imprint of indescribable suffering not only on his body but, far more importantly, on his soul. Jory would not, perhaps could not, talk of what had happened, but his eyes spoke in the silence.

  Again and again she came upon him staring at the walls as though they were enemies, yet on the rare occasions she coaxed him out of the house he seemed diminished by the light. Inside his head he drew himself tighter and smaller until he was not there anymore. He was surrounded by a vast emptiness in which only the core of suffering was real.

  Even Marrek, Coverack man or not, found the sight of what had been his son unbearable.

  ‘What they done to him, missy? Tell me that.’

  She could not. Imagination was blocked by horror; besides, what good did it do to dig into what might have happened? All that was past; the war was over. The task now was to help him get over it as quickly as possible, become once again the man she’d known since they first met. But the truth was that for Jory, Marrek and Marina, as no doubt for millions of others, the war was not over at all. It was there every minute of every day and likely to remain so.

  The granite-hard Coverack father, so proud of his lack of feeling, was now reduced to a cursing and futile hatred while the woman was desperate to do what she must to restore Jory and their life to some semblance of the wholeness she had thought would come with the end of the fighting.

  What she now had to face was that returning to the life they’d had before the war might prove impossible. With all its ups and downs, that life had brought her joy and fulfilment beyond measure but there were times, now, when she feared it might be gone forever, destroyed in the cauldron of the war.

  Then steel entered into her soul. They would get back to those days. It would happen because she would make it happen. That would be her task: to restore to herself the man she had followed from the land of trees to this place that was now and would forever be their home. The pounding surf would be his destiny, and hers, for as long as they had life.

  That evening she went out of the house. The September air was brisk, with little hint of spring. In Boulders the few vehicles would by morning be white with frost, which along the coast was almost unknown.

  She walked down to the water, unusually quiet in the cold air, and climbed, step by step, to the summit of the rock she had named the Steeple. From this point it was possible to see all the way down the coast. It was the place she came when she wanted to think.

  Jory was back; that fact dominated her thoughts, as it would the future. She had waited for this moment for so long, but now it had arrived she saw it had implications she had not previously considered.

  She had lost her roots.

  She was no longer Marina Trevelyan, mother of Charlotte, the Marina who set out every morning on her bicycle to her job in the newsagent’s shop in Boulders. Now she was a woman whose damaged man had come back from the war, his mind in pieces, and who from the moment of his arrival had become her first responsibility. She was still attached to her home, her daughter and old Marrek, but they were no longer her priority. Her work at the shop, her life … all that had gone. With Jory’s return she had jumped into a void.

  Yet she had no fear of the future. With Japan’s surrender and the coming of peace they were all entering into an unknown world where it was impossible to know what might lie ahead, but destiny would govern their future as it always had. The likelihood of her coming here from the forest country had been almost non-existent, yet here she was and here she would remain, a feature of this stretch of coast as permanent as the rock upon which she now stood. Destiny, in the form of Jory Trevelyan, had brought her here and would now decide their future. She no longer needed to accept responsibility for what would happen to them. Destiny would govern all.

  She stood a little longer, then, with resolute heart, climbed down from the Steeple rock and went back to the house.

  She almost lost him that first week.

  God knew where he’d obtained the pistol, a .38 calibre Smith and Wesson army-type revolver, but there it was in his skeletal hand, pointing at the empty sea. There he was, too, well away from the house, standing at the water’s edge and staring at the waves. Later, when he had regained something of his former coherence, he confessed he had intended to kill himself.

  ‘But you cared enough to come after me. That’s what stopped me.’

  ‘Of course I came after you. I always will. You are my life.’

  At the time, uncertain how he might react, she did not dare approach too closely but stopped a few yards away from him. When she spoke, she was
careful to hide the alarm she felt.

  ‘What are you up to?’

  No reply, nor did he look at her.

  ‘Come back with me, sweetheart. Please?’

  He stood for a moment, then sighed. ‘Okay.’ His voice was docile, as though it were natural for anyone to do what he was doing, pointing a pistol at the empty sea.

  He walked back to her, the revolver dangling from his fingers.

  ‘You want me to take that?’

  No answer; nor did he hand her the gun.

  At least he sounded normal and she hoped they might be over the worst of it, but that night the terrors returned to Jory Trevelyan.

  Now he was screaming and sobbing as he fought off invisible enemies. As his body writhed with remembered torments. As later, after she had succeeded with great difficulty in calming him, he told her something of the things that had been done to him and thousands more while they had been prisoners of the Japanese. Thankfully he did not try to tell her everything at once—she did not think she could have borne that—but as the days went by, he held her hand as he drew her with him into a time of terror, degradation and pain more appalling than anything she could have imagined.

  It began when the Scimitar was torpedoed off the New Guinea coast in the middle of the night of 14 January 1945. He was off duty and sleeping in his berth when the crash of the explosion woke him. In the next minutes, he told her, everything was bedlam, with the cruiser listing more and more to port, the deafening shatter and smash of breaking bulkheads combining with the scream of escaping steam and—most terrifying of all—the rush of water flooding through the ship. Which continued to list more and more.

  ‘We were all fighting to get out,’ he said. ‘Panicking, with the water around our ankles. Less than a minute, it was up to our knees. Then the lights went out. You can’t imagine it. If it was bad before, it was ten times worse then. We were groping, shoving, fighting to get out of there, everyone scared stiff if the Scimitar went down we’d go with her.’

  He told her he’d never felt more relieved in his life than when he finally made it to the deck. The Scimitar was canting at forty-five degrees and down by the head, with escaping steam shrieking and no way anyone could see to launch the lifeboats.