by Jean Moran
‘What if it’s surf crashing over rocks?’
‘No, damn it, no. You’re a pessimist and that’s for sure, Harry Gracey. Put a picture of a golden beach in your mind and that’s what it will be.’
Harry shrugged. ‘The power of thought? Well, I’ve heard of the power of prayer, so why not?’
*
Hours later, the palm trees bordering the beach were turning from black to grey as they came more clearly into view.
Connor was suddenly agitated. ‘We need to get ashore before it’s light. Start paddling. As soon as we’re close enough, we go over the side and swim.’
‘Connor, an officer is only as good as his sergeant, and you’re the best. I’m the officer. I should have been the one making the decisions and giving the orders.’
‘Orders be buggered.’
Ribbons of surf spread like dirty lace across the surface of the water, moving inexorably to the land.
At a point about two hundred yards from the beach, they slid quietly into the ocean and struck out for the land, finally dragging themselves ashore, their chests heaving with exhaustion.
Harry raised his head. ‘Do you think there might be a welcome party of the Japanese persuasion?’
‘We need to hide until we’ve had a good look round.’
Legs weak from their long days at sea, they half staggered, half crawled over the warm white sand and into the dense vegetation just beyond the fringe of beachside palms. Among the greenery, shaded by the palms, they fell onto a mossy bed and slept.
*
Connor woke when Harry shoved something weighty into his chest. ‘Here. Breakfast. A coconut. One each. I’ve made holes with my penknife. Forgot I’d tucked it into my pocket. I knew being a Boy Scout would one day come in useful.’
Connor grabbed it with both hands, tilted his head back and poured the milk into his mouth.
‘I didn’t even have to climb to pick it,’ crowed Harry. ‘There’s a few scattered around. Should keep us going for now until we go inland and find a village willing to feed us.’
‘Let’s get our strength first.’
‘Now, now, old boy. It’s my turn to be in charge and I say we go and take a look around. We need to have some idea of where we are. Who knows? That current may have brought us to Northern Australia.’
‘No chance.’
‘I suppose that is wishful thinking. Still, might be some way of getting there from here – borrowing a fishing boat perhaps.’
They drank the milk of three coconuts each, then proceeded to smash them open on a sharp rock and eat the flesh.
Connor peered up at the sky. ‘Looks like rain.’
‘Nonsense,’ said Harry, narrowing his eyes as he followed suit. ‘Just puffballs.’
A little later, the tropical downpour washed every vestige of salt from their bodies, and if they’d had the strength they would have danced in it.
The lazy surf that had brought them ashore now swept up the beach in angry heaps.
‘No fishing today,’ Harry said glumly, coughed and spat a mixture of salt water and blood onto the ground. ‘My chest is painful. My mother told me to look after my chest. Should have listened,’ he said, smiling ruefully. He was joking, but Connor knew he was worried.
He studied the rising water. If this was an atoll then there was a chance of it being buried by the sea almost as quickly as it had risen. It might still be Bali, but there was no way of knowing.
They stayed in their hiding place for another night, listening to the storm as it thundered overhead, soaked by the water running in rivulets from drooping palm leaves.
The following day dawned clear. The sea had calmed, the water now sweeping ashore with less vigour.
Failing to secure the scattered coconuts prior to the storm proved a mistake. More had been torn from the trees, but the sea swirling up onto the beach had taken them. There was only enough for immediate use and no surplus to take with them into the interior of the island.
Hand on his chest, Harry coughed and spat.
‘Well?’ He looked at Connor. ‘What do you think? Stay here or explore?’
‘The sea will be rough for at least another day, so no fishing for our supper. I think we need to find civilisation and food other than coconuts – if there is any.’
*
The vegetation they’d found pleasantly reviving grew more sparse and the rain had turned the firm earth into a viscous slop.
They struggled to trudge through it. Sometimes their knees gave out and their muscles ached. When their limbs screamed for rest, they fell onto their hands and knees or even their bellies, forced to use their elbows to propel themselves forward.
The mud cooled their sore skin, seeping into the cavities where once they’d had flesh.
Harry fell face down so he was almost breathing mud. ‘I think I could sleep in this stuff.’ His voice was muffled.
‘Don’t be ridiculous.’
‘At least it’s soft. Like cream.’
‘You’re going soft in the bloody head, man.’
‘Watch it, Sergeant Major. That’s insubordination. I’m the senior officer. Remember?’
Connor didn’t laugh. He was too weak for that. They’d been starved, beaten and tortured for so long, they were not like men any longer, their flesh almost gone, nothing but the skeleton remaining – but against all the odds, they were still alive.
‘On. We have to go on. On, Harry. Come on. Shift yourself.’
High above, monkeys capered in the treetops, stopping to look down at them and scream their warnings.
‘I envy them,’ said Connor. ‘They’re free, athletic and noisy.’
The two men could not be noisy. Despite the jungle foliage, noise travelled fast and was best left to the monkeys. At least they had the choice of coming to the ground or climbing into the trees.
The light began to fade at the same time as their hunger came back to gnaw at their shrunken stomachs.
Harry lifted his head and sniffed the air, like a dog on the scent of a bitch, though sex was the last thing on his mind. ‘I smell a village.’
Connor raised his head and did the same.
Limbs clicking into place, like those of old men, they staggered to their feet, each grasping the shoulder of the other. Hope renewed their failing energy. Bedraggled and caked with mud, they moved slowly through the twilight, screeched at by macaques, bitten by myriad insects, moths fluttering blindly into their faces.
Dark forest behind them, they emerged into a clearing, their hopes leaping at the sight of children playing, a handsome woman with a baby strapped to her back. On seeing the two men, the children ran to their startled mothers who looked up from their cooking pots, their faces glossy with moisture. Others shouted and screamed, older children running into the village huts and between them into the greenery beyond.
Drawn by the cries of alarm, men filtered into the clearing from wherever they had been. One man, grey, wrinkled and elderly, stepped proud of the others. Holding his head high, the headman gazed at them, a slight frown needling his forehead in pencil-thin furrows.
Harry crumpled to his knees, pressed his palms together and begged for rice. Connor remained standing, swaying slightly, shoulders hunched, arms limp at his sides. He would have crumpled too if he hadn’t forced himself to imagine a coat hook between his shoulder blades that was holding him upright.
The tense atmosphere dissipated, long brown hands beckoned them forward, invited them to sit, gave them water. Bowls of rice, with a little fruit and fish, appeared, then more coconuts, which had been hollowed out and contained fresh water. Thanking their hosts with clasped hands, their bowed heads drew friendly smiles from soft brown faces.
That night they rested, sleeping on bare earth that, under the circumstances, was as comfortable as a feather bed. Being close to one of the cooking fires was a luxury, the dying embers warming their tired bones and heating their ragged loincloths so that they steamed.
Harry was stari
ng into the fire and smiling. ‘If Heaven is like this, then I’m all for going there,’ he murmured, his eyes half closed.
Connor didn’t answer. He was staring up at the stars and thinking of those he knew who were experiencing the same starry night. He wished Harry would shut up about Heaven. He’d heard enough of that kind of talk from the priests back in Ireland.
‘Can I remind you of that favour I asked you a while ago? Get me home. In pieces if you have to. And I’ll do the same for you. Mind you, I don’t intend going home any time soon. I think I’d like to stay here.’
‘But you still want your ashes taken back? Even if you think you’ve found Paradise?’
‘It’s a family thing. Anyway, I won’t need my body and its many amazing attributes when I’m dead, will I?’
Connor made himself comfortable, closed his eyes and prepared to sleep.
‘I wonder where we are.’
‘For the moment I don’t care. In the morning I’ll ask if the Japanese Army is hereabouts.’
Feeling warmer and more content than they had for days, they closed their eyes against the night, but the nightmares were still in their heads – the slaughter they’d seen, the privations they’d endured.
A hand shook Connor’s shoulder and the dream was dispelled.
‘Quick. You hide. Quick. Japanese.’
‘Harry. The bastards are here.’
Harry didn’t need a second urging.
People were rushing in all directions. There was screaming and crying all round, hurrying feet, mothers with babies in their arms, men looking confused – peaceful men who were farmers not fighters.
Although still feeling the after-effects of their voyage, fear straightened their limbs.
Supporting each other got them halfway to the edge of the village before Harry erupted in a coughing fit that bent him double. ‘Go. You can run faster than me.’
‘I won’t do that.’
‘Get going. I’m right behind you.’
In the surge of frightened villagers attempting to escape, Connor found himself running into the thick greenery they’d tripped out of earlier in the evening.
When he looked round, Harry had gone in the other direction.
He was faced with a choice: run back across the compound or stay where he was.
Figures seemed to be milling beneath a hut. Harry was among them. The huts were set on stilts above the ground, away from snakes and vermin.
Was it his imagination, or were the milling humans diminishing?
Minute by minute, the figures became fewer until they had gone. He guessed then that the wily villagers, who had experienced the enemy raids before, had a hiding place beneath the hut.
Making himself as small as possible, he melted into the vegetation and watched unseen as hordes of bayonet-wielding Japanese flooded into the clearing, kicking at the cooking fires and pots, killing the dogs that still barked and harried.
A few villagers were caught in the open. The sound of gunfire mingled with cordite and blood.
He kept low and still, eyes closed. He heard somebody speaking, then laughter.
Being careful not to give himself away, he parted the bushes and peered through. His heart sank.
The soldiers were bending down, looking beneath the hut where the hiding place was situated, laughing and pointing – and doing something else.
An order was snapped by the officer in charge, a thickset man with round glasses. A number of soldiers fumbled with something fastened to their belts.
Grenades.
The explosions blew the soldiers backwards and bits of bodies flew through the air then fell in lumps, thudding as they hit the ground.
He wanted to scream in horror, but all he could manage was a silent retch.
Flames engulfed most of the huts. Nobody came running when the soldiers left. He found himself feeling glad that the dogs had been killed. Dead meat was dead meat and they would have feasted for days on the human remains scattered across the ground.
Unable to look any longer, he tore his eyes away. If he kept looking, remembering the details, he would go insane. He closed his eyes, placed his hands over his ears and rocked backwards and forwards, like a child trying to console itself.
By the time dawn came, his head was still buried between his knees, but he sat as still as a tombstone in a silent graveyard. He had no idea how long he remained in the strange limbo, his mind a blank and the world nothing but a void that he wished would never be real again.
Harry is gone.
Harry is gone.
Harry is gone.
Harry is gone.
He rose slowly from behind the bush that had screened him and kept him safe.
A fire was blazing in the middle of the compound. He recognised the village elder, heard a frail wailing of men and women alike. They were all gathered around the fire, throwing on more wood, pushing at it with long sticks in an effort to encourage more heat.
The fire was wide and sprawling, unlike the earlier ones, above which had hung cooking pots. This had trellises of wooden stakes over it, which he recognised as a funeral pyre. The bits of bodies were being burned.
He sat there, thinking of Harry. Only last night his senior officer and friend had said this place was his idea of Heaven, which, after all they’d been through, was a reasonable enough observation.
Take my ashes home to my mother.
Ashes.
He heard the roaring of flames and saw the fire was burning more fiercely now.
Later in the day as the flames began to die, the ashes were raked from the fire.
How was he supposed to know which ashes were Harry’s among the heap from the bodies that had been burned?
You won’t know.
But his mother. I’ve to take his ashes to his mother.
And she won’t know either. Nobody will know.
The villagers understood and gave him a blue and white jar with a lid.
He stared at the cold ashes that didn’t just belong to Harry but to everybody who had died in the explosion. He sat by those ashes for some time trying to come to terms with what had happened. It would be a long while before he could – if ever.
As night began to fall and the daytime horror became cloaked in darkness, he used his bare hands to fill the jar, his tears running into his beard. When the jar was full he held up his trembling hands before his face and whispered Harry’s name.
More body pieces were found among the vegetation. The villagers attempted to relight the fire, but their movements were listless, worn out by despair and the effort of making the main fire.
Connor got the lighter out from within his loincloth. He hoped it would light, its fuel somewhat diminished. He clicked it three times before it sparked then put it to the dried grass piled beneath wood and body parts.
The flames grew. Smoke rose.
Connor looked at the lighter, the Chinese characters on the bottom that probably spelled out the name of Kim Pheloung. It wasn’t him he was thinking of but the raven-haired woman who had given it to him. He recalled singing ‘Star of the County Down’ when she’d been in the bar, a song about an Irish girl with chestnut hair. He’d seen her raven hair, her grey eyes, and her image replaced that of the girl in the song. If they both survived he would find her. Returning Harry’s ashes to his mother was the promise he’d made to his best friend. Returning the lighter to Rowena Rossiter was a promise to himself.
22
The house in Shanghai was larger than the one in Kowloon and, as Kim had indicated, older and built in a grand style. It, too, was protected by an outer wall enclosing one compound and an inner wall enclosing a second.
The outer wall bounded the ancillary compound where the car was parked, the gates wide enough to take transport. The next gate set into the interior wall was what the Chinese called a ‘moon gate’, a circular opening as round as the moon and offset out of line with the main gate and the main entrance to the house. The crooked path between the doors was
meant to prevent a demon entering the house.
The pagoda-style roof of luminescent blue tiles ended in great swallowtails at each outer corner, its dugong rafters painted black above white pillars, green lanterns and red walls.
Inside was cool and smelt of spices, ebony and rosewater. Women in silk robes and traditional garb bowed deeply as they passed.
Rowena held Dawn’s hand as they entered, aware of the child’s innocence, her face lit with wonder as she eyed the high ceilings, the rich furnishings, the dragons that girdled the base of the roof.
Dawn looked around her wide eyed and touched her mother’s thigh, grasping a handful of her dress.
‘It’s all right, darling. We’re safe now.’
‘Yes,’ declared Kim. ‘A palace compared to where you were before. My palace.’
‘Or a prison,’ murmured Rowena, which earned her a sharp look from her host.
‘It will be far more comfortable than where you were.’
‘Yes. You’re right. I’m very grateful to you.’
He clapped his hands. ‘You will be even more grateful. I have a surprise for you. You will be much pleased.’
A figure she recognised stepped forward from among the other women, dressed traditionally in dark blue, a colour deemed suitable for a servant.
Luli bowed, then raised her head and smiled shyly. ‘Doctor.’
Kim frowned. ‘Not doctor. You call her madam. She is no longer a doctor while she is under my roof.’
Luli blanched and lowered her eyes.
‘She will be the child’s nurse,’ Kim announced.
Luli raised her eyes, smiled shyly at Rowena and then at Dawn.
Dawn smiled back.
‘You will take the child to see the carp. Now.’
Luli repeated the instruction as though it were natural for his command to take root, like a Buddhist prayer.
Remembering the scene on the boat Rowena was momentarily compelled to cling to her daughter’s hand.
Kim gently prised away her fingers. ‘My dear, Luli will take the child.’ He smiled as he said it, then leaned closer so that only she could hear: ‘Or there will be no child.’