Maralinga

by Judy Nunn

  Two of the officers started lifting lead-lined boxes from the back of the truck, while the other two took Geiger counter readings of the bodies. The radiation levels, as expected, were extraordinarily high.

  ‘Looks to me as if they’ve been in the crater,’ one of the officers said to Pete. ‘There’s bomb glaze residue on their skin.’

  Of course, Pete thought. The Marcoo device had been detonated at ground-level and had produced a large crater, which must have attracted the family. Why shouldn’t it? A big, warm hole in the ground was a perfect camp site on a chilly desert night.

  He watched as the bodies of the man and the woman were loaded into two separate lead-lined boxes. The boxes were suspiciously coffin-like in appearance, he thought, as though they had been designed for this very purpose. The children shared a box between them.

  The orders were for all to report to the DC/RB area, where there would be a briefing, and the three trucks set off in a convoy, the Bedford in the lead.

  Like a funeral procession, Pete thought, his eyes on the coffins in the back of the Bedford. He felt hollow, devoid of emotion. He had known this would happen, it had been just a matter of time. His mixture of helplessness and guilt was overridden by a sense of utter defeat.

  Nick Stratton left headquarters not at all relishing the prospect of carrying out his British commanding officer’s orders. But orders were orders, and, distasteful though the task might be, the decision was the right one. There really was no alternative course of action to be taken, he thought as he climbed into the Land Rover and started up the engine. He just wished he wasn’t the one who had to spell it out to the men.

  The lead-lined boxes were taken directly to one of the principal laboratories in the DC/RB area, where the chief liaison officer, Colonel Nick Stratton, was already waiting. Upon their arrival, the four officers of the indoctrination force were ordered to report to the nearby decontamination unit where they would be divested of their protective clothing, Colonel Stratton instructing them to say nothing of the incident during the procedure. Pete Mitchell and the three general servicemen were to remain in the laboratory until the officers’ return, after which the briefing would commence.

  Charlie, Sam and Benjamin looked about the laboratory with great interest. They’d never even been through the gates of the DC/RB area, let alone inside a laboratory. So this was where it all happened, each was thinking. This was what Maralinga was all about. Was this where they made the bombs?

  Pete wasn’t interested in the laboratory. He was too busy staring at the lead-lined coffins. What are they going to do with you, he wondered. Shove you into a pit along with the other radioactive materials? Probably. Sorry, but there’s not much I can do about that. Christ, he was fed up with the whole thing – he wanted to just turn his back and walk away. But somehow he couldn’t. He remained staring mindlessly at the coffins. Charlie’s right, he thought. You poor bastards. There was nothing more one could say, really, was there? You poor bastards – you didn’t ask for any of this.

  He snapped out of his reverie as the officers returned and Nick Stratton took the floor.

  The seven soldiers were instructed to stand at ease, and did so in military fashion, legs astride, hands clasped behind backs, which made Pete all the more conspicuous as he perched a buttock on the granite-topped bench in the corner. He intended no personal disrespect to Nick Stratton, who was only doing his job and carrying out orders, but Pete had a distinct feeling he knew which way the briefing would go. The army’s bound to want to cover this up, he thought. There’ll be a whole heap of bullshit, and then we’ll be reminded about the oath of bloody silence, I’ll bet.

  ‘This tragic incident is deeply regretted by both the British and Australian armies and all those involved with the Maralinga project,’ Nick said.

  Yeah, yeah, get on with it, Pete thought.

  Nick did. ‘However,’ he continued, ‘I must remind you of the oath of silence you have all sworn.’

  Well, he hadn’t beaten about the bush. Pithy and to the point, you had to give the bloke that much. It was typical of Nick Stratton, Pete thought with begrudging respect.

  ‘You are bound, every one of you,’ Nick’s eyes swept the room, making contact with each man in turn, ‘to abide by the Official Secrets Act at all times.’ His eyes met Pete’s, retaining contact for a second or so longer, as if saying, That means you too, Pete. Then he continued. ‘You men are, therefore, ordered to maintain silence on all you have witnessed with regard to the Aboriginal deaths, regrettable though they are.’

  There was a slight snort of derision from the granite-topped bench in the corner, which Nick ignored.

  ‘And it is my duty to warn you,’ he said sternly, ‘that any man who disobeys this order will be instantly court-martialled.’

  The announcement surprised even Pete. Pretty radical, he thought.

  ‘The violation of the Official Secrets Act is a treasonable offence, as I’m sure you’re all aware,’ Nick continued. ‘Just as I am sure you are also aware that those found guilty of treason can face thirty years’ imprisonment or the firing squad.’

  Pete glanced at the soldiers for their reaction. They were stunned, all seven of them. The four officers remained eyes front, but he could see they were shocked. Young Charlie, Sam and Benjamin were openly exchanging gawks of amazement.

  Nick had expected such a reaction. ‘Put the fear of God in them,’ the brigadier had instructed. ‘If the press gets wind of this, we’re in serious trouble.’ Irksome though Nick found the task, he couldn’t argue with the reasoning. They could not afford a public outcry, and fear was certainly a way to keep men in line. He’d wondered whether he should sweeten the pill and give reasons for so dire a threat, but he had decided against it. An order was an order, after all.

  ‘Under no circumstances must the Maralinga project be threatened,’ he concluded. That would have to do, he thought. ‘Thank you for your attention, gentlemen.’

  The briefing at an end, he opened the door. ‘You can have your laboratory back now, Dr Crowley,’ he said to the white-coated scientist who stepped inside. ‘Thank you for your patience.’

  ‘My pleasure, Colonel.’

  Nick stood beside the door as the men filed out.

  Pete remained where he was. Crowley, he thought. He remembered the man. He’d met him a week or so ago, when he’d been called into the DC/RB area to communicate with the Aboriginal family who’d undergone decontamination treatment. Dr Melvyn Crowley – that was his name. He was the chief pathologist.

  ‘You too, Pete,’ Nick said. The last of the men was leaving the room, but Pete Mitchell hadn’t moved a muscle.

  Melvyn Crowley would be responsible for dissecting the animals exposed to radiation, Pete thought, and he looked around the laboratory, taking in the scene for the first time. This was a pathology unit. The very granite-topped bench he was perched on was designed for the specific purpose of dissecting corpses.

  He stood, but made no move for the door. There were only three of them left in the room now. He looked at Melvyn Crowley, but Crowley didn’t look back. Crowley had eyes for nothing but the coffins. And he was positively drooling.

  ‘After you, Pete,’ Nick said firmly.

  ‘Shit!’

  The expletive was enough to distract Melvyn Crowley’s attention from the coffins, and, as he looked at Pete, the excitement in his eyes was readable.

  You perverted little creep, Pete thought, you just can’t wait to get started, can you.

  ‘I said time to go.’ Nick’s patience was running out. This was an order now.

  Pete looked from one to the other. Melvyn Crowley, his glasses steaming up in ghoulish anticipation, and Nick Stratton, so steeped in military protocol his vision was blinkered.

  ‘You can get fucked, the lot of you,’ he snarled, and he stormed from the laboratory.

  That night in the officers’ mess, Pete Mitchell was noticeably drunk. It was quite early in the evening, but he’d downed se
veral hefty whiskies back at the donga and was now pouring beer on top. Daniel, sensing something was wrong, tried to join him, but Pete waved his cigarette in a gesture of dismissal – he wasn’t interested in the company of others. Others weren’t interested in the company of Pete either – he could be a morose bastard when he was on the drink, it was agreed, so they left him alone at his table in the corner.

  Nick Stratton felt sorry for the man as he watched from across the other side of the mess. Pete Mitchell was taking the deaths of the Aboriginal family very much to heart. It was understandable – he no doubt held himself responsible in some way, but he shouldn’t. There was nothing he could have done. In any event, drinking himself into oblivion wasn’t going to solve the problem. Nick downed his beer and crossed to the table. Pete glared as he sat, but he didn’t wave Nick away as he had Daniel.

  ‘Why don’t you take yourself off to bed, Pete,’ Nick said quietly. ‘There’s no point in agonising over something beyond your control.’ Pete dragged heavily on his cigarette and continued his baleful glare. ‘It was an accident that shouldn’t have happened, but you couldn’t have prevented it. It’s not your fault.’

  ‘You’re just like all the rest, aren’t you, Nick? You think because they’re black, they’re expendable.’

  Damn, Nick thought, he shouldn’t have come over to the table. He should have stayed where he was and kept his mouth shut.

  ‘Who the hell do you think you are?’ Pete hissed. ‘Who the hell do you think they are? Casualties of war? You think you can justify their deaths for some noble cause? I’ve got news for you, mate. We’re not at war.’

  But we are, Nick thought. We’re at war with communism. We’re at war with mother Russia. The race for nuclear power is a whole new war, Pete, unlike anything you and I have known. This is the very purpose of Maralinga. It’s why we’re here.

  He rose from the table. ‘Go to bed, Pete,’ he said.

  ‘Sure.’ Pete rammed his cigarette butt into the overflowing ashtray, stood and skolled the rest of his beer. He needed something stronger anyway. ‘What a pity you can’t threaten me with a cosy little private court martial, Colonel. You’d have to take me to the Supreme Court, and that’d make it a matter of public record. I must be a real cause for worry.’

  Nick made no reply, and Pete didn’t push the confrontation any further. Hell, why bother? They both knew he was no cause for worry. Pete Mitchell never made waves. Pete Mitchell looked after number one.

  Nick watched him go. What a pity, he thought. Pete had lost his objectivity; he was verging on unstable. It appeared the army had made the wrong choice in Pete Mitchell. But he felt sorry for the man nonetheless.

  An hour and a half later, when Daniel arrived back at the donga, Pete had drunk himself into a near stupor. He was sitting on his bunk, barefoot and dishevelled, necking the whisky straight from the bottle.

  ‘Come and join me, mate,’ he said. ‘Come and have a drink.’ He held out the bottle, then realised it was all but empty. ‘Hang on a minute, hang on.’ He leaned over and started ferreting between his legs for the cardboard box he kept under his bunk.

  ‘I don’t want a drink, thanks, Pete.’

  ‘Course you do, course you do.’ The cardboard box appeared and, taking out a fresh bottle, Pete handed it unopened to Daniel. ‘There you go, be my guest.’ Then he pushed the box back under the bunk with his foot.

  Daniel could see he didn’t really have much option. Pete had now decided he was in the mood for company and wasn’t prepared to take no for an answer.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said, opening the bottle and fetching a tin mug from the dresser. He poured himself a modest whisky, left the bottle on the dresser, and pulled up one of the donga’s two chairs. ‘Cheers.’ He raised the tin mug in a salute and hoped that Pete would pass out soon.

  ‘It’s a bugger of a thing to happen, isn’t it?’ Pete said blearily. ‘A real bugger of a thing.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose it is.’ Daniel didn’t bother asking what the bugger of a thing was.

  ‘You know what Crowley and his mob’ll do to those poor bastards?’

  ‘Nope. No idea.’

  ‘They’ll dissect ’em – just like they do the sheep and the goats and the rabbits and the mice,’ Pete gave added emphasis to each word with a wave of the bottle, ‘and any other living creature they can irradiate. They’ll cut up their bodies and grind up their bones in the name of science, and they’ll love every bloody minute of it.’ He drained the dregs of the whisky. ‘Jesus, they must be over the moon now they’ve scored a few humans. Crowley sure as hell is – you should have seen the look on his face. Grab us that bottle, will you.’

  Daniel fetched the bottle from the dresser and handed it over. He wasn’t sure if he understood what he was hearing, but Pete had certainly gained his attention.

  ‘You know what the really bad part is though?’ Pete fumbled with the cork of the bottle. ‘At least I reckon it’s the really bad part, and they would too if they had a say in it, which of course they don’t because they’re dead.’ The cork finally came free. He tossed it on the floor and took a swig of whisky. ‘The really bad part is the cutting-up part.’

  Pete leaned forward, elbows on knees, fingers firmly clenched into a fist around the neck of the bottle. He had an intense desire to communicate with Daniel. Young Dan, unlike the average soldier at Maralinga, had actually shown some concern for the Aborigines. Although, Pete had to admit, even in his addled state, that such a judgement wasn’t quite fair on his part. The average soldier at Maralinga had been fed a load of bullshit when all was said and done. They’d been told the local population had been removed from the area – that is, if there’d ever been any local population in the first place. The average soldier could hardly be expected to show concern for those who didn’t exist.

  ‘The worst thing you can do to these people, Dan,’ he said ponderously, trying to choose his words with care although he was having some trouble, ‘the worst thing you can possibly do to them is to cut them up. That’s the really, really bad part. You understand me?’

  ‘Not exactly.’

  The kid wasn’t getting his drift, Pete thought. He took another swig of whisky and then spelled it out. ‘You don’t mutilate them, that’s what I’m saying. You don’t chop these people up when they’re dead! Dismemberment is worse than death. These people have to go to their ancestors intact. Am I getting through?’

  ‘Who exactly are we talking about?’

  ‘The dead family.’ Pete was exasperated – who the hell did Dan think he was talking about? ‘Mum and dad and the two little kids, that’s who.’

  Dead family? What dead family, Daniel wondered. Pete was rambling in his drunkenness. He must mean the family who’d been put through the decontamination unit. Good God, if there’d been deaths reported, it would have been the talk of the mess.

  ‘I haven’t actually heard of any dead family, Pete,’ he said carefully.

  ‘Well, of course you haven’t, and you won’t tomorrow either, or the day after that, or next week or even next year. They’ve threatened to court-martial anyone who talks – violation of the Official Secrets Act – a treasonable offence, mate. Jesus Christ, I could cop a bullet through the brain for telling you this.’ Well, that had certainly hit home, Pete thought with satisfaction. He laughed, enjoying the shock on the kid’s face. ‘Ah, they’re a ruthless bunch your employers, Dan.’ He raised the bottle in a toast. ‘Here’s to the army, mate, yours and mine. A pack of bastards every one of them.’ Then, head back, he guzzled long and hard, whisky spilling in rivulets down his chin.

  Daniel was indeed shocked, but more by the very suggestion that such a thing could happen than by his actual belief that it had. This was surely no more than the lunatic ravings of a drunk.

  ‘So there you are, that’s the way it goes.’ Pete was close to passing out now. ‘A nice young family finds a cosy hole and curls up for the night and, before you know it, they’re being cut into bits. Doesn’
t seem fair to me … Doesn’t seem bloody fair at all …’

  The bottle slid from his grasp and hit the floor. Daniel rescued it.

  ‘Oh, thanks, mate, thanks a lot.’ Pete put his hand out for the bottle, but Daniel placed it on the dresser.

  There was a moment’s pause while the hand hung uncertainly in the air, then Pete seemed to forget all about the whisky. He flopped back on his bunk. ‘Bugger of a thing to happen,’ he said. ‘Bugger of a thing …’ He kept muttering for a while, and gradually his mutters became snores.

  Daniel hefted Pete’s feet up onto the bunk and then sat on his own bunk, deep in thought.

  It couldn’t have happened, he told himself. None of it could have happened. He couldn’t afford to believe that it had. Pete was a disturbed man. If Aborigines had been discovered dead, word would have got around, surely. But then, Daniel thought, what word ever did get around about Aborigines? He’d only heard about the family who’d been contaminated through Pete. Everything he knew about the Aboriginal predicament at Maralinga he’d learnt through Pete.

  He remembered the day he’d gone out in the patrol truck, the day he’d seen the woman and child, and he remembered how the two had seemed to disappear before his very eyes. There are local people in the area, he thought, and they are difficult to locate, and they are in danger. All this he knew to be a fact. So if the dreadful but plausible scenario of the family’s death was true, could it be possible that the authorities were so bent on keeping the fact a secret that men were being threatened with court martial? Violation of the Official Secrets Act, no less – a treasonable offence? Daniel found it impossible to believe.

  He looked at Pete, whose snores were by now stentorian. He’d confront him in the morning, he decided. One way or another, he must find out the truth.

  But in the morning Pete was gone. Daniel waited for him to return from the ablutions block, but he didn’t. He didn’t report for breakfast either. The confrontation, Daniel realised, would have to be postponed until the evening.