by Peter Watt
The sun was relentless and Diane Duffy was desperately thirsty.
‘Speedo!’ one of the Japanese soldiers yelled at the line of women and children. They were trudging under the hot tropical sun along a dusty dirt road from the Katong temporary camp towards their destination of Changi prison. At least the Japanese had provided lorries for the very sick and elderly for the march into captivity. Diane had three cans of sardines in the small bag she carried but thought that if she ate them, they would make her even thirstier.
Some of the women were defiantly singing songs of the British Empire, and spirits were reassuringly high. Walking beside Diane was a young Englishwoman whose husband had been a manager with a British trading company in Malaya. The sun had burned her beautiful pale skin a beet red as she had lost her hat. Diane offered the young woman her own hat, and she accepted it.
‘I don’t know what has become of my husband,’ said the young woman, who had introduced herself as Dorothy. ‘The Nips separated us when we were forced to surrender. Do you have any family?’
‘My son was evacuated a few of weeks ago,’ Diane said. ‘I haven’t heard anything since.’
‘Why didn’t you go with him?’ Dorothy asked.
‘I wish I had,’ Diane said. ‘But I had other commitments, and my son went in the care of an old friend.’
‘I heard that many ships evacuating Singapore were sunk by the Japs,’ Dorothy said carelessly. Diane’s face must have shown her anguish because the young woman said, ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to imply that your son was on one of those ships. Some do appear to have been able to run the Jap blockade.’ She grasped Diane’s arm. ‘Do you think we will be humanely cared for?’
Diane heard the plea in her voice and realised that the young woman was frightened and wanted reassurance. ‘I’m sure the Japs will treat us with consideration as non-combatants,’ she answered, although her words rang hollow. This was not an army that believed in the protocols of the Geneva Convention, and civilian prisoners only added up to useless baggage that had to be fed and guarded. The soldiers escorting them looked young and seemed to resent their role as guards. They clearly saw themselves as conquering warriors and this kind of duty demeaning. Diane knew that such an attitude could result in brutality.
After a long, seemingly endless march, Diane saw the huge gates of the prison loom up, and was almost grateful. At least they had reached their destination, albeit covered in dust, tired, hungry and very thirsty. The column of women passed through the gate and suddenly Dorothy gave a small cry of joy.
‘It’s Henry! He’s alive!’ she said, staring at a haggard-looking man wearing slacks and a dirty white shirt standing in the courtyard amongst other male civilian prisoners. Diane could see that Henry had spotted his wife as his face broke into a joyful smile. He raised his hand to wave and Dorothy was about to break ranks and run to him when a Japanese guard stepped in front of her and held his bayonet-tipped rifle across his chest in a threatening manner. Dorothy dutifully stepped back to join Diane.
‘At least you know your husband is still alive,’ she said and in her thoughts she wondered about Patrick. Had Cyril been able to get him out of Singapore and to safety? There was rarely a moment that Diane did not think about Patrick, and she felt as though the pain of separation was worse than anything the Japanese could do to her.
Diane heard the great iron gates clang shut behind them. The guards ushered them up iron steps in a prison block to cells formerly occupied by criminals. Each cell was around nine foot by twelve foot. A tiny window with bars was located about ten feet above the concrete floor, and a single stone slab acted as a bed. In the corner was a hole that was the toilet. Diane, Dorothy and an older woman were ordered into one cell. The door clanged behind them and the sound echoed down the building as other iron doors slammed shut.
The three women stood uncertainly in the tiny cell.
‘I’m Diane Duffy,’ Diane said to the older woman.
‘Anne Bambury,’ replied the slightly stout woman, who looked to Diane to be in her late fifties. Her hair was grey and tied back in a bun, and her accent was English.
‘This is Dorothy . . . I’m sorry but I don’t know your family name,’ Diane said, attempting to introduce the young woman.
‘Mrs Dorothy Kindle,’ she said. ‘I suppose family names will not mean anything here, though.’
‘We are British and our names are part of the Empire,’ Anne said angrily. ‘Don’t forget that, young lady. Are you British?’ she asked, turning to Diane.
‘I was born in England, but I’ve spent most of my life overseas. I married an Australian pilot and I have a four-year-old son,’ Diane said. ‘He was evacuated with a family friend.’
‘Which ship?’ Anne asked bluntly.
‘I’m not sure,’ Diane answered. ‘He may have even been evacuated in a flying boat.’
‘I only ask because so many evacuating ships were sunk by the bloody Japs. I know, because I was on one they sank only a couple of hundred yards off the wharf. We lost a lot of people. Rather unusual to get a berth on a flying boat,’ Anne said.
‘I’m a pilot, and a friend offered to do me a favour,’ Diane said. Both women looked at her as some kind of oddity. ‘I had an airline based out of Singapore but my aircraft were destroyed in the initial air attacks by the Nips.’
‘Well, our first decision here is who gets the bunk,’ Anne said, eyeing the raised concrete slab. ‘We can draw lots for tonight, and rotate around.’
Diane and Dorothy agreed that this was the most democratic solution, and Anne won the first night on the platform.
An hour or so later the Japanese guards opened the doors and the women filed down to receive rations and water. The food was a rice soup served out of big tubs. All were hungry and the food filled their stomachs and the brackish water quenched their thirst. Many in the food line became reacquainted with friends they thought they had lost, and the main topic of conversation was the possible whereabouts of those missing. Diane went in search of Dr Cicely Williams but could not find her. Eventually the order came to return to their cells, and the three women made their way up the many iron steps to their cramped accommodation.
The building once again echoed with the awful clang of steel doors being closed behind them, and they prepared for the hours of darkness.
Anne slumped on the raised concrete slab. ‘I wonder if we’ll get bacon and eggs tomorrow morning,’ she said lightly. ‘I think I might just have a lie-in. Tell them I’ll have my breakfast in bed.’
Diane smiled, but Dorothy said, ‘I don’t think there’s anything to joke about.’
Anne sat up and looked the young woman in the eye. ‘You’re going to need a sense of humour for what is ahead, young lady,’ she said sternly. ‘The Japs might win this war, and all we can expect is this until we die.’
Dorothy burst into tears and Diane placed her arm around her shoulders. She glared at Anne, who rolled her eyes.
‘Dorothy has been separated from her husband,’ she said. ‘I think we should go a bit easy on her. She’s only young.’
‘I’ve had three husbands,’ Anne said. ‘All useless. Where is your husband?’
‘He was killed in Iraq a few years back,’ Diane answered. ‘He was a good man.’
‘Then you have been a lucky woman,’ Anne commented. ‘The only good man I ever knew was my brother. I came out here to join him, and the Japs killed him in a bombing raid a couple of weeks ago. I couldn’t even find enough of him to bury.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ Diane said with sympathy. ‘It sounds as though you have had a hard life.’
Anne did not reply, and when the darkness came, Diane and Dorothy lay down on the hard floor to attempt to sleep. Diane could hear Dorothy weeping quietly, huddled in a foetal position. Diane did not attempt to console her. She lay on her back and fixed in her mind the image of Patrick smilin
g at her. Tears rolled down her cheeks and all she could do was hope that Cyril had kept her son safe.
Two days later word came along the feeding line that a meeting was to be held in the prison’s carpenter shop to organise a system of government amongst the female prisoners.
Diane was pleased to hear of the meeting as it gave everyone a sense of stability. She looked down at her bowl of rice and water that looked like dishwater. It stank and was tasteless and the prisoners called it bubu. Between three hundred women the ration was five tins of sardines, a quarter tin of bully beef and half-a-dozen tins of soup. Already the thought of food was uppermost in everyone’s mind. The only consolation was that the male prisoners had been given the task of preparing the food and Dorothy was able to snatch a short conversation with her husband when they lined up for their bubu under the watchful eyes of the Japanese.
At the meeting Dr Elinor Hopkins was appointed liaison officer, and Anne put herself forward as representative for the block where their cell was situated. Diane was not surprised to see Anne elected as she had come to learn that she had a toughness of spirit badly needed in these desperate times. But Diane could see that the Japanese cared little whether they died of hunger. She suspected that this ration shortage was a deliberate means of eliminating them, and at night she would close her eyes, her stomach rumbling with hunger, and try to imagine Patrick at the railway station – the last time she had set eyes on him. Always the tears would roll down her cheeks, but in the darkness there was no one to see this, and no one to console her.
*
Aboard the motor schooner plunging through the seas towards the northern coast of Australia, Jessica Duffy sought out the man who had pulled her from the sea.
‘Sergeant Kelly,’ she said when she reached him at his post, manning the Bren gun on the bow, ‘I was told that you saved me from a shark and put your life in jeopardy pulling me from the sea. I have not yet thanked you.’
Jack smiled. ‘No need for thanks, Miss Duffy,’ he said. ‘I would do the same for a blackfella.’
‘You did,’ she smiled. ‘My ancestors are Aboriginal.’
Jack reddened, and spluttered, ‘I meant no offence . . . just an expression.’
‘I know, Sergeant Kelly, and I do not take offence from the man who saved my life.’
‘You look a lot better now than when we first fished you out of the drink,’ Jack said. ‘I heard that you lost a fellow NGVR man a few hours before we found you.’
‘Yes, he was a good man, and Frank Holland wanted him to get back to Australia to tell the government of a Japanese massacre at the Tol plantation.’
‘I know Frank,’ Jack said. ‘Good bloke, for a Pommy. I last heard he had joined us in the NGVR. You say you have Aboriginal blood – I once had a soldier in my command, a Tom Duffy. He was a blackfella and the best bloody digger we had in the unit. Any relation?’
Jessica’s eyes widened. ‘My father’s name is Tom Duffy, and he fought on the Western Front,’ she said. ‘He was awarded a DCM.’
‘God almighty!’ Jack exclaimed. ‘You’re Tom’s daughter? I lost track of your old man when I went to New Guinea after the war. Is he still around?’
‘The last contact I had with him was when I was . . .’ Jessica paused. She looked into the face of the man before her and saw only an honesty she knew in her own father. ‘I was a nun at a mission station on New Britain,’ she said quietly. ‘But I had to flee when the Japanese found out that I had assisted Sergeant King.’
‘Then you’re still a nun,’ Jack said.
‘Not in my heart,’ Jessica replied, gazing across the rolling ocean. ‘I’m afraid my faith is not strong enough for me to keep my vocation. When I return to Australia I intend to resign from my order, find my father and start a secular life.’
‘I was baptised a Catholic,’ Jack said. ‘I guess I’m not a very good one because I can’t remember the last time I stepped into a church. But I never thought I would meet a nun in the process of resigning her job. Welcome to the real world. When you find Tom give him my regards. Kind of wish he was with us in the NGVR.’
‘I hope my father has the sense to realise his age, and is even now at home managing our cattle stations,’ Jessica retorted. ‘He has done enough for his country.’
‘Do the others know that you are a nun?’ Jack asked.
Jessica shook her head. ‘It is not something I wish to make widely known,’ she said. ‘I suppose that I am still technically a Bride of Christ until my superiors in the order release me from my vows. But I no longer feel a part of my missionary past. I did not agree with what I saw of our presence amongst the natives, destroying their culture in the name of our God.’
‘Well, good luck in getting a divorce from God,’ Jack said with a grin. ‘I suspect that you have to fight with yourself over that matter.’
‘Ship off the port side bearing down on us!’ a voice shouted and Jack buried the butt of the machine gun into his shoulder. It was a useless gesture as any warship could blast them out of the water.
Every man aboard tensed until the warship swung around and Jack identified the Royal Australian Navy ensign fluttering from the wireless aerial. The skipper whooped from the bridge. ‘Just got a signal from our warship,’ he yelled to all below. ‘It says, “Welcome to Australian waters.”’
Jack dropped the butt of the Bren from his shoulder and hugged Jessica. ‘We made it,’ he said. ‘You’ll soon be catching up with your dad.’
Jessica gazed to the starboard side and in the distance she could just make out the ragged tops of the hills of North Queensland. She was almost home.
*
Private Tom Duffy had been able to use his experience dealing with army clerks to gain a forty-eight hour leave pass, and also permission to pay for a hotel room in Cairns while he waited for his ship to Port Moresby. Accommodation had been scarce and Tom had been forced to draw on his substantial private funds to pay triple the rates for a bed on the hotel’s enclosed verandah. At least there was a large fan to stir the hot air of the tropics.
He wandered out of the hotel to visit to his friend, Frank Fumarra, an old comrade from his days on the Western Front. Tom had helped him buy his grocery business with a generous loan and he had become Tom’s unofficial agent in far north Queensland. Frank’s business had flourished and he now had a large family.
Tom politely declined an offer to partake of a meal with Frank’s family, whose Italian heritage would ensure Tom the warmest of welcomes and the biggest of meals. But Frank had a daughter around the same age as Jessica, and Tom felt that this would make him even more melancholy at the separation from, and unknown fate of, his beautiful daughter.
So Tom returned to the hotel and chose to spend his leave sitting at the bar and drinking.
*
Jessica stepped from the rowboat that had conveyed her across the mangrove flats to the Cairns foreshore. She thanked Jack Kelly and he asked her what she planned to do now.
‘Look up an old friend of the family and go to the bank to take out money to buy some clothes,’ Jessica answered. ‘Then I’ll purchase a train ticket to Townsville and find my father. We have a lot of catching-up to do.’
‘I’m heading for the nearest pub to wrap my hand around the coldest beer I can find,’ Jack said with a happy smile. ‘It’s been a long time since I was able to do that. See you around, Jessie.’
They parted and Jessica, still wearing her shabby trousers, dirty shirt and floppy broad-brimmed hat, walked into the town to seek out Frank Fumarra.
When Jessica stepped into his shop she was suddenly overwhelmed by the feeling of being in an alien place. For so many weeks she had lived at the edge of existence – sometimes starving, always exhausted, always at risk – as she and Sergeant Bruce King evaded the enemy. Standing in the shop with its aroma of fresh fruit and vegetables and its shelves stocked with food, Jessi
ca felt disoriented. She seemed to be suspended between a traumatic past and an uncertain future.
‘Can I help you, miss?’ a male voice asked, and Jessica turned to face Frank, who frowned as if confused. ‘Sister Camillus . . . little Jessie!’ he exclaimed. ‘Is that really you?’
Jessica broke into a smile. ‘It’s just Jessie now,’ she said. ‘I’m no longer Sister Camillus.’
Frank stepped around his counter and embraced the young woman. ‘I cannot believe that you are in my shop . . . Wait until I tell the family you’re here . . . You must stay with us. Your dad was here only the day before yesterday. What a joy it will be for him to know that you are safe and well.’
‘Dad was here?’ Jessica gasped. ‘I thought he’d be in Townsville or out on one of the stations.’
Frank’s beaming smile turned to a frown. ‘He said that he hadn’t heard from you for many weeks. He has returned to the army and is being sent to New Guinea. I told him he was too old to go back to war, but you know your dad, he’s a born fighter.’
‘Do you know where my father is now, Uncle Frank?’ Jessica asked.
Frank gave Jessica the name of the hotel, and she thanked him and promised to return as soon as she had located her father.
At the hotel, she was told by the receptionist that Tom Duffy had checked out some hours ago.
‘Do you know where he might have gone?’ Jessica asked in desperation.
‘Dunno, love,’ the woman answered. ‘I guess he’ll be joining the other blokes shipping out this morning. If you head over to the river, I think their ship is anchored there.’
Jessica hurried to the riverbank to find a small trading ship in the channel making its way out to sea. She could see a row of uniformed soldiers leaning on the rails, smoking and watching the shore. She scanned the faces as best she could at this distance and discerned a taller, darker-skinned man standing at the railings on the top deck. She waved frantically and called, ‘Dad! Dad!’
Tom Duffy was a little hungover from the previous evening of drowning his sorrows, but he noticed what appeared to be a young man waving to the converted troopship. The thump of the engines drowned all sound, but now the young man was jumping up and down and waving frantically.