To Love a Sunburnt Country

by Jackie French

  PULAU AYU PRISON CAMP, 26 DECEMBER 1942

  NANCY

  They had turkey for Christmas dinner at the prison camp. Nancy had a feeling it was really Boxing Day, but Mrs Hughendorn’s calculations said it was the 25th, and the others accepted her judgement. It was good to celebrate. Malaria and its delirium came and went, and dysentery too. But here — now — they were alive.

  So their evening meal was turkey and roast potatoes and roast pumpkin — only Nancy wanted the roast pumpkin (cattle food, Mrs Hughendorn called it) but they indulged her. Brussels sprouts and new peas. Plum pudding and mince pies and custard and brandy butter and trifle with red and green jelly and pavlova, which Nancy had to explain too, the meringue crisp on the outside and soft in the middle and the cream and sliced passionfruit and strawberries. And giblet soup to begin with and a fruit cocktail and devilled eggs to Sally’s mother’s recipe and fruitcake.

  It was still cassava, of course, with a few shreds of carrot and some of the bitter greens that Nancy now collected with the flower buds, as well as a couple of especially fat ‘island rabbits’. But it was what you called it that mattered. And today, Christmas Day, it was turkey with all the trimmings.

  They sat around the cooking fire. Their dresses were tattered now, even Mrs Hughendorn’s. She had been generous with her spare clothes, but after a year of washing by hand in not enough water, and the ever-present dirt and heat and no way to dry anything properly in the wet, and with no needle and thread for darning, the fabric was rotting through.

  Gavin wore a length of material wrapped around his waist. Moira had refused to let him wear a pair of Mrs Hughendorn’s knickers, tied up with grass string. A sarong might be ‘native’ but it was better than ladies’ bloomers.

  They had managed Christmas presents for him, and one of Mrs Hughendorn’s remaining stockings to hang up for Santa to put them in: a ball, woven out of sticks and grass, the sort Gran had woven sometimes at the Christmas week picnics by the river; a ‘new’ hat, padded to make it small enough to stay on his head; a cricket bat made from a flattish hunk of firewood with cloth wrapped around the end for a handle. ‘It is high time he learnt cricket,’ Mrs Hughendorn had proclaimed. ‘Every young man needs to be able to play cricket.’

  They had taken it in turns to throw the ball to him, to show him how to hit the ball with the bat. He could catch, laughing at every throw, but hadn’t managed to hit the ball with the bat yet.

  ‘Maybe by the time he’s two,’ said Moira, smiling.

  Now he sat with the women on the benches, eating his cassava mash with every sign of pleasure. He knows no different, thought Nancy. She blinked sharply, refusing to cry today, even at the thought of all that Gavin had missed, not just food but proper beds, clothes, other children. But extra food still came for him every day, usually bananas but sometimes a precious egg, or a bowl of cassava mash, leaves and root together, or chunks of roasted breadfruit.

  And he still laughed as they played with him, or told him stories. He was their miracle: a child who laughed.

  Sally put down her bowl. ‘O, little town of Bethlehem,’ she began. Her voice was high and sweet.

  ‘How still we see thee lie,’ Mrs Hughendorn joined in.

  ‘The hopes and fears of all the years,

  Are met in thee tonight.’ They all sang now, even Nancy in a sort of tuneless hum below the others.

  ‘Away in a manger, no crib for a bed …’

  Gavin crouched in the dirt at their feet, looking around at the singing women with joy. Moira had given up trying to keep him out of the dirt. Dirt was what they lived with.

  We should sing more often, thought Nancy. Sing the night terrors away. Sing away fear for themselves, for Ben, for what was happening on the battlefields. The Japanese radio broadcasts from Tokyo Rose that they were made to listen to once a week said that the Japanese Imperial Army would soon conquer the whole of Australia.

  We will fight, she thought. Even Gran will fight. But she didn’t want to think of Overflow battling invaders. One invasion is enough for a thousand years, she thought. She wanted to think of home as she had left it, a place of peace and grazing sheep, with a wedge-tailed eagle soaring overhead.

  ‘We three kings of Orient are

  Bearing gifts we travel so far …’

  What gifts were being exchanged at Overflow? Mum always gave books at Christmas. Dad had plaited her a whip one year — she had been so jealous of Ben’s, and Ben wouldn’t lend her his, said girls didn’t crack whips. A new saddle another year, new boots. Gran gave chocolates and big jars of boiled lollies, or conversation lollies with their engraved sayings like I love you or Kiss me quick, all the treats she had never had until she was an old woman, with the postman to bring packages from Gibber’s Creek.

  And Santa Claus still came, of course, even to Mum and Dad and Gran that last year at home, because she had the remainder of her wages in her pocket and because she had missed them more than she could admit, more than she could bear to think of now …

  ‘Silent night, holy night,

  All is calm, all is bright …’

  Someone moved behind her. Nancy turned.

  They were all there, the guards, the officers, the translator, the commandant, also thinner than they had been nearly a year earlier, even gaunt. For a moment Nancy thought they were going to be beaten for singing, that it was against some rule. But then she saw that the soldiers were listening, watching. That they too were remembering home, somewhere beyond this place of stink and mud where there was beauty and love.

  ‘Round yon virgin, Mother and Child

  Holy infant so tender and mild …’

  So not like Gavin, she thought, smiling at Gavin’s dirty face.

  ‘Sleep in heavenly peace …’

  It was the translator’s voice, a tenor descant, surprisingly tuneful. The women stopped, startled, then joined in again for the last line.

  ‘Sleep in heavenly peace.’

  Chapter 35

  Gibber’s Creek Gazette, 24 January 1943

  Victory at Guadalcanal: Allies Retake Solomon Islands

  In a stunning victory, Allied forces have retaken the Japanese garrison at Guadalcanal. According to Colonel Angus ‘Mattie’ Matherson (retired), of Skye Station via Gibber’s Creek: ‘This gives the Allies a base from which they can take Japanese stronghold Rabaul. If the Japanese thought they’d crippled America at Pearl Harbor, this victory shows them they were wrong.’

  GIBBER’S CREEK, 24 JANUARY 1943

  MICHAEL

  Michael sat in the armchair in his father’s office often, partly flattered by his father’s need for his company, partly disturbed. He had been at school through the worst of his father’s recovery from his stroke. He’d assumed that his parents were ageless. But he and Jim were his father’s second family — their half-sister, Anna, was down in Melbourne, married to a banker, neither of whom had enough of a taste for country life for them to holiday at Drinkwater. Dad was in his sixties now; and Abercrombie, his foreman for decades, was like Mr Fothergill back at school — past retiring age and still working only because of the war.

  For the first time Michael realised that there would come a time when he was the protector of his parents, not the other way around. And earlier than for lots of the chaps because his parents had been older than most when they’d had himself and Jim. Not yet, perhaps, or never entirely. But today, at least, his father relied on him enough to delay his going back to school.

  What would Dad think, he wondered, if I suddenly told him: I want to leave school now? Work at Drinkwater till I’m old enough to join the AIF …

  A sharp rap at the door interrupted him.

  ‘Come in.’

  George Green was tall with light brown hair and blue eyes. He still looked pale. According to his landlady, he had been ill with bronchitis since before Christmas. ‘You wanted to see me, sir?’

  ‘Sit down.’

  George sat on a hard chair opposite the desk. ‘I
s there a problem with the trials for my new secondary valve? I thought the results were good.’

  ‘No. Not about the valve. Mr Green, I won’t beat about the bush. Your family name is Grünberg, isn’t it? Not Green.’

  A moment’s stillness. The man looked from his boss to Michael, then back again. ‘It used to be Grünberg,’ he said carefully. ‘My grandfather changed it to Green at the start of the last war. But we are loyal Australians.’

  ‘Ah.’ His father seemed slightly flummoxed by the man’s evident sincerity in the last statement.

  ‘But what does being a loyal Australian mean?’ asked Michael. This matters, he thought. The Nazis lumped anyone who wasn’t white, and a certain kind of white at that, together as enemies of the state or even as sub-human. We are better than that. Aren’t we?

  ‘I suppose … doing what’s best for your country.’

  ‘Australia is your country?’

  ‘Yes.’

  That sounded honest too, thought Michael. But there was another tone beneath the words.

  ‘What do you think is the best future for Australia then?’

  Another pause. ‘You know I’ve been to Germany then.’

  Michael nodded. His father said, ‘Yes.’

  ‘I won’t pretend to you. Hitler’s done a lot that I admire. National socialism — it’s good for workers to have a say in how the factory in which they work is governed. The Jews have too much power, and the old guard too. Those who inherited money or position, but who didn’t earn it.’ Michael wondered if he was imagining the hint of a German accent now.

  ‘You would like to see this for Australia?’

  ‘I should lie, and say no. But, yes, I would. The socialists say every man is as good as another. National socialists say that is nonsense. You know it is nonsense. Why should a man of intelligence, or education, have no more say than a fool who drinks his pay? But that is the system we have now.’

  ‘You admit you’re a Nazi?’ Thomas Thompson’s face showed his horror. ‘Well, you can get out. Now.’

  ‘No,’ said Michael. ‘Dad, please. George isn’t saying that, are you?’

  ‘No. I am being honest. You wanted honesty. I could have told you I want none of these things. But I want Australia to choose them, not because a foreign power says we must. I don’t want German overlords here, nor Japanese ones. You think I’m a spy for Germany? No. Never. I love this country as much as you. I want the best for it. And when your country is at war, you do your best for it. As I do my best here.’ He looked at his boss now. ‘How much overtime have I put in and never charged for? How often have I come in with new designs on a Monday, after working during the weekend? Even when I was sick I was sketching, planning.’

  ‘And your ham radio?’ Thomas kept his voice neutral.

  ‘I handed it in, like all the others. You can ask the police to search. I expect you will. They will find nothing.’ There was slight contempt in his voice now.

  No spy would hide a transmitter in his own home, thought Michael. Not with a thousand miles of bush to hide it in. ‘You like to walk on the weekends?’

  George looked at him warily. ‘Is that a crime? Yes, I like bushwalking. It keeps me fit. Helps me to think. I haven’t been for a walk since I was sick though.’

  Michael exchanged a glance with his father. His father nodded slightly, as if to say, up to you.

  ‘Mr Green, what would you say if we told you that you have been accused of being a spy for Nazi Germany? But rather than report you to the police — as probably we should do — instead we are offering you the chance to go back to Rocky Valley. To work at the Macks’ farm.’

  ‘Digging potatoes? I’d say you are a fool. Both of you. Your factory needs me. Our country needs me. It needs the new valve I’m working on too. I’m an engineer, not a potato farmer. Australia has all the potato farmers it needs, but not enough engineers.’

  His face was flushed. From anger, thought Michael, then realised that it was humiliation. George Green was his valley’s success story, along with Joseph McAlpine, the only two in their community to go to university and work with more than their hands. For the first time Michael accepted finishing school as a privilege, one that he would be stupid to turn down. Now George Green would be returning to dig potatoes.

  And Australia desperately needed engineers.

  ‘How about this then?’ suggested Michael slowly. ‘You say you are working on a new valve. No, don’t tell me more,’ he added, as the man began to speak again. ‘I don’t need to know about it.’ Nor would I understand it, he thought. Jim, with his love of all things mechanical, should be doing this. ‘Can you work on it at Rocky Valley?’

  The man still looked at him warily. ‘Yes. I have tools at home. I can work on the design there. If I have to.’

  ‘Then tell your family part of the truth. Tell them that for security reasons you need to work on this valve of yours away from the factory. Say there is a danger of security breaches here. We’ll pay, say, half your salary.’ He looked at his father. ‘Is that OK, Dad?’

  His father nodded.

  ‘But you’ll also dig potatoes, or whatever else is needed.’ And Sandy and all the others can keep an eye on you, he thought. Put one foot out of line — try sneaking away to transmit messages — and you’ll find you have as many eyes on you as a flock of cockatoos.

  The young man considered it. ‘I’ve no choice,’ he said at last.

  ‘No,’ said Thomas Thompson. ‘Under the circumstances we have been generous. We don’t want to see you or your family interned unnecessarily.’

  ‘You think you are generous. But I’m the one who is the loser.’ He took a deep breath. ‘Mr Thompson, Mr Michael Thompson — what happens when the war is over? Will you give me my job back then?’

  ‘If the Nazis win, they might give you the factory,’ said Thomas Thompson dryly.

  ‘They won’t win. We’ll beat them,’ said George Green and, for the first time, Michael knew that he did tell the truth now, or at least what he believed. ‘We’ll beat the Japanese too. When that happens, will you take me back?’

  Michael didn’t look at his father. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Even though my beliefs are not the same as yours?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Michael again. ‘That is part of what we are fighting for, isn’t it? The right to free speech.’ Even as he said it, he realised it wasn’t true. It was a good propaganda slogan, but not the truth. They were fighting to keep their country their own, no more, no less.

  George Green — or Jürgen Grünberg — stood up. ‘I’ll pack my things. I’ll send a report on my work to you,’ he nodded to Thomas Thompson, ‘each Monday.’ He raised his chin and looked at both of them. ‘And if the Japanese ever land on Australian soil, I will fight against them as hard as either of you.’

  He shut the door behind him.

  Chapter 36

  Gibber’s Creek Gazette, 20 February 1943

  Japanese Plane Over Sydney

  A Japanese plane over Sydney yesterday caused the city to be blacked out again and anti-aircraft batteries to be on full alert …

  PULAU AYU PRISON CAMP, 2 MARCH 1943

  NANCY

  She dreamt, though she was still awake.

  Bogongs, with velvet wings that still left you itchy when they brushed against your cheek. Hills by starlight, red-tinged, blood country, star shadows, purple, green, rocks that sat like humped sheep and sheep that sat like rocks. Black-frost night. No white rims on the gum leaves but in the morning they would be frozen. Odd but if she leant against the tree, it would be warm: bee warm, honey warm, scent of sweetness. The little black bees wouldn’t sting you, most like, Gran said, but take care. The natives bred with the new bees, bees that did sting. You couldn’t be sure now if a hive of wild bees were stingers or not.

  Like me, she thought. Black bee, long yellow bees, Gran and Granddad marrying, Dad marrying Mum and here I am, not quite a native bee. One that didn’t used to sting but now …

&nb
sp; Ancestors like strings in the night, stretching up and far away. Two strings for parents, four for grandparents, then eight, sixteen, all strings leading to me and Ben. Another string to Gavin, leading to the future, a small strong string from Ben.

  Where was Ben?

  She called, but made no noise. Ben? Ben?

  Somewhere outside the dream the women spoke. ‘She’s been like this for over an hour.’ Moira’s voice. But Moira should not be here, not in the land of rocky, bony hills. My bones. My ancestors’ bones lie here. Not hers. Suddenly, deeply, she knew that Moira would never be buried in these hills.

  ‘Don’t think it’s malaria. Some other fever. Try the quinine.’

  ‘I didn’t know we had any.’

  ‘Miss Beatty bought some.’

  ‘Doesn’t she need it?’

  ‘She died an hour ago,’ said the voice. ‘Wherever she is now, she doesn’t need quinine. There’s some native stuff too. Smells like wormwood, but it’s worth a go.’

  ‘Go fetch wood,’ said Mum, wood shaped like snakes and snakes like wood.

  She’d run screaming from a big brown snake, but Ben laughed. ‘It’s a stick. Not a snake at all.’

  She’d stared, not admitting she’d been wrong. ‘It’s a snick then.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Ben. ‘You have to be careful of those snicks. Dangerous creatures. Snicks pretend they are a snake, then when they’ve got you scared, pretend they are a stick.’

  ‘Where is Ben?’ This time it came out aloud.

  Someone took her hand. Moira, who was here but not here. Moira crying.

  ‘Yes,’ whispered the not-Moira. ‘Where is Ben? Ben? Where are you, Ben?’

  Chapter 37

  Gibber’s Creek Gazette, 9 April 1943

  Petrol Warning

  Those using their cars for purposes not on their licences will be prosecuted. There will be no more warnings, stated the Chairman of the Gibber’s Creek Fuel Control Board, Councillor Bullant. ‘Travel from your place of work to your home does not come under the category of “business licence”.’