To Love a Sunburnt Country

by Jackie French

  ‘Give me a bigger craft and I’ll fly you all. Or bring you one by one.’

  For the first time emotion showed, a tiny curl of a smile. ‘I believe you would. But it’s going to be hard enough to convince the brass to give me fifteen men.’

  Fifteen men, she thought, to hold an army back. ‘Better not try for the impossible as well: getting them to admit a woman can fly. Hop aboard.’

  She turned to Brownie. ‘Good luck.’ She almost said, ‘Send me a message to say how you’re going,’ but of course he couldn’t. She hoped Johnno would at least let her know if he lived or died. She hesitated, then gave him a kiss on the cheek. ‘There. You won’t get that from any other pilot. Good luck, mate.’

  ‘Good luck getting back. And thank you.’ He gave the thumbs-up sign. He still looked stooped and office pale. But there was a confidence about him now. As she watched, he strode off, towards the trees.

  She thought she saw the black-skinned man meet him, but perhaps it had just been the flickering of shadows.

  She handed the stranger the helmet. Hoped she could find the way back; looked for the images in her mind and knew she could. Born in mountains, raised in mountains. Mountains were as good as a map to her now, once seen never forgotten, recognised again no matter what angle she approached from.

  Kirsty turned to the stranger. ‘I’ll get the crate turned round and we can be off. No, I can manage it alone.’ She was afraid his leg would give way if he tried. ‘Can’t land you on the base, I’m afraid, but there’ll be a jeep waiting for you.’

  To take Nancy to hospital, she thought. Pity for the dead woman, the unknown Mrs Overflow, flooded her. A brave woman, with a brave husband. She deserved more than a whisper of regret that she wasn’t Nancy Clancy.

  ‘We’ll be home by suppertime,’ she said, as she hauled the plane around to face back down the small strip. ‘How does a nice tough steak sound, and a plate of bitter greens?’

  ‘I’d rather have a beer.’

  ‘You might have to settle for a pot of stewed tea. Black, no sugar.’

  Nancy, she thought. Dear Nancy. Where are you, child?

  Chapter 45

  Gibber’s Creek Gazette, 24 March 1944

  The Gibber’s Creek Volunteer Defence Corps was called out today when a plane spotter reported men in shorts running along Gibber’s Creek. Assuming the Japanese had landed, the corps turned out in force, but soon discovered that the ‘aliens’ were Gibber’s Creek students on their cross-country run. Several of the pupils lost time while being ‘interrogated’ so the result of the race is inconclusive.

  PULAU AYU PRISON CAMP, MARCH 1944

  NANCY

  Nancy lay on her bamboo slats and stared up at the starlight through the gaps in the roof. She had felt strangely well all day, as if she could reach up on her tiptoes and dance across the camp. And plan escape.

  She’d picked greens and flower buds this afternoon — no parcel to collect today. But Mrs Hughendorn had scratched a message with a piece of charcoal on the back of one of the old notes to their unknown local friends, a careful message, referring to that lovely picnic we had before the war and wondering if they might do it again.

  The picnic had been on the next island, an hour’s sail away, but the Japanese weren’t to know that. It was a small island, no plantations, no one living there except fishermen camping now and then, so it was unlikely to have Japanese guards. No water either, so whoever went there would have to take enough to survive there for a few days until, possibly, hopefully, their local helpers could get word to someone from a nearby island to pick them up, to take them to another island, and another …

  They couldn’t decide whether they should all try to leave at once, or alone, or two at a time. One or two would be easier, but those remaining would be punished, perhaps even killed, in retaliation. Perhaps they could make it seem as if there had been an accident. Get permission to clean themselves in the sea, pretend two of them had been eaten by a shark …

  Which almost certainly wouldn’t work. But at least the women had hope now, something to talk about, to plan, as they sat around the cooking fire, instead of just rehashing memories and dreams.

  Nancy felt … odd. The day’s euphoria had given way to something else. She probably needed to go to the latrine, and now she’d thought of it she couldn’t go back to sleep till she had. There had been no severe dysentery again, but all still suffered from loose bowels either as a residue of the infection or because of the low-protein diet of gruel and vegetables.

  She slipped out of the hut, the lights around the perimeter enough to see by, then stopped, staring at the crumple of cloth halfway over the edge of the hole.

  It wasn’t cloth. It was a woman. She bent to pull her up, dragging her by her thin ankles, scraping the muck away from her face with her hands, trying not to gag at the stench. ‘Mrs Hughendorn!’ She was so used to thinking of Mrs Hughendorn as large. Even thin, her very presence made her imposing. But this was a skeleton.

  She bent, and heard breathing. Thank goodness. Just a faint, perhaps … they often felt faint after going to the latrine. She needed to fetch Nurse Rogers, but Mrs Hughendorn would hate anyone to see her like this. She ran to get the bucket of dirty water they had used for washing earlier. The ground swam and wandered beneath her … Something’s wrong with the lights, she thought vaguely. They keep flickering on and off …

  The bucket seemed three times as heavy as usual. But she managed to wash the putrid mess off Mrs Hughendorn’s face and from her hair, thin and straggling across her scalp, and even get most of her dress clean.

  She sat, suddenly unable to stand again. ‘Nurse Rogers,’ she called. Her voice was faint, and hardly hers! ‘Nurse Rogers!’

  ‘What is it?’

  Nancy relaxed at the sound of the nurse’s voice, shut her eyes against the lights around the barbed-wire fence. The guards must have new lights, for these were far too bright. That must be why they flickered. The ground lurched …

  An earthquake? she thought muzzily. But the huts didn’t shake, nor did the palm trees beyond the camp sway …

  Nurse Rogers appeared, still wearing only her slip. ‘Mrs Hughendorn!’ She knelt, felt the woman’s forehead. ‘High fever. Help me get her back to her hut.’

  ‘I … I don’t think I can.’

  Nurse Rogers looked at her sharply. ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘I’m feeling … the world is feeling …’ Black, she thought.

  Then nothing.

  She woke a minute later. It had to be only a minute, for there had been nothing, not even dreams, just a quick walk along the river, holding Michael’s hand. The native chooks had darted in and out of the reeds, and then the swan had sailed out, leading her cygnets …

  She blinked, and realised it was day. Moira sat by her side. ‘Nancy? Oh, Nancy, thank goodness. No, don’t try to sit up.’ The dear thin arm held her head, pressed white tablets to her mouth and then a coconut shell of water. ‘Drink,’ she ordered.

  Nancy drank, and swallowed, the tablets harsh against her throat. ‘What … what happened?’ That husk wasn’t her voice. What had happened to her voice?

  ‘You’ve been sick, darling. Here, try to swallow this.’

  More liquid, warm this time, in a spoon. It tasted of chicken. What miracle had brought chicken? And a spoon!

  She blinked. Something was different about Moira. Not thinner, not browner. Her pearls: that was it. No pearls at her throat, no earrings. Even her wedding ring was gone.

  Had the Japanese confiscated them?

  ‘Your jewellery,’ she whispered.

  ‘Never mind that now. Try and sleep. Nurse Rogers says that you need sleep.’

  ‘I’m sick?’

  ‘Three weeks,’ said Moira, and Nancy heard the strain now, the throat hoarse from crying. ‘We don’t know what it is. Nurse Rogers thinks cerebral malaria perhaps, but it could be all sorts of other fevers. Thank goodness the tablets brought the fever down.’

 
; ‘Tablets? Your pearls … they bought my tablets? And the chicken?’

  ‘Shh. It doesn’t matter now. Nothing matters except to get you well.’

  It took the rest of her strength, but she had to ask. ‘Mrs Hughendorn? Gavin?’ Please don’t let me have given him my fever, she thought, thinking of the kisses she shared with the small boy.

  ‘Mrs Hughendorn is recovering too. Gavin is fine. Mr Shigura is teaching him how to use chopsticks.’

  ‘Mr Shigura?’

  ‘The translator. He … he has been very good. He gave us the full price for the jewellery, arranged for the drugs. From Singapore: that is why they were so expensive. Everything is in such short supply, even for the Japanese. Sleep now, Nancy. Sleep.’

  She slept. She woke to find another figure by her bed. The translator. Mr Shigura. It seemed strange to think of him with a name now, a person, not just a function.

  ‘I … I’m sorry. I can’t stand to bow.’

  ‘It is no matter. I am glad you are recovering.’

  ‘My sister-in-law says you have been kind.’

  He said nothing. Had he broken regulations to help them? Who was this man? She had never even wondered where he had learnt English so well.

  ‘Your English is so very good, Mr Shigura,’ she said tentatively.

  ‘I learnt in Japan, then came to Malaya. I worked as a barber, wrote reports of what I saw, what I heard. English customers meant my English becomes like theirs.’

  ‘You were a spy?’

  ‘I gathered intelligence. For my country, for the Empire of the Sun.’ He met her gaze properly for the first time. ‘The English took from Malaya, from Thailand, from India. They gave nothing back.’

  ‘We’ve given them …’ she tried to think ‘… buildings. And education …’

  He gave a short laugh. ‘You gave education, but no jobs. All managers had to be English. Now Japan makes local people managers. They govern themselves now.’

  Was it true? How could she know, lying back here? She was too weak to think, much less find an adequate reply.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said again. ‘For all you have done, Mr Shigura. You have been kind.’

  He looked at his shoes for a moment, then at her. ‘English mems are lazy. They spend their time at parties, ordering servants. At home my wife works in a factory. My daughters too. Two hours at school, eight hours in the factory. English mems are like fleas on a dog.’

  ‘That’s not true! I work … or I did work, back home. My mother teaches school, my grandmother has worked all her life.’

  ‘You are different.’

  ‘No. The nurses work, did work.’

  ‘You and the nurses then. The others?’

  She said nothing, had nothing to say, no energy even if she had.

  ‘You sleep,’ he said, ‘get well. Your nephew needs you. He is a good boy.’ He hesitated. ‘When the war is over, perhaps you will go home. Your nephew will speak excellent Japanese by then. It will be useful for him.’

  You have been teaching him Japanese, she thought, not knowing whether to thank him or protest.

  ‘He may be a manager one day, under the Japanese Empire. By then mems may have learnt to work.’

  ‘We would all have worked, and gladly, if you had given us work to do,’ she whispered. But would they all have worked if it hadn’t been forced upon them? She didn’t know.

  ‘There is no work now,’ said Mr Shigura. ‘Now you must rest.’ He bowed, the first time he had ever bowed to her, and left.

  It was another three days before she could sit up, a week after that before she could stumble to the latrine so Moira no longer had to hold a coconut-shell bowl underneath her, and clean her with dried leaves and water. It was two weeks before she could sit on a block of wood by the evening cooking fire. Mrs Hughendorn sat in her usual chair, pale and even thinner, the skin drooping from her chin onto her neck. Moira sat beside her and Nurse Rogers, with Gavin on her lap.

  ‘Where is Sally? Is she sick too?’

  ‘Sally died four weeks ago,’ said Moira quietly. ‘And Nurse Williams and Nurse McTavish. It was the same fever you had. The medicine didn’t come in time to save them. Nurse Rogers was sick too.’

  ‘Luckily not till after we had the medicine,’ said Nurse Rogers. ‘Whatever it was didn’t hit me too hard.’

  Nancy looked at the fire. Four of us left, she thought, and Gavin. Three of us too weak to walk further than the latrine, and Moira not much better. And there will be more illness, as long as we are starved, and live with mosquitoes in the dirt. Four left from thirteen. Seven of us dead. Perhaps Mrs Addison and Vivienne dead by now as well, in whatever was happening beyond their barbed wire.

  She thought of the translator — Mr Shigura — the thinness of his face too. Had war taken so many men, destroyed so many crops, that there was not enough food for anyone? When would the guards finally decide that there was no point wasting any food on their useless charges?

  She didn’t know. She sat, trying not to cry — it still seemed important not to let the guards see any of them cry, and Gavin too. She sipped her soup, with no flower buds or greenery or ‘island rabbit’ in it now — nor would there be till she had more strength.

  But she knew one thing, clear as the moon bouncing on the cloud above. Four weakened women and a child could not escape, no matter how much help the local people might give them. They must stay and let the war buffet them, the guards command them. There was nothing else to dream of now.

  Chapter 46

  Jim Thompson

  AIF

  23 September 1944

  The Thompson Family

  Drinkwater Station

  via Gibber’s Creek

  Dear Mum, Dad, Michael, Gussie, Bonkers, Sheba and assorted sheep,

  All well here but we could do with some of your drought. Any chance, Dad, that some of your mates in the War Office could arrange a rain exchange?

  Have been climbing up and down a mountain all day and believe me, down is worse than up in this country. The Japs have been dive-bombing us like mosquitoes. We’d get up ten yards and have to slide back down into the jungle again.

  We got to the top after five hours and were jiggered so decided to have a sleep for a while. A native boy brought us water, coconuts, bananas and a paw paw each. Lay down to sleep then heard tramping through the jungle. We grabbed our gear right smart and got ready to have at them, and then heard the swearing. Only Aussies can swear like that. The native boy brought us four more paw paws and a coconut. He is a good sort. He said he’d show us the back tracks away from the roads, ones the Japs don’t know about.

  Don’t know how much of this the censor will leave in but hey, mate, every bit of jungle looks the same up here and this letter won’t be of any use to enemy intelligence. Whoever designed this jungle isn’t intelligent at all.

  Give my love to everyone, sheep included, and especially Sheba. Tell her we could do with an elephant here. She’d have all the bananas she wanted to eat and could carry our gear down these damn hills. Or we could sit on her back and just slide her down the mud.

  Jim

  SYDNEY, 23 SEPTEMBER 1944

  MICHAEL

  Michael hefted his overnight bag as Skimmer put his key in the door of the Point Piper house. He could hear music and the chatter of voices.

  The door opened in a gust of perfume: frangipani flowers, brandy fumes and something that was almost like the whisky he was familiar with from home, but not quite …

  ‘Bertie, darling!’ A woman … girl … floated down the hallway towards them through a crowd of men in the tailored beige of American Army officers. There were a few dark blue uniforms of the RAAF, one grey-blue of a New Zealand airman, but otherwise the guests were all young women in floral dresses: red hair, dark hair, blonde. This one wore a short blue silk skirt, silk stockings — how did anyone manage to have silk stockings now? Even Mum drew seams down the backs of her brown legs, keeping her one remaining pair of stockings for an
‘emergency’ — her hair was blonde, in short tight waves; her lips were a vivid red; and there was a drink in her hand. ‘Have they let you out of school?’

  ‘Just for the weekend. Thompson, this is my sister, Eva. You met each other at the picnic races.’

  ‘Of course,’ Eva said vaguely, glancing back at the throng spilling out of the doorways on either side and sipping from her drink. Suddenly she looked back at Michael. ‘I do remember you! Drinkwater, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said shortly. Now that he’d noticed the appeal his parents’ estates held for these girls reared to find a good husband, it seemed inescapable. And for that matter, maybe it had even made a difference at school, where he suspected he’d have been liked well enough anyway — pleasant chap, handy with an oar, not bad at rugger. But the Drinkwater/Thompson fortunes eclipsed anything he might achieve himself.

  ‘Come on, honey bear.’ Her accent had a haze of American about it. She waved her drink casually. ‘Put your stuff in a bedroom and let me introduce you.’

  ‘Your parents …?’ Michael asked delicately.

  Eva laughed. ‘Darling, they shot off as soon as the Japs hit New Guinea. They’re snug up in the Blue Mountains now.’

  ‘They left you here alone?’ Eva was a year older than him, he remembered, had left school at sixteen.

  She fluttered dark eyelashes at him. ‘Rarely alone, honey bear.’ He wondered quite what she meant, but she added, ‘Mrs Murphy is off tonight.’ Housekeeper, thought Michael, as Eva added, ‘Besides, I’m needed in Sydney.’

  ‘You’re working?’ It was difficult to imagine this young woman as a Rosie the Riveter, welding ships out at Cockatoo Island, or labouring in a wool or munitions factory.

  ‘Eva and her chums raise money for War Bonds,’ said Skimmer.

  ‘You should buy a ticket to the orphans’ ball.’ Eva smiled up at him from her glass. ‘Two tickets.’