by Mark Dapin
‘It turned out the Japs were relieving their troops and, in typical Nip army fashion, the old lot had left before the new blokes had arrived. I don’t know how they ever beat us in the field. They were the most disorganised rabble in the world.
‘For the first couple of hours after he got home, Townsville Jack was as happy as a boong in a bottle-o. I thought the robbery must’ve gone well, but he was still riding the pipe. When the opium wore off, he said he’d never got out of Lavender Street. He’d found his two whores, and he’d somehow ended up selling them his Tommy gun. When the opium wore off, he felt like he’d let himself down, thrown away his future for drink, drugs and women. But then, when he thought about it, it didn’t seem like such a bad deal. That was before he started pissing blood and realised he had the clap.
‘I was bored and buggered and spent most of my time dodging work details. I kept going over and over everything in my head. Why didn’t we leave the camp as soon as Bathurst Billy got back? I could’ve made it to Johor, and who knows how much further.
‘Every bloke found his own way to use his time. There was a lodge for freemasons, a lepidopterists society for butterfly collectors, and the dry-land yacht club for idiots. The boxers did a lot of skipping, which was good exercise in a POW camp because all it took was a bit of rope and a piece of ground – like necking yourself, which was a craze that came later. I enrolled at the university, where Katz taught a life-drawing class, and Professor Scaly and Croaker Keneally were running a course in bloody frog husbandry.
‘But all of us were hungry all the time. You can live on rice. It keeps you alive, but that’s about it. If you eat rice three times a day, you spend all your time between meals thinking of food that isn’t rice.
‘Some of the boys carried pin-ups in their hats. They tried to stick them on the walls of the hut, but nothing would last in the heat. The colour faded and the paper rotted, as if the girls had grown old.’
‘In March, every bugger was asking Katz to draw sheilas with big boobs. By July, we were passing around Mrs Beeton’s cookery book from the library, reading out recipes to each other, fantasising about roast beef and battered fish, lamb’s fry and Sergeant’s pies. One joker even had Katz paint a picture of a baked dinner, and he got it out to look at every Sunday. I think he ate it in the end. I think he went mad. We all went a bit mad, from the hunger and from everything else.
‘When you’re starving, you can’t concentrate, you get angry. The smallest thing makes you want to cry, and there were so many big things to cry about in the camp, like the fact that our lives were just slipping away. You start to hallucinate, you get paranoid, you think you’re dying. The smell of a campfire reminds you of cooked meat and it melts your guts.
‘Nobody was interested in Jack Lindsay’s Sappho any more. After four months on a rice diet, all they wanted to look at was Norman Lindsay’s Magic bloody Pudding.
‘One morning Townsville Jack asked me to take a squiz at his wedding tackle. He dropped his pants and showed me a pair of balls so big they looked like King Edward potatoes. But then, everything looked like potatoes to me.
‘“Look at this!” said Townsville Jack. “My nuts have shrunk.”
‘We thought it was another symptom of the clap, and Townsville Jack went to beg for more penicillin, but the MO said it was just rice balls. We called them “rice balls” because the Japs loved to eat rice balls and we swore they would be eating our balls before long.
‘“Your testicles need vitamin B,” the MO told Townsville Jack. “Get yourself some Vegemite.”
‘Townsville Jack sent me out to see if I could find any on the black market. Vegemite was easy to get into camp because the Japs thought it was boot polish.
‘The racketeers used to work in a spot we named Change Alley. I found Bathurst Billy selling bully beef looted from a supply dump, and tinned fish called “modern girl” because it “stinks like sheila”, he said.
‘“How would you know?” I asked him.
‘He was younger than Daniel, David. Can you imagine that?’ asked Jimmy, shaking his head. ‘Can you picture Daniel, the year before he went to university, already in a war? Bathurst Billy’d joined up, trained, fought, got defeated and captured while Daniel was still studying for his HSC, and now he was telling me what sheila smelled like, as if he’d turn up his nose at the chance of a sniff.
‘Bathurst Billy said Vegemite cost four dollars – twice the price of bully beef – because it was “classed as a medicine”. But when he heard it was for Townsville Jack, he gave me it for free. He was a lovely little bloke.’
*
Jimmy sketched an altar, drawing pencil marks along a folding ruler and marking corners with a try square. He used full lines and broken lines, measured out in inches, with fractions shown as two half-sized numbers on either side of a bar. Jimmy’s plans were clean but complicated, often working over two levels, with exploded details, and arrows like half-smiles. He imagined everything as made up of joists and joints. There were no curves, only angles.
He couldn’t remember what else he used to see inside the spirit houses in Thailand. He imagined objects or models. He thought they might have been animals.
‘Myer’ll know,’ he said.
I had no idea Myer had been in Thailand.
Myer was drinking with Solomon in the Club, but when we arrived Solomon went straight to the pokies, because Solomon played the pokies on a Saturday.
‘Pincus,’ said Jimmy.
‘He wants something,’ said Myer.
‘Remember Thailand?’ asked Jimmy.
‘No,’ said Myer, pushing his beer coaster with the tip of his ring finger.
‘The little houses,’ said Jimmy.
‘No,’ said Myer, tapping the table.
‘Where the Thais kept their ghosts,’ said Jimmy.
‘No,’ said Myer, shaking his jowls.
‘Like in the Thai Dee,’ said Jimmy.
‘She’s got a nice arse,’ said Myer. ‘She’d look good in glasses. Or out of them.’
Myer pushed his spectacles off his nose and balanced them on his forehead.
‘Come on, Pincus,’ said Jimmy, ‘don’t mess me about.’
‘I spent the war in Changi, Jimmy,’ said Myer. ‘I was in the concert party. We didn’t have to go on the line.’
Jimmy smiled tightly.
‘You worked next to me, Pincus,’ he said, ‘up to your waist in water.’
‘I sang songs and told jokes,’ said Myer. ‘I cheered the men up. I was a comedian. I used to have an act with Cowboy Miller. We did a song called “Changi Races”, dressed up like boongs with lampshade hats on. Everyone laughed. Funny? They thought they’d wet themselves, but it turned out to be the monsoon.’
‘I dug ulcers out of your leg,’ said Jimmy, ‘with a spoon. I nursed you when you thought you were dying.’
Myer laughed.
‘The only time I nearly died was on stage,’ he said.
Jimmy sighed.
‘I need to know what was inside the spirit houses,’ he said. ‘I can’t remember.’
‘I can’t help you, Jimmy,’ said Myer. ‘I was part of the chorus but I sometimes performed solo. Blokes still write to me. I was in Changi, not Thailand. You’ve got me mixed up with some other good-looking fella.’
‘You don’t remember,’ said Jimmy.
‘I can’t remember what didn’t happen,’ said Myer. ‘I was a weak man. I shouldn’t’ve been a soldier. I could never’ve survived on the line.’
‘You were strong,’ said Jimmy. ‘You made it back.’
‘There’s things I like to talk about,’ said Myer. ‘The songs we used to sing, like “Changi Races”. Oh, that was a good one. Funny? I thought I’d wet myself, but it turned out to be the monsoon. Because it wasn’t about horseracing, was it? It was about frog racing. Fucking frog racing. Do you remember your mate? What was he called, Queensland Bill or something? He used to be a bookie and he ran a book on the frogs. He called them �
��the hops”, remember? Because they weren’t the gallops or the trots.’
‘I’d forgotten that,’ said Jimmy.
‘Lovely bloke,’ said Myer. ‘I’ve often wondered what happened to him after the war. Went back to Queensland, I suppose.’
Jimmy shrugged.
‘Probably up there now, racing cane toads,’ said Myer.
‘Could be,’ said Jimmy.
‘Remember, Jimmy,’ said Myer. ‘“You’ll never get off the island!” Funny? I thought I’d wet myself, but it turned out to be the monsoon.’
Both men’s attention passed to the silent boxing on TV.
*
We walked back from the Club with a couple of drinks under our belts.
‘The Changi Concert Party,’ said Jimmy, shaking his head. ‘I don’t know if there was a troupe of Japs in Cowra doing The Mikado, or an SS entertainment unit singing songs about Churchill in Scotland, but the Aussies and the Poms had these jokers, and what a bloody mixed bunch they were. There was a comedian called Happy Harry whose catchphrase was “You’ll never get off the island.” That was just about all he ever said, really. There was Bluey, the fella with the ventriloquist’s dummy, and a bloke who played sonatas on a gumleaf. He had it all bloody worked out. Other blokes might steal his guitar, or the Japs might smash it, but nobody was ever going to pinch his bloody gumleaf.
‘The worst were the poets. Christ, there were some shithouse poets in Changi. They should’ve been locked up for their bloody poems. And there was a yodelling cowboy. We inflicted a yodelling cowboy on our own men, David.
‘It’s a funny thing, but I reckon some of those blokes were happy as Harry with the way things turned out. It wasn’t as if they were world-class performers. If it weren’t for the war, they’d be playing to twenty blind pensioners at the Maitland CWA. In Changi, they had thousands turn up for every show. They were the heroes of the bloody camp. They must’ve been the only blokes in history who thought, We’re in a war! You beauty! At last, I’ve got a chance to dress up as Sheila! ’
‘What about Myer?’ I asked him. ‘What did he do?’
‘Myer? He was a medical orderly.’
‘No, I mean in the concert party.’
‘He wasn’t in the concert party,’ said Jimmy. ‘Apart from Happy Harry, there was a string of blokes who only knew one joke: “There was this Irishman, this Englishman, this Scotsman and this Jew . . .” You know the one. But I went to watch them like every other bugger, because they were the only show in town.
‘They were always rehearsing their pantomime for Easter or their revue for the King’s bloody birthday, but never anything for Christmas because we all knew we’d be home by Christmas.
‘And then one day Bathurst Billy had enough of waiting for Christmas and decided to get back home under his own steam. He disappeared under the wire with a map, a compass, Quilpie and a couple of Poms. The Japs caught them a week later, beat the daylights out of them and threw them into a cell. They stayed there for two months.
‘I tried to get to see Bathurst Billy when he was banged up. There were no windows in the building, and you couldn’t tell where they were keeping him, but I stood outside, as close as I could, having loud conversations with Townsville Jack, trying to let Bathurst Billy know what was going on – which was, of course, bugger all. We saw the Japanese Gestapo, the Kempetai, arrive in their starched uniforms and polished boots, and I think one day I heard Bathurst Billy screaming, but it might’ve been a gull, you know. It could’ve been a seabird.
‘They stayed a few days and then they left, still neat and pressed and clean, as if they’d never had a drop of blood under their fingernails. I don’t know what they did to them in there. I don’t like to think about it. There’s some things you can turn away from. It’s all right not to look.
‘In August 1942 all the officers ranked higher than colonel were taken from Changi to a special officers’ camp in Japan, where they could order each other around and salute themselves all day. They left Callaghan in charge of the rest of us, and he was determined to maintain military discipline, to carry on as if we hadn’t surrendered to the Japs.
‘Callaghan was keen that we should all keep up appearances, like it was the best dressed army that won the war. We all had to shave every day, and keep our hair above the collar. Men who’d managed to hang on to walking shoes had to give them to officers. Other Ranks could either wear boots or go barefoot. If you had a good shirt or pants, you had to pass them up too. Some blokes, the only thing they had left was their spare clothes, and then they didn’t even have those.
‘A new Jap took over the camps too. We called him “Major General Fuck-You”, but I dare say that wasn’t an accurate translation from the Japanese.
‘Fuck-You asked all the prisoners to sign a document promising they wouldn’t try to escape, which was a bloody joke because there was nowhere to escape to anyway. And what type of bloke would see a chance to get away from the Japs but think, Hang on, I can’t jump ship now because I promised I wouldn’t?
‘Some blokes reckoned that if we signed it we’d lose the right to army pay, because we’d no longer be doing our duty as soldiers, which was to escape. But no bugger was escaping anyway, and we weren’t getting any pay, so it was a pretty bloody academic argument.
‘I suppose Callaghan thought if we didn’t stand up to the Japs then, we never would. I reckon he saw it as his chance to lead the army into a fight, and he wasn’t going to retreat or surrender. It was a battle of wills, and he was going to show the bandy-legged bastards what he was made of – which was one hundred per cent military bullshit, from top to toe. He was all army, Jack Callaghan, and he ordered us all not to sign, so the Japs paraded us outside in the sun, lines and lines of men behaving just the way the army likes them to – all doing the same useless, mindless bloody thing.
‘Callaghan didn’t know if he was Genghis Khan or Ghandi. He had the troops practising passive resistance against the samurai. The Japs couldn’t figure out what to make of it. Why would we surrender in battle, when we had weapons, and suddenly decide to stand up for ourselves now, when we were beaten? We were the most cockeyed bunch of mugs they’d ever seen.
‘They pointed their machine guns at us, and the blokes behind them made pistols with their fingers and mimed mowing us down like grass. After a few hours men were pissing and shitting themselves, collapsing and lying in their own vomit.
‘Callaghan and Ramsay were called away from the parade ground, but we didn’t know why or even that they’d gone. The worst thing was, by this time we’d let ourselves hope that Bathurst Billy and the others had got away with it. It’d been three months and they were still alive and, truth be told, the Japs hadn’t turned out to be half the monsters we’d thought they’d be. Then the bastards showed they really did have no mercy. They let the bloody Changi Concert Party play to the blokes collapsing in the heat of the barracks square, with their Jew jokes and music hall songs and jocks in frocks and heels and wigs.
‘When the yodelling cowboy climbed onto the barracks roof to give a recital, I looked over at the Jap gunner and whispered, “Shoot me.”
‘In the end, nobody got shot, although a couple of blokes died standing to attention, and I always wondered what their families would’ve thought if the army’d let them know how they’d really lost their lives, that they’d drilled themselves to death.
‘Callaghan and Fuck-You reached an agreement that Fuck-You would change his request into an order, which meant we were only obeying under duress, and it was all right to have our fingers crossed behind our backs.
‘We marched back to our barracks, where we found out that Bathurst Billy and the others had been executed in front of Callaghan and Ramsay.
‘Ramsay came to our hut, to talk to Bathurst Billy’s mates.
‘“He made us all proud,” said Ramsay. “He walked into the field with his head held high. They offered him a blindfold, but he turned it down. The Japs let him say a few last words, then h
e looked the firing party right in their slitty eyes and shouted, ‘Shoot straight, you bastards!’ and the Nips opened up. They caught him in the head and the heart. He never made a sound, and I reckon he was dead before he hit the ground.”
‘When the others heard, they clapped and cheered, and shouted, “Vale Bathurst Billy!” Ramsay saluted them and marched out of the hut. I caught up with the sergeant major a few steps away and gripped him by the shoulder.
‘“What exactly did Bathurst Billy say before he told them to ‘shoot straight’?” I asked.
‘“He said he had no regrets,” said Ramsay. “He was giving his life for the country he loved and his home town of Bathurst.”
‘And that’s when I knew that everything Ramsay had told us was a lie, and my little mate had died slowly, struggling and screaming, blindfolded and scared.’
BONDI
SATURDAY 28 APRIL 1990
We sat in silence, Jimmy’s jaw trembling, until finally I had to speak.
‘We forgot to have lunch,’ I said.
‘We had a liquid lunch,’ said Jimmy.
‘I can’t just have a liquid lunch,’ I told him. ‘I’m only thirteen.’
‘Well then,’ said Jimmy, ‘what do you want to eat?’
‘Fish and chips,’ I said. ‘A yiddisher fella invented them.’
Jimmy tried to cuff me. I swayed out of his reach.
He had only just fallen into his armchair, so he wasn’t happy about pulling himself back up. As he stood, I heard his knees creak.
‘Fish and bloody chips,’ he said, as if he had never heard of such a badly matched couple.
We had to go halfway to the beach to get to Greco’s fish and chip shop, which sat on a side street off Bondi Road, opposite the Regal Hotel, just beyond the point on the horizon where the ocean met the sky. From Greco’s you could only see the sky. We walked down the opposite side of Bondi Road, past the shabby unit blocks with Hawaiian names and scribble-tagged walls, until we reached the bus stop, where two tall Japanese boys got off the bus from Bondi Junction.