And only a few minutes later Kepa had a second snapper, which he slipped into his sack then tightened the drawstring so the fish could not escape. The boys giggled as the sack thrashed about seemingly on its own on the rocks.
Then something tugged on Hemi’s line, and he shrieked with excitement. He gave it several gentle but calculated jerks to secure whatever was nibbling the bait, then when the weight increased he began to pull the line in, his tongue poking out in concentration.
‘Steady, boy,’ Kepa urged. ‘Do not yank it, the fish might get loose.’
Rewi, unable to control himself, reached out and grabbed the taut line.
‘No!’ Hemi squealed. ‘It’s mine!’
Kepa grasped Rewi’s sleeve. ‘Let go, boy, this one is Hemi’s. Your turn will come.’
Rewi scowled, but his frustration soon turned to excitement as a silver shape began to ascend from the watery depths.
‘It’s a tarakihi. I can see it. A big one, too!’
Hemi’s face was red from concentration and effort, but he managed to land the fish all by himself, and twist the hook from its mouth. Kepa held the sack open and Hemi flicked his fish into it with a shout of triumph.
In the next hour they caught three more fish, one each, and a very bad-tempered octopus. They broke for lunch, and while the boys were unpacking the food their mother had prepared for them, Kepa wandered over to the gnarled trunk of an ancient pohutukawa tree at the base of the cliff to relieve himself. But as he was doing up the buttons of his trousers, something in the air — a change, a slight shift in pressure, a sly rustling noise felt rather than heard — made him turn and look out to sea.
What he saw almost stopped his heart. Coming directly towards the rocks was a series of three huge, freak waves, not yet breaking, but getting bigger and bigger as they approached. He began to run at once towards the boys who, oblivious to what was coming, had their heads down over the fish sack.
‘Run!’ he bellowed. ‘Run to the cliff!’
The boys glanced up then, saw the expression on his face and turned to look behind them. They shrieked in unison and began to run.
The first wave broke against the rocks, its hissing fingers snatching up the fish sack and the boys’ lunches. The second surged around their ankles as they raced towards Kepa and the cliff. The third hovered briefly then crashed down, sending spray and spume yards into the air. And when it receded, it had taken both boys with it.
Kepa groaned in dismay as he peered over the edge of the shelf and down into the churning sea, but then his heart thudded with hope as he spied Rewi clinging to the face of the rock below him. The boy looked up, and Kepa saw the look of pure terror on his face.
‘Hold on,’ he cried as he began to climb down, his hands and feet seeking small crevasses in the rock as he went. When he reached Rewi, he held out his hand for the boy to grasp. When their grip was firm, Kepa gave an almighty wrench — which surely must have pulled the boy’s arm out of its socket — and hauled him up, then shoved him over the top.
‘Go back to the cliff!’ he yelled, even as he turned back to the water searching despairingly for any sign of Hemi. Another wave crashed against the rocks and he hung on desperately to stop himself from being sucked into the sea.
Could that be a little boy’s head, that small black blob caught up in a knot of seaweed on the surface some yards out?
Kepa didn’t think twice; he twisted his body around and launched himself off the side of the rock into the heaving sea. He went under but bobbed straight back up and made for the patch of seaweed, his arms moving freely but his feet dragging in their heavy boots.
In less than a minute he was there. He reached for the little ball and yanked, crying out in relief when Hemi’s face appeared beneath it. The boy seemed stunned but his eyes were open, and at the sight of his koro his face lit up. Then he coughed up a great whoosh of seawater and started to cry.
Kepa rolled over onto his back and pulled the little boy into the crook of his armpit. ‘Stay still, little one, and hold on around my neck,’ he ordered, almost weak with gratitude from the feel of the child’s body against him.
He set out, kicking with his feet and paddling with one arm, the other holding on to Hemi tightly. His choices were to paddle around the point and head for the beach, or return straight to the rocks; he chose the rocks, because he was not sure he would have the stamina to reach the beach.
He paddled a few feet then rested on the swell, paddled again, then rested again. He felt himself flagging and tried to conserve his energy. It was taking him much longer to return to the rocks than it had to swim out, and the sea seemed to be intent on dragging him, and his mokopuna, back out.
Finally he reached the rocks and turned over. Hefting Hemi in his arms, he held the boy until a wave rose beneath them and lifted them up. At the wave’s peak, he placed one hand on the boy’s narrow back and the other under his bottom, and gave an almighty, straining shove. Hemi flew out of the water and hit the rock face, where he clung momentarily like a small monkey.
‘Climb!’ Kepa urged. ‘Climb!’
Hemi did, and disappeared over the top.
Kepa let himself relax for a moment and hung on to the rock while he gathered his strength. They were both safe. Thank God. He could climb up himself now.
But he couldn’t. The tiny pricking pain he had felt at the back of his head as he’d heaved Hemi up was growing into a massive burning sensation tearing through his brain, and a loud roaring filled his ears. He blinked, and suddenly all he could see was the crimson of the pohutukawa flowers. He was so very tired too, and cold, and his arms and legs felt like lead. When he asked them to move, they chose not to respond.
He clung to the rock for a moment longer, then felt his hands let go as he slipped back into the sea.
The pain in his head stopped just as suddenly as it had begun, and now he felt weightless, floating comfortably on his back, his limbs splayed like the starfish in the rock pools. It was warm again too, and he felt the sun caressing his blind eyes and the surface of the sea stroking his hands and his face lovingly. He smelled the scent of lavender, and smiled in his mind.
Then Tangaroa claimed him, and he slipped under.
On the rocks above, two terrified little faces peered over the edge. Below them, on the surface of the once-again placid sea, bobbed a blue hat with a green feather in its band.
The boys clutched each other then, and their spiralling wails of anguish silenced even the wheeling seagulls.
When the people from the village came that afternoon to tell Joseph that his father had gone, Tamar knew then that she had moved into the very last phase of her life.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Burma, April 1945
Drew dozed. He seldom slept properly these days. Or perhaps he did, but just didn’t realise it. Not much at all seemed real any more, so it was quite likely he was asleep when he thought he was awake.
He shifted slightly on his sleeping mat, and felt Tim’s forearm resting across his ribs. Tim’s bones dug into his bones, and it hurt. Everything hurt now — his body, his soul and his mind.
The headaches had not stopped, although they had settled into a pattern he’d learnt to live with, like everything else in the camp. McCaffrey had died and Major Paterson continued to give him opium whenever it was available, and that helped, although he suspected he had become addicted to it. But what the hell did that matter now? He was already an outcast of sorts, a moving, breathing freak. He knew this because when he looked down at himself, he saw not the body of a man but only sharp, protruding bones and deep hollows where flesh should have been, and the sickly yellow of cracked, ulcerated and sagging skin. Under his loin cloth — which had replaced his rotted shorts long ago — his penis rested in its sparse nest like a small, shrivelled acorn above a pair of equally shrivelled balls.
The last time he had used it, for anything other than peeing through, had been at Christmas time. The Japs — completely uncharacteristically
— had given them all small amounts of surprisingly edible meat for several consecutive days, and it had provided just enough nourishment to get the juices flowing again. The experience had been both exhilarating and terrible, and had driven Tim and Drew to break the vow they had made to each other some months earlier.
Tim was his lover, and had been since Easter of 1943. Drew had not wanted things to turn out that way, but they had. It had taken him many weeks of agonised soul-searching, denial and argument with himself after the day in the prison yard when Tim had touched his shoulder and then walked away, but in the end he’d been unable to ignore the manner in which his own body had responded. He had not loved Tim then, although he’d finally had to admit he was physically attracted to him, but he needed him now. Tim, for his part, insisted he had loved Drew since the first day they’d met in England, and that he’d lived in hope that Drew would some day reciprocate.
The day of revelation might have taken place in the yard, but the night on which their relationship had been consummated had not occurred for another month. Tim and Drew found themselves the sole occupants of their cell, after Keith and Don had been relegated to a week of solitary confinement for some paltry misdemeanour. The separation left Drew and Tim feeling strangely bereft, as if their cell mates had died. Their spirits had been profoundly low and, when he looked back, Drew often wondered whether that had allowed the barrier between them to come down.
He’d been lying on his side on his mat, cocooned in that bright, still state between wakefulness and sleep when thoughts were not quite dreams. There had been a stealthy shuffling noise, no louder than the sound made by a rat scampering across the concrete floor of the cell, and he had sensed a presence behind him, the warmth of someone lying close but not touching. He held his breath, knowing that it was Tim, but not daring to acknowledge the other man out loud.
Finally, after what felt like an hour of long, individual seconds ticking slowly past, but was probably only five minutes, he did speak.
‘Tim?’
‘Mmm?’
Drew had no idea what to say next. He did not want Tim to move away, but neither did he want the seemingly inevitable to happen. If it did, everything could — no doubt surely would — change forever.
In the end he’d not had to say anything, as Tim had moved his hand and set it gently on the sharp curve of Drew’s hip. Drew placed his own hand over the long thin fingers and squeezed softly, feeling horribly nervous and excited and ashamed, but somehow relieved that whatever had flitted so feverishly back and forth between them for the past weeks would now be revealed and confronted.
Tim’s fingers began to draw slow circles over Drew’s concave belly, and he wriggled closer so that his breath blew warm on Drew’s neck. Drew, feeling disconcertingly as if he were standing at the top of a very high cliff and about to hurl himself off, relaxed back against Tim’s chest and let it happen. The fingers crept lower, and Drew closed his eyes as what he belatedly realised he’d been longing for finally happened.
It was not particularly erotic, it was not very passionate, but it was a release. Most of all it was overwhelmingly comforting, this closeness to another human being and the sharing of something so absolutely intimate. It made Drew feel like a person again, a real, functioning entity, and not just a rotting body.
They fell asleep in each other’s arms, and when Drew woke the next morning, he felt he might be able to last just a little longer in this fetid Burmese prison after all.
Their physical affair had continued for four months, at infrequent, snatched intervals because of the almost total lack of privacy in the camp, then Tim had become so ill with dry beriberi he’d been admitted to the hospital for several weeks. Drew had had time to think then about what they’d been doing together, about what the others might say if they found out — if, of course, they weren’t aware already. Some sailors might be a little more accepting of the idea of homosexual sex — although notably less of genuine homosexual love — but airmen and soldiers would almost certainly not be, and he didn’t think he could stand the stress of being shunned by the men he had come to rely on for support, friendship and survival. He had no idea whether he was a true homosexual or not, but did know that he loved Tim as a friend, and as the person who gave him physical comfort when he so desperately needed it. But he still could not rid himself of his deep conviction that wanting comfort was not a good enough reason for having sexual relations with another man. The thought of it still disgusted him even as it settled and calmed him. It was wrong. He had joined up to defeat the wrongs occurring throughout the world, and now here he was adding to them. It had to stop.
So when Tim recovered enough to be discharged, Drew sat down one evening in the yard with him and talked for a long time. When he said he would prefer the physical side of their liaison to cease, Tim agreed almost immediately. Not because he also wanted it to stop, he said, but because he could see the effect it was having on Drew, and he didn’t want to continue with anything that made him unhappy. They had made their vow then, and Drew had been relieved, but was left feeling hollow and somehow even more ashamed of himself.
Then conditions at the camp had deteriorated even further, as the Japanese directed their frustrations over their increasing losses and defeats at the prisoners. The food was reduced to such meagre, nutritionless portions that the men were lucky to find the energy to move, never mind anything else. There were deaths every day, and the hospital staff were no longer able to cope. It was as much as they could do to get the bodies decently buried.
Then Christmas had come, and the extra food, and Drew had found himself once again finding physical comfort with Tim. And once more he drew away as soon as his conscience became too much to bear. So now they were back to being just mates, although, as had happened last night, Drew occasionally woke in the morning to find Tim cuddled behind him. Keith had died three months ago, from a gangrenous ulcer on his thigh, and only Don shared their cell now, and if he had noticed that they sometimes shared the same sleeping mat — which he surely must have — he never commented.
Drew was tempted to think that perhaps nobody did care any more, and that what he and Tim did or didn’t do wouldn’t matter a damn. But he knew it would. It would matter to him, because he still believed it to be essentially wrong. And if the rumours that the British were getting closer by the day were true, then he might soon be faced with the task of turning back into the person he’d been before he was captured, and that person most certainly did not have relations with other men.
And the rumours must be true, because four days ago some of the Japanese had left the camp, taking with them about four hundred prisoners, about half of Rangoon’s inmates — all those still fit enough to march.
A noise outside woke him fully, and he gently disentangled himself from Tim’s arm, rolled over and very slowly got to his knees. He was so weak these days that any quick movement caused him to almost pass out, and he couldn’t afford to bump into anything as his skin was so fragile it tore like tissue paper. Even a tiny contusion could grow into a festering great hole in the flesh, and he knew better than almost anyone that he could die from such an injury in less than a week.
He hauled himself upright, waited a few moments until his head stopped spinning, then slipped his feet into his boots. What the hell was going on outside? He glanced down at Tim, but he was still fast asleep. So was Don.
He was on duty at the hospital soon any way, so he might as well get up now. As he trudged in semi-darkness across the central yard that connected all sections of the prison compound, he noticed it had suddenly become very quiet, but it was still several minutes before he spotted the small crowd of prisoners milling about the main gate. He stopped and blinked, then rubbed his eyes and blinked again.
The gate was wide open.
He approached cautiously, expecting at any moment to be shot or at least belted by one of the prison guards with a rifle butt. But then he noticed something else: there were no guards.
> As he reached the nearest man he stopped; the bloke had his hands over his face and tears trickled between his fingers.
‘What’s going on? Why’s the gate open?’
The man took his hands away and shook his head.
He sobbed and a bubble of snot blew out of his nose, and he shook his head again. He seemed unable to speak.
Drew went on to the next man, an acquaintance from the compound next door to his.
‘Bob, what’s going on?’
Bob nodded at the gate. ‘Watch.’
Wing Commander Bill Hudson, the most senior prisoner in the camp, stood in the open gateway with his hands on his hips, looking profoundly bemused. He glanced around then stepped through the gap, set one foot down on the ground outside the walls, then came back in and closed and locked the gates.
He turned to the small crowd. ‘They’ve gone. The Japs have gone.’ He held up a piece of paper. ‘They’ve left a note saying we’re free, and that they hope we might all meet again on the battle field somewhere. Jesus Christ,’ he added in disbelief, shaking his head.
Drew was stunned. They were free, they could go, they were free.
Soon the entire camp knew, although Hudson advised everyone to stay inside the walls in case they were shot by Allied forces, who were quite obviously very near.
They were; the RAF arrived not long afterwards and began bombing and shooting around the prison. Several men broke into the Japanese stores and took a bucket of whitewash up onto the roofs, and painted ‘Japs Gone, British Here’ To ward off the bombing. It didn’t, and the RAF phrase ‘Extract Digit’ was also added, letting the circling pilots know that the occupants were indeed Allies. The bombing finally ceased.
Four days later the British marched into Rangoon, and Hudson opened the prison gates. Drew and Tim were among the hundreds of men who spilled out onto the road outside, yelling and whooping and cheering madly.
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