Fire in Summer

by JH Fletcher

  The meeting was over. Hedley, still consumed by rage, was unrepentant. ‘Splitting up the land like that …’

  Kath tried to pacify him. ‘Perhaps Wilf will sell it to you?’ Knew at once that it had been the wrong thing to say.

  ‘Land I’ve sweated my guts out to bring on? My own land?’

  ‘Perhaps she’ll change her mind.’

  They both knew there was no chance of that.

  ‘I’ve half a mind to fence it off and leave it fallow …’

  Just talk; he could no more do such a thing than set fire to a paddock of ripe grain. The fact that he was powerless filled him with rage. ‘And to Wilf, of all people.’ He had to blame someone and Wilf was the obvious target. ‘Bloody drop-kick …’

  ‘Why don’t you farm it together?’ Kath embarking once again on her self-appointed role of peacemaker. ‘It makes sense; there’s too much work for one man.’

  Hedley wouldn’t listen. ‘I’ll see him dead in the street before I let Wilf set one foot on my land again.’

  Three days later, when Wilf came round, trying to mend fences, Hedley told him so to his face. In so many words.

  Kath said nothing, only looked. Which, with Hedley, would always be enough. ‘Don’t you start …’ Seeking some means of inflicting greater damage, he said, ‘Though I’d have to be barmy to stick you and loyalty in the same box.’

  He did that from time to time, a knife-point nick to remind her that he knew. To make sure she would never forget it. Mind games. Nerve ends stripped raw, Kath was ready to pounce when Walter, twelve years old now, all legs, hands and feet too large for him, came looking for her.

  ‘What do you want?’ Was at once contrite. Thought despairingly, If I’m willing to turn on my own son …

  Walter looked startled, as well he might. ‘Sorry —’

  Swiftly she hugged him. ‘It’s not your fault.’ She wanted to hold him, to feel the muscle already growing beneath the child’s flesh, but knew better than to start mauling him at this age.

  ‘Dad been getting at you again?’

  Pride would not permit her to discuss her husband with her son. ‘It’s nothing.’

  ‘I was you, I’d tell him to take a jump.’ No doubt about his loyalty, at least. This precious child, she thought. She had a snapshot of Walter on her bedside table. He was grinning into the lens after a game of footy. When she had the house to herself, she used to go into the bedroom, revisiting the sense of marvel that the photo always gave her. There he is. And here am I, watching him.

  Despite the battering Hedley had given her when he got back from the war, there had been no more children. For a long time he had refused to admit there could be anything wrong with him, but eventually, grousing, had gone for a check-up. When he got back, he’d been silent for a few days, eventually mumbled something about ill-treatment in the war, the beatings and starvation.

  ‘Reckons I can’t have any more kids …’ He spoke defiantly, seemed to fear that it might make him less of a man in her estimation as, perhaps, it did in his. Kath was thankful; all the same, an only child … It was scary to have all her eggs in one basket. She felt it now, as Walter told her why he’d come looking for her.

  ‘There’s this trip with school …’

  She thought she had misheard him. ‘To Queensland?’ He might have said Mars. ‘It’s too far.’

  For once Hedley was on Walter’s side. ‘It’s not as though they’re going by themselves. There’ll be teachers.’

  Of course he might have approved simply to spite her. To get her own back, she said, ‘And the cost?’

  ‘Are we supposed to pay for it?’ Hedley’s expression changed at once; putting his hand in his pocket had never come easily to him. But even in this, circumstances conspired against her. There were funds, it seemed. Parents would have to chip in, but only a few quid. Even by Hedley’s standards it wasn’t much. Although he had to moan, for appearances’ sake.

  ‘Be in the poor house yet …’

  Kath was too wise to offer to pay herself. Hedley wasn’t proud; he’d have taken her up on it.

  Come the holidays, she went to the station with all the other Mums to see the boys off. Not a Dad in sight, but that was as it should be. Men’s things, women’s things: the distinction was alive and well in the mid-north.

  Kath was tearful to see Walter setting off on his first great adventure. She knew it was only the start, that he would grow away from her. From now on, inevitably, she would have to share him: with himself, with the rest of the world, with — eventually — a woman. It amazed her how willing she was to hate the unknown woman who, one day, would steal her son from her.

  She kept tears and thoughts to herself. Instead beamed and beamed, islanded with the other mothers amid a maelstrom of pupils, teachers, yells and chaos that eventually resolved itself into a group of women, abandoned on the platform, waving frantically as the train steamed out. When it was out of sight, they turned to each other, smiling self-consciously, and went their several ways, to houses that would seem a great deal emptier than they had before.

  21

  WALTER

  1954

  They had covered tropical rainforest at school; in their geography book there had even been a chapter entitled Hot Wet Forests.

  North Queensland was certainly hot and wet, yet somehow Walter found it a bit of a let-down. It wasn’t as mysterious as he had expected, and the jungle, when you looked at it, was only trees. It wasn’t that there were no hidden temples — he hadn’t really expected those, for all his hopes — but that you couldn’t even imagine the possibility of any. It was just too ordinary for adventures.

  Being closely supervised didn’t help. They were watched so carefully that they couldn’t do a thing without someone saying they shouldn’t.

  ‘Keep together, boys.’

  ‘Keep up.’

  ‘Keep quiet.’

  Not that different from home.

  They were taken to an old gold mine, which might have been interesting, but even here there were problems. Signs saying ‘Danger. Keep Out’. Once again teachers everywhere, determined to make everything as boring as possible.

  There were moments, even so. There were crocodiles. Ruins, if not of temples, at least of telegraph stations, where agitated grown-ups warned of snakes. Caves, too, where a guide told them about stalactites and turned out the lights, so they all screamed in darkness so black it was like a weight upon them. Rock paintings, which they were told were very old.

  The next day, at last, they were taken into the real forest, where a man explained about the leaf canopy, about chlorophyll, about a column of ginger ants marching purposefully up the mossy trunks of a great tree. Walter took in none of it. There was something here much more exciting than chlorophyll.

  Mystery.

  The trees formed a tight circle about them. Inside, off the track, the darkness beckoned. They were going to have a break when the lecture was finished. They’d been told they would be there for half an hour before moving on. Plenty of time. With Charlie Weir, a mate, Walter slipped away. The forest closed its fist.

  ‘We’ll have to be careful not to get lost,’ Charlie said. He was right; it wouldn’t take much. There were no paths, no way of telling whether they were facing in the right direction or not.

  ‘Could wander in circles until we die.’ Charlie’s eyes as round as circles themselves.

  They tried to imagine it, practised staggering helplessly from tree to tree, collapsing theatrically as thirst and starvation overwhelmed them. To be eaten, at last, by ants.

  ‘You’re supposed to cut a blaze in a tree, to show you the way to get back.’ Could be tricky when they didn’t have a knife.

  ‘We won’t go far,’ Walter decided. All the same, it was great to be free for once, to scare each other with stories of what might happen.

  ‘Reckon there’s any crocs?’ There were supposed to be plenty, but here, away from water? It didn’t seem likely.

  �
�We could be right next to a creek and not even know it.’ Which was certainly true, the forest so thick they could see hardly anything at all.

  Even so, Walter was reluctant to sacrifice their freedom by going back. ‘Just a bit further,’ he said.

  Charlie wasn’t too sure, so Walter found a piece of pointed stick and used it to scratch a mark in the moss on a tree trunk. He stood back, admiring his handiwork. ‘There …’

  No worries, now. They only had time to go a little further, in any case. The ground sloped steeply downhill. They skidded down the slope, their heels leaving tracks in the leafmould. The air was damp and still. No birdsong; they had only the buzz and squeak of bugs for company.

  ‘There’s a monkey …’

  They both knew there were no monkeys in Australia but there ought to be some, in jungle like this. It was the right place for monkeys. Walter looked hopefully; saw, not a monkey, but what looked like the side of a cliff, covered thickly with moss, growing out of the ground almost at their feet. Cautiously he approached it, rested the flat of his hand upon it.

  Metal.

  He stared, round-eyed in his turn, and the shape emerged silently from the forest as though someone had turned a light on. ‘It’s a plane!’

  Adventure, indeed.

  They stared at each other. ‘What’s it doing here?’

  ‘It must have crashed.’

  In which case … Walter was scared stiff, but not about to turn his back on what might be a True Adventure. ‘I’m gunna have a look.’

  He explored along what had to be the fuselage, found where the wing had broken off as the plane had come down through the trees. Above his head a blink of red showed through the green grime that coated the metal. He reached up, rubbed the moss away. A red circle, painted on the aircraft’s side. A foot further on, some writing in an unfamiliar, spidery script.

  ‘It’s a Jap plane.’ Walter’s whisper was very loud as, all about him, the jungle waited. ‘It must have been here since the war.’

  ‘People must know about it,’ Charlie said. ‘It couldn’t just be here and no-one know.’

  Couldn’t it? It didn’t look as though anyone knew about it; it looked as though no-one had been here since it crashed.

  Now the perspex canopy of the cockpit was directly above his head. Like the ants marching skywards up the tree trunk, a line of round holes ran diagonally across the plane’s aluminium skin until they reached the canopy. Craning his neck, Walter saw where one of the sections had been broken.

  ‘Bullet holes,’ he whispered excitedly. ‘It must’ve been shot down.’

  Again the boys stared at each other. The canopy was closed. Which meant — didn’t it? — that the pilot must still be inside.

  ‘I’m going back,’ Charlie said.

  ‘I’m gunna have a look.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Go back, if you want to.’

  A branch was growing alongside the broken canopy, the front section of which Walter now saw had been smashed, too.

  ‘If I can get up there …’

  Charlie’s courage had evaporated with the idea of the long-dead pilot still inside the plane. ‘There’s no time.’

  ‘It won’t take a minute.’

  There might be no monkeys in Australia, but Walter was up the branch quicker than any monkey. His heartbeat filled his chest. He peered inside. For a minute could see only darkness. Then, in the same way that the plane itself had emerged from the forest, shapes formed. A spider, glittering, metallic, waited in a web that spanned a section of the shattered perspex. At some time, probably years before, a sapling had thrust its way through the floor of the fuselage; its branches, reaching towards the light, now threatened to take over the space of what had once been the cockpit.

  There were controls everywhere: levers and wheels, dials and gauges without number, all shrouded in mould, through which needles pointed meaninglessly, frozen at the moment of the crash.

  Walter gripped the rim of the broken canopy and levered himself an inch or two higher. The branch supporting him sagged beneath his weight, screeching faintly against the aircraft’s aluminium flank.

  There was what seemed to be a steering wheel of sorts, oddly shaped. On the wheel … He craned closer, rubbing away the film of mould on the canopy.

  A hand.

  What remained of a hand. A dim outline of bones, the skeletal fingers clenched tight about the wheel. An arm, draped in the remnants of what might have been cloth. The bones of an arm.

  Walter struggled unavailingly but there was no way he could push back the canopy, frozen forever in its tracks. Yet, now that his eyes had grown used to the darkness inside the cockpit, he could see it all so clearly: the skeleton still seated in the pilot’s chair, one hand grasping the wheel, one flung backwards across what had been his face.

  The skull’s empty sockets kindled terror. His instinct was to get away as quickly as possible, yet the determination that had driven him up the tree made him hesitate. He wanted a souvenir to take with him; without something tangible to prove what he’d found, no-one, perhaps not even himself, would believe any of it.

  He hauled himself as high as he could into the cockpit’s shattered opening and reached inside. His fingers brushed metal, what might have been plastic and leather. Bone.

  The touch might have been terrible, but was not. It was smooth to the touch, cool. Around the neck, on a piece of thread, hung two small metal discs. Walter’s hand closed upon them. He wrenched. The rotted thread offered no resistance; the discs came away in his hand. He stared at the skull, half-afraid, but it did not move. He stuffed the discs into his trouser pocket and shinned back down the branch to the ground.

  Where Charlie waited, dancing with anxiety.

  ‘What did you see?’

  ‘Everything. All the controls. Guns —’ He had seen no guns, but it must have been a war plane, so guns there must have been. Both of them would have been disappointed had he not reported guns.

  ‘Was that all?’

  He knew what Charlie meant, had deliberately kept the best until last. ‘A skeleton …’

  ‘Get on.’

  ‘Climb up and take a look, you don’t believe me.’

  Charlie wasn’t game for that. ‘Did you really? Dinkum?’

  ‘Course.’

  Charlie watched him, half wanting to believe, half resentful of the experience that he might have shared, had he been game to climb the branch, too. Decided to withhold judgment.

  ‘We’d better get back. We’ll be in the cactus if they miss us.’

  It was easier than they’d expected, the scratches Walter had drawn in the moss a great help. Within a couple of minutes they were back, or nearly. Walter stopped and grabbed Charlie’s arm. ‘Not a word.’

  ‘Course not.’

  But Walter knew Charlie too well to believe it would be that easy to shut him up. ‘If they find out we sneaked off …’

  No need to finish the sentence. They would be in all kinds of drama if the teachers found out, might even be packed off home for their trouble. In which case they’d be in trouble there, as well. Much better, though hard, to keep their traps shut.

  They managed for quite a long time, but when they were safely back home again in South Australia, the pressure to talk grew too strong. It was too late; nobody believed a word of it.

  ‘Yeah? Why didn’t you say anything, then?’

  They even laughed about it in the staff room.

  ‘Hear the latest? Warren and Weir are claiming they found a Japanese plane up in Queensland.’

  ‘I always said those two had imagination.’

  Charlie was furious, belligerent, got into no end of scraps because of it. Walter, too, because it was expected of him, but without putting his heart into it. Unlike Charlie, he was not upset. It was enough to know.

  He told no-one, not even Charlie, about the discs, even though they would have proved the truth of their story. He examined them secretly. They were small circles o
f aluminium, inscribed with what must have been Japanese script. He ran his fingertips across their surface. The touch of the metal reminded him of how the bones had felt.

  He put them in a drawer with his other treasures and, in time, forgot about them. Even that did not matter; his subconscious retained the memory. Like those few minutes in which he had been alone on the swaying branch, staring through the broken canopy at the shadowy eye sockets of the dead pilot, the discs and the memory were his.

  22

  KATH

  1955

  September 14, 1955. After a long and, it seemed to Kath, unusually cold winter, the day was fine and clear, with the first hint of spring.

  Hedley was already up. She had sensed his departure, as she always did, but had long gone beyond the stage where waking to a new day was an experience to be shared. She had learned to expect nothing else from Hedley, but her own indifference was hard to accept. Indifference was such a waste, almost a crime. Life was precious, happiness her right …

  She turned in bed, slowly coming to. Happiness? Right? What did they have to do with anything?

  She opened her eyes, mind cleansed of the half-thoughts that had been tumbling through it seconds earlier. Beyond the window the morning was still, pearly with a pre-dawn opalescence. Magpies burbled in the gum trees; from far away came the peevish rumble of sheep. She thought, I have bought what I have with what might have been. I chose a familiar way of life, surrounded by people I have always known, in place of the unknown. Which at the time seemed to threaten me so powerfully.

  We make our own lives and I have no complaints. Things aren’t bad. Better than that; things are good. She had said it so often that it must be true. But, if that is so, Kath thought as she got out of bed, why do I feel as though I have missed out?