The Secret Years

by Barbara Hannay

  This brought a brief grunt.

  ‘You never told me you were a Rat of Tobruk, Harry. I was stoked when I saw your Rat badge. That’s really special. And you were at Kokoda, too. That’s a huge deal.’

  Another shrug. ‘It was all such a long time ago.’

  ‘But they were both such big battles. So important for Australia. I’m surprised you never talked about them.’

  Her grandfather didn’t respond to this but simply sat, fingering the edge of the tin with a bony, scarred finger. ‘Every battle’s important for the poor buggers who have to fight them.’

  True, Lucy thought, but she had been reading up on Tobruk and its reputation hadn’t been earned lightly. The Aussies had endured 241 days defending Egypt and the Suez Canal against the Italians and Germans who were under Rommel, and they’d done it in the grimmest of conditions.

  The desert ground had been so hard and stony they’d only been able to dig shallow trenches, little more than a metre deep in most places, which meant they’d had to crawl everywhere on all fours, the whole time putting up with a daily bombardment from mortar or field guns and snipers. And they’d slept in tiny, two-man dugouts roofed by beams covered in sandbags.

  ‘It must have been terrible out there in the desert,’ she said. ‘I’ve been reading about the huge problems with the water being all brackish and salty. I don’t know how you drank it.’

  At this, Harry cracked a small smile. ‘S’pose I’m fortunate my kidneys have lasted this long.’

  ‘I guess,’ she said softly. Then, needing to quickly change the subject, ‘And what about the thousands of flies, Harry? They must have been unbearable. Flies and maggots during the day and armies of fleas at night.’ Not to mention the dysentery and desert ulcers the men had to deal with.

  ‘Yeah, well.’ Harry reached for a ginger biscuit. ‘It helped to have a sense of humour.’ For a moment he sat, the biscuit forgotten, as he stared into the distance, no doubt thinking about the past. Then he chuckled. ‘You mentioned all the paperwork. It was even like that in Tobruk. There we were, struggling with Rommel and his Panzers on the frontline and our captain kept getting these bloody forms to fill in.’

  Lucy smiled.

  ‘Lucky for us, our captain had a brilliant sense of humour, and in the end he mocked up a form of his own. Made it look official and sent it back to HQ. Called it the Fly Report.’ Harry was grinning broadly now. ‘He even invented all these categories of flies that had to be filled in. Number of flies killed per unit, method of destruction – whether they were killed by fly swat, spray, sticky paper – type of fly.’

  Lucy was laughing. ‘Oh, that’s priceless. Even the type of fly?’

  ‘Yeah. Small, black fly. Large green. Blue arsed.’ Harry chuckled again. ‘That should have been a dead giveaway, but there were some units that actually filled in the report.’

  ‘You’re joking.’

  ‘Even had them signed off by the authorising officer.’

  ‘Oh, I love it. That’s fabulous.’ Across the table they grinned at each other and Lucy was delighted that Harry had finally shared a tiny snippet from his past, even if it was only a funny story. ‘No wonder the Rats became famous.’

  Harry’s smile faded. ‘There was no fun like that in New Guinea, especially Kokoda. Don’t ask me about that, Lucy.’

  He looked haunted suddenly. ‘All right, I’ll remember not to ask,’ she said quickly.

  With a shake of his head, he added, ‘But I reckon wars are getting harder to fight.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. You must have —’

  He ignored her attempt to interrupt. ‘In my day, we had a frontline. We knew where the enemy was and what we were up against. But it’s different now. Your enemy manages to infiltrate everywhere, all around you. In the towns, even in the bases. I read the papers. I keep up with the news. You must have never really known where your danger lay. I bet you were always looking over your shoulder.’

  ‘That’s true,’ she said softly. There’d been several scary incidents when she’d been out in villages with the female engagement team, and a couple of times when the base had been hit by rocket fire.

  Her mother and Sam had both acknowledged this danger, but at the same time they’d also resented her presence in a war zone, almost as if she’d gone there deliberately to upset them. It was reassuring to know that Harry understood exactly what she’d been through, and she appreciated that he commented without accusations.

  But when she looked at the battered old tin sitting on the table between them, she couldn’t help wishing he’d shared more about his own experiences. She wanted to ask him about all of his medals, about his life out west on the cattle property, Kalkadoon. Most of all, she wanted to know about the mysterious and beautiful George.

  ‘There’s so much I don’t know about you,’ she said, unable to keep quiet. ‘I know practically nothing about your life before you moved here to Townsville.’

  Harry quickly dropped his gaze to the tin and frowned. ‘I suppose it’s a habit I’ve fallen into. Your mother went through a really rough patch when she was younger, before you were born. That’s when I left Kalkadoon and after that, she never liked me talking about the place, or the past.’

  Lucy could well believe this. Her mother was even more tight-lipped than Harry about her past, and she’d gone ballistic over that letter.

  ‘I wasn’t the father I should have been,’ Harry said sadly.

  Lucy very much doubted that this was true. Reaching over, she placed her hand on his. ‘Well, you’ve been a bloody fantastic grandfather.’

  ‘Thanks, love.’

  They sat for a bit, his hand in hers, savouring their special bond. Poor Mum, she thought. You’ve missed out on so much.

  Watching her, Harry said, ‘You should focus on the future, Lucy, not the past. You should be thinking about that young man of yours.’

  That young man of yours.

  Sam. Lucy gripped the handle of her mug so tightly it was a wonder it didn’t snap. She still hadn’t heard from Sam. Sure, she could always try to ring him, but no way was she going to beg and plead.

  After all, Sam was the one with the problem. But his silence made everything pretty damn clear and final. Even so, a tiny corner of her stupid heart was still hoping . . .

  She couldn’t bring herself to explain this to Harry. Not yet. He would only worry. He might even assume she was following in her mother’s footsteps – becoming a relationship tragic.

  But . . . Oh God. By not telling Harry, she was being as secretive about her private life as he was. Uncomfortably aware of the irony, Lucy decided she couldn’t press Harry for more personal stories today. There was still time.

  Instead, she said, ‘First up, I’d like to focus on doing a few odd jobs around here. There’s plenty to do in your yard.’

  Harry frowned. ‘You’ve got better things to do than worry about my yard.’

  Showed how little he knew. Here she was, home on leave, with Christmas coming and weeks of leisurely summertime to fill, and with absolutely no idea what she was going to do with her time. With her life.

  Her friends had all scattered, most of them, including Kaz, taking off down south to spend Christmas with family and friends. Her fiancé had dropped her and her mum had moved into a brand new apartment with a nice new man, which meant that hanging around them, Lucy felt a big fat gooseberry.

  She sent her grandfather her warmest, most convincing grin. ‘’Course I want to help you. I’m used to working hard – long hours and no time off. It feels weird to have so much spare time on my hands. Honest, you’d be doing me a favour, so if you’ve got a pen and paper, we can make a list.’

  ‘Not more paperwork.’

  They both laughed. It felt good.

  Lucy ran hard along Townsville’s Strand, weaving her way around dog-walkers, past joggers with the latest-model fitness trackers strapped to their biceps, and young mothers in gym gear pushing state-of-the-art prams.

 
The path was set in parkland, rimmed by palm trees and beach and, beyond, the shimmering pale sea lay as flat and still as a swathe of blue silk. On the other side of the park, restaurants and apartment blocks and cafés spilled onto footpaths where cyclists in fluorescent lycra sipped their morning lattes.

  So different from the world she had left behind in Uruzgan province, where people still travelled on donkeys and women and girls carried their family’s water supply on their heads. By comparison, her hometown was like a futuristic planet.

  The sense of dislocation had hit her especially hard this morning. She’d visited Anna Duncan yesterday and had subsequently spent a night battling bad dreams, only to wake and find herself yet again in her mother’s pristine white-and-cream apartment.

  Her sense of loss had hit harder, too. A quick check of her phone had shown that Sam still hadn’t tried to make contact, which meant it was four days now since she’d seen or heard from him.

  This stupid silence had gone on long enough. She would have to make contact, bring things to a head. She felt sick at the thought.

  Reaching the rockpool at the end of the Strand, she paused briefly to take in the view across to Magnetic Island and to grab a deep swig from her water bottle, then turned and retraced her steps. Running back along the waterfront, she continued on through Anzac Park, veering along the eastern end of Flinders Street past the museum and marine aquarium and over the bridge that spanned Ross Creek.

  It was only eight-thirty, but already the tropical sun whacked a sting and she was sleek with sweat.

  Not the best condition in which to encounter a familiar figure as she turned the next corner.

  Sam.

  Lucy almost stumbled. Forgot to breathe.

  Sam, in blue jeans and a white T-shirt that showed off his gym-taut body, was obviously waiting. For her.

  Her heart leaped, bounding like a hurdler. Her legs were unsteady, her knees threatened to buckle.

  With a casual lack of haste, Sam took his hands from his pockets and rested them loosely on his hips. He appraised her without smiling. ‘Hey,’ he said.

  It wasn’t a promising start.

  ‘Hi, Sam.’ Lucy drew a deep, very necessary breath. At least she wasn’t panting. ‘I’m guessing that Mum must have told you where to find me.’

  He nodded. ‘I thought we’d better sort this out.’

  This – such an unhelpful word under the circumstances.

  Lucy wiped her sweaty hands on the backs of her running shorts. ‘Do – do you want to talk here? Go somewhere for coffee?’ There were places open on Palmer Street.

  Sam’s blue eyes were narrowed and shrewd. ‘That depends.’

  ‘On?’

  ‘On why I haven’t heard from you.’

  Lucy gasped. ‘Why you haven’t heard from me?’ She glared at him. ‘I’ve been waiting to hear from you. You were the one who —’

  ‘You were the one who walked out,’ he cut in tightly.

  ‘True, but I walked out to avoid a fight. You know that. You were the one who had the problem.’

  ‘Whatever, Luce.’ He gave an irritated shrug and he looked and sounded bored.

  Damn him. Lucy’s eyes were stinging, but she was too angry to show any hint of her hurt. ‘What do you want to hear from me? That I’ll resign from the fucking army?’

  He didn’t answer, simply stood there, his expression wooden.

  ‘Perhaps you need to spit it out, Sam. We’re over, aren’t we?’

  ‘Is that what you want?’

  She gritted her teeth. Not only was Sam playing games, parrying her question with a question of his own, but he hadn’t shown the slightest hint that this conversation was in any way upsetting.

  Bastard. What the hell had she ever seen in this guy? He might be handsome – cute was the word her girlfriends had used – but it was damn annoying that she’d been so smitten, that she’d actually fallen in love. If only she’d realised sooner there was way too much ego to match his pretty face.

  ‘Let me get this straight,’ she said, needing to sock it to him fair and square. ‘First, you drop a bombshell, claiming you can’t marry me because of my job. Not because my work’s dangerous and you actually care, but because you think my role in the field has higher status than your desk job. And when I leave to avoid a heated argument on my first night home, you go sulky and silent. Now you’re trying to tell me that it’s all my fault.’

  And he wasn’t lifting so much as a finger to try to win her back.

  Lucy’s fury burned white hot. ‘You know what?’ she demanded, glaring with a fierceness to match his.

  Sam rolled his eyes. ‘I’m sure you’re going to tell me.’

  Yes, she bloody well was. ‘You’re a prick, Sam Harrison. And there’s no question. We are most definitely over. So goodbye and —’

  She whipped the tiny diamond from her finger – lucky she was so sweaty it slipped off easily – and thrust it roughly into his hand.

  ‘Good riddance!’ she yelled over her shoulder as she jogged away.

  11

  Lucy didn’t look back to check out Sam’s reaction. She ran hard, on past her mother’s apartment block, turning into a leafy, quiet suburban back street. Here she eventually slowed to a walk, taking deep breaths. Morning sunlight streamed through overhead poinciana trees. She could hear the sounds of children’s laughter spilling from a nearby house, saw an elderly woman watering her front garden before the day got too hot. The street was peaceful and ordinary and Lucy was no longer engaged to be married.

  Out of nowhere came a miraculous sense of relief.

  She could admit it now. Loving Sam had been hard work, much harder than it should have been. If she was honest, she’d never been truly relaxed and certain about him and, amazingly, the prospect of a future without him was like having a fresh breeze blow across her face, a whiff of beckoning freedom.

  Rather shocked by such an immediate feeling of reprieve, she looked up through lacy green branches laden with red to the bright, cloudless blue sky and she wondered if this new sense of lightness was how her mum had felt when her relationships had ended. Was this why her mother was able to start again, over and over, each time with fresh hope that with the next new man everything would be rosy?

  Shit. She didn’t want to be like her mum. She couldn’t bear to fall into that kind of pattern.

  I’m not.

  I’m not like her.

  Lucy was sure she didn’t share her mother’s neediness or lack of confidence. Even as a child, she’d sensed her mother’s emotional fragility, but she’d never really understood how this could have happened when her mother had been brought up by Harry. But there’d always been that tension between Harry and her mum, the tension that Lucy had never understood.

  She was sure it had something to do with their past. Perhaps it is connected to that letter Mum screwed up.

  As she turned into another street lined with sprawling timber Queenslanders set back behind clumps of palm trees or bougain­villea, she thought about the turmoil in her mother’s face when she’d snatched the Englishwoman’s letter out of her hands. The letter writer had begged and cajoled Harry into giving up his daughter, demanding that he send her to England where she’d be so much better off, where she could mix with her ‘own kind’ and be ‘properly’ educated.

  It was such a snobby thing to say.

  Her mum, who obviously knew the woman, had called her a bitch. And Lucy could imagine that was true. A snobby bitch.

  Lucy was glad she’d retrieved the woman’s letter from the kitchen tidy bin. She’d felt only slightly guilty and she’d soon reconciled her conscience. Surely a letter like that was too significant to throw away?

  After all, with Harry never talking about his glamorous George or his part in the war, and with her mum jamming up whenever she asked questions about Kalkadoon Station or her time in England, Lucy was sick of all the secrets in her family and fed up that they wouldn’t tell her anything.

  It
occurred to her now that Harry’s George came from England, as well. One way or another, these family secrets all seemed to be connected in some inescapable way to England.

  And by a weird coincidence, if things had turned out differently, Lucy would have been heading off for England right now.

  Months ago, before she’d been distracted by Sam’s marriage proposal, she and Kaz had planned to spend their Christmas leave by going to London and then hiring a car to see England and Ireland. Despite being smitten with her boyfriend, Kaz had been mightily disappointed when Sam’s proposal had prompted Lucy to pull out of the trip.

  Remembering this, another sickening thought struck. Sam had only proposed to her after she’d told him about her travel plans.

  Realising this now, her anger kicked in again with a vengeance, but she would only make herself sick if she tried to analyse the deeper implications of Sam’s timing. She’d wasted enough of her life agonising over that guy.

  One thing was coming through very clearly, though. She was pretty damn sure that she knew how she was going to spend the rest of her leave.

  Following swiftly on from that thought, Lucy impulsively retrieved her phone from the pocket of her shorts and keyed in Kaz’s number.

  Her girlfriend answered quickly. ‘Hey, Lucy, how are you? How’s Sam?’

  Lucy winced. ‘I’m . . . so-so. That’s so-so, as in, not so great, actually. A bit gutted, to be honest.’ She swallowed to ease the tension in her throat. ‘Sam and I just broke up.’

  There was a gratifyingly shocked gasp on the end of the line. ‘That’s terrible, Luce. I’m so sorry.’ A small silence fell, but Kaz clearly couldn’t hold back. ‘What happened?’

  To her annoyance, Lucy struggled to get out the words. ‘Basically, Sam wanted me to leave the army.’

  ‘Oh.’ A brief pause from Kaz. ‘I suppose he’s like my Brad. Worried about another deployment and he wants to keep you home safe and sound.’

  ‘Not exactly.’ Although that would be a logical explanation, and one Lucy probably could have lived with. ‘For Sam it was more of an ego thing.’ She could feel the tension tightening her throat and she drew a deliberately calming breath. This was going to sound so damn lame. ‘It’s pretty crazy, Kaz. He’s unhappy because he’s stuck in a desk job while I’m on active duty.’