by Kim Kelly
‘What? What do you mean?’
‘Roycox, he works for Anglo-Eastern. Has done since Adam was a boy. Spent most of his career in Iran.’
This is said so offhand it takes me several moments to understand what I have been told. Anglo-Eastern Petroleum has deliberately sabotaged Australia’s search for its own oil reserves, and this would probably be common knowledge to me if I drank at the Rabaul Club. I think I might be sick. Being fleeced by crooks is one thing, but being fleeced by Empire? To keep us economically dependent on them. When they won’t release our troops for defence of the Pacific. When they tell us to defend Singapore – their Singapore, their Malaya, their oil – with a bunch of twenty-one year olds who are still working out how to reload efficiently.
‘Mongrels. You fucking mongrels.’
We really have been left for dead, haven’t we.
PART FOUR
DECEMBER 1941–APRIL 1942
BERNIE
‘Men and women of Australia,’ Mr Curtin calls to me from the wireless in the kitchen, ‘war demands bravery in sorrow at home as well as bravery in the face of the enemy in battle.’
How true is that? Truer today, somehow, as I pull my dressing-gown around me. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, that was a recording of our Prime Minister …’ the announcer goes on with the news, but I’m still with Mr Curtin. I like the way he addresses us: men and women. I’m a woman, and there’s something in his voice that brings me something of Dad: Come on, Bernie love, up you get. Getting pummelled in the surf: Don’t tell your mother I nearly drowned you.
‘Good morning, Bernadette dear, how are we this morning?’ Mrs Wassell asks me as I step into her sunroom for breakfast, and today I reply: ‘I’m well, thank you, very well, I think.’
I look at the pill on the little dish by the glass and water jug, waiting for me, and I know I won’t take it today. I don’t know how brave my sorrow is, but something has changed in me. Something is different today.
‘Well, isn’t that wonderful to hear,’ Mrs Wassell smiles, like an angel, because she is one: the CWA angel who’s been minding this child for over three months now. It’s time for me to leave her care. Make room for another one, like me, and like Cathy Knowles who has the other spare room here at the moment. She’s twenty-four: four kiddies under six and her husband’s just lost the farm to the drought. She’s lost her mind, too, but only temporarily if the CWA have anything to do with it. I don’t remember much about coming here, to this cool-quiet cottage in Leura, in the mountains, but I can still hear Mrs Lockhart shouting the paper off the walls at some doctor over me: You send that child to Callan Park and I’ll see to it that you are struck off. So I didn’t go to Callan Park, the asylum for really mental people, I came here; and fairly much slept solidly underwater for the first seven weeks, as Cathy is doing right now. As women in need are doing right now in the CWA rest homes all over the country, from the big seaside holiday house in Dee Why, to little open hearths like this one. Next time you buy a jar of fundraising jam, know why.
‘One egg or two, dear?’ Mrs Wassell asks.
I say: ‘I think I might have three.’
‘Good for you!’ Mrs Wassell smiles brighter still: light of the world. And I’ll wash up.
I’ll have a look at the newspaper first, something I haven’t done for a couple weeks, not quite ready then. It was full of the HMAS Sydney having disappeared off the wireless, all presumed lost, somewhere off the west coast, with the Japanese ambassador saying: May I extend to you my sincere sympathy for the loss. Giving me that feeling of wanting to run for the hills again. Till I saw the smudgy photographs of the lost sailors, too sad, and then the story of one that survived: he was put off the ship with some illness or other just before the final voyage, and he said he was going out to buy a lottery ticket at the miracle of it. I hated him when I read that then. I hated him for coming home. I had to have my lunch pill early.
But not today.
Today, I stop at the date at the top of the page: Saturday, December 6, 1941.
Breathtaking: one year ago tomorrow, I should have been married. We should have married on the seventh.
That pummels into my good morning with a knee-grazing thump. And with the daily dread: I have to write to Gordon. I have tell him everything that’s happened. He’ll understand, of course. But I can’t quite imagine writing it down yet, finding all the words I’ll need. To hurt him too. He’ll be so sad at the news, and angry at the cause, all the causes, of my silence. Each time Mrs Lockhart telephones, she asks me if I don’t want her to write to him for me. But I say no: it’s my job to tell him. Anyway, as familiar as Mrs Lockhart might be with our Gordon, I don’t know how well she knows him. I couldn’t imagine getting a letter like that from … from anyone at all.
‘Bit of bacon, dear?’ Mrs Wassell calls from the kitchen.
‘No thanks.’
I look up out the window, at the glorious view of the mountains from this sunroom. The reds and the mauves of the rock faces above the forest, above the valley. It’s not Gordon’s favourite valley, the one at Blackheath, but these are the same mountains, where we were to honeymoon, the same rocks whose reds and mauves are made of various things ending in ite. And they’re not mountains either, are they; he told me that once, seems like a million years ago, and I can’t remember what he said they are instead. I miss him terribly, terrible as everything else, shocked tearless. Wordless.
When you’re back in the world, the words will come, Mrs Lockhart has said, and with them possibly the tears too. But it’s time for me to test that, test myself. To move back into the world. Not home to Coogee; I’m not ready for that: I would curl up in Mum’s blanket box, burrow under the magnolia folds of my wedding dress, never make my way out again. But can I return to Hay? Mrs Zoc is still there, a danger to the State, and Piccolo too, Mrs Lockhart having carted him cross country when she went home at the end of August, home to get busy for the Wagga Wagga Show, major source of jam funds for the year. Mrs Lockhart, I owe her so much: she even got a good price for Dad’s hydraulic hoist to keep the wolves away from Arcadia. It’s in Coonabarabran now, at a tractor workshop. But still, I feel such a weight of guilt at having been with her, in Hay when I should have been at home with Mum. What did I think I was doing? Indulging myself with this idea of being a writer, of being … I don’t know. Something what, special? Outside those who love me best, I don’t exist. Do I? Would Mum be here today to tell me if I hadn’t been traips–
‘Here we are, three eggs on toast.’ Mrs Wassell places the plate under my nose, and says: ‘Oo, here, almost forgot, postie came early this morning,’ handing me an envelope from her apron pocket.
A small white envelope, with a little daisy drawn on the top left corner.
Dear Miss Cooper, hear the lisp in the wobbly but determined hand. I have been thinking of you a lot. I thought you might like this picture I drew.
Over the page: it’s a picture of a bird, a corella with its comb standing up on end, sailing above the roofs of the camp. It’s very good, for a six year old. Or is he seven now?
I hope you like it. I hope I will see you again one day.
Yours faithfully
Eric Werner
I think I will see you again one day, Eric sweetheart. One day quite soon. And I see something different again. Hope: a small hand pulling me up to my feet, pulling me back to life. I’m proud of you, very proud of you, Bernadette. Thanks, Mum. Bravery, in battle or sorrow or otherwise: it’s about being alive, isn’t it. Just a fact of life. Not a choice.
GORDON
If I wasn’t standing in a bar under a volcano on an island in the Bismarck Sea, an island deserted except for a tiny armed force of fourteen hundred, half of whom aren’t paid-up soldiers, plus me, one cracked vulcanologist and an assortment of other unarmed public servants, including six nurses, I could almost be impressed.
The Japs. Bombing the US bases in Hawaii and the Philippines, bombing Malaya and Guam, Thailand and Shanghai. They
are air-raiding the whole of the Pacific at once. On the smell of an oily rag. Literally. Ten ships, at least, and an airfield at Pearl Harbor on Sunday; two British ships off Malaya yesterday. If they succeed, this has got to go down as some kind of record of will over ability.
‘Men and women of Australia, we are at war with Japan. This is the gravest hour of our history.’
‘You’re not joking,’ says Johno.
But I still can’t believe it. A shower of pumice hits the tin roof of the club and I look out across Simpson Harbour. Only a couple of fishing canoes out there under the orange sky. There’s nothing for the Japs in New Britain that they can’t get more easily elsewhere, and there’s flaming well nothing for them here in Rabaul right now. They can’t possibly succeed at their war, either. This will be all over in a week or two. They can’t take the Pacific. They can’t take it and hold it. This is well beyond crazy: suicidal. They will be held off at Singapore and exhausted in a week.
A plane comes in to land on the water now, sliding up to the jetty, and Johno says: ‘Put your name in.’
The draw for the last seat on the last evacuation flight. The very last of the women and children of the plantation families are already waiting on the jetty with their luggage. But my attention’s gone back to the Prime Minister’s speech.
‘We Australians have imperishable traditions. We shall maintain them. We shall vindicate them. We shall hold this country and keep it as a citadel for the British-speaking race and as a place where civilisation will persist.’
Curtin sounds so certain that Australia itself is under threat, that civilisation itself is under threat. That can’t be true. The biggest threat Japan has ever posed to us is economic. They want their share of the world financial pie. You can’t get more civilised than that.
‘Dozy,’ Johno stands in front of me, the cartridge belt across his tunic making it an order, ‘you put your fucking name in.’
I say: ‘No. I’ve made my decision.’ To stay.
He says: ‘Please.’ His emu frown insisting: please don’t make me responsible for you.
I say: ‘Righto.’
I put my name in, but I don’t get the seat. One of the junior clerks from the District Office does, and I’m glad: he’s only nineteen.
It’s only as we’re watching the plane banking above the harbour an hour or so later that I see the line of logic behind why the Japs would come here. Why they will have to come here: because this war is going to be won or lost by air power. In order to get to the high octane they need for it – oil that’s in Malaya, the Dutch East Indies, Burma, Borneo – they will need to hold the whole of the Western Pacific, and to achieve that they will have to take out every island, and hold each one, including this one. Including Australia.
But take a whole continent? That’s impossible. And now they’ve brought the Americans into it. More than impossible.
As impossible things go, I duck out to the post office to see if there’s anything for me in what might be the last bag of mail we’ll get for a while. What do I want? Some kind of last words? There’s nothing for me in the bag, though. There was never going to be. But when I’m heading back to the club, I detour across to the Weekender to check behind the counter there, just to be sure nothing’s slipped down behind anything else. There’s no one to object; even Mr Chittaway’s gone home now, too. But there’s nothing here for me anyway. Of course there’s not.
So I go back to the bar, with every intention of achieving my very worst, but when I arrive, the wireless is off and one of the officers of the 2/22nd is bailing up Sid. ‘What do you mean, no more beer?’
I don’t know him, somebody Campbell, but he’s obviously not one who’s too concerned about imminent invasion: he’s of the type who seem to think the government is paying him to stay up here and drink. The rest of the room is not unreasonably in sympathy with him, though.
Sid says: ‘And how do you reckon that’s my problem?’ Not happy himself at the idea of running out of grog. Less happy that a lieutenant has just spoken to a major that way, in uniform.
‘You’re the BP shipping clerk, aren’t you,’ says this AIF idiot, pulling it over a militia man and rubbing it in.
Whoa. The bar splits in two behind this Campbell and Sid. There’d be a blue on with the next word if Sven didn’t call out, waving from the door of the manager’s office: ‘I am on the telephone now, Sid, who do I speak to?’
Sid can’t get past his riling at no one ever being able to call him Major Triscombe, before Sven adds: ‘Oh shit. The telephone is dead.’
Oh shit. The blue is back on, and the band starts playing ‘Gundagai’ on the tennis lawn.
‘Come on, Brockie, leave them to it.’ Johno picks a bottle of Scotch off the top shelf and jumps back over the bar to me. ‘Let’s make this a good one.’
We go up to our room at the back of the Weekender, pass the bottle over the crystal set to hear: ‘A Tokio news correspondent has claimed that numerous Japanese planes, laden with high explosives, dived straight at the warships in Pearl Harbor, suggesting that these airmen acted as human torpedoes. It is likely then that the same method was used in the attacks on Malaya …’
‘That’s what you’d call economical,’ says Johno.
‘Yeah, it is,’ I agree, and I understand, with the full whack of clarity now, how they’re planning to succeed.
Suicide.
We can hear a plane, a mosquito buzz high in the sky, very high. Doesn’t sound like a Moth.
‘That’s a long-range engine,’ says Johno.
So it’s probably not one of ours, is it.
BERNIE
‘Sorry about this, Mrs Lockhart. Miss Cooper,’ Ken Morely says as he ushers us through the gates of the camp towards the admin office. Gates have been erected across the entrance in my absence, and internees are confined to quarters outside recreation hours. There’s a new commandant at the camp, a Major Payne – Major Pain, Mrs Lockhart’s dubbed him – not taking any chances now the Japs are in. Especially not taking any chances with Mrs Lockhart’s plum puddings.
Ken takes the box from me and makes a show of poking about amongst the white cloth parcels, each tied with a festive red ribbon. My eyes are still adjusting to Hay light; I’ve just got off the train, having trouble with the idea of confining children to quarters, vision of Anna Werner facing the firing squad in her criminally Continental d’Orsay t-strap sandals, Alby begging: Please, I’ll never run Eric up the flagpole again.
‘What are you looking for, Kenny?’ Mrs Lockhart rouses, ready to smack his bottom with her handbag. ‘Concealed nutmegs?’
‘I’m sorry, Mrs Lockhart,’ he says again, and he’s got worse to impart: ‘You can’t come further in today, either. Visiting’s strictly Sundays now.’
She narrows her eyes at Ken, but decides to keep her powder dry for bigger game.
‘Come on, Bernadette,’ she drags me back to the ute. I watch her start the engine of this great black beast of a thing: her feet hardly reach the pedals and she has to sit on a cushion to see over the wheel. Despite the circumstances, I smile. I’m glad I’m here. I don’t want to be anywhere else but in this redoubtable sun’s care.
‘Now, back through town, we’ll stop at the outfitters – got to get you some trousers for Christmas. Can you ride, dear? I can’t remember if you told me …’
‘No, no.’ Not a horse; not trousers, either.
She switches on the radio set before I can protest any further:
‘Men and women of Australia. The call is to you, for your courage; your physical and mental ability; your inflexible determination that we, as a nation of free people, shall survive. My appeal to you is in the name of Australia, for Australia is the stake in this conflict. The thread of peace has snapped – only the valour of our fighting forces, backed by the very uttermost of which we are capable in factory and workshop, can knit that thread again into security. Let there be no idle hand. The road of service is ahead. Let us all tread it firmly, vic
toriously …’
‘Brilliant man, John Curtin,’ she talks over the Prime Minister, too. ‘Alcoholic. Dreadful chain smoker. But we’re in good hands now.’ She speaks as if she knows him as well as she does Ken. Maybe she does.
‘Our honeymoon is finished. It is now work and fight as we have never worked or fought before–’
She switches him off. Outside Drysdale’s Men’s Outfitters. ‘Now, to business. The McDoughals need an extra pair as their Alex has been sent up north with the coast watch, clever one Alex, they’ve got him on code-breaking, you know, all those spy stories he read as a child. Anyway, it’s left Alice short for the tomatoes.’
Crop, she means; not plucking one from the yard for a salad. ‘But I can’t ride a horse. I–’
‘Not hard, my dear. If I could in my day, you can in yours. Only plodding on our dear little Odd Socks and there’s pin money in it for you. You should learn in any case – it doesn’t do not to know how to ride. How else are you going to get there? Stand on the roadside till the wind takes you? You can’t have the utility unfortunately – Mitch might need it.’
Irrelevant as I can’t drive a motor vehicle either. I say: ‘Um. Ah.’ The McDoughals’ property is next door to Mrs Lockhart’s, the next homestead along the river, and it’s a mile away.
I can hear Dad laughing his head off. Mum’s saying, Shush, Bill. Waiting for my answer. I would like to say I will walk; a mile is nothing. In this throat-searing heat. Don’t whine: but can’t you drive me? Back and forth with petrol the price of champagne.
Half an hour later, I’ve even got the boots on and Mr Drysdale is looking pleased with himself: ‘We’ll make a country girl out of this one yet, won’t we, Bess.’
I try not to turn around to see what the back end looks like in these tan canvas slacks.
‘Doesn’t she look the part, doesn’t she just.’ Mrs Lockhart is pleased too, choosing a hat now, from the one and only brand in this establishment. ALL AUSTRALIAN AKUBRA – THE THOROUGHLY GOOD ARTICLE. ‘She’s a little Boomerang, don’t you think, Bob?’ Mrs Lockhart plonks a beige one on my head, chinkling with Mr Drysdale at her pun on the style of the crown. One that goes past this head: all the wide-brims look the same to me in here. They all look like my Rock.