Patty had to confess that she didn’t at all like the frenetic rebuilding supported by a flood of US dollars. The Japanese hurried about their business as if recovering from a nuclear blast was just another calamity, no different from an earthquake. She never met a single Japanese who harboured feelings of bitterness toward the Americans. Defeat meant next to nothing. Something like prosperity was coming to Hiroshima and the attention of the Japanese was on the houses being built, the businesses springing up overnight.
In five years, there would be a new Hiroshima, with the Genbaku Dome, what remained of it, left standing as a ‘memorial’. She thought the only fitting memorial would be to do nothing to the ruins, to leave the reddened acres exactly as they were. In her heart, without too much searching, she could find hatred for those who made the decision to fly an aeroplane over Hiroshima and release a bomb that would kill in a second eighty thousand Japanese, the majority of them civilians. And then a week later, after a conversation that probably went no further than, ‘Had enough? Okay, Nagasaki,’ fly a second aeroplane over the city further south and kill some thousands and thousands more.
Banks were operating, housing construction was going ahead at a furious pace, factories sprang up overnight and people were returning in their tens of thousands to the city.
Returning to the irradiated soil.
Most of her work these days was with victims of radiation sickness. Patty and the doctors and the BCOF personnel ate only what was imported from Australia and America. But the Japanese ate what was now growing in fields on the fringe of the city and they came to the hospitals with their hair falling out and huge tumours in their throats and chests, too weak to walk more than a few paces without needing to rest. But the very air she breathed was toxic and she had accepted that she would develop radiation sickness in time.
She came to know all of the doctors who ran the small hospitals, but none better than Doctor Tanaka, who had worked for the military as a civilian doctor for the entire length of the war. He was forty, tall for a Japanese, with an engaging smile and a knack for irony that she had never met with before in the local people. He spoke perfect English with a slight American accent—he had trained at Harvard—and told her she was only ever to speak English to him because her Japanese was awful. She had lunch with him whenever she could, food that he prepared himself from American supplies. He liked her, so he said. He hoped she liked him. Did she? Yes. And to tease, told him in her rubbish Japanese that he had ‘kind eyes’.
‘For the Americans,’ he said at lunch one day, ‘the war was an experiment.’
‘How so?’
‘They had a theory that America was the most powerful country in the world. The war was raging in Europe and Asia. But they could not join in and put the theory to the test because they had nothing against the Germans other than distaste, and nothing at all against the Japanese. Pearl Harbor was the catalyst for the experiment. They soon saw that they were likely to destroy Japan. The first Japanese bomb that landed on Pearl Harbor was the beginning of the end for the Japanese imperial forces. The further stage of the experiment was to do to the Germans what they had done to the Japanese. And so they did. The theory was proved. Next, of course, we have to consider the Soviets, who have a theory of their own. Several, in fact.’
‘Poppycock.’
‘“Poppycock”? What is “poppycock”?’
‘Nonsense,’ Patty provided, in Japanese.
‘I love this word. Poppycock. Not only will I use it, I will speak it, as I so often do.’
Kado Tanaka had no sensible reason for being so cheerful, and in fact he was not. He was still in mourning for his wife and four children who had died when the bomb dropped. He was out of the city on that day and came back to find everything in flames. The children and their mother, Monica, had been at home when the bomb exploded, just beyond the immediate area of destruction but not beyond the heat. When Kado could get to his home, he found his family dead, their bodies an unnatural red all over and their clothing and flesh fused.
Monica and the children had all been Catholics, a conversion that went back generations. He dug a grave a little way from the house, then spent the rest of the day hunting down a Catholic priest, a German, Father Schlink, from the church Monica and the children had attended. He found the priest badly burnt but able to walk and had him officiate at the burial, in the one grave, of his family. Monica had given all of the children traditional Catholic names, just like her own, and had wanted her husband to call himself Joseph but he had declined. He had only converted to Catholicism to please Monica and had never attended mass. He asked Patty to explain what it meant to be a Quaker.
‘Don’t shout, do no harm,’ she said.
‘I have heard you shout in the wards.’
‘Don’t shout unless you’re frustrated by bad nursing in a Hiroshima hospital.’
By degrees.
Her affair with the major had been ridiculous. With Kado, more important to her than the major, she’d move it along by degrees. Her better self had come to feel offended by the ludicrous bouncing about with the major. He was so brisk that she’d never had time to exercise her judgment. One of the things she so appreciated in Kado—well, she admired and appreciated everything—was that he left it all up to her judgment.
His affection for her wasn’t in doubt. He smiled at her, seemed to welcome the times in an examination of a patient when their hands touched briefly. She allowed him to adjust his surgical mask. Over one patient, a boy of six, too sick with radiation sickness to survive, Kado stepped away from the bed and stood at the window staring out. She went to him and wiped his eyes with folded gauze. He took her hand and held it briefly.
It became part of the program of each day that she would put her arm around his back and hold him, only for seconds. One day, she said, ‘You don’t mind this?’ He shook his head, smiling.
In this way, little by little, they reached a point where it seemed foolish not to kiss. The kissing was intended to be an introduction to greater intimacy, but it quickly went further and became passionate. Patty pulled away, looked Kado in the eyes, made her judgment, and kissed him again. The next day, more of the same, but with murmurs and endearments.
The US Marines, criticised for their ‘anything goes’ treatment of the Japanese, held a friendship gathering in a building outside Hiroshima with Japanese professionals to discuss what was happening inside Hiroshima. Kado was invited and asked Patty if she would accompany him. The Americans had little to say other than that plenty of people were dying. A Marine choir sang Cole Porter and Irving Berlin songs. In the middle of the evening, a Marine colonel, newly appointed to head the Marines in Japan, made an apology for the destruction of Hiroshima, Nagasaki and a big part of Tokyo.
‘I apologise for war, on behalf of humanity, that we need to resort to war to settle an argument. You Japanese hit us hard at Pearl Harbor, and we did what Americans always do—we came back and hit you harder. But it gives Americans no pleasure to kill Japanese. It’s just war, and as Sherman said, “War is hell.” We will rebuild Hiroshima, but we can’t rebuild the Japanese and American lives lost.’
Then a reprise of Irving Berlin’s ‘Always’.
On the way home in the taxi, Patty said, ‘Shall I stay with you tonight?’
‘Please, yes.’
Kado lived at his hospital in a small ward set aside, completely unadorned. His bed was no different than those of his patients. He and Patty showered together, then made love until well after midnight, the first time a little awkwardly, with more ease later.
In the morning, it took Patty a few moments to remember where she was. When she did, she laughed with delight, held Kado’s face in her hands and kissed him again and again, until he was laughing too.
‘That was heaven,’ she said. ‘Can you please tell me it was heaven for you?’
‘Heaven, Patty. Better than heaven.’
She dressed and went to the nurses’ quarters to change into her unifo
rm. She kept three spare uniforms in her locker, and she needed to; patients were brought in bleeding from their mouths, their noses, from everywhere. They would be dead within hours, after leaving their blood all over her. She showered and dressed. It was all she could do during the day to stop herself kissing Kado and rubbing her body against his.
They were lovers. It was meant to be. Could things really be meant to be? No. Except this. Except this.
He spoke to her in Japanese while they were in bed, as if this more confirmed his feeling for her. In the narrow bed, they were always close, folded into each other. He told her in English that Monica had always been squeamish about sex. ‘She believed God was watching, critically. I asked her, “Why?” and she said, “You don’t pray.” Monica prayed all the time we were making love.’ He said that Monica paid no attention to the war and never prayed for the victory of Japan and Germany, as everyone else in the Catholic congregation did. ‘She was a patriot of heaven, only. She wanted to see the victory of God on earth. She was childlike in her faith, but I loved her with all my heart.’
‘Do you feel as if you’re betraying her with me?’
‘Patty, she is dead. We can’t betray the dead, unless we’re neurotic.’
A few days after this conversation, between treating one patient who died from radiation poisoning and another who died of the same cause, Kado asked Patty if she would marry him and bear children. She said: ‘Yes, of course.’ Then: ‘I will be acceptable to your parents?’ ‘Yes.’
They married in a Catholic ceremony, to please dead Monica. The priest asked Patty if she was a Catholic and she said, no, a member of the Society of Friends. Father Schlink shrugged. ‘In these times, who cares?’ His face was brick-red from radiation exposure and his gabardine cassock, the only one still left to him, had been burnt here and there and patched, not skilfully, with red cotton fabric.
They lived in the ward until it could be arranged for the two of them to move in with Kado’s parents, who lived outside Hiroshima but had nevertheless been burnt in the ferocious blast of heat that roared out from the immediate site of the explosion. The burns were not serious. Kado treated them himself. The parents, Shinsa and Maka, admired Patty for staying to help, but also found her odd. She understood nothing of the customary ways in which a daughter-in-law was expected to behave. She left her underwear on the clothesline in plain sight of Kado’s father and kissed Kado on the lips no matter who was watching. Kado told her, with a smile, that his parents thought she was a barbarian, but nice.
‘Have some babies,’ he said. ‘They will forgive you everything.’
She wanted to take him back to Australia, to Almond Tree, to meet her own parents. ‘I haven’t been home in years.’ But would the Australians give him a visa? He had worked for the military, even though he’d never been in the army. There was no need to worry. The Japanese, who had elected their own parliament, the Diet, had so embraced American values, Western values, Australian values, that they wished to appear the best friend the West had in the East. Look at China, now communist. Look at us, we hate communists like lepers. They provided the Australian Consulate with a version of Kado’s war record that exonerated him completely—he was a civilian doctor ‘forced’ to work for the military. They would leave for a month in Almond Tree, mid-1950.
Chapter 12
WES FINISHED the stables in October 1949 and the grand opening was to be in January, followed the next day by a special race meeting of seven events, including the Lady Mary Morecombe Plate for women, with prize money of five hundred pounds, and the Sir James Morecombe Cup of four thousand five hundred pounds, run over a mile. Wes was to be presented to the gathering as the architect and builder of the stables, which were considered by everyone who saw them to be a work of art, almost too good for horses, you could set up a table and chairs and eat dinner in any of them.
To Wes’s surprise, Beth accepted an invitation to attend the grand opening, along with Di Porter. Her degree was complete and she was, in any case, home with her family in Almond Tree for a few weeks. He was amazed that she could spare the time. So far as he knew, she was running the communist parties of the world and was forever flying to Moscow and England on ‘party business’. Considering how much it cost to fly to England, let alone Moscow, he was baffled at the local party’s ability to pay the bills. It was also surprising that she was able to keep out of prison. ASIO kept tabs on her, no doubt hoping for some transgression that would land her in the clink. Franny still pestered him, off and on, but at least refrained from fondling him. Her expression now was a sly conviction that he would come across in the end. But that was also just off and on. Mostly she appeared downcast.
On opening day, Beth came as promised with Di Porter, both of them in beautiful summer dresses and high-heeled shoes. Wes commented on Beth’s dress and was told, awkwardly, that Di had made her wear it. Di said: ‘I had my way this one time. Usually she chooses dresses that make her look shapeless and frumpy. She thinks there’s greater virtue in looking like a peasant than in showing off her looks. I think she looks gorgeous. What about you, Wes?’
‘Yes, gorgeous.’
‘So you built all this,’ said Beth, escaping the subject. ‘Hmm. Most impressive.’
‘Impressive?’ said Di. ‘You’re selling him short. It’s a masterpiece.’
At the opening ceremony before a crowd of fifty or so, Jim Morecombe, in his favourite phrase, considering himself a speaker who avoided, always, boring the audience, started out with: ‘Ladders and Jellybeans, are you bowled over by what Wes Cunningham has built for us here? The most glorious racetrack in Australia made even more beautiful with these twenty-two new stables.’
When it was Wes’s turn to say a few words, the words were few indeed. Dressed in a dark suit and tie, he stood at the microphone and gave a brief bow to Sir Jim and Lady Mary. ‘It was a pleasure,’ he said, and that was it.
The next day, the day of the meeting, Wes didn’t ride; all the jockeys were professionals and far below any weight Wes might make. Franny rode in the Ladies’ Plate, and won. She ran to Wes from the mounting yard, pinned the blue ribbon to his suit jacket, put her arms around his neck and kissed him on the mouth. He reddened with embarrassment and put the ribbon in his pocket. Beth said: ‘God, she’s shameless. She’d ride naked if you asked her.’ There was a note of grievance in her voice. Di Porter, who knew the story of Beth urging Wes to marry Franny, said teasingly: ‘But dear heart, isn’t that what you want, Wes and Franny to ride off naked together?’
Beth tossed her hair in irritation. ‘If my sister is a trollop, it’s not my fault.’
∼
That evening, Wes came by invitation to Di’s cottage for dinner. Di made a salad with pitted black olives, basil from Wes’s mum’s garden, and feta cheese she had brought with her from a deli in Collingwood. And a number of other ingredients. She served it with warm cuts of roast pork. Beth knew nothing about cooking and, left to herself, would have lived on ham sandwiches. During dinner, they talked about the recent testing of Soviet nuclear bombs, how much more powerful they were than the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs. ‘But we have maybe ten bombs,’ said Beth. ‘The Americans have hundreds.’
‘And this is a good thing?’ said Wes. ‘That the Americans and the Russians can fight each other with more and more powerful bombs? You know Patty is in Hiroshima, nursing people with radiation poisoning? She saw the city seven months after the blast. Said it left a wasteland.’
‘Yes, but if we don’t have nuclear weapons, we are at the mercy of the Americans. Now the Americans have to think twice before they drop a bomb on Moscow.’
‘When you say, “we”, you mean the Russians?’
‘I mean the Soviet Union, which is where my heart is, Wes.’
‘My heart’s in Almond Tree.’
Beth said she had a favour to ask of Wes, a very big favour.
She explained that she and Di had to get to a region a long way off, and although they had a Land Rov
er they could use—it belonged to a comrade—neither she nor Di could drive over the terrain they would need to cross.
‘And where is this region?’
‘The South Australian desert.’
‘Dear God!’
‘I was going to ask if you would drive us.’
‘Well, yes. Why, Beth?’
‘It’s for work.’
‘For the union?’
‘Not exactly. I can’t tell you.’
‘For the party?’
‘I can’t tell you.’
Di intervened. ‘Yes, for the party, Wes. Well, really, we’re asking him to drive fifteen hundred miles, he deserves to know why. Beth didn’t want to ask you, get you mixed up in party stuff. It’s a bit dicey, Wes. I persuaded her, I must confess.’
Beth said: ‘Wes, it’s espionage. For Di and me, if we’re discovered, too bad for us. But I care for you too much to put you in danger. You should say no.’
‘And when you get there? What then?’
‘We take photographs,’ said Di. ‘Lots and lots of photographs. I have the camera.’
‘You shouldn’t say that,’ said Beth, with a censorial look.
‘You expect him to shut his eyes while we’re taking pictures?’
‘And when do you want to go?’
‘In a week,’ said Beth.
Wes said he’d have to check out the Land Rover. He’d come down to Collingwood in a couple of days and go over the vehicle.
The next day, Wes came to lunch at the Hardys’ to be on hand when the news was broken about the marathon trip to the South Australian desert. He had insisted that Bob Hardy and Lillian be told of the trip. If the women died in the desert, it shouldn’t come as a shock to Bob and Lillian when their daughter’s body was discovered in some parched wadi more than a thousand miles away. Gus and her husband Pete were at the table too, with the baby Sylvester (just called Vester) crawling around on the kitchen floor on a mission to torment one of the dogs, Bandy, a long-suffering bitser. Maud and her husband were having an argument at the far end of the kitchen concerning three missing jars of blackberry jam which he gave to Sue Tilly, so Gus claimed. ‘Every time you see her, it’s “Sue dear this” and “Sue dear that”. You should get her to move in and make her tea and toast in bed in the morning.’ Their two kids amused themselves at the table by mimicking their parents.
The Bride of Almond Tree Page 7