A Place Called Home (Cannibal Country Trilogy, Book 2)

by Andrew Wareham

  It was very different to Rabaul or Lae – the house-boys and girls there had said ‘yes missus’, waited on her convenience and gone running to her eventual command.

  They inspected the bedrooms and found them to be almost identical – twenty feet square; a big, three-bladed ceiling fan; louvered windows; dark hardwood floors; white walls and ceilings, two inside walls almost blocked out by floor to ceiling clothes cupboards, a long dressing table and mirror on the third. The bed was huge, solidly constructed from the same hardwood as the floor. The bare wood had been polished and the paintwork was well-scrubbed; the windows had been cleaned recently - the people here might not be servants but they had done a good job of work.

  “We can be comfortable here, George, but the children might be dwarfed by its size. These are great big bedrooms for a little boy or girl.”

  “They’ll get used to it, love. They’ll grow up thinking its normal. Pick the corridor you want.”

  They pulled their suitcases into the room she chose, began to unpack into the closets, stopped when they heard noise in the main room.

  “That’ll be Mrs Kelly and Bridget. The cook and the maid, love.”

  There were two women in the dining-room, sat at the big table, rising as they entered. The older was a large and weather-beaten forty, blue eyed and dark-haired, the first grey starting to show. The other was a short, skinny red-head of seventeen or eighteen, freckled and with a smile for everything.

  “G’day, Mrs Kelly, Bridget. How are you both?”

  They grinned at him, welcomed him back.

  “This is my wife, Mary.”

  “Sure and you’re a pretty one, lass! You’ll soon settle down, you’ll see. From the look in your eye, ma’am, I’d say you were in the family way!”

  “Three months,” Mary responded in a very little voice, unsure of how to respond to the overpowering greeting and the casual equality.

  “Good girl! We need a few youngsters running about the place – makes it more homelike! Are you likely to be staying here long?”

  “That depends on the war, Mrs Kelly. George thinks the Japanese will invade up North.”

  “So he’s brought you down here to where it’s safe. Good on ‘im! Makes sense. We’ll have to talk housekeeping, but that can wait till you’ve got yer feet under yer own table. I can do steak tonight, with a few potatoes and some sort of beans and I reckon I can knock up a puddin’ of some sort. Got plenty of coffee, do yer want a pot now?”

  George nodded, very much so.

  “Right, mate. They built the new water tanks yer old man ordered last time ‘e was down, so yer don’t need to worry about showers and that. I reckon she’ll be good for the whole of the Dry Season.”

  They obeyed her implicit orders and showered and changed and came out to the coffee she had made, set out on the great dining table. There was a choice of delicate cups and saucers or thick half-pint mugs, a pair of each set out. It was a test of some sort, Mary suspected. She poured a mug for George, spooning in the cane sugar as he liked it; then she half-filled the second mug for herself with just a flat teaspoon of sugar.

  “You need to look at the kitchen next, love. There’s a big freezer room with a couple of really massive fridges and two commercial size freezers. I’ll talk to the foreman at the yard, make sure there’s plenty of kerosene ordered and in stock. I’ll need to have a word about cane cutters as well.”

  Bridget, who had been quietly working her way through the rooms, dusting and mopping out, came in and asked whether they wanted her to give a hand with the boxes out on the deck.

  “Kitchen stuff’s pretty obvious, I reckon, Bridget. So’s the dining-room. For the rest, stick our clothes in the bedroom, will you? We’ll sort out the vases and ornamental stuff over the next day or two.”

  “She’ll be right, boss. Will do.”

  The girl wandered off whistling quietly and obviously needing neither help nor supervision.

  “Bridget’s the daughter, more or less, of Mrs Kelly. I think she was born to her first husband’s first wife, or something like. It ain’t polite to ask too much.”

  “Right… I think. Should I just go on down to the kitchen without her asking me in?”

  “Why not? It’s your place. Just don’t treat her as if it was.”

  That did not seem to make a lot of sense, but she walked downstairs and along the covered passageway to the kitchen hoping that it might become more obvious over a few days. She hesitated in the doorway.

  “Come in, dear, it’s yours!”

  It was a large, open room, fly-mesh over the windows like the upstairs and dominated by a huge wood-burning stove. The floor was bare concrete, smoothed over and rigorously scrubbed, like the walls.

  “Cook a dinner for twenty if needs be, missus. Cool table over in the corner for proving bread, mesh bins for veggies next to it. Butchering block to the side – mostly get our own meat here. Got a couple of dozen cattle up here. Can’t get milk out of ‘em though. Too hot for that.”

  Everything was ruthlessly clean, washed and disinfected at every use.

  “Only way up here, lass. Too easy to get ill otherwise.”

  Mary nodded, said it had been the same in Rabaul and Lae.

  “Freezers are next door, fridges as well.”

  Mrs Kelly led her through to another large, brick-floored outhouse with four huge American machines, run by kerosene and spaced separately around the walls.

  “Gives them plenty of air so that they don't run hot. Electric light in here, same as all through the place. Generator comes on just before dark, earlier if it’s raining and we needs light. Switch is in the kitchen. Always turn it on before you come in and then stop in the doorway to look round. You sometimes get a snake inside and spiders regular in the Wet Season, come in where it’s dry. Don’t go near ‘em yourself – call me or Bridget. I expect George will ask Bridget to sleep in the house when he goes back, so you’re not on your own. Is the missus coming down, do you know?”

  “Mr Hawkins says he will send her before the Japanese come. He will stay till the last moment, I expect, fighting and getting everybody else out. My mother may come and stay for a while until my father comes down to buy their own place somewhere in Australia – probably near here. I just hope they do not wait too long…”

  “Bloody war! I can remember the last one, lass. George will go back, will he?”

  “He is an officer. He will go, it is his duty and he does not know anything else. He knows the bush better than many men; he walked out once after an air crash, and he was little more than a boy then. That was when I met him, Mrs Kelly. He will have a good chance when they have to fall back.”

  "Will they have to run? Can't they stop the Japs when they come?"

  "Too many of them, and with planes and ships. The Americans will be able to beat them, in the end, I hope. We can't. I have been told that there are more men in the Japanese Army than there are men in the whole of Australia, and most of the Australian Army has been sent to England to save the Poms' necks because they won't fight for themselves any more!"

  George had met the yard foreman, was on reasonable terms with him; he was not familiar with sugar planting and extraction and would depend on the man' knowledge and goodwill.

  “Danny, how are you?”

  The foreman was in his fifties, long in the Far North, said that he could remember first meeting Ned Hawkins in Cairns before the last War. He was short and lean but muscular enough for his job.

  “I’m right, George, but we got problems for the lack of hands. The government called up most of the blokes, and all of the casuals what comes in at cutting time.”

  “Bloody fools! A year from now they’ll be complaining they got no sugar. What’s the best thing to do, Danny?”

  “Samoans, we can pull them in for a few months and then send them back home with a few quid in their pockets.”

  “Right, I’ll talk to the immigration people in Cairns. Paying full whack, Danny – we ain’t usin
g them on the cheap.”

  “Up to you, George – she’s your bank account. Do you reckon to see Ned back here this year?”

  “Be bloody lucky if we see him ever again, Danny. He’s going to stay to the last to get people out. It's the way he is and there's nothing to be said to him. He’ll be lucky to make it himself. My mother will be down before the Wet Season makes flying dangerous. My wife’s people, too – they’ll be staying a while until they get set up for themselves. More likely in town than out here. Her old man is rich, mate – don’t need to go near cane fields to make a living!”

  “Sounds good to me, mate.”

  Immigration had no problems with bringing in Samoan labourers – it had been done for many years and they were generally to be trusted, or so they said. They very definitely did not want kanakas out of Papua or New Guinea – they still, it seemed, had not learned how to handle the availability of alcohol.

  “Last lot that came down here, got to be ten years since, first payday saw them fighting drunk in town, waving bloody axes; the police ended up shooting four and there’s a dozen still serving time up in the prison. No way we want to see any more of them, mister!”

  “Booze is a killer up in the Islands as well. It’s banned, to the locals, that is. The missionaries would all go into delirium tremens if they were made to go dry! Every so often you hear of a burglary at a planter’s house and the booze cellar emptied, and then you call out every policeman and wait for hell to break loose!”

  “Same with the Abos down here as well – all the time the police are raiding their settlements and no sooner do they destroy a carton of gin there than they get hold of two more. And if you do manage to lay hands on all of their booze and shut down the bastard who’s selling to them, then they turn to bloody meths and rot their brains out!”

  “Meths is banned up in the Islands now, mate!”

  “No surprise there.”

  They shook their heads in unison - drink was the curse of the whole Pacific.

  “What’s the approved way of getting hold of Samoans, mate?”

  “There’s an agency in town here, properly licensed and reasonably straight. They’ll bring ‘em in and take ‘em back on their proper times. They act as a bank for ‘em, too.”

  George could imagine just what sort of bank they would operate, and how high its fees and charges would be. There was no alternative to using them – he could not sail to Samoa himself and be his own recruiter.

  He found the agency and established his name and the two places, booked twenty labourers for as soon as they could get them and wandered back to the hairdressers where he had left Mary. There was no such thing in Lae or Rabaul and for the first time ever she was getting a cut and styling; she was instantly reconciled to being South.

  They made their way to the main stores and announced themselves to the managers, instantly opened accounts for ‘the Hawkins place’, red carpets rolled out. There was no aristocracy in Australia, or class system, but wealthy planters were still top dogs.

  Two hours of shopping, everything to be delivered later in the day, and they wandered along to the richer doctor’s surgery – strictly and only private care. The story was the same here: medicine was available to everyone, but the richer you were, the better the health you could purchase. Their names were recorded, medical history taken down and Mary’s pregnancy was noted and a place booked at the Nursing Home where she would be delivered, all most efficiently and very quietly.

  Being rich in Rabaul or Lae was less important than it was in Cairns, it seemed; there was a more genuine equality among the whites in the Islands, probably because they had the kanakas to look down on and the Chinese and mixed race to despise.

  “Driving licence and we’re done for the day, love.”

  The police station was less welcoming but raised no objections to changing Mary’s Territory Permit for a full Australian licence, once they had established that she had nationality.

  The Station Sergeant was inclined to be helpful - rich planters generally had political influence and he was still looking for promotion.

  “Petrol rationing will come in before too long, sir, almost of a certainty. You will need to register the sugar plantations as well as your personal vehicle.”

  “What about guns, constable? Will there be any restrictions on them?”

  “No need, sir, not up here. You got to have a croc rifle, and you want a snake pistol or a shotgun as well. Both would be a good idea – your missus ain’t really big enough to handle a twelve-bore.”

  “Good point, how we off for time?”

  They could make it to the gunsmiths before it closed; he had snake pistols in stock.

  “Twenty gauge shotgun barrel, cut down to six inches, on a wooden pistol grip, sir. Single shot, break loading. Horizontal firing pin, cocks itself when you reload, safety catch falls in place automatically, you got to release the safety before you can fire. Uses Number four shot, sir, rather than buckshot - gives a better scatter but it's still just about heavy enough to kill a snake.”

  The snake pistol was heavy and awkward to handle for a small person with tiny hands, but far more convenient than a shotgun.

  “Hold her two-handed, Mary, feet apart, knees bent a bit; aim for the body lower down than the head. The head can wiggle about a bit but the snake’s body keeps its line. Shoot it once then step right back and reload before you do anything else. Then see if it needs another one. Normally you’ll have blown it in half, but if you ain’t hit clean then you need to finish the job.”

  She thought it was money well spent; there were relatively few snakes and spiders up in the Islands, and not many of them were venomous and she disliked this part of Australian life.

  “It is too big for my handbag, George.”

  “Keep it in the bedroom, in the same place all the time.”

  George paid, buying two boxes of twenty-five shells, expecting them to come into short supply as the war closed in on them.

  “Thinking on it, mate, what was the rifle me old man bought for the place a couple of years back, last time he was down?”

  The gunsmith looked back through his records, kept by law.

  “Westley-Richards, four-five-five, the Express, sir.”

  “How many rounds did he buy?”

  “Just twenty-five, sir. One packet.”

  “Another fifty, if you would. Have you got anything magazine fed, just in case?”

  Like most gunsmiths, he had a number of army-surplus three-oh-three rifles, sold off in the cuts of the early Thirties and bought very cheaply on the offchance. He had speed loaders as well and cleaning kits and the official issue metal boxes carrying one thousand rounds. George bought two of everything. He did not expect the Japanese to land in Australia, but there was no harm in being ready.

  Two and a half weeks of holiday, driving Mary down to the best beaches, those safe from sharks inside their own reefs, and enjoying the sea, and then spending a day inland, up the escarpment and just into the edge of the Outback.

  “A beautiful bit of country, love. Worth fighting for.”

  “Not worth dying for, George. You cannot be careful, that I know, but do not take unnecessary risks!”

  “I will not – but some risks have to be taken. I will try to get your mother to come down soon. Mine as well, I hope.”

  They said their farewells at the airport, quietly and, in public, unemotionally - there was no need to advertise their feelings for the benefit of others; she was not to stand on the tarmac waving goodbye to the disappearing plane. Mary turned to the car, gave a final wave and pulled away, fighting back the tears - his last sight of her must not be of unhappiness, that would be a terrible omen for him.

  George was in uniform and wandered out to the plane carrying a small kitbag, much to the horror of a pot-bellied, red-tabbed English colonel taking the flight, evidently to grace the staff in Port Moresby.

  "You, Lieutenant! Do you not know that an officer in uniform does not carry lug
gage?"

  "You talking to me, mate?"

  The colonel was breath-taken, unable to answer coherently.

  "We don't bother with that shit up in the Islands, cobber. You'll get on much better if you get that through yer head good and early." George relented, dropped the accent. " It's not India, sir, and we don't have pukka-sahibs up in our bit of country."

  "You don't, eh? Well I'm damned sure you have courts-martial and you are going to stand before one! Your name, lieutenant?"

  "Hawkins, George; Papua and New Guinea Militia, in Lae at the moment. Who are you?"

  The pilot of the Dakota came wandering up, casually interrupting them and waving to the single steward to get them aboard.

  "G'day, George! How they hangin' mate?"

  "G'day, Hans! You got the nationality sorted out, mate?"

  "Ja, I am now a dinkum Aussie digger, George. I gave them your name, like you said, and it all went through good and quick. I shall be Air Force Reserve from next week, in the Transport command. I have asked to transfer to Bombers, and from what they tell me, mate, it might go through."

  "I'll send a wire to me old man, get him to have a word for you, Hans."

  Hans had been one of George's pilots in Lae and had been very clear in his desire to stay in Australia and certainly never to return to the Fatherland. He liked the life in Australia and the Islands.

  "Thanks, mate. Oi! You getting on my plane or you going to stay behind, fatty?"

  Hans had seen that the colonel was arguing with George, felt he should add to the entertainment; he had the true hatred for the military of a Prussian who had escaped from under the jackboot.

  The colonel stamped up the three steps and demanded to be shown the first-class seats.

  The steward was an older man, nearly fifty, and had served in the Dardanelles; he had no love for Poms, or for officers, or for passengers who made demands.

  "Staff officers! I shit 'em! There ain't no first-class, and if there was I wouldn't have your bloody sort in 'em. Just sit down and shut your whining! And if you don't like it, the door's there and you can bloody walk!"