Above the Fold

by Peter Yeldham

  “No. We haven’t kept in touch. Have you?”

  “Sort of. Christmas cards, maybe a letter once a year. I get some of the news via Helen. Steven is slowly getting better. Even working a couple of afternoons a week, but still in a wheelchair.”

  “I’m glad he can work. He needs that, after a lot of hellish years.”

  “You’re very forgiving, darling.”

  “I have to be, Rach. I can’t change anything. He’s still my close friend from the old days. He and Baz.”

  “So what’s Claudia?” she asked provocatively.

  “A sweet memory,” he replied as tactfully as he could. He didn’t like the question. She seemed unaware how sensitive it was for Luke.

  “And Hannah?” she asked mischievously. “The one that rumour had you marrying. Was she nice?”

  “Lovely,” Luke replied, and changed the subject to her career, which he knew she was always glad to discuss.

  At times he wondered if Rachel had in mind an affair, until she told him an old boyfriend, an actor currently in America, had phoned wanting her to join him. So the Christie play and dinner, followed by a goodnight kiss outside her apartment in Dolphin Square was their parting. She held him tightly after the kiss, and wondered if she was making a terrible mistake. Luke convinced her she was not, and walked all the way home to Chelsea feeling relieved. Despite the long friendship they no longer had a close affinity; Rachel’s life was all about her next role, or the world of show business, which was not his domain.

  And other things were happening, strange events on the far side of the world, a future series of atom bomb tests. The first was to be held on Monte Bello Island off the West Australian coast, followed by more tests on the mainland in remote desert territory north of Adelaide. Luke found it incredible, after the Americans and Russians had each tested and stockpiled enough bombs to blow up the world, after France was planning tests in the Sahara and South Pacific, now Britain, with Australia’s connivance, was planning to join the nuclear club. Secure in his Chelsea house and writing another book, Luke tried to ignore it.

  British newspapers devoted their front pages to the series of atomic tests in the South Australian desert.

  TRIUMPH AT MARALINGA, they trumpeted. SUCCESSFUL BRITISH TESTS. Graphic pictures of the mushroom clouds accompanied frequent headlines over the next few years.

  The atomic bomb explosion sounded like a distant roll of thunder, and was heard more than 200 miles away, declared an article, which did not mention that the winds carried radiation particles a great deal further than the sound. In fact, it was later revealed they were carried right across the country, to places like Townsville and Rockhampton. Few people knew this. One who did was Dr Yuri Nakamura.

  Luke saw the bomb explosions shown on television’s News at Ten, the last one from Maralinga where the desert and sky was lit by intense light, then covered with a vast mushroom cloud of black smoke. At this and all other tests the scientists were in full protective clothing, while the Australian army and navy working alongside them wore only shorts and singlets. To his astonishment some were even bare-chested.

  Another time he saw a documentary about its effect on the Indigenous population in the region. In it an Australian spokesman said the government approved of its uranium being exported to Britain and America. “These two countries,” he declared “are the main defenders of the free world, so it is our duty to make uranium available to them.”

  An elderly Aboriginal grandmother of an outback tribe disagreed.

  “We sell ‘em this stuff, this uranium, and they bring it back as bombs to drop on us,” the old lady said. She looked ancient and regal, with long silver hair and an air of great dignity. “They make a bomb that destroys our land and our dreamtime. We can’t walk in the traditional places, we can’t drink our water no more, or live our proper life hunting or catching fish, because the land is burnt and the fish are dead. Why did our country allow ‘em to do that to us?”

  The memory of the words she spoke haunted Luke for months, and he was reminded of them when he met Nakamura again. Yuri was on a rare visit to England, to lecture at Cambridge University about his work with leukaemia and cancer patients, still caused by the original radiation fallout after more than fifteen years.

  “It continues,” he said to Luke, “even in your country. I was there last year, treating soldiers who’d worked at Maralinga. They had huge lesions and skin cancers, that could only have been caused by exposure and the lack of protective suits.”

  It jogged Luke’s memory. “I saw pictures of Aussie troops in singlets or bare-chested,” he said. “I know the heat’s like a furnace out there, but it seemed crazy. Why didn’t they have proper protection like the boffins?”

  “Because they were never told it was necessary,” Yuri answered. “Nor were they offered contamination suits. Sir William Penney, the chief British scientist, promised there would be no danger from radiation. That was a lie from a man who surely knew it was a lie. The cancers I had to treat proved it. Fever and hair loss, blistering skin, bleeding and intestinal ulcers, all the obvious symptoms. Soldiers who worked at those tests are suffering from radiation sickness. And no wonder. Troops were ordered to turn and face the site as bombs exploded, and they were not in protective suits, they wore shorts and shirts. Bareheaded, and some with bare feet. And the last test bomb they dropped in your backyard was twenty-seven kilotons, which is almost twice the size of the one at Hiroshima. Pilots were ordered to fly planes through the centre of mushroom clouds. The servicemen were being used as guinea pigs, Luke. It was insane, and all carried out with the approval of both governments. But even worse was what happened to some of the Aboriginal tribes in that region.”

  Luke told him of the elderly Aboriginal lady, and the words she’d said that had made such an impact on him.

  “She was right,” Yuri confirmed. “They’ve lost their traditional lands and waterholes. No-one cares about them. They weren’t warned, some weren’t even notified. A lot are suffering and untreated, because they don’t know what’s making them ill. It’s a national disgrace.”

  Over dinner that night he startled Luke with news of more recent events that had been occurring in Australia, events kept undercover and unpublished. After exploding seven atomic bombs in this outback area, the same team of British scientists had just finished conducting a series of new trials with plutonium. These were secret. There had been no reports of them on radio or television, nor in the newspapers. Yuri expressed the opinion there never would be.

  “Why not?” Luke asked.

  “The soldiers and scientists were under an oath of allegiance that bound them to secrecy,” Yuri told him, “and it’s highly unlikely they’ll ever speak of these tests in view of the penalty they could face.”

  “What penalty?”

  “Disclosures can be punished by thirty years imprisonment.”

  “Thirty years! That’s more than murder. Are you sure of that, Yuri?”

  “Thirty years,” he insisted.

  “But why so harsh?”

  “Because Australia and Britain have been breaking international law. The tests were an illegal breach of the United Nations declaration. They called them safety experiments, camouflaging them with innocuous names like ‘Vixen trials’. Even I didn’t get full details, but I heard enough to know it was illicit and very dangerous for the troops and fliers who took part.”

  “But couldn’t anyone stop it?”

  “Not without evidence. And no-one was going to provide evidence, because they were too afraid. The tests, so far as I know, are over, and those who planned and carried them out have got away with it.”

  “Can’t you go public with that?”

  “How? I’m just a Jap doctor with no friends in high places. This corruption was driven by the British government, as well as the foreign office and some leading scientists. And in my opinion, Australia’s involved but they got a raw deal. And to go public, Luke, I need someone who was there to supply t
he evidence.”

  “And no-one will?”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  “Yet someone must’ve talked to you,” Luke said, “otherwise how would you know about this?”

  Yuri Nakamura was quiet for a moment then he said, “Patient to doctor, Luke. A bit like a priest in the confessional. And whoever spoke to me would not dare to talk openly. Not facing the prospect of life in prison.”

  “Shit.” Luke was thoughtful. “I don’t like the idea of secret tests. Or anything governments keep under wraps. Do you think any of those men might talk to me? Off the record?”

  Luke watched as Yuri considered the question carefully. “You’d put yourselves in a very dangerous position, even if someone would.”

  “I’m under no oath of allegiance.”

  “Perhaps not. But …” Yuri hesitated. “There is just one who might. But it would have to be on a condition of the strictest anonymity.”

  “That’s no problem.”

  “It could be. I’d have to get his permission to even give you his name. He’s not only sick, the poor man is very intimidated.”

  “By the army?”

  “No,” Yuri said, “by his wife.”

  It made them both smile, this reply, but it was to prove ill-fated. It meant a delay of nearly a month. Yuri had to return to Tokyo before he could supply the name and contact, for the details were held in a locked file at his clinic. On his return he rang Luke from Tokyo, with the shocking news the soldier had been taken to hospital in Perth, where he’d died.

  “I’m awfully sorry,” he said. “I’ve no other name I can suggest, Luke. No-one who’d be courageous enough to talk.”

  “Can you tell me your patient’s name now? I guess his death makes any pact between you null and void. You never know, it might be useful if I can get there.”

  “Don’t think I’m paranoid, but I’d rather send it to you by mail than give it over the phone. I’m a sort of a loose cannon in my own country these days, and you never know how safe the phones are.”

  “That’s fine with me,” Luke said. “Send it soon. Because I’m hoping to leave in a couple of weeks. Just to poke around and see what I can find out.”

  “Do be careful,” Yuri begged him.

  Luke assured him he would be, but in fact he was already more fully committed than he revealed. By then he’d become involved with the idea, and had been making notes for a book that harked back to Kaito and even before then, to his own first sight of the dead streets in what had been Hiroshima. Ever since he’d seen that devastated landscape, and taken part in trying to look after the stricken child, this had been one of the driving passions of his life. And it was given force by the words from an old lady with a strong face and long silver hair, words that kept repeating in his mind.

  “They make a bomb that destroys our land and our dreamtime. We can’t walk in the traditional places, we can’t drink our water no more, or live our proper life hunting or catching fish, because the land is burnt and the fish are dead. Why did our country allow ‘em to do that to us?”

  The memory of what she’d said continued to haunt Luke, and was the motivation that brought him home once again, after another long absence.

  Because he felt sure the rest of the story was somewhere in the place the British had acquired and turned it into their nuclear testing ground, the home of the Maralinga Tjarutja people in the middle of the South Australian desert.

  THIRTY-ONE

  “We were taken by surprise when it happened,” Sue Marsden said, “but you couldn’t argue with Claudia when her mind was made up.” She hesitated for a moment, then, looking almost apologetically at Luke, she added, “We’d always hoped it would be you.”

  It felt strange being here after so long, once again sitting by the pool with Gordon and Sue; Gordon now retired from the diplomatic service, Sue looking absurdly young and a painful reminder of Claudia. Hard to realise how the time had fled, but the memory was still vivid. His first visit here and Claudia in her bikini long before they were allowed on Sydney beaches. He tried to listen to what Sue was saying instead of thinking about her daughter.

  Sydney was so different now. Much had changed since his last visit. Locally made Holden cars now dominated the traffic: the six o’clock swill had ended and pubs now stayed open until ten. Television had arrived and the former radio serials were almost extinct. An Australian play, The Summer of the Seventeenth Doll, had been a triumph both here and in London, the death penalty had been abolished, and a referendum to give Aborigines civil rights was being talked about, but apparently not yet on the political agenda.

  Shopping hours had been relaxed. Supermarkets and most small shops that had once closed on the stroke of midday each Saturday, now stayed open on weekends. And the Pill had brought talk of women’s liberation and a sexual revolution.

  There were other surprises. On the road from the airport as the taxi threaded its way through the inner west, he noticed the proliferation of Greek signs on shop windows. It was new to him. They passed a street market selling aubergines, olives, feta and zucchinis. He inhaled the pungent smell of souvlakis wrapped in pita bread; it was like a street in Salonika where he’d been just a week ago, after a stopover to see friends in Athens.

  “Bloody Greeks,” the cab driver said. “Bastards have taken over this part of town.”

  “What’s your problem with them?” Luke felt impelled to ask, and was conscious of a surly glance that made the chance of a tip unlikely.

  “Too many foreigners,” was the carping reply. “Oughta stay where they bloody belong.”

  His attitude was one thing that sadly hadn’t altered — the xenophobic aggression towards newcomers. Luke remembered the post-war influx, the shiploads of Europeans from wartime refugee camps arriving to be shocked by the hostility they met. It was mindless resentment towards displaced people, who no longer had a country and needed a place to live. Some of this had happened before he went to Japan, most of it came as news while he was there. He’d since heard that many of those displaced persons — DPs as they were labelled before the tag ‘New Australians’ superseded it — had survived this reception to become fine citizens. Some had prospered showing rare entrepreneurial skills, and were now running businesses and employing Australian workers.

  “Even worse in Melbourne,” the driver said, truculent now he sensed disapproval. “Third biggest Greek city in the world, they reckon. Full of Greeks and other dagoes.”

  Definitely no tip for this whinging sod. The rest of the way into the city proceeded in antagonistic silence. Luke concentrated on the discernible changes: he noticed a fine old theatre being bulldozed, which seemed a pity in a city so short of good stage venues, and the absence of trams, for the tram lines had been ripped up since his last visit and the Sydney network replaced by buses despite protests. Another change, a more positive one, was his own destination, the newly built Menzies Hotel behind Wynyard Station in Carrington Street. It was a relief when they reached there and Luke could deliberately count out the exact fare, and match the driver’s angry stare.

  “Pom are you?” the cabbie said. “Must be, they’re mean as shit.”

  Luke had not bothered to answer.

  “Did you mind me saying that?”

  “I beg your pardon?” He realised that Sue had just asked him a question while he’d been thinking of the hostile driver. “Sorry,” he said, “did I mind what?”

  “Me saying that we always hoped it would be you for Claudia.”

  “It’s history, Sue. So many years.” He’d forgotten her propensity to speak her mind, but was prepared to discuss this. After all, they must miss her, too. “Do you ever see her?” See them, he meant, but still found it difficult to speak of them as a couple.

  “Oh, yes,” she replied. “We spent a week up there last year. Noosa seems to be growing into a popular resort. They were lucky being able to buy a flat on the beach years ago. Prices are starting to go gangbusters on the coast.” Luke waited. He
wasn’t interested in house prices. He was tempted to say he knew about the flat, but resisted it. As Sue had chosen to open the subject, he just hoped to find out about their daily life, the sensitive details of their relationship, things he’d been unable to discuss for so long.

  “Steven’s starting to walk again,” she said. “Sometimes with a frame, but now he’s trying to convert to just using a stick. It’s slow progress. He limps badly, but I expect he always will. He can’t drive, of course. Claudia has to drive him everywhere.”

  “They’re thinking of getting one of those specially fitted cars,” Gordon said. “Be a help to her, because she’s always on the go with her hospital job and ferrying Steven to physio. At least that’s only twice a week now, because he swims and does the exercises himself each day.”

  Luke nodded. “That’s good to hear. Really glad about Steve walking. Are they happy?” he asked, and in his mind were the words of her poignant letter:

  I know you’ll have a great career. All Steven has is an ambition to be able to stand on his own feet and walk again. I think I can help him. Or at least make him happy, if that fails.

  “Happy? Well …” When Sue hesitated it was Gordon who answered.

  “We think so.” The unexpected question had clearly caught them both off guard. “It’s difficult to tell, Luke. I mean, Steven’s immensely grateful; after all, our girl nursed him through the worst of the polio. If not for her help he’d still be in a hospital, and dependent on daily care.”

  “Or at home with those dreadful parents,” Sue said.

  “The mother’s not too bad,” Gordon corrected her.

  “But she’s overruled by the husband.”

  Gordon persevered against Sue’s propensity to interrupt. “He’s able to work now, of course; Steven, I mean. And he’s got a good job. Started off two afternoons a week, now it’s four full days. The accountant for a fairly big real estate firm up there.”

  “Huge,” Sue elaborated. “It now has several branches, and covers the Sunshine Coast from Caloundra to Noosa. So it’s a big job for him, and quite well paid, we gather. We drove up to Buderim and Montville while we were there. Such pretty places. We almost decided we could live up in the hinterland.”