Pearlie the Spy

by Lucia Masciullo

  Someone on the other side of the street yelled, ‘Look, American bombers. Aren’t they beauties!’

  A cheer went up and people began clapping. They do look lovely, she thought. And the pilots, all brave men like Thomas Hardy.

  Suddenly, from the Esplanade, came the sound of anti-aircraft fire. Three blasts followed by smoke.

  Then someone else shouted, ‘They’re not Americans. They’re Japs!’

  People began running in all directions as the air-raid sirens began wailing across Darwin. There was more anti-aircraft fire.

  Pearlie stood in the middle of the street staring in disbelief. She saw a big red disc on the wing of one of the Japanese warplanes. It banked sharply to the right then flew low over the pier.

  Grey Ears jerked backwards. Her eyes were wild with fear. Pearlie grabbed the halter before she had a chance to take off. ‘Quick Tinto, into the pouch,’ she yelled above the noise. The little monkey jumped off Grey Ears’ back and quickly snuggled down so that only his frightened eyes were visible.

  Now she had to find shelter. Pearlie looked around desperately. Where would she find one big enough for Grey Ears?

  Suddenly she heard a loud boom. She looked towards the wharf. A ship docked there was on fire.

  ‘The Neptuna’s been bombed!’ someone yelled as he ran past. Then the ship exploded. Smoke billowed and fire ripped through the pier. There had been men working down there just a few moments before!

  Then she looked up. Two planes were flying directly towards her! Their propellers spun like gnashing teeth. Their engines screamed like winged monsters.

  Pearlie ran, dragging Grey Ears by the halter. But in a second the aeroplanes were there, right on top of her. The roar was deafening. She cried out as she fell to the ground.

  Everything around her exploded in a mass of fire and smoke.

  I am a fourth-generation Chinese Australian. My great-grandfather came to the Victorian goldfields from China in 1853. China was a very poor country and many people sailed across the sea in search of a better life.

  My dad was born in Shanghai, China. He met my mum when he was sent to Australia by the Chinese government during World War Two. War separates some people and brings others together. It is strange to think that if World War Two hadn’t happened, I wouldn’t have been born.

  I grew up in the suburbs of Melbourne. I was a tomboy. I climbed trees, dug tunnels, built cubby houses. And like my main character, Pearlie, I loved animals.

  I was born and grew up in Italy, a beautiful country to visit, but also a difficult country to live in for new generations.

  In 2006, I packed up my suitcase and I left Italy with the man I love. We bet on Australia. I didn’t know much about Australia before coming – I was just looking for new opportunities, I guess.

  And I liked it right from the beginning! Australian people are resourceful, open-minded and always with a smile on their faces. I think all Australians keep in their blood a bit of the pioneer heritage, regardless of their own birthplace.

  Here I began a new life and now I’m doing what I always dreamed of: I illustrate stories. Here is the place where I’d like to live and to grow up my children, in a country that doesn’t fear the future.

  IN mid-1942, life was tough because of the war. Prime Minister Curtin wanted Australians to make sacrifices and go without certain luxuries like soap, alcohol, chocolate and bananas. This was called the ‘Austerity Campaign’. Every Australian received a ration book with 112 coupons that had to last them for a whole year. Everything that was on the ration list had to be bought with coupons instead of money. For example, a man’s suit cost 38 coupons; a pair of socks cost four coupons. If people used all the coupons in the book before the end of the year, they would have to go without until they were issued a new one. As you can imagine, this was very hard for families with growing children.

  Australians love to drink tea, but when Japan occupied countries in South East Asia that produced tea, that had to be rationed too. From April 1942, all Australians over the age of nine had to register with a shop that sold tea, like a corner store. Each person could get only one ounce of tea per week, which is equivalent to six teaspoons. In August 1942, sugar was also added to the list. Each civilian was allowed half a kilo of sugar per week. Other items that were rationed were meat, butter, coffee, rice, prunes, potatoes, fresh fruit and vegetables, as well as furniture, clothes, fountain pens and tissues.

  The fear of invasion made people horribly suspicious; many Japanese living in Australia were suspected of spying or colluding with the enemy in some way and were sent to ‘Internment Camps’, where they were locked up until the end of the war. In the later years of the war, Germans and Italians were also detained. We don’t know the names of those who spied for the Japanese in Darwin during the war; however, there were definitely spies in the Northern Territory. Japanese spies also worked at the highest level of the British government. One of these spies was Lord William Forbes-Sempill. Another spy was Frederick Rutland, a decorated World War One British pilot. He sent photos of Pearl Harbour to the Japanese to prepare for their surprise attack.

  The waters around Darwin are filled with the deadly box jellyfish. People say that being stung by a box jellyfish is one of the worst types of pain. It feels like having boiling oil poured over you. In Pearlie’s day it was believed that urine would take away the pain. But they also used vinegar, which even today seems to be the best treatment.

  The MV Neptuna was blown up in Darwin Harbour when the Japanese attacked, 19 February 1942.

  PEARLIE lay, dazed, as the smoke cleared.

  She held Tinto tightly to her chest. His little body was trembling with fear. Even though he struggled and scratched, she would not let him go.

  The bomb had missed her, but other planes were heading towards Cavenagh Street, to Chinatown, to her home.

  Pearlie gasped as she heard the planes machine-gunning the buildings.

  Tears streamed down her cheeks. There were hundreds of silver planes covering the skies of Darwin.

  Then she saw a bomb hit the police station.

  ‘Oh no, Hazel!’ she cried.

  She got to her feet and ran in the direction of the flames, clutching Tinto. Many of the ships in the harbour were under attack now. Some were on fire and others were exploding. Plumes of smoke like grey-black mushrooms rose up from the burning vessels. The smell of oil made Pearlie feel so sick she had to stop and catch her breath.

  ‘Don’t go that way!’ a man said as he limped by. He was shirtless and the top half of his body was covered in blood. Pearlie shrank back in horror.

  There were men running everywhere, yelling and screaming. But Pearlie didn’t stop. All she could think of was saving her dear friend Hazel. Then she remembered Grey Ears. The donkey must have run away when the bombs were exploding around them. But Pearlie didn’t have time to look for her. She had to make sure Hazel was safe first.

  The police station was on fire when Pearlie got there. Its roof had caved in and the windows were shattered. She searched about for Hazel.

  Then she saw something moving.

  A grey ashen head rose up out of the dirt. Then a body.

  It was Policeman Sandy. He had been buried under rafters and ash.

  Pearlie rushed over to help him up. ‘Have you seen Hazel?’ she screamed through the noise of bombs and artillery fire.

  Policeman Sandy brushed himself off. ‘Go find shelter, Pearlie. I’ll look for her.’ He disappeared back into the wall of smoke.

  Pearlie looked around in a daze. Then she saw her friend coming towards her. Tears sprang to her eyes.

  ‘Pearlie! Are you all right, love?’ Hazel pressed Pearlie close to her chest.

  The warmth of Hazel’s embrace calmed her. ‘So you’re not mad at me?’ she said.

  ‘Mad?! If I ever see that Ron Beake again, I’ll kill him myself,’ Hazel sniffed. ‘Come on, honey. We gotta get out of here.’

  ‘I can’t. I have to find my donkey,�
�� Pearlie said, and she reluctantly pulled away from Hazel and turned and ran.

  The harbour was ablaze. There were about fifty ships out there and many were on fire and sinking. Even the hospital ship, the Manunda, had been bombed.

  Pearlie stopped at the post and telegraph office – or what was left of it – and saw men dragging bodies from the ruins. Please don’t let that be Post Master Mr Bald and his family, she thought, feeling faint. A wave of nausea came over her. She lifted Tinto up to her face, wiping away her tears in his fur.

  As she walked quickly away with head bowed, she saw fragments of parcels and letters blowing along the ground. Some envelopes were scorched and singed. Other letters were being pushed along by the wind like a flock of small white birds searching for food.

  Then Pearlie saw something that made her stop.

  A small yellow envelope blackened with soot lay at her feet. And on the envelope was a single word that jumped out at her.

  The world went silent. Pearlie no longer heard the roar of aircraft or the screams of the wounded and dying. All that was blocked out as she stared in disbelief.

  ‘Naoko,’ Pearlie breathed, for the word was written in Naoko’s beautiful handwriting.

  Here’s a sneak peek at Meet Grace

  IT must be the longest day this winter, Grace thought, and all I’ve found are a few bits of coal and a piece of rope.

  Grace waded towards the riverbank, wiggling her toes into the mud, feeling for anything that had washed in with the tide or fallen from a boat or barge to put in her kettle. That was her job as a mudlark – to search the bottom of the Thames for things to sell. She shivered.

  A dirty fog hung over the water, draping everything in grey. The other mudlarks looked like shadows as they waded through the river. Grace felt the water cold against her legs – the tide was on its way in and her dress floated around her like a tent. She knew that soon she would have to get out of the river, but her kettle was only half full.

  ‘Please let there be something more,’ she said to herself, her teeth chattering, ‘some copper nails or a piece of driftwood.’

  Grace looked across the river at a forest of masts. It was the same view she saw every day. Sails of every size billowed beneath the winter clouds. Barges filled with coal and iron held anchor, ready to be unloaded on the shore. Longboats cut slowly through the water carrying fruit and meat to distant parts of London, and busy workboats ferried people up and down the river.

  Ouch! Grace gasped when she felt a sharp pain in the bottom of her foot. She bent down and searched around in the mud until she touched something that felt like metal – cold and smooth. She pulled it up. Grace wiped it clean with a corner of her dress and turned it over in her hand, unable to believe it was real. It was an iron hammer, with no rust on its head, and no chips in its sturdy wooden handle. It was the most valuable thing she had ever found – worth as much on the street as a silver watch, she was sure.

  ‘A hammer – a fine hammer,’ she whispered. ‘Uncle Ord will be so pleased.’

  ‘Oi! What you find?’ Someone shouted at Grace and she quickly dropped her hands beneath the water.

  A figure waded towards her through the fog. It was Joe Bean. He was no older than Grace, but he was the leader of a gang of mudlarks that lived under Blackfriar’s Bridge. Grace had always been good at staying out of their way; she kept her head down so she wouldn’t be noticed, or she worked in the parts of the river where Joe and his boys didn’t often go. They were thieves, and they didn’t think twice about stealing from the barges and from the other mudlarks who worked on their own. If any of the mudlarks ever had money from things they’d sold, Joe Bean would try to take it from them. And Grace knew that if he saw the hammer, he would snatch it from her and take it straight to the marine shop to sell for himself.

  ‘I got nothing!’ Grace shouted back.

  ‘I saw something in your hand just then – something shiny. Give me a look what you got!’

  Grace’s heart pounded; she couldn’t let Joe see her prize. With a hammer like this to sell, maybe Uncle Ord would be happy with her, instead of angry. He would be proud that she was clever enough to find something so valuable. They could keep the coal Grace had found and light a fire in the hearth – she imagined warming her numb toes and heating up a cinnamon bun on the end of a toasting fork. There’d be enough food for a week!

  Grace waded into the shallows, but Joe Bean was close now. ‘Well?’ he said. ‘Don’t make me call the boys to look you over.’

  Grace shook her head, too nervous to speak. She held the hammer with one hand behind her back. She had never stood up to Joe Bean before, but then she had never found anything as precious as a hammer.

  Joe moved towards her. ‘Show me!’

  ‘No.’ Grace’s voice quavered.

  Joe grabbed her arm and tried to pull it from behind her back. Grace fell back into the river, dropping her kettle into the mud. Water splashed up around them as they struggled.

  ‘No!’ she shouted.

  Joe Bean had his hand on the hammer. It was slipping from her grasp. Grace gritted her teeth and with all her strength, she wrenched it from him. Joe fell back into the water and Grace held the hammer high over him.

  ‘I said no, Joe Bean! The hammer is mine! You go away and leave me alone!’ Her voice trembled as Joe crawled like a crab through the mud, his eyes wide with surprise. The sharp iron claws on the hammer’s head glinted.

  Grace picked up her kettle and ran, knocking straight into a group of sailors clambering out of a rowboat onto shore.

  ‘Where are you off to in such a hurry?’ one of them said. ‘A handful of rags like you?’ She could smell whiskey on his breath.

  The other sailors laughed at her.

  Grace picked herself up and pushed her way past. When she turned around, Joe Bean was lost in the crowd somewhere behind them. Grace hurried higher onto the shore where the crowd thickened, pushing past mudlarks and boatmen, coal whippers, and costermongers selling dried fish and oysters. She breathed a sigh of relief, shoving her way through groups of people waiting for workboats and others lining up to buy fresh fish from the colliers to sell at the market.

  Grace gripped the hammer tight and headed home, slowly now and limping. Her foot stung against the cold cobblestones as she dodged the open drains of sewage and the piles of garbage that lined the narrow crowded streets. She stopped to inspect her wound. The cut wasn’t deep – only bloody.

  Grace shivered. It was when she got out of the water that she most felt the cold. The wind cut straight through her. It doesn’t matter this time, though, she thought. I’m safe from Joe Bean and I still have my hammer.

  In Chatham Square a line of fishmongers stood at a long scaling table. They ran their knives down the backs of freshly caught fish, cutting out the guts and tossing them to the ground, staining the cobblestones a purplish red. The smell of fish filled the air. The women sang as they worked, their arms moving in time to the rhythm of their song.

  Grace stopped to listen. She liked singing, never mind who was doing it; sailors or fishmongers or butchers selling ham hocks, even her drunken uncle and his sailor friends. The only thing Uncle Ord had ever told her about her mother was that she liked to sing. I wish I could remember the songs, Grace often thought. I wish I could remember her voice.

  Grace kept walking, humming the fish-mongers’ tune. She had never known her father, and her mother had died when she was very small. When Grace tried to remember her mother, she could recall the feeling of warm arms around her; but the memory wasn’t enough to keep her alive without a roof over her head in the long cold winters. Uncle Ord always reminded her of that. ‘You’re lucky to have me, Grace! You’d be on the street without your uncle to take care of things. You are an orphan after all!’ He said the word as though it were a curse word – the very worst thing you could be.

  Uncle Ord had lost his wife and his only son to an illness called consumption, and he missed them a lot. He’d lost his siste
r too – Grace’s mother – and that was how he got stuck with Grace. She knew that every day, just by being alive, she reminded him that his son was not.

  Grace climbed the steps that ran up by Blackfriar’s Bridge and crossed into Water Lane, hobbling to keep weight off her foot. Her wet skirt slapped against her legs, stinging her skin. The fog was in the streets too, hanging like low-slung spider webs. Crowds of people pushing carts ready for the night markets were coming down in the opposite direction.

  Two of the girls who lived next door came running up behind Grace, giggling together. Grace pressed back against the stone wall as they shoved their noisy way past her. She wished she had a sister, or a friend to share things with. It never mattered how hungry they were, or how cold, the girls were always playing and laughing with each other.

  Ma Honeywell, their mother, stopped when she saw Grace and gave her cheek a playful pinch. She had eleven children, most of them girls, though she could never find half of them.

  ‘Hello, luv,’ she said, smiling. ‘How was business today?’

  Ma Honeywell always asked the same question, only today Grace could give her a different answer. ‘Good,’ she said, smiling back. ‘Very good! My uncle will be happy!’

  ‘That’d be a sight for sore eyes. You better get home, luv, and give him what you got!’ Ma Honeywell patted Grace’s arm, then turned and walked on. She was on her way to the alehouse, where she would drink so much gin that later she wouldn’t remember who Grace was at all.

  Grace continued up the steps, imagining what it would be like when Uncle Ord saw the hammer. ‘Well done, Grace,’ he would say. She could almost feel the heat from the fire and taste the toasted cinnamon bun.

  ‘Uncle Ord!’ she called, as she pushed in the door of their lodgings.