“Hard times, Hawkins, demand hard measures!” The colonel was pleased with that phrase, decided to write it down so that he would remember to use it again. “Hire on your Chinks and Cheechees.” The colonel had spent many years in India before settling in Australia. “For God’s sake, though, watch the buggers! Rob you blind they will!”
Ned made his thanks and retired politely from the presence – he had learned at an early age not to crow over his defeated adversaries. He sailed home rejoicing – the Germans had been thoroughly divorced from their plantations – the places were now ownerless, would have to be disposed of to suitable candidates after the war.
“Jutta, my love, my beautiful one! The colonel’s an old fool! Come ’ere!”
The house-girl giggled and ran out to tell her friends, and rapidly the whole plantation, that ‘they were at it again’. Much laughter and nudging resulted, heads shaken and very vulgar comments made about the boss’ vigour and enthusiasm and no wonder the missus was forever smiling these days. ‘More power to their elbows’ was the general consensus, it surely made a change from the, miserable psalm-chanting old bugger they’d had over them before.
“Ned, Ned, no, you must not in the daytime! I have said before, you must not, you should not, it disturbs the people, they know what is happening.” Her voice rose in pitch suddenly. “No, Ned, they will see!”
Her drawers dropped to her ankles as she gripped the edge of the kitchen table where she had been working.
“Ned … what shall I do with the bread?” Her voice was less concerned, breathing much quicker. “What it? What do you mean? Oh!”
She found herself lying face down across the table, skirts up high, thighs well apart.
“Ned! Careful! Please … there’s no more room. Well … just a little more, I expects. Hold me, Ned! Oh, my love, my dear, mein liebling …”
Later, dignity restored, she fed him and inquired of the reason for his sudden enthusiasm.
“I came into the house and saw you and wanted to do you on the spot, love.”
She smiled proudly, quite gleeful at her effect on her man; she told him off, of course, firmly informed him how improper it was. She forgot, however, to tell him not to do it again.
“As well, my beautiful love, today is a day to celebrate. I think I see our way clear to making a lot more cash and getting another place at the end of the war. Then I shall have all the money I want to take you south on a holiday, a real one.”
He had mentioned this ambition before – the magic time to come when he would take her on a honeymoon spree, one day, when it was all over, the war they never talked about. She did not truthfully believe in it – it was a ‘some day’ affair, when the moon was blue.
“We will ever go back home, Ned?”
“We are home, my dear, or I am, I have no other. What of you? Grandparents?”
“Father argued with them. To his own he would not talk again when he changed his God; to Mutti’s he never would because he said they had interfered. I think, perhaps, I should write to them. But not yet.”
It would be difficult to send letters to Germany – not impossible, the Red Cross would forward them through Holland or Switzerland, they did so for the internees at Rabaul – and it might well be unwise for her to be known to be communicating with the enemy, however innocent her letters – which would be read by the censors – might be.
“It will be over, one day, love.”
“And one of us must lose.”
For the first time it was said, the issue was presented in the open, loomed ready to break their happiness. Luck, inspiration, the love he was unaware of, all came to Ned’s aid.
“I can’t lose, not while I‘ve got you, and I don’t need to win anything else. I want England to win, very much, but I want you more.”
He was swamped in a great armful of tearful wife, head burrowing into his chest, conveying a message of total agreement. He had enough sense to keep his hands still, to let her sob contentedly, holding her firmly.
December came and they celebrated their wedding anniversary, Ned presenting Jutta with a rather fine diamond cluster ring, bought for twenty pounds from a private soldier who had ‘come across it somewhere’. He was relieved that Jutta did not recognise the piece, was glad she had not known her neighbours socially, for it had certainly been looted. He ordered a dozen cases of Bundaberg rum to be shipped up on the next boat – alcohol was in short enough supply to be more valuable than gold to the thirsty.
“Pack me a bag for a week, will you lass?”
“You are going avay? Where do you go? When do you come back?”
“Don’t flap! I’m going to Kavieng – they’ve got a problem of some sort on the plantations and they’re hollering for help. The government tender’s calling at the Vunapope wharf in the morning and there’s space for us both. If you had let me finish, before you started to panic, I was about to ask if you wanted to come too.”
“I can come?”
“Please.”
“I pack two bags.”
“And one for me.”
He ducked as she threw a cushion at him, engaged in a wrestling match with an inevitable end.
The tender was the Lorengau, a fifty ton auxiliary motor ketch, prized in the invasion, the navy holding to its old traditions. Jutta was somewhat indignant at first, but consoled herself that at least it was still in service, still useful, persuaded herself that she was not a traitress to be stood on its deck. It was a typical island boat, except that it was cleaner than most and its engine actually worked. The ketch rig was very common as it demanded a very small crew and the stumpy mizzen in the stern allowed easy access to the single hold from a boom on the mainmast. The sail area was less than that of a schooner of the same size, but speed hardly mattered on the short island hops – copra would not go off and passengers could afford a few extra hours, would often welcome the interlude.
The trip across the Bismarck Sea took just less than twenty four hours, timed so that the transit of the reefs was made after dawn in bright sunshine, a crewman sat in the bows and peering intently into the water – they knew exactly where they were, had made the passage a hundred times before, but that was no reason to be careless – it was generally held that these waters contained the world’s highest density of sharks and grazing a coral head might be regarded as unwise.
Neither Ned nor Jutta had been to New Ireland before and both were fascinated to discover a very different land, Micronesian more than Melanesian, part of the Pacific rather than an extension of Australasia. The islets and reefs between Kavieng and the big island of New Hanover belong to the Pacific of Robinson Crusoe – desert islands, gold fringed, palm clustered, coral girt, the waters in between teeming with tuna and flying fish, and sharks. The surf curls in heavily from the east, crashing in vain attempt to destroy the first obstacle in thousands of free miles, the noise of the waves always part of the background. The main island is long and narrow and mountainous except for a plain in the north around Kavieng where there is plantation land, less rich than the Gazelle, but still worthwhile. The German government had, for presumably strategic reasons, built a highway – the Bulominski, named after the count who had built it, later creating the Hindenburg Line, for which he was perhaps more famous - surfaced with crushed coral, and running the length of the island so that it was uniquely possible to penetrate inland here, but very few people did. The Comte du Re had founded his colony thirty years earlier halfway down the island, complete with a windmill for grinding the wheat he proposed to grow, but his starving survivors had been evacuated by Queen Emma soon after and the land remained empty – the only relic being the great altar brought for the cathedral that was to be built, and that now serving as the cocktail bar at Gunantambu, Queen Emma not being pious.
Business was quickly dealt with, Ned needing no more than a five minute inspection of the nearest plantation. It took far longer to explain the problem and its solution to the anxious committee of government clerks who
escorted him – they may have been wonderful bureaucrats but they had scant knowledge of planting.
“Right, gentlemen,” Ned said, on his best behaviour, aitches sternly marshalled – they had to take him seriously. “The signs are clear. Trees drooping, leaves browning, buds dropping, so production is falling off.”
“Quite literally, actually, Mr Hawkins.”
A titter of amusement and clerkly smiles all round.
“Sulphur shortage,” Ned responded, ignoring the attempt at humour – he did not find it at all funny, nobody had fallen down. “How much are you putting on?”
“Well, actually, Mr Hawkins …”
“None at all, I suppose. You didn’t know you ought to. Well, that’s all right, I don’t know much about chasing bits of paper in offices.”
He was trying to be fair, couldn’t understand why they bridled at his light comment.
“Right! You need four pounds to each tree, at two lots, two pounds apiece, more or less, you don’t need to weigh it to the ounce, three months apart. Dig a trench, two feet deep and a yard long and line it with the stuff and cover it over, wet it down if you don’t expect rain within a day or so; first lot you put on the one side of the tree, say east and south; next time you do north and west. Say four or five feet out from the trunk so as not to cut into the roots when you dig. After two years, leave it for a couple of years and then repeat it. So, this year and next year, and then again in 1921 and 1922, Right?”
“Good, thank you, Mr Hawkins. Could you just repeat that, though, while we write it down, you did speak rather quickly.”
With overt patience, he spoke very clearly and slowly indeed.
“Thank you, Mr Hawkins. How long will it take us to get it shipped up here? You can buy it in Australia, can you?”
It was pleasant to be the expert, but it did mean putting up with some bloody fools.
“Over at Rabaul, they’ve got some funny things they call volcanoes.”
He paused, waiting for light to dawn.
“Yes, Mr Hawkins.”
“Jesus wept! Go to Rabaul with men, shovels, sacks and a ship, mustn’t forget something to sail in. Go up Sulphur Creek to the fumaroles, and what do you think you’ll find, all over the place and stinking like rotten eggs?”
“Oh, yes! Of course! We should have thought of that!”
He forbore to comment.
The Lorengau sailed on its provision run round the islands while Ned and Jutta stayed in the guest room at the Club. They fished, paddled on the reef, swam in the big bay, inside the coral where it was safe, idled on the beach, walked through the forest, not yet fully cleared for plantations, got soaked by storms and sun-burned in the intervals. Night, morning and noon when possible, they made love, slow and languorous, furious and frenetic, conventional or imaginative, all as the mood struck them. They made holiday.
The week ended too soon and they pottered back against the wind, slowly, the hold stinking as only old copra can. The rhino beetles and longicorns, three and four inches long, ambled around the deck waving their harmless pincers. The cockroaches, longer than the palm of a big man’s hand, scurried revoltingly, slick and oily. The rats, gorged and bloated, stayed out of sight, imagined.
Back home, Jutta glowed with happiness – bright, alert, luminous with glee, bubbling; she sang as she worked in the kitchen and chased the gardener into doubling the size of the vegetable plots. She imposed ruthless order on the yard and quarters, limewashing everything motionless; she descended on the aid-post, cleaning it and demanding hygiene and calling out the doctor-boy from Kokopo to vaccinate and inoculate everyone in sight. The families were better-off than they ever had been before – healthier, fitter, cleaner; depressed, hag-ridden and resigned.
“Ned! We should set up a school for the piccaninnies – they should all have the chance to read and write.”
“Only the Tolai.”
“Why?”
“The mainlanders must not be encouraged to stay here, must not have their families with them. They must go back to their own lands, to their own clans, at the end of their contracts. If their children can go to school here then they will want to stay for their sake, and then they will make gardens on Tolai land out in the bush. It may be unused land at present, but, some day, the Tolai will want to use it, and then there will be trouble. Nine times out of ten, tribal fights start over land.”
“Ja. Is true. Will you talk to the elders of the village, ask if they want a school? We can bring a teacher in from Moresby, one of the mission boys from the Papuan coast, they have had schools there for twenty years. I will talk to the vomen as they come to the aid-post.”
“Women, no ‘vee’, love.”
“Thank you.”
When the war ended new wives would come up from Australia and would be unlikely to enjoy a German accent in their midst; they had agreed to work on her pronunciation, for neither believed that the land would go back to its former masters, no matter what any peace conference might say. It would be wise to fit into the new community.
Jutta spun round to go onto the verandah, silhouetted, quite intentionally, against the evening light. They sat together whenever possible for the few minutes when the day’s last glow fell on the untouched mountains of the interior, displaying them black and blue and formidable against the orange sunset – it was a view they never tired of, one that brought the back streets of Southampton to Ned’s mind and an overwhelming thankfulness that he would never return to their grimy bricks and overflowing gutters.
She was wearing a thin cotton house-dress, effectively transparent with the light behind it, showing the full, heavy breasts, the tiny curve of her belly, her tight-muscled rump to a very appreciative Ned.
“Still only eighteen,” he thought, “growing a bit yet, I expect that’s why her tits are bigger and her belly’s showing more. Jesus Christ! I wonder. When was her monthly due? How the hell do I ask her? I wonder if she knows?”
Intimate matters of feminine hygiene had never been discussed between them; Jutta assumed that Ned was wholly unaware of the matter – for the sisters had assured her that men should never know anything about that – whilst Ned had noticed her embarrassment and had taken pains to avoid it. It was March now, and reflection suggested nothing since December. A visit to the doctor at Vunapope was called for – now how was he to get Jutta there, for she obviously felt very well indeed.
LONG WAY PLACE
Chapter Ten
Jutta was delighted, amazed, overjoyed, slightly apprehensive. Ned had persuaded her to come with him to Vunapope, combining a dozen specious reasons why, bombarding her with the necessity until it was easier for her to agree than to continue to argue. He had handed her over to a ready-primed nursing sister then sat outside on the bench under the big rain tree, more excited and hopeful than he was prepared to admit to himself – though he was willing to accept, very quietly in his own mind, that he rather fancied the prospect of family life; he wondered what it would be like.
Half an hour and he stood as his wife was escorted to him by three smiling nuns, happy for their ex-pupil, sentimental that joy should have come to her after a clouded childhood, ready even to congratulate her alien, apostate husband.
“Ned! Ned! Sister Perpetua says to me that I a baby shall be having, in August, she is thinking it vill be!”
Accent and grammar were both fled; Ned braced himself against the great leap onto his chest, hugged her tight as he disjointedly, breathlessly muttered his pleasure and thanked the sisters for their good wishes. He paid his fee and put Jutta up into the trap, laughing and chattering in delight.
“Ned – you knew! That is why you make me to come here. How did you know?”
Awkwardly, with many circumlocutions, he explained just how his suspicions had been aroused. Bright red, she said that she had wondered what was happening, but a baby hadn’t occurred to her – it was a pity there had been no woman she could talk to. Ned said nothing – there had been a whole village full of wo
men within half a mile, any or all of them casually knowledgeable in such matters, but he knew just how she would react to such a remark. He could blame it on her German upbringing but he could not imagine that any Australian would have been different.
“Ned?” A much smaller, sober voice, suddenly frowning.
“Sister Perpetua … she was here when Mutti … I mean, she says … Mutti was a small lady, but I, like father, am bigger. Sister says that I should not have troubles like my mother had.”
“But you are afraid that you might.”
“Ja, it is possible. Sister says that it better would be if … she says not to … well, we ought to make fun in bed only sometimes, and then very gentle you must be. Till August, and then afterwards six weeks! Is long time, Ned.”
“A very long time!”
“Ja!”
Long Way Place (Cannibal Country Trilogy, Book 1) Page 22