by Janet Tanner
‘Fortuna? Naw. She’s not in yet.’ The wharfie rolled a wad of tobacco across his lip.
‘But I was told that was her,’ Tara said, pointing out the ship at the end of the wharf.
He shook his head. ‘Neptuna that is. She’s unloading explosives.’
Tara swore. ‘Oh, you don’t mean I’ve got to go all the way back!’
The wharfie grinned and picked up her case. ‘Come on, I’ll give you a hand. I’ve got to go back that way myself.’
His last words were almost drowned out by the drone of approaching aircraft. ‘More of those noisy Yankee bastards,’ he yelled above the roar.
Tara looked up and saw a sky full of planes. He was right, the Yanks were everywhere now. Then, more in surprise than alarm, she registered something wrong. Yankee planes did not fly with gaping holes in their bellies and those markings …
Simultaneously she heard the wharfie yell a warning.
‘Christ – look out! It’s the bloody Japs!’
He grabbed her arm pulling her down towards the decking. She hit it with her knees and experienced a moment’s searing pain. Beneath her the wharf vibrated, all around the thick air echoed with the throb of engines. Then a high-pitched whine threatened to split her ear-drums. Instinctively she covered her head with her hands. And the world seemed to explode around her.
She came back to consciousness like a drowning man surfacing through choppy storm waves with the ground rocking beneath her and the trembling air torturing her ear drums with a sharp stabbing pain that was both physical and aural. Thuds and explosions jarred through every one of her senses, each preceded by the piercing whine that made her clap her hands across her ears. Yet nothing could shut it out, nor the screams and the shouts, nor the crackle of gunfire.
Acrid smoke drifted past her filling her nostrils and stinging her eyes and she arched her body coughing, only to gulp in more of the smoke so that for a moment she thought she would choke. The sensation frightened her more than the mayhem around her and she struggled to a sitting position, hawking and gasping. Then, as her streaming eyes took in the scene, she froze in utter horror.
The whole of the harbour, it seemed, was ablaze. Clouds of smoke, thick and black, obscured some ships, others listed at crazy angles. In the water men struggled and screamed, small boats dodged, patches of oil blazed. And still the planes threatened overhead, not the high level bombers now – they had done their work – but dive bombers and fighters, swooping in, attacking.
Near the wharf edge a swathe of scarlet fluttered; Tara recognized it as one of her own skirts. She rolled over to reach for it and saw her suitcase bobbing in the water below, blown open, with the contents spread over a yard-wide area. Beside it, face down, was a body blackened by oil – the wharfie who had been helping her. A scream bubbled in her throat and died, then she was on her feet stumbling back the way she had come into the drifting cloud of smoke.
A few yards she ran, then drew up sharply with all the tiny hairs on the back of her neck pricklingly erect. Something was wrong, terribly wrong. She hesitated. Then as the smoke swirled away she saw what it was. The dogleg angle of the jetty had been destroyed. Just a few feet in front of her the steel and timber ended abruptly and there was nothing but the sickening drop to the oil blackened, water below. Another step and she would have gone plunging down.
For a moment Tara stood frozen unable to believe her own eyes. The turntable, the locomotive, the recreation shed where the men had been gathering for smoke-oh – all gone – blown to oblivion by a Jap bomb. Then as her mind cleared like the drifting smoke she realized the full implications of the destruction.
She could not get off the wharf. She was trapped on an island of debris in the middle of the harbour with no means of escape. And still the Japanese planes swooped in overhead so low that the pilots’ grinning faces were clearly visible, still the bombs fell and the guns fired, still everything burned around her.
As Tara stood there, staring down into the void, the air screamed again and she threw herself down as the wharfie had thrown her, burying her head in her arms. The world rocked not once but twice and the explosions deafened her. As they died away she rolled over, looking over the shelter of her arm and gasping at the sight which met her eyes.
The ship she had been making for in error – the Neptune – had suffered a direct hit. The bridge was gone, a pall of black smoke mushroomed up into the already thick atmosphere. Then, as she watched, the flames leaped orange and scarlet against the black, Dante’s inferno here before her eyes.
Tara scrambled to her feet again – but which way to go? There was no escape. Someone caught at her arm and she turned to see a burly seaman.
‘Come on, love – we shall have to jump to get off here!’
She shrank from his touch. ‘No – I can’t!’
‘Come on I say! We’re effing good targets up here!’
Leaving go of her arm he launched himself, disappeared then bobbed up again. As he did so a bomb hit the water and a wave, feet high, erupted. The force of it lifted the man like a toy, hurling him at one of the struts. He crashed into it and fell back into the water thrashing feebly and fighting for breath, his lungs crushed by the explosion.
‘Oh Holy Mary!’ she sobbed. Blindly she turned back towards the end of the wharf and as she did so a Jap plane sprayed a line of machine gun fire alongside her. Once again she threw herself down but a man running in front of her fell, blood spurting scarlet from his leg. He missed me on purpose, she thought, but she knew she could not rely on the next one doing the same.
Her searching fingers found the edge of the wharf. Perhaps she could climb down the struts and shelter underneath, she thought. It wouldn’t save her if a bomb scored a direct hit, but it would keep her out of the way of flying debris and machine gun bullets. Concentrating totally on the effort Tara scrambled over the edge and sought a foothold. Slowly down, one foot then the other, hanging onto the edge of the wharf with hands that bled. Something whistled through the air close by and she flattened herself until she heard it splash into the water below. Then she lowered her foot carefully onto the next strut – and screamed as it splintered and gave way beneath her. For a moment it seemed she was bound to fall, then her searching toes found a ledge and she scrambled onto it, hanging out like a bow from the shattered structure of the jetty.
She could think of nothing now but the physical effort of hanging on; the attack was merely the background to the nightmare. Her fingers were slipping, slipping, every muscle screaming a protest. Then above the roaring in her ears she became aware of a voice she recognized calling her name.
‘Tara! For God’s sake! Get down here!’
With difficulty she twisted round enough to see a launch in the water below her and there in the bows was Sean Devlin.
‘Come on – move!’ he yelled at her.
She was hanging onto the strut for grim death. ‘I can’t!’
‘Yes you can. Jump! We’re here! We’ll catch you! Come on!’
She did not answer. She couldn’t do it – let go of this strut and fall towards the water! Holy Mary, she couldn’t!
‘For Chirst’s sake!’ he shouted angrily. ‘You’ve got to get away from here. The bloody Neptuna is going to go sky high in a minute. Can’t you hear it?’
Hear it? Hear what? Words meant nothing. She had been able to think of nothing but that fall. And then, through the cacophony of other sounds she heard it – a low and threatening rumble that seemed to come from the very core of the earth, shaking the air, reverberating along the wharf, entering her body through her fingertips as well as through her tortured ears. Vaguely she remembered words that seemed to have been spoken in another life – the wharfie who had died telling her ‘The Neptuna is unloading explosives’ and saw again as she had seen with her own eyes the two crippling bombs that had torn into that ship. She saw it and heard it and suddenly it all came together in one terrifying flash of realization.
The Neptuna was going to b
low up. If she remained where she was she would almost certainly be killed.
Tara swung round. Beneath her in the launch, arms outstretched, was Dev. For just a second she hesitated, then pushed herself away from the wharf and into thin air. She screamed as she fell, Dev caught her and they rolled over together. In panic she tried to cling to him, but without even asking her if she was all right he extricated himself, returning to the bows of the launch and yelling instructions to the three others who were crewing with him.
‘That fella there – see him? He’s alive. Fish him out!’
Horrified, Tara clawed at him.
‘But the ship is going to explode – you said …!’
He shook her off. ‘Get a line to him – quickly now!’
She watched as the man was pulled in. He was black with oil and there was an ugly hole where his eye should have been. It gaped scarlet in the midst of the black slime. Tara turned away clapping her hand over her mouth to stop the rush of bile. One of the Chinese seamen swimming in from stricken ships was pulled out of the water too.
‘Let’s get out of here!’ Dev yelled and as the launch turned to head for shore the breeze brought Tara a whiff of a strange and overpowering smell reminiscent of roast pork. But with patches of blazing oil being blown towards the swimmers she knew it was not.
They had just reached shore when the Neptuna blew up. She went with an explosion that rocked the entire harbour, chunks of metal and lengths of rail launched like toy rockets into the vast billowing cloud of smoke, planks of wood and even the main mast tossed like matchsticks. The launch was set rocking madly and Tara thought they would capsize, then as it steadied she was amazed to see the air still full of pieces of falling debris showering towards the sea, foreshore and other ships. One fragment, white hot, landed in the water close by. And above the stricken ship the first dense black cloud continued to mushroom up and out, a gigantic, awesome memorial.
As the water settled Dev brought the launch closer to land and when he told her to Tara jumped over the side, the water splashing up her legs, and struggled towards the beach. Dev and one of the other men followed, supporting the badly wounded seaman between them. They set their burden down in the shelter of the towering cliffs and Dev turned to Tara.
‘You can look after him now.’
All Tara wanted to do was crawl into a crevice of the cliff and hide until the raid was over.
‘Me? But what can I do?’
‘Get him to a hospital, first chance you get help will come – as soon as the raid is over.’
‘Couldn’t you take him?’
In his rakish face his eyes were very dark, very hard. ‘We have other work to do.’
She looked out over the harbour. It was like a scene from hell.
‘You’ll be all right now.’ He turned to his friend. ‘Come on, let’s get this show on the road.’ And without a backward glance they went back down the beach, splashing through the water to the launch. The engine was still running and soon they were just another bobbing dot amid the debris, half obscured by a curtain of smoke. Tara felt a moment’s admiration, swiftly followed by disbelief. Her own sense of self-preservation was so strong she could hardly believe that anyone would go out into that holocaust risking horrific death if they did not have to.
Beside her the injured man moaned and Tara glanced at him, half impatient, half repulsed. She would help him to a safer spot beneath the cliffs and leave him there, she decided. Then, when the raid was over, she would find someone with transport and tell them where to find him.
Trying not to look at his face she put an arm around his shoulders and immediately recoiled from the slimy touch of the oil. She moved out of the cleft but a burst of gunfire from a fighter plane made her skip back again.
Oh, it was like the end of the world! Tara’s fingers went to the rosary she always wore around her neck, clutching at the cross with shaking fingers. The injured man moaned again, mumbling something unintelligible, and Tara looked at him in despair. She was trapped. Trapped with this – this thing. Shapeless, slimy, stinking black and that terrible gaping wound like raw meat on the butcher’s slab … she could not bear to look at it a moment longer. If she had to stay here she must at least try to cover it up. But with what? She had nothing. Except … Tara found herself remembering countless movies … her petticoat. She hauled up her skirt looking with regret at the fine cotton lawn, the nicest petticoat she had ever owned and nicer even in her opinion than the flame-coloured silk that Red had bought to go with her basque. But the petticoat was already muddied and torn in one place where it had caught on a wharf support and in any case at that moment Tara would have sacrificed anything to hide the gaping wound from view.
She ripped off two strips of material then gritting her teeth, tried to clean the oil away from the edges of the wound and bandage over it. Several times she had to turn her head away, taking fresh air, such as it was, into her lungs and deliberately steadying herself. The man was semi-conscious, but when she finished tying the strip at the back of his oil-caked head with a neat bow he muttered something once more and leaning forward she caught a name.
‘Roma.’
Oh Holy Mary, he thinks I’m his wife or something, Tara thought, horrified, but she found herself leaning closer and summoning the courage to wipe the oil away from around his mouth too.
‘It’s all right, we’ll have you in the hospital soon enough, so we will,’ she said, and told herself: Whatever he looks like this is not a thing. It is a man. And you, my girl, would do well to remember it!
Chapter Four
Just when it seemed they never would the Japanese planes went away. As the All Clear sounded the shocked people of Darwin emerged from their hiding holes, the drainage ditches, open sewers and sheds where they had taken refuge, and Tara, along with dozens of others, was able to creep out of the shelter of the cliffs.
All she wanted to do was to run – as far from Darwin as she could before the planes returned – but she was held back by the thought of the wounded man. He’s not my responsibility she told herself, but it was no use. The pieces of her petticoat bound around his face somehow made him her responsibility.
I’ll have to make sure he’s all right before I leave him, Tara thought crossly. I’ll have to see he gets proper treatment or I’ll have nightmares about him. Well, I’ll probably get the nightmares anyway!
She bent over the man again. The stench of oil and blood assailed her once more but at least it no longer made her feel sick.
‘I won’t be long,’ she said. ‘I’m going to find help.’
His fingers fluttered on her arm and she made herself squeeze them.
‘Stop worrying now. The worst is over.’
The dock road was in chaos. Vehicles, pressed into service, hooted and honked above the jarring grind of engines that refused to start, the injured staggered drunkenly, clutching their wounds with something like disbelief, the frightened ran and milled, their faces ugly with panic as they fought to jump aboard anything that moved. Frantic to get away herself Tara ran this way and that looking for someone who could help her, but for all the attention she was able to attract she might as well have been invisible.
On one side of the dock road a man was bending over a heap of rubble, shifting it stone by stone from the roadway. His hair had flopped limply down across his face as he worked but Tara recognized him as a customer of the Savalis’ place. Heart pumping with relief she ran over to him.
‘Griff! Thank, goodness!’
He glanced up at her, his face red and running with perspiration, then bent to move another block from the heap of rubble, tossing it with seemingly senseless precision to a new heap a few feet away.
‘Griff, you must help me, please!’ she caught at his arm, trying to get through to him, but he shook her off with a fury which startled her.
‘Cut it out for Chrissakes!’
‘Griff – I’ve got a wounded man …’
‘Deal with it yourself. I’ve g
ot other things to do.’
‘But Griff …!’
He broke rhythm long enough to look up at her, rubbing the perspiration out of his eyes. ‘Mate of mine is buried under this lot. Either lend a hand or fuck off,’ he snarled.
Tara backed away. It was hopeless. No one was going to take the slightest notice of her – too many people had been killed or wounded whilst she, though dirty and dishevelled, was unhurt. Turning her back on the chaos she ran back to where her charge was sprawled under the cliffs.
‘Could you get up, do you think, if I help you?’ she asked him.
An imperceptible nod told her he had heard. Bracing her back against the cliff she got an arm around his waist and began to lever. Oh, but he was a dead weight, slipping and slumping all over the place!
‘I can’t do it unless you help me,’ she said and her tone if not her words seemed to rally him. She felt him struggle and increased her own effort, then somehow he was on his feet though as she took a step or two forward it felt to her as if the whole of his weight was on her arm.
Like two drunks they staggered towards the road. I can’t make it, Tara thought. In just a moment my knees will give way and I shall just sag down like a sack of potatoes with him on top of me.
The thought of being pinned down, unable to escape his trickling blood and the choking oily smell that emanated from his every pore gave her the strength to struggle on though her goal – the end of the dock road – seemed farther away than ever.
She heard the engine of a motor vehicle behind her, tried to veer clear and could not. A horn honked loudly and mentally Tara echoed the exhortation Griff had used to her. Fuck off. If the driver wanted to get by he would have to do some manoeuvring. Tara certainly could not.
The horn honked again and a voice – a female voice – shouted: ‘Hi! You!’
The vehicle was almost alongside her. With an effort Tara turned her head and saw it was white-painted with a prominent red cross on the side. An ambulance – and leaning out of the driver’s window was a young woman, whose hair gleamed red-gold in the strong sunlight. ‘Hey! Do you want some help?’ she called. Tara could do nothing but nod her head gratefully. The ambulance stopped, the driver’s door opened and a pair of long legs emerged.