Love in the Years of Lunacy

by Mandy Sayer

  There were two latrines set up roughly thirty yards away, each with a line of about ten or twelve men. She squinted and could see Moss and the drummer joining one of the queues. She knew there was no way she could wait that long, and anyway she was unable to piss standing up, always having to find some secret place behind a building or in the long grass of the jungle. Beyond the clearing, the land sloped up gently into a rainforest thick with tall trees and vines; a stream ran down between banks of high grass. She followed it up into the tangle of vegetation, into a chorus of insects and twittering birds. Another plane roared overhead.

  She had just squatted beside a smooth rock and lowered her trousers when an air-raid siren sounded. Her hands were wet with blood as she tossed the soiled paper into a bush. She fumbled in her pocket and pulled out a long, fresh piece, then folded it over and over to make a new napkin, noticing to her dismay that her trousers were now splattered with blood. The siren was so loud it made her ears hurt. When she glanced down the hill she saw men running out of the warehouse, diving for split trenches near the latrine. There was a distant stutter of gunfire. She was just about to shove the paper into her crotch and pull up her underpants when she caught sight of a man standing on the other side of the stream, pissing. She couldn’t be sure but she thought it was Moss.

  Gunfire hammered around her and she threw herself to the ground. A smaller plane streaked across the sky and another shell dropped, closer this time, and she was splattered with dirt and rocks. She crawled along the ground on her elbows and knees. She could see the man who’d been pissing was now running down the hill, on his way back to the warehouse. She wished she could follow him, but was too terrified to move. Between the wails of the siren she could hear someone shouting orders and the stutter of ack-ack guns. A plane flew so close she could feel the wind from its propellers. She flattened herself against the ground and rolled into a hole, pressing her face into the mud. The earth shuddered as a third shell exploded further down, near the warehouse. She could hear people wailing and yelling and the air was thick with the stench of gunpowder.

  After five or so minutes, silence settled over the valley. She raised her head warily and glanced down the hill. Between the trunks of palms she could see that one corner of the warehouse was on fire and soldiers were already ferrying buckets of water from the beach, trying to put it out. Smoke rose from a crater in the ground. She crawled out of the hole and hurried down the slope. Someone was barking orders and there was the rumble of ambulances and trucks speeding towards the site. Two Americans were already lifting the limp body of a fellow soldier into the back of a jeep. She was striding past a drain at the back of the warehouse when she noticed a pair of boots, upside down, sticking out of it. There seemed to be a soldier wedged head first inside it, though he wasn’t calling for help or making any noise at all. Pearl called to Farthing, the organist, who was collecting some musical arrangements that were scattered all over the ground. Farthing grabbed one ankle and Pearl took the other and, after counting to three, they bent their knees and pulled, clutching various parts of the man’s uniform—his trouser legs, his belt—for a better grip. As he rose from the hole, she could feel that his body was as limp as a puppet. They laid him on his back on the ground. He was covered in a confetti of blood and dirt, but Pearl recognised him immediately. It was Moss, and his eyes were open, looking directly up at her.

  The front wall of the warehouse had been burned down, smoke rose from the roof and several rows of chairs had been reduced to clumps of ash, but once the wet, charred mess had been cleared, the soldiers filed back inside. Some sat quietly on the ground, heads bowed, waiting for further orders. Fortunately, the stage had been spared and none of the instruments had been damaged. Moss had been taken away in an ambulance, along with an American trombone player who’d also been killed. The Australian musicians stood around anxiously, smoking cigarettes, not saying much about the air raid, about losing one of their own.

  ‘Okay, fellas,’ announced Rudolph, ‘the show’s going on. Let’s blow the roof off this joint.’

  ‘Shouldn’t be too hard—it’s already half gone,’ joked Charlie.

  As the curtain finally rose to the sound of ‘One O’clock Jump’ cheers mushroomed out of the soot and rubble. Above the music, ambulance sirens could still be heard wailing across the bay. Men in the audience began slapping their knees and clicking their fingers in time with the beat. Pearl was still in a kind of daze after the shock of the falling shells and finding Moss’s corpse wedged into the drain. She’d never seen a dead body before, and had been surprised by how heavy it was. And as she was thinking about this she suddenly realised that Rudolph was pointing his baton at her, drawing tiny circles in the air, and she remembered her first solo was due to begin. She glimpsed Moss’s alto on its stand. Before she had time to stop herself she was unclipping Martin’s tenor from the noose around her neck. She reached forward and snatched up Moss’s sax and raised it to her lips.

  For the first time in nearly a year, she was holding an alto in her hands, in her mouth, and it felt as if she were embracing an old lover from whom she’d been separated for years. After practising and performing on the much larger tenor, playing Moss’s sax was a comparative breeze. As she stood in the spotlight, the air sang in her lungs and her fingers moved effortlessly against the keys. Her stomach was giddy with adrenaline, there was a gorgeous tingling between her legs that was almost sexual, and these sensations soared out of the bell of the sax in a fast, excited rush. She glanced to her right and was astonished to see Bob Hope and Gladys Moncrieff in the wings, dancing together. To her left, in the audience, was the line of top brass: the captain of the Pacific Entertainment Unit, Jim Davidson, Australian and American officers. When she completed the solo with a descending riff that James had taught her, the men jumped to their feet and applauded loudly and the locals in the audience tossed flowers at her feet.

  Afterwards, the top brass came backstage to greet the band and to have their photos taken with the visiting celebrities. Pearl cleaned Moss’s sax before packing it back into its case.

  ‘That was fantastic, Willis!’ boomed Rudolph. He clapped her on the back. ‘You play a wicked alto. Why didn’t you tell me?’

  She shrugged, lost for words.

  ‘That thing you were doing at the end of “Cherokee”, that was a knockout. And your tone. Like honey. Bit of the old Lester Young there.’

  ‘Thanks, sir.’

  ‘Shame about old Moss. But you know the old saying . . .’

  Pearl nodded. ‘Only the good die young.’

  ‘No—the show must go on. I don’t want any arguments about this, Willis: you’re playing alto from now on, and that’s an order.’ And with that he made a beeline towards Bob Hope, who was standing by the door chatting to the musicians and signing autographs.

  15

  Through the windows of the plane the sea looked as smooth as a pane of glass. It was the first time Pearl had been on an aircraft and she was absolutely terrified. Charlie sat beside her with his arms crossed over his chest, hands clamped under his armpits to keep them warm. Blue was so tense about flying his eyes were shut, hands clenched together on his lap. Pearl could see a patchwork of ploughed fields pockmarked with bomb craters and trenches. Suddenly the plane banked on a forty-five-degree angle and she found herself looking down on a series of uneven peaks that resembled a line of knuckles. Inside the cabin it was so cold her breath fogged the air and her ears began squealing due to the lack of air pressure.

  The unit had received orders from Sydney only the day before to move on to the Huon Peninsula, due north of Port Moresby. The region on the map the CO had shown them was a peninsula of land framed on three sides by the Solomon Sea. The allies had taken the peninsula only a few weeks before; there’d been many casualties and some of the men isolated on island posts hadn’t heard music or even seen a newspaper in over eighteen months.

  The old bomber coughed and spluttered. Occasionally, it lost altitude fo
r a moment and began to rattle. From the air, Pearl could see the area around the gulf had been heavily bombed. Big black bald patches mottled the rainforest. The wings of crashed planes forked up between palm trees. As they began descending she could see overturned jeeps lying in the tall kunai grass. The plane circled an airstrip and landed with such an impact that some of the instrument cases were flung around the cabin.

  The musicians leaped out of the hold and into a hot wind that smelled like putrid meat. A group of American soldiers began unloading the plane.

  ‘What’s that stink?’ Pearl asked one of them.

  The man nodded at the ranges to the north of the airfield. ‘Corpses up in the mountains. Too many to bury.’

  ‘Allies or Japanese?’ asked Charlie.

  ‘Both.’

  They were driven to a small barracks close to the airstrip. After stashing their gear beneath canvas cots in a dormitory, they followed Rudolph’s orders and marched into the mess tent. Soon, a clerk lugged in a bulging canvas bag and everyone lined up to receive mail. Pearl was surprised when a clerk handed her a package addressed to Martin Willis. She cut the string, ripped off the paper, and found a square tin she recognised from the kitchen cabinet at home, with a faded picture on the lid of a pretty girl sitting on a swing and eating a green apple. Inside were twenty-four of her mother’s cinnamon biscuits, and a long letter which was full of bad news, all related with blue ink in her mother’s spidery longhand. Clara wrote that Pearl had really gone off the deep end and had vanished into thin air. The police could find no trace of her. The wedding had had to be called off. Pearl ate five biscuits in quick succession as she reread the letter. Hector was beside himself. And one day Pearl would get what was coming to her. There were also items of domestic trivia—Mr Bones had moved to a local nursing home; Lulu’s false teeth had been misplaced; Clara had hosted a tea party for the local chapter of the civilian army. She closed by begging Martin to look after himself.

  More than anything, Pearl had hoped to receive a letter from Martin, to be reassured that he was safely hidden on Nora and Pookie’s farm. That afternoon she sat down and wrote him a short letter, telling him she was safe and well, and that she’d met and performed for Bob Hope, who’d autographed one of her musical arrangements. She asked him to reply as soon as possible and signed off with, Your brother, M.

  Over the next few weeks Pearl almost began to enjoy herself. No one questioned her identity or her position in the band and she was allowed to play the alto saxophone.

  From Finschhafen the musicians travelled by barge down the coast towards Lae, leapfrogging from island to island, camp to camp. Their instruments were packed inside an army truck and each day, after the barge had ploughed through the chartreuse-coloured water to another island, the truck was driven off onto the sand, where native children would dance and cavort alongside it like a flock of excited birds, walking on their hands and throwing fruits and flowers.

  The troops would help clear the jungle scrub for the portable stage, which folded out from the back of the truck. The band members would wash and refresh themselves and then the ninety-minute performance would begin.

  The soldiers sat on boxes, jerrycans and biscuit tins—anything they could find to keep their backsides out of the mud—clapping in time and shouting requests. At night, the band used the tail-lights of the truck to illuminate the stage. Some island-bound troops hadn’t had leave in two years, and when the concert was over, the musicians were often asked to do the entire show all over again. When they did, Rudolph would throw in extra material that Pearl had arranged in her free time, to see how it sounded and to provide some variety. Rudolph would tell a few jokes and Charlie Styles would do his impression of the bombs over Darwin that had happened two years before. Once, while he was performing it, a real shell was dropped and everyone grabbed their instruments and dived into the trenches.

  ‘Special effects are good!’ cried a guard as he gunned at the sky, laughing.

  Afterwards, the troops were usually so grateful that they gave Pearl and the other musicians gifts—small boxes and masks carved from tree trunks, shells filed into talismans, palm leaves woven into mats.

  When they weren’t performing, Pearl, Charlie and Blue avoided the rest of the band. Blue was fastidious about hygiene and when he wasn’t pulling out his hair he was polishing and oiling his treasured trombone. He always nagged Pearl if she didn’t wipe out her sax after a show. When her last reed split he showed her how to file down a piece of bamboo and insert it into the mouthpiece instead.

  Sometimes they went fishing, and if they caught anything they’d build a fire, roast the catch, and eat it with warm coconut milk. Other times they’d slip off with the locals and look for turtle eggs to eat; they were round and dimpled, like golf balls. Occasionally they’d find an isolated beach and, when Pearl was sure no one was near, she’d strip off her clothes and swim in the turquoise sea with Charlie and Blue, ducking and bobbing between tropical fish. In spite of the occasional air raid, those weeks felt like an endless holiday—she was free to experiment with different musical ideas, and there was no Clara or Hector to tell her what to do.

  Their barge chugged through the low tide of the Huon Peninsula in late January 1944. As it edged its way toward the harbour, the bow of a sunken ship could be seen rising above the surface of the sea. Lae had been taken by the Allies only a few months before and everyone knew there were still units of Japanese hiding out in the ranges. The outline of the township grew more distinct as they approached, jagged silhouettes of bombed buildings and flattened houses, felled trees and overturned jeeps. The bay reeked of shit and rotting vegetables. Mangy dogs roamed the wharves, nosing through garbage and barking at the moon.

  The musicians camped at a barracks on a ridge above the bay, sleeping in double bunks with wooden frames; the legs stood in kerosene tins full of water to keep the ants away. Every now and then gunfire hammered in the ranges. During the second night, an air-raid siren sounded and everyone stumbled out of bed and into a foxhole and had to doze against one another until dawn.

  On the third day of their stay in Lae, Rudolph received movement orders from Sydney, delivered by a skinny, big-eared clerk. Rudolph’s eleven-man unit was to be divided temporarily into two groups. One would stay in Lae, unloading supplies from Australian ships and helping the Allies repair the damage to buildings in the area; the other would travel independently into the more remote areas of the country, to camps close to the combat zones, where soldiers had been isolated for months without adequate supplies, let alone entertainment. It would be tough, exhausting and extremely dangerous. The orders stated that no more than five men should form the troubadour detachment, for reasons of mobility as well as security.

  ‘These soldiers,’ said Rudolph, ‘haven’t had a proper hot meal or seen a movie in ages. So they need more than a tune or two. They need song-and-dance routines. Comedy. Maybe even a magic act.’

  The party was standing at attention between the company clerk’s office and the mess tent. It was already hot and flies buzzed in circles around their heads.

  ‘Now I’m asking for volunteers,’ continued Rudolph. ‘You’re all welcome to try out. There’s no extra pay of course, but think of what you’ll be doing for your comrades.’

  Everyone looked at the ground, nodding briefly, swatting at flies and mosquitoes.

  Charlie asked what they would use for props and costumes.

  ‘We can probably borrow some from the Yanks. There’s a supply hut near the latrines.’ Rudolph nodded to a small square building on the other side of a creek, made from logs and corrugated iron.

  Blue then asked, in a trembling voice, for the exact location of the combat zone.

  Rudolph glanced at the orders he was holding. ‘The troubadours will play three isolated camps through the Markham Valley between here and Nadzab. At Nadzab they’ll receive orders either to return here or to continue further towards the front. Any questions?’

  Pearl asked
if the troubadours would be performing in American camps.

  ‘Of course,’ said Rudolph, who was growing testy in the heat. ‘Now there’s not much time. This new outfit’ll have to be rehearsed and polished by the end of the week. So who’s going to try out?’

  In the mess tent later that day, Charlie stood in a pair of baggy trousers held up by braces and performed a set of impersonations of various famous people, from James Cagney to Hitler to Oliver Hardy. He then did a comedy routine with a hand puppet he’d made from an army sock. Blue, while terrified at the prospect of such a dangerous mission, was even more frightened of being separated from Charlie. He surprised everyone by sitting on a fold-out chair and playing the trombone with his feet, something he used to do as a child back in Orange. The drummer, Marks, painted his face white, dressed up in a clown costume, and did a soft-shoe on top of an oil barrel, using his bayonet as a cane. Marks was also able to walk on his hands. The organist Farthing, a hefty, muscular man with legs like tree trunks, donned a blond wig from the supplies hut, painted on red lipstick, and squeezed into a spangled pink dress. He balanced a broomstick on his nose, then a rifle on his head. After that, he stuck two pineapples down the front of the dress and imitated Mae West.

  Pearl was keen to tour the American army camps, even if it meant performing close to the front, and she wanted to stick with Charlie and Blue, who were the only ones who knew her secret. When her turn came, she stood in front of Rudolph and began to play ‘In a Persian Market’ on her alto.