A Distant Land

by Alison Booth

  The reasons didn’t matter though. What mattered was that her mother was now out of the car and opening the rear passenger door, and hugging Zidra hard enough to squeeze the air right out of her chest. This pride Zidra found so touching that she discovered she was crying too, in spite of her happiness. Because of her happiness.

  Chapter 43

  George Cadwallader stands in front of the medicine cabinet in the bathroom and inspects his reflection in the speckled mirror. The orange and brown tie is a bit garish but Eileen bought it for him specially for today’s celebration, and leaving it off isn’t an option. He opens the cabinet door and takes out his bottle of Hair Restoria. After unfastening the cap, he tips a few drops of liquid onto the palm of one hand and wipes it carefully over his scalp and through what remains of his hair. That bare patch of olive skin on the crown of his head is growing day by day, he’s convinced of it, but the Restoria does at least help keep the remaining strands in good condition. They shine with a lustre almost as great as his bald patch.

  ‘Hurry up, Dad! What are you doing in there? We’re going to be late.’

  ‘I’m contemplating.’ George washes and dries his hands before opening the bathroom door. ‘You do look smart, son.’

  Andy grins. He slides past his father and stands in front of the mirror. George inspects his son’s square shoulders and blonde hair. Even the military haircut can’t disguise its luxuriance. Staring hard at Andy’s face reflected in the mirror, George realises for the first time that it’s asymmetrical. This mirror image strongly resembles but isn’t identical to the face that he loves. ‘What happened to your nose?’ he says after a moment.

  ‘I broke it. Didn’t I tell you? That was ages ago now.’

  ‘In conflict?’

  ‘You might say that. It was in a game of footy.’

  At this moment Eileen calls out from the lounge room, ‘Don’t you want to wear your uniform to the party, Andy?’

  ‘Are you joking?’ Andy bellows. ‘No one wants to see a man in a uniform these days. I’m surprised at you for suggesting it, Mum.’

  Eileen totters down the hall in her new high heels and stands next to George. It might be the shoes or her happiness at having both of her boys at home that makes her a bit unsteady. At any rate something prompts her to thread her arm through George’s and rest her head for an instant on his shoulder.

  Andy says, laughing, ‘You might have handbagged Cannadine, Mum, but I don’t think you want me to get in on the act. I don’t want to be roused on by any clergymen.’

  ‘You won’t be,’ Eileen says smoothly. ‘I haven’t invited the Reverend Cannadine this time.’

  Jim pulls out of the wardrobe the new tie his mother presented him with the evening he returned to Jingera. ‘To celebrate,’ she said, and he decoded this to mean that he is to wear it for the party today. The tie is patterned in purple and mauve flowers that, with a leap of imagination, you could think of as bauhinia. It reminds him of the morning before his capture, when he sat on the flower-strewn balcony of his flat in Phnom Penh, thinking of Zidra.

  Now he turns up the shirt collar of the pale-blue shirt he’s wearing and slings the tie around his neck. All those years at boarding school mean that he never needs to look at what he is doing when knotting a tie. He can do it blindfolded; he can do it in his sleep – probably has done it in his sleep.

  In a few days’ time he and Zidra will drive back to Sydney. He hasn’t told his parents that they will be living together right away, in the tiny Annandale house that they viewed last week and have arranged to rent for a year. He has told his parents only that they will be married next April at St Matthew’s Church in Jingera. Although he’d expected that Zidra would want to be married in a registry office, it was she who’d chosen the church wedding. ‘We’re doing it for your mother,’ she said. Her usually pellucid eyes gave nothing away.

  He knows that his parents have been changed by his captivity, changed by his reported death, but he cannot quite clarify in what way, nor does he want to probe. He knows only that they mourned him, that they metaphorically buried him. His mother’s eyes follow him whenever they are in the same room. It is as if she doesn’t quite believe that he is really her son. While he understands her feelings, it makes him a little self-conscious. She notices him too much – more than she’s ever done in the past. And she is thinner; her clothes hang on her. He is responsible for this. His father looks older as well, much older than he did when Jim was last home.

  And Jim too has been scarred. You do not slough off, like an arthropod discarding an exoskeleton, an experience such as the one he went through. The capture, the expectation that at any moment you might be shot, the fear also that you might be killed by bombing sorties or artillery fire. He wakes up at night, sometimes trembling, sometimes shouting. Occasionally he awakens only when he is banging on the closed door of whatever room he’s sleeping in. Yet his experience is what the people of Indochina have been going through every day, every week, year upon bloody year. Now he understands much more of what that must be like.

  At this moment he hears his mother calling to Andy, and Andy’s response: ‘No one wants to see a man in a uniform these days.’

  He smooths down the tie before taking his navy linen jacket out of the wardrobe. While shrugging his arms into it, he thinks of the new – and to him surprising – bond that exists between his parents and Zidra. When she dropped him off two days ago, she stayed for dinner and he noticed the empathy between them. This didn’t exist before, he is sure of it. My capture has brought them a new daughter, he thinks. That she wants to marry him in the church to please his mother touches him immensely and so too does his mother’s fond expression when she looks at Zidra.

  The late-afternoon sky is a brilliant blue so deep you could drown in it. From the gable of the church hall is hanging a white canvas banner emblazoned with large red letters: ‘WELCOME HOME, JIM AND ANDY’. Crowds of people are standing on the lawn in front of the hall. People Zidra knows. People she’s never seen before. New people into the area. Old families from the area. Farmers and fishermen and forestry workers. The men in smart clothes, the women in vivid dresses and shining hair. All keen to take part in this celebration to commemorate the return of the two Cadwallader boys.

  Not everyone who went to Indochina has come back though. There are new names picked out in shiny untarnished brass on one side of the war memorial in the middle of the town.

  Returning to the car park to collect her forgotten handbag from the back seat, Zidra is overjoyed to see Lorna, in a yellow dress and high-heeled red sandals, walking down the hill towards her. Though she said she might come, Zidra attached a low probability to this, for Jingera is a long way from Sydney, a long way even from Bermagui if you don’t have a car.

  ‘I’m staying at Wallaga Lake. I got there last night.’ Lorna smiles broadly, her special grin that puts all her teeth on show and makes her skin glow.

  Zidra guesses there’s a reason for this illumination and says, ‘Has something happened? How are you?’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Just good? How were your exams?’

  ‘Very good,’ says Lorna. ‘And I’ve got a job with the Land Rights Commission.’

  ‘Fantastic, you clever thing! I’m so pleased for you.’ Zidra gives Lorna a big hug and for the second time today finds her eyes brimming with tears.

  ‘There’ll be big battles ahead,’ Lorna says, although she is laughing.

  ‘I know,’ Zidra says. ‘But you’ll win them.’

  ‘We’ll win some and lose some. That’s what we’ve got to expect.’ Lorna leans against the top railing of the fence marking the boundary of the nature strip. Her smile has vanished and her face is serious.

  Zidra perches on the fence next to her. ‘But you’re happy, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You
look a bit sad all of a sudden.’

  ‘Do I? It’s only that things are coming to an end.’ Lorna stares at her red sandals. They are shiny, and probably new, and Zidra is deeply touched by Lorna’s pride in them. She remembers the day she first met Lorna, all those years ago, when she’d been hiding in a hedge not far from where they are standing now and Lorna crawled in to join her. She was wearing sandshoes without laces that day.

  ‘What things are coming to an end?’

  ‘The years at university. The years of being free.’

  ‘Do you feel you’ve been free?’

  ‘Yes, in spite of everything.’

  ‘But you’ll carry on being free.’ Turning her attention to a tiny black beetle labouring along a blade of grass, Zidra wishes she had more to offer.

  ‘Not free of responsibility though.’

  Zidra looks at Lorna, whose smile once more displays all her teeth. Reassured, Zidra says, ‘You’ve got a vocation.’ Lorna is strong and will travel far, and Zidra feels honoured to be her friend.

  ‘A mission,’ Lorna says, laughing now.

  ‘You’ve had one for years.’

  ‘Ever since Gudgiegalah Girls’ Home. You’ve got one too, Dizzy. And should I be congratulating you?’

  ‘You know about the Wheatley?’

  ‘Joe Ryan called me. Some bloke from the award committee was trying to reach you, he said.’

  ‘When? I’ve only just heard myself.’

  ‘Joe phoned me just before I left Sydney. He said he’d got a tip-off it might happen but he couldn’t be sure. He asked me not to tell anyone and I haven’t. He wanted to know where you were likely to be, or that’s what he said.’

  ‘I didn’t know you were such good friends.’

  ‘We’re not but he phoned me anyway. He thinks he knows me because of all you’ve told him about me, he said.’

  ‘It’s your story as well as mine, Lorna.’

  ‘Joe said that’s what you think. It is partly my story but it’s your telling. You ran with it and crafted it and added more stories to it. And got it exposed. I’ll always be grateful for that, and very, very proud of you.’

  ‘I feel you should be getting this award as well.’

  ‘That’s complete nonsense, Dizzy, though I love you for saying it. Now here’s your feller, look!’

  Lorna takes Zidra’s arm and together they watch the Cadwallader family advance up the hill, the parents flanked by their two sons. Jim catches Zidra’s eye right away. He grins and waves.

  ‘The boys are back,’ someone says, and cheers and clapping ring out from the throng of people waiting outside the hall.

  Glancing around the smiling faces, Zidra notices a shaft of light reflecting off the telephoto lens of a camera. It is held by a rather nondescript figure standing to one side of the crowd. The lens is directed towards her and Lorna.

  Her face tenses, her smile becomes a scowl.

  It is Mr Ordinary, taking photographs again.

  But now the figure turns, the light shifts. She recognises Rod Bigelow, the photographer from the Burford Advertiser.

  She relaxes, she smiles. She walks towards Jim, whose life has been so miraculously restored to her, and folds herself into his embrace.

  Historical Note

  Australia’s participation in the Vietnam War began in 1962, at a time when there was a deep fear of Communist expansion in the Far East. Commencing with a small commitment of thirty military advisers sent to South Vietnam, Australian involvement in Vietnam expanded to a battalion by 1965 and to a task force by 1966. By the time the last of Australia’s forces withdrew from Vietnam in 1972, the war represented the longest major conflict in which Australians had participated.

  The conflict in Vietnam spread into neighbouring Cambodia, which is the setting for some of this novel. The North Vietnamese and the Vietcong set up base camps in Laos and Cambodia, with the approval of those countries, along the border with South Vietnam. Their troops were supposed to stay in that corridor close to the border. However, as the troops became more active, Cambodia’s Prince Sihanouk allowed the United States to make bombing raids over Cambodia. After a military coup in Cambodia in March 1970, Sihanouk’s successor, Lon Nol, called for more active support against the Communists, and in April 1970 Cambodia lost its neutrality when United States President Richard Nixon decided to invade Cambodia.

  Initially Australia’s engagement in the Vietnam War had widespread public support. However, as Australian deployment grew, conscripts began to make up a large proportion of those being sent to Vietnam and killed. Moreover there was a growing perception that the war was being lost, and reports of atrocities on both sides – including the My Lai Massacre by United States soldiers – further alienated public support. In parallel with the strong anti-war movement developing in America, opposition within Australia grew. In 1970 and 1971 thousands of Australians marched through the streets in three anti-war demonstrations, known as moratorium marches. These demonstrations were closely monitored and some of the organising groups infiltrated by the security services.

  By this time Australia was winding down its commitment in Vietnam, while the United States was withdrawing its troops and progressively handing over to South Vietnamese forces responsibility for the conduct of the war – a process known as ‘Vietnamisation’.

  Engagement in the Vietnam War cost five hundred and twenty-one Australian lives, while around three thousand Australians were wounded. New Zealand forces were also involved in the Vietnam War.

  Acknowledgements

  Research for this book took me to a number of different historical sources, including browsing through newspapers in microfilm format in the National Library of Australia. I am particularly indebted to Paul Ham’s meticulous history Vietnam: The Australian War (HarperCollins, Sydney, 2007). The letter of condolence I included in Chapter 19 is an actual letter, taken from Ham (p. 431), whose source was the Australian War Memorial, 290 4/R237/1/1 Part 1, Correspondence – General – Letters of condolence. For information about the Vietnam War, I also found useful the Australian Government website: http://vietnam-war.commemoration.gov.au.

  For background information on internal security and the role of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation at the time of the moratorium marches, I am indebted to David McKnight’s book Australia’s Spies and Their Secrets (Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1994). The chapter about Zidra’s ASIO file landing on the desk of an editor of a major newspaper – and the editor choosing not to look at it – is loosely based on fact (see McKnight, p. 185). Of course the context, newspaper and characters in my novel are entirely fictitious. When I first conceived this book, I had not yet discovered two accounts written by war correspondents about their time in captivity in Cambodia during the Vietnam War. Once I found these sources, it was impossible not to be influenced by them. These books are by Richard Dudman, Forty Days with the Enemy (Liveright, New York, 1971) and Kate Webb, On the Other Side: 23 Days with the Viet Cong (Quadrangle Books Inc., New York, 1972). I am grateful to both authors for the detail they provided of their journeys behind the lines in Cambodia. I owe a special debt to Kate Webb’s account. My chapters about Jim’s capture and interrogation are loosely based on her experiences as reported in her book, although of course the characters and settings involved in this novel are again fictitious.

  Readers of history will know there was no Fourth Moratorium March. The one referred to in the novel is entirely fictitious, as are all the characters, although the quotation at the end of Chapter 1, ‘Democracy begins on the farms . . .’, is from Jim Cairns, who was an important player in the moratorium marches. The quotation comes from the House of Representatives, April 1970.

  Although the Aboriginal Land Rights Commission did not exist in 1971, I have invented in the final chapter another body of a similar name.

  For thei
r invaluable comments on an earlier draft, I am grateful to Kathy Mossop and Evie Wyld. Special thanks to Maggie Hamand for her plotting advice when I was at a crucial stage of the first draft, and to David McKnight, who generously discussed with me journalists, exposés, newspapers and ASIO. Thanks also to Tue Gorgens and Tim Hatton for their careful reading of the manuscript at its more advanced stages.

  Particular thanks are due to Karen Colston at Australian Literary Management, who has helped in so many ways over the years, and to my publisher, Beverley Cousins, for her always insightful and sensitive suggestions. Once again it has been a real pleasure to work with them, and with copy-editor Kevin O’Brien and the rest of the team at Random House Australia. Last but not least, I thank my family for their support and encouragement.

  Alison Booth was born in Melbourne and grew up in Sydney. After over two decades living in the United Kingdom, she returned to Australia in 2002. A professor of economics at the Australian National University, she is married with two daughters.

  Alison Booth’s website address is www.alisonbooth.net.

  A Distant Land is the final volume of the Jingera trilogy.

  Also by Alison Booth

  Stillwater Creek

  The Indigo Sky

  Reading Group Questions: A Distant Land

  1. The book’s prologue is written from Jim’s perspective and provides information about what will happen to him. How different would the pace of the novel have felt to you if the prologue had been removed?