Stars Over the Southern Ocean

by J. H. Fletcher

  A mate Marina had never seen in her life gave her away. The words were said, the deed done.

  Mrs Trevelyan looked at the ring Jory had placed on her finger, the one that had served as an engagement ring and that now had been called into service for the wedding.

  ‘I’ll get you another one,’ Jory said. ‘A proper wedding ring.’

  Afterwards there was beer or what in those days passed for beer; there were platefuls of sandwiches and some cakes: the best that could still be arranged, given the war and Jory’s finances.

  Later they went back to the guesthouse bedroom where for the first time Marina Trevelyan made love to her husband.

  The next day the weather was still fine. They hired a sailing boat and made their way a mile or so up the river. They drew in to the bank. Again, they made love.

  ‘Lovely,’ she said. ‘With the sunshine and water.’

  ‘You’re the lovely one,’ he said.

  It meant a lot to hear Jory say such a thing; compliments weren’t his line.

  The sun was warm on her naked breasts and she didn’t want to cover them but did so anyway in case another boat should come. They talked about the river and the fish Jory had caught at Bassett Pond the other day and the surprise he’d given her the day before. The sunlight shone on the ring on her left hand and they talked about that and how wonderful everything had been and still was. They said nothing about the war or when he had to go back.

  They sailed back down the river and returned the boat to the yard where they’d hired it. They settled up what they owed at the guesthouse. They caught the afternoon bus and went home.

  The day before he left Jory kept his word and told her some of the terrible things he’d seen on his last voyage.

  He talked of bird-pecked corpses, eyeless, a dozen of them or more, floating in a circle, like close friends, the detritus of some unreported incident. That was how they’d logged it, he said, as an unreported incident, something trivial, not worth further investigation.

  The worst incident of all came later. Marina heard of oil-coated seas burning, the wide screaming mouths of men imploring rescue before the flames reached them, with the Scimitar’s sharp bows carving their way through them to hurl depth charges in pursuit of the submarine they thought might be hiding beneath them. Fragment of bodies hurled skywards by the blast, their screams quenched by fire.

  ‘The smell,’ Jory said. ‘I’ll never forget the smell. Fuel oil and smoke and roast pork. But they were men, Marina. Our men, screaming in English, Aussie or Yank, no way to know, but we blew them to bits. Our own men.’

  He told her of Des Dyer, a fisherman out of Strahan, a notorious cocksure bully, losing it and stepping over the side when he was on duty one night.

  Never, in all their time at sea, did they see a living enemy. ‘Only our own blokes. And we killed them.’

  The images his words created were terrible but his voice remained strong. He had seen what war was like but had not been broken by it. She thanked God that he was still her indomitable man.

  Marina remembered Jory’s father talking of his ancestors, the wreckers of Coverack, and how the drowned faces had stared up at him from under the water. Now his son bore a similar burden.

  ‘You know what’s the worst thing?’ he said. ‘Seeing what the war does to people scares you, because you know it can happen to you. And very likely will, if the war goes on long enough. A ship of dead men,’ he said. ‘Makes you think, eh?’

  She was glad he had told her these things. They were a heavy burden but that was what love was, wasn’t it, the sharing of the bad and the good?

  A truck came to pick him up at eight o’clock the next morning. It was a day of scowling cloud, a gale threatening, and they stood hand in hand, Jory in his uniform, kitbag at his feet, and watched as the truck came bumping down the track. Marrek, not game to see his son go back to war, wasn’t there.

  ‘Take care of our baby,’ Jory said. ‘Look after yourself.’

  Our baby. The words warmed her.

  ‘I’d really love it if you can manage to get home when he’s born.’

  ‘He?’ Jory teased her.

  ‘Fifty per cent chance. Don’t you want a son?’

  ‘It’s you I want. As for the kid … Whatever comes is fine by me.’

  ‘Truly?’

  ‘Truly.’

  The truck drew up in a squeal of brakes, dust swirling. They looked at each other.

  ‘See you, then.’

  ‘Take care.’

  He clambered into the truck. Gave her the briefest of waves. She watched as the truck climbed back the way it had come. As it crested the ridge. As it disappeared from view.

  See you, then, she thought. Pray God.

  She went back into the house.

  Weeks passed. Months.

  ‘I would really like you to be home when the baby’s born,’ Marina had said, but the navy wasn’t in the compassionate leave business and the child was two months old by the time Jory first saw her.

  Her. She’d got it wrong and it was a girl, after all. They called her Charlotte, after an aunt of whom Marina had been fond, back in her Mole Creek days.

  ‘What was it like? Having it, I mean?’

  ‘Not too bad.’ It had been a traumatic experience, no doubt about that, yet after the child had been born the fear and pain had somehow faded into insignificance. ‘Gotta do what you gotta do,’ she said.

  She supposed that could be said of both of them.

  A tricky question came next.

  ‘Be all right for us to do it again?’

  She could have said it was too early but couldn’t bring herself to do that. ‘I asked the doctor.’ It hadn’t been easy, even with Boulders hospital’s Doctor Agnes Hand, standing in for Doc Burgess; with a male doctor it would have been impossible. ‘She said it would be okay after six weeks. That’s the usual time, she said.’

  ‘And now it’s how long?’

  ‘Eight weeks.’

  ‘Beauty,’ he said.

  She supposed it was, but felt nervous, all the same. The truth was that since Charlotte’s birth she hadn’t felt particularly sexy at all. She’d asked Doctor Hand about it when she went for her six-weeks check-up and she’d said it was a normal reaction, adding something about hormones that Marina hadn’t understood. She was also scared it might hurt her but as Jory’s wife didn’t see how she could say no when he would soon be heading back to sea again. So she said nothing but smiled in what she hoped was an inviting way, interlocking her fingers with his and squeezing his arm with her free hand.

  In the event she didn’t feel much but at least it didn’t hurt and he seemed happy, which had been the point of the exercise, while she crossed her fingers, hoping—and praying!—that he hadn’t left her up the duff for the second time.

  Before he left he said: ‘You may not be seeing me for a while.’

  Marina was alert at once. ‘Why not?’

  ‘Maybe I shouldn’t be telling you, and it’s no more than rumour, but the word is we could be in for a long voyage this time.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Dunno. The islands, maybe. Or New Guinea. Maybe it’s not true anyway. But don’t say anything to anyone, okay?’

  As if she would; the way things were, these days, she found it hard to say anything even to herself.

  He left; life went on and she wasn’t pregnant after all. Thank the good Lord for that. Then she wondered whether God would punish her for not wanting to bring more life into the world.

  1944

  CHAPTER 38

  On 6 September—Charlotte’s second birthday, no less—with all the gods of sea and weather hurling their fury at the land, she walked into the Boulders post office to be confronted by Melva Davis.

  Melva was running the post office in the absence of hubby Bert, another one on active service. One look at her face and Marina knew, even before she saw the brown envelope in Melva’s hand.

  The telegram said only that Jo
ry was missing in action. It said nothing about how, when or why. It said nothing about him being dead. Missing in action. She clung to that like a lifeline. Missing in action. Which meant, surely, he should be all right. A prisoner, maybe, but away from the killing he should be safe.

  But how to know? She looked around her with frightened eyes. What would happen if … No! She strangled the thought at birth. No ifs. Melva said the authorities would be sure to let them know more later; she clung to that, too.

  The news might have been worse but the shock was still there. Missing in action. She walked back to the newsagency through the wind and rain, seeing nothing of the people around her. It was only when she got back inside the shop that she realised that tears were running down her face.

  Alice Chan came to her at once. ‘You have news? Is it bad?’

  ‘They say he’s missing in action.’

  ‘Does it say where? Or how?’

  Marina shook her head. ‘Nothing else.’

  Bad enough, certainly, but it might have been worse. Killed in action. Missing, believed dead. They would have been worse, yet not to know was terrible, too.

  ‘They will tell you,’ Alice said. ‘Very soon they will tell you.’

  The telegram wasn’t the only thing she’d picked up in the post office. She’d bought Charlotte a birthday present. A doll. It wasn’t much of a doll but was the best she could find. Given the circumstances of the war, she’d been lucky even to find that, but she’d seen an advert in the paper and had it sent from Hobart.

  Now Alice exclaimed as Marina unpacked it. ‘So pretty!’

  The doll was wearing a pink dress and had long blonde hair and blue eyes that opened and shut.

  ‘What are you going to call her?’

  Because a doll must have a name.

  ‘Maybe Alice?’

  Alice Chan was tickled as pink as the doll’s dress. ‘Good name,’ she said. ‘Very good name.’

  She found pretty paper, helped Marina wrap it.

  Marina forced herself to put on a happy face when she went home. She’d decided to say nothing to Marrek. Later, perhaps, but not now. Today was Charlotte’s day. Charlotte Trevelyan, aged two. With her new doll and best friend Alice.

  Marina had made a cake. Only a little cake, with only few ingredients available, but it would do. She put it on the table.

  Missing in action.

  For a moment her feelings almost got away from her. She steadied herself, breathing deeply, hands on the table.

  Marrek watching. ‘You okay?’

  She gave him her best smile. ‘I’m fine.’

  She hadn’t been able to find proper cake candles so they had to make do with an ordinary one. It was too big to sit on top of the cake so she placed it to one side. She lit it and helped Charlotte blow it out again. She cut the cake and they all had a piece, the doll Alice included.

  Missing in action.

  ‘Pity Jory couldn’t make it,’ Marrek said. It was extraordinary how much he had softened in recent months.

  ‘Too busy, I guess,’ she said. ‘Zap the Jap,’ quoting something she’d read in the paper.

  ‘That’d be right,’ Marrek said.

  While Charlotte pushed cake into Alice’s face and scolded her and made much of her.

  With Charlotte safely washed and in bed and asleep, Marina went out. The gale had moderated and she walked down to the water’s edge. She stood there, looking at the sea and wondering where her husband was now. Missing in action. She remembered what he’d told her on that first leave, so wonderful in every other respect, of the flayed corpses, the ocean ablaze, the Scimitar cutting through the screaming survivors in pursuit of the submarine. Which they might have sunk but which might never have been there at all.

  So hard to pray when every atom of her being felt desiccated by the endless horrors of the war.

  She told Marrek about Jory the following day; he heard the news with a grim face, saying nothing. Later she spotted him up by Ellen’s grave, talking to his dead wife, no doubt about their son. Words … Her own brave face kept Marina going through the days and weeks and, if she wept in private amid the loneliness and fear of the long nights, no one knew but herself.

  The powers-that-be eventually got around to telling Marina what had happened. Or what they thought had happened. Or hoped had happened. Because nothing could be sure.

  The Red Cross was more help. At least they told people things. Or as much as they could.

  The Scimitar had been on operational duties in the Pacific. The letter was a bit coy about where it had happened—perhaps they hadn’t known—but what they were able to confirm was that the cruiser had been torpedoed during the night by what had almost certainly been a Japanese submarine and according to survivors’ reports had sunk almost immediately. A destroyer, USS Mullany, had been in the area and had reported a submarine apparently picking up survivors of the sinking. The approach of the Mullany caused the submarine to submerge. An unsuccessful attempt to locate the submarine followed, after which the destroyer returned to rescue what survivors could be found in the darkness. Able Seaman Trevelyan had not been among the men rescued by the Mullany but may have been one of those picked up by the submarine. Enquiries were being made and it was hoped that more definite information would be forthcoming shortly. In those circumstances Mrs Trevelyan would be notified.

  ‘Load of crap,’ Marrek said. He threw the letter on the floor. ‘He’s gone, missy. Best face it.’

  Marina would not face it; she did not believe Jory was dead. She could not have said why, but her belief was strong. For the present she’d get on with what had become her non-life, wait to hear any more news from the Red Cross and for the better days she was convinced lay over the hill. And, she told herself, she would not cry.

  Eventually, to the surprise of both Marina and her father-in-law, they did hear that the Red Cross had obtained confirmation from the Japanese authorities that Able Seaman Jory Trevelyan had been one of those rescued by a Japanese submarine and was now a prisoner of war in Japan.

  ‘Surprised the Nips bothered to let us know,’ Marrek said. ‘What I’ve heard, they aren’t the best when it comes to looking after the blokes they’ve got locked up.’

  Because, by the tail end of 1944, alarming rumours were circulating about the cruelty with which the Japanese had been treating their prisoners of war.

  ‘I don’t reckon he’s out of the wood yet, missy,’ Marrek said.

  At the newsagency Alice Chan said much the same. ‘I remember what they did in Nanking,’ she said.

  Marina wouldn’t listen. Over and over she told herself that Jory was alive and one day in the not-too-distant future would be coming home to her and to Charlotte.

  ‘Daddy will be back with us very soon,’ she told the child. Who did not know what a daddy was.

  1945

  CHAPTER 39

  Day by day. Month by month. Every report said the war was nearly over, with the Germans reeling towards defeat and the Japanese, fighting like the maniacs that more and more people were convinced they were, being driven one after another from the islands they’d captured two years before. Iwo Jima fell at the end of March, Leyte in April, and British troops reached Rangoon at the beginning of May. Yet still the only news that mattered—surrender and an end to the fighting—did not come, with the Germans out of it now but the Japanese still battling on.

  Okinawa was taken; still no surrender. It began to look as though an invasion of Japan would be unavoidable. That would mean tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, of casualties. Nobody wanted that but the word was that the Japanese generals, stubborn as a dozen oxen, were still refusing to negotiate.

  Fire will rain down from the sky, the US warned.

  Not interested, the generals said.

  ‘Scared we’ll do to them what they done to us,’ Marrek said.

  Maybe; but it turned out after all that none of it mattered, because in August there was a new rumour.

 
‘The Americans have dropped a bomb.’

  ‘What’s new? They’ve dropped thousands of bombs.’

  But it seemed this bomb was different.

  ‘They dropped a single bomb and it wiped out a whole city. Hiro-something.’

  ‘One bomb destroying a whole city? Pull the other one.’

  ‘That’s what they’re saying.’

  Two days later, a second bomb.

  The middle of August. Cold enough, Marrek said, to freeze the tits off a bull. Bombs or no bombs, the weather was still the weather. With the cold came yet another gale, gathering Marina on her way to work and hurling her helter-skelter up the hill and down the other side into Boulders in about half the time it normally took.

  Breathless, she parked the bike and went into the shop.

  ‘Any news?’

  No news.

  The morning unfolded, quietly at first—unsurprising, given the weather—but picking up later. The rain had eased so she went out in her dinner break.

  ‘Catch a breath of air,’ she said to Alice. As though she hadn’t caught enough air on her way in, that morning. She was restless, a mixture of expectation and uncertainty. That morning the wireless had been saying that an invasion of Japan might take years. Years … It was unthinkable, yet if these latest bombs didn’t do the trick, what other choice was there? And if that happened, people were saying, what might the bloody Japanese do to their prisoners?

  She walked down the street past the fire station until she reached the memorial. Her collar pulled high around her neck, she stood and read yet again the roll call of those who’d died in earlier wars. So many, and so many bereaved parents and wives and children whose names were not recorded but whose pain she could feel like a thorn in her heart. They’d fought; they’d died. And to what end? What had their dying achieved, with the world once again engulfed in war? Would human beings ever stop trying to kill each other? It seemed unlikely; fighting was endemic to the species. Without a mutation nothing would change.

  A cheerful thought; she turned to walk back up the street to the shop.