To Love a Sunburnt Country

by Jackie French

  He laughed quietly. ‘Anyone else likely to be throwing pebbles at your window at five am?’

  ‘Is that the time?’ She grinned at him. ‘Give me three minutes.’

  ‘Two.’

  She was ready in one, the nightdress thrown off, an old dress thrown on. She realised she should have put on shoes as soon as she climbed through the window. Young ladies wore shoes. But none of the other kids at school did and, despite Mum’s best efforts, she got rid of hers as soon as she was out of sight of the house, except of course when she was riding.

  The grass was dew wet and chilly against her soles. She held a foot up. ‘Do any of your girls in Sydney wear bare feet?’

  ‘I don’t have any girls in Sydney. No girl at all, except you.’

  She flushed, suddenly extraordinarily happy. ‘Why do we say “wear” bare feet?’

  ‘Never thought about it. Don’t you get bindiis in them?’

  ‘My feet are tough.’

  ‘Snakes?’

  She shrugged. ‘Mostly I know when a snake is about. The birds give alarm calls if it’s a brown or a tiger. And I see the snake tracks. There’s a scent to black snakes too.’ She looked at him curiously. ‘Your mum didn’t tell you any of this?’

  ‘No.’ He frowned. ‘No, wait a sec. Before I went to school. We used to take a walk and she’d talk to me. I even remember something about listening for snake warnings. School put it out of my head till now. How did you know Mum told me?’

  ‘Gran said your mum was brought up by Auntie Love. She was related to Gran somehow. Niece or great-niece, I think. Gran thought a lot of her.’

  ‘And she was my great-grandmother. Funny to think of history being not so very long ago.’

  ‘We’ll be history one day. If we do anything interesting enough.’

  ‘I think,’ he said, ‘that being history is uncomfortable. I’d rather breed Corriedales. But there won’t be a choice, if the war keeps going. Where are we heading?’

  ‘You’ll see when we get there.’

  Over a small hill, sheep watching curiously from the dew-damp grass. A mob of roos, the old buck thoughtfully scratching his stomach, wondering if they were a threat. His females bent to eat, unconcerned.

  They could see the river from here, a pattern of small channels and then the main branch, silver in the early light. But Nancy crossed the hill, instead of heading down to it.

  She pushed through thorn bushes, growing on such rocky ground that it had never been worthwhile clearing them. And there it was. A small gorge between two hills. Rock broke to the surface here, patched pink and grey almost like goanna skin. The water flowed steeply a few feet deep over a polished lip of rock in a tiny waterfall, before twisting snake-like in cascades down into a round deep pool below a native fig tree, carpeted with maidenhair and a low red-tinged fern. It was strangely like the pool at Moura, the property his mother had lived on as a girl with Auntie Love, and now rented to Blue and Joseph McAlpine, but the water here flowed more forcefully and deeply, though the pool was as rounded and serene.

  The world was hushed around them, even the bleat of sheep muted by the hills on either side. Nancy sat on the rock beside the water, cross-legged. The waterfall spray made a slight haze in the early light, its drops winking silver and gold.

  Nancy looked at the water, not at him. ‘Gran showed me this place when I was small. I’ve never brought anyone else here before.’

  ‘Why did you bring me?’

  She’d looked at him then, at his serious face, his hair like bleached grass, so much nicer without the pomade he’d worn at the party and yesterday, before she answered.

  Now, a year later, she bit her lip at the memory of what she’d told him. It wasn’t what girls said to boys in romance novels. She wondered if anyone had ever said it to a boy before.

  She shouldn’t have said it. Or should she? He hadn’t answered; had so obviously not known what to say. But he had seemed moved, as if he understood.

  Had he?

  Boys were companions to chase goannas with, to lead droving among the trees. She’d had no experience of being with a young man like this. Nor did she want the sort of courtship you read about in books, dressing up to go to the picture theatre or to dances. Flirting and making your young man jealous. She’d had no time for that, not when she’d had to leave later that day. Suspected she never would have time; would always be open with those she loved …

  There, she’d said it to herself, at least. But surely what she had said to him instead meant a hundred times more than simply love. What they had together meant more than kissing, or what came after kissing when you were married, which she knew the mechanics of, had even seen with ewes and rams, but suspected was somewhat different for a human couple.

  Had he understood? He hadn’t replied, but he hadn’t laughed either. She’d thought perhaps he was too moved to speak.

  He had never mentioned her words in his letters. Nor had she. You didn’t write about such things — or, if you did, she didn’t know how. He had written faithfully twice a week. But good though the letters were, you couldn’t see the whole person on a page. She liked Michael the letter writer. But it was the look on his face as he watched the swans and pelican at the river, the sudden joy when she had shown him the cascades, the wonder as he gazed up at an eagle balanced on the morning air — that was what she’d fallen in love with. She needed to see him again to know that she hadn’t imagined the bond between them.

  She bit her lip. What if he met another girl in Sydney? One who didn’t ‘wear’ bare feet, whose hair was done by a hairdresser, not hacked off when it grew too shaggy? At least hers looked decent now too, or would when she had a chance to comb it.

  He was at a boys’ school, so there were no girls to meet there. But he had mentioned staying at a friend’s house in Sydney in one letter, and there were girls enough in Gibber’s Creek too. Perhaps he wrote to her just from friendship …

  She thrust the thought away. Damn — no! Bother Mrs Armitage, making her think like that. Michael was Michael as surely as she was Nancy of the Overflow. And when they met again, she’d ask him if he remembered her words at the cascades, if he felt like that about her too.

  She leant back on the leather seat, the sweat trickling under her dress, listening to the clack of wheels, the beat of the engine. A clearing appeared, paddy fields, a cluster of small children and a woman in bright native clothes who waved. It was all so normal, so peaceful, she wondered if she had indeed panicked this morning; if the refugees on the road had been panicking too; whether even those fleeing in this carriage had no need. The Japanese may have attacked; had obviously sent scouting parties ahead. But surely they had already been pushed back.

  At least she was getting Moira to move south, even if it was only to Kuala Lumpur. Once there she had to be able to persuade her to go all the way to Singapore, then onto a ship home. Their plantation was clearly too close to the Thai border to be safe, even if the Japanese Army was repulsed this time. Moira must know it now.

  Soon, she thought — Michael, Gran, the river, riding up into the hills. She had been away too long, almost as long as it had taken to drove to Charters Towers and back again, and she had needed home then. She wanted it even more now. This land was too green; the flowers were too bright. Or rather it wasn’t the land’s fault, nor the people’s either, not even condescending busybodies like Mrs Armitage, who after all was kind as well.

  The fault of this land was that she didn’t know it, hadn’t absorbed its scent and songs since the day she was born, had never been introduced to it by those who understood it, only by those who trod temporarily on its surface, like Moira and Ben. For Ben, Malaya was an adventure, work experience — a chance to prove himself his own man before, inevitably, he too came home to Overflow.

  She wondered if Moira knew that he’d be drawn back there? Or did she hope that one day they might retire to England, in a cottage by the sea?

  Chug a chug a chug a chug a … Jungle
gave way to rice paddies, rice paddies to swamp, swamp to plantations, plantations to slopes. The song of the engine changed as it pulled its carriages uphill. CHUG a chug chug CHUG a chug chug. Nancy felt her eyes closing, the night’s lack of sleep taking over from the energy she’d needed earlier. This train was evidently an express, not stopping at the smaller stations. CHUG a chug chug CHUG a chug chug became a lullaby. CHUG a chug chug …

  The train jerked to a halt. She woke with a start, the air clammy and her dress damp with sweat, and peered out at jungle.

  ‘What’s happened?’

  Japanese, she thought in alarm. They’ve captured the train. There could be no other reason the train should stop here in the jungle.

  ‘Loading firewood, I expect,’ said Mrs Armitage blearily. Arleen/Irene were still asleep, Gavin sprawled in what had been a clean suit, giving tiny baby snores, still across their laps. ‘The engines have been converted to firewood since the war. Shortage of coal, don’t you know.’

  ‘Shortage of a lot of things. Damn Japs and Huns. Pardon my language, ladies,’ added moustache-man. He too looked as if he had just woken from sleep.

  ‘Excuse me.’ Nancy rose, and peered out the window, still half expecting to hear shouts in Japanese, though she was not sure how they would sound different from the many languages already spoken in Malaya.

  There was a station, a small one, long enough only for the engine, loader and first carriage. A stationmaster in the traditional blue English uniform yelled an order to two men loading firewood, just as Mrs Armitage had suggested, then leant into the first carriage. Voices rose in excitement.

  ‘What’s happening?’ demanded moustache-man.

  ‘I don’t know. The stationmaster seems to be telling the people in the next carriage something …’ She broke off as the man limped towards her, his gait explaining why he wasn’t in a different uniform, like almost every other man from twenty-one to thirty-five. ‘Excuse me, ladies, sir, but have you heard the news?’

  ‘The Japs have attacked Kota Bharu? We’ll soon see them off,’ said moustache-man, mopping sweat and smuts from his forehead with a once-white handkerchief.

  ‘Not just Kota Bharu. We’re holding them off there all right. They’ve bombed Singapore too. But that’s the least of it.’ He paused to give them the full effect of his words. ‘Have you heard about Pearl Harbor?’

  ‘Where’s that?’ asked Mrs Armitage.

  ‘Hawaii. Those islands where the American fleet is based. Was based I should say.’ The stationmaster almost seemed to be enjoying the melodrama. ‘The Japanese have bombed the lot of it. The entire American fleet sunk. All their aircraft too.’

  Moustache-man sat straighter. ‘Impossible, man!’

  The stationmaster shook his head. ‘No, sir. The BBC’s had news bulletins out all day. Happened just like I’m telling you. The whole American fleet just sitting there, like ducks on a pond, for the Japs to hit. All their munitions stores. The lot. Just gone.’

  ‘What a rotten thing to do,’ said Arleen/Irene. ‘America isn’t even in the war.’

  Rotten? Nancy looked at her incredulously. America the massive, the force that had finally decisively ended the previous world war, neutral so far in this one, taken so totally by surprise. And now America’s entire fleet gone! Didn’t the girl know what this would mean?

  ‘Can’t do something like that,’ said moustache-man. ‘You have to declare war before you strike.’ He too seemed to think the unsporting nature of the attack the most important aspect of it.

  ‘Well, they’ve gone and done it anyway.’ The stationmaster moved on to give the next carriage the news.

  ‘This means Japan is at war with America as well as the British Empire,’ said Moira slowly. ‘England will have to declare war on Japan now they have attacked Malaya. So will America. And Australia will have to declare war on Japan too,’ she added as an afterthought.

  And England is only just managing to hold her own against Germany, thought Nancy. They don’t have planes or men or ships to help us down here. Most of our men are in the Middle East, defending Britain. And the might of America, the ships and planes that could have carried America to war in the Pacific, had been demolished in one shock attack.

  She gazed out at the jungle, just as the wet air melted into rain. We are on our own, she thought.

  Chapter 7

  Gibber’s Creek Gazette, 12 December 1941

  New Call-Up

  Single men aged eighteen to forty-five and married men aged eighteen to thirty-five, except those in reserved occupations, are to be called for service in the armed forces under new regulations announced yesterday. Councillor Bullant stated today: ‘It is every man’s duty to save our country now.’

  KUALA LUMPUR, MALAYA, 18 DECEMBER 1941

  NANCY

  The Anzac Club kitchen was hot, hot not just from the day, closing in like a fist in the unmoving, humid air of Kuala Lumpur, but from the heat of five stoves. Nine white women volunteers and nine native cook boys were on duty to feed the thousands of men — troops and government workers — who had no other place to eat now the hotel and clubs that were still open were no longer serving meals. Six months back there had been more than enough mem volunteers to work buffet at the Anzac Club. Now, with most of the white women gone, those who were left worked all the hours they could.

  But there were not enough hands. Never enough hands, thought Nancy, balancing two plates of sausages and eggs in one hand and a bowl of fruit salad and ice cream in the other.

  It was good to be doing something again, after almost a year of leisure. Boredom was harder work than droving. Work also helped keep away worry about Ben. Was he safe? Had he even got the message that they were here?

  They’d sent a wire to his regiment as soon as they arrived at Gemas, as well as to Overflow, and to Moira’s parents in England, to tell them that they were safe, and heading to Kuala Lumpur. The initial attack at Kota Bharu had indeed been repulsed, but all of the British colony agreed — even Moira, to Nancy’s relief — that it was out of the question to go back north.

  Gemas was too crowded with evacuated railway families to stay more than one night, but Mr Armitage’s name had carried them efficiently on to Kuala Lumpur next morning. By the time they had arrived there the Japanese forces had struck Kota Bharu again.

  And this time they prevailed.

  Day by day the Japanese Army surged further south, though the Allies were expected to take a stand any day now. General Heath, the commander of the British Indian III Corps of the Malaya Command, could hold his position for months, according to the wireless. There was no danger …

  Yet everyone knew there was.

  Evacuees streamed through the city on the way to Singapore, from Kedah, then Perak. Women and children mostly, piled into cars, bundled with cots, pillows, blankets, suitcases, the women bleary from driving all night, the children wide-eyed, too quiet and understanding too much. Most had been ordered from their homes with an hour’s notice and told to take no more than two suitcases, their husbands already vanished to the volunteer Selangor Defence Force.

  Like Moira, few knew where those husbands were now, whether they were fighting, wounded, alive or dead. Women stopped to plead at headquarters, asking for information, or at least a way to get a message to men who might not know that their family had left for England, India or Australia for weeks or months or even longer. Others stopped for petrol or a few brief hours’ sleep, then drove on.

  Planes buzzed overhead each day: Japanese, no Allied planes now, circling and studying, then dropping a cluster of bombs, almost as an afterthought, while the ack-ack guns fired fruitlessly from below. Every cricket pitch and golf course was hilled and sandbagged to stop enemy planes landing there. Every major building had its air-raid shelter prepared, even if it was made of concrete pipes and sandbags.

  But Moira still refused to go on to Singapore. ‘Ben will expect to find me here,’ she said, as the train pulled into the crowded station a
t Kuala Lumpur and Nancy tried once more to persuade her to take a ticket south.

  ‘He’ll expect you to go to Singapore. Or go home! His home,’ she added, to make her meaning clear. ‘That’s what he’s wanted all year.’

  Moira didn’t meet her eyes. ‘I’m not going anywhere till I know Ben is safe. Till I’ve spoken to him. There’s far more chance of him getting leave to see us here than down in Singapore.’

  ‘But what about Gavin? You’re putting him in danger too.’

  ‘His father is in far more danger. Once we go south it may be a year or more before Ben sees his son again. Besides, everyone at Gemas said that the Japanese will be stopped any day now. We’re in no more danger here than we’d be in Singapore, with the bombing there, or in a ship.’

  She’s probably right about that, thought Nancy, frustrated. Nowhere in Malaya was safe now; nor was Singapore, bombed nightly if the gossip at the Club was right. Ships were in more danger than ever. But at least if they went they’d be going towards safety. She quelled the thought that perhaps her own longing for Overflow, for Mum and Dad and Gran, to talk to Michael again, instead of the frustrating almost-talk of letters, made her wish to get to Singapore more urgent.

  And it was true that their present house was probably safer from bombing than Singapore. They had journeyed from the railway station to the Anzac Club in two rickshaws. Nancy had hoped that, like Gemas, Kuala Lumpur would be too crowded to tempt Moira to stay, but it had been surprisingly easy to find a house, fully furnished, even with bed linen and staff. Many of the colonialists’ houses were deserted, their owners fled to Singapore, and from there to England, India, Batavia or Australia. The secretary of the Club even had a list of homes where the owners would be glad of respectable tenants, to prevent their belongings being looted.

  An hour later Nancy was driving a borrowed Austin Minor, also deserted by its owner, to a bungalow edged on one side by a rubber plantation and behind by jungle. She was met on the trellised veranda by a forty-year-old boy, Ah Jong, who accepted the arrival of two strange mems as calmly as he produced the endless paw paws, pineapples, local vegetables and eggs that were the only household staples available in the markets now.