To Love a Sunburnt Country
Page 13
Moira pretended not to hear.
‘Darwin,’ said Nancy.
‘I heard it was Broome,’ said another woman, fat as Mrs Flanagan from the Gibber’s Creek Post Office.
‘Batavia,’ said the elderly woman with the tiara.
Nancy said nothing. She had assumed the ship was heading to Australia. Darwin had been her last Australian port. Perhaps the ship was heading to Batavia first, and would then sail on to Broome and then Darwin. Or perhaps there’d be another ship at Batavia, and, hopefully, their passages booked on it. Nothing she could do about it now.
How many nappies were they going to need to get to either port? Would there be any way to wash them? The air below was bad enough now. What would it be like with twenty-four dirty nappies in the tropical heat?
They ate more bully beef at mid-afternoon, the water jugs coming around every hour or so. The boat rocked. More planes, more bombs, but still neither docks nor ships were hit. The single lavatory already stank; there was invariably a long queue of women waiting to use it. Could they wash Gavin’s nappies in seawater?
When, oh when, would the ship finally sail?
At dusk the order came to go below. They lay half sitting, crammed on their bedding — there was not enough room to lie down fully — with Gavin grizzling at Moira’s breast. She had given up any attempt at modesty, except to hold her blouse across. Besides, there were only women here, who tactfully avoided noticing a mother feeding her child.
The ship rocked. The darkness grew. They dozed, on and off, except Gavin, who slept, stretched across their laps. Yet another explosion thundered in the distance. At last, some unknown amount of time later — it was too dark to even glimpse her watch — the rocking changed. The motor rumbled purposefully. A small surge knocked Nancy into the woman next to her as the ship got under way.
Nancy felt Moira’s hand reach for hers. She grasped it. ‘We’re going home,’ she said.
‘Your home,’ said Moira, her voice distant. ‘My home is Ben.’
Chapter 13
Gibber’s Creek Gazette, 28 January 1942
The War Relief Dance
By Elaine Sampson, aged nine and a half
Yesterday our school had a dance for Comforts for Soldiers. At lunchtime we took all our books off the shelves and the boys moved the desks in front of the blackboard so they would not be in the way.
We had good music. Mr Henderson played the mouth organ and Mrs Harrington the banjo. We paid a penny to dance. A good time was had by all.
We raised one shilling and eightpence halfpenny. The halfpenny was because Billy Snogs only had a halfpenny but we decided he could dance anyway because he is the tallest boy in class and can dance like Frank Sinatra does in the movies, except he wears shorts instead. We will buy pencils for the soldiers so they can write to their families. The girls wanted to buy soap too but the boys voted no.
SOMEWHERE SOUTH OF SINGAPORE, 29 JANUARY 1942
NANCY
The bomb hit with the first shreds of daylight. Nancy had been asleep, propped against Moira. She woke as the boat shuddered, twisted, then forged on. Gavin woke with a start and began to whimper. Around them women screamed, or hugged themselves, frozen with fear. Children wailed, in protest and terror.
‘What’s happened?’ Nancy’s voice was hoarse with thirst, her dress damp with sweat.
Something hit the water nearby, so close they could feel the swell the instant before the explosion knocked them sideways. Even the children were silent. Nancy held her breath too, waiting for the ship to sink.
It didn’t. Nancy rummaged under the end of the bedding for their life jackets.
Another explosion. Another. The ship lurched upwards, sideways, twisted in the water, but the walls around them stayed intact. Nancy found Moira’s hand. The older woman was silent, holding Gavin to her, his ears jammed between her body and her free hand to shield him from the noise. He gave small hiccupping cries, too caught up in the surrounding terror to properly cry.
Another sound, like cloth ripping. A splintered hole appeared in the deck above them. Nancy peered around, wondering if the bullets had penetrated below the deck, but there was no sign of blood on any of the women and children in the dimness of the hold.
They waited, now hearing only sobbing children and men’s yells from overhead. I’m getting good at waiting, thought Nancy. More shouts from above, the sound of running feet, the chatter of gunfire. Explosions on either side of them …
Was it minutes or hours? She thought the latter, but time had lost its meaning. Was it minutes or hours before her ringing ears registered that the bombs had stopped, the throaty roar was dropping as the planes receded?
The hatch was opened wider. ‘Everyone all right down there?’
No one answered, then a woman called back, ‘Seem to be. Was the ship hit?’
‘Bit of damage aft. Nothing to stop us though. It’s safe to come on deck if you want some air.’
Nancy grabbed Gavin and made her way towards the companionway before too many could crowd the way, climbed with one hand on the rail, the other holding Gavin. As she emerged through the hatch, she took a deep breath of fresh and smoky air and felt some of her sweat dry.
‘Water over there, love.’ A sailor nodded towards a drum amidships.
‘Thank you.’
Moira appeared beside her as she helped herself to water, drank fast and deeply before the drum too was crowded. She’d had enough of bodies pressing against her.
‘Do you think it’s safe to give Gavin a drink of water?’
‘Better not.’ Moira took him from her. ‘I’ll feed him. Let’s go forwards. It should be less crowded there.’
The deck was rough with bullet splinters below their feet. Smoke pillowed the rear of the ship. They passed a lifeboat. Moira gave a small laugh. ‘Well, we won’t be using that.’
‘Why not? Oh, I see.’ The wood was ripped so badly that there was no way the boat would float. Nancy thought of the life jackets under their bedding. She should have brought them with her. But they’d look ridiculous carrying them around. As if they expected defeat. Not keeping up the side, she thought vaguely. Poor show, what.
It was cooler in the small space forwards. There was even a little early-morning shade next to a wooden crate. Gavin fed, nuzzling for comfort long after the feed had finished. Moira let him, sitting back against the bulkhead, her eyes closed.
Nancy went over to the rail and peered out across the ocean. Singapore had vanished. Over on one side there was a thin blue line of land. An island, she thought, trying to remember the scatter of Malaya’s outcrops on the map that had hung in Ben’s study back at the plantation, might hang there still.
Who was living in the house now? A Japanese officer? Or would the house be abandoned, too far out of the way? No, she thought. The Japanese will want the plantation to keep producing the precious rubber. A new manager would live there, a local man, perhaps even the foreman who had been effectively doing the job during Ben’s absences.
She gazed back the way they had come again, searching the sky for planes. Over on the horizon was a larger shape she took to be a destroyer, and three more ships, one larger and two slightly smaller than theirs. Was the destroyer protecting them? But no one had shot the enemy planes from the sky.
Something bobbed, perhaps fifty yards away. At first she thought it was another crate, then realised it was too round, with spikes, like a too-fat echidna.
A mine. She had seen them on newsreels. The ship had to touch the mine, didn’t it, before the mine blew up? This looked to be too far away to be an immediate danger. But there might be — must be — more.
But at least there were no more planes …
Something rose above the thin line of the island. A bird, she thought. Another and another …
Bombers.
‘We need to go below.’
‘No.’ Moira’s voice was surprisingly calm among the new tide of screams from the deck behind them. ‘Go and ge
t the life jackets. Bring them back up here.’
‘But we might be hit if we stay up here.’
Moira touched the crate behind them. ‘We can shelter behind this and the bulkhead.’ She looked at Nancy directly. ‘If the ship is sunk, the companionway is going to be blocked with women. We’d have no chance of getting out of there alive.’
Nancy bit her lip, nodded. It should be me thinking that, she thought vaguely. But Moira had far more experience of ships than she had. Though not, she thought, of ones that might soon sink. She slipped between the other passengers, struggled down the companionway, women pushing on either side. They’ll panic if we are hit again, she thought. Moira is right …
She grabbed the life jackets, waited till the worst crush had come down the ladder and then pushed her way back up, along the boat.
‘Back here.’ Moira crouched above Gavin between the crate and the bulkhead. She straightened and slipped on the life jacket, fastening it in front, then resumed her crouch. Gavin gurgled and grabbed at her pearls. She pushed his hand away absently, gave him her finger to chew. ‘Put your life jacket on. If we’re badly hit, swim towards the island. Fast. If you’re near the ship when it goes down, the suction will take you with it. Hopefully one of the other ships will pick us up, if they’re not damaged too.’
‘Moira …’
‘What?’
‘I can’t swim.’
‘What?!’ Moira stared at her. ‘All Australians can swim. All those beaches.’
‘We live hundreds of miles from the beach!’
‘You can’t swim at all?’
‘A bit. Mucking round on the river.’ She’d never swum more than a dozen strokes across a swimming hole. The river was too shallow to swim in, except when it was in flood and too dangerous. No one swam in the billabongs, not with tangles of waterlilies and the chance of bumping into black snakes cooling off.
‘Bloody hell.’ She had never heard Moira swear before. ‘I can’t manage you and Gavin both.’
‘You can swim?’
‘Four-hundred-yard school champion,’ said Moira shortly.
Bully for you and your swimming pool, thought Nancy. She looked at the sea around them. The bombers were almost on them now.
‘Dog paddle or overarm?’
‘Dog paddle.’
Moira looked at the land on the horizon. ‘Dog paddle might get you there. The life jacket will keep you afloat. Once you’re in the water use your hands like paddles and kick like hell. And that,’ she said grimly, ‘is the best swimming lesson I can give you right now.’
‘Perhaps they won’t hit us.’ Nancy tried to count the planes. Fifteen, twenty, twenty-five …
The first bomb fell. The ship heaved as the water exploded around them. A plane zoomed lower. The screams from the other end of the boat took on a new note, agony now among the fear.
Time slowed. A dark ball slipped down the blue of sea and sky. Into the funnel of the ship. The ship shuddered. As if it knows, thought Nancy. Then it exploded.
The world shrieked into fragments. The shock rolled both her and Moira across the deck. Instinctively Nancy lunged back, grabbing Gavin, forcing him below her as bullets strafed the deck. She began to roll again, sheltering his body with hers.
The ship was sinking.
Flames danced across the deck behind her.
Another explosion. The ship vanished. What had been solid deck was noise so loud she couldn’t even hear it, was splintering wood and flames. She felt the ship lurch wildly to one side, flinging her against the bulkhead. It lurched again, the prow rising higher and higher against the sky. She saw rather than heard Moira’s yell, ‘Jump!’
The prow was too high and steep now to reach. She stumbled to the side, held Gavin while Moira climbed onto the rail, then passed him up to her, a small wailing ball of baby. Moira jumped, holding the baby high, her bent legs neatly scissoring the water. For a few seconds she vanished, then appeared again, lying on one side, stroking solidly with one arm, Gavin gasping and screaming in the other.
Screaming. He was alive. Tiny, terrified, in the vastness of the sea.
Nancy shut her eyes and jumped.
Water. Green water, which was strange, because it had looked blue. Green and bubbles, so many bubbles. She must be sinking down, onto the bottom of the sea.
No, the other way. She was floating up, a golden, wave-rippled ceiling above her. The life jacket.
She popped through the surface, gasping.
Cold. How could the water be cold here in the tropics? Then realised it was not cold, not really, it was that she had been so hot.
Where there had been a ship was nothing but flames. She wondered if they had more flammable cargo than women and children.
No one could live in that. Ten seconds before, or twenty, she had been there. Moira’s order had saved her life.
The heat burnt her even from here. She turned her face away.
‘Moira!’ she yelled. A wave slapped her face. She realised she had automatically managed more movement in the water than she had ever attempted before.
‘Moira!’ she cried again.
No answer.
She managed to lie, her legs out, dog-paddling her hands. Someone screamed behind her. Not Moira. Another voice yelled, ‘No, no, no, no!’ Someone shrieked, ‘Glenys!’
She couldn’t help them. Couldn’t help anyone but herself. And Moira — hopefully — was swimming like the school champion she had been, holding Gavin up above the waves, towards the distant island.
She bobbed up to make sure she was heading in the right direction, and kicked like mad.
Chapter 14
Gibber’s Creek Gazette, 29 January 1942
Letters to the Editor
Dear Sir,
I would like to draw readers’ attention to the words of poet Henry Lawson. Though written decades ago, they are even more relevant now. Britain may have failed us; America may befriend us; but in the final stand, Australia must fight alone.
Yours faithfully,
Mrs Thomas Thompson
‘In the Storm that is to Come’ by Henry Lawson
By our place in the midst of the farthest seas we are fated to stand alone —
When the nations fly at each other’s throats let Australia look to her own;
Let her spend her gold on the barren West for the land and its manhood’s sake;
For the South must look to herself for strength in the storm that is yet to break.
The rain comes down on the Western land and the rivers run to waste,
While the townsfolk rush for the special tram in their childish, senseless haste,
And never a pile of a lock we drive — out a few mean tanks we scratch —
For the fate of a nation is nought compared with the turn of a cricket match!
I have pictured long in the land I love what the land I love might be,
Where the Darling rises from Queensland rains and the floods rush out to the sea.
And is it our fate to wait too late to the truth that we have been blind,
With a foreign foe at our harbour gate and a blazing drought behind?
DRINKWATER, 29 JANUARY 1942
MICHAEL
Four shirts, with name tags. Four pairs of trousers, long, with name tags, freshly starched and ironed. Socks, with name tags.
There was something forlorn about socks in a suitcase, rolled up like baby echidnas, always pushed into the corners or even stuffed into shoes. Gym bag. Hair oil, wrapped in a towel in case it leaked. Two fruitcakes, from the miraculous Mrs Mutton, who hung bunches of home-grown grapes and long strings of halved figs and plums up in the hay shed to replace the dried fruit it was hard to buy now. Mah McAlpine provided the property’s butter now, from the three patient Jersey cows in the paddock overlooking Sheba’s.
Could you milk an elephant? he wondered. They were mammals after all and so, by definition, milk producers. But if you could milk elephants, then Malaya would have cheese …
How would Nancy have changed? He hoped she hadn’t cut her hair, or had it permed in fashionable curls. He supposed she wouldn’t be wearing a drooping dress, as she had at the party and on the train when he waved her goodbye. Nor the moleskins, worn through at both knees and ragged at the cuffs, that she had worn at Overflow. Would she wear the blue spotted voile she had told him about?
Surely there’d be a chance to be alone with her, even in Sydney. The Botanic Gardens perhaps. Somewhere they could talk and hold hands. It wouldn’t be the same as being here, but it wasn’t long till half-term. He’d come back for that, even if it meant a night on the train each way, so he’d have two whole days with her …
Did she still feel what she had said that morning at the cascades, before she left? Please don’t have changed too much, he thought. Wear a spotted voile, and even lipstick, but still be Nancy of the Overflow.
The phone shrilled down in the hall. Two long rings and three short ones, which meant it was for them. He heard Mrs Mutton’s tones: ‘Drinkwater, Mrs Mutton speaking.’ And then, ‘I think he’s in the study.’
He went out into the corridor, curious. Phone calls about work mostly came to the factory, and not so early in the morning.
‘Thomas Thompson speaking. Yes, operator, another three minutes. As many as it takes. Hello?’
Silence. And then, ‘I see.’ More silence. And then, ‘I see. Thank you for calling me. There’s no other news?’
Another pause.
‘I see. Yes, I see. Yes, of course. Please call at any time if you have word. Many thanks indeed.’
The phone clicked back in its cradle.