To Love a Sunburnt Country

by Jackie French

  OVERFLOW, NEW SOUTH WALES, AUSTRALIA, 2 MARCH 1942

  BRUCE CLANCY

  Bruce Clancy stared across the paddock. Six hundred head of cattle gazed back at him hopefully. He wondered briefly whether they’d watch him so intently if he did a song and dance routine. No actor on the stage ever had an audience that watched you so attentively as a mob of Herefords waiting for their hay.

  They still had grass enough, despite the drought. But the sky stared down at him, an unrelenting blue.

  Yet why should the sky feel pity for the people below it? There was no malice in a drought. It simply was. He had a feeling the land — this land — was better for it, hard as it was to live through it. The weak died; the strong, the drought-hardy, survived. Leaves fell and made soil so new trees could grow.

  Overflow’s grass now was in the channel country where the river spread in a flood. If the cattle stayed in the channels too long, they’d compact the ground, sour it with their droppings. The hay was to lure them away from the river and its channels, to eat the tussocks here, after they’d had their taste of hay, drinking from the water trough, the windmill spinning away to fill it.

  His mother had advised him to ride a drought like an eagle, letting the hot air carry him past it, watching, learning, but not letting the pain of what he saw hurt him. His father’s response to a drought had been to head to ‘the long paddock’, taking their stock up to where the rain had been more kind, for months or years if necessary. Dad was happiest in the saddle, with the stars for a ceiling. But Mum belonged here. And Ben and Nancy for all their roving …

  The pain he had not let himself show to his wife and mother hit him like a ten-ton truck. He sat on the hard ground and let himself sob, deep, tearless cries. And the cattle watched, curious again, because this wasn’t what humans did. They dumped hay from trucks or called, ‘Houp!’ and moved you on. They did not sit and make noises, or at least not by themselves.

  The sobs finished. He stood, shaken. He had never lost control like that before. Had been the one who was sensible, who’d saved his pay and bought a farm, who’d built up the stock while Dad was off gazing at his stars and listening to the trees.

  The protector. But he had failed to protect what was most dear, his daughter and his son. Ben had been so tiny when Mum had put him in his arms, red-faced and annoyed at what the world had put him through. He had expected the new baby to be a sort of cross between him and Sylvia, or maybe just a generic baby, a bit like a calf was just a calf, pretty much. But Ben had been an individual already.

  And Nancy. You’d swear she was already gazing around with interest, taking it all in. For some reason he’d never worried about her, not when she jumped out of a tree and broke three toes, which taught her not to jump out of thirty-foot wattle trees; nor the time she’d headed off up the gorge to collect wild honey from a nest she’d seen as a surprise for her mum and gran. She’d been eight, and they hadn’t been bees, but paper wasps. She’d come flying back stark naked as the wasps had been crawling all over her clothes, but not a single sting.

  He hadn’t even worried when she’d ridden off to Charters Towers. She had too much of the old man in her. She’d be back, like Dad was. Do wild things, but do them sensibly. If wasps attack you, cover your face and run, then take your clothes off …

  Was Nancy dead? Mum said no. Sylvia said no too, but that was different. Sylvia would believe her daughter alive for the next twenty years, forty, however long they both might live, unless she saw her body. And that could never happen.

  Did he have two children, or one, or none? He knew one thing and that only.

  He had failed. For the duty of a father was to keep your kids alive; and happy and fulfilled. He’d thought he hadn’t made such a bad fist of that bit.

  But he was wrong. Nancy and Ben were gone.

  ‘And when I’m gone you will be ownerless,’ he said to the cattle. To the farm he had worked for, saved for, had ridden and fenced. All of it nothing if there were no children or grandchildren to love it after him. And there was nothing he could do. Nothing.

  Except hang on. For Sylvia’s sake. For Mum’s. And for the flickering light of hope in the black blanket of the last few weeks, that all he did now, might still, please, he thought, please let it be for my children.

  Chapter 21

  Gibber’s Creek Gazette, 5 March 1942

  Aircraft Destroyed, Refugees Killed in Broome

  A Japanese attack on 3 March on Broome in Australia’s northwest has destroyed aircraft and killed an unknown number of refugees from the Dutch East Indies fleeing the Japanese armies to the north, mostly women and children. No further details are available. The number of those killed may never be known as they were still on board ships that had recently arrived with no passenger manifests.

  PULAU AYU PRISON CAMP, MALAYA, 15 MARCH 1942

  NANCY

  Her bed was by the doorway. It meant less privacy, and more splashes when it rained. But at night she could look upwards at the stars. She might be trapped behind barbed wire, but as long as she could look up, part of her was free.

  When hunger ripped her stomach, too painful to sleep, when a whimper from Gavin wakened her, alert till Moira soothed and fed him, she could watch a star travel across the sky, and feel her soul fly with it, into the endless black.

  Morning began like all mornings these days, with yells of ‘Tenko! Tenko!’, two guards striding right through their hut, one with a rifle with a fixed bayonet and one with a bamboo rod, long and thin and with a bite that ripped your skin. The one who carried the rod would tear your blanket off, if you didn’t sit up fast, leering at whatever he could spy below.

  The guards came in at night too, just as they also entered the latrine at will and leered at the women as they washed in their petticoats each afternoon.

  There was no light in any of the huts — the light bulbs had been removed — but a ring of lights around the camp gave enough light to see dimly, even when there was no moon.

  Only thirteen women still; one child. The spare beds stayed empty, except as a way to keep Sally’s and Mrs Harris’s possessions out of the mud, as water seeped under the thatched walls. No men other than the Japanese soldiers. The few European men who had still been on this island when the Japanese arrived had been taken to a camp elsewhere. Sally’s and Mrs Harris’s husbands were elsewhere too.

  ‘Elsewhere’, it seemed, was all that anybody knew.

  ‘Tenko! Tenko!’ The guards stamped through the hut a second time.

  Nancy straightened her clothes and slipped her feet into the sandals she’d managed to make for herself out of slabs of wood, held on with ribbons donated by Mrs Hughendorn. The other women had been generous, as far as their meagre resources allowed: mosquito netting to keep Gavin safe from the small army of mosquitoes that invaded each dusk; a spare dress each for her and Moira, as well as hats; and the precious blankets because although the days were steaming hot, once the sun disappeared the nights rapidly grew chilly.

  ‘Tenko!’ The bamboo rod flicked at Nancy’s arm as she shuffled out. She glanced at the mark. Just a bruise, thank goodness. It hadn’t cut the skin. The wound in her side had scabbed over nicely, but Nurse Rogers had warned the women that any cut might become infected with only dirty water to wash in.

  The morning ‘tenkos’ were the parades outside the huts, the women lining up for inspection by two guards. Nancy shuffled next to Mrs Harris, then bowed low.

  ‘Say your names.’ The translator was the one she had met the first day, with the soft hands of a city worker, not a soldier.

  ‘Mrs Horatio Hughendorn,’ said Mrs Hughendorn, as if announcing herself at the Court of St James.

  ‘Bow lower!’ A guard’s hand came down, striking Mrs Hughendorn below the eye. A bruise, not a cut, thank goodness, thought Nancy again.

  Mrs Hughendorn bowed lower, her lips tight, panting from both pain and the effort of bowing her bulk low.

  The translator gazed at Mrs Hughendorn imp
assively. ‘You will show respect for the Army of the Emperor at all times. Next!’

  ‘Mrs Barry Harris.’

  ‘Mrs Mainwaring.’ Mrs Mainwaring also shared Mrs Hughendorn’s house. In her twenties, she had evacuated from north Malaya where her husband managed a plantation to the supposed safety of the Singapore-protected south. She spoke little. This morning she looked like she had been crying in the night.

  ‘Mrs Neville Montrain.’

  ‘Nurse Williams.’

  ‘Nurse McTavish.’

  ‘Miss Edith Smith.’

  ‘Miss Deborah Beatty.’ Miss Smith and Miss Beatty had been retired governesses, living on their savings on the island, which Nancy assumed would have been even cheaper than the mainland, and far less expensive than life back in England. They were small and looked like sisters though they were not related, as though years of doing similar work had made them look the same too.

  ‘Mrs Addison.’

  ‘Miss Vivienne Crewlight.’ Vivienne was in her early twenties, long nails with the red polish almost peeled off. She had been Mr Hughendorn’s secretary, though Nancy wondered how she had managed to type with nails as long as that. She had been relegated to Hut Number Two, with the nurses and Mrs Addison. Possibly expecting her to share with a Eurasian was a small revenge for Mrs Hughendorn, if her husband had cast too-fond looks towards his secretary.

  Nancy waited for her turn. ‘Miss Nancy Clancy.’

  ‘Mrs Benjamin Clancy,’ said Moira. ‘Master Gavin Clancy.’

  ‘Guggins,’ said Gavin, as if recognising his name. He leant over to Nancy, his small arms out, his bottom bare under his wrapping of flowered cloth. It was impossible to wash nappies here. But he seemed to know when he could release his bowels onto the dirt, instead of soiling anyone who held him.

  Nancy froze, waiting for the guard’s stick to descend on him. But the translator merely nodded to her to take him. Gavin clutched her like a small koala, surveying the camp as if it had been designed for his entertainment.

  ‘Nurse Elizabeth Rogers.’

  Roll call was over. But still the guards kept them standing in the sun, staring straight ahead. Nancy flicked her eyes up, saw a heron fly towards the sea. A beetle buzzed about her nose, but thankfully didn’t land. Brushing it off might get her lashed too.

  At last the translator said, ‘You may go.’

  Nancy headed to the latrine with the others from her hut. They tended to go in a group, if they could. There was protection in a group. Perhaps.

  The latrine was a trench, with a single plank suspended above it, its contents steaming in the heat, roiling with maggots and the occasional brown scurry that was a rat. Moira had vomited the first time she had seen it. Even Nancy had fought to keep her stomach contents in place. But there was nowhere else in their small camp to use. One of the other women held Gavin while Nancy and Moira used it, to stop any contaminated water splashing on him. Even if he didn’t get any in his mouth, it might still cause a skin infection or fungal growth.

  This morning the trench had half filled with water from the storm the afternoon before. The smell was less, but the foetid water so near to her buttocks made it hard to go at all. Finally she managed and wiped herself with one of the leaves that fluttered down into their compound each day.

  Mrs Hughendorn had assigned each of the younger women jobs around the camp. No one objected — it made sense for the younger, fitter women to do the harder jobs. Nurse McTavish and Nurse Williams headed to the gate to fetch the two armfuls of firewood they were allowed each day. Sally began to sweep the compound, with an old twig broom that would have been a servant’s in a previous life, pushing the wind-blown, sodden petals and leaves into a heap.

  Nancy’s job was to help fetch one of the four buckets of drinking water they were allowed after roll call from the well by the main house each day. She picked up the wooden bucket, and waited for Moira, Nurse Rogers and Mrs Mainwaring to join her. The four of them stepped up to the well. Nancy tied a rope onto the first bucket, and lowered it down till it splashed in the water below. She was glad the water level was high now, in the wet season. Moira had dropped a bucket into the well on their first day. They’d had to call a guard to retrieve it with a long pole.

  They’d been beaten for that, three cuts across their bodies, and four for Mrs Mainwaring when she had cried out and tried to shield herself. But if the well had been deeper and the bucket harder to fish out, they might have been beaten more.

  They waited till all four buckets were full, instinctively keeping safety in numbers even here, then carried them over to the outdoor kitchen.

  Four buckets of clean water for thirteen women meant two mugs of water per day each, and four for Moira as she was feeding Gavin. That left just enough water to boil their cassava and cook their stews, though while the monsoon season lasted at least they were able to catch rainwater too.

  The other women were already at the kitchen, sitting on their allocated blocks of wood while Mrs Hughendorn presided from her armchair under the awning. They each dipped their mug in the water, sipped slowly, making it last. There was no point leaving some to drink later — the heat evaporated the water during the day.

  The door of the soldiers’ house opened. The house had belonged to Mr and Mrs Hughendorn. The smaller house had belonged to Mrs Hughendorn’s mother-in-law, until her death a year before. A guard whooshed out the food bin — what looked like an old pig’s swill canteen on wheels. Nancy sniffed. Rotting cabbage again, she thought, as the bin drew closer.

  It was — two native cabbages for the thirteen of them, each half slimy with rot, a small bag of sago, and chopped yams.

  Nancy bent over the fireplace and pushed aside the dirt that she’d used to carefully cover the coals from the night before, to keep them alight and save their small store of matches. She added tinder, leaves and twigs. At last the fire flared. She added wood, then put on the pot, the sago and the yams in the last of the water. It seemed a sad waste of water to use it for cooking, but trying to eat the raw yams had made them sick.

  The women almost unconsciously stared at the cooking pot, like snakes too fascinated by a snake charmer’s flute to look away. White smoke began to filter across from the plantation, a scent so acrid you could taste it on your tongue.

  ‘Ah, they are harvesting the gambir leaves,’ said Mrs Hughendorn. ‘Some plantations,’ her voice made it clear what she thought of those plantations, ‘only harvest twice a year. Mr Hughendorn found that with proper feeding we can get four cuttings, at least.’

  ‘Why is there so much smoke?’ asked Nancy. Not because she cared, particularly, but because when your world was mostly red dirt and barbed wire, anything new was interesting.

  ‘The leaves and twigs need to be boiled. The men work in gangs of five. Two to harvest, one to watch and stir the pot, two to bring the firewood. The gambin looks a bit like treacle when it’s ready to be dried.’

  ‘How can you dry it in this weather?’ asked Moira, watching Gavin bounce on Nurse Rogers’s knee.

  ‘We leave it in drums till the dry and finish it then. That’s how we can get a better harvest than the Chinese.’

  ‘It looks a bit like cakes of amber when it’s dry,’ put in Mrs Addison. ‘The leaves are useful too. Good for dysentery, or as a lotion for burns.’

  ‘Ah, yes.’ Mrs Hughendorn carefully didn’t look at Mrs Addison. ‘The natives chew it too.’

  Nancy wondered if there had been gambir leaves in the poultice the Malay woman had put on her side. But she didn’t want to increase the tension between Mrs Hughendorn and Mrs Addison by mentioning it, nor spark too much curiosity about how she came by the wound.

  Even here colour matters, she thought. And lipstick, though only Mrs Hughendorn used hers now. She suspected the other women were saving theirs for when they were rescued.

  Ten minutes later she added the torn-up cabbage, as much slime removed as possible. Fifteen minutes later Mrs Hughendorn doled the food out, as dignifi
ed as if they were at a dinner party, a bowlful each.

  No spoons. No knives. The women drank from their bowls, ate the sludge that was left with their fingers. Nancy supposed there were spoons still in the houses. Was this a deliberate attempt to humiliate the mems, making them eat like animals? Or did the guards simply not care to give more than the minimum required?

  But they ate, the mems who only months ago had been served by butlers and ‘boys’, had small boys to pull the fan above their heads as they dined; had major domos to market for them, to bring them their early-morning tea and toast, their breakfast, their morning tea and luncheon, tiffin and evening drinks then dinner and a supper perhaps, if they were entertaining.

  They had all journeyed a long way in their short time within the barbed-wire enclosure. But they were alive, and that was what was important. If we are alive, thought Nancy, we can hope.

  All she had to do was live, and one day she’d be back at Overflow.

  The area around the fire was silent; they were each trying to make the gruel last as long as possible. Hunger battled with repulsion at the smell. Nancy glanced around the circle of women, Mrs Hughendorn grimly doing her duty to absorb calories, Moira’s worry tinged with despair that Gavin might reject the only food they had. It was far away from her last proper breakfast, the porridge, the omelette at the Raffles.

  A giggle bubbled up inside her. ‘Let’s pretend,’ she said suddenly.

  Mrs Hughendorn transferred her disapproval of the gruel to Nancy. ‘What do you mean, Miss Clancy?’

  Nancy held up her bowl. ‘This only looks like dog vomit.’

  ‘Nancy!’ protested Moira.

  Mrs Hughendorn cleared her throat meaningfully. But Nancy thought she detected a crinkle of laughter about the piggy eyes.

  ‘We can take turns to say what we’re really eating. I mean, this can’t be breakfast, because one doesn’t eat dog vomit for breakfast. So it has to be porridge, then lamb’s fry with onions and Mum’s gravy and fried tomatoes …’