To Love a Sunburnt Country

by Jackie French

  Except that the loss was like a black hole in her heart. Not what was gone, but what now could never be. The kids laughing in their uncle’s arms; showing him her factory and their bathroom, inside toilet and all; Christmases after the war with all of them — Blue’s Joseph back, Nancy and Kirsty, Matilda and Tommy’s boys returned, the combined McAlpine and Thompson families gathered around her plum pudding and custard … She wrenched her mind back. ‘I’m sorry, you were saying?’

  ‘Before he took out the machine-gun posts, he told me to tell you he loved you. You and Blue and Sheba.’

  ‘Sheba?’ Despite herself, she smiled. ‘He sent his love to Sheba?’

  Private Thornton frowned. ‘Isn’t she one of your sisters?’

  ‘She’s an elephant,’ said Mah dryly. ‘Blue, well, Blue is like a sister.’ But she knew that wasn’t why Fred had sent his love to her. ‘We were in a circus together,’ she added, because he was obviously wondering where an elephant could have joined her life, or Fred’s. Funny, she thought of him as Fred, perhaps because that was how Blue had known him. Blue was the only person with whom she could share memories of Fred now. Except for this boy here.

  ‘I thought … maybe you’d like to know about what he did.’

  ‘The captain wrote to me.’

  ‘Not the true story,’ said the boy.

  She stared. And she found she was smiling and crying at the same time. No story with Fred at its centre could ever be simple. ‘Tell me.’

  ‘He pretended to be a Jap. Took off all his clothes except his shirt. Ran in screaming, yelling this Jap word. That’s how he got to the first machine-gun post, and partway to the second too before they realised he was one of us.’

  She could see it, the green mountains and Fred’s bare buttocks. Trust Fred, she thought, to go out in one great Galah.

  ‘And then they killed him.’ Her voice wasn’t shaky, though she realised her hands were.

  ‘Maybe.’ The tone was cautious.

  ‘I … I don’t understand.’

  He put his plate down carefully, still obviously unused to the balance of a hand without a finger. ‘We got him down to Templeton’s Crossing dressing station. Took us three days before a patrol found us. He was alive then. Breathing. Two bullets had gone through his chest and out again, broken a couple of ribs but nothing much worse, I think, or he wouldn’t have made it that far. Leg and shoulder hurt too. Shoulder was pretty bad.’ He saw her flinch. ‘I’m sorry. Just trying to tell you how he was.’

  ‘Thank you.’ She managed to add, ‘It is … good … to know exactly how he died.’

  ‘But he didn’t. I mean, we don’t know that he did.’

  Again, all her words had vanished.

  He looked at her steadily. ‘He never got to Myola dressing station, that was the next one down. They never found his body neither. Said he must have crawled off into the jungle, but you can’t crawl far banged up like that.’

  ‘But that is what must have happened,’ she whispered.

  ‘Maybe. If that was all it was though, I wouldn’t be telling you this. The captain got a letter, just before I got this.’ He nodded at his leg and his hand. ‘The letter said that Private Malloy — not Smith — was recovering in Australia, would soon be rejoining his regiment.’

  ‘I … I don’t understand.’

  ‘Me neither. When they shipped me back I got one of the doctors to try to find out. There had been a Private Malloy in hospital in Darwin, for a while. Then he vanished too. Both Private Malloy and Private Smith have vanished, Mrs McAlpine. And seeing what your brother did that day, and what I saw with my own eyes, well, like I said, I just don’t know. But I reckoned I should tell you about it.’

  A dog barked in the paddock behind the house. Andy, coming home. Dear safe Andy. Suddenly she wanted his arms, warm and close, around her. Wanted him on the sofa next to her while she explained that one day — maybe, just perhaps — one day there’d be a postcard, from Uncle Perce, apple picking in Tasmania.

  Hope, she thought. That is what we live on now. We hold it close like a hot-water bottle.

  Now she had hope too.

  Chapter 50

  Gibber’s Creek Gazette, 15 January 1945

  According to a government spokesman, one thousand five hundred Australian war brides have already set sail for America and their new families, while another ten thousand war brides wait for passage to be reunited with their American husbands. Every transport ship provides berths for a handful of lucky brides.

  Wife of the Prime Minister, Mrs Elsie Curtin, yesterday told a press conference she was worried that some of these young brides had very little idea about the life each would be making. Many expected to live in New York City or Hollywood or places they had seen in the movies, but instead most are destined for the ‘… backblocks. If they are city girls,’ she commented, ‘they will have a rude awakening.’

  It is evident that many of these marriages were hasty and even ill-considered, with young women sympathetic to the young men so soon to face the Japanese and help our country. But second thoughts are too late once you are married. It is believed that a new bill will soon be presented to the Australian parliament to allow war brides to divorce under Australian law, so that they need not go to America to dissolve a union that was too rash.

  But for Gibber’s Creek’s only war bride, Dahlia Polanski (née Bullant), life in America is ‘grand’. In a letter to her parents last month, Dahlia says, ‘… there is a wireless in every house in the street and a new movie at the pictures every week. They have this wonderful store called the Piggly Wiggly, where you can buy ice cream and stockings and all the bacon you want. Last night we went out after dinner and had an ice-cream sundae with hot fudge sauce. I had two!’

  PULAU AYU PRISON CAMP, 15 JANUARY 1945

  NANCY

  ‘Nanna! Tell me story! A Ben and Nancy one.’

  Nancy settled Gavin on her lap as she sat on her bunk. Outside, the wind muttered and tore at the roof. The bed was damp. She was damp. But at least it was warm damp, not cold. A small pile of smouldering coconut shells warded off the mosquitoes, a gift from Mr Shigura.

  ‘Once upon a time there was a bunyip! A big hairy bunyip that lived in the waterhole at the place called Overflow. It used to call every night, when the moon shone, “Ooooerrrrrrrrrrr”.’

  Gavin giggled.

  ‘“Never swim in the waterhole by the big rock,” Gran told Ben and Nancy. “The bunyip who lives under the waterlilies there will drag you down.”’

  ‘What is a waterhole?’

  She stared at him, this child who couldn’t remember a world beyond the hard-packed rectangle of dirt and huts. ‘It’s like a bucket of water, but big … bigger than the whole camp!

  ‘One day Ben had an idea. He said, “Let’s make the bunyip happy. Then we can catch fish in the waterhole.”’

  ‘How do you catch fish?’

  ‘I’ll show you one day.’

  ‘Tomorrow?’

  ‘Maybe not tomorrow. Ben decided that they should give the bunyip everything they liked best. They brought a teddy bear … That’s a soft thing you cuddle,’ she added, forestalling the next question. ‘They brought food too.’

  ‘Cassava and nanas?’

  ‘No cassava and no bananas. They didn’t have any bananas then.’

  ‘Coconuts?’

  ‘No coconuts.’

  ‘What did they eat then?’ asked the boy who had eaten cassava and bananas for as long as he could remember.

  ‘A big plate of mutton and pickle sandwiches. Half a watermelon. Buttered scones and pikelets with jam, and lettuce with salad cream and pickled beetroot. They’re good things to eat.’

  ‘Really?’ Gavin was not convinced.

  ‘Really. One day you’ll eat them too. Ben said the bunyip wouldn’t like pickled beetroot, because Ben hated it, but Nancy said she loved pickled beetroot, so they left it in. And they had apple pie and cold roast chicken with lemon stuffing and roast pot
ato and roast pumpkin …’ She realised that Nurse Rogers had stopped to listen, and Moira too, gazing at her, their minds far away, in the world where there was so much food you could give away a picnic to a bunyip.

  ‘I think the bunyip would like cassava and nanas best,’ said Gavin. ‘But not dried fish.’

  ‘Dried fish is good for you. Ben and Nancy put out all the food by the waterhole. And the next morning what do you think they found?’

  ‘The bunyip didn’t like it.’

  She grinned. He grinned back, so like Ben she nearly cried. How could a smile be Ben’s, and hers and Gran’s, but all his own too? Did all three-year-olds talk as well as Gavin did? Was he brilliant? Well, of course he was brilliant, but perhaps it was the company of so many doting aunties too: he spoke like a child who’d never played with another his own age.

  ‘The bunyip loved it! All the food was gone.’ Eaten by a wild pig or possums, most likely, she thought. ‘And Ben said, “Hooray! Let’s fish in the bunyip pool.” So they threw in the fishing lines.’

  ‘Didn’t they want the fishing lines any more?’

  ‘No, they held onto one end and a great big fish grabbed the hook at the other. And Ben pulled it up and took it home and they all had roast fish for dinner.’

  ‘I’d rather have nanas,’ said Gavin decidedly.

  Nancy laughed. ‘Ben’s family wouldn’t. They said he was the best fisherman in the world. And do you know who Ben is now?’

  ‘My daddy!’ yelled Gavin, bouncing on his grubby knees.

  ‘That’s right. And one day we are all going to Overflow. Me and you and Mummy and Daddy.’

  ‘And Auntie Rogers and Mrs Hughendorn and —’

  ‘Everyone who wants to come.’

  ‘But not men with sticks.’

  ‘No. Not men with sticks. We will never see the men with sticks again. And we’ll eat apple pie and roast lamb and your daddy will say, “You are such a fine big boy, the best big boy in the whole wide world.”’

  A cry was muffled across the hut. Nancy saw Moira bury her face in her hands.

  She quickly kissed Gavin’s cheek. Despite the lack of water, the dirt, the stench of the latrine, the too-fragrant dried fish, Gavin always smelt sweet. ‘Now you go and ask Mrs Hughendorn if she’ll play Old Maid with you.’ The older woman had made a set of cards from dried bamboo leaves.

  ‘Moira? Are you all right?’

  ‘Yes. I’m sorry. Stupid. Just being stupid. I just miss him so.’ She raised a tear-reddened face. ‘Will we ever see him again?’

  ‘Yes.’ Nancy had to believe that. It wouldn’t be fair to have gone through all this, and not to see Ben, and Overflow, again.

  ‘What is he doing now, do you think?’ whispered Moira. ‘If only we knew. Is he a prisoner? Did he escape?’

  She carefully didn’t add the other all-too-real possibility: Is he dead?

  ‘I bet he’s having a right good time,’ Nancy said, equally carefully cheerful. ‘You can always trust Ben to fall on his feet. Bet he’s living the life of Riley right now.’

  ‘Really?’

  Nancy nodded, imitating a conviction she didn’t feel.

  It was funny. Overflow was in her heart. And Gran and Michael, Mum and Dad. It was as if she knew they were where they should be, knew they were waiting for her. She just had to live long enough and she’d see them again.

  But Ben?

  She didn’t know. Had never been able to feel her brother, the way Gran said she could feel both of them. Ben was … Ben. He was his own person. Not hers. Moira’s and Gavin’s perhaps. She loved him, deeply, dearly, but he was not hers to keep.

  ‘He’ll be right,’ she said again. She put her arm around Moira’s thin shoulders and hugged her sharply. ‘He’ll be right. You bet he will.’

  Chapter 51

  Blue McAlpine

  Moura

  via Gibber’s Creek

  6 February 1945

  Flinty Mack

  Rock Farm

  Rocky Valley

  Dearest Flinty,

  It is sweet of you and Matilda to worry about me, but truly, I am quite all right. You would be proud of me — I knitted a whole cardigan last week, holding the wool in my overall pocket as I went around the factory. We have a new biscuit, ‘Aussie Crunchies: a tough biscuit for a tough land’. They’ve got chunks of choko stewed with ginger, honey, thinly sliced then dried and chopped. It tastes just like dried pears. Well, it doesn’t, quite, but it doesn’t taste of choko. Though of course chokos don’t taste of anything, much.

  Really, my life is not just work! I even went to the dance last Saturday, though with all the Land Girls we women outnumbered the men nineteen to one. I counted! I trotted around the floor with old Dr Archibald, then danced with Andy. It’s very useful having a resident brother-in-law at times like these.

  It was a wonderful spread, quite worth the two shillings we paid for supper. It is amazing what women can do with no eggs or butter or cream. I made a pavlova with my sugar ration and Drinkwater cream. Mah and I get so sick of the smell of sugar in the factory that I never seem to use all of it for myself. It was a fine pavlova, if I say so myself, and filled with cream and strawberries it looked a treat.

  It was a worry to see Dr Archibald so tired, but there is no possibility of getting anyone to help him. There has been a bad measles outbreak. Two girls have died and a boy left deaf, and it still hasn’t run its course. I’m glad Mah’s two got it so lightly before the war, as they’ll have immunity now. Dr Archibald says it’s a very virulent form of the disease.

  Sorry, I meant to be telling you about the dance, not going on about measles. I even dyed my legs and put a seam up the back to look like I was wearing stockings. Thank goodness it didn’t rain till AFTER the dance, as within ten seconds my legs were streaming brown!

  Give my love to Sandy and to the boys and to Nicola, and truly, don’t worry about me. I am fine.

  Your loving sister-in-law,

  Blue

  DEATH MARCH, MALAYA, FEBRUARY 1945

  BEN

  The Allies bombed the camp one morning — American planes, appearing over the island’s hill. Craters burped dust. Bullets scraped along the ground.

  Ben grabbed a forty-four-gallon drum, hauled it inside their hut near a wall and crouched down behind it. ‘Over here!’ he yelled.

  Others followed his example. It was the only shelter they could make.

  ‘Haven’t the Yanks seen the POW sign?’ muttered someone in his ear. Curly, still alive too, a stick of a man with enormous green eyes.

  Ben didn’t answer. The sign must be impossible to miss.

  But still the bombs dropped.

  At last the planes vanished.

  ‘What do you think?’ Curly heaved himself onto Ben’s bunk. ‘Think our lot is going to take Malaya back yet?’

  ‘Don’t know.’ They still had the radio, despite the danger; still heard the BBC World Service most nights, the sentries leaving guard duty to the dogs after dark. Dogs could not tell anyone they’d heard a radio. The POWs knew the Allies had landed in Burma, that the Soviet Red Army was winning on the Russian front, sweeping through the Crimea, Bucharest and Poland. On 6 June the previous year, Allied forces had stormed the beaches of France in ‘D-day’. Rome had been liberated, Belgium, Paris; the Americans were surging across the Pacific — even Japan itself was bombed.

  But here each night the day’s dead were placed on the top bunks, safe from dogs; buried in a single trench come morning, with brief prayers and a salute. Men more skeletons than men, dead of malaria, infected ulcers, diseases, all compounded by starvation.

  ‘Can’t get much worse than this,’ said Curly. ‘Means it’s gotta get better. Don’t you think?’

  Ben said nothing.

  ‘Don’t give up, matey. You just keep thinking of that home of yours. Your missus waiting, and your nipper. What’s his name again?’

  ‘Gavin.’ He knew what Curly was doing, what they all did for each
other now. When a mate gave up he died. So you got him talking about home. Talk about home and think that he could live.

  He should talk to Curly too. Curly came from Brisbane. Ask him about hunting prawns on a moonless night, down at Moreton Bay. Joke with him about his kilt — back at home Curly played bagpipes in the Brisbane Pipe Band. Talk to him …

  He didn’t.

  The next morning Curly was dead.

  The soldiers burnt the entire camp that day, after the work party had staggered out. No warning, just the torches biting at the bamboo walls and thatch. The sick escaped out onto the road. Mostly. Running, being carried.

  There was no chance to grab their meagre possessions, not that there was much to take — a few blankets, pannikins, the precious radio and transmitter.

  The Japanese pointed, shouted. The men marched along the roads, and then through swamps. If a man fell, he was shot where he lay or bayoneted. There was no food, or not for them. The Japanese had supply camps, with bags of rice. The prisoners scavenged bamboo shoots, banana shoots, and once a python the guards let them cook in return for half the meat.

  The guards were hungry too. Gaunt. Not starving. Yet.

  This land could not support so many people, and so much war as well.

  They marched at night and through the day, stopping only when the guards needed a rest. Those who did not get up after the stop were shot, if they were lucky; bayoneted if they were not.

  Another camp. Ben felt a flare of hope. Food? A bed? But even as he watched, the huts in front of them erupted into flame.

  More prisoners stumbled out towards them, starved, naked apart from scraps of rag.

  A guard thrust a pack at him. Ben tried to lift it, couldn’t. One of the prisoners from the new camp helped him. They managed to carry it between them, along a road now, white in the night.