To Love a Sunburnt Country

by Jackie French

  ‘Thanks.’ He could manage one word. And a step. Another step. Another.

  The man said, ‘I know you.’

  Ben glanced at him — brown face, no whiskers, a coolie hat he must have woven himself from straw, some shreds of shorts — finally found the face he’d known. ‘Dr McAlpine?’

  Memories. The last Christmas party at Drinkwater before he left for the new job. The tables laid with food: roast turkey, hams, corned lamb. His mouth was suddenly flooded with saliva. Salads in great big heaping dishes and loaves of bread. Butter. Cheese. Jam rolls and whipped cream.

  He thrust the memory away and found another: Andy McAlpine introducing his kid brother, Joseph McAlpine, newly fledged as a doctor, and the girl he was to marry, who had an elephant and a factory …

  Ben said, ‘I remember you too,’ as more memories came flooding in, the scent of rain on dirt, Mum’s laughter in the kitchen, the smooth lapping of the flooded river’s tangled daughters that gave their place its name. Overflow. Next year … no, before that … he would be there, with Moira and with Gavin. He’d have to get Gavin up on a horse, if Dad hadn’t already done it. Or Nancy — she’d have been the one. Gavin probably had his own pony already. They’d ride together, and Moira too, riding in the cool of night as the Cross turned over.

  ‘Watch out!’ said Dr McAlpine sharply, as the log leapt out at him.

  He fell.

  Chapter 52

  Gibber’s Creek Schoolyard Skipping Song, 1945

  Underneath the water six feet deep

  Old man Hitler fell asleep

  All the mermaids tickled his feet

  Underneath the water six feet deep

  SYDNEY, 6 FEBRUARY 1945

  MICHAEL

  They marched four deep from the army trucks over to the station platform, their heavy boots thudding on the concrete. The entire company was dressed in jungle green, wearing slouch hats with chin straps and puggarees and carrying full battle kit.

  He could feel the stares of the civilians. Someone called out the old battle cry: ‘Ho-ho-ho! Ho-ho-ho!’ Others in the crowd began to chant it.

  Michael grinned. For the first time he actually felt like a soldier. A woman’s voice began to sing.

  ‘Once a jolly swagman …’ Her voice wavered with what might have been a sob. But other voices took up the song. It swelled above the stamping feet. ‘… you’ll never take me alive, said he!

  ‘And his ghost may be heard as you pass by that billabong,

  You’ll come a-waltzing Matilda with me.’

  It was a song of defiance, sung like this, a song of determination too.

  The men settled their kits on the station platform and waited.

  And waited.

  Night came. The train did not. But this was war. Trains were late in wartime.

  Women in print overalls brought around trays of tea, the mugs already milked and sweetened, and slightly stale buns. He drank the tea and ate, then wished he hadn’t. He felt vaguely ill, his stomach tight. He had ever since he started training, and had blamed nerves.

  Just now, though, he couldn’t think exactly why he should be nervous. His mind felt thick.

  And then the pain hit.

  He had a moment to realise it, then the agony took over, dropped him to the platform, clutching his belly, retching. Someone yelled, ‘It’s Thompson. He’s down!’

  Concrete against his face. Thought and memory vanished.

  He woke to whiteness. White walls. White light. A white sheet stretched across him. Pain lurked somewhere, but not the same pain as before. He tried to move his toes, then stopped because that hurt too. But at least they were there.

  ‘Michael? Tommy! He’s awake.’

  ‘Mum?’ That croak wasn’t his voice. ‘What happened?’

  ‘Shh. Tommy, darling, tell the nurse he’s woken up. Your appendix burst. They thought you were going to …’ Her voice cracked, and then she recovered. ‘They sent a telegram. We’ve been sitting here for two days and nights. They’ve been very good to us,’ she added, as a nurse in full starch bustled up, her heels tapping briskly on the wooden floor.

  He knew enough of hospitals and had enough of his mind back to know that Dad must have been handing out ten-shilling notes, if his parents were staying past visiting hours. Or the nurses had expected him to die …

  The nurse felt his forehead. ‘Temperature’s eased,’ she said, sounding slightly surprised. ‘A good thing it happened at the station in Sydney, young man, with a doctor on hand too. If they hadn’t got you into the operating theatre when they did, we’d have lost you.’

  ‘How long?’ he whispered.

  ‘Have you been here? Four days and nights.’

  He shook his head. ‘How long till I can get back to my company?’

  The nurse looked at him with both sympathy and understanding. ‘A few months. Then light duties.’

  Months! Light duties. Standing guard. Or paperwork. I’m sorry, he said silently to the men he’d trained with, who might even now be waiting in Brisbane or Townsville for embarkation, who would fight for him, perhaps die for him. I’m sorry, Nancy. Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry …

  ‘No New Guinea for you,’ said the nurse. As she turned to go, he heard her mutter to his mother, ‘You’re lucky.’

  Chapter 53

  Flinty Mack

  Rock Farm

  Rocky Valley

  15 April 1945

  Matilda Thompson

  Drinkwater Station

  via Gibber’s Creek

  Dear Matilda,

  I am so glad to hear that Michael is recovering. It must have been a terrible shock for you. I am so glad he is safe and even gladder that he WILL be safe, and not sent overseas. Is that a terrible thing to say? But with so many of our young men gone, it is hard to see even one more leave.

  You may have heard about our bushfires. We are quite all right here, but the Whites’ main house was quite burnt out and all of their lower pasture. They’ve moved in with their son and daughter-in-law, and we’ve all been lending a hand gathering up what we can to help them, as they lost all their clothes of course.

  I thought our place would go too, and I had the silver and my latest manuscript and photo albums under the tank stand, ready to let it drip, and dressed in wool which was as hot as a Sunday oven but at least doesn’t burn. The flames had got up as far as the Rock when suddenly the wind changed, almost as fast as I can write about it, and blew the fire back over the already burnt country. The edges were smouldering, of course, but we had it entirely out in about two hours. We’re all on roster to patrol it, in case there are some burning embers in hollow logs, but the cool change has come in. No rain — I think it has forgotten how to rain. But there is still water in the creek up here and the corn crop is safe and (I’ll whisper it) if the fire hadn’t got the Whites’ old place, the white ants would have had it down next winter.

  I heard on the radio some professor saying the war might actually end this year. Do you think it really might? What does Tommy think? He is so much closer to People in the Know than we are up here. Or maybe People in the Know just think they are in the Know. If they really did KNOW, we might not have had this ghastly war at all.

  Now the latest book calls me and so does the washing up. We will see which one wins.

  Do give Michael my love and very best wishes, and Jim,

  and love to you and Tommy,

  Flinty

  SOMEWHERE IN THE PACIFIC, 17 APRIL 1945

  GILLIE O’GOLD

  Gillie O’Gold checked her mirror as the plane circled the island below them. Another touch of lipstick. Women across the world were staining their lips with beetroot juice now, or kept their worn-down lipstick stubs for special occasions, but not Gillie O’Gold. There were always lipsticks for Gillie O’Gold, no matter how severe the rationing. A dab of powder …

  Was that a wrinkle? She peered, then relaxed. But when you had been twenty-eight years old for two years — and planned to be twenty-
eight for at least six more, when she might reluctantly admit to being ‘… nearly thirty, darling. Isn’t that terrible?’ — you had to be careful. Even more careful than she’d ever been on the trapeze, back in her circus days, when she was Gertrude Olsen. If only Blue and Mah could see her now! And Fred. Fred had insisted that Blue was more beautiful than her, but you could never believe Fred, and anyway, he’d never seen her with peroxided hair, permed and perfect, the professional make-up that made a beautiful face one that men adored.

  She glanced out the window as the plane headed down to the runway. Another fringe of white sand, more palm trees, more Nissen huts and young men doing calisthenics, the Red Cross flag flying over the hospital, and in the middle between the two green-clad mountains a strip of grassed runway, with aircraft in rows at both ends, some as small as the one she was in, others larger, big enough for army jeeps and … Gillie shrugged mentally. And whatever other machinery was needed for the war.

  War was everywhere, even in the life of Gillie O’Gold. Half the movies in Hollywood had war themes now. The other half had resolutely nothing to do with any fighting — romantic goofball comedies, like her last. Jungle Girl, starring her and Rock Hudson, who was a sweetie. She’d played the orphaned daughter of a rubber planter, living in the jungle after her parents’ deaths, a sort of female Tarzan swinging through trees, her old trapeze skills still perfect, but with much better clothes than Tarzan ever wore, evening dresses artfully fitted and torn just enough to be revealing …

  But no more revealing than the costumes she’d worn as a child and young woman, back in Australia. Gillie frowned, then stopped. Frowning caused wrinkles.

  Vaguely she was aware that the country of her birth had been threatened with invasion. But it hadn’t happened, nor was it likely to. Mum sent food parcels to Australia from their home in California, big fruitcakes full of eggs and dried fruit, to everyone she’d known at the circus, telling everyone she knew in America that the USA needed to help Australia right up until the USA had finally joined the war after the Japanese attack on the US fleet at Pearl Harbor at the end of ’41.

  Gillie could sing ‘The Yanks are Coming’ and even ‘The White Cliffs of Dover’ with the best of them (where was Dover anyway?), but she had, in fact, little love for the land of her birth.

  Stuck in a Queensland mission as a half-Aboriginal kid — and if anyone knew that she’d be done for, which was why she kept her hair peroxide blonde. Sold to a circus — and a cruel one — when she was four years old; snuck away by an older trainee who then pretended to be her mother till finally she was ‘Mum’ so firmly that neither they nor Ginger ever questioned it again. Thank goodness Ginger had a desk job now, at a place called Los Alamos, well away from the fighting. The war wouldn’t touch him there.

  The plane seemed to hover on the hot air above the runway, then dropped and rolled almost to the edge of the cliff. Gillie put away her compact. When you had spent the first eighteen years of your life swinging from ropes and the high trapeze, landing on coral atolls or jungle landing strips didn’t faze you. And Mr Wirrenheim, her agent, said that doing a tour for the troops was just what her image needed. Plucky Gillie O’Gold, just like the characters she played.

  Except, of course, that the shows never went where there was real danger. War happened to others. Not to Gillie O’Gold.

  And the troops adored her. She peered out, and grinned. Men lined the runway now, a crowd with one voice, ‘Gillie! Gillie!’

  She stood, arranged her best smile and stepped out. The heat hit her like a slap. So did the noise.

  ‘Gillie! Gillie! Gillie! Over here!’

  And then her signature tune, played by a military band.

  ‘Tell me the sun can’t shine,

  Give me a star to climb,

  Hand me the moon to throw,

  Just don’t tell me “no”.’

  She waved, blew kisses, let the shouts wash over her, cleaning away once again the small scared child up on the high rope, the urchin with her hair cut like a boy’s, the teenager spooning stew from a tin plate as she sat on a bale of hay with Blue and Mah, grateful for a squished-fly biscuit and a hunk of damper.

  She was Gillie O’Gold now. And they loved her.

  An hour later she had admired the dozen aircraft painted with a picture of her smiling provocatively in a bathing suit; had held the hand of every man in the hospital, except the imprisoned Japanese ones in the guarded section at one end.

  At last she was alone in a hot Nissen hut, a generator pounding away outside to power the fan and the tiny fridge, where at least there was some ice for her gin.

  Gillie had work to do. First oiling her hair — peroxide made your hair brittle if you didn’t take good care of it. A face mask of grated coconut — good advice from the studio make-up artist: ‘They always have coconuts out in the Pacific.’

  Nails retouched, cold compresses on her eyes. One hour to lie down, empty her mind, then the work again: washing her hair, rolling it in curlers — at least it dried quickly in the heat. Face mask off and then make-up: foundation, a new blank face to work on. Cheeks outlined with rouge; eyebrows and lashes coloured; eyeshadow smoothed on; false eyelashes applied; and then she teased out her hair and slid a little — a very little — coconut oil on it to make it shine, then a dust of glitter.

  Now the cage, wire and old silk stockings, to keep her face from being smudged and her hair intact as she slipped into her clothes, cursing that the space available in the planes didn’t allow her to bring her dresser. She still drew the line at pressing her own frocks. The colonel’s batman was doing that …

  First the girdle, then the silk stockings, the heels, finally the gold lamé dress, a final puff of powder. No full-length mirror — the things she had to put up with — but actually she could do this in her sleep.

  A knock on the door. ‘Miss O’Gold?’

  ‘Come in!’

  It was the colonel, far too young to be a colonel, so she gave him the ninety-five-watt Gillie smile — a one-hundred-watt one could stop a man in his tracks and this bloke had to get her to the stage.

  ‘Flowers for the fair, Miss O’Gold.’

  ‘Flowers? For me?’ She took the slightly wilting orchids. Great. Now someone would have to hold them while she went on stage. Whatever stage they had knocked up in this place …

  The island smelt of heat, of sea, of men and sweat and tinned beef. It was cooler now, the sun sitting on the horizon. The breeze from the sea even had a hint of chill. The colonel led her between the Nissen huts, empty now, not a man to be seen. All of them, waiting for her.

  And there was the stage, rigged up from planks, a curtain strung across it on ropes stretched between two palm trees. The colonel led her to a set of stairs. She couldn’t see the audience but she could hear them, could taste their expectation thick as treacle, could hear their hearts beating. Tomorrow they might think of wives and sweethearts, but tonight, she thought, every one of you is mine.

  The warm-up act was on first, in front of the closed curtain. She could hear men’s voices singing falsetto; blokes in evening dress with coconuts for bosoms, she expected, hearing the laughter too. ‘Dance with me, romance with me …’

  The song finished. Applause, and a few whistles. Three men ducked behind the curtain in grass skirts and, yes, coconuts lolling in giant brassieres, blond wigs made from dried grass. One of them grinned at her. ‘We got them warmed up nicely for you.’

  She gave her ninety-seven-watt smile back, made her voice husky. ‘Honey, I’m hot enough to get them sizzling.’

  ‘Miss O’Gold.’ The young man blushed under his stage make-up. He didn’t even look twenty-one. Had lied about his age, she expected. ‘Could I … have your autograph, please?’ He pulled a piece of paper out of his brassiere. Gillie smiled as his fingers trembled.

  ‘I’ll do better than that.’ She took the paper, signed it and pressed a lipsticked kiss onto it, then leant over and kissed his cheek. ‘Dream of that, soldier b
oy,’ she whispered, then turned the wattage up to full.

  The curtain opened. She counted to ten and strode onto the stage.

  The cheers could have lifted her above the clouds. Did lift her. She lived for this. She ate cheers for breakfast and dinner too. Her veins flowed with love. She let the shouts wash up and over her, standing still in the spotlights of a dozen jeeps’ headlights, unmoving, letting them drink her in.

  Twenty seconds, standing in the glow of cheers. Fifty. She lifted her arms, and blew a kiss.

  The yells grew shriller, wolf whistles, hoots.

  She lifted her hand. And there was silence.

  That was the best of all. One flutter of her fingers and two thousand men went quiet. She smiled, and nodded to the colonel offstage to start the music on the gramophone.

  The bullets raked across the stage.

  Blood dripped down her evening dress. She had been shot, but felt no pain. Then she realised the blood was from the young man who had asked for her autograph moments earlier, whom she had kissed. He lay, his body torn, only a few feet from her. Had he rushed to shelter her as the first bullets flew?

  More firing. Instinctively she dropped and rolled across the stage, still a limber acrobat. She was behind a box backstage even as the shooting grew more intense.

  ‘It’s the Japs from the infirmary! They got the guard —’ The shout was cut off.

  She listened. Two machine guns, she thought, drawing from her extensive knowledge of firearms — she had seen every war movie ever made, and been in three of them. One at the back of the audience, the other at the far end of the stage. Screams. A moan that went on and on, and stopped. The colonel screaming, ‘Get Miss O’Gold!’ then his voice too was cut off. Men yelling, running for tents, huts, weapons.

  At last the bang, bang, bang of a rifle. The machine gun at the rear of what had been an audience ceased its chatter. The one at the other end of the stage snorted again, at the retreating men. No more rifle shots. Perhaps they could not fire without hitting their own men. Or her.