Fire in Summer

by JH Fletcher

  So she spoke, softly, while the darkness hugged her close. She summoned all her will to banish doubt. I shall be strong, she repeated. I. Shall. Be. Strong. In time, I shall believe.

  ‘I don’t feel guilty. It was the right thing to have happened. Because now I know. When Hedley comes back, I may not have love, but that won’t matter. I shall have a place, a sense of fulfilment. I shall have a life.’

  Jeth stirred. Asked, in a soup-thick voice, ‘You saying something?’

  ‘I said perhaps we should break this up and get to bed. Our own beds.’

  ‘Not yet …’

  He was awake now, ardour renewed in his voice, the dark gleam of his eyes. For a moment Kath was tempted, so much, but she would not permit it. His hand was on her breast; she removed it, firmly. ‘It’s getting on for six.’

  ‘Who cares?’

  ‘I don’t want my friend’s aunt to find us naked in her summerhouse.’

  ‘You said she was a romantic’

  She bared her knife. ‘This wasn’t romance. It was sex.’

  He was bewildered, willing to resent. ‘Sex? That wasn’t all it was to me. It was —’

  She bent and kissed his cheek, so gently. ‘It was fun. A really nice evening. I enjoyed it.’

  After he had gone, she tidied up the room as best she could, let herself quietly into the house, tiptoed up the stairs. She lay in bed and thought of what had happened.

  It was the music, she thought. I never thought it would have that effect on me. It stirred me up. That’s what it was.

  She was kidding herself, and knew it. Very well. Let’s try another version. She’d had a lech for an attractive man, had allowed him, knowingly, to sweep her off her feet. For company, for admiration. And for sex.

  That, too, was not the truth, or not all of it. But it would have to do.

  You’re a real beaut, she told herself. How are you going to live with yourself? Knew that, despite everything, it would not be difficult. This business — it had happened, it was finished, with no-one any the wiser. Apart from Beth, who might suspect, but would say nothing. Blame it on the war, like everything else. The important thing was that it was over.

  Incipient hysteria, her determination to deny the truth, loomed most menacingly. It is finished. Again and again she told herself. Finished.

  Six weeks later she knew different. Went, again, to see Beth, who had been careful not to ask too many questions, but who now was going to have her unasked questions answered.

  Beth took one look at her, read something in her face.

  ‘What is it?’

  Kath tried to smile, made a pretty poor job of it. ‘I’m in trouble.’

  13

  HEDLEY

  1944

  Corporal Nakajima said, ‘All men go Singapore.’

  Two days later, amid a cacophony of demented orders and the repeated thud of batons upon bodies that were more bone than flesh, Hedley and the rest were once again piled into cattle trucks. The doors rumbled shut. The locomotive whistled, the wheels bit. Wearily they began the long journey south. Thailand was gone.

  Or perhaps not. During the five vile days he remained incarcerated within the truck, Hedley bore with him memories: the vulture-haunted camp swarming with mosquitoes, the graves of the countless dead, the screaming, sadistic brutality that he knew he would never forgive. Neither in this life nor the next; never while understanding and feeling remained, while the pulse of nerves and blood echoed all they had seen and endured. The wheels themselves said it, rhythmic and unceasing. Never. Never. Never.

  One further memory, towering and malevolent, which he would permit himself neither to acknowledge nor consciously to remember. It was obliterated, as love and other weaknesses were obliterated. Only resolution and an abiding anger remained.

  At last, watching through the gaps in the truck’s sides, they saw the blue and golden glint of water. The train crossed the Causeway. They were back in Singapore.

  Before they had left the camp, they had known all there was to know about the progress of the war. The secret radios, the whispers of the prisoners, exalted, yet now, with the re-birth of hope, even more apprehensive of discovery. The air itself proclaimed the news. The Allies were winning. It ran like an electric current through the compounds. On work parties, axe and chungkol beat out its rhythm. Even as they were herded into the cattle trucks, they thought of nothing else, the unexpected decision to move them seeming to confirm it. The Allies were winning; soon the war would be over. Now they were back in Singapore, one question remained.

  ‘What’s going to happen to us now?’

  That was soon answered. The train took them directly to the docks. They climbed out onto a concrete wharf where a freighter, rusty and worn-out, was moored. Its name was written in both Japanese characters and in English. Rokyu Maru.

  On top of all the torments of their captivity, one of the minor irritations experienced by all prisoners was never knowing what day it was, where on the earth’s surface they were. Always Hedley made it his business to find out, as though only by knowing when and where he was could he be sure that he still existed.

  He recognised one of the guards. He had been better than most; on occasions had even smiled. Hedley beckoned him over.

  The man came close. ‘What you want?’

  ‘What’s the date?’

  The guard didn’t understand.

  ‘The day. What day of the month is it?’

  The guard’s face cleared. ‘6 September,’ he said happily. ‘6 September 1944.’

  With bitter satisfaction Hedley repeated it, and the vessel’s name, beneath his breath. 6 September 1944. Singapore docks. Rokyu Maru. Over and over he said it. I am here. I am alive. Not that it made any odds.

  They were herded up the gangplank and into holds that dripped rusty water on their heads, that breathed decay and salt, a promise of yet more suffering. After what seemed hours, they felt and heard the engines as Rokyu Maru put to sea.

  Five in the morning, a week later. They were asleep, or as close to sleep as they could get, the hold so packed with men that it was barely possible to lie down at all. It was utterly dark. Hedley did not see the darkness. He saw neither the bulkheads nor the thousands of feet of salt water that began only an inch or two away on the other side of a steel hull so worn by rust that he imagined he could feel it flex with every wave. Instead he returned to his saving ritual: the contemplation of paddocks heavy with grain, sunlit uplands, the sight and texture of home. Every day he revisited the same images, clung to them even in his sleep, hoping that they would bring him to safety at last. The images for which he had paid so terrible a price.

  The air about him was full of the breathing of men.

  A crash shattered the night. The vessel surged in the water, then stopped as though it had run into a wall. Everywhere men were screaming, scrambling to their feet, the smell and texture of panic spreading like fire in the darkness. Water, flooding beneath his feet. It flowed faster until all at once it was over his ankles and climbing. Panic grew.

  A chorus of screams as terror ignited in the hold’s dank darkness. ‘What the hell was that?’ One of the men near him bawled the question, his voice shrill with barely-controlled terror.

  ‘Torpedo.’

  Hedley was standing by the metal staircase leading to the hatch overhead. Groping, stumbling, fighting, he hauled himself clear of the rip-tide of spreading panic. Others followed. At the head of a frenzied mob, he reached for the hatch while below, out of the stygian dark, above the screams of trapped prisoners, came the deadly voice of rushing water.

  He grabbed the hatch and hauled on it. It slid back; the cool night air came flooding in. Amid a stampede of frantic men he flung himself up the last few steps and onto the deck.

  Now there was light, guttering, blood-flushed. Not far off, two ships burned amid a frenzy of red and yellow flame, of massive clouds of smoke. The clamour of a hundred voices splintered the night. The noise was as terrible as the
flames: cries from the flooding hold; screams, distant but excruciating, from the burning vessels; a clatter of boots and yelled commands as guards and crew ran along the deck.

  For the first time, Hedley realised that the ship was canted steeply to one side. Panic, momentarily extinguished after the escape from the hold, returned, devouring the air like acid. Hedley felt outraged disbelief that, after everything they had undergone, they were now about to be drowned by one of their own submarines.

  There were boats hanging in the davits. Hedley saw some of the men trying to clamber into them, and thought: they’ll never launch them in time. And if they do, they’ll take the crew, not the prisoners.

  The deck lurched beneath him. A metallic clang, reverberant and ominous, signalled something breaking loose in the bowels of the stricken ship. ‘Looks like we’ll be swimming.’ Some bloke alongside him, voice calm.

  Hedley stared down at the greedy blackness of the sea. ‘I’m not the world’s greatest swimmer.’

  ‘Stay here and you’ll be sucked down by the ship.’

  Face barely visible in the flame-shot darkness, the man clambered over the rail, stood poised for an instant, stepped forward and was gone.

  Again Hedley looked at the sea. Survival seemed impossible. Yet, as the bloke had said, to stay was death. The saving image returned: the stubble harsh beneath his boots, the clatter of the header slashing its way through the ripe wheat. He scrambled over the rail. In the tropical darkness, an Australian sun laid its hot weight upon him. He jumped.

  He sank deep, surfaced spluttering. The salt excoriated him; his mouth and groin, raw with pellagra, caught fire.

  He stared over his shoulder. He could hear screams, the rush of air as hatches blew. Towering above him, the sinking vessel sagged amid a whistle of escaping steam. If it capsized, it would come down on top of him.

  He turned, swimming frantically to put distance between himself and the ship. Minutes passed. The pounding of his heart deadened all other sound. The salt bitterness of the waves, the darkness, consumed him. He found a floating spar, grabbed it, trying to catch his breath. The sun was still far below the horizon, yet there was a first, faint greyness. Slowly it strengthened. The waves surged around and over him. In the first breathing of light, he saw the seas dotted with heads. One of the escorts was circling, hunting the submarine that had attacked the convoy.

  Hedley watched it pick up speed, the flare of white foam deepening at the bow. He saw it plough straight through a mass of swimmers. He heard the distant threnody of screams, obliterated by the concussion of depth charges. The shock wave smote him, axe-like. He was crushed, spinning, surging, clutching between his legs to check that everything was still there. It was; he felt a moment’s relief before pain obliterated all.

  The light strengthened. Without ceremony, Rokyu Maru lifted its stern and slid bow-first beneath the water. There was a swirling tug at his legs, some barrels and pieces of wood came up amid a burst of bubbles, and it was over.

  There was a man, low in the water, unmoving.

  ‘Over here…’ Hedley’s salt-blistered voice croaked. The man did not move. He paddled the spar closer, afraid to let go in case he lost it. He grabbed the man’s shoulder, turning him.

  ‘Here you go —’

  Stopped.

  Raw, naked eye sockets. Empty circles of blue bone stared from a face flayed beef-red by flame. From this thing that had been a man, moaning in constant dirge, came the reek of fuel oil. He must have been on one of the ships that he had seen blazing in the night.

  ‘Christ! Dear God …’

  Would have wept, but long ago war had dried his tears. He looked closer, saw what flame had until now obliterated. The features. The rags of what had been a uniform.

  A Jap.

  He was done for, finished. Even if he wasn’t … Let him get on with it. He let the man go. Dug his hands into the sea. Paddled away, taking with him the spirit of war, of vengeance, apocalyptic and terrible. One thing more, on top of all else.

  Later that day he was picked up by a Japanese ship and taken to Japan. The stillness of ultimate horror, the things that he had seen and done, that were now an indelible part of his being, went with him.

  14

  KATH

  1944–1945

  Beth stared, round-eyed. ‘What you going to do?’

  ‘Get rid of it. I suppose.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Don’t know.’

  Beth shook her head dubiously. ‘I can’t see our local blokes doing anything like that.’

  ‘I could go to Adelaide,’ Kath suggested. ‘Ask around.’

  ‘Ask who? You can go to jail for something like that.’

  Exasperation. ‘I can’t just have it, can I? There’s got to be a way.’

  Neither of them could think what it might be.

  Kath stared at her friend. ‘You weren’t as surprised as I thought you’d be. Did you guess?’

  ‘Let’s say I thought it might be possible.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘That night in Adelaide. It was almost six when you came in. I didn’t think you’d spent the time walking in the park. How did you manage it, anyway? Like where, I mean?’

  ‘In Aunt Clarrie’s summerhouse.’

  ‘You never!’

  ‘It would have been a bit cold in the park.’

  Although, at the time, she would not have minded. Now she almost wished they had done it there; there seemed something wonderfully abandoned about making love in an Adelaide park, among the disciplined flowerbeds, under the skeletal branches of trees, the glittering stars.

  Beth laughed. ‘I’ll never see that old summerhouse again without remembering.’

  ‘Aren’t you shocked?’

  ‘Why should I be? He seemed a nice bloke. And you told me you were keen on him.’

  ‘What about Hedley?’

  ‘What about him? Rushing off right after the wedding, getting himself grabbed by the Japs … You supposed to give up your life, too?’

  ‘So long as he doesn’t find out.’ Which brought them back to the original problem.

  ‘You don’t see Jeth any more?’

  Kath smiled, hugging her secret. Not even Beth would know the truth. ‘Got what he came for, didn’t he?’

  Beth was furious. ‘Men are bastards! The whole lot of them seem to think we’re on this earth just for their benefit.’

  ‘Jeth knew what I was there for, right enough.’ She felt a twinge at saying it, so unjustly, but hoped that, if she went on repeating it long enough, she might in time come to believe it.

  Very daring with her friend, Beth asked, ‘What was it like?’

  ‘Okay.’ Judiciously, as though she had a dozen experiences to compare.

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘I’ll think of something.’

  And went home, cycling furiously, swerving around the potholes. Perhaps, if I came off … Shook her head. Too chancy. Her luck, she’d end up with a couple of grazed knees and nothing else. All the same, she couldn’t just let things take their course.

  Back home, she put her bicycle in the shed, went indoors.

  ‘Been to town?’ Mrs Schulz wondered.

  ‘To see Beth.’

  ‘That’s nice …’

  Her mother would be devastated if she knew. Bad enough if Kath had been single, but married, and with her husband a prisoner …

  A scarlet woman. There were some who’d brand her, literally, given the chance. Yet those same blokes wouldn’t turn a hair if Hedley had been up to something while he was away. Not that there was much chance of that, poor beggar.

  Maybe that was why she didn’t feel guilty. It had happened, it was over, no-one was any the worse. Provided she got rid of the kid. She went into her bedroom, closed the door behind her. As she had before Walter was born, she undressed slowly. She stood naked in front of the mirror and looked at herself, trying to see what Hedley had seen, what Jethrow Douglas had seen.

 
; That first night, with Hedley, she had barely looked at him at all, her attention focused on her loins yielding painfully to the man’s thrust. The time with Jeth had been different. She had observed the looseness of his mouth as he had bent over her, the rapt eyes eating her up, staring in wonder.

  Just a woman, she thought now. White body, sloping shoulders, sun-tanned arms. Breasts still good; Walter hadn’t managed to muck them up although he’d tried, the little bugger. Tummy still flat. Not for long, though. Things were happening under that white skin. She did not regret what had happened, but sure as hell didn’t fancy the consequences.

  She imagined a darning needle, long and sharp. You read about it. Just a prick, to let the air in … But could she really bring herself to do it?

  She squatted down, opened herself with her fingertips. She could feel but not see. A mirror on the floor might help, but even then she doubted she’d see much. She imagined herself holding the needle. It wasn’t supposed to be difficult; one thrust, that was all. But what if she stuck it in the wrong place? What if she started bleeding and couldn’t stop?

  She didn’t want the baby, but would have it a hundred times before she risked killing herself.

  Slowly she stood up, got dressed again. No. She’d have to think of something else.

  ‘I’ve got another aunt,’ Beth said.

  Beth and her aunts. One had helped create the problem; now another might help resolve it. Aunt Maudie lived down the south-east, in a little town on the edge of the sea.

  ‘Does she know a doctor?’

  Nothing like that. What Aunt Maudie might do was give Kath a place to stay until she’d had the baby. They’d arrange for its adoption — no shortage of people wanting a kid — and Kath could come home again, no-one the wiser.

  Kath didn’t think much of the idea. ‘So I just say to my folks: I’m off for six months, see you later?’