by JH Fletcher
‘They’ll have to know. But at least they’ll be the only ones.’ That was certainly true; her parents would cut their throats before they leaked a tale like that.
Telling them was going to be fun. ‘Maybe you’d better check with your aunt first,’ she said. ‘Make sure it’s all right.’
‘I’ll drop her a note. But there won’t be any problem.’
Nor was there. Kath, facing the prospect of telling her parents, had almost hoped she’d say no, although putting things off was hardly going to help.
Beth showed her the letter. Your friend will be more than welcome. We’ll be company for each other. That was all. No recriminations, no sense of an obligation for which settlement would be required later. It seemed too easy. Kath was suspicious.
‘She knows what we’re on about?’
‘That you’re having a baby? Of course.’
‘And I’m married. You told her that?’
‘I told her everything.’
‘This aunt of yours must be a very remarkable woman.’
‘She is.’
First, though, Kath had to face her parents.
Her father, ashen with rage — with more than rage, with embarrassment and distaste. This business of women’s bodies … He was profoundly mortified at being dragged into something he did not want to think about, never mind discuss. Babies were women’s business. Even in wedlock it was bad enough. Outside it …
‘We never had a bastard in the family before.’
‘You’re doing a fair job yourself,’ Kath told him.
Anger boiled. ‘What?’ He was barely coherent. That a daughter of his should talk back to him, now of all times … ‘You’re not too old for a belting.’
But wouldn’t get it, they all knew that. You couldn’t belt a pregnant woman. It made him madder than ever, but there was no help for it. He turned on his wife, as though it were her fault. ‘Make what arrangements you like. I don’t want to know anything about it.’
And stormed off. They were shearing, over at the shed. The shearers had better watch out, that was all.
Her mother, by contrast, was silent. Embarrassed, too, but aware that practical considerations must come first. ‘We’ll say you were sick of twiddling your thumbs, managed to get a job down there. Just for a few months.’
‘Will people believe it?’
Thora Schulz wondered about a daughter who could ask such a question. ‘Of course they won’t believe it. Everyone saw you with that bloke. I saw you myself, thought you had more sense. Well, there’s no point talking about it. No-one will be able to prove anything, that’s what matters.’
‘I wouldn’t want Hedley to hear about it, that’s all. It’s not his fault.’ Although there might be two opinions about that.
‘Should have thought about that before you climbed into bed with that Yank.’ Thora was not in the comfort business.
There were limits to what Kath would accept, too. ‘It wasn’t a bed. It was a sofa.’
Thora turned on her. ‘Don’t be smart with me, my girl. You’ve disgraced the lot of us. Be thankful there’s someone willing to help, that’s all.’
Kath almost told her mother about the darning needle. Decided not to push her luck. ‘I’ll need some money,’ she said.
Aunt Maudie met the train.
Kath was wound up, apprehensive of what this strange old lady might be like. She’d better not think she can push me around, that’s all.
Maudie said, ‘Fancy a cup of tea?’
Nerves made Kath sullen. ‘Whatever …’
‘A friend of mine’s got a shop. There might be scones, if we’re lucky.’
Kath said nothing. Maudie didn’t seem to notice. She was tall, not as old as Kath had expected, about sixty, maybe. She looked a bit of a witch, needle nose and dark eyes. Beth had told Kath how in her youth Maudie had run off to South America with a bloke. Looking at her, it seemed incredible.
Over the tea table — the friend had indeed come up with scones, even some home-made jam — Kath studied her surreptitiously, once more trying to see in the person facing her the young woman who had done such an astonishing thing. Could see no hint, although the face was certainly lively, the dark eyes bright.
‘Your husband’s a prisoner of war, Beth tells me?’
Here it comes, Kath thought. ‘Right.’ Defensive, watchful.
‘You must be very lonely.’
Kath’s smile was like a challenge. ‘Not lonely enough, some would say.’
‘You needn’t worry about that. People say all sorts of things.’ She smiled cheerfully, which made Kath think more kindly of her.
‘Why are you willing to help me?’ she asked.
Maudie sipped her tea, patted her mouth fastidiously. ‘So many things in life aren’t fair. This terrible war … Someone like you, so young, having to waste years of your life waiting for someone who may never come back at all. People are so quick to judge, when it’s a woman; men get treated much more leniently than we do. Why should you suffer? You didn’t cause the war. Beth says your husband volunteered. You didn’t make him, did you?’ Another sip of tea, a mouthful of jam-smeared scone. ‘I’ve never been sure about this business of rushing off to fight. Your husband put country before family. I’m not saying he was wrong but, when people decide to do things like that, they have to accept the consequences.’
‘Like this mess, you mean?’
‘Bringing a child into the world, knowing there’s someone will love and care for it when the time comes, isn’t a mess. You knew the risks and did it anyway. Consequences flowed from that, too, and here you are. Nothing wrong with that.’
Kath couldn’t help it — she grinned, warming to this new lady in her life. ‘You should have heard my Dad …’
‘If you don’t want the consequences, don’t do the deed.’ Maudie wiped her lips for the last time. She smiled. ‘Wouldn’t hear about it, would you? Old fool telling a young woman like you the facts of life … Not sex, I mean, the real facts.’ She stood, brushing away crumbs. ‘Let’s get you home. You’re bound to be tired, after that journey.’
Now it was much easier to see Maudie as the young woman who had taken a lover and run away with him to South America.
Months passed. Every day Kath walked beside the sea, in sun and heat, rain and wind. Her body grew cumbersome, yet her mind became clearer with each day. She watched the waves breaking on the shore, the migrant birds in dense flocks upon the waterway they called the Coorong, and thought how the birds, too, were strangers come temporarily to rest in this place so far from home.
She had grown close to Maudie, yet in some ways knew her not at all. Beth’s aunt was always talking about how life should be lived, but said nothing of herself.
Only once did she mention the past. She had accompanied Kath on her afternoon walk. They reached a line of sand dunes, paused where a gap revealed the sparkling reaches of the sea. A keen wind blew; along the beach breakers roared, collapsing in a welter of spray. Far out, white horses gashed the iodine waves.
‘We get whales here, sometimes,’ Maudie said. ‘In spring.’
‘I feel pretty much like a whale myself,’ said Kath.
‘Don’t complain. You don’t know how I envy you.’
They continued to walk, silent for a while. Out of nowhere, Maudie said, ‘I had a friend once. We had such adventures. People said I was a fool to go off with him. Of course I went. I’d have gone to the moon, if he’d asked me. I loved him.’
Again silence, and the breaking of the waves. ‘You never had kids of your own?’
‘He tried to smuggle arms into Spain, once. Long before I knew him, while he was still living in Europe. He got caught, beaten very badly. Kicked, too. Kicked there. He always told me that was why he couldn’t have children. Heaven knows I never did anything to prevent them.’
Later, as they turned for home, Maudie said, ‘He was a madman. But I loved him. I surely did.’
‘What happened to him?’
Maudie glanced at her, bird-bright, then looked away. ‘He died.’
Kath said nothing, waiting for her to continue, but she did not. Neither then nor later did she refer again to the madman whom she had loved, and who had died.
Later, alone once more, Kath’s mind went over what Maudie had told her. She’s had her great adventure, she thought. She ran away with a madman. In my way I also ran away, which is why I am here now. In the end, Maudie came back. I suppose I shall do the same, go back to the life that was laid out for me before I was born. In some ways she and I are very much alike. She says nothing of her past, has not told me even the bare bones of it; she hugs her secrets tight. I, too, shall say little, yet there is one thing I shall have to do.
The trunk of a fallen tree lay in the grass beside the path. She sat on it, feeling the heaviness of her body, watching the blue and silver sea.
If I could, I would protect Hedley from all this, but it is impossible. He is bound to hear from someone. In which case it should be from me. For my sake, not his. The way the world is, no woman can hope to exercise control, openly, over her man. She has to find another way. If I tell him he may walk away from me, in which case I’ll be free to remake my life. Or he may accept. I think that’s what he’ll do, because of the land. He’ll be angry, he’ll chuck it up at me again and again, but that won’t matter. If he accepts the situation, he’ll have surrendered.
Kath remembered how, after she had sent Jeth away, she had sat alone in the summerhouse, feeling the dark surge of power within her. It had been easier than she would have dreamt, dismissing the man who until the final seconds of their time together had believed himself master both of the situation and of her.
She could see so clearly his expression — part anger, part confusion — as he had stormed off into the night. It still gave her pain, but also a heady sense of triumph at the realisation of powers that until then she had not known she possessed.
Now, sitting by the sea, hearing the thunderous boom of breakers along the shore, she shook herself, dismissing such thoughts. For better or worse, that part of her life — the emotions, the dreams — was over. She had a vision of her life as it would become. She would have this baby that she would never permit to be a child to her. She would return home, complete with the story of why she had gone away, the lie that no-one would believe. She would resume her life. Later, after the war was over, Hedley would come home from the army. When the time was right, she would tell him what had happened. He would make trouble but, in the end, would go along with what could not be changed. She would have him, and her life.
She would dominate by docility. She would obey her husband, always, and in so doing would live the life that she herself had created, that she herself would control. He would not be aware of it. No-one would be aware of it — only herself, and that would be enough. Kath patted her belly, smiling.
‘Baby,’ she said, ‘I reckon you’ve done me a favour.’
And waddled heavily home. Not long now. When it was over she would go home, lavish all her love on Walter, who was the one person she had missed, take up her life again.
The war news was all good now. In a letter her mother had told her that the Rangers had left. Rumour was they were heading for some place called Okinawa, but of course no-one knew for sure.
Kath hoped Jeth got through all right. What had happened … They would never see each other again, but he would be a part of her forever.
She puffed her way along the path. She’d walked far enough, perhaps too far. She had an idea that tomorrow, or perhaps the next day, she would be busy with something other than walking. Never mind; she was nearly there now. She could see Aunt Maudie’s house ahead of her, and the future.
Both, she decided, were looking good.
15
HEDLEY
1945
Once off the ship, the prisoners were formed up. Clad in underpants — the only clothes that most of them still had — they were paraded through the city.
‘Where are we?’
‘Who knows?’
Everywhere were signs in Japanese script, people staring. ‘They must think we’re a sight for sore eyes, eh?’
For the first time Hedley didn’t care where they were. Somewhere in Japan — that was close enough. After the trauma of the sinking ship, when death had seemed to stretch out its hand towards him, he had become part of a dream through which he floated, unthinking, focusing his mind always on the vision of home that had sustained him for so long. Where he was, even who he was, mattered no longer.
The locals watched as though the circus had come to town. There was shame in being almost naked in this city of grey buildings, before the impassive, watching eyes. Life had become so precarious that one or two of the prisoners might even die of it, but not Hedley. Who gave a shit what the Japs thought?
They spent the night in a hall. They were given food: rice, a bit of fish, what looked like grasshoppers. No-one cared what it was, wolfed it down without looking.
Next day they were put on trains and taken north, arriving eventually at a camp surrounded by a twenty-foot-high wooden wall. It was cold, minus thirty degrees at night. The Japanese clothing they had been issued barely covered them. There were no beds; they slept on bare boards, with a kapok quilt.
Minus thirty degrees. ‘Bit of a change from Thailand …’
People died of the cold, too. Those who survived were given the job of stacking thousands upon thousands of tree trunks, forty feet long and three feet in diameter, held together by inch-thick wire cables. The logs floated in a kind of dock and were hoisted out and stacked by crane.
It grew even colder, then — at last — warmer again. There were prisoners from all over. Most of those from Thailand, who by some miracle had survived the torments of the railway, were dead. Hedley was contemptuous of the failure of will that killed them after so long, when the war — surely? — was almost over. He watched and remembered, conscious always of those things that he would not permit himself to acknowledge; thought, I have been to the other side of hell and come back to talk about it. They are not going to get rid of me now.
One day the handful of survivors was paraded. From a radio rigged up by the wall, a colourless, high-pitched voice spoke in Japanese, incomprehensibly. The guards stood stiffly to attention while tears ran down their faces. Afterwards, no-one any the wiser, the prisoners were marched back to the barracks.
‘What the hell was all that about?’
It was three days before they discovered that the war was over.
No joy, no cheering; they were too exhausted for that. There was even apprehension that, after so long, they would once again have to start thinking for themselves. It was almost too much to bear. They stared at each other, at the Japanese, and wondered what would happen next.
Someone said as much. ‘What now?’
‘We go home,’ Hedley said. Unlike the rest, he knew at once. In his eyes, his voice, the image of the land beckoned as bright as a beacon across the miles, the wasted years. ‘What else? We’re going home.’
He saw again Captain Okamura’s blandly-smiling face, remembered the wave of terror and despair that had filled him, the appalling sense of panic that life, after so much anguish, might yet be lost. And, in the end, and for a price, was not. Resolutely, for the thousandth time, he put the memory away. In time, he told himself, he would forget. The quiet and insistent voice would die. He would go home. To his land, which would make him whole again.
16
KATH
1945
Kath had never thought it would be so hard. One heard about it all the time. Or thought one did. A passing fling, nothing serious, a slip-up, whoops, hide the evidence, and that was the end of it.
Adoption was a wonderful thing. People spoke as though it were easy, like getting rid of an unwanted parcel. Sign the adoption papers and that was an end of it. Good for the mother, the adoptive parents and, most of all, for the baby. For we mustn’t forget t
he baby — who must at all costs be forgotten, as the man who had been a partner in creating the problem must be forgotten. And was not.
The child arrived on schedule. It was an easy birth, not at all like the performance she’d had with Walter. If anything could have let Kath forget she’d had it at all, it was the way her body expelled it almost effortlessly into the light. It was there; it was gone. Only a lingering soreness remained.
Emptiness was a chasm into which the world fell. She practised her brave face, but it was no good. She wept in Aunt Maudie’s arms. ‘I never knew it would be like this …’
Despair turned to hatred of everyone and everything. Of herself, most of all.
‘I must disgust you.’
‘Don’t be foolish.’ Aunt Maudie’s sharpness was like a slap in the face, probably the best medicine Kath could have had.
Kath’s emotions were not so easily harnessed. ‘I remember you saying you’d have given anything to have a baby yourself. I’ve had one and chucked it in the bin. Of course I must disgust you. How can you feel anything else?’
It was a day of still skies and sunshine in the middle of winter, like finding a gold coin in a mud puddle, but Kath — clenched eyes, clenched fists — rejected even the weather’s consolation. Maudie’s voice came calmly out of the darkness, as still and golden as the day. ‘You have a husband. A little boy. A family. You had no choice.’
‘It shouldn’t have happened at all.’
‘But it did. And you had to deal with the consequences. Which you have done. It is better — for your sake, for everyone’s sake.’
She was right, which should have helped, but did not. It will pass, Kath told herself. As for Jeth …
The papers talked of a huge battle for an island called Okinawa, where rumour said the 19th Ranger Battalion had gone. The Japanese were expected to fight to the death. Already casualties were numbered in thousands; in tens of thousands, perhaps. She heard Jeth’s voice telling her about Gainsborough, South Carolina, of his plans to be an architect after the war. What had a few acres of coral and palm trees to do with him? With any of them?
