Andrew Wareham
A Place Called Home
BOOK TWO
Cannibal Country Trilogy
Digital edition published in 2015 by
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A Place Called Home
Copyright © 2015 by Andrew Wareham
All Rights Reserved
Contents:
Title Page
Copyright Page
Introduction
PNG Map
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
By the Same Author
Introduction
A Place Called Home: In Book Two the island is hit by a massive earthquake resulting in many deaths and widespread disarray. The 1920s and 1930s are challenging times with much social upheaval. Ned’s son George goes out into the world to prove himself a man in his own right. After prospering in business George truly grows up as the prospect of Japanese invasion looks increasingly likely after the war in the Pacific intensifies.
PNG Map
Editor’s Note: Andrew’s book was written, produced and edited in the UK where punctuation, spellings and word usage vary slightly from U.S. English.
A Place Called Home
Chapter One
Ned and Jutta slept badly, disturbed by a series of tremors, each sufficient to shake the bed and rattle the blinds, just enough to wake them. 'Baby makers', the Tolai called them, for men and women woke suddenly, disorientated in the dark, clutched each other for support and comfort while the ground heaved underneath them and solid earth became jelly.
They breakfasted early, outside on the verandah, George in his crib, never more than a pace away from them.
Jutta had checked the survival kit while Ned was in Rabaul and had stashed it in the doorway to the laundry, easily accessible even if the house tumbled. Doorways were always the strongest parts of any room, the frames normally standing even when the ceiling collapsed. The wooden crate contained a week's dry food - biscuit, corned beef, tea, milk powder, sugar, canned beans - George was still at breast. There was a basic medical kit as well, in case the aid post burned down - a stock of bandages, splints, burn salves and antiseptics, morphine tablets - cooking fires flared and spread too easily. Next to the kit was a wooden crate containing a dozen quart bottles of kaolin and morphine; sanitation would fail in the aftermath of a quake and drinking water would almost inevitably be polluted. As well, in their own wrapped packages, were water purifying tablets, soap, changes of underclothes, a newly added stock of light muslin nappies, two bottles of brandy, a dozen boxes of matches and a double-wrapped two pound block of twist tobacco. Outside, covered and racked in low, strongly made wooden frames were twenty of five-gallon water barrels, freshly filled.
Ned holstered his pistol and reloads at his belt and carried a shotgun, rounds of buckshot and ball in his pockets. Jutta had the three-oh-three at her side, knew how to load and fire it, was awake to the chance of need.
Eruptions and, particularly, earthquakes upset the mental balance of animals and human beings alike. The already unstable, panic and commit actions that later condemn them to disbelieving horror and remorse. Parents trample their own children in the wild rush to escape. Mild, peaceable men and women butcher their neighbours to steal a horse or boat or a drink of clean water. On a lesser scale of tragedy, trusted pet dogs savage their masters and the children they play with.
A few rise to heroism; a few sink to depravity; most stolidly get by and survive - but a wise man with a family carries a piece of insurance at his side.
The haze above the volcanoes across the bay thickened, became clearly visible as dust rose. In mid-morning everyone froze at a distant rumble, a sound that reminded Ned of an express train advancing.
"GURIA!"
Every adult bellowed as one.
Families galloped from the labour line. The house girls jumped out of the nearest window and hobbled into open space. Jutta came running out, George in her arms, and Ned joined her in the crowd in safety, thirty yards from the nearest tree or building, in the space kept clear as a refuge.
"Lookim!"
Fingers pointed to the hillside half a mile away as the noise grew. The palms were rippling as if a great wave were passing underneath them; a few toppled. Thirty seconds and the quake was on them, travelling at sixty miles an hour, a visible undulation in the ground.
The roar was immense, as if there was a great gale, but the air was still.
Some children wailed, a few adults swore, most held tight to each other, motionless.
Ned anxiously clasped his sphincter muscles; he had never known such pure terror before. A swift glance told him he was not alone. A child cried out in sudden dismay, stood straddle-legged, not as big and grown-up a boy as he thought he was.
A sudden hammer-blow under the soles of their feet.
They staggered, knees flexed. Elders, strength gone through advanced age, and the sick and very young fell, rolled, were beaten all over by the next wave and the third. Ned held, gripped Jutta and George tight to him.
Utter silence for a few seconds, then tears and moans, shrieks of bereavement from a mother and the families of two of the elderly. Men and women ran, milled about, moving to release the tension. There was a sudden uproar from the temporary pigpens where a fence had fallen and a young boar strayed to another's sows.
Ned started towards the house, to check for losses. A dozen voices warned him of aftershocks, some of which could be almost as big as the original.
There was another growling roar and fingers pointed out across the bay.
"Lookim!"
A black and grey mushroom of smoke, steam and dust rose above Matupit, lowest of the volcanoes, twelve or so miles off in a direct line but easily visible, and growing.
Smaller tremors continued at two and three minute intervals. The copra drier, patched up but never properly rebuilt after the fire, collapsed. The great black cloud climbed into the stratosphere, bent over in the high winds and crawled out across the bay, its boiling roar unending.
There was no telephone. Horses were unmanageable, could not be approached with a saddle. The sea was unthinkable. Nothing could be done for Rabaul and Ned stayed at Vunatobung - other people must deal with the rescues, he could not.
Two of the Dry Season water storage tanks fell during the afternoon, their wooden legs termite-ridden and unable to stand the unending vibration.
Just before an early dusk a fine ash began to fall, sifting gently, almost invisibly out of the threatening sky, irritating eyes and noses, itching and scratchy. Jutta draped cheesecloth over th
e crib, protected George from the worst. There was a tinge of sulphur on the low wind that picked up as night fell, tainting their gritty dinner.
Violent electrical activity, worse than the Doldrums, began at full dark, the charged particles of the mushroom cloud releasing ten thousand lightning strikes in forks and sheets that spread across the whole horizon. The ground still shook and the volcano grumbled and the people grew more and more tense.
Ned took Jutta and George into the house for the night. It was not entirely safe but it was better than sleeping on the ground. The Gazelle Peninsula on which Rabaul stands is free of the most dangerous snakes and spiders, but there are small scorpions, and this was a night when nothing would stay in its burrow. Better to be secure behind the fly wire screens.
Around ten o'clock there was a sudden outburst of screaming and shouting, the disturbance that Ned had feared - so much tension had to break.
He scrambled into his boots and outer clothes, handed Jutta the shotgun and told her to stay in cover, use it on anyone who came through the door with first giving warning. He ran out, revolver drawn, towards a bellowing, fighting knot by the lines. He kicked the ashes of a fire together and threw on dry palm fronds, shouted as the flames threw light on the struggle. A labourer on the edge, carrying an illicit bow, seeking targets by lightning flash, spun round and shot on reflex, unthinking, stopped in full view, horrified by his own action, dropped as Ned fired two bullets into his chest. The arrow disappeared high over Ned's head.
The shots stopped the fight; villagers stepped back from the labourers and a nearly naked young girl ran to her mother.
Five minutes questioning disclosed that four of the labourers, sharing the same hut, had been unable to sleep and had sneaked out to the bed place of a village girl who had been flirting with them that afternoon. A muffling hand had slipped as they stripped her, her scream had brought her family, the labourers' cries of pain had summoned theirs, a full-scale clan fight had broken out.
Two labourers were dead, one of them a would-be rapist, an axe still buried in his head. A dozen men on either side had been injured, the villagers, having come into the fight with weapons, less harmed. The girl was bruised but otherwise untouched, could be heard weeping as her mother beat into her the unwisdom of leading on strange men.
"I'll call the police at dawn. For tonight there will be no more of this nonsense!"
Two quick conferences ensued and then spokesmen came to him requesting no law. He had hoped this would happen but had had to demonstrate that it did not matter to him - he had nothing to fear, a dead man meant nothing as far as he was concerned.
"There has been a fight and there is one murdered man and one killed in his crime. Three men must be charged for attempted rape, twenty and more for using axes and clubs and spears and bows. You know the penalties - some must hang and all of the rest must be sent away to prison. I am sorry, but the business must be settled, and that means police."
The spokesmen returned to their clans, came up with proposals to offer the others, met together in no man's land to confer with each other. There was much shouting, cries of outrage and despair, an agreement melodramatically reached. Two hours and a deputation, villagers and labourers side by side, came to Ned.
"It's all square, boss, for us, that is. The death pays for the rape, so neither side will call for payback or compensation. The one you did is all right, too. He tried to get you first and we will all pay money to his mother's brothers back in his home place as compensation. No police?"
With a great show of head-shaking reluctance, and solely because of the circumstances of the night, Ned agreed, and volunteered to hand over some money as well, but as a gift, not because he had to pay for doing wrong.
They nodded - that was the right thing to do - the clan had lost a man, whatever the reason, needed to make up for his earnings.
Ned stood tall, as well as he could, addressed both sides.
"No more fighting! It is over!" He turned to the labourers, his employees, his responsibility. "You lot can keep your cocks inside your laplaps for the next few days. Leave these girls alone! Right?"
They muttered their assent.
The bodies were retrieved and laid to one side out of reach of the rats, to be quietly interred in the morning, out of sight and harm's way. The fires were kicked out and the two sides retired to their own sleeping places. The fight was over for this time. Next year, next decade, perhaps even next generation, their grievances could be hauled out and dusted off, incomplete business brought to an end in a proper battle.
"You are safe, Ned?"
"Unharmed." He slipped back into bed, rolled onto his side, not touching her. "I had to kill the labourer Walom. He fired an arrow at me."
"I heard the shots. You killed him for it - I am glad. If I had seen him, I would have done it for you."
She pulled him to her, held him to her body, gripped him tightly.
"Do you think I will care less for you because of a dead man? He deserved to die, and you are mine, my love!"
She cradled his head, held the baby to her, and smiled proudly in the dark, her family preserved.
Dawn hardly broke, the sky stayed almost black; the ash dribbled relentlessly, greying the landscape. The volcano's roar was duller, or perhaps they were more used to it, and the electrical activity was less frenetic, centred more tightly on the bay. The tremors were of lower intensity, less frequent. Ned called the labourers together, their chargehands to the front.
"Twelve men to clear and salvage the water tanks. Twenty to pull down the copra drier; eight to dig post-holes and set up a temporary roof by the side. Full pay for yesterday, although there was no work. It is dangerous to do anything today because of the gurias, the earth tremors, but we must set things to rights quickly. Next week the labourers will be needed in Rabaul, I expect, and we will have to do as the soldiers tell us. Because it is dangerous, I will pay double - two for one - for the next three days and any man who is hurt will stay on full pay until he can work again. I shall pay extra money if you will work on Sunday instead of going to church."
There was much discussion and immediate approval of the changes. Overtime, danger money, sick pay - none of these had been heard of before and nor had pay for unworked hours. If it had been too wet to work it had been too wet to earn - free time had been just that, literally.
Ned knew he had set a precedent, but it was only right - he had to be fair because he had to live with himself.
The men set to with a will, hoping that if everything was finished quickly on the plantation they might really get into town - something forbidden by the previous regime and discouraged by this.
The lightning stopped after forty-eight continuous hours and the ash fall ended overnight. In the morning Ned saddled up, his horse calm enough to permit it, and rode down to Kokopo in growing rain. As he passed down the road so the coconut palms, bent over under the load of dust, straightened and turned green again; trees that he had been sure were dead, firewood, showed perfectly healthy, even with almost all of the immature nuts still attached. Part of his brain, an insistent background heresy, rejoiced - for the volcanic outpouring must be rich in nitrates and sulphur, must benefit the soil, and all for free!
Kokopo was full of refugees: troops, German internees, Chinese and mixed-race rarely intermingled, the old administration offices serving as dormitories, first come, first served.
An army doctor supported by four orderlies sterilising and rotating his limited supply of hypodermics, had set up a tent in the main street and was furiously injecting all who came in range. A team of red-caps, tall, burly military police, was rounding up great mobs of the non-inoculated, driving them past regardless of protest, claims to religious immunity, indignant cries that they had been done last week, last month, last year and ignoring also oaths and alien imprecations. Epidemic disease was not to be permitted, by order.
Ned watched and approved until his bridle was firmly grasped and his horse's head turned in
the direction of the Red Cross.
"I'm very busy," he faltered.
"Tough shit, sir."
He bared an upper arm resignedly, sucked in a deep breath as a clean but much blunted needle was driven home.
He led his horse away, muttering. The horse whinnied.
"You can stop laughing, you bastard, or I'll take you to the vet and have you done next!"
"Mr Hawkins!"
"Good day, Colonel."
"I, ah, seem to have been wrong, Hawkins. There does seem to have been an eruption after all."
"Yes, you might put it that way, Colonel."
They looked out across the bay, stood together, Ned's head barely topping Holmes' shoulder.
Matupit displayed a new scar, the south-eastern lip of her crater gone, a tongue of lava and mud licking out over her island into the sea.
The water was flat, almost solid, caked with floating pumice.
Dust still occluded visibility, but there was an air of lorn disaster - all destroyed, slighted, ruined.
It was pointless to mock, to crow over the man's failure. Nothing that Ned said could be more cogent than the silent wasteland in front of them.
"Casualties, sir?"
"No firm count made, or possible, I suspect. Three men dead - soldiers struck by lightning. No Chinese - it seems they were warned and left beforehand, most of them. Natives, I don't know - we had no accurate head count to start with. Most of the coast was empty in front of us as we marched out, but the fisherfolk of Matupit and the Beehives must be lost."
"Where are the Beehives, for Christ's sake?"
The islands were missing; a careful search found their tops just protruding, maybe twenty feet of rock where there had been cliffs twenty fathoms tall.
"That seems to be the only great change, Hawkins. No tidal wave, so little flooding; lava flowed into the sea, away from the town. Dust, of course, feet of it. Trees all dead, I expect, but basically we came off lightly. Be back in business in a few weeks."
A Place Called Home (Cannibal Country Trilogy, Book 2) Page 1
