Fireshadow

by Anthony Eaton

  Footsteps outside and the door slammed open, another draught of cold wind howling briefly through the warm room.

  ‘Erich, I thought I would find you here.’ Stutt smiled. ‘Doctor, Alice.’ The commander offered a polite bow of acknowledgement to both the Australians, as Erich jumped to his feet.

  ‘Good morning, sir.’

  ‘I have some news.’ Stutt was clearly excited. He spoke in German. ‘It’s tomorrow. They’ve found extra berths on a transport out of Fremantle three days from now, one travelling to Europe to pick up the last of the Australian troops. They’re clearing the rest of us.’

  ‘Us?’

  ‘All the remaining Germans and most of the Italians.’

  ‘Tomorrow?’

  ‘Ja. Wake-up call will be early, 0430, to give us enough time to get up to the city and be processed before leaving.’ Stutt paused, noticing the sudden droop in the young man’s shoulders. His voice softened. ‘This is going to be difficult, but there is no other choice, you know that, Erich.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Good then. You will need to pack today. Leave any German military emblems you might have – badges or whatever. They are confiscating them all at the port.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Stutt nodded a goodbye and left, clearly in a hurry to inform the others. Erich slumped into a chair.

  ‘That was it, wasn’t it?’ Alice started towards him then stopped, fear in her face.

  ‘Ja. It was.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Tomorrow.’ He looked up at her and her lip trembled. ‘Early in the morning.’

  The doctor’s chair scraped the timber floorboards as he hauled himself slowly to his feet.

  ‘So soon.’ He hesitated, about to speak further, but then clearly changed his mind. ‘I will leave you two alone for a while, I think. I have paperwork to do in my hut, in any case.’

  Reaching into the cupboard behind his desk, he retrieved a small bundle and made his slow way towards the door, stopping only briefly by the chair where Erich still sat slumped.

  ‘Erich.’

  ‘Yes, Doctor?’

  ‘You will need to be brave, for both of you.’

  ‘Ja. Thank you, sir. Will I see you before I go?’

  ‘I wouldn’t allow it otherwise. I will be back later this afternoon.’

  As soon as the door closed behind the old man, Alice crossed silently to the pot-belly stove and stoked it up. It radiated hot warmth into the dimly lit building. Then, crossing to the door, she locked it. It clicked faintly in the silence.

  ‘Alice . . .’

  ‘Shhh.’ There was a strange look in the girl’s eyes as she took Erich’s hand and pulled him from the chair. One he’d never seen before. ‘Don’t speak. Not yet. We’ll talk later.’

  Erich let her lead him to the nearest cot.

  In the late afternoon gloom the dim glow from the stove cast tiny, leaping red shadows onto the floor. On the bed the two lay entwined. After the initial hesitant awkwardness, both had fallen to each other with a desperate, frightened hunger. Erich had heard the other men talk about these things, had heard more than his share of bawdy army tales, but the long hours of the afternoon with Alice, with only the rain pounding on the tin roof, had been nothing like that. Nothing like he’d expected.

  And afterwards, when they’d lain together, naked, quiet and still, and she’d finished crying, he’d stroked her hair and whispered to her that he would be returning and that it would be all right, until she’d fallen into a gentle sleep. Then Erich had lain there, treasuring the warm softness of her body pressed sleeping against his own and had watched the fireshadow leaping on the timber floorboards, constrained behind the iron bars of the stove. And he’d felt a slight tingle in the fading scar tissue on his face and arms and he trembled at the thought of what might or might not be waiting for him in Germany.

  ‘Are you awake?’

  ‘Hmmm.’ She stirred against him and her eyes opened. For a moment Erich allowed himself to swim in the two dark pools of them. Then she was sitting up and shaking her head.

  ‘I fell asleep!’

  ‘You did.’

  ‘Erich, I’m so sorry.’

  ‘No.’ He kissed her. ‘No. You are beautiful when you sleep. I am glad I was able to share it.’

  ‘But it’s your . . . our last day.’

  ‘Only for a little while. A few months.’

  Without further conversation the two climbed, albeit reluc-tantly, from the bed, both suddenly aware of their nakedness. They turned from each other and fumbled quickly at their clothes.

  ‘Alice, are you all right?’

  She smiled at him again, a kind of sad happiness behind the expression.

  ‘I’m very fine.’

  ‘Good. I will need to go and pack.’

  ‘I know. I should see to grandfather.’

  ‘Ja. I will look in again later.’

  ‘All right.’

  At the door, Alice grabbed at his hand before he opened it.

  ‘We might not get another chance.’ She kissed him then propelled him outside. ‘Go.’

  Erich tumbled into the storm-thrashed afternoon and ran for the shelter of the mess hall. There he turned to wave a final goodbye, but Alice had already retreated back into the warmth of the hospital.

  PART THREE

  1946–1947

  5 July 1946, 4.30 am

  During a break between rain showers, the night forest falls silent to the rumbling thump of diesel engines and the quiet murmur of men’s voices. The foreign sounds echo through the gaps between the trees.

  In the tray-backs of the trucks, men hunch, thickly wrapped and huddled together against the bitter cold, grey and anonymous. In the deep darkness of the verandah, Alice trembles and draws the lapels of her coat closer around her. One of the shapes is Erich. This she knows, but her grandfather has forbidden her to come out for the departure, thinking that this will make it easier for both of them. The shadows of the hut are as close to him as she can get undetected, and Erich might as well be gone already, lost among the shapeless forms climbing into the trucks.

  The bustle and loading seem to take an eternity and then nothing happens for a while until finally, with a shout and a muffled cheer, the trucks lurch forward, wheels spinning in a brief battle for traction before crunching away across the gravel.

  Alice watches the red tail light of the lead vehicle flash briefly as the driver taps the brakes. Are they stopping? Has there been some mistake?

  No.

  The firefly glimmer vanishes again and the trucks reach the point where the road disappears into the tree line.

  As they slip between the shadowy trunks, the forest seems to swallow them.

  25 July 1946

  Through the window of her tiny room Alice watches the rain falling. At this time of the year Perth is at its coldest, and though it is nothing like the bitter cold of the Marrinup winter, here it seems somehow worse, somehow repressive. The low-hanging clouds sit on the sleepy city, almost embracing the buildings.

  She can’t sleep. Just like last night, and the night before.

  Finally she rises from her bed, retrieves her dressing gown from the floor and slides out into the passageway.

  Her parent’s home, though bigger than the hut she shared with her grandfather at the camp, seems tiny and cramped. The floorboards in the passage creak slightly beneath the press of her feet but the sound is drowned in the soft grumble of rain on the tin roof.

  Her father is asleep in the front room again, slumped in his armchair beside a wireless that hisses only night static into the room. The fire has gone out and he clutches a blanket beneath his chin, shivering in his sleep. For a while Alice stands in the doorway and watches him; the tiny tic and twitch of his closed eyes and the laboured rise of
his breathing the only signs of life.

  Is he really alive? she wonders.

  This sleeping man isn’t the same one who left them three years earlier. This man is a stranger who sleeps night after night sitting upright with the light on. This man barely speaks to her or her mother, except when something is wrong. This man has sadness in his eyes and in the way he walks and in the sound of his voice. It seems to pour out of him with every nuance and gesture.

  Somewhere in the distance, thunder crashes.

  Silently, Alice slips the latch on the front door and steps outside.

  Perth is sleeping through another stormy July night. A little along the porch her father’s lamp casts a dull yellow rectangle out through the front window and across the verandah into the garden, where her mother’s rose plants whip in skeletal anguish. Soon it will be spring and they will bloom, but for the moment they stand naked, stripped by their winter pruning, the thorns and occasional leaves bare to the cold air.

  A couple of steps down from the porch and Alice walks out onto the cracked concrete of the front path. The rain is driving now and she is getting wet, but she doesn’t care. Her thoughts are somewhere else. Somewhere warm. Out in the endless blue tropical expanses of the Indian Ocean, under a sky peppered with stars, where a troop ship, a converted liner, steams its way through the humid night towards the Suez Canal, through the Mediterranean Sea, and then to the ruins of Europe.

  Where is he now? she wonders. Is he thinking of me?

  Her bare feet splash in puddles as dark as blood as Alice walks along the pavement. Her hair is wet and lank now, sticking to her face in long strands. It was like this the night he left, she remembers, and the afternoon before.

  When she closes her eyes Alice can remember what he felt like. She can recall without effort the sound of his voice, his accent, his Germanic expression – sometimes so lilting and at other times guttural.

  But when she opens her eyes again there is only the rain and the night.

  She walks automatically, along empty suburban streets and past silent rows of shops. The greengrocers and butchers are quiet, their painted wooden signs swinging wildly in the wind, their windows dark and empty.

  It rains harder and harder, but still she walks, embracing the cold and the wet as she would a lover. Feeling the chill fingers of the storm weave through her hair, slide down her neck and trickle gently along her back.

  Somewhere between minutes and hours later she looks up and finds herself standing in front of her parents’ house again. Through the window, her father still sleeps in his chair, and the house is as silent as when she left it. The front gate swings wildly – she has forgotten to latch it again on her way out – and Alice steps through, securing it behind her.

  The brown and cream tiled bathroom is cold as she steps out of her sodden pyjamas and towels herself dry, her skin blue-veined and goose-fleshed. For a moment she examines her face, her eyes, in the small mirror. Is there something different about them now? At certain angles, when she glimpses herself and looks away quickly, something new seems to hide behind her eyes, something older and more grown up.

  The dry flannel of fresh pyjamas feels soft and warm against her skin and she shivers slightly as her body begins to warm. There is a slight tingle in her breasts and she rubs at them subconsciously. The pyjamas are an old pair of her father’s and she has to roll up the sleeves and cuffs to make them fit, but they are warm and comfortable and remind her of her father from before the war.

  Silently, Alice makes her way back into the front room. Her father stirs slightly and murmurs something inaudible as she flicks off the wireless. Alice tucks the blanket more tightly around him, kisses him lightly on the top of his head, notices that his hair has begun to grey around the temples, turns off the light and creeps from the room.

  Under her mattress is a notebook, leather covered, a gift from one of the sergeants at Marrinup. Lately Alice has been writing in it. A diary of sorts. A place to confide to the world at large the things she can’t find the strength to tell those closest to her. Alice slides it out and sits at the old writing desk beside her window.

  The nib of the pen is old and the ink flows easily from it into the smooth, thick pages of the book. Alice writes. She writes to Erich and tells him about her father, and her mother, and the weather, and her grandfather. And for a few moments it is like he is there again, in the room with her, listening.

  Finally, in her own bed again, Alice watches the rain falling until eventually she sleeps.

  5 August 1946

  Alice and her grandfather sit facing one another on opposite sides of the old wooden table in his kitchen.

  Are you certain? she asks him.

  Yes. He doesn’t say anything more. He doesn’t need to. Now that he is back, she spends a lot of time at his house. It is warm and dark and filled with the smell of wood polish and hints of lavender. Her grandmother used to put lavender in all the drawers and in the linen cupboard, and even now, all these years later, pockets of it still linger and waft through the dusty air.

  I’m sorry, her grandfather begins, but Alice manages a half smile and a nod.

  Don’t be.

  Alice isn’t. Now that her grandfather has confirmed it, she realises she already knew.

  When will it show?

  The old man shrugs. It could be early, it could be later.

  Some women manage to hide it all together until the very end. She won’t be like that, he knows. A couple of months at least, he tells her.

  She will have to tell her parents. Does she want her grandfather to do it for her?

  No. Alice shakes her head, emphatic. This she will do herself.

  Do they know about Erich?

  Again, Alice shakes a negative response. Since her return to the city, her parents have been impossible to talk to, outside the pointless conversations of day-to-day life. Her mother is walking on eggshells again. At nights when Alice is lying awake she can hear her sobbing, alone in her room for hours on end. During the days she is quiet, withdrawn and world-weary. Her father has started looking for a job, but there’s nothing around for a returned soldier in his forties. There’s little around for anyone in Perth at the moment.

  On the stove the kettle is bubbling quietly. The fire flickers through the narrow grate and fills the dim kitchen with warmth and the smell of wood smoke.

  Another cup of tea?

  Yes.

  Grandfather makes the tea strong and stewed, like he always does. Alice has to put a lot of milk in hers. The warmth of the mug tingles into the palms of her hands and she inhales the sweet, fragrant aroma. Her grandfather is talking to her.

  Just the once, she tells him. On that last afternoon.

  For a long time the old man says nothing and the silence fills the space between them like a comfortable blanket. It won’t be easy, you know, he tells her. Alice nods.

  Walking home again, Alice cuts through a park. Two small children – a boy and a girl – play on a pair of old wooden swings while their mother watches from a nearby bench. She is young and would be pretty except for a weariness which hangs about her shoulders. The children are having a competition to see who can swing the highest. The mother smiles at Alice as she walks past.

  There is a sense of unreality about it all. The sky is grey, but there is no rain, only a heavy curtain of clouds which hangs overhead, muting the sunlight, hiding the blue. As she walks, Alice holds her hands on her belly for a few moments, trying to feel the life in there.

  All she feels is her own breathing.

  10 August 1946

  This bedroom used to be her mother’s when she was a girl. Then it was her grandmother’s sewing room. Now it is filled with boxes. Alice clutches the eiderdown tightly around herself and allows the faint scent of lavender to fill her.

  It is early to be in bed, but tonight, for some reason, Al
ice feels tired.

  When she was a child she would stay here at least once a week with her grandparents while her own parents went out. Her grandmother would tuck her in, just like this, every night. Alice remembers those dry lips kissing her goodnight, just lightly brushing against her hair. She remembers the joy of burrowing deep under the covers, swimming in lavender-scented warmth.

  She hopes that one day her child will be able to burrow under quilts like that.

  A few yards away, in the main room, her grandfather is reading. It is nice to know that he is out there. It’s like being back in the camp again, except this time Erich is much more than just a few minutes walk away. At night in the camp they were separated by barbed wire and searchlights. Here they are held apart by oceans. She still writes in her journal most days. On those pages she pours out the things that would otherwise circle in her mind, building pressure like an oncoming storm. Most often she writes to Erich, but sometimes she writes to herself and sometimes to the world.

  She hears familiar voices in the main room. Her parents.

  Her first instinct is to dive deeper under the eiderdown, to cover her head and shut out the gentle whispering beyond the door. She knows it won’t work, though. No matter how deep she buries herself, she won’t be able to shut out the voices from inside her head.

  After the warmth beneath the quilt the room seems cold and Alice trembles as she pulls her threadbare old dressing gown around her shoulders. At the door she hesitates. It has been three days since she has seen or spoken to her parents. Three days since telling them about Erich and her, and the baby growing inside her. Three days since her father struck her.

  Even now she can feel his slap stinging her cheek. Drawing a deep breath, Alice opens the bedroom door.

  They are sitting in the parlour at the front of the house. Her parents and grandfather. The fire is banked and an old spirit lamp burns on the sideboard. As Alice enters they all stop speaking and look up at her. Her parents sit beside one another on the lounge. It is the closest Alice has seen them to each other since she returned to Perth. Her mother has been crying, her father’s expression is unreadable. The only thing Alice can see in his face is the usual sadness. No lighter or heavier than it was the last time they spoke.