by Mandy Sayer
At the wharf, the musicians assembled under the command of Rudolph. They picked up their gear and were marched to waiting trucks. As dawn began to press over the hilltops, faint images of the township began to emerge: the rubble of destroyed buildings, shopfronts pockmarked with bullet holes, shattered windowpanes, awnings lying on a narrow footpath. Three coconut trees had fallen against a house, demolishing part of the roof. An awful fear itched across Pearl’s skin. Already, a few locals were moving about the streets, the men slim and bearded, the women wearing loose, tent-like frocks; she glimpsed a group of four or five walking languidly, with bundles of what looked like fruits and vegetables balanced perfectly on their heads. Naked youngsters wove between them, chasing a long-necked feathered creature about the size of a small kangaroo.
They were driven past rows of army huts, thatched with palm fronds, some with little rock gardens out the front with vines of bougainvillea and the odd ficus tree. Some units were already performing morning drill, their abrupt, puppet-like movements silhouetted against a blushing sky. Pearl glimpsed a group of black men marching around a long hut without walls and her heart leaped. She half expected to see the face of James amid the passing parade of men but the truck abruptly turned a corner.
They pulled up beside an old, double-storey wooden hotel by the water with two wilting palm trees out the front. The reception area had its front wall missing and there was a giant crater in what once must have been the floor of the adjoining foyer. The CO announced that the US military had occupied the hotel since early ’42, that they were being billeted here because the nearby Murray Barracks was overcrowded. In spite of her apprehension, Pearl was glad to be staying at a hotel full of American GIs; perhaps James was there, or somebody in the building would know where to find him.
Charlie, Blue and Pearl were assigned to share a single room again, along with the alto player, Moss. On the way over on the ship he’d been assigned latrine duty every day for giving the CO lip and he was still in a filthy mood.
Blue walked into the room first and immediately went to stand in front of the bamboo-framed mirror on the wall, examining the widening bald patch on his head.
‘Oh, great,’ announced Moss as he claimed the cot by the window. ‘I got stuck with all the loonies.’
A humid, musty pall hung over the town. As Pearl combed the streets with Charlie, the heat felt close and suffocating. Their sweat-stained shirts stuck to their skin and mosquitoes swarmed around them incessantly. The roads were slippery from the early-morning rainfall and trucks ground tyre marks into the red mud as they transported men between camps. A few army nurses in khaki trousers and slouch hats walked arm in arm with soldiers who limped or hobbled with walking sticks. At each intersection of the city, American MPs directed steady streams of traffic: army jeeps, trucks, donkeys, bicycles, ambulances, even the odd horse and cart. Pearl looked for James in the face of every black GI she saw, but found only strangers who glanced away, as if she were invisible.
They walked up the hill towards the Murray Barracks. It had been Charlie’s idea to look for him there, where most of the GIs were stationed. They found a thatched hut with office painted in white on a sign out the front and walked along a path of wooden planks that led to the open door. Inside, an electric fan whirred on a desk at which a bespectacled private was hitting the keys of a typewriter. A red and green parrot sat on the radio transmitter that was set up behind him, gnawing on a piece of chalk.
‘Can I help you?’ he said, not looking up from the form he was filling out. His voice had a slow, midwestern twang.
Pearl approached the desk. ‘I’m looking for someone.’
‘Name?’
‘Washington.’
‘Division?’
‘Uh, I’m not sure.’
The private pursed his lips as he hit the return lever and continued to type. ‘What regiment?’
Pearl threw a helpless look at Charlie, who shrugged.
‘He’s a mechanic,’ said Pearl.
The private stopped typing and finally looked up. ‘You mean you’re looking for a Negro?’
Pearl explained that he’d been stationed in Australia for a year and would have only arrived in New Guinea a day or two before.
The private, who had a wide nose and a long, lantern jaw, regarded her through narrowed eyes then turned to the parrot, which was still scratching at the piece of chalk. ‘You reckon we can find him, Petey?’
The parrot looked up and squawked.
‘What’s that, Petey? Is that a yes or a no?’
The bird squawked again once, then twice, lifting its wings and flapping nervously along the transmitter.
‘Gee, fellas, I’m sorry,’ said the private, smirking. ‘I guess that’s a no.’
Pearl sighed and asked him how she should go about finding her friend.
The private shrugged. ‘Petey and me ain’t got the time to track down some raggedy-assed coloured boy for some raggedy-assed Aussies who don’t even know his goddamn regiment.’
‘We know his name. What he does.’
‘I’ve got rosters to type. Supplies to order. So get the fuck out of my office before I kick your ass.’
The parrot let out a piercing screech and cried, ‘Ass! Ass! Ass!’
They wandered dejected through the city streets. The temperature was rising and the air smelled of putrid, oil-slicked mud. Men squatted in front of bombed-out buildings, passing between them huge cigarettes that smelled like burning rope, rolled from pieces of newspaper.
The sheer weight of what she had recently undertaken pressed down on Pearl in the heat, and it only occurred to her now that all the risks she had taken, the people she had hurt, would probably be for nought. She’d managed to keep her disguise a secret from everyone but Charlie and now Blue, but how long could she maintain the ruse before someone found her out? She glimpsed a dark-skinned girl with a white sheet wrapped around her, swaying in front of a fruit stall. Today, she realised, should have been her wedding day. She thought of Hector and how she had probably ruined his life.
When they arrived back at the hotel, dehydrated and disappointed, they found Blue lying naked on his cot, plucking out the fine hair that grew around his navel. Moss, fortunately, was out, and after they drank some water and pulled off their heavy boots, Charlie began to show Pearl how her .303 worked, how to load and aim. She’d missed out on the six weeks’ basic training that the other musicians had been given, and needed to catch up. The weapon felt heavy and important in her hands. She raised the barrel to the open window and aimed it at a palm tree out the front, murmuring, ‘Bang! Bang! Bang!’
After lunch, she disappeared into the back garden of the hotel, rifle in one hand and tenor saxophone in the other, in the hope of finding some privacy. She’d been quietly crushed by the fact that it was going to be nigh on impossible to track down James. Pearl swallowed the anger rising in her throat, trying to control her sense of futility.
She wondered what kind of craziness had caused her to do this; she certainly didn’t feel like the same person who’d talked her brother into switching identities only a week before. The sheer danger and stupidity of it all threatened to overwhelm her. She sat in the dappled sunlight in a kind of dumb, bewildered silence. Sweat rolled down her temples, over her cheeks, and dripped from her chin. A kingfisher cried from the branch of a sago palm. She wasn’t sure how long she sat there, overcome, but when a huge yellow butterfly fringed with black fluttered down from the branches of a crocus tree and landed briefly on her hand, it was so beautiful and unexpected that she convinced herself that something good was about to happen. She wiped the sweat from her brow, drew in a deep breath, picked up her brother’s tenor saxophone, and began to practise her scales in the dying light.
Rudolph ordered drill the next morning, between the wilting palm trees in front of the hotel. Pearl stood at attention next to Charlie, and when Rudolph barked his orders she saluted, turned, wielded the rifle—dropping it only once, when they were
marching around the building. Fortunately, most of the other musicians were not much better at it than she was and Rudolph didn’t seem to notice or care about her few mistakes.
After breakfast they collected their instruments and filed onto a bus that rumbled through the muddy streets of Port Moresby, passing wooden buildings and squat huts splintered by bullet holes and shells. The concert party’s first performance was to be in a small hospital camp about twenty miles up into the Owen Stanleys. She’d practised for hours each day since her embarrassing performance on the troop ship, and she was finding it easier to get her hands around the larger instrument, but it had been so long since she’d performed professionally in public that she was still anxious.
The road out of town rose gently into green fields, carved up into several runways, and every now and then an Allied plane flew so close that everyone cringed at the noise. Sometimes the bus had to detour around bomb craters, or churn through the overflow of flooded ravines. As they ascended further into the ranges it began to rain and one windshield wiper fell off, slowing their progress further.
Towards lunchtime, they pulled into a clearing dotted with canvas tents and a few dwellings built native-style, their roofs thatched with palm leaves. There was one large shelter that had been built without walls. The dirt floor was lined with logs and already a dozen or so men—some with bandaged heads and limbs—were sitting on them, smoking and waiting for the show to begin. Others were making their way across the clearing on crutches. When she looked closer she could see that some of the crutches were fashioned from the boughs of trees.
As the party clambered off the bus Pearl saw a tall black man standing on a platform, on guard duty, rifle poised, his uniform caked with mud. She broke away from the group and ran towards him.
When she reached the platform the man turned and gazed down at her, and up close she could see his face was too long, his chin too prominent, his eyes too wide.
‘Can I help you?’ His voice had none of James’s Southern lilt.
She hung her head, feeling foolish. ‘I thought you were someone else.’
‘Oh yeah?’ he said. ‘And who’s that? Ain’t too many Aussies runnin’ round lookin’ for the likes of coloured folks like me.’
Pearl explained that she didn’t know his division or his regiment. All she did know for sure was his name: James Washington.
The guard frowned. ‘Don’t know him. Why you lookin’ for him, anyway?’
‘My twin sister used to date him back in Sydney. Still sweet on him, I guess.’
The guard lowered his rifle and leaned on the railing around his post. ‘Best bet is the airfields,’ he offered.
She edged closer to him, waiting for him to elaborate.
‘Talk to the pilots. They flyin’ all over the place every day. They know what’s happenin’.’ He shrugged. ‘Long shot of course. Be mighty hard to track him down.’
Pearl nodded briefly, thanked the guard and returned to the large hut without walls to begin warming up with a few quick runs on the saxophone. When she paused, she realised she was shaking—from fear or anticipation, she couldn’t tell which. Charlie must have noticed it too, for he called, ‘Hey, Willis,’ and led her out of the hut and into the dense green foliage beyond the clearing. When he was sure no one could see him, he pulled out his water canteen, flipped the top and took a sip, then passed the canteen to her. She was confused at first, until she caught a whiff of the rough grain alcohol. She took several gulps before Charlie snatched it back.
More and more soldiers gathered before the band. Local men carried some in on stretchers; Pearl was shocked to see a couple of them had no legs. Others arrived in rusting wheelchairs pushed by medics and nurses. Before her was a sea of gauze and bandages, makeshift slings and crutches. Everything seemed bruised and broken and sore—except their eyes, she noticed, all of which were fixed on the band, bright with anticipation, and she found herself curiously moved by their expressions, all somehow childlike, despite their suffering.
As she stared at these men, her own problems receded, became remote and insignificant. She had her health; all her limbs were intact; she’d never had to face, repeatedly, the threat of her imminent death. It occurred to her that these men needed music as much as they needed morphine or antibiotics and, as she began to play, as she followed the circumlocutions of each chart, as she saw the glowing faces of the wounded men, a strange kind of urgency welled up through her until nothing else mattered but trying to ease their pain.
14
After a week or so in Moresby, as the band was eating dinner in the gutted dining room of the hotel, the CO stood up, cleared his throat, and informed them that the famous American comedian Bob Hope was due to arrive the next day. He’d be performing in a warehouse on the other side of town, along with the great Australian soprano, Gladys Moncrieff. A huge stage was already being erected inside the warehouse and the entertainment unit had been scheduled to accompany the stars.
Later, Pearl lay on her canvas cot, trying to prepare herself mentally for the upcoming concert. She was terrified of being exposed as an impostor, yet excited to be performing with such big names. That week, they’d already performed a concert in the market garden of a village, another beneath a leafy cathedral of palms in a forward camp in the Owen Stanleys, yet another amid the debris of a bombed community hall. The acoustics were appalling at all these venues, the heat stultifying, and Pearl’s fingers were so sweaty they occasionally slipped from the brass keys. On top of that, she was still struggling with the nuances of the tenor sax, though each time the band struck up she found it a little easier to adjust her lips and coax a deep, fluid tone from the S-shaped bell. Now that she knew the company’s entire repertoire by heart she could concentrate on her breath, her tone, and improvising on her solos. And she could focus on finding James.
During their one free morning that week, she and Charlie had taken the black American guard’s advice and headed out to one of the nearby airfields. They chatted with ground staff, shared cigarettes with pilots, and ingratiated themselves with a unit of black Americans who loaded planes with supplies. None of them had heard of a Washington who used to play the tenor sax back in the States and who now worked as a mechanic—until Pearl and Charlie were introduced to one co-pilot named Sol Leiderman, a jazz buff from New York City who said he’d actually once heard James Washington play in a Harlem club before the war. His wife even owned one of the records he’d made with Count Basie in 1939. It was a long shot, but just in case Leiderman did happen to come across him in his travels, Pearl wrote down Martin’s regiment number so that he’d be able to track her down.
As she lay perspiring in her cot, the constant buzz of mosquitoes and the sound of Moss’s snoring made her head throb. And the more she tried to fall asleep the more anxious she became, worrying about the big concert the following day. Her throat was parched and there was another pain, lower down, in her belly. For a moment she feared it was the onset of one of the local diseases: dysentery perhaps, or even malaria. But then she felt wetness between her legs and stifled a groan; her period had arrived.
Wads of army-issue toilet paper were stuffed inside her underpants, chafing against her skin, as she performed drill the next morning. She was scared she’d bleed through her khaki trousers. She had an extra toilet roll stuffed in her pack for the long day ahead.
Three US jeeps collected the band members and Rudolph late in the morning and they were driven around the curve of the harbour, through hot, humid air and the ubiquitous smell of rotting seaweed.
The warehouse was as big as six tennis courts. Inside, men were still nailing together the floor for the stage and erecting a curtain sewn from parachute silk. The smells of sawdust and the petrol that had once been stored there were pervasive. The American band they were to join was gathered down the back, tuning their instruments and warming up. Rudolph led Pearl and the others across the concrete floor towards them, and as they drew closer she saw a black GI play a run on an
alto saxophone that sounded so familiar a shiver ran through her body. Up close, however, he looked nothing like James: his skin was darker and his cheeks were marked with acne scars.
The CO of the American band, Captain Simon Rowe, was to lead the united outfit. Gladys Moncrieff had already forwarded her charts and Rowe passed them around to the twenty-five musicians.
‘Okay, fellas,’ said Rowe, ‘there’s no time to run through all these but they’re pretty straightforward. Any questions?’
Pearl and the others thumbed through the charts. Rowe was right: there was nothing tricky or demanding. She’d been playing stuff like this since she was eleven years old: ‘A-Tisket, A-Taskit’, ‘I Can’t Give You Anything But Love, Baby’, ‘Get Me to the Church on Time’. Rowe then passed around an additional set of jazz charts for the opening set of the show, to be played before Gladys and Bob came on. These were much more complicated, with additional codas and extra instructions written in pencil on top of the bar lines. There were only about ten fold-out seats set out along the side wall, reserved for the Australian and American top brass. The band hurried to help the service personnel set up the music stands and seats on the stage, for the show was due to start in less than half an hour. Soldiers were already filing into the warehouse, bringing with them boxes, empty ammo crates and anything else they could find to sit on.
A flurry of panic erupted onstage, behind the drawn curtain. ‘Miss Moncrieff’s arrived!’ ‘Glad’s here!’ ‘Our Glad just pulled up.’ Rudolph, who was helping to erect the microphone into which she would sing, tripped on the cord and knocked over the baritone sax. Rowe was pacing the boards, giving orders. Most of the musicians were still warming up or rearranging the sheets on their stands.
Pearl was sitting in her assigned chair, holding the tenor and trying to remain calm, when she felt a warm gush between her legs. Leaving the sax on her seat, she dashed towards the back of the stage and leaped off it. She rushed through an open door and almost bumped into a woman who was standing in the shade of the warehouse, her hair lacquered up into a towering bun, sweating through an apricot satin dress and fanning herself with a magazine. Gladys Moncrieff. There was a sudden roar of engines overhead and when Pearl looked up she saw a small aeroplane soaring through the clouds.
