by Mandy Sayer
Rudolph waved at her to stop. ‘We all know you can play the saxophone, Willis,’ he barked. ‘But this detachment needs variety.’
Pearl told an old joke of her father’s about a priest with constipation, but when she delivered the punchline Rudolph just coughed.
‘Can you do any routines?’ he asked. ‘A bit of dressing up?’
She glanced at the other band members, standing there with their sock puppets and broomsticks and funny hats. ‘As what?’
‘Well, like what Farthing here just did—as a sheila.’
Pearl swallowed. Her face began to colour. The organist pursed his lips and blew her a kiss.
‘I’m sure you could get away with it, Willis. You’re a lot prettier than Farthing.’
A wave of panic moved through her. ‘No I’m not, sir.’
‘You can’t just play the saxophone!’ bellowed Rudolph, exasperated. ‘The men in these camps haven’t seen the likes of a woman for years! Haven’t had mail or tasted a steak in months.’
‘I wouldn’t know what to do,’ she protested.
‘Just do what Farthing did! Get your arse over to supplies and pick out a nice frock.’
She opened her mouth to object, but Rudolph interrupted. ‘Do it, Private. Or you can forget the whole thing.’
Pearl stormed out of the mess tent. She couldn’t believe her bad luck, after having come so far, after having fooled so many people. If she impersonated a woman, she suspected, she’d be far too convincing.
She was sitting in the shade of a bombed requisition hut, trying to hold back her tears, when the skinny, big-eared clerk appeared before her, squinting in the sunlight.
‘You Willis?’ he said. He shooed away a fly with the piece of paper in his hand.
Pearl took off her hat and nodded.
‘This just came through from Moresby.’ It was a cable from Sol Leiderman addressed to Martin: Private Washington based in Nadzab.
Her heart did a little dance in her chest as she read the words over and over, hardly believing the message in her hands. On the other side of the creek, heat waves rose from the iron roof of the supplies hut. She looked up to see Charlie standing over her, hands on hips. ‘He’s in Nadzab,’ she breathed. ‘Only thirty miles away.’
Hoots and wolf-whistles ricocheted through the mess hall as she marched towards Rudolph, who was still in his seat, scribbling on a clipboard. A few men clapped and a cook rushed up and asked her for a root. On her head was a long, blonde wig. Charlie had painted her face with garish make-up—scarlet lipstick that exceeded the perimeters of her lips, eyeliner, a smudge of rouge on each cheek. She wore a full-length dress made of a filmy red imitation silk that swayed and caught the outline of her body as she moved; beneath it was a 40D brassiere stuffed with surgical hemp, creating a pair of enormous breasts that stood out in front of her like two cannonballs. On her hands were long black gloves that stretched up over her elbows. She still wore her army boots, and in them she walked heavily, swinging her arms from side to side, grimacing at the cat calls. She affected a humiliated pout—nostrils flaring, downcast eyes—that sent the rest of the party into paroxysms of laughter. She came to a stop before Rudolph, raised one gloved hand, and saluted. She noticed her breasts were crooked and rearranged them.
‘That’s more like it, Private,’ said Rudolph. ‘Now give us a tune.’
She hadn’t planned the ruse this far, and hesitated. If the song were too romantic, she’d risk sounding like a girl. But if she didn’t sound a little feminine, she wouldn’t get the gig, and then she’d be left behind on the wharves of Lae. The trick was to sound like a man trying to sound like a girl, which wasn’t the same as a girl trying to sound like a man.
‘Come on, Willis,’ prompted Rudolph. ‘Give us a fucking song.’
She cleared her throat and took a deep breath. Suddenly, she heard her father singing one of his old vaudeville tunes, his high, soprano voice as he played the ukulele, pulling faces at the crowd and wagging his bum from side to side. And when she opened her mouth, out came Aub’s warbling, comic vibrato, crooning ‘Fan Dance Fanny, the Frowsy Nightclub Queen’. One by one, soldiers appeared at the flap of the tent and came in to get a better look. When she hit the last high note, she parted her legs, raised her arms, and held it as if it would never end, and when it did, the crowd that had gathered clapped and whistled, throwing betel nuts at her feet.
16
There were now costumes to be made, songs to rehearse, comedy routines to sharpen, arrangements to be written. Pearl didn’t mind all the extra work, however, because she knew she was only two or three days away from finding James. They made dresses out of parachute silk, wigs from surgical hemp, and dyed them different colours with Condy’s crystals, iodine and chemicals from the barracks hospital. She also begged a roll of canvas from the ordnance store and painted on it the Sydney Harbour Bridge and a cove of water; she then attached two wooden stakes to each side so that they could be driven into the ground to hold up the scenery. Farthing already had a portable organ; Marks cut his kit down to one drum, a cymbal, a cowbell and a woodblock. Rudolph appointed Pearl the musical director and she began to write arrangements for the five-piece band. Charlie complained that there were no slow tunes in the repertoire and Pearl retorted that they would bore the soldiers.
‘There’s only one thing worse than a ballad,’ she said. ‘And that’s a ballad medley.’
The troubadours set out early on a Sunday morning.
Wanipe and Dogare, the two black trackers, carried the heavier instruments and props: the portable organ, the scenery and the small kit of drums. The rest of the band carried costumes, wind instruments, a ground sheet and blanket, mosquito nets, anti-malarial tablets and food rations. They each had a water canteen attached to their belt and carried a rifle in one hand.
They walked towards the foothills that ringed the township of Lae, avoiding the direct road to Nadzab, where they could be easily ambushed. Pearl had had her hair cut the day before by a company barber and he’d shaved it so close that she was now almost bald. It pleased her to look even more like a man, but she had to keep her hat pulled tight over her ears to prevent her scalp from getting sunburnt.
The river they followed was a deep turquoise with islands of red silt and white sand marbling into swirls. As the day passed, the trees loomed taller, the jungle thickened into curtains of vines and leaves. Sometimes the river curved into itself and they had to cross it, holding their instruments and rifles high above their heads.
Late afternoon, the convoy approached a small base camp consisting of half a dozen sagging tents alongside the river. Dotted throughout the clearing were scrawny, bare-chested men sitting on jerry cans and bits of wood. Some cleaned their rifles; others smoked; two soldiers were stacking logs by a tent. The nearby trees were festooned with drying shirts and rudimentary hammocks were strung between the boughs. Green lichen carpeted most of the ground and everything smelled of mildew. There was a washstand built into the trunk of a sago palm with a plate of reflective steel nailed above it.
The troubadour’s first concert was a total disaster. The portable scenery sagged into the ground, the costume changes were too slow, and the men in the camp knew the punchlines to most of the gags and yelled them out prematurely. The wind blew the sheet music away and the pages glanced across the surface of the river and were swept downstream. Farthing lost his way without the charts, and the music lurched on in a retarded grind of dropped codas, missing notes and dissonant harmonies. When Marks attempted to walk on his hands he slipped in the mud. Behind some bushes, Pearl donned her wig and then the red dress, pulling it over the top of her still-wet trousers so she wouldn’t look too feminine, and applied a thick coat of make-up. In her attempt to sound manly, she accidentally started off in the wrong key and had to begin again. She sang in her father’s voice but the long hike and the many mishaps had unnerved her. And by this time the men were growing restless with all the mistakes and were wandering off towards
the mess hut. But one of the carriers, Wanipe, stood by shyly. He wore only a burlap sheath and a dog’s tooth hung on a piece of string around his neck. In his hands he held three kauri shells. It was hard for Pearl to tell how old he was—maybe forty or even older.
After she finished her number she saw that he was holding the shells out to her. She took them, nodding. No sooner had she murmured her thanks than he swooped down upon her and began kissing her face, her neck, her shoulders, pressing himself onto her, until they both slipped over in the mud. All the musicians burst into laughter and Farthing pulled Wanipe to his feet, explaining in rudimentary pidgin and accompanying hand gestures that the object of his desire was really a man. Wanipe frowned and shook his head; Pearl couldn’t tell whether it was in astonishment or disbelief.
The tracks through the rainforest were slippery with mud; the air buzzed with mosquitoes and flies; everyone grew weary with the heat and the constant dehydration, but they wouldn’t allow themselves to complain, let alone turn back. Coconut trees stretched into the sky, along with sago palms, breadfruit trees, bamboo and wild sugarcane. When they were sure they were in a safe area, they rehearsed the show again, tightening up the costume changes and changing the jokes and routines. The scenery that Pearl had so carefully painted was too heavy to carry and was soon abandoned by the river.
The carrier who’d offered Pearl the kauri shells, Wanipe, always led the way. He was not only familiar with the local territory, he was one of the few coastal people who’d traversed the hundreds of miles of the western highlands, walking up mountains as high as fourteen thousand feet above sea level to trade shells for gold and pigs. His skin was a deep ochre in the sunlight. The whites of his eyes were always a little red, as if he were suffering from a permanent hangover. His cheeks creased into gentle corrugations when he smiled. Sometimes Pearl caught him gazing at her with a knowing look, as if he could see through her clothes and detect the slight curve of her breasts and the triangle of downy blonde hair between her legs. Farthing and Marks had done their best to convince him that she was a man, but she often felt he knew the truth and that this knowledge was a source of amusement to him. The other carrier, Dogare, didn’t give her a second glance. He was younger than Wanipe, and lighter-skinned, with a thin, wiry body that always held the scent of sweat and coconut oil. In a certain light, he looked like James, though his expression was more surly and unsure.
They didn’t walk a direct route towards Nadzab, but zigzagged back and forth through the jungle, from one post to another. The tracks they walked wound like long brown serpents through stands of sago palms and clusters of cane, the stalks of which stood twice the size of a man. Sometimes the river flooded and the party would be thigh-deep in mud and sour water, struggling past waterlilies and ferns. Sometimes they’d spot snakes undulating in the water. Blue, in particular, was terrified of them, and whenever he spotted one he would splash towards Wanipe and Dogare for protection. But the greatest fear of all was the one generated by the presence of the Japanese, who were hiding in the area through which they now moved. Several times a day they heard the whistle of a falling shell or the heavy stutter of gunfire, and they’d dive into the mud or a shallow ravine. Now that they were closer to the fighting, they were under orders to always end their shows before dusk, as any artificial lighting would be a beacon to the enemy.
Apart from the carriers, the only other people who didn’t know Pearl was a girl were Farthing and Marks, and she was always on her guard. She never went swimming with them; instead, she briskly bathed on her own in the dead of night. In her pack she carried her brother’s razor, without the blade, and each morning she lathered her face and drew it across her cheeks and chin until the soap had been scraped away.
When they all lounged around a fire at night, Farthing and Marks often bantered about ex-wives, old girlfriends and bad cooking. Pearl was startled by their talk—she’d never heard men speak so directly, so candidly about themselves.
‘That’s the trouble between men and women,’ remarked Farthing one night. ‘For a man, the first fuck with a girl is always the best one, but over time it just goes downhill.’ He shook his head. ‘But for a girl, the first fuck with a bloke is always the worst one, but over time it gets better and better.’
Marks roared with laughter and Pearl, a little shocked, quickly joined in. Blue and Charlie were already in their tent, asleep.
‘Whaddya reckon, Willis?’ Farthing prompted.
Pearl nodded. ‘Mate,’ she said, flicking the butt of her cigarette into the fire, ‘don’t talk to me about first roots. I used to go out with this one girl—you know, the first time we did it was in Luna Park.’
‘Bullshit,’ said Farthing.
‘True.’
‘On the Big Dipper?’
‘Did ya sell tickets?’ added Marks.
‘It was the night the Japs invaded Sydney. In a carriage of the Tumblebug.’
‘Like doing it outside, eh?’ asked Farthing.
‘I tried that once,’ said Marks, ‘but it was too fucking cold and my John Thomas shrivelled up.’
‘I didn’t want to at first,’ said Pearl, trying to be just as brazen, ‘but she begged me. And right after we’re done—I’ve hardly had time to pull out of her—and what does she do but turn around and beg me for a favour.’
‘There’s always a catch,’ mused Marks.
‘She want money?’ asked Farthing.
‘Let me guess,’ said Marks. ‘Probably wanted to move straight into your place and start rearranging your whole life. That’s what my first girlfriend did. After six months I pissed off and left her there with all my gear. She got the lot.’
‘Better off tugging,’ said Farthing.
‘This girl wanted me to teach her how to play the saxophone.’ Pearl rubbed her hands together over the fire. ‘One root,’ she sighed, ‘and they reckon they own you.’
‘Just for spreading their legs . . .’
‘And lying on their backs for five minutes.’
‘Three minutes if it’s you,’ joked Farthing.
‘You’d only take sixty seconds!’ Pearl laughed, relieved to be accepted as one of them.
They’d been on the trek several days when Farthing and Marks guessed that Charlie and Blue were, as they joked, playing bottoms with one another. There were several telltale signs: a hand on a shoulder, one straightening the other’s hat, the traded glances. Any doubts Farthing had had about the intimacy between the couple were put to rest when he stumbled into the wrong tent one night and saw, in the dim moonlight, the outline of Charlie’s head bobbing against Blue’s groin.
As the caravan pressed north, the affair between Charlie and Blue became the source of good-natured ribbing. Charlie would ask something like, ‘What’ll we have for lunch?’ And Marks would retort, ‘Why don’t you ask your missus?’ When Blue would clean and polish his trombone every night they’d tease him about doing his housework. The ease with which Farthing and Marks accepted the couple allowed Pearl to relax a little, but she was always wary of being caught out, especially when she had to dress up as a woman and sing love songs to lonely soldiers.
They were only a few hours outside of Nadzab when the unit reached a company of Americans that had, only the day before, taken a nearby airstrip. The Japanese had been driven back into the hills. But twice while the band changed into their costumes and applied their make-up they could hear exchanges of rifle fire and bullets ricocheting off trees and rocks. Blue grew pale at the sound and began to tremble, and Charlie had to straighten him up with a bottle of brandy he’d cajoled from an American gunner.
It was about an hour before dusk. They set up their instruments and props between two L-shaped split trenches. A group of about forty soldiers sat before them, some bandaged. Three men lay on stretchers, heads supported by sandbags. Guards patrolled the grassy clearing that served as an airstrip, the piece of land everyone had been fighting over the day before.
The band struck up the overture, a
fast rendition of ‘In the Mood’. They were into the third chorus when Pearl saw two men carry a body out of a thicket of trees at the edge of the clearing. As he was ferried past the band and into a tent she noticed his shirt and trousers were caked with dried blood; his head, arms and legs flopped limply.
As the show progressed, the soldiers clapped and laughed. Charlie dressed up in a frock sewn from surgical gauze and sang ‘Chattanooga Choo Choo’. All the men joined in, crooning the words and swaying from side to side, while intermittent rifle shots from the surrounding hills provided an unsteady counterpoint. Marks balanced a rifle on his head, next a bayonet, next a bamboo canvas stretcher. He then turned over a huge wire reel and did a tap dance on what was now a round wooden platform. Blue played the trombone with his feet but the occasional gunfire made him so nervous the slide kept slipping out of his toes and the tune was cut short after only one chorus. After that, he rested his trombone on his case and walked away from the band, around the split trenches and into the bush, because there weren’t any latrines in the temporary post. While Blue was relieving himself, Pearl emerged from the costume-change tent in her red dress, long gloves and blonde wig, carried by Wanipe and Dogare. She lay stretched out on her side, elbow cocked and head resting in one hand, singing ‘We’ll Meet Again’ while the soldiers cheered and shouted, ‘My place or yours?’
Wanipe and Dogare were clearly enjoying themselves. It was the first time they’d been included in the show, and they’d painted ceremonial stripes on their faces and necks with Pearl’s red lipstick; their fuzzy hair was speared with cassowary plumes and the iridescent feathers plucked from birds of paradise. They deposited Pearl on the wooden reel, placing her upright on her feet, where she continued to sing while the soldiers blew kisses. Hoots and wolf-whistles rose like sirens up into the trees.
