A Distant Land

by Alison Booth

And what was he doing in Phnom Penh? He’d always upheld that noble aim of reporting the truth, chronicling both sides of the conflict. But was he really any better than the swarms of journalists who thronged into Saigon and Phnom Penh to thrive on adrenalin and booze? Nearly seven hundred of them, according to that report he’d read, and the vast majority were probably covering the war from the bars in Saigon. It was all too easy to get a press card. All you had to do was turn up at the US Army Press Centre with a visa and a letter from your employer or, if you were freelance, from your agency.

  Was this the best way for him to use his intellect? His talent wasn’t for journalism or even for writing, although he could do both reasonably well. But these activities gave no real meaning to his life. He wanted to reach out to help people, not in the medical sense but in fighting for basic human rights. Sure, that’s what America and her allies, the Australians and New Zealanders, thought they were doing in this screwed-up war. But they weren’t. They were making things worse. They were destroying Indochina and it would take years, decades, for it to recover.

  He would go home and take up the job in the Human Rights Centre, and would feel his way forward to a better use of his life than he’d been making of it so far.

  He stood up, abandoning his introspection. In a quarter of an hour it would be time to phone home. At this moment a legless man in his early twenties rolled by. Perched on a trolley – a crude thing, no more than a piece of planking on four small wheels – he managed to stop using his bare hands. He said something in a Cambodian dialect that Jim didn’t understand. The man’s intention was unmistakable, as was his need. Jim dug into his pocket. Pulling out all his change, he placed it on the proffered palm. The man grinned and nodded before wheeling himself off.

  Slowly Jim made his way along the crowded boulevards and back to Dominique’s flat. He was fortunate to know precisely where he wanted to go and to have the means of travelling there.

  Chapter 36

  To fill in time while she waited for Jim’s phone call, Zidra began to tidy her bedroom. She picked up some clothes she’d left in an untidy heap on top of the chest of drawers and tossed them onto the bed. After pulling open the top drawer, she tried to lift out the shoebox in which she kept Jim’s letters. She’d decided to reread the most recent, even though she knew it almost by heart. A week ago she’d tied the lid onto the box with a hair ribbon, and now this caught on the side. As she tugged, the drawer twisted and then came out with a rush. All its contents spilt onto the floor. She picked up the drawer and pushed it into the recess. It refused to glide back into place. She wriggled and shoved it, but it wouldn’t slide all the way in. Something had to be blocking it – perhaps a pair of knickers or those navy-blue tights that had gone missing a few weeks ago.

  She removed the drawer again and ran her hand over the slightly splintery wood that partitioned each layer of the chest. At the back she touched a small object that felt like plastic. She lifted it out.

  Lorna’s missing microcassette was missing no longer. It had been in her room all along.

  She began to laugh and was still laughing two minutes later when the phone rang. She picked up the receiver on the top landing.

  ‘Hello?’ Jim’s voice was unmistakable.

  ‘Jim!’ She let out a yelp of joy. ‘This is the most fantastic day of my life!’

  ‘Mine too. I’ve been really looking forward to talking to you, Zidra. By the way, I gave your number to a journalist friend last night. He was supposed to ring you to let you know.’

  ‘Someone did call, twice. He asked for Sandra. Jim, I can’t believe you’re alive! We thought you were dead. Everyone did, what with your body being found and everything. Or what they said was your body. And now you’re back. It’s a miracle.’

  ‘Yes, it’s a miracle.’

  ‘It’s terrific to hear you.’ Abruptly she was seized by a shyness she hadn’t felt for years. Though she longed to say that hearing his voice was what she’d been dreaming of, the words that came out were simply, ‘I got your letter.’

  ‘Which one?’

  She felt surprised. Surely he’d know what she was talking about. ‘The one you wrote on the plane. It was postmarked Saigon.’

  ‘Oh, that letter.’ His voice sounded strained.

  At once she guessed that he was regretting sending it. Embarrassed, she said, ‘It was a lovely letter.’ Perhaps it was understandable for him to be having second thoughts. After all, he’d written that ages ago. His world had altered dramatically since then. Those weeks with the Vietcong were bound to have changed him, in ways she could only imagine.

  ‘That trip back home seems like a long time ago now,’ he said.

  There was a brief pause. In the background Zidra heard a woman’s voice, French, Dominique perhaps, and then an American man speaking. ‘What’s going on?’ she said, fighting back a twinge of suspicion.

  ‘I’ve moved out of the Hôtel le Royal. I’m staying in Dominique’s flat. Some guy wants to interview me again. Now’s definitely not the time.’ Jim’s voice sounded even more tense, or maybe he was simply distracted. ‘About that letter . . .’

  ‘It arrived late.’

  ‘You didn’t reply?’

  She was unable to speak for a moment. How could she have replied when he was already dead? She swallowed before saying in a strangled voice, ‘I only got it the day before the memorial service.’

  ‘Nothing was waiting for me when I got back to Phnom Penh,’ he said. ‘No letters, nothing. Even my typewriter had gone. They reckon my flat was broken into after I was reported missing.’

  There was another pause. Dominique and the American man were talking again, their accents unmistakable although it was impossible to pick out the words. After they faded out, there was only silence. She said, ‘Did you have anything else valuable there?’

  ‘No. My typewriter was pretty ancient. I’ll buy another one.’

  She wondered what had happened to all those letters she’d written to him over the years. Weren’t they valuable? She’d hate to lose the shoebox containing all his letters to her.

  Suddenly she heard the American man’s voice on the other end of the line. ‘Just five minutes of your time,’ he was saying, and then Jim said quite impatiently, ‘No interview now, I’m on the phone to Australia . . . Sorry, Zidra, what were you saying?’

  ‘Something riveting about your typewriter,’ she said, struggling to keep the frustration out of her voice. To calm herself, she grabbed at the first thing she could think of and said, ‘I suppose you’ll have job offers from everywhere now. And I’ll bet that the CIA and ASIO mobs will be wanting to cosy up to you.’

  ‘The US Embassy people in Saigon want to debrief me. I refused. I told them that after I’d spent all those weeks with the other side denying any involvement with the CIA, I certainly wasn’t going to change that position. Anyhow, I’ve agreed to meet with the ambassador after I finish writing some pieces for the UPI, but there won’t be any debriefing. Then next weekend I’m coming home.’

  ‘Coming home?’ She might have leapt for joy if she hadn’t at that moment heard Dominique’s voice murmuring in the background, ‘Du café, mon cher?’

  ‘Yes. I’m giving up my UPI job.’

  ‘Are you really?’ She sat down on the top stair tread. Was it even remotely possible that he could still mean the words he’d written in his last letter? But if he did, he would surely be telling her so now. And why was Dominique calling him mon cher if they were just good friends?

  ‘I’ve had enough of being a foreign correspondent. Being a prisoner makes you see things clearly. What matters, what doesn’t.’ At this point Zidra heard Dominique saying, ‘Le voila, mon chouchou,’ and Jim’s reply, ‘Merci,’ followed by the clink of a cup. Zidra spoke as calmly as possible. ‘What’ll you do?’ Her question would give him the opportunity to reas
sure her, assuming he hadn’t changed his mind about her.

  ‘Take the human-rights job at Sydney University if it’s still open,’ he said at once. ‘There are human-rights issues all through South East Asia.’

  ‘There’ll be even more once the fighting in Indochina ends.’ Delight that he’d be returning to Sydney tussled with disappointment that he hadn’t reiterated his love for her.

  ‘How are you, Zidra? You sound different.’

  ‘No, I’m the same,’ she said, speaking with forced calmness. ‘By the way, did your parents tell you what I read at your service?’

  ‘No. I haven’t spoken to them yet. I’m going to do it next.’

  That he called her before his parents must show that he still cared. She might have felt exultant if she hadn’t heard again Dominique’s voice and the murmur of Jim’s reply. He must have put a hand over the receiver, for she was unable to discern his words. ‘Good,’ she said, her response inadequate to express the emotional turmoil she was experiencing.

  ‘It’s so weird that people think I’ve risen from the dead. I feel terrible I’ve put everyone through all this. What did you read at the service?’

  ‘The poem by Judith Wright you sent me. “All things conspire to hold me from you.”’

  ‘“All things conspire to stand between us – even you and I.”’

  Especially you and I, she thought. After a pause, she said, ‘Are you okay, Jim?’

  ‘I’m two stone lighter and I’ve got one or two ulcers on my calves.’

  This sounded like jungle rot to her but of course he would play down any injury. ‘What’s the treatment?’

  ‘Antibiotics and mercurochrome. Plus lots to eat. Preferably not rice. Dominique’s been a real godsend.’ He laughed. ‘She’s such a brilliant cook.’

  Zidra squashed down her jealousy at the thought of Jim and Dominique eating delicious French food together. Whenever people had the chance, they’d get up to all sorts of things; you only had to consider her and Hank to see that. Even if Jim was going to withdraw his marriage proposal, she told herself sternly, all that mattered really was that he was still alive. ‘I missed you so much,’ she said, picking her words carefully. ‘I can’t wait to see you again.’

  ‘Nor I you. We’ve got a lot to discuss.’

  She hated the businesslike way he spoke those words; he might have been talking to another lawyer rather than to someone he’d once written a love letter to. Choosing to ignore his brusqueness, she said, ‘Would you like me to collect you from the airport?’ She stood up and took a couple of paces around the landing.

  ‘Yes. I’ll call you again in a day or two with the details.’

  She remained still for a moment, gripping the phone receiver in her hand, her finger pressed down on the button. She was feeling light-headed and confused, as if she could float right up to the ceiling if she didn’t hold on tightly to something. After a few moments the dizziness went, and she put the receiver back in its cradle. Even now she had trouble believing that Jim’s return wasn’t simply a dream.

  Mon chouchou. She didn’t know what that meant but it certainly sounded like an endearment.

  She ran downstairs to the bookshelves in the living room and pulled out Lisa’s French–English dictionary. ‘Chouchou (informal) pet, golden boy, blue-eyed boy.’ That pang of jealousy returned. She really had to get a grip, she told herself firmly. Jim was alive; he was returning home. That was all that mattered.

  Chapter 37

  George was marching around the kitchen waiting for his turn to speak to Jim. For a good ten minutes Eileen, who usually had little to say on the phone, had been talking to – or, more precisely, interrogating – Jim about the state of his health. Having established that he wasn’t one of the two journalists who’d been reported with malaria, she was asking about his feet. His feet! Certainly they were important, but what George really wanted to find out was his state of mind.

  ‘Jungle rot,’ Eileen was saying. ‘You mean like they had in the trenches in the First World War? Surely not . . . You were lucky not to get that. You’ve still got all ten toes? . . . What are they treating the ulcers with? . . . Mercurochrome, is that all? . . . Yes, yes, I see. Antibiotics too. Good, glad to hear it. Your father’s pacing around the kitchen, wearing a track in the linoleum, so I’ll put him on in a minute. When are you coming home? . . . Next week, did you say? You know we’re longing to see you again. Will you carry on staying at the Royal Hotel till you leave? . . . Pardon my French’ – and she was laughing now – ‘The Hôtel le Royal . . . You’re staying at Dominique’s flat? . . . Okay, I’ll get a pen to write down the number while you speak to your father.’

  Once George had the phone in his hand, those words that had been queueing in his brain suddenly vanished, and all he could get out was, ‘Good to have you back, son.’

  ‘Back from the dead, that’s what people are saying,’ Jim said. His voice was the most beautiful thing George had ever heard, resonant and clear. ‘There was a wake for me at the Gecko Bar apparently. And I heard about the memorial service at St Matthew’s. I’m really sorry you had to go through all that, Dad. It must have been terrible for you.’

  Terrible was an understatement, George decided. He felt a momentary pang of remorse about holding the memorial service too early. After all, it wasn’t like a funeral, where you had to rush in to bury or cremate the body. The cremation had already occurred, or so they’d been advised. But on the other hand, everyone thought Jim was dead and they’d had to observe the rites of passage. Eileen especially had wanted that.

  ‘It was a big turnout,’ he said. ‘Half the town was there and many from further afield.’ With Eileen hanging about in the kitchen, he judged it wouldn’t be politic to mention the incident of the handbagging of the Reverend Cannadine. He added, ‘It was a very moving service.’ He coughed to cover his feelings. He was on an emotional roller coaster and had been for weeks. The last thing he wanted was to start blubbing again on this, the day of Jim’s resurrection from the dead. Once his fit of coughing subsided, he said, ‘Yes, it was terrible, but your capture must have been too.’

  ‘After my first interrogation I was sure they were going to kill me,’ Jim said, his voice tense. ‘I even heard the click of the pistol’s safety catch being released but the guy didn’t fire it. Maybe he did that deliberately, or maybe I just imagined it. I’ll never know the truth about that.’

  A pistol at your head, the belief that your life was over. How would you deal with that? And then, a moment later, realising your life continued: would you feel euphoric or afraid? If George hadn’t wanted to protect his son, he might have asked what that was like. Instead he enquired how the Vietcong had treated them.

  ‘They looked after us pretty well.’

  ‘Why do you think you were released?’

  ‘Well, I’m not sure really, but I’ve got a few theories. I’ll tell you about them when I get home.’

  George was pleased to hear that, in this regard at least, Jim was unchanged by his experiences. Much of his life had been spent searching for explanations and, when there weren’t any, devising hypotheses.

  Jim continued. ‘But I think the main reason they let us go is that Hanoi’s starting to see foreign journalists as a propaganda tool. Since the My Lai Massacre the media’s sympathies are increasingly with the north, and Hanoi knows that.’

  ‘I suppose reporters are a propaganda tool if you report what you’re told,’ George said. Believing you were about to be executed would have to leave a legacy, he decided. Not to mention whatever else had happened to Jim in his weeks in the jungle. Things that perhaps they’d never learn about.

  ‘We had lots of discussions with the Vietcong,’ Jim said. ‘I wouldn’t say it was a re-education exactly, although they intended it to be. I reckon they thought it would serve their cause better to treat us well,
knowing we’d spread the word.’

  ‘You’re not bitter?’

  ‘On the contrary. It was a way of seeing what’s happening on the other side.’ Yet Jim’s voice sounded strained as he spoke these words and George wondered how much of what he was saying was bravado. ‘All I’m sad about is the hell you must have gone through.’

  ‘Yes, it was hell,’ George said. There was no point pretending otherwise. ‘But it’s over now.’

  ‘Did you and Mum throw out my stuff?’

  ‘We kept everything as it was. Not that you’ve got many things here anyway. A few books, some old clothes, that’s all.’ George was glad he’d left Jim’s box of treasures in the garage exactly as he’d found it.

  Now Eileen was hovering at George’s elbow, trying to retrieve the receiver from him. As he handed it over, fatigue hit him like a blow to the head and he knew he’d have to spend the afternoon in bed.

  It wasn’t often that an ordinary cove like him experienced a miracle.

  Chapter 38

  Jim saw Zidra standing by the barricade as soon as he came through the swing doors from the customs and baggage hall at Sydney airport. Dressed in a black linen dress, she looked more elegant than he’d ever seen her, as if she were off to a party. When she saw him, she grinned and waved. He put down his bag and held her close. ‘I’m so glad to see you.’

  When she moved back a pace, he wondered why. He could do with a shower, he decided, though he’d had a thorough wash and brushed his teeth in the tiny toilet area on the plane. To fill the rather awkward silence, he said, ‘Are you sure it’s all right for me to stay at your place?’

  ‘Yes, it’s fine.’ She looked tired and there were dark smudges under her eyes, but she was smiling. ‘Joanne and Lisa don’t mind in the least. They’re dying to meet you. I borrowed a folding bed and we’ll put it in the dining room. We don’t use that room much, so it’s no imposition. This is such a fantastic day! It’s hard to believe you’re back at last. I thought we’d go to the TV station first, for your interview. It’s lucky you’re back on a Saturday and I’ve got the whole day off. And then after that I think you’ve got some more interviews?’