Enemy Camp (12 page)

Clarry was showing off in the water. ‘He's brave,' Susan said. ‘I like the way you and Barry take him places.'

‘We've been going out to the POW camp.' I tried to make it sound important. ‘We're having Japanese lessons from one of their officers.'

Susan nodded. ‘I know. Captain Ashton the interpreter comes and talks about things with Mum sometimes.'

So the Proctors are so important that even camp officers come to see them? But I just said, ‘A bit weird they wouldn't let your mother help at the camp.'

Susan shook her head. ‘Dadd— Dad's pleased. He says things could turn violent there at any time. Are you being careful?'

‘It's OK,' I said, and felt tough. So yeah, I talked to Susan Proctor. Amazing.

Anyway, that was yesterday. This morning, we finished tidying up Tak Yee's sheds. I found more old newspapers. J
UNE
26, 1936: F
IRST
C
ONTROLLED
H
ELICOPTER
F
LIES
… A
UGUST
28, 1937: J
APANESE
T
ROOPS
C
ONTINUE
A
TTACKING
S
HANGHAI
.

We finished quite quickly. Mr Yee gave us another sixpence each, and a bag of apples. ‘Good workers.' He grinned.

Clarry gave him a bow, like the ones we give to Ito, and said ‘
Arigato
'.

He wasn't being cheeky. Maybe he just forgot that all Asian-looking people aren't the same. Tak Yee's face froze. He jabbed a finger at Clarry. ‘I not Japanese! Japanese cruel and evil! Out! You get out. Now!'

We scuttled out as fast as we could; Clarry didn't say a word all the way home.

I'm reading another of Barry's Christmas books. It's called
Out of the Silent Planet
, and is about a bloke taken on a spaceship to another world, where he meets these furry creatures with their own civilisation.

Dad brought me home a new journal. Great.

TUESDAY, 12 JANUARY Nothing.

WEDNESDAY, 13 JANUARY Actually, a lot has happened.

Barry had another lesson with Miss Mutter. I felt a bit jealous. He's having these special lessons, and I think Margaret likes him. Susan Proctor doesn't like me, I'm sure; she's just polite to people, like Mum says.

Anyway, Barry was out, and Dad was away at the camp, and even Mum was away half the morning. She walked over to old Mrs Laurie's, with a basketful of carrots and peas and rhubarb. She came back all excited, with a small jar. ‘Marmite! Mrs Laurie's grandson has it in his army rations. He hates the taste, so she's got some — and now we have! First time in three years!'

‘By the way,' she added, ‘I ran into Mrs Proctor.
She said Susan enjoyed talking to you at the baths on Monday. You didn't tell me about that.'

I shrugged. My mother was smiling, for some reason.

Barry told me that Clarry was still so pale and quiet when they got home from Tak Yee's on Monday that Mrs Morris got frightened in case he was sick, and started asking him what the matter was. Clarry burst into tears (he would be
so
wild if he knew I was writing this down), and Barry said how Mr Yee had got angry.

So Mrs Morris took Clarry straight around there to explain and apologise. Must have looked interesting, her towing him along on his trolley! Mr Yee had calmed down, and said he was sorry, too. The Nips had attacked the town in China that his family comes from; they burned most of it, and killed thousands of people. I thought of that newspaper heading I'd read. Clarry was pretty quiet today.

We're supposed to be having our next Japanese lesson soon, but there's a problem. Dad told me when he got home.

‘A bunch of the military prisoners are getting stroppy, son. They were too sick to make trouble when they arrived, but the more of our tucker they eat, the more strife they cause.'

He took a swig of tea. ‘They've started giving some of the guards a hard time, yelling at them and abusing them if they're told to do something. It's all in Japanese,
of course, but you can tell they're not wishing our blokes Happy Birthday. A few of our younger fellows want to give them a good jab with a bayonet.'

Mum was listening. ‘Do you think it will come to that, Jack?'

Dad drank more tea. ‘Some of the Nips, they
want
to be hurt. That bloke who rammed the nail into his arm, he's not the only one who feels like that. If they act up and get a cut from a bayonet, they'll feel they are fighting men again.'

‘How many of them are like that?' Mum asked.

‘Hard to tell. The civilian ones still don't give many problems. Most of them work in the gardens, or the chimney factory, or the piggeries out of town, and get along OK.'

Dad began rolling a cigarette. ‘But the CO is finding it harder and harder to get working parties from the military compound. Every day now, there are some who flat-out refuse to go. Ito and a couple of the other officers do what they can, but …'

He shrugged. ‘Ito is expecting you out there tomorrow morning, son. But the colonel won't let anything go ahead if it doesn't seem safe, and he's right about that.'

I tried to read more
Out of the Silent Planet.
There are these wild animals like sharks that the bloke from Earth helps hunt. But I kept worrying about the camp. Why can't those Japs behave like normal people?

THURSDAY, 14 JANUARY We did go to the camp after all. But … well, I'll tell you.

Dad left early, and Barry and Clarry and I headed out later. We talked about school as we rode towards the camp. Clarry can't wait to be there, the weird kid.

‘I'm gonna play cricket,' he announced. ‘And I'm—' An army truck passed us, going in the same direction, and we couldn't hear all the other things he was going to do, luckily. There were Home Guards in the back of the truck.

The truck was parked at the barrier beside the main road when we arrived, and we knew straightaway that something was happening. Extra men in khaki uniforms stood at the main gates. The blokes from the truck had formed up in three lines and began moving forward. Behind the wire, figures in blue sat on the ground. None of the usual moving around, washing up, wrestling, anything like that. Just rows of prisoners, sitting silently.

The guard at the barrier held up a hand. ‘Wait there, lads.'

‘We've come for a lesson with Lieutenant Ito,' I told him.

‘I know. But we've got orders not to let anyone in just now. You'll have to wait.'

‘What's g-going on?' Barry asked. The guard gazed towards the compound, where more guards had appeared with rifles and bayonets, and didn't reply.

We waited. Quarter of an hour. Half an hour. Nothing seemed to be happening behind the wire. The prisoners sat. The guards stood. Our one watched the compound. Forty-five minutes. An hour.

Finally, an old crank-handle telephone rang beside him, and the guard answered. ‘Yes … Yes … OK.' He hung up. ‘Sorry, lads, you'd better head back home.'

I remembered what Dad had talked about last night. ‘Is something wrong?' I asked.

The guard was gazing towards the compound again. ‘You'd better head home,' he repeated.

So we did. In a bad mood, all three of us.

FRIDAY, 15 JANUARY It rained all morning. Don't you hate it when it rains in the holidays?

Dad got home late last night. That business at the camp was because a working party from the military compound was supposed to go out and cut gorse, but a whole lot refused. They thought the gorse was being cut so they'd have nowhere to hide if any of them escape from camp. Fancy wanting to hide in gorse!

It took hours of talking and translating until a working party did go. Even then it was only half the size that Colonel Wallace had ordered. ‘Some of the Nips reckoned they'd cut themselves with the slashers before
they'd do work like that for the enemy,' Dad told Mum and me. ‘The colonel did the sensible thing, leaving them behind. But a few of our blokes aren't happy. They say the Japs are acting like
they
run the show.'

‘What did the other prisoners do?' Mum asked. ‘The civilian ones?'

‘They weren't any trouble. But the whole camp went into lockdown: all the prisoners sitting on the ground until things got settled.' Dad shook his head. ‘Bruce and I looked at some of the Home Guard fellows arriving — eighteen-year-olds and grandads — and Bruce said “There's real bullets in those guns, Jack. Let's hope nothing happens.”'

He was stroking the little carved fish. ‘Ah, well, they've made their protest. With any luck, things will be quiet now.'

He tapped yesterday's
Evening Post
, which Mr Morris had brought over. ‘Did you read about the Jap submarine that our two New Zealand minesweepers got, near the Solomon Islands? It was bigger than either of them, but they dropped depth-charges, and when it surfaced the
Kiwi
rammed it while the
Moa
kept shelling it. It hit the reef and sank. Every day we keep that lot out there quiet, the closer it is to the end of the war.'

I've finished
Out of the Silent Planet
. How can I survive without a book to read?

SATURDAY, 16 JANUARY Two pages to go in my first journal. Went to the school baths with Barry and Clarry. Just us and a few Standard One and Two kids. Pity.

Started another of Barry's books. He didn't want it, and I can see why. It's called
Mary Poppins
, about rich kids in London. They have this governess who gets blown into their house by the wind. It's pretty silly, but better than nothing — just.

Things are quiet out at the camp, Dad says. Ito wants us for another lesson tomorrow. Yes, sir!
Hai, sensei
! But … But you'll never believe what Mum wants me to do …

SUNDAY, 17 JANUARY We left our bikes at the barrier. I carried what Mum had given me while we were led through the civilian compound. Prisoners moved between huts, shook brooms. One half-lifted a hand as we passed, and went ‘Hurro'. Over by one hut, a group seemed to be doing some sort of weird exercise, moving their heads and hands from side to side.

Ito arrived just a minute after us. We stood and bowed. He half-nodded, and went, ‘Barry … Crarry … Oon.'

Next, our
sensei
tested us on the words we had
already learned. If we got them right, he said nothing. If we got them wrong we had to say them about twelve times.

‘You learn today of our great mountain,' Ito said then. ‘Fujiyama.'

I'd never heard of it, but he described how the mountain is a volcano that last erupted about two hundred years ago. It's over twelve thousand feet high (that's much higher than Mt Cook). Japanese stories say that it rose from the ground in a single day, and that it's holy. He told us the words for mountain (‘
san
': that's easy) and snow and other things. He and Mr White would get on well, I thought. They're both good teachers.

When he'd finished, he once again said, ‘You have questions for me?'

Clarry pulled himself up, bowed, and went: ‘
Sensei
, will you tell us more about your son, Haru?'

Ito turned away and gazed out the window. What was happening? Then I realised he didn't want us to see his face. But when he turned, he was as calm as ever.

‘He is courage boy. He likes horses. He and I have climbed Fuji-san. Father and son do this in Japan.'

He paused. His eyes were in the wall behind us. ‘On February, third day, it is the end of winter in our land. The father throws seeds to send away winter demons. Haru will do this when I am not there.'

Clarry stood again. ‘Will he be a soldier, too?'

The slim figure nodded. ‘If our Emperor wishes.'

I got up. ‘
Sensei
, I heard that the men in camp were going to act a play, but you said there is no play.'

‘This is right. It start soon. No play.'

My mind felt blank. My face probably looked blank. ‘But,
sensei
, how can it start if there is no play?'

Ito frowned, then he seemed to understand. ‘
Noh
play. Very old Japanese play. There is much using of hands to show.' He lifted his own hands, moved them from side to side. Suddenly I realised what those prisoners had been doing out in the compound.

‘It's called a Noh play!' Barry and Clarry laughed.

Ito's face stayed stern, but his mouth lifted slightly. ‘You do not listen,' he told me. ‘Say again: “
Noh
”.'

I said it again. And again. Twelve times.

The guard stood. ‘Time's up, lads. I'll take you back, pal.'

We three bowed. Then I reached for what Mum had given me. ‘
Sensei
, this is a gift from my mother for teaching us. It's Marmite.'

Ito took the jar. He opened it and sniffed. ‘Mah-mite,' he went, and sniffed again. ‘It is poison?'

‘No! No, it's to eat. You spread it—' I realised our
sensei
was smiling. His face changed completely; he wasn't an enemy fighter or a strict teacher any longer. The guard chuckled, too.

‘You will thank your mother, Oon. She is kind.' The guard led him from the room.

I told Mum and Dad about it. My mother was pleased about the poison Marmite, but she looked sad when I told her how he had turned away after Clarry asked about his son. ‘He must miss his family so much.'

‘He's still an enemy soldier, Molly,' Dad told her. ‘You've got to remember that.
He
does.'

But Dad is glad that the lessons have started again. He was interested about Mt Fujiyama. ‘Did you know your mother and I climbed Mt Egmont, soon after we were married?'

Mum ruffled my hair. ‘We'll
all
go up Mt Egmont again sometime, son. Barry and Clarry, too. When this war is over, we'll all go.'

MONDAY, 18 JANUARY Barry and Clarry were at their gran's. Dad was at camp. Mum was bottling a whole lot of beans.