In the Mouth of the Tiger (75 page)

We moved into our Bicton home a week later, and quite suddenly I became a suburban Australian housewife, seeing my husband off to work on the seven thirty bus, doing the shopping at the corner store, and whitening the family's clothes in the wash with Reckitt's Blue. Denis was suddenly a working husband, spending the day at Leeuwin and coming home each night to water the garden and help with dinner. Every payday he would count out his pay on the kitchen table, then give me my housekeeping before putting the rent and the electricity money aside in jars we kept on a shelf above the stove. ‘No champagne this week, Norma,' he'd say with a wry smile, or ‘I'm afraid you can forget caviar for Sunday dinner, my dear.'

The humdrum nature of our life was comforting and, as I had no idea how long it would last, I clung to its routine with gratitude. I began to sleep again, long, dreamless sleeps from which I would wake refreshed. I resumed my passion for reading, joining the local library and borrowing up to half a dozen books a fortnight. Every day after lunch I'd tuck myself into a rather battered cane chair in our sunny sleep-out, and read solidly while the boys had their rest and the sprinkler chipped away on our lawn outside the open glass louvres. My reading was quite catholic. As well as all my old favourites I read and learned to appreciate Australian authors new to me: Miles Franklin, Frank Davison, Aeneas Gunn, Vance Palmer, Eleanor Dark and Ion Idriess. I was particularly captured by Eleanor Dark and Ion Idriess, whose robust tales were of the great red heart of Australia and its tangled tropical north.

Although by this time my pregnancy was well advanced, I was feeling wonderful and there had been no complications. To keep fit and mobile, I'd been taking walks with Denis in the evenings, and swimming with him at Cottesloe Beach on the weekends, provided the seas were not too rough. We'd bathe the boys in the shallows, then set them to building sandcastles while we swam out past the breakers, where we'd tread water, looking back at the golden beach and the towering Norfolk pines.

‘Happy?' Denis had asked on one of these occasions. I'd thought about it carefully, then nodded slowly so that my chin dipped into the blue water. I
was
happy, but it was a conditional happiness. I was happy because Denis was with me every day and every night, but I knew with certainty that as soon as duty took him away demons would swarm around me. The demons of regret that so much was lost. Demons of guilt that we were alive and so many dear to us were dead. And the worst demon of all – the fear that Denis would be killed and I would be left alone in an unfamiliar, alien world.

I tried to push these dark thoughts away but the birth of our daughter in mid-April unexpectedly rekindled them. Unexpectedly, because April is a lovely month to give birth and Frances was a lovely baby. In April, the long hot days of summer have passed, and while it is not yet cold the first rains have settled the dust, and brought the local trees and flowers back to life. Frances was a beautiful baby from the moment she was born, but when I held her for the first time I thought of Catherine's little April, and the dream I had of our two babies growing up together. Despite my joy I felt a small sharp splinter of
pain as I gazed mistily through the French doors of my hospital room to the flower-filled garden beyond.

Looking at those beautiful late summer blooms, I made a promise to myself. If ever I had a garden of my own again, I would plant a bed of roses in memory of Catherine. I was quite sure she was dead. I'd seen the look of utter despair in her eyes on that last awful afternoon. A look that told me so clearly that all she wanted was to be with Robert and April.

I remained at the Tresillian Hospital for a fortnight – they regarded confinement seriously in those days – but of course I had to come home eventually. And I found that looking after three children was a lot harder than looking after two, particularly when one of them was a baby. Frances was a very active baby, with a mind of her own and lungs as strong as a smithy's leather bellows. I was quite unused to being awake all night, then having to cope with small children all day, and within a week I was a complete wreck.

It was during this first hectic week that I was woken by an insistent knocking at the front door. I was not expecting visitors and, with the boys having an afternoon nap and Frances thankfully asleep, I had taken advantage of the unexpected peace and quiet to have a rest myself. Grabbing a comb, I ran it through my unruly hair and straightened my crumpled dress as I made my way to the front of the house. When I saw who it was, my breath caught in my throat – standing on the doorstep, beyond the screen door, was Gabrielle Lyon, her baby asleep in her arms.

As usual, Gabrielle looked very chic, in the way only a Frenchwoman can look, and even as the smile broke on my lips I tugged again at my wrinkled skirt and cursed the fact that my hair must look a mess. ‘Oh, how absolutely wonderful!' I exclaimed, and then looked beyond her, but there was no lithe, grinning Ivan in tow. ‘Come in, Gabrielle. I've little to offer but I know you like tea, and there's lots of that.'

We sat in the kitchen, chatting in low tones because of the children, sipping Bushell's tea and nibbling Arnott's biscuits. I cradled Gabrielle's baby, Clive, in my arms as we talked, and could not help noticing the similarity to his father. I wanted so much to ask where Ivan was but of course I could not. The likelihood – the overpowering likelihood – was that he was dead.

But Gabrielle raised the subject, and with a smile. ‘Ivan is fine, by the way. I've just heard that he is alive and well – but he's in India!' The rush of joy I felt made me rise to my feet and bend over to give Gabrielle a kiss. ‘So there
are still some of us about,' I said with a huge sigh of relief. ‘Tanya and Eugene also got away, so we are scattered but safe – at least for now.'

Then my relief suddenly left me, and tears formed under my lids. ‘Alec and Margaret are dead, you know,' I said quietly, ‘and their two boys.' I sat there, wrestling with my new-found fragility, and Gabrielle helped by sitting still and letting the moment pass.

We chatted for most of the afternoon. The boys woke and ran riot, I had to feed Frances, and Clive had a tantrum when he was woken by the racket, but nothing spoilt our cheerful story-telling. There was so much to say, so much to learn.

‘I'm in Perth because Ivan got us a berth on the
Narkunda
,' Gabrielle said. ‘He had no trouble getting tickets from the P&O office. Not only were they free, but at that stage the panic had not set in and the evacuation ships had hardly any passengers. I didn't know a soul in Perth when I arrived, but Ivan had crewed a ketch to northern Australian before the war and had met quite a few people. One of the families he met, the de Pledges, own a big cattle station up near Onslow, but they were spending the summer in Perth to escape the wet, and they kindly took us in. Australians are like that, I've found. Probably a bit rough-hewn, but with hearts of gold.'

‘So what are your plans?' I asked.

Gabrielle gave a vivid Gallic grin. ‘What do you think, Norma? I am sailing for Colombo as soon as I can. Tom de Pledge is arranging a ship. Oh, I really, really can't wait!'

I wanted Gabrielle to stay to dinner because I knew Denis would want to catch up with her – and with the news of Ivan – but she had to go. She was catching a bus. It was still hard to get used to having one's life dictated by bus and train timetables. In Malaya, the syce drove you anywhere you wanted to go and at any time you wished.

When Denis arrived home from work I discovered to my chagrin that my news was not news to him. ‘Oh yes,' he said with affected casualness. ‘A signal came in from SOE India early this morning. Quite a long one. There's no doubt about Ivan. Although the Japanese were breathing down his neck, he and a crowd of SOE and other Intelligence people managed to get hold of a native boat, which Ivan then sailed all the way from Sumatra to Ceylon. It took them more than seven weeks to cover the distance – a whopping sixteen hundred miles – and it was a fantastic feat of seamanship. He's in India now, at General Wavell's HQ, hatching a mission of some kind.
He's evidently got a partner in crime – Bill Reynolds, a retired master mariner cum mining engineer from Ipoh. I'm sure I've told you about him.'

The name rang a bell. ‘You mean the man who used to take you into the ulu on the back of an elephant?' I chuckled. ‘The man who liked hunting rogue tigers?'

Denis nodded his head. ‘The same. He's done work for The Firm for years, he's a crack shot, and he fears neither man nor beast. If he and Ivan have put their heads together, there is no knowing what they are cooking up'.

A week after Gabrielle's visit, Denis told me that he had advertised for a live-in helper. It was early on the Saturday morning, but I was already in the laundry, boiling nappies in our coal-fired copper.

‘It would be lovely to have a hand about the place, but we simply can't afford it,' I said, wiping the perspiration from my forehead with the hem of my apron. ‘If anyone rings, you'll have to tell them it was a mistake.'

‘We
can
afford it,' Denis said firmly. ‘Some of our Malayan funds have trickled through. A rather decent sum. Someone in Singapore had a bit more forethought than one has a right to expect, and sent the money on ahead of us.' Even at the time it struck me as a rather unlikely story, but I was tired and desperate and I didn't question our sudden wealth for a second. ‘You are a very clever man,' I said, dropping the heavy ash stirring stick into the copper and giving Denis a grateful hug.

The phone rang hot all day, and by nightfall we had interviewed and engaged a delightful young lady who agreed to move into our spare bedroom the next day. Shirley was the eldest of a large Fremantle family who had looked after ‘kids', as she called them, since she was ten, and thoroughly enjoyed being paid for doing what she had done for free at home.

She made a tremendous difference. She regarded herself as a member of the family rather than an employee, but she was helpful and kind, and took a huge burden from my shoulders. Initially the boys looked at her a little askance because she didn't indulge them as Agatha and Christine had done, but they soon adjusted to her big-sister bossiness, and came to appreciate her constant good humour. She often joined them in their games, chasing them in the back garden, playing hide-and-seek around the house, and even pillowfighting with them after lights-out so that Denis would have to bawl out for quiet. She was sixteen and I suppose not much more than a child herself.

Life was just returning to its pre-baby normality in the first week of July when there was a knock on the front door late one afternoon. It was only by chance that I heard it, as we were in the middle of a severe winter storm, with thunder rolling and heavy rain pelting against the window panes. I opened the door to a bedraggled Ivan Lyon, his uniform soaked through and an unopened umbrella in his hand.

‘Sanctuary for a stranger?' he asked. I could see immediately that something was troubling him, so I didn't bother with pleasantries. ‘You are getting out of those wet clothes and into a hot bath,' I said firmly. ‘I'll dig out some stuff of Denis's for you to wear while Shirley dries your uniform in front of the fire. In the meantime I'll rustle up a batch of hot scones.'

Denis' grey slacks and jumper were miles too big for Ivan so that he looked like a child sitting in our overstuffed lounge chair. He had always been of a wiry build but he had lost a tremendous amount of weight in the past six months and I pressed the scones, smothered in home-made strawberry jam, on him with the fervour of a Jewish mother.

‘You must eat,' I insisted. ‘Please, Ivan. Gabrielle would hate to see you so thin.'

I realised immediately that I had said the wrong thing, because Ivan just sat there looking at me, his thin face a mask of sudden pain.

‘My beautiful Gabrielle is dead, Norma,' Ivan blurted out, ‘and so is baby Clive.'

I sat there, too stunned to say anything for a moment or two.

‘Dead? Gabrielle cannot possibly be dead, Ivan. It was only a couple of months ago that she was in this very room, bubbling over with joy that she would soon be on her way to join you in India.'

‘She never reached India', he said flatly. ‘The
Nankin
disappeared in the Indian Ocean. They think she ran into a German raider. There's been no word of her fate, or what happened to the passengers.'

I refused to let myself believe that Gabrielle and Clive were dead. Taking Ivan's hand in mine, to comfort myself as much as him, I said, ‘God has a way of protecting the innocent.' It was a phrase Sister Felice used a lot, and though I was not sure I completely believed it, it had always given my spirits a boost in times of trouble and I hoped it would now help Ivan

‘That is a platitude, Norma, and you know it,' Ivan said harshly. ‘God can no longer protect the innocent. We are at war, and war is a horrible business. Too many people have died. I wonder if it's all worth the candle?'

It was unlike Ivan to be so pessimistic and I didn't like the direction the conversation was taking. I groped desperately for a way to divert his thoughts. ‘Look, Ivan – sometimes things look so dark that you feel you can't possibly find your way through the blackness. But things can change. If you are positive, and persevere, you can get through the darkest night. Remember how dark things were when Singapore fell? But you came through all that, didn't you?'

Ivan pondered my words, and I could see him metaphorically squaring his shoulders. ‘I had a bit of luck, Norma.'

‘Tell me about it,' I pleaded. ‘Tell me what happened. I know Gabrielle marvelled at how you beat the odds. Knowing that you won through will have given her strength to fight as you had.'

Ivan had an incredible story to tell. He'd been setting up an escape route in Sumatra for those fleeing Singapore when the island fell and he realised that he needed to escape himself. He and his companions managed to buy a leaky old Malay prahu, the
Sederhana Djohannes
(‘Lucky John'). Although the tiny vessel had certainly lived up to its name and they had won through, the voyage had been a nightmare, alternating between periods of baking tropic calms and sudden violent storms. Telling the story restored Ivan, and I saw his back straighten and his eyes lose their misery. He suddenly turned to me.