Jack's Island (2 page)

From our classroom, if we looked through the windows towards the air-raid trenches—the ones we had to dig at the edge of the playground the first summer we arrived on the island—we could just see the sea. It made it hard to concentrate. All we wanted to do was get down to the ocean. With Palmer droning on and on about some sorry Greek bloke wandering all over the miserable Mediterranean, it became impossible.

Banjo, my best mate, decided he needed to get outside. His real name is Andrew, Andrew Paterson, just like Banjo Paterson the poet. He reckoned he was related. I reckoned he had more chance of being related to King Kong.

‘Sir?' Banjo put his hand in the air.

‘Paterson?'

‘Sir, can I go to the dunny?'

He shouldn't have grinned when he said it. You would've thought he'd announced Admiral Yamamoto was his all-time hero and he was off to enlist in the Jap navy. All hell broke loose. Palmer, the rotten old maggot, instantly went berserk. His eye twitched and he lurched across the room, knocking into the desks and swinging his cane like a Viking battleaxe.

‘Don't you talk to me in that tone of voice, Paterson. I'll teach you to show some respect, boy.' He drew back his cane and let fly, catching Banjo across the back. He lashed out two more times. The third blow struck Banjo's face as he turned away, hitting his nose. Blood gushed out. Banjo tripped over, his legs caught in his upturned seat. He couldn't get away. He pulled himself into a ball and covered his head, but he didn't cry out. He didn't make a sound.

Palmer stopped as suddenly as he'd started, as if he'd just realised what he was doing. He seemed slightly confused.

He put his hand to his temple. ‘Yes, you can go outside. Go to the tank and clean up your face. Jones, you go with him.' Then he turned to the class, ignoring us. ‘Class, the twelve times table.'

Banjo wouldn't cry, not in front of the rest of the kids. Not in front of anybody. I only ever saw him cry once. But he must've hurt like hell. Two thin red stripes had appeared on the back of his white shirt. We sat in the shade of the water tank and I took out my hanky, wet it and cleaned him up as best I could. The class was droning away inside.

‘Six twelves are seventy-two, seven twelves are...'

Then we saw Dafty. Dressed as usual in his ragged clothes and with hair like mouldy hay, he looked just like I imagined Tim, the ostler in ‘The Highwayman'—which is funny because Dafty's real name is Tim, Timothy Small. He sat under the shade of the Moreton Bay Fig tree at the edge of the schoolyard playing with his chook. Lassie, he called it, as if it were a collie dog and not a scraggy, mangy, bantam rooster.

Dafty sang the same four lines of the song he always sang over and over whenever he saw Banjo. ‘Waltzing Matilda, waltzing Matilda, you'll come a waltzing Matilda with me...' I don't think he knew any more words.

Dafty wasn't bright enough to go to school, even though he really wanted to. I think he would've given anything to be allowed in the classroom with the other kids. Instead he'd wander all over the island with Lassie, exploring or swimming until home time, and then he'd rush back to meet us at school. He'd collect lizards and little snakes and bird feathers and eggs and strange-shaped rocks, and things washed up by the sea, and brightly coloured wildflowers. He hardly kept anything for himself but gave his treasures away to anyone he liked that day.

He stood up and wandered over. ‘Hello, Banjo. Hello, Jack,' he said in the slow and careful way he always spoke. ‘What's a happened to you? Why you bleeding, Banjo? Did he hurt you, Banjo? Did the teacher hurt you? Why did the teacher hurt you, Banjo?' He didn't wait for an answer. ‘I've got for you a Christmas present.' He always called them that, even in July. ‘It's a army bomb for you, Banjo. Look.' He opened up a bit of dirty cloth and held out a real live hand grenade. ‘I got it for you specially. My bestest friend.'

‘Holy hell!' I cried. ‘Dafty, do you know what that is? It's
dangerous.
It's a bloody grenade.'

‘Don't you want it then, Banjo?' asked Dafty. He frowned at me, genuinely hurt at my reaction.

Banjo instantly forgot his pain. ‘Yes, Dafty, I do want your Christmas present. Don't listen to Jack. I want it very much. Thank you.' He reached out for the grenade. ‘You mustn't tell anyone about this, you hear, Dafty? It's got to be our secret. Not where you got it from or anything. Do you understand? It's a special secret.'

‘Yes, Banjo, but Lassie knows. Why did he hurt you, Banjo?'

Simple kids usually get bullied, but there was something so childlike and trusting about Dafty that people hardly ever teased him. Just about every kid in the school looked out for him. When a new kid called Nobby laughed at Dafty once, Banjo beat the living daylights out of him. Nobby never laughed at Dafty again. In fact, he was pretty careful what he laughed at all from then on.

Kids always swapped their sandwiches for one of Dafty's Christmas presents. The night I told my dad I'd swapped a beetroot sandwich for one of Dafty's funny-shaped rocks, he laughed so hard he nearly choked. Even Patricia laughed, my little sister who was too young to go to school and hardly understood.

‘Who's the daft one? Jack or Dafty?' Dad had cackled like a broody chook. ‘You wait till I tell Merv Purvis tomorrow. He'll think it's such a good joke he'll probably give himself a hernia.' Dad shook his head in disbelief.

As the school bell rang the class rushed out into the yard, filling it with noise and laughter.

Forgetting the grenade, Dafty went off to deliver another present, this time a little yellow flower, to Bess Merson. Lassie scratched along behind him, pecking at insects and crumbs.

‘I think we'd better get out of here,' said Banjo. ‘The last thing we need is for Palmer to catch us with the grenade.'

He was right. We'd be under one of those unmarked gravestones in the cemetery quick enough if he did. Banjo carefully put the hand grenade in his satchel and we headed away from the settlement. For once in our lives we pedalled our bikes very, very carefully.

‘We'll chuck it over the cliffs at West End.' Banjo was full of good ideas. West End was nice and remote but it was also a long, long way to ride on a rough dirt track with an unexploded bomb in your schoolbag.

We had a strong easterly wind to help us along and we reached the end of the island quite quickly, even though it felt like forever and our legs ached from riding up all the hills. I think I held my breath the whole way.

‘Can I have a look?' I asked when we finally reached the edge of the tall, circular cliffs surrounding Fish Hook Bay. I'd never seen a grenade up close before.

‘Don't drop it,' said Banjo, handing it over like a precious diamond.

‘Course not,' I said. But it was surprisingly heavy and I nearly did.

‘See anyone about?' he asked as I handed it back.

I looked around. ‘Out here? Not a soul. Hey, what're you doing?' I said in panic.

Banjo had pulled the pin from the grenade with his teeth like he'd seen the heroes do a thousand times at the pictures. Then he spat it out. ‘We don't want any other kids finding a live grenade at the bottom of the cliffs and setting it off. They might not be as sensible as us.' He flung the deadly weapon over the cliff and into the bay below. It didn't go very far.

I fell to the ground, covering my head with my arms. ‘Get down, you idiot!' I yelled.

When the explosion went off I nearly died of fright. Loud? I'd never heard anything so deafening in my entire life. It sounded like it had gone off inches away. I slowly opened my eyes, expecting to see Banjo splattered into strawberry jam, bits of him scattered in the breeze. But he was standing at the cliff edge, in one piece but looking stunned. A cloud of dust and smoke and the smell of cordite rose up from the bottom of the cliff.

My ears rang when I stood up. I saw way off in the distance a khaki army truck winding its way up the two-rut road towards us.

‘Banjo,' I shouted. ‘We've got to get out of here. Now! They'll see us. We're in for it.'

Banjo didn't seem frightened, but then nothing much ever seemed to scare him.

‘Quick,' I yelled. ‘Over the edge. Down the wallaby track. There are some overhanging rocks down by the water. They won't see us there.'

The truck rumbled closer and closer.

We grabbed our bikes and stumbled down the steep track towards the little beach. My bike felt like it weighed a ton as I struggled to haul it along. The spokes kept catching on shrubs but I tugged them free, not caring. Several times my bare feet skidded on loose rocks and I overbalanced, nearly plunging to my death. I might as well have been dead if anyone found out we'd let off a real grenade. What had we done?

It felt like hours. We sat still, hardly daring to breathe, hidden by the overhang. Over the noise of the waves we could hear the soldiers talking on the cliff top above us. An officer was yelling orders but none of them came down the steep, almost vertical track.

Eventually the truck started up and roared back down the road. As I stood up I saw something hidden behind a boulder near the next overhanging rock. It looked like someone had emptied their guts and covered it with sand. And just beside it, leaning against a rock, stood a rifle. I moved over to take a closer look. It looked like a real rifle. On the sand next to the rifle butt lay a helmet. I gasped in surprise. The helmet was Japanese. I instantly recognised the shape of the helmet from all the newsreels I'd seen at the pictures, and the Japanese writing on the inside headband was clear. The sand hadn't blown over them so they couldn't have been there very long.

‘Banjo,' I whispered, ‘look over here, by the overhang.'

The Jap gun and helmet were obvious enough but where was the Jap who owned them? I looked over my shoulder, half expecting to see the whole Japanese fleet on the horizon. Had the invasion started? Flaming hell! The towering cliffs surrounding all sides of the narrow opening of Fish Hook Bay would be a perfect place to hide a boat, especially a Japanese one that didn't want to be seen.

‘Come on, we've got to get out of here,' I whispered.

Banjo nodded but walked towards the helmet.

‘What're you doing?' I cried. ‘We've got to get out of here. What if they come back?'

‘We have to souvenir them,' he said. ‘It's our duty. They're spoils of war.'

At any second we were going to be shot dead by a patrol of Nips. That was for certain. Or worse, captured and Japanese water-tortured.

‘But we can't tell anyone we found it,' I said. ‘They'll know it was us that caused the explosion. Come on, let's get out of here.'

Banjo calmly picked up the helmet and the gun and, as if he was out on a Sunday stroll, put the helmet on his head and slung the webbing belt of the rifle over his shoulder. He coolly collected his bike and started along the sand towards the wallaby track. ‘What are you waiting for?' he asked.

We hauled our bikes back up the high cliffs, and pedalled furiously towards the settlement.

‘But where's the Jap who belongs to it?' I panted. ‘Do you reckon we got him with the grenade?'

‘Probably not. I didn't see any blood or anything. Looks like we might've scared the gizzards out of him, though,' laughed Banjo.

How could he joke like that when the invasion was about to happen? And what if the Jap was hiding, watching us go? What if he followed us? He might cut our heads off with his samurai sword, especially seeing we pinched his rifle. I pushed the pedals on my heavy old bike even harder.

‘Jack? Is that you?' Mum called from the kitchen as I walked in the front door. The smell of baking from the Metters stove drifted through the house. With any luck we'd be having Cornish pasties for tea. In spite of the rationing Mum often managed to make pasties, my absolute favourite.

‘Constable Campbell's been here. He wanted to talk to you. The army thinks Dafty got hold of a hand grenade. Do you and Banjo know anything about it?'

‘No,' I lied.

‘There was an explosion at West End and an army sergeant says he saw two boys up there. Just where were you two?'

‘We were at the lakes. At our fort.'

‘You know I don't like you playing round there. There are far too many snakes near the water.'

‘What'll happen to Dafty?' I asked, trying not to go red in the face.

‘He'll be in serious trouble. No doubt about that. Very serious trouble.' She took off her apron and wiped her hands with it, then narrowed her eyes and gave me a closer look.

Then Banjo, the idiot, came in through the doorway wearing the helmet and with the rifle still slung over his shoulder.

‘What have you two been up to? What are you doing with that gun, Banjo?' Mum said.

Before Banjo could even answer, Mum had us both by the ears, out the door and down at Constable Campbell's house so quickly our feet hardly touched the ground. The constable took the rifle and helmet and laid them on his kitchen table. I could forget the Cornish pasties. Bread and dripping for the rest of our poor, miserable lives. Or bread and water if we ended up in Fremantle Prison, which suddenly seemed very likely.

Constable Campbell immediately sent for Colonel Hurley, the army commander on the island. The colonel arrived within minutes in a khaki-coloured Wolseley. The car screeched to a halt at the gate. He pulled open the screen door and rushed in. It squeaked and banged shut behind him. I noticed that his collar wasn't done up properly. Funny the things you notice.

He nodded at the constable and turned to us. ‘You two, eh? At the West End? Fish Hook Cove? Just over an hour ago?' He tapped his baton against his leg, obviously agitated.

We nodded.

He picked up the helmet and turned it over several times. ‘Jap, sure enough,' he said to Constable Campbell. ‘Marine, most like. Before I report this to headquarters, Don, I'll get some patrols out. See just what's going on.'

He turned back to Banjo and me. ‘You two had better come with us and show us precisely where you found these.' And then he seemed to remember my mother. ‘With your permission of course, Mrs Jones. It is Mrs Jones?'

Mum wasn't going to say no. He was an officer after all. ‘If I've told them once, I've told them a thousand times not to go out to West End,' she said. ‘There's no knowing what might happen to them out there. You tell them, Colonel.' She seemed nervous.

‘Yes, Mrs Jones,' he continued. ‘Constable, if you could have a quiet word round the houses. We don't want to alarm anyone but there'll be a lot of movement this evening. We'll be on full alert until this is cleared up. Oh, and full blackout please, Constable. No exceptions.'

He touched his hat. ‘Mrs Jones, if you'll kindly excuse us.' He indicated the door. ‘Constable. Boys.' He ushered us outside and into the car.

Banjo and I walked out with our shoulders back and heads held straight. I stroked my lip where my pencil-thin moustache would've been if I'd been able to grow one, and tapped my invisible swagger stick against my thigh. Not only had we escaped getting into trouble for the grenade, but we were also going to get a ride in an army staff car.