The Turning Tide (14 page)

Dad wasn’t far away. ‘Oh, lad,’ was all he could say, in a gruff voice.

We somehow got inside and sat down in the lounge room. We hadn’t seen each other for two years. Mum was greyer but still as beautiful; Dad had lost some of his hair. Mum sat beside me, holding my hand, laughing, touching my face every now and then.

‘Sweetheart, I didn’t recognise you! I thought, Who’s that soldier coming down the street, must be
Mrs Watson’s son. But it was you. You look so different.’

‘Well, I’ve done a lot of exercise since joining up.’

She faltered. ‘Darling, you look so unwell, I mean.’

‘I’m the picture of health now, Mum. Should have seen me a few weeks ago.’

Dad was horrified. ‘What was wrong, son?’

‘Malaria. Not much food or sleep.’ I hesitated. ‘I was shot in the left shoulder, but it’s much better now,’ I added hastily. (It actually hurt quite a lot from all the hugging.)

Now they both looked horrified. Luckily Auntie Rosa and Uncle Anton came in. They must have been painting in the studio, they were wearing their old smocks.

More embraces. ‘Gently!’ said Mum. ‘His shoulder’s hurt.’

More concern, more explanations. It was getting exhausting. I’d just done a couple of days on the Adelaide to Perth train.

‘I think I’d like to have a lie-down now, if I could,’ I said politely.

My room was cool and smelt of fresh linen and roses. I was unconscious within moments.

I slept half the day then got up in the late afternoon, feeling brighter. Mum cooked a roast for dinner that tasted better than anything in my life. Anna and Liam were there too, sitting across from me. We ate by candlelight – Mum was old-fashioned that way.

I was amazed at the sight of my sister Anna. Gone was the flighty young secretary: now her chestnut hair was pulled neatly back, her face thoughtful, her voice calm. On
the other hand, my brother Liam looked as he always did – his dark hair needing a trim, his smile as open as a child’s. He was wearing his ambulance driver’s uniform.

‘I’ve got a shift later tonight. They bring a lot of the wounded into Fremantle,’ he said. ‘India, Africa, Europe. We never seem to stop.’ He said to me gently, ‘How’s it been, Mikey?’

The childhood name made my throat ache.

‘Oh Lee, it’s been hard, bloody hard. It’s not what you think it’s going to be.’

Auntie Rosa, passing vegetables around, said, ‘Mike, dear, we don’t even know where you’ve been or what you’ve been doing. They were terribly mysterious about it.’

I always had a soft spot for Rosa. She was Mum’s older sister, once a red-haired beauty and even in her fifties still plump and pretty and, I’m embarrassed to admit, an occasional focus for my younger fantasies. She was ruthlessly devoted to her art.

‘We were sent to Timor, Auntie Rosa. We’ve been fighting the Japanese.’

Uncle Anton, white-haired, austere and kind, said, ‘Timor, where’s that? Does it have jungle, Michael?’ When I was a child he’d done his best to encourage a flicker of artistic talent in me without the slightest success, but we’d stayed friends anyway.

‘Dutch East Indies, Anton,’ said Dad. ‘Five hundred miles from Darwin.’ Everyone from Broome knew where Timor was: after the Japanese, the best lugger sailors were the Koepangers.

‘No, not jungle,’ I said. ‘Mountains – a lot of them. Gum trees, little thatched huts, white churches. God, it’s beautiful.’ I was suddenly struck with memories.

‘That Dutch ship –
Tjerk
something – brought hundreds of people here from Timor last year,’ said Anna. ‘I nursed quite a few. They were in a dreadful state. Were they friends from your unit, Mike?’

‘Friends, but from another unit,’ I said. ‘Were they all right? Did they recover?’

Her eyes were soft. ‘Some did. Some didn’t.’

Anton said, ‘And how are the Japanese at trench warfare?’

‘There’s no trench warfare, we use guerrilla tactics,’ I said, cutting into a potato. ‘Attack suddenly in small groups, then disappear. It demoralises, weakens the enemy.’

‘What an extraordinary concept,’ said Anton thoughtfully.

‘It was necessary. There were thirty or forty Japs to each one of us.’

I looked up from my plate. My parents’ faces were stricken.

‘Let’s talk about something else,’ I said. ‘Dad, Mum, what’s happened to the luggers?’

‘Oh, son,’ said Dad, recovering. ‘The navy decided to sail about forty boats to Fremantle and managed to wreck about a third of them on the way. Not very good sailors, the old navy.’

‘Only forty? What about the others?’

‘They burnt them, Mike, on the foreshore.’ Mum was still outraged. ‘Good boats, some worth over a thousand pounds, nothing the owners could do. As if the Japanese would want a few old luggers.’

‘Not your
Sparrow
!’

‘No, darling, she’s here, tied up in Fremantle, thank God. But now they’ve got the luggers they don’t know what to do with them.’

Sparrow
had been rebuilt so many times in her long life there probably wasn’t an original piece of timber left, but Mum had owned the boat since before the Great War and loved her with a passion. I decided on a new topic.

‘And how’s everyone else? Where’s Min-lu?’

Mum said quietly, ‘She died last September, Mike.’

‘Oh Mum, no! What happened?’

‘Pneumonia. There was a long cold snap. She was eighty-one, so I suppose it wasn’t …’ Mum looked down. ‘It was quick. But I didn’t want to tell you in a letter.’

So much had changed everywhere else, I’d believed – or hoped – nothing would change here at home. I gently squeezed Mum’s hand.

Next day I was sitting on a bench in the back garden enjoying the sun, when Anna dropped by. I was pleased: we hadn’t had much chance to talk at dinner.

‘Can’t believe the change in you, sis, so calm and wise,’ I teased. ‘Where’s that silly secretary gone?’

‘Once they gave me responsibility I had to live up to it. You’d be surprised at what comes out under pressure, bub,’ she said.

‘No I wouldn’t, not now.’

‘No.’ She sighed. ‘Those friends of yours I nursed, from Timor. They’d talk to me sometimes when they couldn’t sleep. Sounds like it was bad.’

‘It was. They were there longer than us but they had more local support. It was harder in different ways for us. More hopeless, maybe.’

She nodded, her shiny chestnut hair loose today. She tucked it firmly behind her ears and said, ‘Show us your shoulder, Signalman Whalen.’

‘That’s Lance Sergeant Whalen to you, missy.’

‘That’s Nurse Whalen to you, soldier. Do what you’re told.’

I laughed and undid my shirt.

She looked carefully at the scars on the front and back of my shoulder and gently probed them.

‘Ow, careful.’

She sat back. ‘You were lucky,’ she said thoughtfully.

‘Why?’ I didn’t know much anatomy.

‘A bit lower and the damage would have been very nasty, maybe fatal. At least once the bone’s completely knitted it should be fairly good again.’

‘Just fairly?’

‘Mike, what kind of game do you think war is? A bullet’s an explosion, not tidy or clean –’ She bit her lip and took a breath. ‘It’s damaged. Could be a lot worse. Thank God it’s not. At least it might keep you out of trouble now.’

I shook my head. ‘Not likely. No idea what they’ve got planned, but it won’t be a holiday by the sea.’

‘What, they’d send you back into action after this?’

‘Yes, of course,’ I said, doing up my shirt again.

‘Oh, shit, Mike, that’s not fair.’

‘I didn’t know girls swore,’ I said, surprised.

When she’d finished laughing Anna said, ‘Mike, you innocent. With what we have to handle every day, swearing’s
the least of it. Anyway, it helps, when things are too much. You must know what that’s like.’

‘I’ll say.’ I looked at her, pleased. ‘Oh Anna. It’s great to see you again. To see everyone. But it’s terrible about Min-lu. How’s Mum taken it?’

‘She was sad but she’s gradually getting over it. Min-lu had a good long life and Mum knew it had to happen sometime. I think her deepest worries are about you.’

I sighed. What my family might feel had been the last thing on my mind when I’d signed up.

‘At least Liam’s flat feet have kept him out of the army,’ I said. ‘I was glad about that.’

Anna looked at me steadily. ‘Liam doesn’t have flat feet.’

‘But Mum’s letter –’

‘I know. That’s what he told her the recruiting officer said. He didn’t want to upset her.’

‘Then what was it?’

‘There was a boy from Broome in the group, one of those nasty Richards kids. He told the officer Liam was a Binghi and shouldn’t be allowed to join up.’

She nodded at my amazement. ‘Yes. Didn’t you know? There’s a government directive excluding Aboriginal men from the military.’

‘But what utter stupidity. And Jesus, they’re talking about – what? – a few drops of blood from a great-grandmother, dead last century? What about his Irish father? That doesn’t count?’

She shook her head. ‘Not in this case. They closed their minds and sent him away. Liam was hurt, but driving an ambulance is just as important and it suits him better. He’s too … I don’t know … gentle, otherworldly, for the army.’

‘Not like the rest of us ruffians,’ I said wryly.

She didn’t smile. ‘I’m not so sure about you, either.’ She turned to me. ‘Mike, you’ve done enough. If you get the chance for some job that’s away from the front line, please take it. For Mum and Dad’s sake.’

‘We all have to do our bit, sis.’

‘Yeah?’ she said cynically. ‘I’ve seen a lot of blokes who haven’t done a fraction of what you have, let alone their bit, getting rich and fat at home.’

She shook my arm, luckily not the sore one.

‘Mike, you’re in signals, for heaven’s sake. Communications, not the infantry –’

‘But I can’t let my mates down, Anna.’

She looked at me in pity and sorrow. ‘I understand. But if you’d seen what I have, horror piled upon horror – your mates, Mike, crying out for their mothers,
begging
for death.’ She stopped, her hand over her mouth.

I put out my arms and hugged her.

When I was young, Mum told me Liam’s dead mother had been very beautiful, but because of her trace of Binghi blood some official had stopped her from marrying Dad. She abandoned Liam then and went away, and Mum cared for him from when he was little.

Liam was a dark-haired, handsome version of Dad. He didn’t look Aboriginal, but sometimes he’d gaze into the distance, his brows drawn down over his long eyelashes, and I’d see something ancient and fascinating in his face. But today he was just being his usual annoying philosophical self.

‘It was probably for the best, Mikey. You know I hate taking orders.’

‘Still, it was bloody unfair.’

He smiled. ‘Remember when you beat that boy up at school for calling me a Binghi?’

‘Well you were nothing like those ones around Broome, all sad and defeated.’

‘But it was still true, you dope.’

‘If you’re a Binghi because your great-grandmother was, then that makes me … I don’t even know … Wait on, yes I do, Mum’s father’s mother was a German, a Kraut! There! You see? That makes me one of the enemy. Seems I’m fighting on the wrong side.’

He was laughing. ‘Oh, I’ve missed you. You’ve been away too long, little brother. But, hey, I hope you listened to what Anna said yesterday.’

‘She told you?’

‘Too right. United front here, Mikey. I couldn’t agree with her more.’

I nodded. ‘I’m thinking hard about it, Lee. It’s true what Anna said. I’m trained in signals and I’m not too bad at it. Maybe I can still be useful without being shot at.’

He grinned. ‘Good man. Hey, I did a new painting. Want to see it?’ We ambled around the corner to his place, a flat in a house divided into four. He liked being near the family but he liked his independence too. I noticed a woman’s hair comb lying on the floor.

His living room was chaotic – canvases, paint tubes, brushes and old plates clumped with pigment everywhere, and pervading it all a strong smell of turps. Liam’s hard work and lovely paintings brought him in just enough money to live on.

‘Here,’ he said, handing it to me. ‘Don’t touch the surface, still wet. Called
Mike in Timor
. I did it after dinner the other night.’

I stared. It was abstract, with lines of green slopes and gum trees, wriggles of huts and white churches, just as I’d described. But I hadn’t said anything about Bullock, and here, sketched in a few sweeping lines, were his eyes; no longer beseeching me, but part of the mountains now and blessedly at peace.

I sat down in shock and looked at my brother. ‘How did you know?’

He shrugged and shook his head. ‘I heard it in your voice. It seemed right. Is it right?’

‘Yes. God, yes, it is. Can I have it? Will you keep it for me till after the war?’

‘Of course. It’s yours. But you’ve got to pay me.’

I looked up in surprise. Liam was as generous as sunlight with his art and his family.

‘You’ve got to pay me by looking after yourself, Mikey.’

I was sitting at the kitchen table, helping Mum by peeling the potatoes. She was chopping carrots at the bench, a familiar old blue apron over her dress.

‘Did you ever hear what happened to the Egawas after they were taken away from Broome?’ I said.

She nodded. ‘They went to a prisoner-of-war camp in Tatura, northern Victoria. They’re allowed to write occasionally. It’s pretty basic by the sound of it, but Egawasan’s on the block committee, Yoshi’s got a vegetable garden going and Mary’s helping teach school for the kids there.’

‘And Betty and Ken? Have they said anything about them?’

‘Only what we already know, darling. Betty’s in Japan. Ken’s God knows where, fighting for the enemy.’ She put the knife down and turned to me. ‘Are you afraid you’ll run into him one day?’

I nodded. ‘It haunts me, Mum. We have to be ruthless, act without even thinking. But if I knew it was him, I’m not sure I could.’

‘And that would put you in terrible danger, wouldn’t it?’

‘Yes.’

‘But if you did act ruthlessly, you don’t know how you’d bear it afterwards.’