The Turning Tide (24 page)

Sometimes I’d feel a surge of optimism. After so much suffering, life was back on track: the war was behind us. But I was strangely grateful, too, at having lived through it. I understood the fragility of life now. I knew I could never take anything for granted again. Every day was a gift.

I’d kept in contact with Alan, now working at an engineering firm in Melbourne. My marriage didn’t come as a
surprise to him but he was touchingly pleased for me. Some time ago he’d written to say that after losing Johnny he’d discovered he wasn’t interested in men anymore. He was going to find a nice woman, settle down and forget the past.

I was glad he was looking to the future and had no doubt plenty of nice women would jump at the chance of settling down with him. But I wondered if Alan would really be able to forget the past, forget the man he’d been with Johnny.

In late 1949 he sent me a letter telling me about a new girlfriend in Melbourne named Marion. He wrote:

She’s stylish and funny and smart. She runs an art gallery, knows everyone in Melbourne’s little art world, throws amazing parties. She’s brought me out of my shell and I’m having fun for the first time in years. I’ve told her about you and Betty and I think you’d be friends (if they ever let you darken Australia’s doorstep again). I’ve told her about Johnny too, no secrets between us. She’s a sophisticated woman. I feel very lucky.

He enclosed a snapshot of them both at the beach. I was pleased to see how well Alan looked, happy and tanned. Marion was petite beside him, curvaceous, wavy-haired. She was very pretty, like the young Elizabeth Taylor. Another letter arrived a few months later: Alan and Marion had married on the spur of the moment and were on their honeymoon.

Betty and I sent them gifts and congratulations and promised to visit if ever we could. I wondered often about that. Surely the government could start to ease the
restrictions: it was almost 1950, for God’s sake, and there were now hundreds of Japanese women married to Australian men, permanently in exile.

About this time the plight of Korea hit the headlines. Under Japanese rule for decades, it had been promised its postwar independence; instead it was split into two by Cold War manoeuvring. Skirmishes between the Koreas became common, and in June 1950 the north invaded the south in the first proxy war of the great powers.

The Australian occupation mission was committed to Japan until the official peace treaty was signed, but it was taking forever. The troops were restless and a war was their idea of a godsend. Within weeks they’d been redeployed to Korea on a United Nations mission.

Less than five years after the horror had stopped, the army cheerfully threw itself back into another war. I was sickened and wanted out, even if it meant no job. After Betty and I had talked it over I left the occupation forces. To my surprise, Kanga – ambitious Kanga – did the same thing; but unlike me, he was free to return to Australia.

We had a drink before he went home. I was amused to see he wasn’t as sleek and well groomed as usual. He was leaving his Japanese girlfriend too, and was unusually down in the dumps.

‘Well, stay then,’ I told him. ‘She’s a great girl, you could marry her.’

‘What would I do, Broome?’ he said gloomily. ‘Ten years in the army doesn’t make you fit for anything, let alone somewhere you don’t even speak the lingo.’

‘Should have paid more bloody attention in my language classes, then,’ I said. ‘But I guess you could go home and
become a politician, no skills required – or brains or heart by the look of it.’

‘The pollies’ll relax the restrictions eventually,’ he said. ‘Got to. But I didn’t realise you wanted to go back that much.’

‘I don’t. I love it here. But I’d love to see my family too, take Betty home for a while.’

His shoulders slumped, he sighed theatrically and sniffled and took another drink. ‘I just don’t bloody know, Broome.’

I shook my head sympathetically. ‘Not like you, Kanga, not like you at all.’

He slowly grinned. ‘I’ll miss you, you cheeky bastard. But yeah, maybe I will become a politician. Good pay, easy work, sounds all right.’

He took out a handkerchief, blew his nose, smoothed back his hair and straightened his shoulders and proceeded to tell me some surprisingly scurrilous – and true – story about one of our dear leaders. He was Kanga, himself, once again.

Instead of being jobless when I left the army, I was amazed at the work that came my way. Japan was leaping ahead into the modern English-speaking world and translators were in demand. I’d improved my skills over the last three years and my Broome divers’ Japanese had gained subtlety and breadth.

Betty was happy too. She’d returned to teaching and we’d become almost prosperous. But we still lived with her parents and great-aunt Kiyo. The house was large and I enjoyed the flow of family life.

Betty adored her little brother Tomeo too. She seemed accepting of her own childlessness and I saw her sad only
once: the day we had a joyful letter in late 1950 from Alan and Marion, reporting the birth of their daughter Susan. I told Betty again how content I was with her alone, and it was perfectly true.

Chapter 22

I meet Lena walking across to the union cafeteria.

‘Want a coffee?’ she says. ‘I’ll pay this time.’

‘Am I actually permitted to talk to you, young lady?’

‘Yeah,’ she says confidently. ‘You are totally in Dad’s good books now.’

‘That’s a relief. Have they moved house yet?’

‘Finally, what a soap opera. But their place is nice, outside Foster a bit, lots of trees. Suyin is crazy about trees. Don’t think they have them in Hong Kong.’

‘Maybe not among the skyscrapers, no.’

We get our coffees and sit down.

‘So how are you feeling after your walk on the wild side?’ I say.

‘I ate
so
much,’ she says, shaking her head. ‘Unbelievable. And I had a headache afterwards.’

I nod. ‘Planning to take up dope professionally or just keep to the amateur listings?’

‘Mike, it wasn’t funny. You know the worst bit? I felt so
helpless
. Like a baby. Couldn’t move, didn’t want to, didn’t care. It was horrible.’ Suddenly a dimple appears. ‘Not to say I mightn’t have a toke at a party sometime in the future.’

She looks at me innocently with her turquoise eyes, then grins. ‘No, I won’t. Just wanted to see your face.’

‘Oh, okay,’ I say. ‘Run into Angel and Greg lately?’

‘No. And I don’t want to either. But, oddly, they seem to be avoiding me too.’

‘Really.’

Her head to one side she says, ‘Did you threaten them, Mike?’

‘Me? A mild-mannered professor?’

‘So you did.’

‘I told them to stay away from you, that’s all. With a certain air of menace.’

She gazes at me thoughtfully for a moment. ‘Thanks Mike. I think I was getting a bit out of my depth there.’

‘I suspect Angel is out of anyone’s depth. Or shallows.’

She laughs. ‘I’m really glad you and Dad are friends now, too.’

‘I’m not sure I’d call it friends. Armed neutrality perhaps.’

‘No, I mean it. He doesn’t have many male friends. He does the blokey thing but it’s not really him. And he’s awful with older men.’

‘That’s pretty clear. I’ll carry the scars forever.’

‘Mike. Please.’

‘All right. Sorry, Lena. He’s a prickly kind of lad but
I like him a lot,’ I say. ‘Do you think it’s because he grew up without his father?’

‘No. Not his father.’ She hesitates. ‘Mike, this is between us, all right?’

I nod.

‘I told you before how Nana remarried a year or two after the war. He was called Frank something, a local policeman –’

‘Frank? Good God. Yes, I knew him. He seemed a nice bloke.’

‘Yeah, that’s what Nana thought, too. But he wasn’t. He drank too much, he was jealous of Nana’s dead husband because he didn’t go to war himself, and he used to hurt my dad when he was little. Hurt him secretly.’

‘
Jesus
. Did Helen tell you all this?’

‘Yes. She found out by accident after they’d been married a year. She left him straightaway and got a divorce. I asked Dad and he says he hardly remembers, but he thinks Frank used to poke these spots called pressure points. They’d hurt but not leave bruises.’

I nod. ‘We learnt them in commando training. The sort of thing you use against a deadly enemy, not a kid. How could anyone do that?’

‘Don’t know. Poor Dad. He says he doesn’t remember but I think he does.’

We’re both silent for a moment or two.

‘Something else I wanted to ask,’ Lena says. ‘I turn twenty-one next month but because of exams I’m postponing the party till December. I know it’s only August but Mum loves to plan ahead. Do you think maybe –?’

‘Yes, of course I’ll come.’

She beams. ‘That’s great. I was worried you’d go all funny again. And at last, you can meet up with Nana. Oh dear. You have gone all funny again.’

‘I hadn’t thought of that.’

She says gently, ‘I know you go sort of pale whenever I say her name –’

‘Do I?’

‘Yes, you do. Even the very first time we met.’

‘Oh, you noticed?’ I say, surprised.

She gives me her patient look. ‘Yes, of course. But you can’t go on avoiding each other forever.’

‘Why not?’

‘Were you in love with her, Mike?’

I’m unable to answer for a moment. Then I say, ‘Half of South Gippsland was in love with her, Lena. She was kind, smart, gorgeous. I was a quivering bundle of hormones – of course I was too. But that was a long time ago.’

‘Well if you’re over her, there’s no problem, is there?’

I sigh, trapped. ‘Suppose not.’

Betty was twenty-nine and I was thirty in October 1951, when we celebrated our fourth wedding anniversary. That night I came slowly awake, as I often did, astonished at my own joy. In the moonlight I could see Betty’s sleeping face, her feathered eyebrows, the sweep of her hair, the curve of her lips, and I thought – as I often did – how lucky I was.

In the morning, lying sleepily together, I stroked her hair, her face, her neck. My fingers felt … what? A lump, a soft lump. And a second on the other side of her throat. I’d lived in Hiroshima long enough to feel a chill of fear.

‘What is it?’ she said, then felt her neck for herself and became silent.

‘Have you had … any bruising, love?’ I said, hardly daring to breathe.

She was silent. I slowly pushed back the covers. On her creamy belly were tiny bruises, scattered like rice grains.

‘I’ve been tired lately, terribly tired,’ she said quietly, ‘but I didn’t want to think –’

‘No,’ I said. ‘It could be lots of things, anyway. You had a cold last week, remember. And even if … there’s treatments, the Americans have got new drugs.’

‘They didn’t help Mrs Tanaka.’

The plump, kindly wife of the man who’d helped us be legally married had died, pale and thin, within a few months of becoming ill. There were others we knew, too – someone’s child, an aunt, a schoolboy. All had experienced the bombing, the oily black rain.

Years afterwards I read that the incidence of leukaemia in bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki was many, many times higher than the rest of the country, the rest of the world. But statistics would come later. First there had to be the desperate struggle to live, one human being at a time.

So the era of darkness began. Sometimes I think it never quite ended.

What can I say? My beautiful wife received transfusions of blood, one after the other. They helped for a while. She had drugs that made her ill but gave her a few precious weeks of remission.

She had injections until she was blue with bruises; sometimes she would weep, exhausted, when she heard the nurse’s cart approaching yet again. Her satin-gold skin
became dry and pale. Her glossy black hair became dull. Her rounded cheekbones became ridges. She had to spend longer and longer periods in hospital.

Still, her flame burnt. One week after a transfusion she seemed surprisingly well. She’d put on a little weight, she had some energy. The doctor said she could come home for a time.

By then, months had passed and it was the start of spring. As we drove to the house she asked me to stop at a park she loved. The trees, ruffles of white and pink, were in full bloom. Her face glowed and we sat on a bench holding hands in silence.

That night in bed she turned to me and whispered our old joke, ‘Maiku, my husband, you are required.’

‘Sweetheart, you’re fragile as a sparrow, I’d crush you –’

‘Shh. You be quiet and lie there.’

She eased herself above me, and onto me, and gently we brought each other to pleasure with the skill of long, shared experience. Afterwards, we cuddled and whispered endearments. She was flushed and warm and happy as we fell into sleep together.

And she was pale and cool and quite beyond feeling anything when I awoke alone.

In a breathtaking backhander of irony, the peace treaty was signed a week later, in April 1952, and the exclusion of Japanese wives came to an end. If treatment in an Australian hospital could have helped Betty, I’d never know.

The doctor told us she’d died suddenly from a clot, probably from the most recent transfusion. It was clear he
thought she was fortunate to have avoided the drawn-out deaths of his other patients. I was glad for her. In my mind, bereft, I howled like an animal.

Betty had taught me the rites of marriage, and now she led me through the ceremonies of death. Her body was laid in a casket on the altar at the Buddhist temple where we’d married. She was made up as perfectly as on that day, and she was dressed in a white kimono with the right side over the left, as only the dead may wear.

I was moved by the number of people who attended the wake. The monk chanted prayers and with her family I offered incense three times. The monk prayed again, then I endured the kindness of sympathisers, weeping or grim with sorrow, for what seemed a very long time.

The next day we attended the temple for more prayers. Betty was given a new Buddhist name so she would not return if her life-name was spoken. We laid flowers around her head in the casket, then it was sealed. We accompanied it to a modern crematorium, of which Hiroshima had many, and witnessed it enter the flames on a large steel tray.