And Fire Falls (10 page)

Sir George raised his eyebrows in surprise. ‘Tell me the circumstances,’ he said, leaning back in his chair.

Sarah explained how the manager had disobeyed a directive she had sent to him and what the directive concerned. Sir George listened, appraising his daughter carefully.

‘And I gather that you do not approve of your sister’s decision,’ he said, addressing Donald.

‘I appointed Drinkwater,’ Donald said. ‘He came with impeccable references. Sarah can’t just go around firing people on a whim.’

‘From what your sister has told me, I would have made the same decision,’ Sir George said coldly. ‘Employees have to understand that they do not question a Macintosh directive, and her firing Drinkwater was not on a whim. In my opinion, Sarah has shown the steel of a Lady Enid Macintosh.’

‘But it was not her right to fire a man I employed,’ Donald protested. ‘You’re taking her side just to teach me a lesson.’

Sir George leaned forward in his chair and glared at his son. ‘If I remember correctly, it has been you who has attempted to override my decisions in the past,’ he said. ‘Sarah is proving to be a true Macintosh. You may consider her decision ruthless but that is what it takes to run an empire such as ours. You yourself could do with being more ruthless. I am disappointed that you conceded to Barrington’s demands for eight per cent when five would have been sufficient.’

Donald shook his head in disbelief. ‘It was that or nothing,’ he replied. ‘I doubt that you would have got better terms.’

‘You don’t know me,’ Sir George snarled and stood up. ‘I would have conceded only one percentage point . . . at the most.’

‘I am sorry that I have disappointed you, Father,’ Donald said, and walked out of the library to find the drinks cabinet. It was obvious that Sarah had ingratiated herself with their father, and now it was two against one. Oh, if only David was back home to side with him, Donald reflected bitterly. He had noticed that Sarah addressed their father with the endearing term, ‘Daddy’. She had not done that when they were young, but it was now in vogue for her when she wanted something.

He poured himself a stiff drink, drank it down in one gulp and then slammed out through the front door, making it quite clear to anyone within earshot that he did not intend to stay for dinner.

*

David Macintosh had arrived in Colombo, Ceylon, with his Australian battalion assigned to develop defences for an airfield. Tents were set up in a rubber plantation alongside those of a British light anti-aircraft unit near the airstrip.

David’s platoon had the tasks of building revetments, laying wire and clearing lanes of fire in the event of a Japanese landing. The one good thing about the dirt airfield was that it was only half a mile from a beautiful tropical beach.

After a hard day of labouring with pick and shovel, David’s platoon was granted leave to go down to the beach. Mail had arrived from Australia and David had kept his precious package of letters to be read under the shade of a coconut tree while his men frolicked in the warm surf.

On the beach, he sat and examined each envelope for the sender’s address. There were letters from his cousins, Sarah and Donald, as well as letters from Sean Duffy, the man he thought of as his father. Missing from the letters were those of his beloved grandmother, Karolina Schumann, who had died peacefully on their New Guinea plantation whilst David had been serving in Syria fighting the Vichy French. He now owned a copra plantation willed to him by his grandmother, but that was of little concern to him now, when his life was always in the balance thanks to the fortunes of war.

David opened the letters from Donald and read news about the progress of the war in the Pacific, as well as reassurances that the family enterprises were flourishing. Sean Duffy, in his usual gruff style, wrote that he missed having David around and that Harry’s gym was not doing so well – most of his prized boxers had signed up. Harry was thinking about retiring, although he still was on Sean’s payroll as an investigator. Finally, he read the letters from Sarah. He kept these until last because they were warm with sweet endearments. David was aware that Sarah had a crush on him, but he had refrained from showing too much interest in her. She was an extremely desirable young woman, but she was also the sister of his best friend, and his cousin. On a couple of occasions she had mentioned the name of an ancestor, Michael Duffy, and said that he could have been the reincarnation of him, if one believed in such things. David had asked her more about this mysterious man and was surprised to find he had a lot in common with him.

‘Boss! Boss!’ one of David’s men was yelling as he ran naked up the beach. ‘A Jap aircraft.’

David glanced up to the sky where he could see the tiny single-engine plane with its distinctive red roundels under the wings. David guessed it was on a reconnaissance flight and not a direct threat to them. However, it was the first sign of the new enemy and it reminded him that his return to war was not far off.

8

T
he sun was relentless and Diane Duffy was desperately thirsty.

‘Speedo!’ one of the Japanese soldiers yelled at the line of women and children. They were trudging under the hot tropical sun along a dusty dirt road from the Katong temporary camp towards their destination of Changi prison. At least the Japanese had provided lorries for the very sick and elderly for the march into captivity. Diane had three cans of sardines in the small bag she carried but thought that if she ate them, they would make her even thirstier.

Some of the women were defiantly singing songs of the British Empire, and spirits were reassuringly high. Walking beside Diane was a young Englishwoman whose husband had been a manager with a British trading company in Malaya. The sun had burned her beautiful pale skin a beet red as she had lost her hat. Diane offered the young woman her own hat, and she accepted it.

‘I don’t know what has become of my husband,’ said the young woman, who had introduced herself as Dorothy. ‘The Nips separated us when we were forced to surrender. Do you have any family?’

‘My son was evacuated a few of weeks ago,’ Diane said. ‘I haven’t heard anything since.’

‘Why didn’t you go with him?’ Dorothy asked.

‘I wish I had,’ Diane said. ‘But I had other commitments, and my son went in the care of an old friend.’

‘I heard that many ships evacuating Singapore were sunk by the Japs,’ Dorothy said carelessly. Diane’s face must have shown her anguish because the young woman said, ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to imply that your son was on one of those ships. Some do appear to have been able to run the Jap blockade.’ She grasped Diane’s arm. ‘Do you think we will be humanely cared for?’

Diane heard the plea in her voice and realised that the young woman was frightened and wanted reassurance. ‘I’m sure the Japs will treat us with consideration as non-combatants,’ she answered, although her words rang hollow. This was not an army that believed in the protocols of the Geneva Convention, and civilian prisoners only added up to useless baggage that had to be fed and guarded. The soldiers escorting them looked young and seemed to resent their role as guards. They clearly saw themselves as conquering warriors and this kind of duty demeaning. Diane knew that such an attitude could result in brutality.

After a long, seemingly endless march, Diane saw the huge gates of the prison loom up, and was almost grateful. At least they had reached their destination, albeit covered in dust, tired, hungry and very thirsty. The column of women passed through the gate and suddenly Dorothy gave a small cry of joy.

‘It’s Henry! He’s alive!’ she said, staring at a haggard-looking man wearing slacks and a dirty white shirt standing in the courtyard amongst other male civilian prisoners. Diane could see that Henry had spotted his wife as his face broke into a joyful smile. He raised his hand to wave and Dorothy was about to break ranks and run to him when a Japanese guard stepped in front of her and held his bayonet-tipped rifle across his chest in a threatening manner. Dorothy dutifully stepped back to join Diane.

‘At least you know your husband is still alive,’ she said and in her thoughts she wondered about Patrick. Had Cyril been able to get him out of Singapore and to safety? There was rarely a moment that Diane did not think about Patrick, and she felt as though the pain of separation was worse than anything the Japanese could do to her.

Diane heard the great iron gates clang shut behind them. The guards ushered them up iron steps in a prison block to cells formerly occupied by criminals. Each cell was around nine foot by twelve foot. A tiny window with bars was located about ten feet above the concrete floor, and a single stone slab acted as a bed. In the corner was a hole that was the toilet. Diane, Dorothy and an older woman were ordered into one cell. The door clanged behind them and the sound echoed down the building as other iron doors slammed shut.

The three women stood uncertainly in the tiny cell.

‘I’m Diane Duffy,’ Diane said to the older woman.

‘Anne Bambury,’ replied the slightly stout woman, who looked to Diane to be in her late fifties. Her hair was grey and tied back in a bun, and her accent was English.

‘This is Dorothy . . . I’m sorry but I don’t know your family name,’ Diane said, attempting to introduce the young woman.

‘Mrs Dorothy Kindle,’ she said. ‘I suppose family names will not mean anything here, though.’

‘We are British and our names are part of the Empire,’ Anne said angrily. ‘Don’t forget that, young lady. Are you British?’ she asked, turning to Diane.

‘I was born in England, but I’ve spent most of my life overseas. I married an Australian pilot and I have a four-year-old son,’ Diane said. ‘He was evacuated with a family friend.’

‘Which ship?’ Anne asked bluntly.

‘I’m not sure,’ Diane answered. ‘He may have even been evacuated in a flying boat.’

‘I only ask because so many evacuating ships were sunk by the bloody Japs. I know, because I was on one they sank only a couple of hundred yards off the wharf. We lost a lot of people. Rather unusual to get a berth on a flying boat,’ Anne said.

‘I’m a pilot, and a friend offered to do me a favour,’ Diane
said. Both women looked at her as some kind of oddity.
‘I had an airline based out of Singapore but my aircraft were destroyed in the initial air attacks by the Nips.’

‘Well, our first decision here is who gets the bunk,’ Anne said, eyeing the raised concrete slab. ‘We can draw lots for tonight, and rotate around.’

Diane and Dorothy agreed that this was the most democratic solution, and Anne won the first night on the platform.

An hour or so later the Japanese guards opened the doors and the women filed down to receive rations and water. The food was a rice soup served out of big tubs. All were hungry and the food filled their stomachs and the brackish water quenched their thirst. Many in the food line became reacquainted with friends they thought they had lost, and the main topic of conversation was the possible whereabouts of those missing. Diane went in search of Dr Cicely Williams but could not find her. Eventually the order came to return to their cells, and the three women made their way up the many iron steps to their cramped accommodation.

The building once again echoed with the awful clang of steel doors being closed behind them, and they prepared for the hours of darkness.

Anne slumped on the raised concrete slab. ‘I wonder if we’ll get bacon and eggs tomorrow morning,’ she said lightly. ‘I think I might just have a lie-in. Tell them I’ll have my breakfast in bed.’

Diane smiled, but Dorothy said, ‘I don’t think there’s anything to joke about.’

Anne sat up and looked the young woman in the eye. ‘You’re going to need a sense of humour for what is ahead, young lady,’ she said sternly. ‘The Japs might win this war, and all we can expect is this until we die.’

Dorothy burst into tears and Diane placed her arm around her shoulders. She glared at Anne, who rolled her eyes.

‘Dorothy has been separated from her husband,’ she said. ‘I think we should go a bit easy on her. She’s only young.’

‘I’ve had three husbands,’ Anne said. ‘All useless. Where is your husband?’

‘He was killed in Iraq a few years back,’ Diane answered. ‘He was a good man.’

‘Then you have been a lucky woman,’ Anne commented. ‘The only good man I ever knew was my brother. I came out here to join him, and the Japs killed him in a bombing raid a couple of weeks ago. I couldn’t even find enough of him to bury.’

‘I’m so sorry,’ Diane said with sympathy. ‘It sounds as though you have had a hard life.’

Anne did not reply, and when the darkness came, Diane and Dorothy lay down on the hard floor to attempt to sleep. Diane could hear Dorothy weeping quietly, huddled in a foetal position. Diane did not attempt to console her. She lay on her back and fixed in her mind the image of Patrick smiling at her. Tears rolled down her cheeks and all she could do was hope that Cyril had kept her son safe.

Two days later word came along the feeding line that a meeting was to be held in the prison’s carpenter shop to organise a system of government amongst the female prisoners.

Diane was pleased to hear of the meeting as it gave everyone a sense of stability. She looked down at her bowl of rice and water that looked like dishwater. It stank and was tasteless and the prisoners called it bubu. Between three hundred women the ration was five tins of sardines, a quarter tin of bully beef and half-a-dozen tins of soup. Already the thought of food was uppermost in everyone’s mind. The only consolation was that the male prisoners had been given the task of preparing the food and Dorothy was able to snatch a short conversation with her husband when they lined up for their bubu under the watchful eyes of the Japanese.

At the meeting Dr Elinor Hopkins was appointed liaison officer, and Anne put herself forward as representative for the block where their cell was situated. Diane was not surprised to see Anne elected as she had come to learn that she had a toughness of spirit badly needed in these desperate times. But Diane could see that the Japanese cared little whether they died of hunger. She suspected that this ration shortage was a deliberate means of eliminating them, and at night she would close her eyes, her stomach rumbling with hunger, and try to imagine Patrick at the railway station – the last time she had set eyes on him. Always the tears would roll down her cheeks, but in the darkness there was no one to see this, and no one to console her.

*

Aboard the motor schooner plunging through the seas towards the northern coast of Australia, Jessica Duffy sought out the man who had pulled her from the sea.

‘Sergeant Kelly,’ she said when she reached him at his post, manning the Bren gun on the bow, ‘I was told that you saved me from a shark and put your life in jeopardy pulling me from the sea. I have not yet thanked you.’

Jack smiled. ‘No need for thanks, Miss Duffy,’ he said. ‘I would do the same for a blackfella.’

‘You did,’ she smiled. ‘My ancestors are Aboriginal.’

Jack reddened, and spluttered, ‘I meant no offence . . . just an expression.’

‘I know, Sergeant Kelly, and I do not take offence from the man who saved my life.’

‘You look a lot better now than when we first fished you out of the drink,’ Jack said. ‘I heard that you lost a fellow NGVR man a few hours before we found you.’

‘Yes, he was a good man, and Frank Holland wanted him to get back to Australia to tell the government of a Japanese massacre at the Tol plantation.’

‘I know Frank,’ Jack said. ‘Good bloke, for a Pommy. I last heard he had joined us in the NGVR. You say you have Aboriginal blood – I once had a soldier in my command, a Tom Duffy. He was a blackfella and the best bloody digger we had in the unit. Any relation?’

Jessica’s eyes widened. ‘My father’s name is Tom Duffy, and he fought on the Western Front,’ she said. ‘He was awarded a DCM.’

‘God almighty!’ Jack exclaimed. ‘You’re Tom’s daughter? I lost track of your old man when I went to New Guinea after the war. Is he still around?’

‘The last contact I had with him was when I was . . .’ Jessica paused. She looked into the face of the man before her and saw only an honesty she knew in her own father. ‘I was a nun at a mission station on New Britain,’ she said quietly. ‘But I had to flee when the Japanese found out that I had assisted Sergeant King.’

‘Then you’re still a nun,’ Jack said.

‘Not in my heart,’ Jessica replied, gazing across the rolling ocean. ‘I’m afraid my faith is not strong enough for me to keep my vocation. When I return to Australia I intend to resign from my order, find my father and start a secular life.’

‘I was baptised a Catholic,’ Jack said. ‘I guess I’m not a very good one because I can’t remember the last time I stepped into a church. But I never thought I would meet a nun in the process of resigning her job. Welcome to the real world. When you find Tom give him my regards. Kind of wish he was with us in the NGVR.’

‘I hope my father has the sense to realise his age, and is even now at home managing our cattle stations,’ Jessica retorted. ‘He has done enough for his country.’

‘Do the others know that you are a nun?’ Jack asked.

Jessica shook her head. ‘It is not something I wish to make widely known,’ she said. ‘I suppose that I am still technically a Bride of Christ until my superiors in the order release me from my vows. But I no longer feel a part of my missionary past. I did not agree with what I saw of our presence amongst the natives, destroying their culture in the name of our God.’

‘Well, good luck in getting a divorce from God,’ Jack said with a grin. ‘I suspect that you have to fight with yourself over that matter.’

‘Ship off the port side bearing down on us!’ a voice shouted and Jack buried the butt of the machine gun into his shoulder. It was a useless gesture as any warship could blast them out of the water.

Every man aboard tensed until the warship swung around and Jack identified the Royal Australian Navy ensign fluttering from the wireless aerial. The skipper whooped from the bridge. ‘Just got a signal from our warship,’ he yelled to all below. ‘It says, “Welcome to Australian waters.
”
’

Jack dropped the butt of the Bren from his shoulder and hugged Jessica. ‘We made it,’ he said. ‘You’ll soon be catching up with your dad.’

Jessica gazed to the starboard side and in the distance she could just make out the ragged tops of the hills of North Queensland. She was almost home.

*

Private Tom Duffy had been able to use his experience dealing with army clerks to gain a forty-eight hour leave pass, and also permission to pay for a hotel room in Cairns while he waited for his ship to Port Moresby. Accommodation had been scarce and Tom had been forced to draw on his substantial private funds to pay triple the rates for a bed on the hotel’s enclosed verandah. At least there was a large fan to stir the hot air of the tropics.

He wandered out of the hotel to visit to his friend, Frank Fumarra, an old comrade from his days on the Western Front. Tom had helped him buy his grocery business with a generous loan and he had become Tom’s unofficial agent in far north Queensland. Frank’s business had flourished and he now had a large family.