Читать книгу Bird of Paradise - Rosemary Esmonde Peterswald - Страница 8

Jake watched the T.A.A. plane circle overhead and followed it in as it landed. He opened the car door, levered his long frame out of the backseat, and walked around to the driver’s side. The scorching wind crackled the parched Kikuyu grass on the verge of the road, sending a spiral of dust high into the air, a small speck of which caught him in the eye. Carefully, he pulled a neatly folded handkerchief from his pocket, using the corner to dislodge it.

‘Yu stopim hai, Phillip... I won’t be long,’ he said to the Pacific Islands soldier behind the wheel.

What does Phillip make of it all? he wondered as he walked towards the terminal. Jake had met the young private the second day he’d arrived in Moresby on his first posting as a Pacific Islands officer at Karu Barracks, where the Australian Army had undertaken the satisfying, yet somewhat onerous task of creating an indigenous army. And although that posting ended up being just a few months, before Jake contracted hepatitis and was sent home, they’d become close, even more so after Phillip almost certainly saved Jake’s life.

Jake’s company had been on patrol in the western districts. Whilst crossing the Fly River, his canoe hit a floating log and capsized, trapping him underneath. Phillip, travelling in another canoe, watched in horror as a crocodile slid off the opposite shore. With no thought for his own safety, he dived into the murky waters, freeing Jake from under the canoe. Together, they scrambled to the shore, just beating the croc by seconds.

Most batmen didn’t drive. But after the incident in the Fly, when Jake discovered Phillip could, he managed to swing a deal with the commanding officer, securing him as a driver as well as batman. On this posting, he’d requested Phillip again. Conversing in a mixture of English and pidgin, Jake noticed Phillip’s English improving nearly as much as his own pidgin. At the same time, their friendship strengthened, transcending race and colour. In fact, on the way out to the airport, Jake even filled him in on who they were really picking up. He trusted Phillip completely—and felt the need to tell someone.

At first he didn’t see Merryn. The other passengers had all disembarked before she emerged at the top of the stairs. Interestingly enough, he found himself shaking as he watched her walk across the tarmac. What was he going to say? And why the hell had she come? Christ, what a stuff up! Yet he had to admit she looked good. For an instant, he felt a small pang of regret as his gaze travelled the length of her body, from her long auburn hair to the white strappy sandals on her feet. She was browner and thinner than when he last saw her, the moist fabric of her short cotton shift clinging to her full breasts.

He pulled a leather cigarette case from his pocket and removed a Chesterfield. After placing it nervously in his mouth, he took out a gold lighter and held it to the end.

As Merryn walked across the tarmac, the hot tar squelched under her high heels, making it difficult to walk. Despite a stiff breeze, the heat was so intense she fanned her face with her hand and wiped her forehead, pushing a piece of stray hair behind her ear.

The first thing she noticed inside the huge iron terminal was the smell of sweat and dust. People were everywhere, wandering, smoking, drinking, slumping, or sitting on the cement floor. To Merryn it looked as though she was gazing at a giant box of Cadbury’s mixed chocolates—some very dark, some a rich brown, and others a milky white. It took her a moment to adjust to the dimmer light as her eyes skittered from side to side looking for Jake. But all the faces she saw were strange to her.

A number of indigenous men, some in colourful lap laps and others in shorts and T-shirts, peered out of a grimy window chewing gum; others clung to the cyclone wire, gaping in awe at the aeroplane. One turned and smiled at Merryn. Later she was to discover it was betel nut that coloured his teeth an alarming red. A bare-breasted woman sat on a long plank in the centre. On one breast she suckled a tiny fuzzy-headed baby, on the other a small piglet. Merryn looked in amazement. Surely it must hurt? Does she save one breast for the baby and the other for the piglet, or do they share? She clasped her own breast, feeling the moistness of her cotton dress.

Next to the woman and seemingly oblivious to the suckling pig sat the singer, Dusty Springfield—bottle blond pelmet hair, eyes black sockets, gone overboard with the eyeliner, brown eye shadow, and thick black mascara. But of course, it wasn’t Dusty Springfield. She was still cracking up a storm in England as far as Merryn knew. This girl smoked a cigarette, swigged from a can of Coca Cola, and read a magazine (the Women’s Weekly by the look of it) all at the same time.

Further on, a group of runny-nosed children squatted on the dusty floor with bright shell bags and carvings at their feet. A pair of grubby hands pushed one of the bags in Merryn’s face.

‘Yu laik, Missus?’

‘No thanks,’ Merryn said, pointing to the leather bag hanging from her shoulder. Two enormous black eyes stared back forlornly. Merryn moved on but then, feeling guilty, rummaged in her handbag for fifty cents, which she suspected was a lot more than what a bag was worth. After placing the coins in the young girl’s hand, she was rewarded with a huge grin and a multicoloured shell bag, which she placed around her other shoulder.

Moments later, clinks of champagne glasses made her turn her head. In the corner, near the boarding gate, a group of Aussie expats stood together; the men in shorts and open neck shirts, a couple in safari suits; the women wearing cotton dresses, culottes, or brightly coloured caftans. There was much hugging and kissing, shaking of hands, and cameras clicking. It took Merryn only a moment to realise they must be farewelling a family back to Australia—the family with the tall thin woman wiping tears from her eyes, two tiny blond girls clinging to her skirt, and the husband smoking a pipe.

Now a green tractor, towing the luggage from the plane, roared into the terminal distracting her. She walked over to collect her suitcase. When she picked it up and laid it on the ground, it felt even heavier than when she had packed it.

Suddenly, she felt a tap on her shoulder. Her heart lurched as though the earth had given way. Without warning, she felt tears fill her lower lids and she tried to blink them back. After a moment, she rounded slowly and looked straight into Jake Hawkins’s blue eyes.

‘Hello Merryn,’ he said, inclining his lips towards her cheek, ‘how are you?’

She averted her face, not wishing to be kissed and shifted her gaze to the blond woman on the wooden bench, now joined by a friend in pink shiny pedal pushers and a skimpy halter neck top.

He put out a hand and touched her wrist—the touch so unwanted she stepped back.

‘Merryn,’ he said again, ‘how are you?’

Having come against her better judgment, she could not speak. For a moment, she thought her jaw had locked. It hadn’t.

‘How am I?’

‘Yes,’ he said.

She swallowed, her face hard now and the queasiness gone. ‘How do you think I am, Jake?’

He studied her face, and there seemed an awful pause. ‘I’m sorry, Merryn. I was just wondering...you know. But you look great. Lost weight?’

‘Thank you, Jake. Yes...I have...not surprisingly.’

They stood facing each other—not sure what to do next. She noticed his olive skin was even darker, making his hair blonder, teeth whiter, the dimple in his right cheek more obvious. She could smell his aftershave.

‘Did you have a good trip?’ he asked.

‘Yes, it was fine, thank you.’

It was as if she was talking to a perfect stranger, a person she had just met. Not someone she knew so intimately. She brushed a piece of sodden hair from her eyes. Her hand quivered, but he didn’t seem to notice.

Stooping down to pick up her suitcase, he pointed to a car waiting outside the hangar. ‘This way,’ he said, ‘through those doors, ‘Phillip’s waiting with the car. You stay here and I’ll go and get him.’

For a second Merryn let her eyes focus on the nametag on Jake’s shirt. Captain Jake Hawkins. As she stood in the scorching heat, waiting for him to return, she remembered the day she had first heard that name. Little did she realise how from that moment on, her life would change so incredibly.

As usual, it had been a fickle summer in Tasmania. The day before was freezing cold and pouring rain. That day was warm with not a cloud in the sky.

Michael, the head apple picker, stood up and leant over to grab his haversack off the ground, showing all and sundry the huge plumber’s crack he was so famous for. ‘Don’t be long, you lot,’ he said. ‘We need to pick three bins before lunch.’

They were lying in the grass by the waterhole below the apple orchard at Koonya, having a smoko in the shadow of a huge poplar tree, shunning the hot midday sun. Out on the waterhole, the still waters shimmered in the haze of unfamiliar heat.

Prue Hawkins tugged at a pla ti of dread-locked black hair, pushing it under her straw hat. She was an eye-catching girl, not tall, not short, but sinewy, much like an athlete.

Merryn, sprawled on the grass a little further away from the main group, nibbled the last of her tasteless devon meat sandwich and threw the crust on the ground for the magpies. Carefully, she put the greaseproof paper back in her lunchbox, took a swig from her steel water bottle, and heaved herself off the ground.

Leaning down, she took off her boots, slipped her shirt over her head, and stepped out of her red shorts. Underneath she was wearing a blue one-piece swimsuit. She walked to the edge of the water unaware of the male apple pickers’ eyes on her lithe body. The water was cool, but she had known it colder. She waded out through the rushes and plunged under the surface. Swimming over arm, she was soon on the other side of the waterhole. She wiped the water from her eyes and gazed across to where the rest of the pickers were sitting and saw Michael walking up through the long grass to the orchard. With the smallest of effort, she flipped on her back and lay there relishing the hot sun on her already brown face.

‘Five minutes,’ Prue called.

Turning turtle onto her stomach, Merryn swam breaststroke to the shore and clambered out between the rushes. Not waiting for her swimsuit to dry, she dressed again, pulled on her boots, tucked her wet hair under her cloth hat, and stepped over to Prue. Together they walked up the small incline, past the lavender hedge surrounding the derelict convict cottage on the rise, hidden under a mass of tangled rose bushes and thick wisteria vines. A little further on, they climbed over the white wooden gate to the orchard, where they hitched a lift on the back of a tractor to the top of the long row of heavily laden apple trees.

Merryn had met the unconventional Prue when she came grape picking at Wattle Creek, the O’Neill’s small vineyard in the Hunter Valley. Prue had just finished her political history course at the ANU. As Merryn had decided she wanted a year off after finishing high school, Prue had talked her into joining her in Tassie to pick apples for a month.

Merryn had jumped at the opportunity. Yet in her second week of apple picking, she wasn’t so sure it was such a great idea. She loved the outdoors, and the rest of the group was good fun, but she had no idea it would be so gruelling, not to mention monotonous. Yet Merryn was used to working hard, having picked an entire vineyard of grapes with her father one year.

Prue put her hand up to shield her face from the sun. She called across the tree to Merryn. ‘My brother Jake’s coming down next week. Can you believe the bastard’s gone and got himself accepted into Duntroon?’

Merryn stretched out to grab a huge Granny Smith. Mechanically, she placed it on top of the other apples in her canvass satchel. ‘I didn’t know you had a brother. You’ve never mentioned him.’

Prue heaved her satchel onto the top step of the ladder and shifted her gaze into middle distance. ‘We don’t see each other much,’ she said, tossing a sweat soaked dreadlock over her bare shoulder. ‘Not on the same side of thinking, if you know what I mean. He reckons I’m sort of off. Bit way out for his liking. But he’s got a mate, Sid, in Hobart who I went out with a few times.’ She grinned. ‘He’s a nice enough guy...we’re still friends. Jake’s coming over to see him. Sid rang to see if they could come down here. He’s organized it with Michael. They’re to stay in the pickers’ quarters with us. Help us pick for a week or so ... then they’re off to Surfers.’ She hurled a hail-damaged Granny Smith to the ground. ‘Jake was at uni doing architecture...threw it in when he got accepted into the army. What a waste!’

‘You don’t agree then? With the army, I mean,’ Merryn said.

‘With all his talent and the heaps of things he could have done,’ Prue told her heatedly, taking an angry bite out of an apple, ‘how the hell could he choose to inflict war and pillage on innocent human beings...because mark my words, it won’t be long before Australia will be in Vietnam too. You just wait and see.’

‘Oh,’ Merryn said. ‘I didn’t think the Americans had much option.’

‘Like hell they didn’t.’ Prue’s voice moved up a semi tone. ‘One day I’ll take you to one of our meetings. That’ll open up your innocent brown eyes. Anyway,’ she went on, pulling at the leather strap holding her satchel, ‘he should be here next Wednesday. You can make up your own mind as to whether he’s wasted in the goddamn army.’