Gibber’s Creek Gazette, 18 June 1942
General MacArthur Named Father of the Year
Heroic General MacArthur has just been named Father of the Year. The new Father of the Year breakfasts with his son Arthur each morning before heading out to the day’s command. The General states that his son is the only one who can tolerate his singing, and they sing duets together.
PULAU AYU PRISON CAMP, 20 JUNE 1942
NANCY
She couldn’t sleep. It wasn’t just the heat, which sucked at her bones despite the sea breeze that grumbled around the bamboo-leaf roof. It was hunger, deep sinew-weakening hunger, as if her body had used up almost its last reserves.
She stared at the gecko on the ceiling, almost invisible in the moonlight. In the bunk next to her Moira lay with Gavin — he at least still looked, not plump, but not gaunt either. Moira was still feeding him, and was thinner than anyone else in the camp.
They had asked again for more food. Vivienne had even cried. The translator had watched with emotionless contempt. Nancy was good at reading the emotions on his almost expressionless face now.
‘No more work, no more food.’
‘But we don’t have any other work to do!’ said Nurse Rogers.
The translator looked her up and down. ‘Will you work for Japanese soldiers in the Japanese hospital?’
‘No, of course not. You can’t ask prisoners of war or internees to work for the enemy army. It is against the Geneva Convention.’
Which the Japanese didn’t sign, thought Nancy, remembering what Mr Harding had told her. She wondered if Nurse Rogers knew that small but possibly important detail. But Nurse Rogers had known one of the nurses bayoneted by the Japanese when they’d taken Hong Kong. Perhaps she suspected that Australian nurses would be no safer in a hospital controlled by the Japanese. So many atrocities, Nancy thought, as the nightmare bodies on the beach seared across her mind again. But here we are at least alive.
‘No work. No food. Nippon soldiers are kind to give you food at all.’
Vivienne had bribed the guard to buy a chicken — half the money to the guard, half to buy the chicken. But when she realised that the other women expected her to share the food equally among them, she bought no more. A week after that Sally had become feverish. The quinine Mrs Hughendorn had bought — the guard again pocketing half the money — had worked. No one else was prepared to buy food now. Not yet.
No more work. No more food. Why feed mems who could not contribute to the war effort?
No extra food until the war ended. If it ever ended. Sometimes Nancy lay and watched the sky. But the only planes were Japanese ones, and those infrequent, as if there was no need for planes now to capture Malaya.
No extra food forever then. How long was forever?
Hunger nibbled you, like a mouse inside. Hunger made you listless, so you couldn’t think. Hunger was turning her wits to chicken bones. Hunger would kill her sister-in-law, this small courageous woman she now knew she loved, was not just bound to by duty.
Something moved in the shadows of the hut. Rat! Few rats lived in the camp — there was no food for them here — but the stench of the latrine attracted them, and bamboo walls and thatch would make good nesting places.
A memory floated into her brain: Gran, sitting still while a goanna lumbered past; her fingers flicking, suddenly, crushing the goanna’s head down. ‘Bush meat’ she had called it, cooking it on a fire by the river for lunch, never taking it back to the kitchen she shared with her daughter-in-law. Nancy wondered if Gran had ever cooked ‘bush meat’ in the kitchen even when the house was solely hers and Granddad’s.
Goanna, black snake, echidna — echidna tasted of ants — the bush rats that weren’t rats at all and had small sharp teeth and devoured insects, the small hopping creatures that were almost rats as well …
She raised herself slowly on the bed, noiselessly. The rat didn’t seem to see her, too intent on scratching out a cavity in the wall. She stood, again so slowly as to be almost motionless. One foot, and then another, making sure her shadow stayed behind her. Six feet away, then three.
Her hand flashed down. The rat wriggled, tried to bite. Her hands twisted. It lay limp in her hands.
One dead rat.
She looked at Moira, Mrs Harris and Sally, all still asleep. Would they eat rat? She looked up at the ceiling, at the gecko. May as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb. She climbed up onto the bunk and grabbed.
The gecko didn’t stand a chance.
She took the booty out into the moonlit night. They had no knives. She found a rock by the barbed-wire fence, chipped it against the stone paving of the outdoor kitchen, and then used her teeth to make a blade, like Gran had shown her. One small cut to the rat’s anus, then she sliced through the fibres up between the flesh and skin. Another cut. The guts spilled into her hand. She threw them into the latrine and began to skin the gecko.
There wasn’t much meat when she had finished. A few spoonsful each. But a few spoonsful of meat every few days might make the difference between life and starvation. And there were more rats and lots of geckos.
She headed up to the well to get one of their buckets of water. They were allowed more now, in the dry season. The guard glanced at her, but didn’t yell at her to go back. Dawn was coming. She filled the pot with water and set the meat to cook. The scent of it as it heated almost made her faint.
She felt an instinctive urge to pull out the half-cooked meat, to gorge on it. She almost hoped the others would reject it. She could feast by herself. And feed it to Gavin too: he was too young to have learnt prejudices about his food.
The meat was shreds now. She added some of the cassava from the night before, let it bubble to the normal gruel, slightly browner now and dappled with the meat, then let the fire die down, covering it with green wood to keep the coals alight until supper.
Sally came out, yawning. ‘How long have you been up?’
‘A while.’ She waited as Sally went to the latrine. Moira woke next, at the cry from Gavin that announced he was hungry.
Mrs Hughendorn emerged, adorned with rubies, emeralds, and dressed in yet another suit, of which she seemed to have an endless supply, though they hung lower and lower on her legs as she lost more weight. She sniffed, then came over and peered into the pot. She looked sharply at Nancy.
‘The guard gave me some meat,’ said Nancy. ‘I added it to the cassava.’ She tried to keep her voice even, her cheeks from blushing. She had never found lies easy.
‘I … see,’ said Mrs Hughendorn. She looked at Nancy’s hands.
Nancy glanced down. Red fingernails. Rat’s blood, or lizard’s. There was no way to clean her hands till the afternoon’s washing water was released.
Another gecko scuttled past. Food, thought Nancy.
Nurse Rogers emerged. ‘Has anyone got a ribbon they could spare? My hair keeps getting in my eyes. Do you think Tojo would cut it for me?’ She too sniffed, came over and gazed down at the pot. ‘Don’t tell me we’ve got meat! What is it? The bones are too small for chicken.’
Mrs Hughendorn glanced at Nancy, then at Nurse Rogers. ‘Island rabbit,’ she said clearly. ‘We used to eat it now and then.’
She knows, thought Nancy. Some of the others may suspect, but they’ll follow her lead. This is ‘island rabbit’ as long as Mrs Hughendorn says it is.
Moira came out, with Gavin on her hip. Nancy smiled at her. ‘There’s meat for breakfast. Not much. But at least it’s meat.’
And somehow the wind from the sea seemed to breathe Australia, the scent of gum leaves, the scent of Overflow.