Coming Home
‘I didn't.’
‘He's been so excited, ever since we knew you were coming. The bathroom's in here…’
Jess stood in the open door, and simply looked at the shining marble, the polished taps, the gleaming white porcelain.
‘Is this all for you?’ she asked.
‘You and me.’
‘There were only two lavs in the whole of the camp at Asulu. They stank. Ruth used to clean them.’
‘That can't have been very nice.’ Which was painfully inadequate but the only comment she could think of.
‘No, it wasn't.’
‘Why don't you go and spend that penny, and then you'll feel better.’
Which Jess did, without bothering to close the door.
Presently, Judith heard the tap running and the splashing sounds of hands and face being washed.
‘I don't know which towel to use.’
‘Any towel. It doesn't matter.’
She sat at her dressing-table, and for want of anything else to do, began to comb her hair. Then Jess returned, and perched herself on the end of one of the beds. Through the mirror, their eyes met.
‘Better now?’
‘Yeah. I was really wanting to go.’
‘It's agony, isn't it? Have you made up your mind? Do you want to sleep in here with me?’
‘OK.’
‘I'll tell Thomas.’
‘I thought you'd look like Mummy, but you don't.’
‘I'm sorry.’
‘No. Just different. You're prettier. She never wore lipstick. When I got out of the aeroplane, I thought you mightn't be there to meet me. Ruth told me, if you weren't there, I was just to stay at the RAF station until you came.’
Judith laid down her comb, and turned to face Jess.
‘You know something? I was just the same. I kept telling myself that you weren't going to be on the plane. And then seeing you…it was such a relief.’
‘Yeah.’ Jess yawned. ‘Do you live here with Uncle Bob?’
‘No. Just staying. My job's in Trincomalee. That's the big Royal Naval harbour over on the east side of Ceylon.’
‘The rehabilitation officers at Asulu couldn't find anybody for me. We had to stay in the camp until they'd found out where you were.’
‘I can't imagine how they even begin to deal with such problems. Like looking for a needle in a haystack. What happened was that I was finally told that both Mummy and Dad had died. You too, for that matter. And I was given a bit of a holiday, it's called compassionate leave, and Bob asked me to come here.’
‘I've always known that Mummy was dead. Ever since the ship went down. But I only just got told about Dad. They'd had a message from the Red Cross in Singapore. He died in prison. He died in Changi.’
‘Yes, I know. I haven't really come to terms with it yet. I try not to think about it too much.’
‘Women died in Asulu, but they always had friends.’
‘I think Dad would have had friends too.’
‘Yeah.’ She looked at Judith. ‘Will we stay together? You and me?’
‘Yes. Together. No more being apart.’
‘Where shall we go? Where shall we live?’
‘Cornwall. To my house.’
‘When?’
‘I don't know, Jess. I don't know yet. But we'll fix something. Uncle Bob will help. Now —’ she looked at her watch. ‘It's half past six. This is when we usually shower and change, and then we sit out on the veranda for a bit. Have a drink. And then dinner. It's early tonight because of you. We thought you might be a bit tired, need your sleep.’
‘Is dinner just you and me and Uncle Bob?’
‘No. David Beatty will be there as well. He shares the house with Bob. He's a very nice man.’
‘In Singapore, Mummy always put on a special dress for dinner.’
‘We usually change, too. Not to be smart but to be cool and comfortable.’
‘I only have these clothes.’
‘I'll lend you something of mine. It should fit, you're almost as tall as I am now. Another pair of shorts, and perhaps a pretty shirt. And I've got a pair of red-and-gold thong sandals you can have.’
Jess stuck out her legs and looked with distaste at her feet. ‘These are horrible. I haven't worn shoes since forever. It was all they could find.’
‘Tomorrow we'll borrow Bob's car and go shopping. We'll buy a whole new wardrobe for you, and warm clothes too, for getting back to England. A thick pullover. And a raincoat. And proper shoes and warm socks.’
‘Can you buy those sort of clothes in Colombo? In Singapore nobody ever wore anything warm.’
‘Up in the mountains, it gets quite damp and chilly. That's where they grow the tea. Now, what do you want to do? Take a shower?’
‘I'd like to go and look at the garden.’
‘Why not take a shower first, and get changed, and then you'll feel a new girl? There's everything you need in the bathroom, and when you've finished, you can choose something to put on, and then go and find Bob, or explore the garden before it gets dark.’
‘I've got a toothbrush.’ Jess reached for her rucksack. She undid the straps, and from its depths produced the toothbrush, and a small bar of soap and a comb. Then something bundled in a washed-out rag, which, on being carefully unwrapped, was seen to be a little pipe, like a recorder, fashioned from a bamboo stalk.
‘What's that?’
‘One of the boys in the camp gave it to me. He made it himself. It plays proper tunes. Once, we had a concert. Ruth and one of the Dutch ladies organised it.’ She laid the pipe on the bed beside her and began to grope in her rucksack once more.
‘What happened to Golly?’
‘He was blown up on the ship,’ Jess told her in dispassionate tones. From the rucksack she withdrew a folded wad of paper, lined sheets torn from a yellow scratch-pad. She held it out. ‘This is for you. From Ruth.’
Judith took it. ‘It looks a very long letter. I'll keep it for later.’ And she put it on her dressing-table, weighted down with the heavy cut-glass bottle of L'Heure Bleu.
She showed Jess how to work the shower and then left her to it. When, after some time, she emerged again, she was naked, except for the smallest face towel which she had wrapped around her waist. Her wet hair stood up in spikes, and she was so thin that it was possible to count every rib. But her childish breasts had already started to swell, like little buds, and she no longer smelt of disinfectant, but Rose Geranium soap.
They spent some time choosing clothes, and finally decided on a pair of white tennis shorts and a blue Chinese silk shirt. When this had been buttoned, and the sleeves rolled up over Jess's spiky elbows, she took up her comb and flattened her damp hair.
‘You look perfect. Feel comfortable?’
‘Yeah. I'd forgotten about silk. Mummy used to wear silk dresses. Where will Uncle Bob be?’
‘On the veranda, I expect.’
‘I'm going to go and find him.’
‘You do that.’
It was good, for a moment, just to be alone, exhausted by emotion and suffused with gratitude, but still cool-headed. It was important to maintain this coolness, because that way she could rebuild her relationship with Jess, from the ground floor as it were. On Jess's side, the reunion at Ratmalana, the spontaneous display of physical affection had been triggered, not by remembered love but sheer relief that she had not been forgotten nor abandoned. Ten years was too long for love to survive and, in that time, too much had happened to Jess. But it would be all right if Judith was patient, took her time, did not intrude and carried on treating Jess as though she were already grown up. A contemporary. She was back. A beginning. Apparently normal, composed, and untraumatised. Go on from here.
After a bit, she stood up and shed her clothes, and showered and dressed again in thin trousers and a sleeveless shirt. She put on some lipstick, and took up the bottle of L'Heure Bleu, and touched the stopper at the base of her neck and behind her ears. Then laid the bottle down, and picke
d up the yellow pages of the Australian girl's letter.
Jakarta,
September 19th, 1945.
Dear Judith,
My name is Ruth Mulaney. I am twenty-five years old. I am an Australian.
In 1941 I finished my nurses' training in Sydney and went to Singapore to stay with friends of my mother and father.
When the Japs invaded Malaya, my father cabled that I must get home, and I managed to get a passage on The Rajah of Sarawak. She was an old tub of a boat and overcrowded with refugees.
We were torpedoed six days out in the Java Sea at about five o'clock in the evening. Jess's mother had gone below for a moment, and asked me to keep an eye on Jess.
The ship sank very quickly. There was a lot of screaming and confusion. I grabbed Jess and a single life-jacket, and we jumped overboard. I was able to hang on to her, and then a lifeboat came and we managed to get into it. But we were the last, because it was already too full, and if others tried to board, we had to push them away, or hit them with oars.
There weren't enough boats or lifebelts or floats. We had no water nor emergency rations in the boat, but I had a water bottle and so did another woman. There were Chinese with us and Malays and a Lascar crewman. Four children and an elderly lady who were on board died on the first night.
We were adrift that night and the next day and another night. The next morning we were sighted by an Indonesian fishing boat and taken in tow. They took us to Java, to their village by the beach. I wanted to go to Jakarta to try to get another boat to take us to Australia, but Jess was ill.
She had cut her leg somehow, and it was septic and she ran a fever and was badly dehydrated.
The other survivors went on, but we stayed with the fishermen in their village. I thought Jess was going to die, but she's a strong little tyke and managed to pull through.
By the time she was fit to be moved, Japanese planes were appearing in the sky. Finally we got a ride in a bullock-cart on the road to Jakarta and walked the last fifteen miles. But the Japanese were already there, and they picked us up and put us in a camp at Bandung, with a lot of Dutch women and children.
Bandung was the first of four camps. The last, at Asulu, was the worst of all. It was a labour camp, and all of us women were made to work in the rice fields, or clean drains and latrines. Jess was young enough, so not made to work. We were always hungry and sometimes starving. One punishment was that everybody had no food for two days.
We ate rice and sago gruel and soup made of vegetable scraps. Sometimes the Indonesians threw a bit of fruit over the wire, or I was able to barter for an egg or a little salt. There were two other Australian women, nurses. One of them died, and the other was shot.
Jess was never really ill again, but suffered sores and boils which have left some scars.
We tried to have a little school for the children but then the guards took all our books away.
We knew that the war was ending because some brave women had smuggled in bits of a wireless and put it together and hidden it.
Then, around the end of August we were told that the Americans had bombed Japan and that the Allied Forces would be landing in Java. After that, the Commandant and the guards all disappeared, but we stayed in the camp because there wasn't anywhere else to go.
An American plane flew over and dropped crates with parachutes, with canned stuff and cigarettes. That was a good day.
Then the British came, and the Dutch husbands who had survived their camps came as well. I think they were pretty shocked when they saw the state we were in.
There are two reasons why it has taken so long for the word to get through to you that Jess is alive.
One is that trouble is brewing in Indonesia, because the Indonesians don't want the Dutch back as colonists. This has slowed everything up.
The other reason is that Jess was listed under my name, as Jess Mulaney, and we told everybody we were sisters. I did not want her to be separated from me. We did not even tell the Dutch women that we weren't sisters.
I was afraid of being repatriated before her and having to leave her behind, and so I didn't say anything until it was time for us to leave. Only then did the Army know that she was really Jess Dunbar.
Over these three and a half years Jess has witnessed some terrible events, atrocities and deaths. All of these she seems to have learned to accept, and to keep her head down. Kids seem to be able to detach themselves. She's a great little person and very courageous.
During this time together, we have become very close and important to each other. She flies tomorrow and is very miserable about saying goodbye. At the same time, she accepts that there is no way we can stay together any longer.
To make things easier, I've said it's not goodbye forever, and one day she must come to Australia and stay with me and my family. We're pretty straight-down-the-middle-type folk. My father is a building contractor, and we live in a small house in Turramurra, a suburb of Sydney.
But I'd be grateful if, when she is a bit older, you'd let her make the trip.
I go home soon after Jess just as soon as there is a passage on a boat, or a flight on a plane.
Take care of our little sister.
Regards,
Ruth Mulaney
She read the letter through twice, and then read it again, and folded it, and put it into the top drawer of her dressing-table. Take care of our little sister. For three and a half years, Ruth had been Jess's security, however tenuous. This was where her love and her loyalty lay. And she had had to say goodbye, and leave it all behind.
Now, it was dark. Judith got up and went out of her bedroom, and in search of Jess. She found her alone, on the lamp-lit veranda, turning the pages of one of Bob's massive old photograph albums. As Judith appeared, she glanced up. ‘Come and see these with me. They're so funny. Mummy and Dad. Ages ago. Looking so young.’
Judith settled herself beside Jess on the cushioned cane settee, and laid an arm around her shoulders.
‘Where's Uncle Bob?’
‘He's gone to change. He gave me this to look at. This is when they lived right here, in Colombo. And here's one of you in a terrible hat.’ She turned another page. ‘Who are these people?’
‘Those are our grandparents. Mummy's mother and father.’
‘They look like they're old.’
‘They were. And dreadfully dull. I used to hate going to stay with them. I don't think you liked it much either, even though you were just a baby. And this is Biddy, Uncle Bob's wife. Mummy's sister. You'll love her. She's funny, makes you laugh all the time.’
‘And this?’
‘That's Ned when he was about twelve. Their son. Our cousin. He was killed at the start of the war, when his ship was sunk.’ Jess said nothing. Simply turned another page.
Judith said, ‘I read the letter. Ruth sounds a special person.’
‘She is. And she was brave. Never frightened, not of anything.’
‘She says you were pretty brave too.’ Jess, elaborately, shrugged. ‘She said, in the camps, you were sisters.’
‘We pretended to be. At first. And then it was sort of real.’
‘It must have been rough, saying goodbye to her.’
‘Yeah.’
‘She says, when you're a bit older, she wants you to go to Australia and stay with her.’
‘We talked about that.’
‘I think it's a great idea.’
Jess's head shot up and, for the first time, she looked into Judith's face. ‘Could I? Could I go?’
‘Of course. Absolutely, of course. Say, when you're about seventeen? That's only three years away.’
‘Three years!’
‘You'll have to go to school, Jess. When we get back. You'll have a lot of catching up to do. But you wouldn't have to go away. You could go to St Ursula's, where I was. You could be a day-girl.’
But Jess was not interested in talking about school. ‘I thought you'd say I wouldn't be able to go.’ She was clearly determined to
stick to the point. ‘I thought it would be too expensive. Australia's such a long way from England…’
‘It won't be too expensive, I promise. And maybe, when you come back from Australia, you could bring Ruth with you, and then she could stay with us.’
‘You mean it?’
‘I mean it.’
‘Oh. I'd like that better than anything in the world. If I could have just a single wish, that's what it would be. That was the worst about saying goodbye this morning. Thinking I'd never, ever see her again. Can I write to her and tell her? I know her address in Australia. I learned it by heart in case I lost the bit of paper.’
‘I think you should write a letter tomorrow. Not waste a moment. And then you can both start looking forward to it. It's important, always, to have something to look forward to. But…’ She hesitated, ‘Meantime, perhaps you and I should begin to make more immediate plans.’
Jess frowned, ‘Like what?’
‘I think it's time we went home.’
Judith was packing. It was an occupation which she had always found something of a chore, but was now made more complicated by the fact that there were two people to pack for, and four separate items of baggage in which to pack. Two for Wanted on Voyage, and two for Not Wanted on Voyage.
For the Not Wanted on Voyage bit, she had invested in large, sturdy leather suitcases, girthed with buckled straps. Strong enough, one hoped, to survive being manhandled by the dockyard maties of both Colombo and Liverpool, and not fall apart should they be dropped from a great height. For Wanted on Voyage, she was using her own suitcase, that she had brought from Trincomalee, but for Jess had purchased a capacious brown hide hold-all.