Fireshadow (15 page)

Twenty-four

July 1946

Rain and wind lashed the camp, tearing at the surrounding trees and throwing a storm of leaf and twig litter up against the perimeter fence. Every three or four seconds lightning would rent the grey sky, the crash of thunder following hard upon it. Aside from those brief flashes, the day was dark. Guards huddled in their towers, crouching low to avoid the worst of the weather, paying little attention to anything other than staying dry.

This was ironic, given that Marrinup Camp Sixteen had endured more escape attempts in the twelve months since the end of hostilities than in the previous five years of the war. After the initial euphoria of the war's end it quickly became apparent that the men of Camp Sixteen were still prisoners and would remain so for the foreseeable future until arrangements could be made to get them to Europe again. Many of the prisoners, Germans and Italians alike, had received letters from home telling of the aftermath of the war and were less than willing to go back.

Erich paused at the door of the mess. No working party was permitted to venture out into the forest in this kind of a storm. A bolt of lightning crashed into the forest only a few hundred yards away, and even through the noise of the storm Erich heard clearly the sound of splintering timber. He shivered for a moment and then, pulling the collar of his greatcoat high around his ears, sprinted down the slope to the hospital.

‘Good morning, Doctor. Alice.' The two smiled. ‘It is a terrible day out there.'

‘Good morning, Erich. We haven't had a storm like this one since the night of Günter's operation.'

‘
Ja
. I'd forgotten how wild it can be.'

‘Have you heard anything from him?'

‘Günter? No.' Erich shook his head. Günter, as an invalid, had been shipped back to Germany on the first transport, some eight months earlier. ‘From what the commander says, though, it is not likely that we will, either. Nothing back home is too efficient at the moment.'

‘I can imagine. It is certainly strange not having him around the camp.'

So far, two shipments of German prisoners had been repatriated from Marrinup. Already huts were being pulled down, and without the full compliment of men the camp seemed strangely deserted.

‘Do you know when you are leaving yet?'

‘No, sir. Another shipment is due to depart any day now, but nobody knows how many men or who they will be. It might not even happen for another month.'

‘Still, you will be looking forward to getting home, I imagine.'

‘Not really, sir.' Erich and Alice made fleeting eye contact. This was something they'd discussed many times in the last few months.

‘No?'

‘No. I cannot imagine that there is much left in Germany for me to return to.'

‘I know, Erich. I am sorry that I couldn't have a little more influence on your behalf, but you know how the military is. All prisoners are to be repatriated, forcibly if necessary.'

‘Perhaps I should escape?' Erich was only half joking. Looking at Alice a small part of Erich seriously considered trying. She rested her hand lightly on his shoulder. It was a tiny gesture but one that filled Erich with an unsettling combination of fear and affection.

‘They caught the three that got away last month, you know?' So often nowadays she seemed to know exactly what he was thinking.

‘Did they?'

Eric looked at her expectantly, eager for more information. The three Italians had bolted from a farming assignment and hadn't been seen since. It was widely suspected that they'd had the help of a couple of locals in their escape.

‘They caught them trying to get a ride to the eastern states. A lorry driver picked them up near Southern Cross and took them to the police in Kalgoorlie.'

Footsteps outside and the door slammed open, another draught of cold wind howling briefly through the warm room.

‘Erich, I thought I would find you here.' Stutt smiled. ‘Doctor, Alice.' The commander offered a polite bow of acknowledgement to both the Australians, as Erich jumped to his feet.

‘Good morning, sir.'

‘I have some news.' Stutt was clearly excited. He spoke in German. ‘It's tomorrow. They've found extra berths on a transport out of Fremantle three days from now, one travelling to Europe to pick up the last of the Australian troops. They're clearing the rest of us.'

‘Us?'

‘All the remaining Germans and most of the Italians.'

‘Tomorrow?'

‘
Ja
. Wake-up call will be early, 0430, to give us enough time to get up to the city and be processed before leaving.' Stutt paused, noticing the sudden droop in the young man's shoulders. His voice softened. ‘This is going to be difficult, but there is no other choice, you know that, Erich.'

‘Yes, sir.'

‘Good then. You will need to pack today. Leave any German military emblems you might have – badges or whatever. They are confiscating them all at the port.'

‘Yes, sir.'

Stutt nodded a goodbye and left, clearly in a hurry to inform the others. Erich slumped into a chair.

‘That was it, wasn't it?' Alice started towards him then stopped, fear in her face.

‘
Ja
. It was.'

‘When?'

‘Tomorrow.' He looked up at her and her lip trembled. ‘Early in the morning.'

The doctor's chair scraped the timber floorboards as he hauled himself slowly to his feet.

‘So soon.' He hesitated, about to speak further, but then clearly changed his mind. ‘I will leave you two alone for a while, I think. I have paperwork to do in my hut, in any case.'

Reaching into the cupboard behind his desk, he retrieved a small bundle and made his slow way towards the door, stopping only briefly by the chair where Erich still sat slumped.

‘Erich.'

‘Yes, Doctor?'

‘You will need to be brave, for both of you.'

‘
Ja
. Thank you, sir. Will I see you before I go?'

‘I wouldn't allow it otherwise. I will be back later this afternoon.'

As soon as the door closed behind the old man, Alice crossed silently to the pot-belly stove and stoked it up. It radiated hot warmth into the dimly lit building. Then, crossing to the door, she locked it. It clicked faintly in the silence.

‘Alice . . .'

‘Shhh.' There was a strange look in the girl's eyes as she took Erich's hand and pulled him from the chair. One he'd never seen before. ‘Don't speak. Not yet. We'll talk later.'

Erich let her lead him to the nearest cot.

In the late afternoon gloom the dim glow from the stove cast tiny, leaping red shadows onto the floor. On the bed the two lay entwined. After the initial hesitant awkwardness, both had fallen to each other with a desperate, frightened hunger. Erich had heard the other men talk about these things, had heard more than his share of bawdy army tales, but the long hours of the afternoon with Alice, with only the rain pounding on the tin roof, had been nothing like that. Nothing like he'd expected.

And afterwards, when they'd lain together, naked, quiet and still, and she'd finished crying, he'd stroked her hair and whispered to her that he would be returning and that it would be all right, until she'd fallen into a gentle sleep. Then Erich had lain there, treasuring the warm softness of her body pressed sleeping against his own and had watched the fireshadow leaping on the timber floorboards, constrained behind the iron bars of the stove. And he'd felt a slight tingle in the fading scar tissue on his face and arms and he trembled at the thought of what might or might not be waiting for him in Germany.

‘Are you awake?'

‘Hmmm.' She stirred against him and her eyes opened. For a moment Erich allowed himself to swim in the two dark pools of them. Then she was sitting up and shaking her head.

‘I fell asleep!'

‘You did.'

‘Erich, I'm so sorry.'

‘No.' He kissed her. ‘No. You are beautiful when you sleep. I am glad I was able to share it.'

‘But it's your . . . our last day.'

‘Only for a little while. A few months.'

Without further conversation the two climbed, albeit reluc-tantly, from the bed, both suddenly aware of their nakedness. They turned from each other and fumbled quickly at their clothes.

‘Alice, are you all right?'

She smiled at him again, a kind of sad happiness behind the expression.

‘I'm very fine.'

‘Good. I will need to go and pack.'

‘I know. I should see to grandfather.'

‘
Ja
. I will look in again later.'

‘All right.'

At the door, Alice grabbed at his hand before he opened it.

‘We might not get another chance.' She kissed him then propelled him outside. ‘Go.'

Erich tumbled into the storm-thrashed afternoon and ran for the shelter of the mess hall. There he turned to wave a final goodbye, but Alice had already retreated back into the warmth of the hospital.

PART THREE

1946–1947

5 July 1946, 4.30 am

During a break between rain showers, the night forest falls silent to the rumbling thump of diesel engines and the quiet murmur of men's voices. The foreign sounds echo through the gaps between the trees.

In the tray-backs of the trucks, men hunch, thickly wrapped and huddled together against the bitter cold, grey and anonymous. In the deep darkness of the verandah, Alice trembles and draws the lapels of her coat closer around her. One of the shapes is Erich. This she knows, but her grandfather has forbidden her to come out for the departure, thinking that this will make it easier for both of them. The shadows of the hut are as close to him as she can get undetected, and Erich might as well be gone already, lost among the shapeless forms climbing into the trucks.

The bustle and loading seem to take an eternity and then nothing happens for a while until finally, with a shout and a muffled cheer, the trucks lurch forward, wheels spinning in a brief battle for traction before crunching away across the gravel.

Alice watches the red tail light of the lead vehicle flash briefly as the driver taps the brakes. Are they stopping? Has there been some mistake?

No.

The firefly glimmer vanishes again and the trucks reach the point where the road disappears into the tree line.

As they slip between the shadowy trunks, the forest seems to swallow them.

25 July 1946

Through the window of her tiny room Alice watches the rain falling. At this time of the year Perth is at its coldest, and though it is nothing like the bitter cold of the Marrinup winter, here it seems somehow worse, somehow repressive. The low-hanging clouds sit on the sleepy city, almost embracing the buildings.

She can't sleep. Just like last night, and the night before.

Finally she rises from her bed, retrieves her dressing gown from the floor and slides out into the passageway.

Her parent's home, though bigger than the hut she shared with her grandfather at the camp, seems tiny and cramped. The floorboards in the passage creak slightly beneath the press of her feet but the sound is drowned in the soft grumble of rain on the tin roof.

Her father is asleep in the front room again, slumped in his armchair beside a wireless that hisses only night static into the room. The fire has gone out and he clutches a blanket beneath his chin, shivering in his sleep. For a while Alice stands in the doorway and watches him; the tiny tic and twitch of his closed eyes and the laboured rise of his breathing the only signs of life.

Is he really alive? she wonders.

This sleeping man isn't the same one who left them three years earlier. This man is a stranger who sleeps night after night sitting upright with the light on. This man barely speaks to her or her mother, except when something is wrong. This man has sadness in his eyes and in the way he walks and in the sound of his voice. It seems to pour out of him with every nuance and gesture.

Somewhere in the distance, thunder crashes.

Silently, Alice slips the latch on the front door and steps outside.

Perth is sleeping through another stormy July night. A little along the porch her father's lamp casts a dull yellow rectangle out through the front window and across the verandah into the garden, where her mother's rose plants whip in skeletal anguish. Soon it will be spring and they will bloom, but for the moment they stand naked, stripped by their winter pruning, the thorns and occasional leaves bare to the cold air.

A couple of steps down from the porch and Alice walks out onto the cracked concrete of the front path. The rain is driving now and she is getting wet, but she doesn't care. Her thoughts are somewhere else. Somewhere warm. Out in the endless blue tropical expanses of the Indian Ocean, under a sky peppered with stars, where a troop ship, a converted liner, steams its way through the humid night towards the Suez Canal, through the Mediterranean Sea, and then to the ruins of Europe.

Where is he now?
she wonders.
Is he thinking of me?

Her bare feet splash in puddles as dark as blood as Alice walks along the pavement. Her hair is wet and lank now, sticking to her face in long strands. It was like this the night he left, she remembers, and the afternoon before.

When she closes her eyes Alice can remember what he felt like. She can recall without effort the sound of his voice, his accent, his Germanic expression – sometimes so lilting and at other times guttural.

But when she opens her eyes again there is only the rain and the night.

She walks automatically, along empty suburban streets and past silent rows of shops. The greengrocers and butchers are quiet, their painted wooden signs swinging wildly in the wind, their windows dark and empty.

It rains harder and harder, but still she walks, embracing the cold and the wet as she would a lover. Feeling the chill fingers of the storm weave through her hair, slide down her neck and trickle gently along her back.

Somewhere between minutes and hours later she looks up and finds herself standing in front of her parents' house again. Through the window, her father still sleeps in his chair, and the house is as silent as when she left it. The front gate swings wildly – she has forgotten to latch it again on her way out – and Alice steps through, securing it behind her.

The brown and cream tiled bathroom is cold as she steps out of her sodden pyjamas and towels herself dry, her skin blue-veined and goose-fleshed. For a moment she examines her face, her eyes, in the small mirror. Is there something different about them now? At certain angles, when she glimpses herself and looks away quickly, something new seems to hide behind her eyes, something older and more grown up.

The dry flannel of fresh pyjamas feels soft and warm against her skin and she shivers slightly as her body begins to warm. There is a slight tingle in her breasts and she rubs at them subconsciously. The pyjamas are an old pair of her father's and she has to roll up the sleeves and cuffs to make them fit, but they are warm and comfortable and remind her of her father from before the war.

Silently, Alice makes her way back into the front room. Her father stirs slightly and murmurs something inaudible as she flicks off the wireless. Alice tucks the blanket more tightly around him, kisses him lightly on the top of his head, notices that his hair has begun to grey around the temples, turns off the light and creeps from the room.

Under her mattress is a notebook, leather covered, a gift from one of the sergeants at Marrinup. Lately Alice has been writing in it. A diary of sorts. A place to confide to the world at large the things she can't find the strength to tell those closest to her. Alice slides it out and sits at the old writing desk beside her window.

The nib of the pen is old and the ink flows easily from it into the smooth, thick pages of the book. Alice writes. She writes to Erich and tells him about her father, and her mother, and the weather, and her grandfather. And for a few moments it is like he is there again, in the room with her, listening.

Finally, in her own bed again, Alice watches the rain falling until eventually she sleeps.