White Gardenia (28 page)

Colonel Brighton’s eyes lit up and I realised he had been waiting for me to ask that question. He strode over to the map and picked up the pointer. I had to pinch my lips together to stop myself from laughing.

‘The government has decided on a policy of populate or perish,’ he said, indicating the Australian coast with the pointer. ‘We were nearly invaded by the Japanese because there weren’t enough people to guard our shores. The government is bringing thousands of people into the country to build the nation up. But until we build the economy, no one is going to have a decent place to live.’ He walked over to the window and leaned against the frame. If he had been someone else, the way he stood with his feet apart and his chin thrust into the air would have seemed overdramatic, but it fitted so well with his character that I stopped wanting to laugh and found myself listening to him attentively.

‘All I can say to apologise is that there are plenty of native-born Australians living in packing crates.’

The Colonel returned to his desk; his whole face was red with excitement and he spread his hands over the files in front of him. ‘You. Me. Everyone here, we are part of a grand social experiment,’ he said. ‘We are going to become a new nation and we are either going to sink or swim. I’d like to do my best to see us swim. I think you would like to see us do the same.’

Colonel Brighton’s words were like a drug; I could feel the blood begin to rush through my veins and had to remind myself to stay calm or else I’d get swept up in what he was saying. The Colonel made living in a shabby, depressing camp sound almost exciting. He may not have been a good listener but he was obviously a passionate and enthusiastic man. I was sure I wanted to work with him, if only for the fun of seeing him every day.

‘When would you like me to start?’ I asked.

He rushed towards me and shook my hand. ‘This afternoon,’ he said, glancing back at the files on his desk. ‘Straight after lunch.’

A
fter my meeting with Colonel Brightong I hurried back to the hut with a pitcher of water and a glass from the kitchen. I was surprised to find Irina sitting up in bed, talking with Aimka Berczi.

‘Here’s your friend,’ said Aimka, standing up to greet me. She was wearing a bottle-green dress and holding an orange in one of her delicate hands. I assumed she had brought it for Irina. Neither the deep tone of her dress nor the colour of the orange brought any life to her face. In the daylight her skin seemed as unearthly as it had the night before.

‘I’m glad,’ said Irina, her voice croaking. ‘I’m dying of thirst.’

I balanced the pitcher on the upturned box near her bed and poured her a glass of water. I put my palm to her forehead. Her temperature was gone but she was still pale.

‘How are you feeling?’

‘Yesterday I thought I was dying. Now I just feel sick.’

‘I thought Irina might still be ill this morning,’ said Aimka, ‘so I brought her the employment and English class registration forms.’

‘The questions are all in English,’ Irina said, taking a sip of water and grimacing. I wondered if the tea had tasted bad this morning because of the water.

‘Never mind, once you’ve finished the English course you’ll be able to complete them,’ I said.

We all laughed and the mirth brought a spot of colour to Aimka’s face.

‘Aimka speaks six languages fluently,’ said Irina. ‘Now she’s teaching herself Serbian.’

‘Goodness,’ I said, ‘what a talent for languages you have!’

Aimka brought one of her lovely hands to her throat and lowered her eyes. ‘I came from a family of diplomats,’ she said. ‘And there are plenty of Yugoslavians here to practise with.’

‘I imagine you would have to be a good diplomat to be a block supervisor,’ I said. ‘Do you know about Elsa?’

Aimka dropped her hands to her lap. I found it hard to keep my eyes off them, they were like two lilies against the green of her dress. ‘It seems we have all the tensions of Europe in this camp,’ she said. ‘People argue over border towns as fiercely as if they were still living in them.’

‘Do you think there is something we can do for Elsa?’ Irina asked.

Aimka shook her head. ‘I’ve always had trouble with her,’ she said. ‘Elsa’s never happy wherever I put her and she doesn’t make an effort to be friendly with the others. In another hut I have a German and Jewish girl together who can’t do enough to help each
other. But then they are young, and Elsa is old and set in her ways.’

‘Russians say that as long as you have good food no one will argue,’ I told her. ‘If the peasants had been well fed there wouldn’t have been a revolution. Perhaps people wouldn’t be so tense if the food was better. Whatever we had for breakfast this morning was barely edible.’

‘Yes, I hear endless complaints about the food,’ Aimka replied. ‘It seems that the Australians are fond of over-cooking their vegetables. And of course there is too much mutton. But during the siege of Budapest I was boiling my shoes to eat, so I don’t find much to complain about here.’

I blushed. I should have known better than to be so flippant.

‘What have you been doing this morning, Anya?’ Irina asked, coming to my rescue.

I told them about my job with Colonel Brighton and about his passion for ‘populate or perish’.

Irina rolled her eyes and Aimka laughed. ‘Yes, he’s a character, Colonel Brighton,’ Aimka said. ‘Sometimes I think he’s quite mad, but he has a good heart. You’ll do well to work for him. I will see if I can get Irina a job at the crèche, anything to save her from the stupid employment officer.’

‘He was trying to give Aimka work as a domestic,’ Irina explained.

‘Really?’

Aimka rubbed her hands together. ‘I told him that I spoke six languages and he told me that was a useless skill in Australia, except for the English. He said that there were no jobs for interpreters and I was too old to get any other kind of work.’

‘That’s crazy,’ I said. ‘Look at all the people in this
camp. And Colonel Brighton told me this morning that there are more camps just like it all over Australia.’

Aimka snorted. ‘That’s the problem.
New Australians
, indeed. They want us all to be British. I went to Colonel Brighton and told him that I spoke six languages. He almost jumped out of his chair to kiss me. He put me to work straightaway as an English teacher and a block supervisor. Every time I see him now he says, “Aimka, I need twenty more of you.” So, for all his faults, he has my admiration.’

Irina shuddered and coughed. She pulled a handkerchief from under her pillow and blew her nose. ‘Excuse me,’ she said. ‘I think this means I’m getting over it.’

‘We’d better go to the Red Cross tent,’ I said.

Irina shook her head. ‘I just want to sleep. But you should go and ask them about your mother.’

Aimka glanced at us curiously and I told her briefly about my mother.

‘The Red Cross here won’t be able to help you, Anya,’ she said. ‘It’s just a medical unit. You’ll need to see someone at the headquarters in Sydney.’

‘Oh,’ I said, disappointed.

Aimka patted Irina’s leg and put the orange on the box next to the pitcher. ‘I’d better get going,’ she said.

After Aimka left, Irina turned to me and whispered, ‘She was a concert pianist in Budapest. Her parents were shot by the Nazis for hiding Jews.’

‘God,’ I said, ‘there are three thousand tragic stories in this tiny place.’

After Irina had fallen asleep again, I gathered our clothes and rushed to the laundry, which consisted of four cement tubs and a boiler. I scrubbed the dresses and blouses with my last bar of soap. After hanging them out to dry, I went to the supply office where the clerk, a Polish man, kept glancing from my throat to my breasts.

‘All I can offer you is ex-army shoes, ex-army coats or an ex-army hat. If you would like any of those.’ He pointed to an elderly couple trying on odd pairs of boots. The old man’s legs trembled and he leaned on his wife’s shoulder for support. The sight of them broke my heart. I thought old people should be enjoying the fruits of their labour, not starting over again.

‘No soap?’ I asked. ‘No towels?’

The store clerk shrugged. ‘This isn’t the Paris Ritz.’

I bit my lip. Shampoo and scented soap would have to wait until payday. At least our clothes were clean. Perhaps Aimka would lend us something and we could pay her back.

Lunch was announced over a loudspeaker hooked to the wall of the supply hut, first in English and then in German. I saw the old woman flinch at the sound of ‘
Achtung!
’

‘Why do they announce things in German?’ I asked the store clerk.

‘Sensitive, isn’t it?’ he said, smiling from the corner of his mouth. ‘They figure that thanks to the Nazis we all understand orders in German.’

I dragged my feet to the dining hut, dreading another unpalatable meal. Most people were already seated when I arrived but the atmosphere in the room had transformed since the morning. The diners
were smiling. The brown paper was gone and each table had been decorated with jars of blue flowers. A man walked by with a bowl of soup and a piece of brown bread. Whatever was in the bowl smelled mouth-watering, and familiar. I glanced at the crimson soup and thought I must be dreaming. Borscht. I picked up a bowl from a pile on a table and stood in line in front of the servery window. I almost jumped for joy when I found myself face to face with Mariya and Natasha from Tubabao.

‘Ah!’ we all cried out together.

‘Come,’ said Natasha, opening the bench door. ‘Almost everyone has been fed now. Eat with us in the kitchen.’

I followed her into the back room, which not only smelled of beetroot and cabbage but bleach and bicarbonate of soda as well. Two men were busy washing down the walls and Natasha introduced them as her father, Lev, and her husband, Piotr. Mariya filled my bowl to the brim with the fresh borscht while Natasha found me a chair and poured us all cups of tea.

‘How is Raisa?’ I asked them.

‘She’s not bad,’ said Lev. ‘We were worried that she wouldn’t make the trip but she’s tougher than we thought. She’s in a hut with Natasha and the children and seems happy there.’

I told them about Ruselina and they shook their heads in sympathy. ‘Give Irina our love,’ said Mariya.

On the shelf next to me was a bunch of the blue flowers I had seen earlier. I fingered the tubular petals and the elegant stems.

‘What are these?’ I asked Natasha. ‘They’re lovely.’

‘I’m not sure,’ she said, wiping her hands on her apron. ‘I think they’re Australian. We found them on a little track down past the tent section. They are pretty, aren’t they?’

‘I like the trees here,’ I said. ‘They are mysterious, as if they are hiding secrets in their trunks.’

‘Well, you’d like this walk then,’ said Lev. He put down his scrubbing brush, sat at the table and began drawing a map for me on a piece of brown paper. ‘The track is easy to find. You won’t get lost.’

I swallowed a spoonful of borscht. After what I had been eating the past few days, it was liquid heaven. ‘This is delicious,’ I said.

Mariya pointed with her chin to the dining hall. ‘I’m sure we will have a lot of complaints about Russian food. But it’s better than what the Australian chef was serving. It’s good nourishing work food.’

Some more people came to the window and held up their plates, asking for seconds. Lev and I exchanged smiles. I watched Natasha and Mariya attend to them. When I had seen the family’s tent on Tubabao, for some reason I had thought they must be rich. But now I realised there was nothing in that tent which they hadn’t created themselves from the materials available to them. If they had funds they wouldn’t be in a migrant camp. I realised that they must simply be industrious and hardworking, determined to make the best of whatever life handed them. I watched Mariya point and make faces with the diners, trying to communicate with them. I was full of admiration.

I returned to Colonel Brighton’s office just before two o’clock. I was surprised to hear voices arguing and hesitated before pushing open the door. Dorothy was at her desk and smiled when I slipped inside but
cut the expression short when she recognised me. I was confounded by what I had done to inspire such dislike in her so quickly.

The Colonel and Ernie were standing in the doorway of the Colonel’s office. A woman was with them, her gloves and hat poised in her hands. She was in her fifties and had a pretty face and lively eyes. The group turned to look at me when I said, ‘Good afternoon.’

‘Ah, there you are, Anya!’ said the Colonel. ‘Just in time. We have toilets that are a threat to our health, food going bad in the heat, and people who can’t speak any of the languages in which we have been trying to communicate with them. Nonetheless, my wife has decided that what we need most urgently is a tree-planting committee.’

The woman, who I took to be his wife, rolled her eyes. ‘People take one look at this camp and feel depressed, Robert. Plants, trees and flowers will take away the starkness and make people feel better. We should try to make the camp more of a home. That’s what a lot of these people have been missing for years. A home. Anya will tell you.’

She nodded her head at me. I sensed I was about to be used as a tie breaker and was careful not to speak too soon.

‘It’s not a home,’ said the Colonel, ‘it’s a holding centre. The army didn’t mind the way it looked.’

‘That’s because if it was beautiful they would never have gone off to war!’

Rose folded her arms across her chest, bouncing her hat in her hand. She was short and feminine but her arms were muscular. She had made a good point, I thought, and I wondered what the Colonel would say in reply.

‘I’m not saying your idea is a bad one, Rose. I’m just saying that I have to get these people fed first and get them speaking some sort of English. I have hundreds of doctors, lawyers and architects who must be taught some manual skills if they and their families are going to survive in this country. The professional jobs will go to the British immigrants, whether they are better qualified for them or not.’

Rose sniffed at this and pulled a notebook from her handbag. She flipped it open and began reading from a list. ‘Look,’ she said, ‘this is what the Dutch ladies suggested we could plant: tulips, daffodils, carnations…’

Colonel Brighton glanced at Ernie, throwing his hands up in exasperation.

Rose looked up at them. ‘Well, if you don’t like flowers, other people have suggested cedars and pines for shade.’

‘Good gracious, Rose,’ said Ernie. ‘We’d have to wait twenty years for those trees to grow.’

‘I think Australian trees are beautiful. Wouldn’t they grow quickly in their own climate?’ I asked.

They all turned to me. Dorothy stopped typing and looked over a letter, pretending to proofread it.

‘Apparently there’s a forest walk near here,’ I continued. ‘Maybe we can find some seedlings and plant those.’

Colonel Brighton was staring at me and I thought that I had made an enemy of him by siding with his wife. But his face broke into a smile and he clasped his hands together. ‘Didn’t I tell you I had found a smart one? That’s a brilliant idea, Anya!’

Ernie coughed into his fist. ‘Colonel, if you don’t mind me saying…I think it was Dorothy and I who found Anya’s file.’

Dorothy threw down the letter she was reading and resumed typing. She must have regretted finding my file, I thought.

Rose slipped her arm around my waist. ‘Robert thinks it’s a brilliant idea because it will save him money,’ she said. ‘But I think it’s a good idea because while the roses and carnations will remind people of Europe, the native plants will help them remember that they now have a new home.’

‘And they will attract more native birds and wildlife to the camp,’ said Ernie. ‘And hopefully fewer rabbits.’

I remembered the animals I had heard on the hut roof last night and grimaced.

‘What’s the matter?’ Ernie asked.

I told them about the scratching and asked if that was why the gaps between the walls and the ceilings were covered with chicken wire.