Women and War (20 page)

Tara looked alarmed. ‘ They didn't say so. Do you think …?'

‘I shouldn't worry, I expect he will rubber stamp their decision. He's too busy personally to vet every VA and orderly in 138, whatever he may like to pretend to the contrary.'

‘That's true enough. Besides he's a man.' Some of Tara's natural ebullience was returning. ‘If I can get past two old biddies, I'm quite sure I can get past a man.'

The moment the words were out she regretted them. She glanced quickly at Richard wondering if he had noticed what she had said, but if he had he was too much of a gentleman to remark upon it.

‘Well, I should imagine we shall soon be taking on a new addition to our voluntary staff,' he said dryly. ‘ So hoping I'm not being too premature – welcome!' He extended his hand and she took it, going weak inside again as those strong deft fingers wrapped around hers.

‘Thank you, Captain Allingham.'

The corners of his mouth lifted; those blue eyes looked directly into hers. ‘ I'd much rather you called me Richard,' he said.

Tara pushed the trolley into the clean room, rammed it into a vacant corner and sank down onto the single upright chair, spreading her elbows outwards on the small scrubbed wood table and laying her head on her arms.

Tired, tired – she could not remember a time when she had been so tired. Even her days of working for Dimitri Savalis seemed like a holiday compared with this. Her legs were leaden with exhaustion, her eyes stung and burned with it, every muscle in her body ached and she felt faintly nauseous.

Why in the world did I let myself in for this? Tara wondered. I must have been mad. But her brain was too furred by exhaustion even to begin to answer the question. All she could think of, all she wanted in the world, was to fall onto the narrow bunk in the quarters she shared with the AANS and masseuses and sleep. But that was out of the question. It was only half-past eleven in the morning and Tara's working day stretched endlessly on towards evening. At eight, if she was lucky, she would be relieved. Last night she had not been lucky. An aborigine woman had been admitted in labour late in the afternoon and there had been no other female auxiliary staff on duty to cover the room that was used for deliveries. Every time she was left alone the woman set up a hollering that echoed through the concrete and tin blocks, upsetting all the patients and setting the nurses' nerves jangling, but the sisters could not spare the time to do more than to make regular checks on her progress and the male orderlies, mostly rough stockmen who had enlisted to become soldiers and were disgusted to find themselves detailed for hospital work, were hardly the best choice to look after a woman in labour. So Tara had been asked to remain on duty.

The birth had proved to be a difficult one. It was almost two when the baby finally put in an appearance. Then, on her way back to her quarters, Tara had been waylaid by Sister Kate Harris. The seaman she had brought in on the day of the raid had taken a turn for the worse. She thought Tara would like to know. For a moment Tara had wrestled with the ridiculous sense of responsibility she felt for the man, then she had submitted. She had sat with him until he died two hours later and when she eventually fell exhausted into her bed she was quite unable to sleep. Now though …

A strident voice in the corridor outside brought her awake sharply. Sister Anastasia Bottomley – coming this way. Tara had no desire to be caught by her sleeping on the clean room table.

Of all the AANS sisters at 138 AGH, Bottomley was the one Tara liked the least. Some, like Kate Harris, had been helpful and tolerant, teaching her to take temperatures and blood pressures and how to make a bed with hospital corners. Others had been impatient, taking pleasure in handing her the most menial jobs and expecting her to work tirelessly. Tara had done so without complaint, knowing it was the price she had to pay for remaining with the hospital. But Anastasia Bottomley was the one person who could make Tara feel she would prefer to take her chances with Red rather than stand her unpleasantness for another single day. She was a sharp-featured woman with a manner to match, tall as a man, with thin shapeless legs which Tara privately described as ‘gum sticks' and strawlike hair cut short and square.

The door swung open and Anastasia Bottomley came in.

‘Ah, Kelly, what are you doing in here?' she did not wait for a reply. ‘There is no time for idling, we have a great deal to do. I've just been informed that we are on the move.'

There had been rumours ever since the raid that the hospital would be pulled back away from the vulnerable Darwin to a site deep in the wilds of Northern Territory, but Tara had not expected it to be so soon.

‘Where are we going?' she asked.

‘Adelaide River. It's ridiculous if you ask me, leaving new purpose-built accommodation for tent wards on the banks of a river. Some people will run scared from everything. Take the day of the raids when the authorities freed the prisoners from Fanny Bay Gaol – some of the girls were scared stiff of being raped in their beds. I'd like to see the prisoner – or the Jap – who thought he could rape me!'

Tara hid a smile. Personally, she could feel nothing but relief at the prospect of being pulled back out of the danger zone. But one thing was nagging at her – when she had fled Dimitri and the Savalis' house she had left her cruficix hanging on the wall over her bed and she hated the thought of leaving Darwin without it. For all she knew the house might not have survived the raid, but if it had … the crucifix had belonged to Mammy and meant a great deal to Tara.

‘Do you think there might be a chance of me getting into Darwin?' Tara asked.

‘I really couldn't say. Depends when we go, I suppose. And I expect we shall be the last to know when that will be. Now, we have wasted enough time in chit chat, Kelly. We have work to do …'

‘Yes, Sister,' Tara said obediently.

Three days later Tara was in the small store room at the end of the ward sweltering in the afternoon's heat as she packed box after box of sterile dressings into crates ready for transportation. Now that the decision had been made to move the AGH no time was to be wasted; the first convoy of patients and staff was to leave the following day and Tara was glad she was to go with it. Frequent alarms were fraying her nerves and an afternoon raid on the RAAF building, Daly Street and Myrilly Point had been the last straw.

She still regretted, however, that she had been unable to get into Darwin to retrieve her crucifix. She had tried without success to find a way but ten miles might as well be a hundred when she had no transport. Now it seemed likely that she would have to decamp for the Adelaide River leaving it behind.

‘Hey – nursie!' The low whisper came from the open window. Tara spun round to see a cheery face topped by a mass of curly hair. ‘Word on the grapevine is that you've been looking for a ride into Darwin.'

It was Private Maxwell, one of the soldiers employed on general duties at the AGH and well known as a Mr Fixit. Besides his official chores Maxie organized card schools, ran a book on anything that moved and managed to come up with an unending supply of black market goods to defy the shortages.

‘Oh I am, Maxie. It's just one little thing I want to do before we leave. Can you help?'

‘I might be able to. Charlie and me are going in tonight. Just two conditions. One – keep quiet about it. Two – you've got to be ready to come back when we are. We can't hang about. Got it?' He tapped the side of his nose meaningfully.

Tara nodded. This trip was strictly unofficial but that was probably just as well. She wasn't at all sure Sister Bottomley would sanction her going if she were to ask permission. And nervous as she was about venturing into town under the present conditions she did so want her crucifix.

‘Where will you pick me up?' she asked.

‘Nine o' clock – camp gates. Are you sure you want to risk it now? Darwin is full of looters, they say. And you never know, there could be another raid.'

‘Oh, stop it! You're the cheery one, aren't you? If you can go, so can I!'

‘All right then. Suit yourself. We'll see you later.' Maxie's face disappeared from the window and Tara went on with her packing.

The humid darkness was heavy and unbroken, the rigorously enforced blackout obliterating any remaining signs of life. But, as a fitful moon emerged for a moment from behind the blanket of cloud, Tara was able to see the stark silhouettes of bombed out buildings, one wall perhaps out of four left standing, and the piles of rubble defining the lips of bomb craters.

Somewhere in the darkness a dog howled – abandoned by his fleeing owners and as yet defying attempts to round him up and destroy him as hundreds of other pets had been destroyed – he bayed his loneliness, hunger and fright to the uncaring night. The sound made Tara shiver. Then the sound of a truck engine drowned the howling and Tara drew back sharply into a shop doorway, her feet crunching on broken glass.

A truck might mean sharp-eyed provosts who would at best bully and delay her with their questions and at worst place her under arrest. Stories concerning the behaviour of the provosts were legion for though martial law had not been declared they had taken it upon themselves to act as though it had, rounding up civilians like cattle and forcing them out of town at gunpoint. One man who had come into the hospital to have a nasty flesh wound dressed had claimed that it had been inflicted by a provost for ‘stealing' – after two days' travelling without food and with precious little water and unable to join the army however hard he tried, he had eventually succumbed to temptation and eaten a handful of peanuts from an open sack on the railway platform!

The truck sped by and Tara recognized it as a US Army vehicle. Its headlamps were blazing a bright path in the blackness; beyond them the shattered buildings were dark dancing shadows while ahead the beam revealed an obstruction – barricades of barbed wire placed across the road. As the truck turned off into a side street Tara left the shelter of the doorway and approached the barricade more slowly looking for a way around. She found one – by keeping close to the wall there was room to slip past. The barricades had been erected for the purpose of impeding the progress of invading troops not one lone girl and she had not come into Darwin to be turned back at the first obstacle.

Tara quickened her step, hurrying past a shattered shop front where a tailor's dummy lay sticking out of the rubble looking for all the world like a stiffened human body. She did not have much time – an hour at the outside – and she must be back at the agreed place or Maxie would leave without her.

To her relief the Savalis' house was still standing. There was a utility truck parked outside the house – no, not so much parked as abandoned, Tara decided. No one
parked
a ute at that angle. The gate stood open and between a crack in the blackout curtains at the dining room window light showed, golden yellow. Tara followed the path around to the rear of the house where the bittersweet scent of the henna still lingered in the air and the pawpaws hung above the crotons and hibiscus.

Up the veranda steps she went and opened the door. The kitchen was in semi-darkness. No delicious cooking smells came from the stove, only the stomach-turning odour of something-gone-off. Tara pressed her fingers across her mouth in disgust.

The sound of men's voices was coming from the dining room and she followed it. Then, in the doorway, she stopped abruptly. The men, three of them, were sprawled around two tables which they had pushed together within the circle of light thrown by a handful of candles and a once highly polished brass and-glass tilly lamp. The air was thick with cigarette smoke; the remains of a meal lay like garbage amongst a scattering of Dimitri's precious bottles; one man's booted feet were propped on the table.

‘Well, hello there!' The man with his feet on the table pushed his chair further up onto its back legs, looking at her down the length of his face through eyes narrowed against the cigarette smoke.

Tara returned his stare coldly. He was a tramp of a man, unshaven and with shirt-sleeves untidily rolled back to reveal swarthy tattoed forearms.

‘Who are you?' she demanded.

The man laughed unpleasantly.

‘We might ask her the same, mightn't we, lads?'

‘We might, but why bother? She's a sheila, ain't she? The speaker had a weaselly face across which his hair hung in greasy strands. ‘All we needed to make the party complete was a sheila – what do you say, Rico?'

‘
Mamma mia
! Rico say
bellissima
!'

‘
Bellissima
!' they ribbed him, but their teasing did nothing to reduce the atmosphere of threatening tension. It hung in the air with the wreathing cigarette smoke.

‘This wine is sure as hell
bellissima
,' the man with his feet on the table observed and he wriggled forward, his heels scoring the surface as he reached for another bottle. The sight of it fired Tara's ready temper.

‘Just what do you think you are doing?' she flared. Another roar of laughter drowned her but she continued angrily: ‘Does Dimitri know you are here? I'll bet he doesn't!'

More laughter. ‘Who's Dimitri when he's home?' one of the men asked.

‘Who cares?' another rejoined. ‘ He ain't at home, is he?'

‘No, he is not, but I am!' Tara was trembling with indignation. ‘Get out of here, all of you. You have no right …'

‘Right?' The man with his feet on the table lowered himself down so that the front legs of the chair landed on the floor with a crash. ‘Now let me tell you somethin', lady. There's a war going on if you hadn't noticed and when there's a war on things is different. Finders is keepers, for one thing. There ain't much food left in Darwin and what's here they won't want. They've gone, ain't they? Run like bunnies. And what ain't eaten will only go off anyways – rot on the tables where they left it and in the fridges for want of power. We're hungry – we might as well fill our bellies with what we can find. What's wrong with that?'