My Beautiful Enemy Read online

  6

  Two days later I left the infirmary myself. I wasn’t completely well, but at least I was able to eat without becoming nauseous and Matron Conlon advised that if I avoided salty foods and took proper rest I should continue to improve. For the headaches she recommended Bex tablets, as many as required to dull the pain. They were harmless, she said, like sweeties. She also told me to drink alcohol, because it was such a tried and trusted cure for nerves.

  ‘Not too much mind,’ she said. ‘But a tipple now and then never hurt a fly.’

  I tried to settle back into my former life, rising before dawn, donning my ugly uniform, carrying out my duties with the minimum of fuss. I showered and ate my meals with men who treated me like the village idiot, and bunked down at night in the cold and draughty hut I shared with three other soldiers, Donohue, Bryant and McMaster, enduring their constant jibes at my youth and inexperience. It wasn’t easy. The other men all had an aptitude for military life, whereas I had none. I was only in the army because of a fluke meeting on a Melbourne tram with an old school friend to whom I’d told a pack of lies about my abrupt exit from the Air Force. Out of sympathy for my troubles he’d advised me where to go if I wanted to get back into uniform, and I was grateful, because anything was preferable to being a civilian. Being a civilian meant constant harassment from strangers wanting to know why a strapping young man like myself wasn’t on the front line somewhere doing his patriotic duty instead of swanning down Collins Street in a spivvy suit. It wore you down. In the end you felt like George Orwell in the elephant story, capable of any folly as long as it saved you from looking like a fool.

  Coming so late to the camp, and being so young, I’d struggled to fit in at Tatura. All the other guards were in their forties. Most of them had been in the last war and had missed the army enough to volunteer a second time round as soon as the call came. They reminded me of my father, in that the 1914 war had turned them into troubled, unsympathetic loners. Life as a Tatura guard seemed to suit a certain personality type—incurious, cynical, sentimental—all traits that I recognised from growing up in my father’s field of gravity.

  Luckily, however, there were some exceptions. Riley, for example, turned out to be a true friend, even if at first meeting I found him difficult to like. He shared none of my views on the Japs and told me so in no uncertain terms.

  ‘You don’t want to believe everything you read in the papers son,’ he said. ‘The first casualty of war, as the saying goes.’

  This was on my first day on duty back in April, before I’d fallen ill. Riley had been assigned to give me a tour of the camp and fill me in on its workings, but it seemed as if his main purpose was to discourage me from thinking my job would make any real contribution to the war effort.

  ‘We’re running an asylum,’ he told me. ‘The patients are all perfectly sane people and our job is to drive them crazy.’

  ‘How do we do that?’ I said, uncertain how seriously I was meant to take him, given that his manner was so unmilitary. He talked to me like we were taking a stroll through a holiday resort. I didn’t know whether to be disappointed or relieved, such was my confusion back then. I was still in a state of shock at the sheer size of the camp and at the numbers of Japs it housed. I estimated there were about eight hundred of them, which seemed to me like a dangerously large number to be concentrated in one place.

  ‘Countless ingenious schemes,’ he said. ‘We encourage them to do useful work. We even pay them for their labours. Then we take the money back when they want cigarettes or postage stamps.’

  To illustrate the point he took me through the clothing factory, a long low corrugated-iron hut running parallel to the mess hall, where about fifty women sat making new clothes out of old ones. Most of them were sewing by hand, but some were sitting at antiquated machines. They all paused to watch us pass by. Some of them even smiled and called out to Riley to give them free fags in exchange for a kiss. You so handsome they cried. Riley might have been handsome once but his stocky body was running to fat and his skin was leathery from too much sun. He laughed at the women and told them he’d have to decline the offer. If he kissed one of them, he said, the others would all want a kiss too, and then he’d spend his whole day kissing girls, which would more than likely kill him. He seemed to know them all by name, and the names of their children, some of whom had decided to follow us around in a little pack.

  ‘A new guard’s a novelty to them,’ he said. ‘Especially one who hasn’t started shaving.’

  It unnerved me the way I was shadowed. One or two of the smaller children even wanted to hold my hand briefly before running back to the pack. It all seemed over-friendly to me. I flinched whenever one of them came near me and was careful to keep my hands in my pockets.

  After the factory visit Riley walked me along the high perimeter fences that formed the boundary of the camp. I remember him pointing to an invisible line in the dust just inside the inner fence and explaining the three-yard rule to me.

  ‘We promise not to shoot them if they stay this side of that line,’ he said.

  I tried to make out a mark in the dirt. ‘I don’t see it,’ I said.

  ‘It must be there,’ he said, ‘because there hasn’t been a shot fired in the three years I’ve been in the camp.’

  He pointed to the watchtower up ahead, where two half-mile lengths of the outer fence joined up and where a manned machine-gun was installed for everyone to see. He waved to the gunner, who waved back.

  ‘It’s doubtful if the guns up there even work,’ he said.

  I’d counted five watchtowers in all, one at each corner of the perimeter and one at the main gate. I wondered if he meant none of the guns worked or only the one nearest to where we were standing.

  ‘No need to look so worried,’ he said, slapping me hard on the shoulder. ‘Just so you know you’re not in any danger from friendly fire.’

  He told me the only thing I would have to really watch out for were the nippers. He said this in a loud voice for the amusement of the half-dozen or so children who were still following behind us as we walked along. I’d glanced back a couple of times and caught one of them mimicking my gait. If you were watching very carefully you could tell that I continued to favour my busted ankle, even though it had completely healed.

  ‘Especially that little blackfella Thompson,’ said Riley, still talking loudly.

  I glanced around again and saw he meant the mimic, a skinny kid of about eight, who had dissolved into a fit of giggles as soon as his name was mentioned. I glared at him to make him stop what he was doing but he took no notice of me. As soon as my back was turned he continued to trail along behind me with his right foot hitching up in an exaggerated limp.

  ‘Why are there blackfellas here?’ I said.

  ‘There’s some of them married to Japs,’ said Riley. ‘So it’s guilt by association. Their dads were generally pearlers up north, or canecutters. Thompson’s real name is Tomioka.’

  At lunchtime, in the mess hall, he pointed out how the different groupings tended to stick together. ‘The Darwin mob are very tight,’ he said. ‘A lot of them are related one way or another. Same with the New Caledonians and the Formosans.’

  ‘Where are all the men?’ I said. Apart from teenage boys and old men, the hall seemed to be filled with women and children.

  ‘We used to have a lot more men here,’ said Riley, ‘but then they reclassified all the seamen as a security risk and sent them to Hay. So what you see here is the lonely wives’ club.’

  While he was talking he walked me around from table to table and introduced me, just as if I was the new boy at school.

  ‘Be nice to him,’ he told everyone. ‘He’s just a kiddie.’

  This made my face redden and I started to sweat inside my uniform even though it was as cold in the hall as it was outside on the parade ground. I had reason to be nervous because I’d never seen so many foreign faces in one place before and it was frightening to be so plainly outnu
mbered. Everyone was polite enough but I sensed that I was an object of amusement, rather than of any real respect, and I resented this deeply because it somehow confirmed my feeling of general ineptitude.

  ‘Very pretty boy,’ said one of the women, who was helping to clear away the dirty dishes and wipe the tables.

  ‘You keep your hands off him,’ said Riley, smiling; then he spoke to her in French and she screamed with laughter.

  ‘You very naughty,’ she told Riley.

  ‘Not me luv,’ said Riley. ‘I’m one of the good ones.’

  Before we left the mess, Riley took me across and introduced me to a group of about a dozen young boys who were sitting at one of the tables furthest away from the doors. They were all dressed in black and I wondered if this was some kind of rule. As well as that, they all had closely shaved hair, which made them look like boy monks; the oldest amongst them was probably no more than thirteen. Riley knew each of their names and called on them one by one to say hello to me. Without looking up from their plates they took it in turns to mutter, ‘Hello Private Wheeler.’

  ‘Keeping your noses clean?’ said Riley, when they’d all done as he’d asked.

  There was no answer.

  ‘You better be,’ said Riley. ‘Because you’re being watched.’

  A couple of the boys glanced up at him. The others stared sullenly at their food as if it had suddenly lost its flavour. The oldest-looking boy spoke just as we were leaving.

  ‘You’re wasting your time,’ he said.

  ‘I sincerely hope so, son,’ said Riley, giving the boy a cheery wave meant to make him laugh. Except that it had the opposite effect. The boy scowled at us and said something in Japanese under his breath.

  Riley ignored him and led me away.

  ‘What did he just say?’ I said.

  ‘Baka,’ said Riley.

  ‘What does it mean?’

  ‘It’s the worst swear word in the Japanese language,’ he said. ‘It means idiot, or fool.’

  ‘And that’s as bad as it gets?’ I said.

  ‘Very easy to insult a Jap,’ said Riley. ‘You don’t need a big vocabulary.’

  Over lunch in the guards’ mess he told me the boys in black had been mixed up in a knife fight a few weeks before my arrival.

  ‘Nothing serious,’ he said, ‘a few cuts and abrasions. The instigator was a kid named Sawada, who in my opinion doesn’t belong here. He needs packing off to the single-men’s camp without delay.’

  ‘Is he the one who swore at you?’ I said.

  ‘No,’ said Riley. ‘The boy I’m talking about is in the lock-up, where he spends half his life. If it wasn’t for the fact that he’s still a minor he’d be gone from here.’

  ‘What’s he in the lock-up for?’

  Riley told me that Sawada had built a radio and kept it hidden in his hut for months until his mother found it and turned him in. ‘So he beat her over the head with a chair leg. And not for the first time.’

  I watched Riley eat his food. I’d left mine untouched on my plate because I’d lost my appetite.

  ‘My theory is that they learn radio engineering in school,’ said Riley. ‘Did you notice the old man sitting by himself at the table near the entrance to the mess hall?’

  ‘I wasn’t paying attention.’

  ‘Well you should,’ said Riley. ‘His name’s Baba-san. He runs a school for the Japs to send their kids to if they want them to learn to read and write Japanese.’

  ‘Is that allowed?’ I said.

  ‘The theory is that it keeps them occupied,’ said Riley. ‘But I’ll wager there’s a fair amount of brainwashing goes on as well.’

  ‘If that’s true then how does he get away with it? I mean shouldn’t we be trying to stop that sort of thing?’

  Riley smiled at me. ‘There are a lot of things we should try to put a stop to,’ he said. ‘If it would make a difference.’

  When I asked him for a list he laughed.

  ‘What’s so funny?’ I said.

  ‘Make a flaming list yourself,’ he said. ‘Give us a gander when you’ve finished. It might make for entertaining reading.’

  Looking back, I realise that Riley was warning me again not to make the mistake of taking our work at Tatura too seriously, because in essence we were guarding people who had nowhere else to go anyway and no wish to leave. As a consequence we were not really required to do very much except to act like senior prefects occasionally when someone stepped out of line. It was years before it dawned on me that the real tragedy of Tatura had been nothing to do with us anyway. It had stemmed from the clumsy and panicky way that the Japs had been lumped together and branded as traitors.

  The camp commandant, a colonel by the name of Hollows, had already reached a similar conclusion by the time I met him. He ordered me to report to him at the end of my first week of duty, a prospect that terrified me, given his reputation. Riley had described him as unpredictable, sometimes kindly and at other times a martinet, so I was relieved when he welcomed me into his office in a friendly, almost familiar way, as if he already had plans for me. He told me to stand at ease then said he wanted to hear my impressions of the camp so far. I didn’t answer straightaway, mainly because I’d never expected to be asked for my opinion. It was rare for a low-ranking soldier like me to be consulted on any topic whatsoever, let alone on the subject of his own observations. I concluded that Colonel Hollows must be trying to test me in some way, that he was probing my suitability for some special task.

  Eventually I came up with something I thought would please him. ‘I think the camp is an excellent example of what the army does best,’ I said, in my most ingratiating voice, ‘which is to organise and discipline a large number of people over a long period of time for a common purpose.’

  Impatience flashed across the colonel’s round, moustachioed features.

  ‘I think that’s missing the point soldier,’ he said.

  I waited for him to continue but he went very quiet. He sat contemplating his pudgy hands for some time, then stood up from his desk and crossed to the window of his office where he stood gazing out across the parade ground to the mess hall on the other side.

  And then he spoke, a little theatrically I thought, about historians of the future, and how he hoped they would recognise how vital it was to take these people in and keep them safe at a time when they were in peril from the worst elements of our society.

  ‘Does that make sense, Wheeler?’ he said, turning around to look at me. With his wide-awake eyes and whiskers he reminded me of a beaver.

  ‘Yes sir,’ I said.

  To be honest it made no sense at all to me. All week I’d been wrestling with incomprehension about my duties as an enlisted man a thousand miles from danger, and now my problem had been made worse. The only thing I knew for certain was that my chances of redemption by acts of wartime valour had been finally and forever reduced to zero. It wasn’t just a case of my having arrived at exactly the wrong place at exactly the wrong time; it was a case of my having blown all my chances up to this point in spectacular fashion. Before I left the colonel’s office he told me that from now on I would be assisting with the children in the English-language school run by McMaster, unless I had any objections. I told him I had none, and then, as I saluted and turned to leave, I felt a stabbing pain in my stomach and knew that this was what it felt like to lose heart altogether.

  That night I wrote a letter to May to tell her how lonely I was and how much I looked forward to seeing her again.

  I feel like I’m going mad. I haven’t had a minute to myself since I got here and there’s nobody to talk to about anything except the rotten war news, which I don’t enjoy hearing because it only makes me feel sorry for myself. You asked me on my last visit whether I was afraid of fighting. Actually I think I’m more afraid of not fighting. What am I going to tell my children when they ask me what I did in the war? How am I going to explain to them that I looked after a bunch of Japs and made sure they w
ere kept happy and contented while real soldiers were out fighting and dying on the battlefield? It’s sickening to think about. I’ve never felt so useless in my entire life. I’d rather do what you do than spend another day in this shithole (pardon the French). At least you can see a result, whereas what I do produces nothing but despair all round.

  She wrote back to me and said that the censors had blacked out most of my letter except for the bit about my children. She asked me how many I wanted and what their names might be, and then suggested an ideal number would be four, two girls for her and two boys for me. Like all her other letters I kept this one under my pillow and took it out at night to re-read it when I couldn’t sleep. I think it helped me to remember that there was another world outside Tatura, and also that someone out there—it didn’t much matter who—was thinking of me not as a boy soldier but as a man.

  7

  Although I’d caught the occasional glimpse of Stanley out on parade, I hadn’t been close enough to speak to him. We didn’t meet face to face again until he came looking for me one day after morning roll call. This was at the end of May about ten days after we’d both left the infirmary. I’d been given leave to go into Tatura township to pick up some school supplies. I also had plans to meet May, who’d found work on a farm about a forty-minute bus ride from Shepparton. In a letter she wrote me around that time she’d described her determination to keep close by me as worthy of a medal for dogged devotion.

  As I was leaving my hut Stanley appeared around the corner as if he’d been waiting for me. He was looking well fed and pleased with himself, and I remember he was wearing a very serviceable funeral suit with a shirt and tie. The Red Cross sent charity bins to the camp on a regular basis so Stanley had obviously helped himself. His shoes were black patent leather with some kind of animal-skin trim, and already covered in a layer of fine dust because nothing in the camp stayed dust-free for long no matter how diligent you were. The wind was to blame. It was rare to have a day when it wasn’t swirling around the huts in a state of perpetual agitation.