Blue Smoke (31 page)

Lucy had already heard, as she kept the radio on all the time, and Leila found her and James waltzing up and down the rows of trees in the orchard. James lifted Daisy, shrieking with delight, out of the bicycle basket and popped her on his shoulders, then grabbed Leila and waltzed her around too.

Work stopped for the day and everyone gathered in the kitchen of the big house to celebrate. Everyone, that was, except Erin and Joseph who, understandably, wanted a little time by themselves to remember Billy before they joined in the festivities. They turned up an hour later, though, smiling widely if a little tearfully and bearing several bottles of beer and one of rather good champagne they’d been given by someone at Christmas and hadn’t got around to opening. Whatever they’d needed to say to each other had obviously been said, and Tamar especially was delighted that they felt up to joining in.

Their impromptu party escalated as neighbours dropped by for celebratory drinks and the sharing of expert opinions on the final days of Berlin, Hitler’s obvious lunacy, the certainty of Japan surrendering any day now and anything else relating to the ‘sodding bloody war’, as James kept referring to it within earshot of Henry.

Henry, thoroughly overexcited himself, amused himself by going around tapping people on the arm, waiting until they asked, ‘Yes, Henry?’ Then saying ‘Sodding
bloody
war’ with such obvious relish that no one could keep a straight face. It wore off fairly quickly, however, and Keely was eventually compelled to tell him to stop it. But nothing could dampen his spirits today, not with all this excitement going on, so while no one was looking he pinched a bottle of beer and went outside with one of his school mates, whose parents lived nearby and had come over for a drink, to practise their burps.

Keely, Erin and Lucy ended up feeding about twenty extra people that night, and the evening was a great success, especially after the Murdochs, the Morgans and the Deanes had all had a turn talking on the telephone to Thomas and Lucy in Dunedin, Bonnie in Wellington — who kept saying she had to get off the barracks phone because other people were wanting to use it — and Kathleen, who said the same thing about the telephone in her lodging house. Neither of the girls knew when they would be coming home — technically the war hadn’t really ended yet because of the bloody-minded Japanese — but they would keep their families posted.

Duncan, Liam, Robert and Drew couldn’t be contacted, of course, because they were still over seas, but everyone vowed to write letters to each of them the following day, so that they wouldn’t be left out of the celebrations at home. With the war in Europe now at an end, surely they must be back soon? And if the stories about the liberation of prisoners in the Japanese POW camps in Burma were correct, then Drew might even be home before the others.

At the end of the night they all raised a solemn toast to everyone who wasn’t home yet, and to those who wouldn’t be coming home, and it suddenly occurred to them all that it really was nearly
all over — the endless working for the war effort, the making do and going without, and the ever-present worry about friends and family away over seas.

The party broke up at midnight because, German surrender or not, there would still be recalcitrant sheep, sagging fences and malfunctioning farm machinery to be tended to the following day. The visitors drifted off, and the Kenmore clan headed for their beds. There was a short panic when it was discovered that Henry seemed to have disappeared, but after he was discovered asleep in the garden next to an empty beer bottle and a small puddle of sick, all was well again, bar Keely and Owen’s mystification over who on earth had given him alcohol to drink. But by the time he was tucked up in bed with his face and hands washed thoroughly with a warm, soapy flannel, they had forgotten about it.

They were thinking instead about what would happen when Bonnie came home from the air force, and how long they would have her and Leila and Daisy to themselves before the three of them headed off for America. Keely hoped it would be ages before the red tape was sorted out and they were cleared to emigrate as war brides, although of course Bonnie was only a war fiancée. There was talk already of New Zealand women — many with small children in tow — bombarding the authorities to arrange passage over seas to meet up with their wartime husbands and lovers. She imagined it would be an absolute nightmare, sorting out who was legally married and who wasn’t, who was entitled to go and who did not have the required credentials, and she could see that along with the excitement and anticipation there would be tears and heartbreak for those who discovered too late that the loves of their lives had disappeared without a trace, or already had a wife and five children at home. In bed, cuddled into Owen’s comforting back, she crossed her fingers in the dark to ward off the possibility that Leila might turn out to be one of those poor wretches.

In their house half a mile away, James and Lucy were thinking about their own children. What would happen when Duncan came home? Would Claire come out to New Zealand with him straight away or would she have to wait in England for a while? What would he do for a job now that he was disabled, and
was
he in fact disabled? He couldn’t be in that much of a state, James pointed out, if he’d been doing a perfectly good job in England for the RAF up until now, even if it wasn’t flying. Lucy insisted that disfigured did not necessarily mean disabled, but James was of the gloomy opinion that jobs might be thin on the ground when the men came home, and therefore it was likely that a fit, normal-looking man was more likely to be given a job over a man with a scarred face and hands. Lucy told James he was being a pessimist, and what about all those rehabilitation schemes everyone said were being put into place for returned veterans? James said what about them, and that Lucy was being naive — look what happened after the last war. But then he said that there was plenty of work for Duncan in the orchard if he wanted to do that, and perhaps they could even form a partnership if that suited everyone, and Lucy knew then that that was what he really wanted.

And there was Drew, too — he would have to find something to do as well. He’d mentioned in several of the letters he’d sent home before being captured that he very much enjoyed life at sea, and that he was considering — but
only
considering at that point, mind — joining the Royal New Zealand Navy as a regular after the war. Or the merchant navy, if the RNZN wouldn’t have him, which would be very unlikely given his active service with the RN over the past eighteen months. But Lucy suspected that Drew might need some time at home to recuperate and build himself up again until he was fit to get on with his life. She knew James was thinking this too, but would not discuss it with her in case she became upset. Which was silly, because she’d handled everything else unpleasant
that had happened in her life so far perfectly adequately.

In the Deane household, Joseph lay in bed talking about Robert rejoining him at Kenmore. The boy was a born sheep farmer, he said, and he’d like nothing better than to train him up to the point where he could hand him the reins when it came time to retire. And Ana, too, if that was what she wanted. But then Erin reminded him that Ana was likely to be flicking someone else’s reins, if David Leonard got what he so obviously wanted. Joseph looked at his wife sharply, and Erin laughed at him and told him not to worry — she meant that David wanted to marry Ana, and if she wasn’t mistaken, there would be a proposal in the not too distant future. Not too distant at all.

In the big house, Tamar sat in her bed alone, her back supported by a pile of pillows, the bedside lamp shedding a soft light on her unopened book. It was just over four months since Kepa had died, and she still had to squeeze her eyes shut against the tears whenever she thought about him. She had raged that she had not even had the opportunity to say goodbye to him, but after a couple of weeks it occurred to her that she had in fact done just that, the last time she had seen him. She was not a particularly demonstrative person by nature, and neither really was he, but she remembered he’d said quite emphatically that he loved her, and that she had made a point of saying it back to him. So perhaps they had known, somehow. They had of course been aware that their years together were limited, and that each one lived was a bonus and something to be savoured, but she’d always assumed she would precede him to the grave. She was the one with the damaged heart, after all, while he had always been as fit as a damned flea. In a way she was glad he’d had a stroke — she would have hated to watch him weaken and then fade away until he became someone who was not Kepa any more. And he’d died ensuring that his precious great-grandchildren would live, and she knew he would
have considered the sacrifice worth it, even if it had robbed him of the last few years of his own life. She missed him so much it hurt her physically, in her heart.

She sighed. Kepa had gone, but Liam was still alive and would soon be coming home. He would have to be told about Evie, and she knew she would be the one to tell him. He could not be left to go charging over to Palmerston North to look for her when in all likelihood she wasn’t there any more, or if she was, it might be with a toddler hanging on to her skirts, one that couldn’t possibly be Liam’s. She had toyed with the idea of sending him a letter before he arrived back in New Zealand, to prepare him, but decided against it. No, she would sit him down and tell him face to face, and then he would not have to absorb the news alone.

Japan, August 1945

On 26 July 1945, the United States, Britain and China issued Japan with the Potsdam Declaration, an ultimatum to surrender or face ‘prompt and utter destruction’. The Japanese chose to ignore it.

Consequently, at 2.45 a.m. on Monday, 6 August, a B-29 Super fortress named
Enola Gay
took off from Tinian Island in the Marianas on a course for Japan. The aircraft was crewed by twelve members of the US Army Air Force. When the
Enola Gay
reached her target over the city of Hiroshima, the weather was fine and clear. At 8.16 a.m., the single, modified bomb bay opened in the aircraft’s belly releasing the atomic bomb named ‘Little Boy’, killing two hundred thousand Japanese civilians.

Prime Minister Suzuki refused to accept a subsequent ultimatum from the Allied powers, and at 11.02 a.m. on 9 August, a second atomic bomb, this one named ‘Fat Man’, was dropped on the city of Nagasaki, killing another one hundred and fifty thousand.

Five days later, Emperor Hirohito accepted the Allied terms of surrender. The following day, thousands of New Zealanders waiting by their radios heard the voice of British Prime Minister Clement Attlee declare that the war had finally ended.

In Wellington on VJ Day the weather was terrible, which is why Bonnie and Kathleen found themselves in the crowded, noisy lounge bar of a pub in Victoria Street. When the news had broken, Kathleen and her workmates, still in their sewing overalls, had rushed out into the street and had been flitting from pub to pub. By the time Kathleen spotted Bonnie in Willis Street, her apron had disappeared, her hair had fallen out of its victory roll and was whipping about in all directions in the steadily rising wind, her face was flushed from a tad too much Pimm’s, and her lipstick was smeared from the attentions of opportunistic kiss-grabbers in the revelling crowds.

‘Bonnie!’ she screeched over the noise of someone blowing a French horn less than two feet away from her ear. ‘Bonnie Morgan! Over here!’

Bonnie, concentrating on avoiding the passionate embrace of an inebriated New Zealand soldier, didn’t hear her, so Kathleen fought her way closer, almost breaking her ankle in the process when the heel of her shoe became stuck in a gutter grate.

‘Damn!’ she swore, and bent down to extricate herself. Her foot came out of the shoe easily enough but then the shoe wouldn’t come out of the grate, which left her hopping in place on one leg wondering what to do next. She certainly wasn’t about to spend the rest of the afternoon trotting about in only one shoe, and neither was she prepared to leave the stuck shoe behind — the pair had used up the last of her shoe coupons for this year and had cost an outrageous thirty-five shillings.

‘
Bonnie
!’ she bawled again. ‘
Over here
!’

This time Bonnie heard, her face lighting up as she fought her way towards her cousin. Then, as she noticed her cousin’s predicament, she started laughing and found she couldn’t stop. Kathleen began tittering herself and soon they were cackling their heads off, and had to sit down on a bench at an adjacent tram stop. Kathleen almost had herself under control until she caught sight of her stylish but lonely shoe again, caught in the grate all by itself, and off she went once more until her face was bright red and her eyes streaming.

It was then that a rather dashing moustached RAF airman appeared in front of them. Fair hair showed under his blue cap, and he had lovely brown eyes, currently screwed up against the wind, and the rain that was just starting to come down. He stood with his arms crossed — whether this was because he always stood like that or he wanted to show off his pilot’s wings to their best advantage, Bonnie wasn’t sure — and appeared to be struggling not to laugh himself.

Kathleen pointed at the grate and wailed, ‘My shoe. Please, save it!’

She sounded so pathetic that the airman and Bonnie both burst out laughing, Bonnie with her hands pressed against her cheeks because they were already aching from the last bout of hysterics.

The airman whipped his cap off and bowed low. ‘I see you’re in a spot of bother, Miss. How can the RAF be of service?’

‘My shoe, it’s stuck in the grate. I have to have it back. It’s … it’s one of a pair, you see.’

‘Really? Well, yes, I can see your predicament.’

He knelt down, getting the knees of his trousers wet in the process, and extracted a pocket knife from the top pocket of his tunic. Expertly flicking the knife open he wedged the blade between the grate and the concrete in which it was set. One or
two forceful jiggles and he had the grate up and over, the heel of Kathleen’s shoe still jammed between two of the bars. Then he did something that Kathleen seemed to think was awfully clever, judging by the daffy look of wonder of her face: he upended the grate, rested one side of it on the bench then pushed the heel rather vigorously back through with the heel of his palm.