Four Fires (74 page)

In about three hours we reach the bottom of the ravine, which is the wrong word because there's no outlet like a ravine should have, just this deep wound in the side of the mountain. We're in among the Alpine Ash, all of which are big trees, bigger than the ones on the spur, and a couple we pass are at least two hundred years old. If Tommy had stopped at either one of them and declared we'd reached the big old tree, I'd have thought, fair enough. But he doesn't and we press on. There's been a fire through here maybe two years ago so the undergrowth isn't too bad and we can make our way along pretty steadily. It's twilight down here, even though it's summer and it can't be much more than about half-past five, with the sun not yet set.

Then we come to a clearing and there it is, the biggest tree I have ever seen. It's as though no other tree dare take any space around it, the trunk is easily fifteen feet across and the clearing in which it stands is quite light because the canopy of the other trees hasn't crowded in and its own canopy is pretty sparse, so the light streams down from above like it's an altar or something. This old fella has to be three hundred feet high! I stand gobsmacked. I can't say nothing, this is the biggest growing thing I have ever seen and only a Maloney has seen it. This must be true, because if someone else had been here then they'd have said so. You'd have to skite about it. The only reason we haven't is because to us male Maloneys this is a sacred tree, this is the God Tommy worships, and so did Tommy's father and grandfather.

I look over at Tommy, who is now sitting on a rock completely knackered. I'm young and the sight of the tree has sent my blood racing and, all of a sudden, I don't feel the weariness in me.

Now I see dark patches of blood through Tommy's shirt. He's also got a nasty cut along the neck and the skin on his legs is rubbed raw.

I don't know what to say, he's done this for me when physically he was well past such a climb.

Thank you, Dad,' I say. Then I can't help myself, I run over and take his head in both my hands and kiss him on the forehead. 'Thank you, thank you,' and I start to cry.

'She's right,' Tommy says quietly, he nods towards the tree, 'I did the same first time I saw it. But you've got to be ready, it's not something you can see if you're not ready.' He doesn't explain what he means and I don't understand. Does he think the tree is invisible? You could easily think something like that, you know, you can only see it when things are right in your mind and soul?

But it's there all right, this mighty Alpine Ash has been standing here for at least four hundred years.

Tommy has got his elbows on his knees and he's looking at a spot between his legs. After a
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while, he looks up slowly directly into my eyes. Tm that proud of you, Mole. You're the best son a man could ever wish for and that's why I'm gunna tell yer.'

I knuckle back my tears, I'm his son even if I ain't. 'You mean, show me the tree?' 'Nah, tell ya.'

'Tell me what?' I sniff.

'Everything, mate. Everything what happened.'

'You mean the Japanese?'

'Yeah, them mongrels, Malaya, Singapore, Changi, Sandakan, all me mates long dead, Gunner Cleary!'

I've heard of Changi but never of the other place, 'Sandakan? Where's that?'

'Borneo.'

I can see he's exhausted, even deciding to tell me, spitting it out, has taken something out of him.

There's a stream nearby so I say, 'Better wash them wounds, get the dirt out. I'll make us a fire and boil the billy, we'll have a cuppa, then I'll make us a nice rabbit stew.'

'You're a good son, Mole,' he says. That's the second time he's said it in a matter of minutes. It's something he's never said to me in my whole life.

'Better wash them scratches in the stream, get the dirt out,' I repeat.

He gives me a tired smile. 'It's better than that, Mole.' He points to a large rock about forty feet to my right and on the edge of the clearing made by the big old tree. 'There's a hot spring behind that big rock, I reckon we're closer to hell than we know.' I look over and see there's a wisp of steam rising from behind the rock, then another. 'What say you, Mole, we'll have a cuppa, take it with us and have a good soak.' I walk over to the little stream. Above the rock it's icy cold and below it's lukewarm. 'The hot springs is what's helped the great giant grow so big, kept its roots warm in the winter,'Tommy shouts out.

There's plenty of dry wood lying around and I gather an armful and cut two long green twigs. I build the fire and bend the twigs, on either side of the fire, so that the points are pushed into the ground. 'Take your gear off, I'll dry it,' I say to Tommy and start to undress. Tommy hands me his wet clobber.

I never cease to be astonished at Tommy's body, his shoulder is sort or crushed in and one arm is thin as a stick and he's sort of a bit lopsided and thin as a rake. If you look at him in the nude, you'd think he was a broken man but he can go all day and walk the legs off any of us. I think I should wash the bloodstains and the dirt out but I know Tommy wouldn't want me to do that, he'd think I was demeaning

myself. Instead, I drape both our gear over the looped sticks to dry and set the billy to boil.

So there's Tommy and me having a cup of tea, sitting up to our necks in hot water, letting all the aches and pains flow out of us. After a while Tommy clears his throat, 'I guess you know some part of it, eh?'

'Not much.'

'Malaya?'

'Nah.'

'Singapore?'

'Only the poem you told us which says it was like a fortress that couldn't be took, only the Japs captured it in a week.' It's not strictly true, I know a bit more, but I want to hear Tommy's version, the way a bloke who was there would say it.

'Singapore don't make sense unless you know what happened before, what happened in Malaya.'

Now Tommy laughs. 'Only the bloody Poms! They've got this idea that no army can cross Malaya. The jungle's too dense, the swamps too deep, it's what they maintain all along. They should know, they tell everyone, they've been in Malaya for donkey's years, planting rubber and running the show, they know it inside out. Can't tell them nothing.

'The suggestion is that if the Brits can't do it, march an army from the north to south, no bastard
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can. Simple as that. So they prepare Singapore with their big guns armed with armour-piercing shells to be used against invading warships. Only problem was, the Japs took no notice and decide to come overland instead, ride in on bicycles down from the north of Malaya, down the pensinula to the southern tip.

'The intelligence coming through from Malaya says that's what the Japanese plan to do, Thailand has given them permission to march across its territory. Bullshit, says the British High Command, we're not stupid enough to fall for that old trick, nobody can get through that jungle.

'Later when we are on Singapore Island, the Brits shell Malaya. We hear the shells passing over, even saw one or two, but being armour-piercing when they landed in Johore they didn't detonate. Right idea, wrong shells, another Pommie fuck-up.'

'Dad, I want to know everything!' I burst out suddenly, 'Everything that happened, don't leave nothing out!' I tell myself even if it's stuff

that's a bit technically wrong but is what the ordinary soldiers believed was happening, that's okay. I also know that Tommy's telling it from the Australians' side and that he might be a bit one-eyed.

Tell you the truth, I'm whacked, mate,' he says. 'Been a long day. What say I'll tell you about Malaya, then you make us a bite of bunny stew and we'll have a few hours' kip and then I'll carry on with the rest?'

We sit in the pool nearly an hour as Tommy tells me the story of his battalion, the 2/19th, and how they fought in Malaya.

The fire has burned down to embers when we get back from the hot pool and our clobber is dry again. We dress and I set about making rabbit stew. But first I cut two sticks that branch into a Yand put them in the ground either side of the embers, then run a long stick through one of the rabbits and place it on this bush spit to roast. I take the other rabbit and cut it up for stew with a bit of salt and the two carrots I've brought. One rabbit isn't going to make much of a stew, but I reckon we'll have a little less to eat tonight and save the other rabbit roasted. We'll need to eat tomorrow night as well and there'll be nothing to be taken off the land until then.

We wash down the stew with another mug of billy tea and it can't be much later than about half-past seven when, after building up the fire so it will last until about midnight, I crawl into my sleeping bag.

There's still a little light coming through because of the missing canopy to the massive old tree.

That's the thing with truly old trees, after about three hundred years they lose most of their canopy, I guess it's a tree's version of going bald. Anyway the birds have all shut up and the frogs have now took to croaking and I reckon I'll be dead to the world in a matter of minutes. But not before I've made Tommy promise to wake me at midnight to go on with the story.

However, tired as I am, I can't go to sleep. What Tommy's told me sitting in the hot pool is working itself out in my memory. I hear his voice, the way he says things, going on and on in my head like it's a record playing back to me. I suppose I've waited so long that my mind doesn't want to lose a single detail, even though I know a fair bit about Singapore and even Changi, because that's history you can read and Mrs Botherington has let me take books about it out of the library.

I tell myself, history is one thing, telling's another. Tommy was there and he saw it like an ordinary bloke sees things and not like the writers who write it from the general perspective or like the generals in their memoirs, who want to cover their arses and come out smelling of roses.

So there it is, Tommy's voice. 'Mate, Singapore was a complete shambles, a stuff-up that you wouldn't believe unless you were there yourself. I heard tell about a wireless broadcast from one of the Pommie military big shots to the civilian population that happened before we get there.

He's said we might get attacked from the air by day, but the anti-aircraft guns were strategically
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placed to give the Nips hell if they tried, but not to worry about night attacks, because the Japanese pilots all suffer from poor eyesight and it is a fact that the Japanese can't see in the dark.' Tommy chuckles, 'Maybe they didn't eat raw carrots like we did when we were kids, eh?'

I laugh as well, I don't know if it's a true story, but I've heard it before, maybe read it somewhere. 'Must have been the same bloke fired the shells that wouldn't detonate.'

'Could've been, though there weren't that many in top command had a bloody clue. Too many gin slings before curry tiffin at the Singapore Club, I reckon.

'Well, the Japs weren't taking no notice of what they were supposed to do and at last the blokes in command realise that we've got a very likely invasion on our hands, jungle or no jungle. So, we're sitting there waiting for the Japs to get in among us, there's not even a roll of barbed wire on the island to stop them. We've been fighting in Malaya, back-pedalling all the way, thinking that once we get to Singapore they'll have had time to get ready and the defences will be in place and we can stand and fight for a change. Not a sausage, mate. They done bugger-all!

'General Wavell, who's in command of all the troops from Burma to the Philippines, and that includes us and the Americans, the Dutch and the British, goes over to Singapore to take a look-see. He finds there's no defences anywhere.

'"Where's the defences?" he asks General Percival.

'"We ain't got none," Percival replies.

'"What do you mean you ain't got none? Fucking Japs are on the way!" Wavell shouts.

'"Yeah, well, we thought it would be bad for civilian morale if we started building bunkers and stuff," says General Percival.'

I guess that's Tommy's version of the conversation between Wavell and Percival, but I reckon it amounts to the same thing. The English generals may have said it more posh but the records show that Percival did say he thought it would be bad for civilian morale when Wavell questioned him about the lack of defences. The point is they've been sitting on their arses in Singapore, spouting about the impenetrable virgin jungle being the natural enemy the Japs can't defeat and suddenly the Japs are knocking on the back door.

Tommy continues, 'We expect to see these massive concrete fortifications, anti-tank traps, pillboxes and weapons pits. Gawd knows they've had all the time in the world to construct them.

There's nothing! Sweet Fanny Adams! Like I said, not even a strand of barbed wire.

'Our own general, Gordon Bennett, is a pretty good bloke and we're happy with his leadership but there's bugger-all he can do. He's under the direction of General Percival of the low-morale quip and also General Wavell, who finds himself retreating fast as his troops can go.

The Brits have been fighting in Malaya long before us, starting right up in the far north at Jitra and Kota Bahru when the Japs first landed. I don't know that much about their part, except I heard how at Kota Bahru way up north, the Japs attempting to land were met by Indian troops under Brigadier Key who fought with great gallantry but, despite holding the high ground, were eventually hopelessly outnumbered by the Japs coming ashore.

'Far as I know, it was much of the same elsewhere, they fought best they could but the odds were too great. Percival, gawd help us, is in charge at this stage and when the Japs cross Thailand into Jitra, the defences aren't organised, the anti-tank mines are laid in clumps dead easy to avoid, the trenches aren't wired for communications and, besides, are waterlogged. Well, the rot sets in right there at the very beginning and from then on they're chased all the way down Malaya until they're in the south. That's when the Australians are brought into the fray.

'The 2/19th, which is us, is on the east coast way down south with the rest of the Australians in Johore, we're supposed to be the last-ditch