Women and War (16 page)

‘That fella there – see him? He's alive. Fish him out!'

Horrified, Tara clawed at him.

‘But the ship is going to explode – you said …!'

He shook her off. ‘Get a line to him – quickly now!'

She watched as the man was pulled in. He was black with oil and there was an ugly hole where his eye should have been. It gaped scarlet in the midst of the black slime. Tara turned away clapping her hand over her mouth to stop the rush of bile. One of the Chinese seamen swimming in from stricken ships was pulled out of the water too.

‘Let's get out of here!' Dev yelled and as the launch turned to head for shore the breeze brought Tara a whiff of a strange and overpowering smell reminiscent of roast pork. But with patches of blazing oil being blown towards the swimmers she knew it was not.

They had just reached shore when the
Neptuna
blew up. She went with an explosion that rocked the entire harbour, chunks of metal and lengths of rail launched like toy rockets into the vast billowing cloud of smoke, planks of wood and even the main mast tossed like matchsticks. The launch was set rocking madly and Tara thought they would capsize, then as it steadied she was amazed to see the air still full of pieces of falling debris showering towards the sea, foreshore and other ships. One fragment, white hot, landed in the water close by. And above the stricken ship the first dense black cloud continued to mushroom up and out, a gigantic, awesome memorial.

As the water settled Dev brought the launch closer to land and when he told her to Tara jumped over the side, the water splashing up her legs, and struggled towards the beach. Dev and one of the other men followed, supporting the badly wounded seaman between them. They set their burden down in the shelter of the towering cliffs and Dev turned to Tara.

‘You can look after him now.'

All Tara wanted to do was crawl into a crevice of the cliff and hide until the raid was over.

‘Me? But what can I do?'

‘Get him to a hospital, first chance you get help will come – as soon as the raid is over.'

‘Couldn't you take him?'

In his rakish face his eyes were very dark, very hard. ‘We have other work to do.'

She looked out over the harbour. It was like a scene from hell.

‘You'll be all right now.' He turned to his friend. ‘Come on, let's get this show on the road.' And without a backward glance they went back down the beach, splashing through the water to the launch. The engine was still running and soon they were just another bobbing dot amid the debris, half obscured by a curtain of smoke. Tara felt a moment's admiration, swiftly followed by disbelief. Her own sense of self-preservation was so strong she could hardly believe that anyone would go out into that holocaust risking horrific death if they did not have to.

Beside her the injured man moaned and Tara glanced at him, half impatient, half repulsed. She would help him to a safer spot beneath the cliffs and leave him there, she decided. Then, when the raid was over, she would find someone with transport and tell them where to find him.

Trying not to look at his face she put an arm around his shoulders and immediately recoiled from the slimy touch of the oil. She moved out of the cleft but a burst of gunfire from a fighter plane made her skip back again.

Oh, it was like the end of the world! Tara's fingers went to the rosary she always wore around her neck, clutching at the cross with shaking fingers. The injured man moaned again, mumbling something unintelligible, and Tara looked at him in despair. She was trapped. Trapped with this – this
thing
. Shapeless, slimy, stinking black and that terrible gaping wound like raw meat on the butcher's slab … she could not bear to look at it a moment longer. If she had to stay here she must at least try to cover it up. But with what? She had nothing. Except … Tara found herself remembering countless movies … her petticoat. She hauled up her skirt looking with regret at the fine cotton lawn, the nicest petticoat she had ever owned and nicer even in her opinion than the flame-coloured silk that Red had bought to go with her basque. But the petticoat was already muddied and torn in one place where it had caught on a wharf support and in any case at that moment Tara would have sacrificed anything to hide the gaping wound from view.

She ripped off two strips of material then gritting her teeth, tried to clean the oil away from the edges of the wound and bandage over it. Several times she had to turn her head away, taking fresh air, such as it was, into her lungs and deliberately steadying herself. The man was semi-conscious, but when she finished tying the strip at the back of his oil-caked head with a neat bow he muttered something once more and leaning forward she caught a name.

‘Roma.'

Oh Holy Mary, he thinks I'm his wife or something, Tara thought, horrified, but she found herself leaning closer and summoning the courage to wipe the oil away from around his mouth too.

‘It's all right, we'll have you in the hospital soon enough, so we will,' she said, and told herself: Whatever he looks like this is
not
a thing. It is a man. And you, my girl, would do well to remember it!

Just when it seemed they never would the Japanese planes went away. As the All Clear sounded the shocked people of Darwin emerged from their hiding holes, the drainage ditches, open sewers and sheds where they had taken refuge, and Tara, along with dozens of others, was able to creep out of the shelter of the cliffs.

All she wanted to do was to run – as far from Darwin as she could before the planes returned – but she was held back by the thought of the wounded man. He's not my responsibility she told herself, but it was no use. The pieces of her petticoat bound around his face somehow
made
him her responsibility.

I'll have to make sure he's all right before I leave him, Tara thought crossly. I'll have to see he gets proper treatment or I'll have nightmares about him. Well, I'll probably get the nightmares anyway!

She bent over the man again. The stench of oil and blood assailed her once more but at least it no longer made her feel sick.

‘I won't be long,' she said. ‘I'm going to find help.'

His fingers fluttered on her arm and she made herself squeeze them.

‘Stop worrying now. The worst is over.'

The dock road was in chaos. Vehicles, pressed into service, hooted and honked above the jarring grind of engines that refused to start, the injured staggered drunkenly, clutching their wounds with something like disbelief, the frightened ran and milled, their faces ugly with panic as they fought to jump aboard anything that moved. Frantic to get away herself Tara ran this way and that looking for someone who could help her, but for all the attention she was able to attract she might as well have been invisible.

On one side of the dock road a man was bending over a heap of rubble, shifting it stone by stone from the roadway. His hair had flopped limply down across his face as he worked but Tara recognized him as a customer of the Savalis' place. Heart pumping with relief she ran over to him.

‘Griff! Thank, goodness!'

He glanced up at her, his face red and running with perspiration, then bent to move another block from the heap of rubble, tossing it with seemingly senseless precision to a new heap a few feet away.

‘Griff, you must help me, please!' she caught at his arm, trying to get through to him, but he shook her off with a fury which startled her.

‘Cut it out for Chrissakes!'

‘Griff – I've got a wounded man …'

‘Deal with it yourself. I've got other things to do.'

‘But Griff …!'

He broke rhythm long enough to look up at her, rubbing the perspiration out of his eyes. ‘Mate of mine is buried under this lot. Either lend a hand or fuck off,' he snarled.

Tara backed away. It was hopeless. No one was going to take the slightest notice of her – too many people had been killed or wounded whilst she, though dirty and dishevelled, was unhurt. Turning her back on the chaos she ran back to where her charge was sprawled under the cliffs.

‘Could you get up, do you think, if I help you?' she asked him.

An imperceptible nod told her he had heard. Bracing her back against the cliff she got an arm around his waist and began to lever. Oh, but he was a dead weight, slipping and slumping all over the place!

‘I can't do it unless you help me,' she said and her tone if not her words seemed to rally him. She felt him struggle and increased her own effort, then somehow he was on his feet though as she took a step or two forward it felt to her as if the whole of his weight was on her arm.

Like two drunks they staggered towards the road. I can't make it, Tara thought. In just a moment my knees will give way and I shall just sag down like a sack of potatoes with him on top of me.

The thought of being pinned down, unable to escape his trickling blood and the choking oily smell that emanated from his every pore gave her the strength to struggle on though her goal – the end of the dock road – seemed farther away than ever.

She heard the engine of a motor vehicle behind her, tried to veer clear and could not. A horn honked loudly and mentally Tara echoed the exhortation Griff had used to her. Fuck off. If the driver wanted to get by he would have to do some manoeuvring. Tara certainly could not.

The horn honked again and a voice – a female voice – shouted: ‘Hi! You!'

The vehicle was almost alongside her. With an effort Tara turned her head and saw it was white-painted with a prominent red cross on the side. An ambulance – and leaning out of the driver's window was a young woman, whose hair gleamed red-gold in the strong sunlight. ‘Hey! Do you want some help?' she called. Tara could do nothing but nod her head gratefully. The ambulance stopped, the driver's door opened and a pair of long legs emerged.

‘Hold on. I'll be right with you.'

A slimly built body followed the legs. The girl was wearing the uniform of the Red Cross; she paused for a moment to pull her rucked up skirt down to her knees.

‘Damned skirts! You'd think they'd give us trousers! Right, I'll give you a hand and we'll get him in. Can you make it round to the back doors?' she asked Tara's charge, hauling his free arm up around her shoulders and releasing some of the weight from Tara. ‘You'll have to sit up, I'm afraid – I'm full already. But I guess it's better than walking.'

As she spoke she was unlocking the rear doors of the ambulance. The stench of burned and blistered flesh wafted out and someone moaned. Half a dozen men sat or half lay on the stretcher beds and between them the two girls manoeuvred Tara's charge into the only remaining space.

‘Right, fellas, we're on our way,' the Red Cross girl said cheerfully, and to Tara, ‘You'd better sit up in front with me – there's no room here.'

‘Oh, I don't want to come.' But the girl was already on her way back to the driver's cab and Tara followed not wanting to be left alone again.

The girl had left the engine running; as Tara climbed in beside her she knocked it into gear and pulled away with a jolt.

‘Damn.' She changed up. ‘You'd think they would make a vehicle like this to run smoothly, wouldn't you? Instead of jolting the patients just when they don't want to be jolted.' Another swift change. Then she said conversationally, ‘ Well, that was a hell of a raid, wasn't it?'

Tara nodded. Her teeth were trying to chatter now from reaction and she knew if she spoke she would be unable to control them.

‘Where were you when it happened?' the girl asked.

Tara set her jaw. ‘On the wharf.'

‘Nasty! You are lucky to be alive. They got the
Manunda
, didn't they?'

Tara looked puzzled.

‘The hospital ship. You'd think they could have seen her red crosses – they're big enough for heaven's sake!' She broke off to steer around a bomb crater. ‘The town's a complete mess, you know. God knows how many people have been killed. The post office got a direct hit. No one there would have stood a chance.'

‘What about the Savalis' rooming house – is that all right?'

‘Couldn't say. I haven't been out that way. Look out!' She swerved to avoid a man wavering dangerously on a damaged bicycle and gave a small resigned shake of the head. ‘I suppose they'll all start running now. Can't say I blame them.'

Tara stared in silent horror at the devastation all around – buildings reduced to piles of rubble, bits of curtain fluttering in the breeze, ruins smouldering. And everywhere the sense of barely controlled panic; panic growing with the sweltering heat of the sun as it climbed in the heavens.

‘This isn't the way to the hospital is it?' Tara asked presently.

‘We're not going to the civilian hospital. That had a hit, I believe. I don't know how bad it was – only that I've been told to take patients to the AGH – the military hospital.'

They left the town behind, swinging out onto a road that ran across flat, blood-red earth where the vegetation was sparser and more twisted.

‘My name is Alys Peterson, by the way,' the Red Cross girl said suddenly. ‘What's yours?'

‘Tara Kelly.'

‘Sounds Irish! In fact you sound Irish.'

‘I am.' Tara looked at her sharply. ‘But how did you know?'

‘My family are English. I have a British passport myself.'

‘I see.' English, she was thinking. I must be in shock not to have noticed. And not only English but upper crust English. You are out of the top drawer, Miss Alys Peterson, whoever you are …

‘Hang on!' Tara's train of thought was interrupted as Alys stood on her brakes, almost catapulting Tara through the windscreen. ‘Looks as if somebody else needs our help.'

The man at the roadside was partially doubled up, his face hidden; but Tara got the impression of crumpled flannels and a none-too-clean shirt and a wide brimmed hat pulled well down onto his head. Alys leaned out.