Grim? Amy Mulvaney said. What’s grim? They’re prisoners, we know that. And the Japs are brutes. But they’re safe.
The Australian prisoners in Germany you can correspond with. May as well be on holiday. But the POWs in Asia, well, it’s not such a pretty picture. There’s no news, no reliable testimony. There’s been no real word of them since the surrender of Singapore. Nothing has been heard of his unit for nine months. They think thousands of the POWs have perished over there.
Maybe. But there’s no proof Dorrigo’s dead.
They’ve been told—
Who told? Who said it? Who, Keith?
I . . . Their intelligence, I guess. I mean—
Who, Keith?
I can’t say. But Ron—well, he knows. People.
People?
Well-placed people. Defence Department people.
Keith Mulvaney halted; his mask-like smile seemed to be signalling something else—pity? uncertainty? rage? —and then continued with an implacable force.
And they expect very few of them to survive to tell the tale.
Amy realised he had abandoned his copyright practice of asking a question only to immediately answer it. He wasn’t trying to win an argument. He was trying to tell her something. It was as if he had already won.
He wrote to us, said Amy, but she could hear that her voice was shrill.
That card?
The card, yes. And his brother Tom wrote you that his family in Tasmania had one after us.
Her voice, she knew, was thin and unconvincing even to her.
The card he sent us, Amy, was dated May 1942, and we got it in November. That was three months ago. It’s getting close to a year since we’ve had any word from him. Not a word—
Yes, Amy Mulvaney said. Yes, yes. Quickly, definitely, as though this somehow proved her point rather than demolished it.
Not a word since.
Yes, Amy Mulvaney said. Though she pressed down even harder on it, her foot didn’t really hurt that much at all. Habit and circumstance, the reassurance and security of marriage, were no longer enough for her. She would leave him. But having thought this bitter thought, she immediately felt confused. How? Where? And what would she live on?
The card his family got in December was dated April.
Yes, Keith, Amy Mulvaney said. Yes, yes, yes.
Her body was being tossed and rolled, and she was reaching for words to help keep her balance. She did not say she had written over a hundred letters to Dorrigo since they had heard he had been taken prisoner. Surely, Amy Mulvaney thought, one would have got through.
Ron Jarvis also said there are reports coming from other sources. Not good. Saying the men are skin and bone and being starved to death.
There’s been nothing in the papers.
There was. Atrocities. Massacres.
That’s propaganda, Keith, Amy Mulvaney said. To make us hate them.
Though she put all her weight on her cut foot, it merely ached.
If it’s propaganda, Keith Mulvaney said, it’s very bad propaganda.
But nothing else, no follow-up.
It’s a war, Amy. Bad news is no news. It vanishes. There’s the best part of a fifth of the Australian army missing, and only a few reliably traced.
That doesn’t mean he’s dead, Keith. It’s like you want him dead. He’s not dead. I know. I know.
The sea breeze, she realised, had ceased. Even the world struggled to breathe. From outside, she thought she heard the sound of a dried leaf snap. Keith coughed. He was not finished.
Ron Jarvis made some more enquiries for me, he said, wiping his lips with a handkerchief. There was a POW who made it out. They’re not telling the families yet. National morale, I suppose. And, I suppose, they wait for confirmation through other channels. Red Cross and so on.
Telling the families what, Keith?
I knew you’d want to know, Amy. I can’t bring myself to tell his family, though—it’s not my place, in any event. I’d be breaching a confidence. To say nothing of national security. This is strictly between us.
There’s nothing to tell, Keith. What are you carrying on about?
The escapee confirmed that Dorrigo Evans died in one of the camps.
Amy’s thoughts were distant and odd. It occurred to her that Keith loved her, something she had not thought for a very long time.
Amy, believe me, Dorrigo’s dead. He died six months ago.
Keith Mulvaney’s words, his boyish voice, spilled out onto the corridor floor tiles, black and white squares.
I knew you’d want to know, he said.
His words ran down the empty hallway and over its threadbare coconut mat runner, searching for Amy. But she was gone from the room.
Keith Mulvaney felt as a man who has killed something so that he might eat. He had wanted to say something else, something so true that it would justify the terrible lie he had just told. He wanted to say, I love you. Instead, he whistled Miss Beatrice onto his lap.