Amongst the Dead

Chapter One

signing on

WHAT I REMEMBER MOST
about the first time the Japanese dropped bombs on me — and, yes, I did take it personally — was not the shrapnel but the mosquitoes. I was lying face down in what was called a trench but which was, in truth, a drain. In my view, a trench is a piece of real estate distinguished from a drain by the absence of putrid, foetid, and greasy water. When the warning siren went off just after 2.00 a.m., my brother Brian and I were amongst those who hurried from the Sergeants’ Mess at Larrakeyah Barracks and tumbled into this so-called trench.

I crouched, initially, rather than lay, reluctant to saturate my uniform in the evil-smelling water. The shocking explosion of the first bomb encouraged me to forget fastidiousness in favour of safety, or the illusion of it. By the time the second and third bombs had fallen, I was ready to start burrowing. I feel no shame whatsoever in declaring that the early morning of Wednesday, 28 October 1942, in the northern capital of Darwin, marks the precise time and place where I experienced, for the first time, a fear so intense that I thought I might die of it. Up to that point in my life, ‘died of fright’ was an expression I assumed belonged to melodramatic fiction.

I put my hands over my ears and tried very hard to believe that a drain offered an impregnable defence against a bomb dropped from above. We’d been told on our arrival in Darwin, just an hour earlier, that we could expect to be inconvenienced by raids at all hours. Since the initial, devastating attacks in February, the Japanese had punished the mostly evacuated town dozens of times.

‘You get used to it,’ we were told by a sergeant. ‘They’re nuisance raids, mostly — small, anti-personnel bombs rather than big bastards. They spray shrapnel close to the ground, so if you keep your head down you should be OK.’

‘But what,’ I asked reasonably, ‘if one of them lands in a trench?’

‘If that happens, you’ll probably die, or wish you had.’

‘And does it happen?’

‘All the time,’ he said. ‘That’s the thing about bombs. It’s hit and miss. They hit, or they miss.’ He’d implied in his tone that he thought I was a bit of a dill.

Every muscle in my body was tensed to aching point, and I sensed that Brian, lying close to me in the dark, was similarly rigid. There was a whining, vibrating hum that I took to be the air rushing around the cylindrical bombs as they plummeted to earth. However, the constancy and weird proximity of the sound turned out to be a cloud of mosquitoes; and they so harried me that, even through my life-threatening terror, they caused me unimaginable distress. I loathe mosquitoes, with their nasty, probing syringes and their ghastly, bloated abdomens, swollen with the blood of others. If I’d been capable of being objective, I suppose I should have been grateful to them. They were so vicious, and in such biblical numbers, that they offered a distraction from the whomp and crack of bombs, and drowned out the deadly zip and ping of shrapnel. I endured them, and thought how strange it was that just a few weeks previously Brian and I had been sitting in the offices of Army Intelligence in Melbourne, eagerly agreeing to an assignment that would put both our lives at risk.

It was Monday, 5 October 1942, and Australia’s most important Catholic leader, Archbishop Daniel Mannix, was comfortably ensconced at Raheen, his mansion in the Melbourne suburb of Kew, instead of lying sprawled and very dead on the altar steps at St Patrick’s Cathedral — only because, I modestly assert, of my intervention. While my achievement had been worthy of accolades, I couldn’t expect any — certainly not the kind of accolades I’d been used to receiving as an actor. I’d fallen, temporarily, out of acting, and into Army Intelligence; and in Army Intelligence, mum is definitely the word.

In a small room in Victoria Barracks, the man who’d recruited me, James Fowler, and his sister Nigella, floated the extraordinary idea that I and my younger brother Brian (still a little shell-shocked by the behaviour of his now estranged and catatonic wife, Darlene) should attempt to discover the truth about three suspicious deaths which had occurred somewhere near Darwin. Why, in a time of war and extravagant killing, these deaths should matter so much, was one of the questions I eventually asked. I say ‘eventually’ because my initial response was unalloyed excitement at the prospect of returning to the profession for which I was best suited — acting. We were, you see, to be sent north as entertainers, and not as dreary foot soldiers, trapped in the hideous daily round of soldiery, a role for which both Brian and I were manifestly unsuited, having been identified as flat-footed — not in any disfiguring or disabling way, I hasten to add. My feet felt quite at home treading the boards, but would have rebelled at the prospect of a forced march.

Nigella Fowler, a young woman of unexceptionable appearance for whom I had nevertheless formed a strong attachment — an attachment which had acquired the urgency of what I supposed was love, after she had saved my life and saved the day simultaneously in St Patrick’s Cathedral — looked at me and repeated what James had already stressed.

‘This is dangerous work, Will. Once you’re up there, there’s no way out.’

I thought I detected a small tremor in her voice that may have betrayed her feelings for me. Coolly professional, I understood that she couldn’t express them at this critical time for fear that I might swerve from my patriotic duty in favour of pursuing her. Catching that momentary glimpse of attraction only made me more determined to solve whatever problem Army Intelligence needed solving in Darwin. A successful resolution would surely do more in the way of securing Nigella’s affections than a month of mawkish wooing.

‘We understand the dangers,’ I said, ‘and I’m sure I speak for Brian as well when I say that we’re ready to face them.’

‘I can speak for myself,’ said Brian, with a characteristic little note of churlishness in his voice, ‘and it so happens that Will is right. I’m ready for this. More than ready.’

James Fowler nodded his neatly groomed head and tapped his desk with the end of a fountain pen.

‘Actually, neither of you is ready, although your willingness is admirable, and all we need to be going on with. There simply isn’t time to train you properly, but we’ll do the best we can in a short time.’

‘Training?’ I raised an eyebrow in imitation of my doppelganger, Tyrone Power. ‘I’m a professional actor, James. I don’t need training. Rehearsal time, yes, but not training. Brian, of course, will need …’

James held up his hand to silence me, and Nigella interjected.

‘Only yesterday, Will, you admitted that you knew nothing.’

Here I saw a startled look on Brian’s face. James took over.

‘I think you should start from that excellent premise, Will.’

Not wishing to jeopardise my return to performing, I held my tongue, and I felt my love for Nigella curdle just a little.

‘Your real training will begin tomorrow,’ James said. ‘The details are being worked out even as we speak. For now, it’s enough that you get some background on the unit we want you to infiltrate.’ He paused, gauging our preparedness to listen.