Love in the Years of Lunacy (16 page)

Some players sat on ammo crates, but most reclined on faded deck chairs left over from when the ship had been a luxury liner. Rudolph whacked the air with his baton and counted them in on Benny Goodman's ‘Stealin' Apples', which wasn't too difficult, as it was a piano-led introduction and the brass section just had to play harmony. But the second verse contained some fast, synchronised sax riffs and she found herself struggling with the fingering. She faked it, and merely pressed the keys, but didn't blow into the mouthpiece, allowing the alto and baritone to carry her through. Fortunately, Rudolph didn't seem to notice. A few soldiers were already throwing off their hats and jitterbugging together, while others leaped into the empty pool and glided across the cracked white tiles, turning it into an impromptu dance hall.

Everyone was in full military uniform, though it was so hot that most of the musicians had unbuttoned their shirts and rolled up their sleeves and trouser legs. Pearl felt exceedingly self-conscious, not only because she was having trouble keeping up with the music; she was also the only one who remained fully clothed, with sweat patches spreading across her uniform. She feared she must seem ridiculously modest or fastidious—or just plain stupid.

The drummer was keeping the beat on the ride cymbal but Pearl couldn't hear it properly because the wind kept carrying it away. When she had to stand up and take a solo on ‘Two o'Clock Jump'—a song she'd played countless times at the Troc—she sensed the tempo escaping her, as if riding away with the sea breeze. She was running out of breath and the tenor was too big and heavy in her hands and the sun was in her eyes and she was perspiring so much her uniform was wet and pasted against her skin.

‘I've heard better solos from old coots in the Salvation Army, Willis,' the CO said after the concert had ended and he'd summoned her to his cabin. ‘I bet you didn't play that drivel at the Trocadero.'

Her face flushed and she could sense tears coming on. The snorts and stares from the other band members had been humiliating enough and she'd barely made it through the final tune. The alto player, Moss, had remarked, ‘The great Trocadero tenor. Couldn't even fart in tune!'

Only Charlie had been sympathetic, slapping her on the shoulder afterwards and reminding her it happened occasionally to every muso in a new band.

Rudolph rested his hands on his hips and demanded to know if she'd been drinking.

She bowed her head and shook it.

The CO began pacing his tiny cabin, bumping into his own hammock each time he turned.

‘Well, you might think my band is some two-bit outfit touring the arsehole of the earth. But let me tell you something . . .' His index finger jabbed the air. ‘Soon we'll be playing for soldiers who've been taking Jap bullets for years, sleeping in mud and living on biscuits. And let me tell you, fuckwit, if you can't deliver the performance of your life every time we do a concert, I'll have you transferred into some service unit faster than you can say
sayonara
, and you'll be stranded on some remote island cleaning shit from latrines for the rest of the war.'

Instead of wasting time playing two-up or circling the deck, Pearl spent the next few days locked inside a linen press, practising scales and runs, rehearsing the band's repertoire, trying to get her lip back. She struggled with the additional weight of the tenor saxophone—quite a bit heavier than the alto she'd always played. It felt like an anchor hanging from her neck. She also had to adjust herself to the tenor sax's lower pitch.

The press reminded her of the time she and James had made love standing up in the linen closet of the Booker T. Club, at the beginning of their affair, when she'd been shaken by the sensations that had shimmered through her body. Inside the tiny room she annoyed no one with her noise. And besides, it was a relief to be away from the scrutiny of her fellow soldiers. Blowing into the mouthpiece for hours each day, she coaxed back her embouchure, strengthening and tightening the muscles around her mouth and lips. She repeated the breathing techniques James had taught her, and began practising slowly again, as he had advised, repeating each tune she knew in every major and minor key. At night, lying in her hammock, her jaw throbbed and her mind was riddled with jazz phrases that kept repeating themselves. And on top of that were her obsessive thoughts about James, about where he was now, what he might be doing, and how he'd react when she finally tracked him down.

Charlie thought she was nuts, rehearsing inside a closet in order to sound good for a bunch of men in the jungle, but the truth was that the effort afforded her a deep, visceral pleasure that was almost erotic in the way it exhausted her each day.

On the fifth afternoon of their journey, she was sitting next to Charlie in the ballroom, eating the usual slop they dished up. The inside of her lip was cut from a splintering reed and she could taste her own blood mixed with the fatty mutton. Gazing up at one of the etched glass murals, she again experienced that quiver of recognition, the memory of being pressed against it with the steward's tongue in her mouth. She could no longer contain her curiosity; she had to know if this was the same ship she'd travelled on with her mother. So after they'd scraped their plates, Pearl suggested to Charlie they go exploring down into the bowels of the ex-ocean liner. He smiled and his eyebrows arched with excitement.

She led the way out the door, along the hall, following the numbers on the doors of the berths until she found a staircase that took them down into a grinding underworld of engines, steam and machinery. It smelled of diesel oil and sometimes the tart, chemical odour of bleach. They walked along galleries, down metal staircases, the temperature rising the further they descended, as if they were inching their way into hell. On the sixth level below deck the engines groaned like dying animals. The navy hadn't bothered applying the same monotonous grey paint to everything down there, and dry green flakes peeled off the walls and stuck to the soles of their boots. She reached a waist-high metal gate that looked familiar, and vaguely remembered a sign that had once hung from it:
passengers strictly forbidden beyond this point. She pushed the gate open and counted the doors on her left until she reached the fifth one. She opened it and entered a tiny cabin with a narrow single bed and a sink. Yellowing newspapers and magazines from 1939 were strewn across the carpet. The upper corners of the cabin were netted with sagging cobwebs. When she walked into the cabin she was surprised to turn around and see the outline of her boots imprinted in the dust on the floor.

She rushed to the bed, and pulled back the mattress: there, carved into the wall, were the initials PW, and a crooked semiquaver. Eight years before the unused berth had been her secret hideout. While Clara had caroused with wealthy patrons on the ship, she'd slipped down here to play on her own, listening to every creak and rumble of the liner, pretending she was a stowaway.

She pushed the mattress forward again and was straightening up when she felt a pair of arms engulf her from behind and push her face-first onto the bed. She struggled, cried out, turned onto her side. Charlie was suddenly all over her, kissing her neck, kneading her arse, trying to stick his tongue into her mouth. He was breathing heavily, the bulge in his pants pressing against her. She shoved him away but he seemed to take it as encouragement and lunged forward again, his full weight against her, biting her earlobe and neck.

She cried out in pain and when he jolted his head back she raised her fist and punched him hard in the face. Without a sound, he rolled over and hit the floor. They both lay still for a moment, Pearl shocked by what had happened.

‘But I thought this was what you wanted,' said Charlie, rubbing his eye.

Pearl was breathing heavily. She didn't know what to say. ‘I'm—I'm not like that.'

‘It's always the blokes who are secretly scared of being queer that hate queers the most.'

‘I don't hate queers. I don't hate you.'

‘Well, then . . .' Charlie got to his feet. His eye was already beginning to swell. ‘You led me down here. You led me on.' Then, to Pearl's great surprise, he undid his trousers and let them drop to his ankles, revealing a hard pink penis about the length of her hand.

‘That's how much I want you,' he said in a quiet voice.

Pearl flushed with embarrassment and was overcome with pity for him, for all his furtive desires, for the lies he must have had to tell for years, and for the ones he would have to keep on telling throughout his life. He wasn't so different from herself, or even James—an outsider pretending to be an insider. She scooted forward and stood up. His erect member was nodding at her impatiently. Mimicking Charlie, she undid the buttons of her shirt to reveal her bandaged chest, then she unbuckled her belt and let her trousers and underwear drop to the floor.

‘You still want to do it?' she asked.

Charlie stared at the blonde triangle of hair between her legs. His face paled and he stopped breathing. His eyebrows fluttered then his cock sank into a limp, tiny finger, pointing at the ground.

13

A
fter eight days at sea, the troop ship anchored in Port Moresby just before daylight. All the soldiers fell in and formed lines across the deck. Sequins of moonlight shimmered across the harbour, the only illumination against the blacked-out town. The air was heavy with humidity and already mosquitoes were nipping at the hands and necks of the troops as they crawled into the rocking barges. Pearl sat clutching her rifle as they were ferried away from the troop ship, both terrified and exhilarated. The breeze smelled of rotting fish. The stars above her were so bright and iridescent they looked like a mosaic of diamonds—so much sharper than in the sky over Sydney.

It was a relief to have finally told someone about her real identity. Back in the tiny cabin, when she'd explained why she was dressed as her brother, why she'd taken such a risk, Charlie shook his head and murmured, ‘You haven't changed a bit.' He squeezed her arm and assured her that he'd keep her secret and guide her through the rigours of army life. He explained that queers, too, were banned from the military, but he and his friend Blue had been getting it off for two years, since their first tour of New Guinea.

‘Sometimes you get so scared,' he said, ‘the only thing you can do is fuck.'

The relationship, however, had been severely tested since Blue had been sent back to Australia and hospitalised. Charlie added that now, when they made love, Blue would sometimes begin to weep. He could offer no explanation for his tears, and it made Charlie feel powerless to help him, as if Blue were a man teetering on the ledge of a building, just out of reach.

At the wharf, the musicians assembled under the command of Rudolph. They picked up their gear and were marched to waiting trucks. As dawn began to press over the hilltops, faint images of the township began to emerge: the rubble of destroyed buildings, shopfronts pockmarked with bullet holes, shattered windowpanes, awnings lying on a narrow footpath. Three coconut trees had fallen against a house, demolishing part of the roof. An awful fear itched across Pearl's skin. Already, a few locals were moving about the streets, the men slim and bearded, the women wearing loose, tent-like frocks; she glimpsed a group of four or five walking languidly, with bundles of what looked like fruits and vegetables balanced perfectly on their heads. Naked youngsters wove between them, chasing a long-necked feathered creature about the size of a small kangaroo.

They were driven past rows of army huts, thatched with palm fronds, some with little rock gardens out the front with vines of bougainvillea and the odd ficus tree. Some units were already performing morning drill, their abrupt, puppet-like movements silhouetted against a blushing sky. Pearl glimpsed a group of black men marching around a long hut without walls and her heart leaped. She half expected to see the face of James amid the passing parade of men but the truck abruptly turned a corner.

They pulled up beside an old, double-storey wooden hotel by the water with two wilting palm trees out the front. The reception area had its front wall missing and there was a giant crater in what once must have been the floor of the adjoining foyer. The CO announced that the US military had occupied the hotel since early '42, that they were being billeted here because the nearby Murray Barracks was overcrowded. In spite of her apprehension, Pearl was glad to be staying at a hotel full of American GIs; perhaps James was there, or somebody in the building would know where to find him.

Charlie, Blue and Pearl were assigned to share a single room again, along with the alto player, Moss. On the way over on the ship he'd been assigned latrine duty every day for giving the CO lip and he was still in a filthy mood.

Blue walked into the room first and immediately went to stand in front of the bamboo-framed mirror on the wall, examining the widening bald patch on his head.

‘Oh, great,' announced Moss as he claimed the cot by the window. ‘I got stuck with all the loonies.'

A humid, musty pall hung over the town. As Pearl combed the streets with Charlie, the heat felt close and suffocating. Their sweat-stained shirts stuck to their skin and mosquitoes swarmed around them incessantly. The roads were slippery from the early-morning rainfall and trucks ground tyre marks into the red mud as they transported men between camps. A few army nurses in khaki trousers and slouch hats walked arm in arm with soldiers who limped or hobbled with walking sticks. At each intersection of the city, American MPs directed steady streams of traffic: army jeeps, trucks, donkeys, bicycles, ambulances, even the odd horse and cart. Pearl looked for James in the face of every black GI she saw, but found only strangers who glanced away, as if she were invisible.

They walked up the hill towards the Murray Barracks. It had been Charlie's idea to look for him there, where most of the GIs were stationed. They found a thatched hut with office painted in white on a sign out the front and walked along a path of wooden planks that led to the open door. Inside, an electric fan whirred on a desk at which a bespectacled private was hitting the keys of a typewriter. A red and green parrot sat on the radio transmitter that was set up behind him, gnawing on a piece of chalk.

‘Can I help you?' he said, not looking up from the form he was filling out. His voice had a slow, midwestern twang.

Pearl approached the desk. ‘I'm looking for someone.'

‘Name?'

‘Washington.'

‘Division?'

‘Uh, I'm not sure.'

The private pursed his lips as he hit the return lever and continued to type. ‘What regiment?'

Pearl threw a helpless look at Charlie, who shrugged.

‘He's a mechanic,' said Pearl.

The private stopped typing and finally looked up. ‘You mean you're looking for a Negro?'

Pearl explained that he'd been stationed in Australia for a year and would have only arrived in New Guinea a day or two before.

The private, who had a wide nose and a long, lantern jaw, regarded her through narrowed eyes then turned to the parrot, which was still scratching at the piece of chalk. ‘You reckon we can find him, Petey?'

The parrot looked up and squawked.

‘What's that, Petey? Is that a yes or a no?'

The bird squawked again once, then twice, lifting its wings and flapping nervously along the transmitter.

‘Gee, fellas, I'm sorry,' said the private, smirking. ‘I guess that's a no.'

Pearl sighed and asked him how she should go about finding her friend.

The private shrugged. ‘Petey and me ain't got the time to track down some raggedy-assed coloured boy for some raggedy-assed Aussies who don't even know his goddamn regiment.'

‘We know his name. What he does.'

‘I've got rosters to type. Supplies to order. So get the fuck out of my office before I kick your ass.'

The parrot let out a piercing screech and cried, ‘Ass! Ass! Ass!'

They wandered dejected through the city streets. The temperature was rising and the air smelled of putrid, oil-slicked mud. Men squatted in front of bombed-out buildings, passing between them huge cigarettes that smelled like burning rope, rolled from pieces of newspaper.

The sheer weight of what she had recently undertaken pressed down on Pearl in the heat, and it only occurred to her now that all the risks she had taken, the people she had hurt, would probably be for nought. She'd managed to keep her disguise a secret from everyone but Charlie and now Blue, but how long could she maintain the ruse before someone found her out? She glimpsed a dark-skinned girl with a white sheet wrapped around her, swaying in front of a fruit stall. Today, she realised, should have been her wedding day. She thought of Hector and how she had probably ruined his life.

When they arrived back at the hotel, dehydrated and disappointed, they found Blue lying naked on his cot, plucking out the fine hair that grew around his navel. Moss, fortunately, was out, and after they drank some water and pulled off their heavy boots, Charlie began to show Pearl how her .303 worked, how to load and aim. She'd missed out on the six weeks' basic training that the other musicians had been given, and needed to catch up. The weapon felt heavy and important in her hands. She raised the barrel to the open window and aimed it at a palm tree out the front, murmuring, ‘Bang! Bang! Bang!'

After lunch, she disappeared into the back garden of the hotel, rifle in one hand and tenor saxophone in the other, in the hope of finding some privacy. She'd been quietly crushed by the fact that it was going to be nigh on impossible to track down James. Pearl swallowed the anger rising in her throat, trying to control her sense of futility.

She wondered what kind of craziness had caused her to do this; she certainly didn't feel like the same person who'd talked her brother into switching identities only a week before. The sheer danger and stupidity of it all threatened to overwhelm her. She sat in the dappled sunlight in a kind of dumb, bewildered silence. Sweat rolled down her temples, over her cheeks, and dripped from her chin. A kingfisher cried from the branch of a sago palm. She wasn't sure how long she sat there, overcome, but when a huge yellow butterfly fringed with black fluttered down from the branches of a crocus tree and landed briefly on her hand, it was so beautiful and unexpected that she convinced herself that something good was about to happen. She wiped the sweat from her brow, drew in a deep breath, picked up her brother's tenor saxophone, and began to practise her scales in the dying light.

Rudolph ordered drill the next morning, between the wilting palm trees in front of the hotel. Pearl stood at attention next to Charlie, and when Rudolph barked his orders she saluted, turned, wielded the rifle—dropping it only once, when they were marching around the building. Fortunately, most of the other musicians were not much better at it than she was and Rudolph didn't seem to notice or care about her few mistakes.

After breakfast they collected their instruments and filed onto a bus that rumbled through the muddy streets of Port Moresby, passing wooden buildings and squat huts splintered by bullet holes and shells. The concert party's first performance was to be in a small hospital camp about twenty miles up into the Owen Stanleys. She'd practised for hours each day since her embarrassing performance on the troop ship, and she was finding it easier to get her hands around the larger instrument, but it had been so long since she'd performed professionally in public that she was still anxious.

The road out of town rose gently into green fields, carved up into several runways, and every now and then an Allied plane flew so close that everyone cringed at the noise. Sometimes the bus had to detour around bomb craters, or churn through the overflow of flooded ravines. As they ascended further into the ranges it began to rain and one windshield wiper fell off, slowing their progress further.

Towards lunchtime, they pulled into a clearing dotted with canvas tents and a few dwellings built native-style, their roofs thatched with palm leaves. There was one large shelter that had been built without walls. The dirt floor was lined with logs and already a dozen or so men—some with bandaged heads and limbs—were sitting on them, smoking and waiting for the show to begin. Others were making their way across the clearing on crutches. When she looked closer she could see that some of the crutches were fashioned from the boughs of trees.

As the party clambered off the bus Pearl saw a tall black man standing on a platform, on guard duty, rifle poised, his uniform caked with mud. She broke away from the group and ran towards him.

When she reached the platform the man turned and gazed down at her, and up close she could see his face was too long, his chin too prominent, his eyes too wide.

‘Can I help you?' His voice had none of James's Southern lilt.

She hung her head, feeling foolish. ‘I thought you were someone else.'

‘Oh yeah?' he said. ‘And who's that? Ain't too many Aussies runnin' round lookin' for the likes of coloured folks like me.'

Pearl explained that she didn't know his division or his regiment. All she did know for sure was his name: James Washington.

The guard frowned. ‘Don't know him. Why you lookin' for him, anyway?'

‘My twin sister used to date him back in Sydney. Still sweet on him, I guess.'

The guard lowered his rifle and leaned on the railing around his post. ‘Best bet is the airfields,' he offered.

She edged closer to him, waiting for him to elaborate.

‘Talk to the pilots. They flyin' all over the place every day. They know what's happenin'.' He shrugged. ‘Long shot of course. Be mighty hard to track him down.'

Pearl nodded briefly, thanked the guard and returned to the large hut without walls to begin warming up with a few quick runs on the saxophone. When she paused, she realised she was shaking—from fear or anticipation, she couldn't tell which. Charlie must have noticed it too, for he called, ‘Hey, Willis,' and led her out of the hut and into the dense green foliage beyond the clearing. When he was sure no one could see him, he pulled out his water canteen, flipped the top and took a sip, then passed the canteen to her. She was confused at first, until she caught a whiff of the rough grain alcohol. She took several gulps before Charlie snatched it back.

More and more soldiers gathered before the band. Local men carried some in on stretchers; Pearl was shocked to see a couple of them had no legs. Others arrived in rusting wheelchairs pushed by medics and nurses. Before her was a sea of gauze and bandages, makeshift slings and crutches. Everything seemed bruised and broken and sore—except their eyes, she noticed, all of which were fixed on the band, bright with anticipation, and she found herself curiously moved by their expressions, all somehow childlike, despite their suffering.

As she stared at these men, her own problems receded, became remote and insignificant. She had her health; all her limbs were intact; she'd never had to face, repeatedly, the threat of her imminent death. It occurred to her that these men needed music as much as they needed morphine or antibiotics and, as she began to play, as she followed the circumlocutions of each chart, as she saw the glowing faces of the wounded men, a strange kind of urgency welled up through her until nothing else mattered but trying to ease their pain.