Love in the Years of Lunacy (17 page)

14

A
fter a week or so in Moresby, as the band was eating dinner in the gutted dining room of the hotel, the CO stood up, cleared his throat, and informed them that the famous American comedian Bob Hope was due to arrive the next day. He'd be performing in a warehouse on the other side of town, along with the great Australian soprano, Gladys Moncrieff. A huge stage was already being erected inside the warehouse and the entertainment unit had been scheduled to accompany the stars.

Later, Pearl lay on her canvas cot, trying to prepare herself mentally for the upcoming concert. She was terrified of being exposed as an impostor, yet excited to be performing with such big names. That week, they'd already performed a concert in the market garden of a village, another beneath a leafy cathedral of palms in a forward camp in the Owen Stanleys, yet another amid the debris of a bombed community hall. The acoustics were appalling at all these venues, the heat stultifying, and Pearl's fingers were so sweaty they occasionally slipped from the brass keys. On top of that, she was still struggling with the nuances of the tenor sax, though each time the band struck up she found it a little easier to adjust her lips and coax a deep, fluid tone from the S-shaped bell. Now that she knew the company's entire repertoire by heart she could concentrate on her breath, her tone, and improvising on her solos. And she could focus on finding James.

During their one free morning that week, she and Charlie had taken the black American guard's advice and headed out to one of the nearby airfields. They chatted with ground staff, shared cigarettes with pilots, and ingratiated themselves with a unit of black Americans who loaded planes with supplies. None of them had heard of a Washington who used to play the tenor sax back in the States and who now worked as a mechanic—until Pearl and Charlie were introduced to one co-pilot named Sol Leiderman, a jazz buff from New York City who said he'd actually once heard James Washington play in a Harlem club before the war. His wife even owned one of the records he'd made with Count Basie in 1939. It was a long shot, but just in case Leiderman did happen to come across him in his travels, Pearl wrote down Martin's regiment number so that he'd be able to track her down.

As she lay perspiring in her cot, the constant buzz of mosquitoes and the sound of Moss's snoring made her head throb. And the more she tried to fall asleep the more anxious she became, worrying about the big concert the following day. Her throat was parched and there was another pain, lower down, in her belly. For a moment she feared it was the onset of one of the local diseases: dysentery perhaps, or even malaria. But then she felt wetness between her legs and stifled a groan; her period had arrived.

Wads of army-issue toilet paper were stuffed inside her underpants, chafing against her skin, as she performed drill the next morning. She was scared she'd bleed through her khaki trousers. She had an extra toilet roll stuffed in her pack for the long day ahead.

Three US jeeps collected the band members and Rudolph late in the morning and they were driven around the curve of the harbour, through hot, humid air and the ubiquitous smell of rotting seaweed.

The warehouse was as big as six tennis courts. Inside, men were still nailing together the floor for the stage and erecting a curtain sewn from parachute silk. The smells of sawdust and the petrol that had once been stored there were pervasive. The American band they were to join was gathered down the back, tuning their instruments and warming up. Rudolph led Pearl and the others across the concrete floor towards them, and as they drew closer she saw a black GI play a run on an alto saxophone that sounded so familiar a shiver ran through her body. Up close, however, he looked nothing like James: his skin was darker and his cheeks were marked with acne scars.

The CO of the American band, Captain Simon Rowe, was to lead the united outfit. Gladys Moncrieff had already forwarded her charts and Rowe passed them around to the twenty-five musicians.

‘Okay, fellas,' said Rowe, ‘there's no time to run through all these but they're pretty straightforward. Any questions?'

Pearl and the others thumbed through the charts. Rowe was right: there was nothing tricky or demanding. She'd been playing stuff like this since she was eleven years old: ‘A-Tisket, A-Taskit', ‘I Can't Give You Anything But Love, Baby', ‘Get Me to the Church on Time'. Rowe then passed around an additional set of jazz charts for the opening set of the show, to be played before Gladys and Bob came on. These were much more complicated, with additional codas and extra instructions written in pencil on top of the bar lines. There were only about ten fold-out seats set out along the side wall, reserved for the Australian and American top brass. The band hurried to help the service personnel set up the music stands and seats on the stage, for the show was due to start in less than half an hour. Soldiers were already filing into the warehouse, bringing with them boxes, empty ammo crates and anything else they could find to sit on.

A flurry of panic erupted onstage, behind the drawn curtain. ‘Miss Moncrieff's arrived!' ‘Glad's here!' ‘Our Glad just pulled up.' Rudolph, who was helping to erect the microphone into which she would sing, tripped on the cord and knocked over the baritone sax. Rowe was pacing the boards, giving orders. Most of the musicians were still warming up or rearranging the sheets on their stands.

Pearl was sitting in her assigned chair, holding the tenor and trying to remain calm, when she felt a warm gush between her legs. Leaving the sax on her seat, she dashed towards the back of the stage and leaped off it. She rushed through an open door and almost bumped into a woman who was standing in the shade of the warehouse, her hair lacquered up into a towering bun, sweating through an apricot satin dress and fanning herself with a magazine. Gladys Moncrieff. There was a sudden roar of engines overhead and when Pearl looked up she saw a small aeroplane soaring through the clouds.

There were two latrines set up roughly thirty yards away, each with a line of about ten or twelve men. She squinted and could see Moss and the drummer joining one of the queues. She knew there was no way she could wait that long, and anyway she was unable to piss standing up, always having to find some secret place behind a building or in the long grass of the jungle. Beyond the clearing, the land sloped up gently into a rainforest thick with tall trees and vines; a stream ran down between banks of high grass. She followed it up into the tangle of vegetation, into a chorus of insects and twittering birds. Another plane roared overhead.

She had just squatted beside a smooth rock and lowered her trousers when an air-raid siren sounded. Her hands were wet with blood as she tossed the soiled paper into a bush. She fumbled in her pocket and pulled out a long, fresh piece, then folded it over and over to make a new napkin, noticing to her dismay that her trousers were now splattered with blood. The siren was so loud it made her ears hurt. When she glanced down the hill she saw men running out of the warehouse, diving for split trenches near the latrine. There was a distant stutter of gunfire. She was just about to shove the paper into her crotch and pull up her underpants when she caught sight of a man standing on the other side of the stream, pissing. She couldn't be sure but she thought it was Moss.

Gunfire hammered around her and she threw herself to the ground. A smaller plane streaked across the sky and another shell dropped, closer this time, and she was splattered with dirt and rocks. She crawled along the ground on her elbows and knees. She could see the man who'd been pissing was now running down the hill, on his way back to the warehouse. She wished she could follow him, but was too terrified to move. Between the wails of the siren she could hear someone shouting orders and the stutter of ack-ack guns. A plane flew so close she could feel the wind from its propellers. She flattened herself against the ground and rolled into a hole, pressing her face into the mud. The earth shuddered as a third shell exploded further down, near the warehouse. She could hear people wailing and yelling and the air was thick with the stench of gunpowder.

After five or so minutes, silence settled over the valley. She raised her head warily and glanced down the hill. Between the trunks of palms she could see that one corner of the warehouse was on fire and soldiers were already ferrying buckets of water from the beach, trying to put it out. Smoke rose from a crater in the ground. She crawled out of the hole and hurried down the slope. Someone was barking orders and there was the rumble of ambulances and trucks speeding towards the site. Two Americans were already lifting the limp body of a fellow soldier into the back of a jeep. She was striding past a drain at the back of the warehouse when she noticed a pair of boots, upside down, sticking out of it. There seemed to be a soldier wedged head first inside it, though he wasn't calling for help or making any noise at all. Pearl called to Farthing, the organist, who was collecting some musical arrangements that were scattered all over the ground. Farthing grabbed one ankle and Pearl took the other and, after counting to three, they bent their knees and pulled, clutching various parts of the man's uniform—his trouser legs, his belt—for a better grip. As he rose from the hole, she could feel that his body was as limp as a puppet. They laid him on his back on the ground. He was covered in a confetti of blood and dirt, but Pearl recognised him immediately. It was Moss, and his eyes were open, looking directly up at her.

The front wall of the warehouse had been burned down, smoke rose from the roof and several rows of chairs had been reduced to clumps of ash, but once the wet, charred mess had been cleared, the soldiers filed back inside. Some sat quietly on the ground, heads bowed, waiting for further orders. Fortunately, the stage had been spared and none of the instruments had been damaged. Moss had been taken away in an ambulance, along with an American trombone player who'd also been killed. The Australian musicians stood around anxiously, smoking cigarettes, not saying much about the air raid, about losing one of their own.

‘Okay, fellas,' announced Rudolph, ‘the show's going on. Let's blow the roof off this joint.'

‘Shouldn't be too hard—it's already half gone,' joked Charlie.

As the curtain finally rose to the sound of ‘One O'clock Jump' cheers mushroomed out of the soot and rubble. Above the music, ambulance sirens could still be heard wailing across the bay. Men in the audience began slapping their knees and clicking their fingers in time with the beat. Pearl was still in a kind of daze after the shock of the falling shells and finding Moss's corpse wedged into the drain. She'd never seen a dead body before, and had been surprised by how heavy it was. And as she was thinking about this she suddenly realised that Rudolph was pointing his baton at her, drawing tiny circles in the air, and she remembered her first solo was due to begin. She glimpsed Moss's alto on its stand. Before she had time to stop herself she was unclipping Martin's tenor from the noose around her neck. She reached forward and snatched up Moss's sax and raised it to her lips.

For the first time in nearly a year, she was holding an alto in her hands, in her mouth, and it felt as if she were embracing an old lover from whom she'd been separated for years. After practising and performing on the much larger tenor, playing Moss's sax was a comparative breeze. As she stood in the spotlight, the air sang in her lungs and her fingers moved effortlessly against the keys. Her stomach was giddy with adrenaline, there was a gorgeous tingling between her legs that was almost sexual, and these sensations soared out of the bell of the sax in a fast, excited rush. She glanced to her right and was astonished to see Bob Hope and Gladys Moncrieff in the wings, dancing together. To her left, in the audience, was the line of top brass: the captain of the Pacific Entertainment Unit, Jim Davidson, Australian and American officers. When she completed the solo with a descending riff that James had taught her, the men jumped to their feet and applauded loudly and the locals in the audience tossed flowers at her feet.

Afterwards, the top brass came backstage to greet the band and to have their photos taken with the visiting celebrities. Pearl cleaned Moss's sax before packing it back into its case.

‘That was fantastic, Willis!' boomed Rudolph. He clapped her on the back. ‘You play a wicked alto. Why didn't you tell me?'

She shrugged, lost for words.

‘That thing you were doing at the end of “Cherokee”, that was a knockout. And your
tone
. Like honey. Bit of the old Lester Young there.'

‘Thanks, sir.'

‘Shame about old Moss. But you know the old saying . . .'

Pearl nodded. ‘Only the good die young.'

‘No—the show must go on. I don't want any arguments about this, Willis: you're playing alto from now on,
and that's an order
.' And with that he made a beeline towards Bob Hope, who was standing by the door chatting to the musicians and signing autographs.

15

T
hrough the windows of the plane the sea looked as smooth as a pane of glass. It was the first time Pearl had been on an aircraft and she was absolutely terrified. Charlie sat beside her with his arms crossed over his chest, hands clamped under his armpits to keep them warm. Blue was so tense about flying his eyes were shut, hands clenched together on his lap. Pearl could see a patchwork of ploughed fields pockmarked with bomb craters and trenches. Suddenly the plane banked on a forty-five-degree angle and she found herself looking down on a series of uneven peaks that resembled a line of knuckles. Inside the cabin it was so cold her breath fogged the air and her ears began squealing due to the lack of air pressure.

The unit had received orders from Sydney only the day before to move on to the Huon Peninsula, due north of Port Moresby. The region on the map the CO had shown them was a peninsula of land framed on three sides by the Solomon Sea. The allies had taken the peninsula only a few weeks before; there'd been many casualties and some of the men isolated on island posts hadn't heard music or even seen a newspaper in over eighteen months.

The old bomber coughed and spluttered. Occasionally, it lost altitude for a moment and began to rattle. From the air, Pearl could see the area around the gulf had been heavily bombed. Big black bald patches mottled the rainforest. The wings of crashed planes forked up between palm trees. As they began descending she could see overturned jeeps lying in the tall kunai grass. The plane circled an airstrip and landed with such an impact that some of the instrument cases were flung around the cabin.

The musicians leaped out of the hold and into a hot wind that smelled like putrid meat. A group of American soldiers began unloading the plane.

‘What's that stink?' Pearl asked one of them.

The man nodded at the ranges to the north of the airfield. ‘Corpses up in the mountains. Too many to bury.'

‘Allies or Japanese?' asked Charlie.

‘Both.'

They were driven to a small barracks close to the airstrip. After stashing their gear beneath canvas cots in a dormitory, they followed Rudolph's orders and marched into the mess tent. Soon, a clerk lugged in a bulging canvas bag and everyone lined up to receive mail. Pearl was surprised when a clerk handed her a package addressed to Martin Willis. She cut the string, ripped off the paper, and found a square tin she recognised from the kitchen cabinet at home, with a faded picture on the lid of a pretty girl sitting on a swing and eating a green apple. Inside were twenty-four of her mother's cinnamon biscuits, and a long letter which was full of bad news, all related with blue ink in her mother's spidery longhand. Clara wrote that Pearl had
really gone off the deep end
and had
vanished into thin air
. The police could
find no trace of her
. The wedding had had to be called off. Pearl ate five biscuits in quick succession as she reread the letter. Hector was
beside himself
. And one day Pearl would
get what was coming to her
. There were also items of domestic trivia—Mr Bones had moved to a local nursing home; Lulu's false teeth had been misplaced; Clara had hosted a tea party for the local chapter of the civilian army. She closed by begging Martin to look after himself.

More than anything, Pearl had hoped to receive a letter from Martin, to be reassured that he was safely hidden on Nora and Pookie's farm. That afternoon she sat down and wrote him a short letter, telling him she was safe and well, and that she'd met and performed for Bob Hope, who'd autographed one of her musical arrangements. She asked him to reply as soon as possible and signed off with,
Your brother, M
.

Over the next few weeks Pearl almost began to enjoy herself. No one questioned her identity or her position in the band and she was allowed to play the alto saxophone.

From Finschhafen the musicians travelled by barge down the coast towards Lae, leapfrogging from island to island, camp to camp. Their instruments were packed inside an army truck and each day, after the barge had ploughed through the chartreuse-coloured water to another island, the truck was driven off onto the sand, where native children would dance and cavort alongside it like a flock of excited birds, walking on their hands and throwing fruits and flowers.

The troops would help clear the jungle scrub for the portable stage, which folded out from the back of the truck. The band members would wash and refresh themselves and then the ninety-minute performance would begin.

The soldiers sat on boxes, jerrycans and biscuit tins—anything they could find to keep their backsides out of the mud—clapping in time and shouting requests. At night, the band used the tail-lights of the truck to illuminate the stage. Some island-bound troops hadn't had leave in two years, and when the concert was over, the musicians were often asked to do the entire show all over again. When they did, Rudolph would throw in extra material that Pearl had arranged in her free time, to see how it sounded and to provide some variety. Rudolph would tell a few jokes and Charlie Styles would do his impression of the bombs over Darwin that had happened two years before. Once, while he was performing it, a real shell was dropped and everyone grabbed their instruments and dived into the trenches.

‘Special effects are good!' cried a guard as he gunned at the sky, laughing.

Afterwards, the troops were usually so grateful that they gave Pearl and the other musicians gifts—small boxes and masks carved from tree trunks, shells filed into talismans, palm leaves woven into mats.

When they weren't performing, Pearl, Charlie and Blue avoided the rest of the band. Blue was fastidious about hygiene and when he wasn't pulling out his hair he was polishing and oiling his treasured trombone. He always nagged Pearl if she didn't wipe out her sax after a show. When her last reed split he showed her how to file down a piece of bamboo and insert it into the mouthpiece instead.

Sometimes they went fishing, and if they caught anything they'd build a fire, roast the catch, and eat it with warm coconut milk. Other times they'd slip off with the locals and look for turtle eggs to eat; they were round and dimpled, like golf balls. Occasionally they'd find an isolated beach and, when Pearl was sure no one was near, she'd strip off her clothes and swim in the turquoise sea with Charlie and Blue, ducking and bobbing between tropical fish. In spite of the occasional air raid, those weeks felt like an endless holiday—she was free to experiment with different musical ideas, and there was no Clara or Hector to tell her what to do.

Their barge chugged through the low tide of the Huon Peninsula in late January 1944. As it edged its way toward the harbour, the bow of a sunken ship could be seen rising above the surface of the sea. Lae had been taken by the Allies only a few months before and everyone knew there were still units of Japanese hiding out in the ranges. The outline of the township grew more distinct as they approached, jagged silhouettes of bombed buildings and flattened houses, felled trees and overturned jeeps. The bay reeked of shit and rotting vegetables. Mangy dogs roamed the wharves, nosing through garbage and barking at the moon.

The musicians camped at a barracks on a ridge above the bay, sleeping in double bunks with wooden frames; the legs stood in kerosene tins full of water to keep the ants away. Every now and then gunfire hammered in the ranges. During the second night, an air-raid siren sounded and everyone stumbled out of bed and into a foxhole and had to doze against one another until dawn.

On the third day of their stay in Lae, Rudolph received movement orders from Sydney, delivered by a skinny, big-eared clerk. Rudolph's eleven-man unit was to be divided temporarily into two groups. One would stay in Lae, unloading supplies from Australian ships and helping the Allies repair the damage to buildings in the area; the other would travel independently into the more remote areas of the country, to camps close to the combat zones, where soldiers had been isolated for months without adequate supplies, let alone entertainment. It would be tough, exhausting and extremely dangerous. The orders stated that no more than five men should form the troubadour detachment, for reasons of mobility as well as security.

‘These soldiers,' said Rudolph, ‘haven't had a proper hot meal or seen a movie in ages. So they need more than a tune or two. They need song-and-dance routines. Comedy. Maybe even a magic act.'

The party was standing at attention between the company clerk's office and the mess tent. It was already hot and flies buzzed in circles around their heads.

‘Now I'm asking for volunteers,' continued Rudolph. ‘You're all welcome to try out. There's no extra pay of course, but think of what you'll be doing for your comrades.'

Everyone looked at the ground, nodding briefly, swatting at flies and mosquitoes.

Charlie asked what they would use for props and costumes.

‘We can probably borrow some from the Yanks. There's a supply hut near the latrines.' Rudolph nodded to a small square building on the other side of a creek, made from logs and corrugated iron.

Blue then asked, in a trembling voice, for the exact location of the combat zone.

Rudolph glanced at the orders he was holding. ‘The troubadours will play three isolated camps through the Markham Valley between here and Nadzab. At Nadzab they'll receive orders either to return here or to continue further towards the front. Any questions?'

Pearl asked if the troubadours would be performing in American camps.

‘Of course,' said Rudolph, who was growing testy in the heat. ‘Now there's not much time. This new outfit'll have to be rehearsed and polished by the end of the week. So who's going to try out?'

In the mess tent later that day, Charlie stood in a pair of baggy trousers held up by braces and performed a set of impersonations of various famous people, from James Cagney to Hitler to Oliver Hardy. He then did a comedy routine with a hand puppet he'd made from an army sock. Blue, while terrified at the prospect of such a dangerous mission, was even more frightened of being separated from Charlie. He surprised everyone by sitting on a fold-out chair and playing the trombone with his feet, something he used to do as a child back in Orange. The drummer, Marks, painted his face white, dressed up in a clown costume, and did a soft-shoe on top of an oil barrel, using his bayonet as a cane. Marks was also able to walk on his hands. The organist Farthing, a hefty, muscular man with legs like tree trunks, donned a blond wig from the supplies hut, painted on red lipstick, and squeezed into a spangled pink dress. He balanced a broomstick on his nose, then a rifle on his head. After that, he stuck two pineapples down the front of the dress and imitated Mae West.

Pearl was keen to tour the American army camps, even if it meant performing close to the front, and she wanted to stick with Charlie and Blue, who were the only ones who knew her secret. When her turn came, she stood in front of Rudolph and began to play ‘In a Persian Market' on her alto.

Rudolph waved at her to stop. ‘We all know you can play the saxophone, Willis,' he barked. ‘But this detachment needs
variety
.'

Pearl told an old joke of her father's about a priest with constipation, but when she delivered the punchline Rudolph just coughed.

‘Can you do any routines?' he asked. ‘A bit of dressing up?'

She glanced at the other band members, standing there with their sock puppets and broomsticks and funny hats. ‘As what?'

‘Well, like what Farthing here just did—as a sheila.'

Pearl swallowed. Her face began to colour. The organist pursed his lips and blew her a kiss.

‘I'm sure you could get away with it, Willis. You're a lot prettier than Farthing.'

A wave of panic moved through her. ‘No I'm not, sir.'

‘You can't just play the saxophone!' bellowed Rudolph, exasperated. ‘The men in these camps haven't seen the likes of a woman for years! Haven't had mail or tasted a steak in months.'

‘I wouldn't know what to do,' she protested.

‘Just do what Farthing did! Get your arse over to supplies and pick out a nice frock.'

She opened her mouth to object, but Rudolph interrupted. ‘Do it, Private. Or you can forget the whole thing.'

Pearl stormed out of the mess tent. She couldn't believe her bad luck, after having come so far, after having fooled so many people. If she impersonated a woman, she suspected, she'd be far too convincing.

She was sitting in the shade of a bombed requisition hut, trying to hold back her tears, when the skinny, big-eared clerk appeared before her, squinting in the sunlight.

‘You Willis?' he said. He shooed away a fly with the piece of paper in his hand.

Pearl took off her hat and nodded.

‘This just came through from Moresby.' It was a cable from Sol Leiderman addressed to Martin:
Private Washington based in Nadzab
.

Her heart did a little dance in her chest as she read the words over and over, hardly believing the message in her hands. On the other side of the creek, heat waves rose from the iron roof of the supplies hut. She looked up to see Charlie standing over her, hands on hips. ‘He's in Nadzab,' she breathed. ‘Only thirty miles away.'

Hoots and wolf-whistles ricocheted through the mess hall as she marched towards Rudolph, who was still in his seat, scribbling on a clipboard. A few men clapped and a cook rushed up and asked her for a root. On her head was a long, blonde wig. Charlie had painted her face with garish make-up—scarlet lipstick that exceeded the perimeters of her lips, eyeliner, a smudge of rouge on each cheek. She wore a full-length dress made of a filmy red imitation silk that swayed and caught the outline of her body as she moved; beneath it was a 40D brassiere stuffed with surgical hemp, creating a pair of enormous breasts that stood out in front of her like two cannonballs. On her hands were long black gloves that stretched up over her elbows. She still wore her army boots, and in them she walked heavily, swinging her arms from side to side, grimacing at the cat calls. She affected a humiliated pout—nostrils flaring, downcast eyes—that sent the rest of the party into paroxysms of laughter. She came to a stop before Rudolph, raised one gloved hand, and saluted. She noticed her breasts were crooked and rearranged them.