Papua (12 page)

S
he was as beautiful as he had always imagined. And there was no doubt that the young woman in the photograph that Jack had carried through the short years since the GreatWar was the same woman who now absent-mindedly scattered seed to the hens in the dusty yard.

‘Good morning, Miss Mann,’ Jack said. Erika snapped from her chore to look sharply at the man who had addressed her in her native tongue. She had not noticed his approach along the track – few people visited the temporary home she shared with her sister-in-law and nephew. ‘My name is Jack Kelly and I am a friend of your brother,’ Jack said as he removed his hat and brushed it against the side of his trousers.

‘You speak German although I suspect that you are an Australian from your accent,’ she replied with a frown.

‘My mother was German,’ Jack answered, taking in the graceful curve of her cheekbones. He felt a weakness in his stomach akin to that he had experienced in the trenches. It was called fear and he knew why. He was standing with his hat in his hand looking upon the vision of someone he had not imagined he would ever actually meet – the woman of his dreams. ‘I last saw your brother in Port Moresby a short while ago and he asked that I tell you all that he was well. He misses you all very much.’

‘Jack Kelly,’ Erika mused. ‘You were the enemy soldier who my brother told us about when we left Munich,’ she said as if remembering another time and place. ‘He said you were kind to him when he was wounded.’

Jack hardly heard her words as he stared at the young woman. She was wearing an ankle length dress with a tight waist, a style popular in Europe before the war. Her long black hair was piled on her head in a tight bun that had been unable to control all her lustrous locks. Wisps fell across her face in a way that made her look vulnerable. She was not wearing a hat and the hot tropical sun was already touching her skin with rosiness akin to a blush.

‘We did meet under less than kind circumstances,’ he finally said, after taking in her dark beauty. He was aware that she was also appraising him in an enigmatic way. ‘I have a letter from Paul for Mrs Mann,’ he said, breaking the strange moment between them.

‘Then you should come inside to meet her,’ Erika said as she emptied the last of the seed from her apron onto the ground. The scrawny hens scrabbled in a frenzy around her dress to peck at the feed. She turned her back and Jack followed her to the high-set wood plank house built in the tropical style. It was a simple dwelling with a fenced garden of vegetables that had been lovingly attended to from what Jack could observe.

‘Karin,’ Erika called inside when they had climbed the rickety staircase. ‘There is a man to see us who has just come down from the north. He has a letter from Paul.’

An older woman who looked to be in her late twenties emerged from the cool gloom of the house. She was covered in a thin film of flour and Jack guessed she had been in the process of making bread. What struck Jack most about Paul’s wife was the beautiful serenity of her welcoming smile. She held her hand out to him then withdrew it to wipe the excess flour from her hands on her apron.

‘I am Karin Mann,’ she said, embarrassed for being caught in a less than dainty condition.

Jack beamed a broad smile to set her at ease. ‘My name is Jack Kelly and it is nice to see bread being made the way it was meant to be baked,’ he added. ‘A bit of a change from the damper I make in the bush.’

Like Erika, Karin was impressed by Jack’s fluency in German, although his accent was somewhat amusing. It had a slight twang to it and his pronunciation of some words was rather quaint.

‘Mr Kelly’s mother was German,’ Erika reminded her sister-in-law. ‘That is how he speaks our language. Mr Kelly says he has news of Paul.’

As if on a prompt, Jack reached into his pocket then passed the letter to Karin, who avidly read the contents. Jack stood patiently in the doorway while Karin finished reading the six-page expression of love and yearning.

Finally she glanced up at Jack. ‘I am sorry, Mr Kelly, for my neglect,’ she said as if coming out of a trance. ‘I am rude in not inviting you inside for a coffee. Or is it tea you would prefer?’

‘Coffee would be fine,’ Jack said, stepping inside the sparsely furnished house. It was strange, Jack thought, that Paul’s sister had not expressed a desire to know what was in the letter her brother had written. But he dismissed the thought as Karin bustled around the wood burning stove to place a big, blackened coffee pot on the hot plate.

‘Paul has already told me about you, Mr Kelly,’ Karin said with her back to him. ‘I think you must be a very good man. He has written in his letter how you were able to get him employment with a friend of yours in Port Moresby. I am very grateful for your kindness.’

‘Nothing much in what I did, Mrs Mann,’ Jack said, parrying the expression of gratitude. ‘Just something mates do for each other around this part of the world.’

Jack had translated the word ‘mates’ into German but it did not coincide with what Karin could understand in the Australian context. He could see her confusion and hurried to explain the meaning. ‘Mates are men who we look after. Not in the way of mates between animals.’

Karin smiled and nodded her understanding of his clumsy explanation. ‘What we would call a deep friendship between men.’

Now it was Jack’s turn to nod. He had to admit to himself that Paul’s wife was also a beautiful woman. He felt a touch of guilt. Such things were not usually admitted to, even to one’s self, when it came to a mate’s wife. That was the bush code of chivalry. But privately Karin was the kind of woman a man would be glad to live with – or die for. But then there was Erika, who seemed to be at the edge of their conversation. She had suddenly left the room with a muttered apology. There were tasks to attend to and Jack was disappointed to see her go. But he had noticed the fleeting scowl on Karin’s face.

‘I must apologise for Erika’s rudeness,’ she sighed as she poured the thick black coffee into two teacups, taking a seat at the simple plank table opposite Jack. ‘She has not taken to this land as I had hoped she would. I must also apologise that I do not have milk for your coffee.’

‘Tough country,’ Jack said as he stirred in a generous spoonful of sugar and took a sip. ‘But the coffee is good.’

‘You must not consider that Paul’s sister is normally like this with guests, but I am afraid she knows that you met my husband at the same time her beloved fiancé Wolfgang was killed. I sometimes think that she holds all Australians responsible for his death.’

‘I was sorry to learn of his death at the time,’ Jack said gently, ‘but that was war. I also lost a lot of friends to German bullets but I do not hold that against individual men who were only doing what the bloody politicians ordered us to do.’

‘I understand this also,’ Karin said. ‘With time I think Erika will come to understand the same. Now she is a young woman with the passion of her convictions. I do not think that she holds you personally responsible for Wolfgang’s death. It is just still fresh in her memories. She did not want to come to this country but Paul felt that he could better look after us over here rather than in Germany where things are not well. There is a deep bitterness that I fear is eating my country like an ogre.’

Jack was about to express the opinion that Germany deserved her fate for starting the war in the first place. But he looked at the gentle face wracked with anguish for things past and present and bit his tongue. No, Karin Mann and her husband were truly decent people who did not need any more suffering. The war was over and so too should be the wasted search for causes. What did it matter who had started the bloody war? What was more important was that it was over.

‘I believe you have a son,’ Jack said, by way of changing the subject.

‘Yes,’ Karin replied with a wan smile. ‘Karl is currently attending school in Townsville. Her smile darkened. ‘The other children are cruel to him. They call him a dirty Hun.’

‘Kids are like that,’ Jack attempted to console her when he noticed tears welling in her eyes. She looked away. ‘But given time kids also have a way of sorting out differences,’ he hastily added.

‘I pray that you are right, Mr Kelly,’ she replied as she wiped at her eyes with the back of her flour covered hand. Instinctively Jack reached across the table to take hold of her hand. It was a gesture prompted by the depth of her hurt and one that surprised him. Normal feelings for such perceived trivial problems had been long blasted out of him on the battlefields of France – or so he thought.

‘Things will work out,’ he said as he held Karin’s hand gently in his.

She gazed at him with an expression of gratitude and allowed the ghost of a smile. ‘I think you are right,’ she replied. ‘Oh, I miss Paul. I pray that we will all be together soon. I am afraid I have not been as good a wife to my husband in the past as I should have been.’

Jack withdrew his hand. ‘I doubt that. From what I have seen in even this short space of time I think Paul has to be the luckiest man alive to have a wife as good as you.’

Karin unconsciously brushed at a strand of loose hair hanging across her face and sniffed. ‘I thank you for your kind words. Paul is lucky to have you as a friend. But tell me, Mr Kelly, what brings you to Townsville?’

Jack was taken aback by her bluntly delivered question. How could he tell her that he had only stopped over so that he could meet the woman of his dreams? That delivering the letter was merely an excuse to do so?

‘Just on my way to Sydney and I thought I might drop in to tell you that Paul is doing well,’ he answered as convincingly as he could. ‘I will be leaving tomorrow on the train south to Brisbane and then on to Sydney from there. I received a telegram when I landed yesterday that my sister has died. My son was staying with her.’

‘Oh, I am sorry. But you are married?’ Karin said with a note of surprise. ‘And you have a son?’

‘Was married,’ Jack replied. ‘But my wife died in the flu epidemic a couple of years ago. I am afraid I hardly know my son. He was born while I was serving overseas. His name is Lukas and he is around five now. They say he looks like me.’

‘Paul is almost a stranger to our son too,’ Karin said. ‘The war took more from us than we know. Our son is only a year older than yours.’

‘Think I know what you mean. Lukas is like a stranger to me and I feel bad that I am not a better father. I just dumped him on my sister so that I could go gold prospecting back in Papua and New Guinea.’ Jack fell silent and stared across his coffee at an almost translucent gecko perched high up on the wall in a dark corner of the kitchen. ‘I don’t know what I am going to do.’

‘I am sorry for your loss,’ Karin repeated gently. ‘Death still comes to us.’

Jack nodded and his sadness was thick in the room. ‘My last correspondence on her health was that she was not expected to live long. She got some kind of infection when she cut herself pruning flowers or something. Doctors said that they could not stop it eating her up.’

‘What will you do about your son?’ Karin asked. As if to answer her own question she added, ‘I could look after him if you wish.’

Startled by the simplicity of the suggestion, Jack stared at her. ‘You would do that?’

She smiled with a warmth that Jack could not remember in a long time. It reminded him of his sister’s wonderful smile. ‘I may require just a little money to pay for his expenses but I have room in my life for one more boy. It is a simple way of repaying your kindness towards my husband.’

A massive weight seemed to lift from Jack’s shoulders. If he was to return to Papua, he knew that his brother-in-law was not really capable of rearing Lukas on his own. The boy needed the attention of a woman at such an early stage in his life. Now Karin was offering to give his son a home where the wonderful and earthy aromas of baking bread and brewed coffee might give stability to a little boy’s life. Sometimes fate had a strange way of repaying acts of compassion.

‘If that is not a trouble to you, Mrs Mann, I would gladly pay for his board and keep. I know he would be looked after under your roof.’

‘Please call me Karin,’ she said. ‘And may I call you Jack?’

‘Meant to say that before,’ Jack said with a feeling of euphoria for the sudden answer to the problem of his son’s welfare. ‘I guess we are kind of family now,’ he added with a short laugh which made Karin smile.

‘He will be treated as if he were my own son – and Karl’s younger brother.’

‘I cannot thank you enough for your offer. I hope that the young fellow does not cause any trouble.’

‘Oh, I am sure if the son is like the father he will prove to be a boy any woman would be proud to have under her roof.’

Jack sensed the honesty of her statement and in it a gentleness that he had not known for a long time. He felt a lump in his throat and decided it was time to leave. He did not finish his coffee but said his farewells to Karin at the door, arranging to bring Lukas with him on his way back to Papua.

Karin watched him walk away, waving when he was at the head of the track that led back to Townsville. When the big gum trees swallowed him in the distance she turned back to the kitchen to finish making the dumplings for the stew.

Although Jack was disappointed that he did not get the opportunity to bid Erika a farewell, he walked back to town feeling that something good had come to his life. Karin was just the right sort of woman to care for Lukas. He was not aware however that Erika had also watched him depart, as she stood beside the water tank pondering. She would ask Karin questions about this strange Australian who had a German mother and who had met her brother in the trenches of the Western Front the day her beloved Wolfgang had been killed. She too watched him walk away until he was hidden by the dignified old trees that lined the track. But somehow she knew that he was not gone from her life. Fortune had brought Jack Kelly to their front door as the answer to her aspirations to find a way out of this godforsaken country of heat, dust and dangerous snakes.