Page 8 of The Island Girls

‘Bags? Clothes?’ asked the soldier. Hans held up his small bag, the one containing everything he needed for his new life: a change of clothes and the photos of his beloved wife and mother. He’d kept it close to him the entire trip and hadn’t let it out of his hands once since he landed on this island.

‘This is my bag,’ said Hans in his thick Dutch accent. ‘I have other things on the boat. My boat,’ he said, pointing in the direction he knew the channel lay where his boat was moored.

‘The boats will remain where they are for now. There is a possibility the Royal Navy might require the use of them for a military operation in the next few weeks. Check in with officials on Poole Quay in the next week, and there might be more information,’ the officer told him.

Hans had no power to do anything but nod and accept what he’d been told. He glanced around him, wondering where in the system Klaus was. In the blur of his vision to one side, he noticed a small group of men stood around another desk, and then he saw Klaus, following not far behind. But he chose not to see him. He’d never asked for Klaus’s company, and didn’t welcome his strange allegiance to Germany. The sooner he could get away from him, the better.

‘Take the walk across the island and down to the quay please, young man, and a ferry will be along soon to take you into Poole. The nice ladies from the Wrens are along the way to guide you, so as you don’t get lost,’ said a kindly Englishman wearing a uniform that wasn’t quite the same as the English soldier. Perhaps this was the costume of a member of the reserves.

The German identity papers grew so large in his mind, he imagined them swelling up and spilling over the side of theboat. How he would ever get to them, he couldn’t imagine, but he could not raise the issue now. Getting off this island was the most important thing for now. Hans nodded and smiled his response, muttering a ‘thank you’. He limped away from the clearing where they’d been camped, leaving the hubbub of the processing station behind him, trying not to look back to Klaus.

A peacock called in the distance and Hans stopped to rest his aching leg and looked up to see him stretching his tail feathers, chasing a hen across the open field. He rubbed his knee and studied his leg again, as he’d been doing these last few days. There was no sign of an injury, no cut or bruise, but something seemed to have happened inside his leg, to his knee, that continued to cause him pain. It simply wasn’t healing. He gritted his teeth and walked on, passing the church that had become familiar in these last few days and took in a deep breath of the pine-fresh air of the island. A cheeky little red squirrel ran across his path, then paused at the base of a tree, looking back at Hans as if to say,Catch me if you can.

When Hans reached the island quayside, he found a place to sit down along with the others being released today, in the warmth of the evening sun, and he hoped that Klaus was far behind and would not get onto the same ferry as him. The ferry arrived and Hans, along with around thirty others, was guided aboard for the short trip to the town quay. He sighed with relief. His connection with Klaus Schmidt was over forever.

Eager to take in all he could see of the harbour and the flying boats, he took a seat on the top deck of the ferry. There might be good work here for a boatman, he realised. There were dozens of those flying boats moored in different places around the harbour and, hearing the roar of its engines before he saw the plane, he turned his head back towards the harbour entrance and watched one taking off as his ferry boat approached Poole Quay. The big-bellied plane lifted itself off the water as gracefully asany seabird Hans had seen, despite the fact it was built like a pregnant whale. It flew off into the setting sun over the top of Brownsea Island and into the hills on the far side of the harbour. West, then.

He heard the familiar sound of a motor launch not unlike his own and watched to see it leaving from where the flying boat had taken off. He peered closely to see the pilot and felt sure it was a woman, with curly, blonde hair tucked underneath her cap, strange as it seemed.

Hans saw that the ferry’s deckhand was eyeing him with a smile as he watched the activity. His face warmed as their eyes connected.

‘I like these seaplanes,’ Hans offered pointing to the flying boat.

‘Not a seaplane, matey – that there’s a flying boat. See this one over this way?’ the deckhand asked, pointing towards the inside of the peninsula where several smaller planes were moored on the water, seeming to stand up on stilts. ‘The bigguns are called a flying boat because they’re technically a boat that flies, rather than a plane that can land on the water like these tiddlers, which is called a seaplane, by rights,’ he added in his thick Dorset accent. Hans nodded and thanked the man for his help.

The journey from the island to the surprisingly industrial quayside took almost half an hour. At the quay, a man in uniform was waiting to greet them. Standing beside this gentleman who wore a major’s stripes on his shoulders was a striking young woman, with dark, wavy hair and a smile that lit up her face like the sun when she laughed at whatever it was the major was saying to her. But the sense of delight in this young woman’s carefree laugh soon turned to bitter guilt in his throat as he compared it with that of Katrijn. He knew then that hewould never stop missing her. This hole in his heart could not heal.

‘Up you come then, miss,’ Hans heard the local ferryman say to a young girl as he helped her off the boat. Hans and the other refugees on this ferry were guided a little way along the quay towards another officer who, they were told, would help them with travel arrangements or accommodation here in the town.

The welcoming committee here appeared calm, and genial even, compared to the intensity of the arrival on the island, and in the midst of his pain and grief, something warm sparked in him, a little like the feeling of coming home on a cold night.

5

BRISBANE – SUMMER 1971

The slow-flowing, warm water trickled over Rebekah’s toes as she sat perched on the edge of the narrow creek bank, wearing no more than her underwear and her floppy, yellow, terry-towelling sun hat. Birds chattered in the tall trees overhead and the high-pitched ticking of cicadas filled the humid afternoon air as the distant sound of a growling lawnmower hushed abruptly after what seemed like hours. Rebekah leant forward and picked up another handful of gritty mud and dribbled it onto her feet and legs, then rubbed it all over her knees, the grit lightly scrubbing her skin. She peered back over her shoulder, up the little hill from the creek and into the backyard.

No one was watching. Mum must have finished taking the washing off the line and gone back inside to fold and iron it. Even Scat the cat was sound asleep with her head on her paws in the shade and relative cool of the back verandah. The sun was at its highest and Rebekah knew that if she made any sound and reminded Mum that she was out here frying her shoulders and back in the mid-afternoon heat, she’d be called inside.

Rebekah firmly pushed her palms into the warm, prickly brown grass on the creek bank and lowered herself carefullydown to sit in the trickle of water that she called her creek. It was only just wide enough for her tiny form to sit inside and there was never more than a trickle of water except in the middle of a rainstorm, when it ran like a torrent from the big overflowing water tank at the top of the hill all the way down until it disappeared into the stormwater drain at the low end of the street.

The backyards of all the houses in Barrawondi Street had no fences to the rear so each one opened out onto this stretch of bushland that seemed to be owned by nobody, though if the residents had tried to build anything there, the Brisbane City Council would surely have had something to say about it. Rebekah’s creek was no more than the downhill route that the stormwater run-off took through the empty land, but to her four-year-old mind, it was a wild waterway full of fascinating creatures, rocks, and her favourite part – the mud.

She scooped up more water and washed the mud off her skin until she was meticulously clean, and then started the process again. A handful of mud, dropped onto her feet, shins, knees, and thighs, then rubbed in all over. She scooped the next handful of mud and, looking out from underneath her long, dark eyelashes, chin low to her chest, she did one more check for anyone who might be watching. Then she slowly lifted her hand to her mouth and did the one thing she was not allowed to do with the mud. But she couldn’t resist the sandy feel as it crunched between her teeth and Rebekah closed her eyes against the sun to better hear the crunch and grind inside her head as she bit down on the grit. And while she was crushing it, feeling the textures on her tongue, she scooped up more soft, warm water and washed her legs clean again.

The cicadas sang their endless chirpy background music and she looked, trying to see them, to find where their chirruping came from, but they were like the hot air she breathed – alwaysthere but impossible to see. A kookaburra laughed overhead, and Rebekah looked up to the top of the gum tree, through the blue-green haze of eucalypt leaves that hung like rain from the branches, to find the bird. Was he laughing at her? Afternoon thunder rumbled from miles away and within a few minutes, a flock of rainbow lorikeets had filled the branches of the giant tree, chattering to each other about the coming storm.

Rebekah knew what was coming next in her summer afternoon play ritual. Soon Mum would come and call her out of the creek, hose her down and get her inside, safe from the storm that would soon come to fill the creek with fresh, cool rain.

But the sound when she heard it was not her mum’s sweet call, or the sound of a loud and close thunderclap. It was that sound she had begun to dread. The angry yell of her dad, home from the pub after his long lunchtime session. He was perennially angry now. Either he was angry after he came in smelling of beer, or he was angry in the morning when his head hurt. Sometimes, he was angry with Mum for not cooking his steak the way he liked it, and other times he was angry with Rebekah for leaving her toys on the floor. Whatever the reason for his erupting temper, Rebekah had learnt to hold her chin on her chest and put her hands over her ears when she heard him shouting, so she could hide and wait for the storm to pass. She stayed that way, in the creek, until her hands hurt and her ears burned from squeezing them so tight.

She let go cautiously and, fearing what she might hear next, the unexpected voice, when it came from behind, though known and loved by Rebekah, was a surprise.

‘What are you doing in there, muddy miss? Doesn’t your mother have a proper bath indoors?’ Aunty Pig’s chuckle was warm and soft, and she held out her hand to Rebekah to help her climb out of the creek. ‘Come on indoors with me, my lovely, and you can have a bath and a pikelet or three.’

Rebekah obeyed without question, knowing and trusting her neighbour as if she were her own mother, but still she looked back to her own back verandah with a frown.

‘Where’s my mum, then?’ she asked as she grabbed a few treasured rocks in her chubby hand to bring indoors for later.

---