Down below, in what Jake had told her was the snake pit, a bar for long socked Papuans and expats—where Errol Flynn once drank and brawled, came a racket from stoned patrons spilling out into the street. A little while later there was a wild commotion. When she peered down, she saw a group hurling rocks at each other, yelling and cursing in pidgin. Although glad her room was up three flights of stairs, she would have preferred something more secure than louvres. She stepped to the door, pulling the safety chain over, poured a glass of water from the pitcher on the shelf, and took two aspirin and a malaria pill. Moments later she crawled under the mosquito net and lay down on the white cotton sheets. Above her head, the huge fan whirred below the ceiling. For a while she toyed with the idea of getting out of bed and turning it off. With it on she was almost too cold. Yet with it off she knew she would find the heat oppressive. It either seemed to rotate full blast or not go at all.
In the end she decided to leave it be. Pulling the sheets closely around her body, she stared at the wall, mesmerised by a small gecko scuttling up and down. Suddenly, she realised she was weeping, tears running down her cheeks onto the pillow. She lifted the sheet and wiped them away. For some time she lay there, still as a statue, gazing up at the mosquito net.
Reunions should not be like this. No way. Normally they were the times she loved most. When Jake would come home from an army exercise, put his key in the door, and bound up the stairs two at a time, taking her in his arms. Later, after they had made love, he would open a bottle of champagne and help her set up the fondue, which they both adored.
The most poignant reunion of all had been when he came back from Vietnam.
The light from the window at Sydney airport had shone on the face of the toddler cradled in its mother’s arms. A small boy, with tight red curls framing his impish freckled face, tugged at the young woman’s cotton skirt and pointed through the window to where a large Qantas plane had just landed.
‘Daddy, Daddy,’ he called out. Swivelling around, he eyed Merryn with glee. ‘My daddy is on that plane. He’s been away at the war. He’s bringing me a present. Mummy said so.’
Merryn crouched down on her haunches and held out her hand. ‘Is that so? Well, young man, you’re a lucky boy. I wonder what your present will be. Have you asked for something special?’
‘Oh, yes,’ the little boy answered, his blue eyes animated by the light shining through the windowpane, his face breaking into a huge grin. ‘A helicopter. Just like the one my daddy’s flown in the war.’
Embarrassed, the mother turned around and looked at Merryn. Leaning down, she took hold of the young boy’s hand. ‘Not a real helicopter, Robbie. A pretend one.’
‘You said it was a real helicopter.’ The boy had sounded cross then, the beaming smile of minutes before replaced by the crabby scowl of a child let down by adults once again.
Merryn had thrown the mother a sympathetic smile and said to the boy. ‘Well, Robbie, whatever kind of helicopter it is, I’m sure it will be a good one.’
It was then that she looked aside quickly, for fear her eyes would give her away. She remembered thinking of what it would be like if she was standing there with a little boy’s hand in hers—a little boy much the same age as the one in front of her. Waiting for Jake. A little boy pointing and saying. ‘My daddy’s on that plane. He’s bringing me a present.’
She remembered how she fiddled with her engagement ring on her finger, rubbing the stone against the fabric of her shirt, and then how all of a sudden one emotion was replaced by another. For now she saw in the far corner of the terminal a group of protestors, banners in one hand and loud speakers in the other. She remembered wondering if Prue was there— because last she’d heard, Jake’s sister was one of the main agitators in the antiwar movement causing havoc up and down the country. Straining her eyes, she was unable to make her out. She recalled the anger she felt. That this was not what it should be like. How she felt like walking over to the group and giving them a piece of her mind. Telling the idiots what she thought of them. Did they reckon these poor fellows getting off the plane had any say in the damn war? Did they ask to go? Leaving behind young families like the one in front of her. Lord, the baby in its mother’s arms couldn’t have been much more than a few weeks old when the father left twelve months ago. The war was not of their making. Particularly the national servicemen who were unlucky enough to be born on the wrong day of the year. A day that saw them called up, sent to Kapooka or other such training camps, where their hair was hacked off in a basin cut, after which they were bellowed at—and then humiliated on the parade ground by a fearsome sergeant major, whose job it was to turn them from callow youths into hardened soldiers ready for war.
That fate was not supposed to have befallen them.
Jake was different to a certain extent, for he’d chosen the army as a career. The young national servicemen hadn’t. Yet even Jake hadn’t been prepared for the slaughter and carnage. On his R&R leave, some of the things he told Merryn made her blood curdle. Not that he filled her in on all the gory details, but she got the gist. In the last couple of months—before he came home—she had the distinct impression it was getting him down, particularly since he’d lost a couple of soldiers in his company. What had really upset him more than anything else, though, and Merryn too, was when his great friend Harry Scott was decapitated by a landmine, with Jake just a few feet away.
‘The plane’s stopped,’ the little boy at Sydney airport had cried out excitedly. He ran to the window and placed his nose on the glass, and then turned to his mother and pointed in glee. ‘Look Mummy! Is that Daddy at the window? Waving?’
Or was it Jake? It was difficult to see. Yet with the thought it could be Jake, Merryn had felt a ripple of excitement scuttle through her body, all other thoughts forgotten. He was home. At long last he was home. Everything would be all right. The world would be a brighter place.
Yet the moment she saw him walk through the door of the terminal, he somehow looked different. It was hard to put a finger on it. Running forward, she had almost jumped at him, throwing her arms around his neck. She remembered the warmth of his lips on hers, the look of happiness on his face. But when she stood back to give him a good going over, she realised how much weight he had lost. Moreover there was something in his eyes—something she had not seen before. Not really a sadness, for he was smiling so much you couldn’t have said that.
When she lay beside him that night at the Coogee Bay Hotel, where they’d taken a room as a treat, with the sound of the waves crashing on the beach opposite, she realised what it was. The young man she had seen off to the war on HMAS Sydney, with the Salvation Army serving tea and scones, had disappeared. In his place was a battle-weary soldier. Hardened by what was asked of him to do. Hardened, too, by what he had seen and what he had lost.
She had rolled over then, stretching out her hand to touch his back. He didn’t move. Only the gentle sound of his breathing disturbed the stillness in the room. She remembered how she placed her fingers upon her breast, to where not long before his lips were pressed. How she had waited so long to have him lie beside her, to feel the warmth of his body next to hers, to know that he was finally safe. With her. Forever. To know, too, that their future life together had just begun.
If only she had known then what she knew now? Although in a way she was glad she didn’t. Yet thinking back, had Jake already started to pull away from her whilst he was in Vietnam? Is that when the change really occurred? Had she been too blind to see? And if she was being brutally honest, maybe she had changed too. When he’d come back from the war, she was more independent— No longer the young girl waiting on his every word and reliant on him for everything. Perhaps he didn’t like that.
She sat up and scrambled out from under the mosquito net, taking a Kleenex from the box on the table next to the window. When she opened the shutters, she noticed that the street below