Butterfly's Shadow - Lee Langley [88]
Rain, seeping from the roof trickled down the tin chimney of the wood-stove, hissing into steam. The room felt humid, tropical. His inner South Sea island.
In that faraway country, the outside world, the war went on. Sequestered and alienated, the young ones blotted out the fact of the conflict with music and gossip and sometimes feverish laughter, furtive sex; older internees took it silently, in the spirit of gaman, clustering round radios and listening anxiously to the ebb and flow of events from the impossible position of limbo.
Limbo was an undiscovered country that Joe was becoming familiar with: which side should he cheer on? The army defending families in Japan, or the army fighting the enemies of America? Those who had bombed the ships on Honolulu, or those who were now his jailers? After Pearl Harbor came the battle of Midway – each a disaster or triumph, depending on where you stood.
‘The Japs are finished,’ one guard called to another, pitching his voice louder than necessary. ‘Finished!’
Wrapped in barbed wire, powerless and voiceless, the internees hung in the balance, losers whatever happened.
Shikata ga na. Nothing to be done about it.
38
Nancy celebrated her birthday by packing bandages. At forty-one she felt too old for a party. And who would she invite? From office desk to Red Cross station to volunteer counter at the military coffee shop, she was running as hard as she could, getting nowhere, but there was nowhere she wanted to be. She felt useful. She was exhausted, but that had its advantages: a tired mind in a tired body; a way to keep thought at bay.
War brought gloom and fear. Uncertainty. She became adept at deciphering the news. From what the government allowed its people to hear she could infer considerably more; it was not always encouraging.
Closer to home, reading between the lines in his letters, she feared for Joey: withdrawing from all he had considered himself a part of, he seemed at the same time to be rejecting a past that was not his, but might have been. Had she been wrong to bring him up the American way? Maybe she should have shown him more of that other world, introduced him to what was, after all, a part of his past, a culture that had survived a sea-crossing and flourished here in its own quiet way. But she had been afraid. Ah, there it was again, lurking; that weasel word. Fear.
Increasingly, she felt an unfocused sense of dissatisfaction. She could recall how, long ago, she had looked forward to being ‘grown up’, mature; to resembling the older women with their style and confidence. Now she was an older woman and it was the young who called the tune. Surely there should have been a point when she was grown up and confident, before the downward spiral, the sense of defeat? She must have been too busy to notice.
Filling the hours seemed the easiest way to fill the days, the weeks, months. Life became a jigsaw, one piece of her schedule slotting into the next, leaving her no time for anxiety, and not much time to dwell on thoughts of other possibilities. Had Ben lived . . . Had the Japanese not bombed Pearl Harbor . . . Had she met and married someone else, would she once more be alone, the imagined man whose body had warmed hers now swept into the conflict?
She was busy stacking dishes in the coffee shop when a man on the other side of the counter said ruefully, ‘You don’t recognise me.’
She glanced at him: tall, thin, a touch of grey in the dark hair, face an anonymous oval, like a cartoon character with sketched-in features – two dots for eyes, a vertical stroke, a horizontal dash.
‘Should I?’
‘Well. We had a rather jolly conversation last week while you made me a cup of something you described as tea.’
‘Oh, right. The Englishman.’
‘Defined by my accent. Rather depressing, that.’
‘Not your accent. Your perfect manners,’ Nancy said, stating a fact, unflirtatious.
‘Ah!’
She glanced at the sky as a grumble of thunder came and went. A sudden sweep of rain hit the windows.
‘You’ve brought us English weather; I’m sure our climate used to be better behaved.