And they expect very few of them to survive to tell the tale.
Amy realised he had abandoned his copyright practice of asking a question only to immediately answer it. He wasn’t trying to win an argument. He was trying to tell her something. It was as if he had already won.
He wrote to us, said Amy, but she could hear that her voice was shrill.
That card?
The card, yes. And his brother Tom wrote you that his family in Tasmania had one after us.
Her voice, she knew, was thin and unconvincing even to her.
The card he sent us, Amy, was dated May 1942, and we got it in November. That was three months ago. It’s getting close to a year since we’ve had any word from him. Not a word—
Yes, Amy Mulvaney said. Yes, yes. Quickly, definitely, as though this somehow proved her point rather than demolished it.
Not a word since.
Yes, Amy Mulvaney said. Though she pressed down even harder on it, her foot didn’t really hurt that much at all. Habit and circumstance, the reassurance and security of marriage, were no longer enough for her. She would leave him. But having thought this bitter thought, she immediately felt confused. How? Where? And what would she live on?
The card his family got in December was dated April.
Yes, Keith, Amy Mulvaney said. Yes, yes, yes.
Her body was being tossed and rolled, and she was reaching for words to help keep her balance. She did not say she had written over a hundred letters to Dorrigo since they had heard he had been taken prisoner. Surely, Amy Mulvaney thought, one would have got through.
Ron Jarvis also said there are reports coming from other sources. Not good. Saying the men are skin and bone and being starved to death.
There’s been nothing in the papers.
There was. Atrocities. Massacres.
That’s propaganda, Keith, Amy Mulvaney said. To make us hate them.
Though she put all her weight on her cut foot, it merely ached.
If it’s propaganda, Keith Mulvaney said, it’s very bad propaganda.
But nothing else, no follow-up.
It’s a war, Amy. Bad news is no news. It vanishes. There’s the best part of a fifth of the Australian army missing, and only a few reliably traced.
That doesn’t mean he’s dead, Keith. It’s like you want him dead. He’s not dead. I know. I know.
The sea breeze, she realised, had ceased. Even the world struggled to breathe. From outside, she thought she heard the sound of a dried leaf snap. Keith coughed. He was not finished.
Ron Jarvis made some more enquiries for me, he said, wiping his lips with a handkerchief. There was a POW who made it out. They’re not telling the families yet. National morale, I suppose. And, I suppose, they wait for confirmation through other channels. Red Cross and so on.
Telling the families what, Keith?
I knew you’d want to know, Amy. I can’t bring myself to tell his family, though—it’s not my place, in any event. I’d be breaching a confidence. To say nothing of national security. This is strictly between us.
There’s nothing to tell, Keith. What are you carrying on about?
The escapee confirmed that Dorrigo Evans died in one of the camps.
Amy’s thoughts were distant and odd. It occurred to her that Keith loved her, something she had not thought for a very long time.
Amy, believe me, Dorrigo’s dead. He died six months ago.
Keith Mulvaney’s words, his boyish voice, spilled out onto the corridor floor tiles, black and white squares.
I knew you’d want to know, he said.
His words ran down the empty hallway and over its threadbare coconut mat runner, searching for Amy. But she was gone from the room.
Keith Mulvaney felt as a man who has killed something so that he might eat. He had wanted to say something else, something so true that it would justify the terrible lie he had just told. He wanted to say, I love you. Instead, he whistled Miss Beatrice onto his lap.
I think that’ll do, Keith Mulvaney said to the dog as he tickled her under the ear. Yes, that’ll do her.
He took solace in the knowledge he had not lied. It was true that the death was not yet confirmed, but Ron Jarvis had been unequivocal: among the list of names the POW had provided the authorities was a Major D. Evans. He thought that they could be happy together. It was a matter of work and time.
Surely, he said to Miss Beatrice. Surely.
Later that evening he found Amy by herself, cleaning the dining room’s kitchen. The room’s perpetual odour seemed if anything stronger, but its wet cream tiles and steel gleamed in the electric light. She was without emotion, telling him she still had more to do, and renewed her scrubbing as he stood watching from the doorway.