

For the Life of Thi Lin Klein

A Novel of the Vietnam War

by Jack Twist

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Published by Jack Twist

on Smashwords

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Copyright 2013 Jack Twist

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jacktwist3@gmail.com

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Smashwords Edition

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without written permission, except for brief quotations to books and critical reviews. This story is a work of fiction. Characters and events are the product of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

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In 2009 the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's annual Fiction Award came to an end. No entrant in the competition would be published that year and so, of the hundreds of manuscripts submitted, no one winner was chosen. Instead, a final four were chosen for special mention. For the Life of Thi Lin Klein was one of those four.

Part 1

The American Girl

Chapter 1

She had been warned, from the moment she made her plans known. It was a war zone after all, even in those safer southern parts. But she flew in anyway, as soon as her visa was approved, alone, with nothing more than a suitcase, a wish to fulfil and that propensity to see things in a positive light. An alien humidity greeted her as she stepped from the plane onto the open tarmac. Heavy clouds billowed overhead. Tan Son Nhut Airport, Saigon. September, 1971.

The war was around a decade old by then. American and American-backed initiatives occurred so incrementally it is difficult to name an actual starting date. But it was a time when western armies contained few women, very few outside medical staff, and she was neither soldier nor health worker. She would avoid the danger areas, where they could be reliably identified, and she planned on a short stay. Still, her visit worried those who knew her, and those who came to know her.

I was one of those who came to know her, well enough for us to agree to meet up after the war, 'back in the world'. She had more confidence in that world than I did, a greater capacity for hope, which I liked to see as something in her personally, and not just an American thing. We had known each other just eight days, and although we spent fifty odd hours of that time very close, as close as two lost and frightened strangers might get, it was still not a long time. And we were young, and from different countries.

But if there was something fanciful in the rushed, frenzied moments of our agreement, I know she meant what she said. My word was less reliable. I made no real commitment as I talked up the possibilities of seeing her again, in a different time, in a different place. Our heart-to-heart took place on a stormy night in a humble hotel room in Saigon, the rain lashing the little balcony so hard that some of it came into the room. We marvelled at the force of it, wished it would ease.

One day the war ended, the curtain closing finally on those images of ignominious defeat, old newsreel clichés today, a communist tank crashing through palace gates, helicopters pushed off the sides of aircraft carriers like redundant junk, and people scrambling to get away from their own country. That was April, 1975, and some six months after that, four years from when I had last seen her, I set off to find the girl I'd promised to see again, back in the world. Well, more or less promised, trusting always that circumstances permitted.

And I gave her no warning, arriving in a small mountain town in the foothills of the Canadian Rockies hoping to track her down. She was twenty-five years old by then, quite possibly married, with children. Babies. I didn't want to think about babies.

Watching the little airport terminal empty of people wrapped in furs and heavy jackets while the snow piled up outside, I wondered if I might be doing something less than proper, arriving unannounced. Like a stalker, an unwanted memory from the past, leaving the young woman little or no way to refuse my approach. No. I would call her first. And I didn't have to say where I was. Anyway, she might have left this town, this district, long ago.

The friends I had left in Los Angeles saw nothing unbecoming in my behaviour, just something foolish, or so they intimated, laughing at my reticence. 'I'll call her from Vancouver,' I told them. I told myself that from there I'd really know how serious I was. Because I had been the one to break things off, such as they were, ending any potentialities by not replying to her only letter, which arrived a couple of months after our parting at the airport in Saigon.

I like to blame the war for not writing back, the aftermath of confusion and regret. And my concern for the shock she must have been suffering still, because she was more deeply affected by what happened than I was. She was in a different world now, so far, in so many ways, from where we had been. She had a need for closure, as they say today, as if she could ever really close those things out completely.

Feeling that way, I sensed in her letter, behind her attempts at familiarity, a fear of a return to it all. I might have imagined more of that fear than was really there in her letter. It was a difficult time. The memories still fresh. And whatever the precise import of that letter, I judged it through my own sense of a need to start again, to forget and move on.

In any event I did not reply. When I heard no more her silence encouraged me and if I could never properly put her out of my mind, so much nobler then my resolve to leave her alone.

But now here I was.

At Vancouver I should have tried to phone, at least gone searching for a phone book, but I anticipated, procrastinated again, until the last call for the flight to her town. And I was on the plane, then circling in what to me seemed impossible cloud, as the pilot waited for a blue patch through which to descend, and miss the mountains as he did. Cold, unfamiliar Canada felt suddenly disconcerting. There I was in a town where I knew no one, well possibly no one, somewhere near the British Columbia-Alberta border.

The affable motel proprietor clearly thought I was running from something, arriving in winter, alone, professing no interest in skiing. Our conversation quickly waned and I went to my room, unsure whether to call at all in the morning, even should I locate her phone number.

Eight days. No more than three together. Four years ago. In the world's most tumultuous and devastated corner at the time. Her personal turmoil. Her state of mind. Would she really want to be reminded of all that? And then there were my needs. Did I want to bring it all back into my life? I had at least a week to get to New York and meet up with my friends. Back home I could explain this little trip into the mountains as part of the holiday. I could finally forget her, and as they say, move on.

But in the morning, even a reluctant Canadian morning, the sun no more than a colour of warmth, a range of white peaks beyond the motel window and the valley of the town leaned into the sky in one direction. There was a jagged, haphazard uniformity about them that both defied and declared the clarity of the blue, and seemed to point the way.

The motel manager seemed brightened too by the sun and the blue and white world, might even have been pleased to see a suggestion of goodwill in my eye, where last night there had been a downcast and defensive redness. He poured smiles and coffee as I sat smelling bacon from the kitchen.

"Klein?" He frowned. "No. I know most everyone in town. Do they live out of town maybe?" He returned soon after with my breakfast and a phone book. "Here. There's a Klein up in the valley. That's well out. Just because they have a telephone doesn't mean there's any other power out that far. Everyone in this country has a phone. In case you get snowed in."

And so I was committed, took my time with my breakfast, prepared myself.

A male voice answered. "Hello?"

"Hello. My name is Mark Ross. I'm not sure if I have the right number. I was hoping to talk to a... to someone named Abbie Klein." He was quiet, forcing me to go on. "I wondered if you might know a Klein, first name Abbie. It's four years since I last saw her, but I think I have the right... region."

"Yes, I know her. She's my sister. She doesn't live here anymore."

"Oh."

There was a pause before he said, "she moved away nearly four years ago." And before I could summon the nerve to ask where to, "Is that an Australian accent?"

"Yes."

"Are you the guy...? What name did you say again?"

I told him.

"Do you know Abbie from when she was in Vietnam?'

"Yes. That's right. I... I should have tried to contact her. I'm travelling with some friends and took the opportunity..."

"Where are you?"

"I'm at the Lake Motel. Here in town."

"You're here in town? How long are you staying?"

"I'm not sure. A few days. I made no definite plans... in case..."

There was another silence before he said, "well, look. I remember your name. Abbie told us about you. And since you're here in town, do you think we could meet? If you want? If you have the time?"

Chapter 2

The first time I saw her I was on guard duty. A sort of guard duty. We also called it garbage duty because we had to escort a local garbage truck through the camp grounds and watch that the men on the truck didn't take anything they weren't supposed to. We only got to do it once or twice during our one year tour and it was when my only garbage duty was nearly completed that I saw her. I had to maintain some sort of watch on the men, or the appearance of it, so that when I looked again she was gone. And she was a rare sight then in that part of the world.

I waited and watched, distracted for a moment from my present duty. It was not the first time I had been distracted from my duty, nor would it be the last. Looking back now, remembering my stint in the military, I see myself, a soldier short on commitment, easily distracted. A young man at war with little interest in it beyond self-preservation, the company of a mate or two, and the odd recreational enjoyment, usually alcohol induced. Physically, tall, some athleticism, but with something lacking, a solidness. The face promised no more than average intelligence, with some firmness of purpose missing there too, despite a hint of youthful arrogance.

Like thousands of others during the years of the Vietnam War, I was a conscript, called up to serve at twenty years old. Some three years before that I had started a university degree, and dropped out soon after. At the time of my call-up I had not re-enrolled. And now, at twenty-two, graduating was still years away. It required maturity, and that was not me. Looking back, so I see myself.

I told the garbage men it was time to go. They looked at me in an innocent and surprised way as though I was cutting short a vitally important assignment and I noticed a newly painted desk and a filing cabinet disappearing onto the back of the truck.

"Heh!" I said. "No! No more! Fini! Get those off."

The boss of the gang offered me money again. I adopted the pose of the morally outraged, wished I'd never taken any in the first place. He explained that they were late and would drop me at the Signals hill near the camp's front entrance, some distance from my unit.

I wasn't having it. "Back to transport compound." I stepped up onto the running-board. The breeze in my face was a relief but the truck stank, the job stank and I couldn't wait to be out of it. And out, as much as was possible, of the heat and humidity which sat like a heavy coat on a hot day, building to afternoon rainfall.

We swung out of the compound and I watched the low, flat building from which the girl had emerged until it was out of sight. But she was gone.

A grey powdered road divided the dirtied sandhills of the Australian Logistic Support base near the coastal town of Vung Tau where some five or six years earlier, army command had selected the flatter sections, between the sand-hills and on top of the bigger ones, for sandbag-reinforced huts where men and equipment were housed. The hilly terrain offered some variation to the usual flat monotony of military camps the world over, but if any tropical appeal once graced that part of the country's southern shoreline it was lost now to the business of war, although that far south, in those later stages, we felt relatively safe. Army-green ambulance vans, red cross on white patch on their sides, lined up alongside the hospital, and heavy earth-moving equipment in the engineers' compound, all spoke of the camp's support role. Most of the fighting units were camped at Nui Dat amongst the rubber tree plantations some thirty kilometres to the north.

The garbage truck, a rusted relic of World War 2 parts and cast-offs, lurched in the hot dust, gears crunching, seemed to groan of man's treatment of his beasts of burden. With one hand firmly gripping the passenger side door, I checked the button on my hip pocket with the other, and the thick bundle of notes inside. It was all piastre, the local currency, and the equivalent of about sixteen US dollars, enough to get you drunk every night for a week at the ORs' canteen. There wasn't much else for us to spend our money on. If you liked to live more dangerously it could get you several drinks in town, and the company of a bargirl.

But my new wealth sat uneasily. Perhaps the sight of that girl, western, pale-faced in her olive-green overalls, reminded me of a world where corruption wasn't so commonplace, or at least not so obvious; a place where I had nothing to do with local garbage collectors desperate to make a few American dollars.

But they had practically stuffed those soiled piastre into my pockets. So I told myself. And I'd been pretty good, considering. I saved a few pairs of boots left in hut doorways, washing drying on makeshift lines, a bundle of tarpaulins, crates of Coca Cola. A crate of beer at the back of the Transport Sergeants' Mess had them all looking at me hopefully until I went and stood beside it.

At central admin a soldier came running after the truck to retrieve a pair of stereo speakers and I had to yell at the driver to stop. I managed to rescue a few copies of Playboy, which they all found very amusing, but they were fast and when their boss offered me 400 piastre for a 'mistake' with a pile of used tyres, and I accepted, they knew they had me. Their guard was corrupt.

As the truck moved away from where I stepped off near the Transport compound, feeling like I'd been more or less in control, I saw the crate of beer sitting on top of the load. The two younger ones who rode in the back waved, all smiles and 'see you later, mate.'

In the shower then I used lots of soap. The stench of corruption, like the stench of garbage, clings and lingers. I would get rid of the money as soon as possible. There were risks in leaving camp alone to go into town but the convoy wouldn't be back for hours and I had my ill-gotten booty to unload.

Blowfly was the only other driver in the hut as I got dressed. His job was to take the 'wet' garbage from our company mess to a dump across town, every day. Everybody else preferred convoy work, even though it took us outside the camp and beyond the town. But Blowfly never complained, and he did work a short day. I told him about my sighting inside the American compound. I wanted to tell someone. Our taciturn garbo glanced at me expressionlessly. "Yeh, I know. I see her sometimes when I go down that way. She's better from a distance."

Blowfly had no fear of town. He saw the same bargirl nearly every evening, spending the night and then turning up at the camp each day to work. He didn't mix much, didn't seem to need us, and I have no idea where he came from but I had heard him say that he wasn't really looking forward to going home. The rest of us were counting the days, literally. Accused once of 'turning nog', Blowfly had shrugged casually, indulged in a proud smile. And on the subject of the American girl he was just as phlegmatic. "Everyone thinks she's great, just because she's a round-eye."

I left it at that. There was no point. The man was prejudiced.

I went to town. Vung Tau. Fishing port and formerly a local beach retreat. That was pre-war, before the Americans came. Now, at its centre at least, a market place for the soldier on leave, catering to those of his needs he was less likely to write home about. Old women squatted on dirty sidewalks with baskets of pornographic photos and trinkets, including multi-coloured peace beads, peace signs and little metal cards engraved withfuck the army, born to kill, Vietnam sucks and the like, attached to leather necklaces.

The peace movement had reached the war zone, in glittering piles of these anti-war messages and flower-power paraphernalia. All in jest of course, the self-mocking curse of the ordinary soldier, but it didn't say much for morale. Put your life on the line, soldier, so the toothless mama san squatting in the dust can go on selling messages that make a mockery of your service. Henry 'Moll' Mollineau, a driver from my hut, had one of the little slogan cards attached to his bush-hat withFuck it. Just fuck itinscribed on it, declaring his attitude wherever he went. Americans in particular liked to wear them around their necks with their peace beads and dog tags.

There must have been ordinary soldiers somewhere, with a belief in the cause, and ordinary locals with a genuine welcome in their hearts for visiting soldiers, and whatever they stood for. You just didn't see any on the streets of downtown Vung Tau.

Girls spilled out of narrow, smoke-filled bars onto the hot, crowded streets, their western hairstyles, heavy make-up and tight mini-skirts accentuating their Asianness. "Heh, Uc dai loi. You want girl? Wanna good time, big boy? Ha, ha, ha."

The Red Cherry Bar was bigger than most with a fully-charged, hard-core porno movie working away on the wall. The mama san had attempted to dress the place up with hot pink paint and mirrors, which only added to the cheapness but also achieved a kind of innocence. Anything done up that badly was screaming out for help.

"You wanna buy me Saigon tea, honey?" the girl on my lap whispered in my ear as she put my hand on her leg. We talked about nothing and she laughed at my stupid jokes as she squirmed around on my lap until I had bought enough Saigon tea to keep her popular with the mama san. "You want boom-boom now, honey?"

She had a baby in a crib in the corner of her little room and I had to wait while she took it away. The shabby, unpainted room and listening to the baby cry while she spoke to an older woman outside unnerved me, but she gave me a big smile when she returned and closed the door. I watched while she slid her slip of a dress over her hips.

"You have condom, honey?"

I showed her. She came to me where I sat on the bed, still smiling, as though we were real lovers and she hadn't a care in the world. And then she was straddling me, sighing on her downward movements, coaxing me into quicker action, to sate the lust, to please, always to please, to assuage whatever frustrations had brought the soldier to her. For she was my lover. Her final cry was expertly timed and accompanied, I realised, by another cry, the cry of a baby somewhere in the distance.

She knelt on the bed after, brushing her hair and watching me peel off a pile of piastre.

"You have US dollar?" I shook my head. I had some US military currency but wanted to unload the local stuff from the day's business. "You be my boyfriend, honey?"

I took a proper look at her for the first time. She was pretty and friendly, a little older than most bargirls, and she might have been more anxious than others to introduce a little regularity, even security, into her life because of the baby. But I mumbled something meaningless and handed her the crumpled wad of piastre.

The air outside in the noisy street was thick with the threat of the evening's downpour. I caught a Lambretta back to the camp before darkness arrived as suddenly as it would and had to share the noisy little three-wheeled cab with a group of five or six women and a brood of chickens cooped in a cage at one woman's feet. They were smiling shyly but when one woman spoke they all laughed.

I arrived in camp as the convoy was entering the compound and hurried to the shower block to beat the rush. I was glad I did. A glance in the mirror showed that my left earlobe was red with lipstick. I managed to wash it off just as the first rowdy, dust-covered drivers entered the shower hut. Cleansed of my sins and red evidence thereof, I wandered back to the lines in thongs and a towel. My hut was a hubbub of disrobing drivers.

"Did you go into town?" Tony Carmody asked. He sat on his bunk pulling off his boots. Tony had been to town once only, and then just for a look. A school teacher from Melbourne, he had a fiancée and was living for the day of their wedding soon after he got back home. He wrote her a letter every day, at least a couple of pages. "And how much did you make on garbage duty? They reckon Daniels made twenty dollars. Slipped 'em a crate of booze."

I told him about my day, my attempts to keep grasping brown hands off army property and personal belongings, my struggle to refuse dirty money, my eventual capitulation.

At which he looked unmoved. Tony Carmody had this infuriating maturity and integrity about him. On the day he did his garbage duty he took none of their money, held to his principles, in the face of all those smiling exhortations from the foreman garbage collector, the man in charge, distinguishable from his barefoot crew by a tattered American army cap, plastic sandals and a pocket full of piastre.

Tony's maturity sometimes left me feeling envious. A fully qualified professional at twenty-two, his life looked sorted, at least on course. He was a reminder to me that my life's plans were not nearly as settled. It was comforting to know that an office job with an insurance company was waiting for me back home in Brisbane, to be taken up again when my national service was done, but the job itself held no great attraction.

I decided to change the subject. "How's the Dat?"

"Wonderful." He tossed a boot under his bunk. "Wonderful because it's a good reminder of how lucky we are to be living down here in slack old Vungers."

Outside there was a rumble of thunder and the sky was now quite dark. Tony lay back on his bunk. Thin lines of dirt had settled in the creases of his neck. He had his eyes closed. "Fancy a beer?" He asked. "When I've had a shower?"

"What an excellent idea. And I can tell you about my big discovery of the day."

"What?"

"A girl of the round-eye variety."

He looked at me. "Down in the American compound? I know. Blowfly reckons she's better from a distance."

By the time he got back from the showers the rain had started and we had to make a run for the canteen hut.

Chapter 3

To those of us who had seen her she was a curiosity, an occasional conversation piece, the object even of a few regrettable fantasies. And then I met her, and she became a person.

The couple of weeks leading up to that meeting went by uneventfully, our unit's operations as much about routine as anything else. Except for one unusual order from base command, an order to which I responded as apathetically as any other driver, and an order that would, eventually, have more to do with all that happened to the American girl and me than I could have imagined at the time.

"We need a volunteer," our company 2IC, Captain O'Brien told us at morning assembly. "Just one. To march in a parade."

He watched us for a moment, gauging reaction, with no sign of optimism. We hadn't marched since basic training and didn't want to start again now. Except for one driver whose interest in the job had nothing to do with marching.

"The parade's being held in Saigon," the captain went on. "To commemorate South Vietnam's national day. It'll be made up mostly of American and South Vietnamese troops, but there'll be contingents from other allies as well, including Australia. Certain Vung Tau units will be volunteering one soldier each to make up our marching party and we have been chosen. Command must have noticed how soldierly we look."

There were grins, bored but wary, from some of the thirty odd, mostly shirtless, mostly shaven soldiers before him. But the captain was not smiling. "It's an assignment that any digger should be proud to participate in because he'll be representing his country." All smiles had stopped and nobody moved. In the growing heat a churlish cynicism descended and multiplied.

O'Brien continued, referring to orders as he did. "Command would prefer a soldier that would, in appearance at least," he read from a paper, "do the lean and legendary digger proud. We already have one volunteer. Unfortunately, while he might be legendary enough, Private Daniels leaves a bit to be desired in the leanness department."

The few sniggers stopped when the captain began scanning his men, looking for a hint of interest, and the required leanness.

"Now don't be shy." His usual smirk turned to a sneer. "You'll get a few days in Saigon, to practise with the squad before the parade takes place." At this Bushfire Daniels raised his hand. The captain looked at him. "Not that you should make much of that. You'll be there to march." Daniels slowly lowered his hand. "Anyone?" Still no one else moved. "Private O'Malley. See me after parade."

There was an audible sigh of relief. Lyle O'Malley was our best driver and our best volunteer. We could always rely on Lyle to take on the more difficult and unpopular tasks. Escaped again, so I thought, if I thought at all, from another crappy job nobody

wanted. Marching and things military were put happily behind us as we headed out on convoy duties.

We spent our days assisting the construction of roads and other infrastructure in Phuoc Tuy Province, an activity which Crazy Al Stanley, our resident socialist, said was probably aiding the enemy. If Al was right we didn't care. Anything to keep out of harm's way.

For us the war was there more in atmosphere and potential than in active violence. We were shot at once, but it seemed the perpetrators were most likely local police, when a truck passed through a check-point without stopping. Watching helicopter gunships spitting fire into the Long Hai Hills along the road to the coastal town of Phuoc Hai reminded us of how close the action was and land mines kept us edgy. But the last time one of our trucks had hit a mine I was still in Australia and there always seemed to be someone else ready to lead whenever we left the bitumen.

And so the days rolled by, in heat and dust and rain and mud, but then after-work beer, laughter, genuine and perverse. And in bravado, and a rough kind of mateship, presumed and understated, expressed in all the cursing, inverted terms of endearment that Aussies understand.

As a personal part of the routine, each night I crossed off the day's date on my calendar on the wall beside my bunk. Until, late one morning some two weeks from when I had last seen the American girl, our admin corporal, Joe Bartolino came into my hut, sat on Tony's chair and looked at me ominously.

We all liked Joe. He did his job with such low-key efficiency that nobody bothered to call him wog, and he had a slight accent. But just then I didn't want to see him. I was enjoying a day off, a luxury we were granted once a month. I had almost finished a letter to my niece who had recently started school; a three sentence account of my life, centred on the weather which was hot, the food which was bad and trucks that were big.

"You must be mistaken, Corporal," I said to Joe. "This is my day off."

"It's an emergency. A drive to Saigon. It may even be an overnighter. And yes, Captain O'Brien said you can have a day off tomorrow. Or the day after, if it's an overnighter."

Saigon. Our town times one hundred. The big capital had a reputation for danger, thoughoutweighed by the attractions. The job was some sort of medical emergency and the hospital ambulances were apparently all busy. Joe had scant details but our company commanding officer, Major Collins, wanted two civilian personnel delivered, one to Saigon, the American Embassy, the other to be dropped off along the way at the village of Muc Thap, in Bien Hoa province.

"Do I get a shot-gun rider?"

Joe's sad brown eyes blinked patiently. Slowly, painfully, he tapped the top of his left shoulder with his right for finger. I swore. It was a signal we all knew, referring to our platoon's junior officer, Second Lieutenant Jefferies. Where Captain O'Brien was a gruff, rugby-player type of officer with a ruddy complexion and a sarcastic turn of phrase, his 2IC, Jefferies, was nicknamed 'The Prefect'. He looked younger than many of the drivers and never seemed relaxed in our company, always at pains to emphasise his authority, pulling us up for minor rules transgressions, even dress, which Captain O'Brien and the NCOs seemed to see as more or less pointless in the heat and the wet.

The shoulder-tap signal arose out of an incident months earlier when the young lieutenant, confronted with a show of insubordination that was both minor and inadvertent, felt it necessary to remind us of his rank by pointing to the officer's pip on his shoulder. An afternoon in a Land Rover with The Prefect, shoulder-tapping Second-Lieutenant Jefferies, was not my idea of a day off. I told Joe.

He nodded understandingly. "You're to be down at admin, in uniform - and that means clean, long greens, with shirt - in half an hour." He looked at his watch. "Better make that twenty minutes." He stood up. "And you'd better pack your bag for an overnighter, just in case."

At the doorway he stopped and turned. "Don't you want to know about the civilians? One local and one American." He observed me for a moment and then turned again to go. "Both female," he called.

In the few stunned seconds that took to compute, Joe was gone before I could call him back for details. I pondered as I went for a shower, brushed my teeth, shaved, closer and cleaner than I had in at least six months. An American. Our girl from the compound next to ours perhaps. I hadn't seen another western female since Singapore Airport.

Back in the hut I changed into clean greens, packed my bag with a set of civilian clothes and basic toiletries and even combed my hair, what there was of it. I was so concerned with looking my best that it didn't occur to me, until I was standing at the admin door, bag over shoulder and M16 in one hand, just how unusual it all was. The Americans had thousands of their own vehicles and drivers in this country and in any case helicopters were used for emergencies.

Joe was talking to the admin typist. "Wakin' up beside my wife. That's the thing I miss most. 'Cept of course watchin' Collingwood beat Carlton." He looked at me. "Well, have a go at the new scrubbed up Private Ross. Hair combed! Sean Connery. In a lanky, lopsided,kinda' way."

"Nah," said the typist. "Gomer Pyle, I reckon."

Joe ignored him. "Well done, that soldier. You've done everything but polish your belt buckle. Even Lieutenant Jefferies will be impressed."

"What's the emergency, Joe?"

He stepped out from behind the desk and came over, handing me a couple of magazines for my weapon. "All I know is the bloke in charge of petrol supply down the American compound wanted to know if we had a convoy goin' to Saigon, to give these two women a lift, as if we go there every day. But we've got the job anyway, and you're the lucky malingerer. Right place at the right time and all that."

Joe lowered his voice. "Take your time if you can. You'll get a night at headquarters, the Canberra, if it's too late to come back. I could have waited for Blowfly but he's probably the only driver in the whole bloody company that wouldn't want the chance of a night in Saigon. Go on. The lieutenant's over at the vehicles getting the Land Rover ready. Relax. Enjoy yourself. And here." He went back to his desk and rummaged in a drawer. "Lots of bad girls in Saigon." He threw me a packet of condoms.

"Do you know how old the American is?"

"No. They didn't give me her date of birth." He looked at me. "Yes. I think it must be the one you blokes've been perving at on garbage duty. So drive carefully. Any woman comes to this country to work must be crazy."

I presumed Lieutenant Jefferies was a couple of years older than I was, though he didn't look it, especially on that day. I hadn't seen anybody looking so spotlessly military since basic.

He flashed me a condescending smile. "Private Ross." He looked up from where he was putting a cover over the vehicle's back seat. "Put your pack and rifle in the back. And I want you to know, this is not some day-off jaunt. We're on an important mission here. Let's make sure we're on our best behaviour."

I felt like promising not to spit, swear or tell any rude jokes and I realised the lieutenant was as excited as I had been, perhaps more so, since he was in charge. I imagined a young officer like Jefferies would have preferred giving orders to seventeen or eighteen year-old regulars, soldiers who had joined up voluntarily the way he did. But this war had meant conscription and here I was, a twenty-two year old insurance clerk, and uni drop-out, now a private soldier at his disposal. With a more capable and enthusiastic performance at basic training, I might have been offered a place in the conscripts' officer training course at Scheyville. But education was just one prerequisite. I presume the officers assessing recruits' aptitudes judged me as more a follower than a leader. Certainly my platoon commander was unimpressed. 'Has completed all tasks satisfactorily,' he wrote in his final report. And added, 'with extra supervision.'

"And how's the cricket going?" The lieutenant asked me.

I had been able to show off my modest ability with a cricket ball by bowling out a couple of dubious Ordnance batsmen in an inter-unit cricket match some weeks earlier. (Such was the war at Vung Tau!) The lieutenant had played as well, so we had that in common. That, our age and our present engagement with our country's armed forces. But that was about all.

"Well," he was placing his rifle and a spare water bottle on the passenger-side floor. "Let's go over and fill 'er up. We're due shortly."

While I filled the fuel tank, he checked water and oil, kicked tyres and made a routine check of the vehicle's exterior. The sun blazed down on the open vehicle but he showed no signs of sweat. He looked pleased with himself.

On our way out of the compound as I passed the mechanics' workshops he turned to me with further briefing. Our major was a personal friend of Mr Jake Klein, a civilian in charge of the oil company office at the American compound. The young American woman we were taking to Saigon was his daughter and the local woman an important employee of the same oil company.

"So it's quite an honour that he should want us to look after them. Keep your wits about you. Major Collins said Mr Klein is anxious that his daughter and the other woman get to their respective destinations as soon as possible, which is understandable."

I wondered where that left our chances of a night in the big city.

Chapter 4

A burly sergeant checked the lieutenant's papers at the gate to the American compound. A soldier in the guard house carried a weapon and watched us steadily. Already things seemed serious. But it would take more than baleful looks from American guards to shake my nonchalance. The lucky malingerer. In the right place at the right time. That the course of whole lifetimes can swing on certain moments in time, for better or worse, was of no concern to me just then. My curiosity about the assignment was already waning. The reasons, full and open, as to why the lieutenant and I were there, waiting to escort strangers to places we knew only from a map, were none of my business, and not for me to wonder at.

I lounged back in my seat, tried to match American seriousness with Australian lack of it. This sergeant had no authority over me. I might have put my foot on the dash had not the lieutenant been with me. My main concern here was still for the loss of my precious day off. I had no way of knowing how that random monster, the war, as subtle and oblique as it could be brutal, was about to tap me on my complacent shoulder, take me by the scruff of the neck and give me a good hard shake, from which I would remain, always, just a little shaken.

The business of the oil company, Vung Tau division, was carried out in a low flat building which I had observed once before, a large and sturdy one by local standards with a wide veranda roof along the front. The lieutenant strode to the door with even more swagger than I'd noticed back at the transport compound. When he came out from under the veranda, accompanied by Mr Jake Klein, his daughter and a local woman, some of the young officer's dash had wilted.

Jake Klein was not as solidly built as most of the Americans I saw, and there was a softness about the face, although it might have been his curly reddish hair, tinged with grey and longer than I was used to. The middle-aged Americans I'd seen were senior officers who looked bullnecked and self-assured with close cropped hair and tight, peaked caps.

His daughter was slim with pale skin, the sort that might have been lightly freckled. It was some time before she looked in my direction because she was showing concern for the local woman. And here was the cause of the lieutenant's now more measured demeanour. This woman was enormously pregnant. She wore a large khaki shirt over brown pants and leaned back as she walked.

When Abbie Klein finally turned in my direction at the lieutenant's brief, perfunctory introduction, I lost faith forever in Blowfly's opinion of women. She was no Ann Margaret but I liked the look of her from the moment our eyes met. A kind of confidence shone from her eyes belying the softness of her facial features. I was struck immediately by those eyes and by the shape of her mouth when she smiled.

Aside from how the girl looked, the moment also held interest for me, as unsophisticated as any other Aussie suburban son born in the baby boom, simply because she was American. You couldn't turn on a radio or television set, go to the movies, or, where I was now in particular, open a magazine, without feeling the force of America. It was the place the rest of us followed, that we all sought to be like, whose culture had become a part of ours. And here was a living example.

She had her hair cut short, wisps of it curling around her neck and ears beneath her military cap. The strap of her duffel bag was slung over one thin shoulder and she was dressed in a kind of olive green flying suit, loosely fitted. I was able to observe her while she attended to the progress of the other woman.

The pregnant woman was something new for me too. Until now the women of our host country had been for me distant figures bending at their work in rice paddies. Or they were school girls hurrying past our parked convoy in the streets of Baria, their wide, conical hats tied under their small chins as they bent their heads forward to shield their faces from sun or rain, and from us, tall western strangers with loud mouths and big trucks - and yet not American. Or local women were Asian parodies of Playboy bunnies, with too much make-up, smiling at me and chatting about nothing while they ran their hands along mythigh in smoky, overcrowded, dimly lit bars, wanting my money.

In spite of her condition and the surrounding mix of westerners, this woman had a dignified, knowing look about her. Jake Klein introduced her as Thi Lin Quang but she became Lin because that's what the girl called her. She must have been ten years Abbie's senior and she smiled calmly and sadly at the lieutenant and me in a way that indicated no sense of inferiority. She had an intelligent face. It reminded me of a teacher I'd had once, one whom all the kids respected though she never raised her voice. Both Americans showed her considerable attention and obviously thought much of her.

"... can't thank you enough," Jake Klein was telling the lieutenant, and me to a lesser extent. "... know it must seem unusual, if not a bit out of line, but we've been caught out here. Lin insisted on working right up till her time and it's suddenly arrived. Major Collins said to me once, 'any time', but I didn't count on your making a special trip. And Abigail wanted to stay and help out right up until the baby arrived, so we thought two birds with one stone."

I took the opportunity to look at the man's daughter again. She was smiling in a bashful way as her father spoke. The lieutenant put their bags in the back and I started the engine while they said their goodbyes, which they did with some restraint, as though some unspoken tension weighed on them.

"A couple of requests, Lieutenant, if you wouldn't mind." said Jake Klein, pronouncing it 'lootenant'.

"Certainly, Sir."

"I wonder if you wouldn't mind going along the beach way, please?"

"Sir?"

"I'd like you to drive back along the beach, if you don't mind. I thought maybe you could turn up off the beach and head out through the Australian base."

Jefferies looked puzzled. "Yes, Sir. No problem."

"Just a little added precaution."

"It's quite okay. Of course."

"And would you have helmets they could wear?"

"Well, not with us. I could get some though. No problem."

"If you wouldn't mind, I'd be very grateful. Might attract less attention. Thank you." The American smiled with what seemed genuine gratitude.

The high barbed wire fence that separated our base from the Americans went out into the sea for some thirty metres and we had to double back away from the beach to get to a gate. A corporal came out of a guard-house as we approached, opened the gate and waved to the women as we passed through.

I turned back towards the beach and Jake Klein was waiting by the fence near his office. The three of them waved until we dropped down onto the sand track that took us to the beach. When he had disappeared from view the two women turned back to the front and I caught a glimpse of Lin's face in the rear-view mirror. She held that patient knowing look but when I looked again I could see tears in her eyes.

We used British made Land Rovers, apart from the trucks, the back seats of which usually ran front to back along the sides, like small troop carriers. This was the only one with a seat that ran side to side and the lieutenant had unearthed a seat cover for the ladies' comfort. I'm sure he would have liked to rearrange the seating positions too, if he could have, because Abbie Klein was directly behind him, so that, turned as he was, he could only see Thi Lin Quang. Still, he ignored her.

"We'll just stop in at our admin to get those helmets, Miss Klein. Shouldn't take a minute."

"Thank you."

"Been to Saigon before?'

"Only passing through the airport on the way over."

"Looking forward to going home?"

"Yes and no. I wanted to be here to see the baby. But my being here worries my father. I've been able to help him with his work but I couldn't really take Lin's place and there hasn't been much else to do. He wouldn't even let me go into town, for safety reasons."

"I'm sure that was wisest. You'll need to be careful in Saigon too. Know anyone there?'

"Yes. I'm staying with an acquaintance at the embassy, until my flight leaves."

When I pulled up outside the admin office I was glad to see only Blowfly. Wandering across the compound he gave the women little more than a glance. The lieutenant deemed it best that he stay with the ladies and I was dispatched to collect four helmets.

"Helmets?" Joe Bartolino looked out through the office door as he spoke. The lieutenant was still turned around talking to the girl. "For a drive to Saigon? He wasn't too bothered when I told him all the radios are out with the convoy. Now he wants helmets. Is he trying to make an impression?"

"Actually it was the father's idea. Although the lieutenant said to get one each for us as well."

"What's he think this is? I don't know if we got any bloody helmets. Wait here."

While he was gone the office typist got up and went to the door. "What's she like?" He put his head outside but had to withdraw it when Jefferies was looking back.

A skinny little sex maniac who spent every second night in town, he annoyed me. "Alright, if you ignore the sore." He looked at me. "She's got this big, black, scabby lip thing on the other side of her mouth."

"I've found one." said Joe, holding a helmet. He stopped. "What are you doin'?"

"Just havin' a look."

"Well have a bloody look at today's orders. And while you're lookin' at 'em, try typin' 'em." The typist had another look before he went back to his desk. Joe went on. "I swear. Some a' you blokes've had your dicks in your hands so much over here you won't know how to communicate with a woman when you get back home. Now if the lieutenant wants more helmets you'll have to go over to ordnance. I'll write you a chit."

The lieutenant looked so disappointed when I told him this that I wondered if he'd been in the middle of explaining what an efficient, potent, well-oiled installation he was running here, all varieties of military equipment at our finger-tips, including helmets.

"Helmets?" said Greg Urquhart from behind the ordnance stores counter. Although one of us drivers, as a qualified carpenter Urquhart spent many of his working days in camp as a general handyman and on this day he was helping out in stores. Like Lyle O'Malley, he was a driver I knew from before Vietnam, but whereas I liked Lyle, Greg Urquhart annoyed me, without trying. He felt the same about me and one day the matter would come to a kind of head.

"Yeh. Three." I gave him Joe's written request.

"Where you goin'?"

"Saigon. But we're taking two women."

"Women?" He ducked his blockish, blond head to peer through the storehouse window. "So why do you need three?" It was none of his business, but that was Urquhart.

"The prefect said three."

"What's he tryin' to do? Impress the ladies?"

"Must be."

Back in the vehicle the ladies put their helmets on immediately. The lieutenant and I waited until I had turned onto the Baria Road. Then he turned in his seat again. "Can you tell me any more about this trip, please? My C.O. was a little vague."

The girl was not quick to answer. "My father is being cautious for my sake, Lieutenant. I'm sorry he made you drive along the beach and get these helmets. I don't think he'll really relax until I'm back home."

"That's quite alright."

We passed the docks area on our left, ship-loading cranes highlighting the rusted decay of flat warehouses beneath them. Both women seemed interested. "Vung Tau wharf," the lieutenant was pleased to tell them.

"Yes. My father wants his office there. The army insists he stay down at the beach compound, for safety reasons."

The stench of the fish market killed conversation for a while and then people, markets and homes gave way to small open fields as the rice paddies began. I had to slow down behind a wagon pulled by a water buffalo while an American convoy passed. Someone called out, "Heh, beautiful!", which prompted a chorus of excitement from the back of the last truck. The lieutenant indicated to me that the way was clear and I swung out to pass the wagon. The old man on the back did not look sideways.

"It must be difficult," said the girl, "driving on what is the wrong side of the road for you."

"You get used to it," said Jefferies, without so much as a glance at me.

I turned towards the girl and smiled discreetly, in an attempt to show that I wasn't a complete zombie. I caught a glimpse of her pale face under the dirty green helmet and straightened up in my seat to try to place her somewhere in the mirror, but when I looked at it again I saw Lin who looked back at me immediately.

Chapter 5

Lieutenant Jefferies warmed to the trip and the ladies were treated to commentary on our platoon's work in the local Phuoc Tuy Province. I suppose he would have liked to have added some blood and glory but he was a transport officer. Pogos they called us up at Nui Dat. 'Personnel on garrison operations' who weren't called on to go out into the battlefields.

But Jefferies was an honest man. "The idea of the Civil Aid Programmed is to win over the hearts and minds of the locals by helping them with new roads, bridges and buildings," he told Abbie Klein. "We put up a complete new school out at Dat Do recently. It's an American idea of course and they're doing it on a much larger scale."

"Yes. I've heard my father talk about it. It's a bit like what he does. His company is helping the locals find oil, using his expertise."

The lieutenant nodded but he had a story to tell. "Dat Do is quite a dangerous district."

He went on to tell the girl about the truck that was blown up out there when it ran over a mine, neglecting to mention that it had happened over a year ago. The incident had given Dat Do a reputation. It was said to be the hairiest place we worked in, with a network of communist support, even if the villagers didn't show their true colours by day.

I thought of some Dat Do stories I could have added. When he talked of the dangers of driving on the beach where we collected sand for the school's construction, and our need to drive in each other's tracks, I could have quoted Al Stanley who reckoned everyone in Dat Do would have appreciated a new school building, including communists. I could even have passed on the rumour claiming that many landmines in the Dat Do area, killing Australian troops, were originally laid by our own forces. Although at that time the story seemed too preposterous.

There were incidents I would not have recounted, mostly through embarrassment. Like the time I helped Tony Carmody change a flat tyre out there, observing nervously, as we worked, two women squatting beneath the awning of a nearby house, chatting as they prepared food beside a large bowl, chewing betel nut, and ignoring us. Nor the old man who shuffled by, even if he looked to me like he could have been Ho Chi Minh's brother. And I certainly would not have mentioned the approach of Moll's truck at the time, the backfire he produced by switching his ignition off and on again, nor the way we scrambled in the dirt for our rifles. Nor his laugh as he drove by. "Get some war up, pogos!"

And then there was Bushfire Daniels' sale of the sand he collected from that beach to the owners of various backstreet Dat Do homes, at five American dollars a load, or its equivalent in piastre.

On Dat Do, it was perhaps just as well the lieutenant was doing the talking.

I caught sight of Lin again in the mirror. She had her hands rested on top of her stomach. She showed some discomfort when we passed over a rough, pot-holed patch of road at the approach to Baria but nodded calmly when the lieutenant asked if she was okay.

Abbie put a comforting hand on her shoulder. "Are you sure you're okay, Lin?" I watched the woman smile at her.

"How close do you think she is?" asked Jefferies.

"To the birth?"

There was a pause while Abbie waited for Lin to answer herself. Her voice, when it came, was steady. It betrayed no pain, though she must have been quite uncomfortable by then. "Soon. Up and down, up and down in the car make it soon."

"Sorry," I said. "Any more pot holes, I'll slow down." I was already driving as slowly as I reasonably could, a night in Saigon in the back of my mind.

The lieutenant insisted we stop in Baria to buy cokes at a roadside stall. He wanted to give Lin a break and both of them some relief from the heat, although the drinks were only warm coca cola poured over a small block of ice and served in paper cups. Abbie checked with Lin first and she nodded agreeably, but I'm sure she would have preferred to have kept on going, on to her home in Muc Thap, to await her baby's imminent arrival.

We attracted some attention, sitting there in a parked Land Rover sipping Coca Cola, even from the normally indifferent locals. It was Abbie. The people were not used to seeing western women.

The lieutenant was able to turn around more now in his seat. "Were you involved with the oil company before coming over?"

"No. No, I was in college, mostly."

"Oh. What were you studying?"

"Comparative English literature." Jeffries nodded. "Not much use to a geological exploration office," she explained, as if to confirm any disappointment that he, a practical army officer, might have felt. "Luckily Lin made up for it. She has been of invaluable assistance to my father. With her knowledge of language, the country and the people."

"How long has your father been here?"

"Since the end of the war, I mean the war with the Japanese, on and off. He's spent almost as much time here as he has at home. He worked with the French up until Dien Bien Phu, with American support. He's the geologist in charge of the exploratory section of the company and he has big plans in this country, when the war is finally over."

"You might be back then, one day?"

"Me? I'd like to think so. But the war would have to be well and truly over. It worries my father too much. And I have things to be home for."

"Marriage?" The lieutenant smiled as he turned his head around, to counter the presumptuousness.

"No." She said and I wished I could have seen her face.

The lieutenant collected their empty cups and with a quick hand movement ordered me to start up. I looked in the rear-view mirror and noticed, through the crowds of bikes and pedestrians, a small American jeep parked some twenty metres behind us. As I edged my way out I saw the driver start the engine.

We crept through the crowded Baria streets and waited at the water tower intersection for the white-shirted traffic cop to wave us on while push-bikes, motorbikes, Lambrettas and the occasional car crisscrossed in a confusion that only he seemed to understand. No one spoke for a while. Then crowds, traffic and ramshackle little buildings fell behind us as the rice fields opened up again. Up ahead a company of helicopter gunships crossed the highway heading southeast, on their way, I guessed, to the Long Hai Hills. We were in open country, on Route 15, the road to Saigon.

Just before the border into Bien Hoa Province we passed a group of soldiers gathered in the scant and ineffective shade of a few trees.

"Are they Australians?" The girl asked.

"Yes. Infantry," the lieutenant told her.

They gave us guarded acknowledgement, in that loose, quietly confident way they had.

We looked on infantrymen with considerable respect. Sometimes, out in convoy, we passed them along the sides of the roads, trudging, heads down in single file, weighed down by their packs, their faces smeared with camouflage grease. Theirs was a different war from ours.

Occasionally we were reminded that myths and reputations didn't always give the full picture. One night in town Greg Urquart introduced a few of us to an infantry soldier he knew from basic training, and someone asked if he had seen much action. "None, so far. And I hope it stays that way. I wouldn't like to be in your shoes either. Those trucks must make easy targets."

The lieutenant looked back at the road ahead and sat quietly. He had no infantry stories to tell.

In Bien Hoa Province we encountered more Americans, their vehicles displaying slogans likeJust do it,We can do itandNo job too big, written in bright white paint on dull green bumper-bars. The Lieutenant was inquiring about Abbie's plans during her short Saigon stay when Lin interrupted politely. The side road to Muc Thap was up ahead.

Almost as soon as we left the highway I felt like we'd slipped into a world of the past. There was nothing anywhere to indicate that we were in the twentieth century and nothing suggestive even of the war. Rice paddies surrounded us. Off to the northwest, roughly in the direction we were headed, a low mountain formed the horizon. The rest was flat, wet and green; the southeast Asia we'd all seen in geography books, and strangely, there wasn't a man, woman or child to be seen. At that moment even the sky was devoid of helicopters. Lieutenant Jefferies seemed absorbed by it too so that we all sat in silence until he asked, "How far exactly to Muc Thap?"

"About sixteen miles from the highway," said Lin, and I noticed how American she sounded.

The lieutenant nodded and we resumed our silence. Off to one side, some distance from the road, a line of people came into view, bending at their work in the rice crop. In the distance beyond the mountain ahead, a Hercules was dropping down slowly to land, an indication of our nearness to Saigon. I took a glance at Jefferies. I'm sure he was looking forward to unloading the pregnant woman and getting to our headquarters in the big city as much as I was.

He turned to the woman. "How far now, do you think?'

"Just a couple of miles," she said quietly. I looked at her in the mirror again. She was in some pain but said nothing else so I saw no reason to increase speed, in particular on this rough, dirt road. As I watched her I was surprised to see an American jeep loom up at our rear, alone and approaching fast.

I moved over on the narrow road as it came up behind us but it slowed and fell in behind. I was about to inform the lieutenant that we were being followed when the driver swung out to pass. I felt momentarily relieved.

The lieutenant turned to look just as the shots rang out. In spite of the noise of gunshots, even in those dire seconds, there was something unreal and confusing about it all. I ducked my head instinctively as I drove but presumed they were shooting somewhere else.

Then Abbie screamed. I turned to see her terrified, distraught face as she reached across for Lin. The man on the jeep's passenger side opened fire again. He was turned completely around in his seat, up on his knees and blasting away at us with a pistol. I swung the Land Rover off the road and up onto a low levee bank that ran along the roadside between it and the rice paddies. I had to turn back towards the road to keep the vehicle upright and by then the jeep was speeding away. I stopped.

Abbie was sobbing uncontrollably, wiping away the blood from the woman's head. I jumped out and found the first-aid kit and we took out bandages and began soaking up blood and trying to make her comfortable. We found wounds on the side of her head, the side of her neck and one through her left shoulder, low down, but it was the head wound near her left ear that did most of the bleeding. It wasn't until we could see her face again and see that she was alive that I remembered the lieutenant.

A bullet had entered at his left eye and the helmet still sitting squarely on his head mocked the tragic state of him. My hands were shaking as I lifted and dragged him out and laid him down beside the Land Rover, choosing a place beside the bank where some grass grew, off the hard roadside. As his head hit the ground I saw that there wasn't much left at the back of it.

I turned to Abbie. She kept cleaning Lin's wounds as best she could, crying openly. "You okay now, Lin?" she was asking. "You okay now?" She was dreadfully afraid that her friend would die. She was so upset I began to worry that she might faint or become hysterical. But as she sobbed she cleaned and dressed the wounds with bandages. Lin winced when she dabbed the shoulder wound and she looked at Abbie sadly but with the same remarkable patience. "Baby, Abbie. My baby."

"Oh my God," said Abbie.

"Go to my grandmother." she whispered. "My grandmother."

"Where?"

"My grandmother." She looked at me. "In Muc Thap."

She had a swathe of bandages around her head now and a smaller one on her neck. She moaned as we put her left arm in a sling. It was the first cry of pain she had made since she'd been hit.

I had to pick up the lieutenant again and realised I'd only taken him out of the vehicle in a nervous haste to remove him from our sight. When I had him in the back compartment behind the seat I took some clothes from his bag and covered him as best I could. I was detached, emotionally, from all of these people because I hardly knew them, but I felt myself wanting to be sick as I arranged the lieutenant's body, making sure that his head was well covered.

I started the vehicle as Abbie continued to comfort Lin and as I moved back onto the road I realised that I had been as lucky as the lieutenant had been unlucky. The right-hand-drive Land Rover had kept me away from the passing jeep and so out of the firing line.

"Why?" I heard Abbie cry above the whine of the engine. "Who were they?"

"They've been following us. I saw the jeep back in Baria."

I caught sight of Lin's face once more. Her eyes were pressed down by the blood-soaked bandage but she managed to look back at me. There was no more calm. Her eyes were full of terror.

Chapter 6

Apart from the effects of time on memory, I wonder if the poignancy of acute fear also gets in the way of what really happened, clouds the picture, when you're trying to recall. And does memory subconsciously expurgate, fade out the less palatable, to allow for happier days and more restful nights in the aftermath? For some days and nights after those few bloody moments along the road to Muc Thap, my mind, my nerves, were in a state of intense jumpiness. I can only hope that what I say here relies more on a memory that is true than on imagination that is not.

I can still see the houses in the village. Unlike those in the larger towns, put together with used timber and sheet iron, in Muc Thap they were bamboo and thatch. "Ask her which house," I said. Abbie had calmed, absorbed totally in her concern for Lin.

It was a comparatively wide construction but I had to bend as I entered. There were two rooms in front, one with an earth floor covered with bamboo matting. The floor of the other room was slightly raised and I was led into it by an old woman who indicated a thatch matting bed where I laid Lin. The two rooms opened out to a covered earth-floor area at the back where an assortment of children, dogs, chickens and a goat watched me.

For all her swollen little body, Lin was a lightweight and I was able to put her down carefully. Blood oozed from the head bandage and ran down the side of her face. She groaned, from a depth of pain, a sound that was hardly human.

Abbie dabbed at her face. The old woman cried soundlessly as she brought a dish of water and some towels and as I stood and stepped back another woman, younger and swifter of movement, appeared from the darkness of one corner to take them from her. She squatted beside Lin and began immediately to wash and comfort her.

I became aware also of an old man, wizened with brown parched skin, standing in the same corner, watching. There was no recognisable expression on his face as he regarded Lin but I felt compelled to explain. "Men shoot. Man in a jeep, shoot her."

He looked at me sadly and something like a smile crossed his face. Lin was groaning in spasms now and clutching Abbie terribly, pulling her closer as she tried to speak. "Your father," she said. "Your father ..." The younger woman had begun opening her shirt and when I turned the old man was no longer there so I went outside.

Some kids had gathered around the back of the vehicle and they took off when I appeared. I checked our bags, rifles and helmets. Everything was as it had been and I resisted the temptation to pick up my M16, not wanting to attract the wrong sort of attention. Instead I searched through the vehicle to make sure there was no radio. Where Lin had sat in the back a section of the seat-cover was soaked in blood while there was almost none on the front seat.

And so began a long and frightening afternoon and night. And the loneliness. The lieutenant had been no friend of mine but I missed him now, his presence if not the man himself. Who was the man? Where had the forces of fate begun that brought Second Lieutenant Malcolm Jefferies, Australian Regular Army, to this war. Who would miss him? I knew so little about him I didn't even know then if he was married.

I remembered the youthful seriousness that had marked his style, and amused us, his troops "Try to look like a soldier, Private Daniels. There is a war on, Private Stanley, and we have a job to do. Can't you find a bigger shirt, Private Mollineau?" And then the day of the shoulder tap. "Aren't you forgetting something, Private Carmody?"

The convoy was parked for a lunch break on that day, at the clearing opposite the Nui Dat turnoff. We were gathered around the urn that sat on the back of the command Land Rover, when a typical conversation, the alleged sex habits of regulars compared to nashos, turned serious. Lieutenant Jefferies joined in. "If it comes to that," he said, "you're all volunteers because you all agreed to serve overseas."

"No we didn't," said Tony Carmody quietly. We all turned. Tony was not one to take part in these discussions very often. Oblivious, unperturbed, he went on. "Maybe some units got to choose, or maybe the rules have changed, but nobody asked me if I wanted to go to war? In fact I asked not to be sent but they didn't want to know. They said I needed a compassionate reason. Like sick parents, or a pregnant wife, dependent on me. Or conscientious objection on religious grounds."

This was followed by silence until, "Aren't you forgetting something, Private Carmody?"

"What's that?" Tony's focus was on the conversation, so that the lieutenant, without saying a word and in unforgettable fashion, reminded him of his rank. The following silence was pointed. In a way that seemed calculated to save the lieutenant as much as himself Tony said quietly, "Sir."

And the shoulder tap was institutionalised, a joke behind the young officer's back, used in endless affectations of authority. But not for long now. From the moment the transport company learnt of the lieutenant's death, there was no more shoulder tapping.

I leant there against the vehicle, trying to hide my fears, and as thoughts on the loss of the lieutenant faded, my own sense of vulnerability began to rise. I wanted to go. The local woman was with her family now and I had the American and the lieutenant's body to deliver to Saigon. And what sort of reception would I get, arriving at HQ with Second Lieutenant Jefferies, half his head blown off? Maybe I should take care of that first and come back for this American since she's so concerned for her friend.

I went back inside. The younger woman was cleaning Lin's head wound while the old one wiped her brow. Abbie held her hand and talked to her. The confident intelligence of before was now a writhing, panting ugliness and as she breathed out heavily blood oozed from the hole at the top of her chest.

It stopped me. I might have left the room had not Abbie turned, her face streaked with tears. I put my plan, whispering to her. I had to see to the body. You know. The lieutenant. "What if I take him on to Saigon and come back for you?" Lin was groaning again but I pressed on. "They'd probably send out a chopper anyway. A medevac or something for you."

"You're gonna leave me here?" There was no anger or desperation in the question. I think she was too concerned for Lin for that. She just wanted to know. But I couldn't answer and she turned back to Lin.

Outside I found the old man looking at the Land Rover. He turned and smiled in his wistful, distant way again. For a second he reminded me of Lin the first time I had seen her. "Britisher," he said.

"Yes," I answered, when I could understand him.

He looked at the vehicle again and then back to me. "Uc dai loi same-same Britisher."

"Yeh. Same as British." It was easier than discussing the differences.

We heard Lin from inside again but the old man seemed unperturbed. "British, Uc dai loi fight Japanee. Here." He made a faint gesture to indicate the land around him.

"Yeh? Japanese here?"

He was nodding. "France. Japanee. Britisher."

At first I couldn't understand him again. "Oh, right. French. Yeh, French too. And then Americans.'

"GI. GI and Uc dai loi." He seemed pleased with the order of all these visits and smiled again. He was very old. His smile revealed few teeth.

"Can you tell me which way is closer to Saigon?" I pointed up the road one way and then the other. "Saigon?"

Without hesitation he pointed towards the low mountain to the west, the direction in which we had been travelling. "Saigon," he said, along with something that I couldn't understand although I sensed that it was something to do with the mountain. I followed his gaze while I shooed some flies that had begun to hover around the body.

"How far?" I asked the old man when he'd stopped talking, but again I couldn't understand his answer. It couldn't be far. We must have covered fifty kilometres to get here.

I muttered something that was meant to show a concern for the women and went inside. The same sad scene presented itself and this time even Abbie didn't notice my presence. The old woman knelt by Lin.

The other one, still with her back to me, was leaning over Lin while she wiped her brow. In the semidarkness, and for all the sense of urgency and family calamity that filled the humble little room, it was noticeable how deft and controlled this woman's movements were. I suspect she was very responsible for Lin's survival during that long evening and night. I did not know then that she was Lin's sister. Lin hadn't mentioned a sister. So there was a mystery, an obscurity and a darkness about her from the beginning. Not once during my time in the house did she turn to look at me, even when she knew I was there.

It became clear that they weren't concerned only with Lin's wounds. They were preparing her for the birth. This seemed to make it all more of a family affair and consequently, I hoped, Abbie's presence less necessary, maybe even out of place. But she was as concerned for the easing of Lin's pain as the others were. And none of them was anything to me. I could arrive in Saigon and Jefferies' body would explain leaving the others, even the American. She wanted to stay with her friend. I had my comrade-in-arms, an officer, to take care of. I had put duty first.

But my duty was delivery of the passengers. And the lieutenant was dead. His delivery was hardly an emergency. He was a dead body.

In frustration I sat down in the little shade that had gathered at the back of the vehicle and as the hot afternoon progressed there was no baby. Later in the day it clouded over and rained but there was little relief from the heat even with the rain falling and the sun came out again, in a spiteful and triumphant return, drying everything rapidly. Then it settled on the wide low curve of the mountain, dropped behind it suddenly, and for a few moments the green fields were splashed with a greyish pink. I put my bag in the driver's seat and climbed into the passenger side, noticing a smell from the body.

With nightfall I was stuck. I decided to wait there all night and if nothing had happened by morning, I would go, girl or no girl, before the smell from the lieutenant's body became unbearable. Even in death, Jefferies deserved consideration and there was a procedure to follow with the bodies of men killed in this war.

I took a magazine out of my bag and clipped it into my rifle, left the safety catch on and rested it on the vehicle door. I wouldn't sleep. I would watch and wait all night. The sky in the west was now nearly as black as the mountain as I watched some local villagers walk by the vehicle. They were all women and children and they looked at me anxiously.

A couple of hours later there was a movement at the doorway of the house and I looked around to see the American girl approaching.

"Thanks for staying," she said.

"How's she going?"

"She's calmer now. I think the wounds shocked her whole system. It was like she was afraid she would die before she could have the baby. She seems more stable now. Her sister and her grandmother are amazing. I didn't know she had a sister. And she's marvelous. Like Lin."

It was not easy to see her face with the feeble light from the low little building behind her but she seemed calmer herself now. "Will she be alright?"

"I don't know. The pain seems to have eased but she has such great courage it's hard to tell how bad she really is." She leaned against the door of the vehicle with a sigh.

"You must be tired." She rubbed her eyes as she nodded. "Sit down for a while."

I took my bag from the driver's seat and put it in the back. She climbed in. "It's not so much a physical tired as an emotional one. It's all been such a shock. You see, I've grown so fond of Lin. I would never have lasted as long as I did in this country without her."

"I know what you mean. You need friends in this place."

"Thanks again for waiting for us. I know how much you must want to take care of the body of that poor man."

"Tomorrow will do. He's not in a hurry." I turned to look at her. "Did you say, thanks for waiting for us? Do you want to take her with you?"

"Yes. I can't leave her here like that. When the baby is born she'll need care in a hospital, and lots of rest. And my father will make sure she gets the best possible care. And the baby. The baby'll have to be with her of course. If it all goes okay. The birth, I mean. If the baby is .... okay."

"You don't think they'd be better off here, with the family?"

"In that state? No. She's shown amazing strength just to stay alive." She waited, looking towards me, but I had nothing to say. "It's not a problem, is it? She's never a problem. And apparently Saigon's just over that mountain up ahead. I want to postpone my flight home until she's well again."

"Have you any idea why anyone would want to kill her?" She was staring ahead in silence, the faint light outlining her soft profile. "I mean, I'm sure it was her they were after. Not Lieutenant Jefferies. I'm sure they weren't aiming at him, or me. They were aiming at her. And they weren't wearing any sort of uniform."

She turned to look at me. "I know that Lin is involved in ... in the politics of her country. I don't really know to what extent but I think it might cause problems because of her position with my father's company, an American company." She looked ahead again and her voice trailed off. "I'll be calling my father from Saigon the minute we arrive at the embassy. I hope he can get to the bottom of it, after he's found a place in a hospital for her. Which reminds me. I'm supposed to call him as soon as I arrive this evening so there might be a search party out looking for us soon. If not tonight, I'm sure there will be early in the morning."

"Good," I said. "Tonight would be best."

She turned to look at me again. "I'm sorry. Putting you through all this."

"It's okay. It's not your fault."

"And I'm afraid I didn't get your name. Was it Ross?"

"Mark Ross."

"Pleased to meet you, Mark. I'm Abbie. " She sat up suddenly and stepped out of the vehicle. "I'd better go back and see how things are going."

I wished she had stayed, and not only because I liked talking to her. I was alone again.

Chapter 7

I see the rest of that night now, in a kind of kaleidoscope, nebulous flickers and patches, through eyes that were struck with fear and fatigue. Most of it sitting in the Land Rover, staring into the blackness, positioning myself so that I could see behind me with a quick glance at the mirror, anything resembling a vehicle coming along the road. I imagined that in the first instance Jake Klein would direct a search vehicle to Muc Thap, Lin's home town.

But there was nothing and silence and darkness, accomplices of some unknown danger,played on my mind. Around midnight, with fatigue encroaching, I started to feel bad tempered. Holding a spare shirt over my nose, wanting to sleep but afraid to, I cursed my luck at having been on a day off when this job came up, and then my luck at having scored an overseas posting instead of a year's delivery duties back at Enoggera, as a friend of mine had. I even cursed my luck in the first place, way back, when my birthday number was drawn out of some officially prepared government box in Canberra.

The baby's birth interrupted my self pity. Sensing some new development in the sounds and movements of the women, I went inside, in time to see the old grandmother dragging the baby out of its mother. She laid it on the mat between her legs and took hold of the cord. Lin was a grey colour except where the blood was oozing again from her head wound. It made a pool beside her face. She clutched Abbie desperately and I remember her whisper. "Your father .... your father ... you must help ...you must ... "

As I left the room the old man was sitting in the darkness of the back area smoking a pipe. I nodded to him and he looked up at me calmly. Three or four kids were asleep on mats on the earth floor and that was the first time I saw Mai. In the flickering light from the bedroom I would have put her age at about eleven although she may have looked older than she was because I never once saw her smile. She was sitting up on the mats where the other children slept, her still, dark eyes watching me.

Outside I could just make out what looked like a group of kids moving down the road through the village. They were very quiet and kept suspiciously close to the shadows of the houses but when I checked the weapons both were there.

Hours they seemed, that passed then. At one stage I removed the bloodied seat cover from the back seat and added it to the clothes on the lieutenant's body. It helped dull the smell and I sat down in the front again. The first of the baby's cries was little more than a squeak, frantic and demanding but without the significance of a real cry. It went on, shrill, above the muffled sounds of the women. And then more silence, the house as still and dark as the night.

Struggling with sleepiness, in a search of something to occupy my mind, I found a footy pick slip in a shirt pocket and turned on the dashboard map light. Anything to stay awake. The absurdity of trying to pick winning football teams from games in Australia

in the coming weekend, given where I was, didn't occur to me. Some rituals are sacrosanct.

But I couldn't concentrate, even on that. Besides, I needed Tony Carmody's help with the Melbourne VFL selections, since we agreed he would help me with those and I would do his for Sydney Rugby League games. Discussion often degenerated into one of those arguments about football codes, with nothing resolved, like disagreement over religious faiths. I usually descended into accusations of Melbourne football insanity, especially when Greg Urquhart, who had played at A grade level in Perth, got involved, with the sort of presumed authority that only he could.

Tony claimed that he and his fiancee, Christine, would take the football season into account when they planned the date for the wedding, and it was not altogether a joke. More evidence, I told him, of Victorian madness.

I couldn't imagine wanting to begin a life of wedlock at twenty-two and I'm sure Tony wondered about my trips into town, but if I thought him too conservative, and he thought me irresponsible, it was never spoken. I realised early on that if I kept in touch with anyone after Vietnam, he would be one.

When Abbie came out I sat leaning against the front wall of the house, falling asleep.The smell from the body had begun to permeate the seat cover and I had moved away from the vehicle. The baby started crying again.

Without seeing her face I could sense that her calm of the early evening was now gone. She seemed tense and exhausted. "She's gone," she said, her voice trembling. "Lin's gone. It was just too much. Oh, God, she suffered to give that baby life. The baby seems okay. A little girl. They're trying to feed her with some sort of goat's milk mixture. But Lin is dead. My friend. Such a good friend. In all my life I've never ... What she went through just then. The struggle was enormous. You know? Just...my God, she suffered."

When the baby cried again she turned and seemed about to leave but then slid slowly down the wall and sat beside me. Her head drooped. Her hands trembled as she put them around her knees.

"You must be very tired," I said.

She nodded slowly. "How are you doing?"

"I got a little sleep before."

"God. What a night."

"Day and night," I said. "Seems like forever since we set out."

"I'd love to lie down for a little while. But I keep thinking of what poor Lin just went through. They're amazing, you know. Their calm through all of that. Poor Lin."

"I'd offer you the back of the Land Rover, but it's not too nice over there now. We'll go at first light, heh? I'll have to get that body taken care of as soon as possible tomorrow."

"Yes, yes." She was nodding slowly. "And that'll give me time to make sure the baby is okay." She turned. "I want to take her with me."

"The baby?"She looked at me and nodded again. "You want to take the baby, on her own?"

"Yes. With no mother she might not survive here."

"But ... what about the grandmother and ... and the goat's milk? Won't they want to look after the baby here?"

"Yes, but it would be too difficult. And I told them I would take her to a hospital and that my father will look after everything. Lin's sister is very concerned but they don't have any choice, really. I have to take the baby to a hospital, at least until she's a little older. Until we're sure she's going to be okay."

From inside the baby squeaked again. It seemed to have increased its urgency and its strength already.

"I'm sure we wouldn't be taking you out of your way. If we leave the baby here she may survive, she may not. In a hospital she will for sure. There doesn't seem to be anything wrong with her. She just needs the proper food and care. These people don't have the facilities, the time. It's risky. I know it's what my father will want. He'll see to it, you see. And it really is nothing after what Lin went through."

Even without knowing all that lay behind this nobility of spirit, I couldn't deny the reasonableness of her plan, but really, I just wanted to get out of there without the burden of a baby.

"Can we go soon then? As soon as you're ready? If Saigon's just over that mountain, we can't miss it, even at night. We'll get help for the baby sooner and I can maybe get the body seen to before the sun gets up too far."

"Well, okay. If you're sure. We'll leave as soon as they've prepared the baby's milk and got some sort of clothing on her. But you know, I'm sure there'll be a search party along this road very early in the morning."

"We may not even need them if we leave soon enough."

"Okay. I'm sorry. I just couldn't possibly leave without giving that baby the best chance she's got. Such as it is."

As she stood and brushed the dust off the seat of her flying suit she stared down at me. Even in the darkness her eyes looked scared. She was tired and upset and struggling to maintain her control but there was a determination about her as well.

She went back inside and I got up and paced over to the vehicle anxiously, wishing there was something I could do to speed things up. I just had to wait. I was pleased when she appeared again soon after but she was walking slowly and put her hand to her forehead as she approached.

"They're not quite ready. I'm afraid there's another thing. Can we take another passenger? Just a little girl. One of the kids. They want to have one of them go with the baby so they know where she is. I guess the adults can't afford the time. We could fit her and her bicycle in the back seat easily enough, couldn't we?"

"Bicycle?"

"Yes. It's only small, like her. So she can get back home on her own."

Anything else? Her dolly? A rattle for the baby? But I said nothing, not wanting to show my selfishness in the face of her requests which were all quite proper and noble.

"And can I borrow one of your water bottles for the mixture?" I emptied my water bottle and gave it to her. "Thanks. They'll be ready in a minute."

I nodded, hiding my concerns as I clipped the spare water bottle to my belt. I had no choice but to agree to her requests. The exigency demanded it. And then there was simply the girl herself, the sincerity in her voice and her words, as she stood there in the hot indiscriminate darkness asking for my assistance, her eyes as prepossessing as ever, for all their concerns, and for all my accumulating fears.

"The little girl," she said. "Mai. She's also Lin's daughter."

"Another one?"

"Yes. Though to a different father."

Chapter 8

I had wanted to steal silently into the night - to follow the road, headlights off, using what little light there was in the sky. But of course we couldn't stop the baby from crying, or squeaking.

"I think this is ninety per cent water." Abbie was nursing the baby and dipping a handkerchief corner into the water bottle containing the goat's milk mixture. The baby refused to suck it. She just kept on crying.

I had put Mai's bicycle on the bloodier side of the back seat and she sat next to it in silence, a young version of her mother. In the east behind us the village was now consumed by the night, as dark in that direction as it was in all others.

"I wonder if she'll cry like that all the way."

"If only I could get her to take some of this."

The road ahead was a narrow hazy grey. At times I stood up to make sure I wasn't going off to the side into muddy patches but avoided turning on the lights. The cry of a baby was not aggressive or challenging but piercing the night above the hum of the engine it set my nerves on edge. And I had no control over it. The engine I could turn off if need be. Anyway, we'd soon pass by the mountain and the lights of Saigon would spring reassuringly into view at the end of a low, flat drive.

"Come on, little one," said Abbie. "Take some milk."

The baby kept on crying.

The vehicle was just beginning to negotiate the rise in the road beside the mountain when the engine coughed. I disengaged the clutch and gave the accelerator some, hoping to clear a blockage in the fuel line. It sounded promising for a moment then spluttered and came to a complete stop. The fuel gauge told the story.

"Those thieving little bastards," I said. "I thought they were after the rifles."

"What?"

"We're out of petrol. Kids back at the village must have drained it nearly dry."

"Do you have any spare?"

"No. We filled up before we left. Should've been plenty."

"So what can we do?'

"Walk."

"Walk? To Saigon?"

I considered. "No. Not to Saigon. I reckon go back to Muc Thap. I'll take the jerry can and see if I can get some petrol."

"But what if they don't have any?"

"I don't know. There's the stuff the kids took, at least."

"And you think you can get that back?"

I stared around me, at a loss. "I don't know. I just want to get to bloody Saigon. And get you there. I think you better leave the baby there this time, heh? Even if I can get some petrol. It's all getting too risky. I mean if I can't get any petrol I'm ready to walk to Saigon now. It's so close. While we're stuck in Muc Thap anything could happen."

The baby kept on crying. I stepped out on the road. Abbie climbed out and stood on the other side of the Land Rover rocking the baby. Mai remained in the vehicle, watching us.

"I'm not walking to Saigon," she said. "If you can't get any gas I'll wait there in the village. Lin's family will help with the baby while I wait for the search party to arrive." She was looking down the road towards the village. Her profile showed that determined set I'd noticed before.

"Well, let's go. No point hangin' around here, especially with the baby crying like it is."

"She's hungry, poor thing. I wish she could suck on this cloth. Come on, Mai. We go back to Muc Thap." The little girl climbed out quickly. "Should she take her bike?"

"Yeh. Probably best." I unstrapped the jerry can then lifted the bike out and placed it on the road beside Mai. She took hold of the handle bars. I went to the front of the vehicle and grabbed my M16.

"How could you run out of gas?"

"It was stolen."

"I know."

I pushed the lieutenant's rifle under the seat as much as possible and began walking.

"Wait till I get my handbag. Are you taking your bag?"

"No. If we hurry we might be back before there's much light."

I waited while she took her handbag out of her duffel bag with her free hand. It had a long strap which she put over her shoulder.

"What about the helmets?" she asked.

"No, thanks."

Out of the Land Rover on the open road, the night seemed even darker. Mai trailed behind us, walking her bike. I wanted to walk faster but I would have left them behind.

Abbie whispered. "Hush, little one, hush,"

The road had leveled out again when we heard the first voice between the baby's cries and when we turned I saw several dark shapes moving down the road towards the vehicle.

"Get down," I told Abbie and we crouched down and moved over to the road's edge. My right boot sank down in the mud.

I didn't wait to see exactly which way they were headed. I grabbed her hand and we climbed over the low levee hump and immediately dropped into a paddy. We made our way through mud and water to a dry bank and scrambled along it, moving away from the road.

"Where's Mai?" Abbie whispered.

I'd forgotten about her and ignored the question, engrossed totally with moving on as quickly and quietly as possible, slipping a couple of times into the wet paddy edge. Abbie kept her footing better, even with the baby, though I had to wait for her.

We got to another bank running parallel with the road and turned left. Only in that direction, west, towards the mountain, was there anything but flat rice fields and I was drawn to tall clumps of bamboo just visible at the lower parts of the mountain. The baby kept on crying. The bamboo was thick and tall and when we reached the first big clump I dropped to the ground and Abbie followed.

"What about Mai?"

"She'll be okay. She only lives down the road."

I looked back, straining my eyes. A very faint lightness in the east showed what looked to me like a flicker of shadows moving along the bank from where we had come. Had the baby not been crying I might have stayed for a closer look. Instead, I dragged Abbie to her feet again and we went further into the bamboo forest.

I was sure we had to keep going. There just wasn't enough cover in the open spaces among the bamboo and they had to be some kind of VC patrol. Who else would be out at night like that? Anyway I wasn't prepared to stop and find out. The baby might have been safe but we weren't.

We began climbing and the bamboo ran suddenly into rain forest. I pushed aside the low, overhanging branches of small trees to find another more open area where the trees grew taller and gave almost no cover. So we charged on, the ground before us sloping uphill at a more obvious incline. It was more difficult for Abbie because it was so dark and she was carrying the baby while I had my rifle in one hand and the jerry can in the other to clear the way.

When I could make out a thick section of smaller trees with vines intermingled among them I turned towards it. Abbie followed. As we fell into this cover I looked back down the slope but could see nothing. Still I dragged her to her feet.

The trees opened up again and I led her diagonally across and up the mountain's slope until we stumbled into another thicket with huge leaves that slapped our faces as we pushed through. The ground gave way beneath us in the darkness and we found ourselves slipping down an almost vertical bank which ended in a more sparsely treed gully. I don't know how Abbie managed not to drop the baby because I lost my hold of the jerry can and was slipping too quickly to go back for it.

We stumbled into a muddy creek at the bottom and climbed upstream until we came to some rocks where the trees gave better cover. "Stop!" Abbie hissed. "For God's sake. That'll do."

She dropped to the ground, put both arms around the baby and stared up at me, panting defiantly in the jungle-covered darkness. I peered through the leaves down the gully. I had felt more than seen the way here and now I tried to listen but, although they had weakened, the only sounds rising out of the blackness were the cries of the baby.

"Is there some way you can shut her up?" I wanted silence, just for a moment, to hear what the jungle might be saying. Put your hand over her mouth for a minute, I wanted to say. But Abbie glared up at me and held the baby tight.

Finding a place among the rocks, I sat down, took up the rifle and pointed it into the branches on the downstream side of us. We waited. The baby's cries abated further. We had to keep brushing some sort of bugs away from us.

"I hope Mai is okay," Abbie whispered. I didn't want to think about that. I just wanted to listen. "There's no one coming," she said. I said nothing. "I don't think they even left the road. They were looking at the car." Though they persisted, the baby's cries were quieter and less nerve-racking. "Probably the kids who stole the gas." She didn't bother to whisper.

"I saw them follow us into the rice paddies," I whispered.

"I didn't. I'm sure they didn't leave the road."

I turned to her. I could just make out her eyes. "You're sure?"

She nodded. "So at least Mai should be safe. Be quiet, baby. Please." The baby kept up its squeaks. She unclipped the water bottle from her belt. "Would you mind holding this? I'll try to feed her again."

Abbie dipped the corner of the little cloth into the water bottle and placed it onto the baby's open mouth, to no avail. She didn't even know enough to turn her head away.

"Try turning her in towards you more."

The baby jerked a hand into the air in protest as her face met Abbie's chest and she went on crying. But then, mouth still open in vain hope of sustenance, she was suddenly silent.

"Oh, please. Could it be? I guess she's exhausted as well as hungry. Just look at her. Isn't she beautiful?"

We could hardly see her. I took the comment to be something women always said about babies. Abbie took a tissue from her bag and dabbed at some dirt or blood on the baby's tiny shoulder. She was now still and quiet and I pointed the M16 into the branches. When I looked back at Abbie her eyes were closed.

"You alright?" I asked.

She opened her eyes. "Just tired. So tired. And my arm aches. I'll be okay."

I didn't want to take the baby. I wanted to be ready with the rifle, but she had to rest and the baby might have woken had we placed her among the rocks. She was not the first new baby I had held. My older sister had three kids. But she was the smallest, almost small enough to hold in one hand.

Abbie lay back as best she could. "I'll just have a little rest," she said and closed her eyes. I settled myself, baby in one hand and rifle in the other, which was as ridiculous as it sounds. Babies and guns don't mix, like babies and war. And the scene would have looked particularly ludicrous to anyone who knew anything about my shooting skills. 'You can't hit much with a rifle in two hands,' Tony Carmody told me later. 'You'd've been better off putting the weapon down and holding the baby. That way if a Vietcong happened along he might've taken pity on you.'

But I wasn't laughing at the time. A strange and omnipotent night closed in, alive with lethal foreboding, it seemed to me, as I watched the thickness of leaves in front of me until they began to take shape and turn deep green. But at least I could hear the jungle then, the ripple of the creek, the call of some bird or animal, and I could hear my subsiding heartbeat. With the approach of dawn mosquitoes came out and were so thick in the air I put the rifle down to keep up a constant waving over me and the baby, refraining from slapping, afraid that any sound might mean the end, a bloody end, to me and possibly the girl asleep beside me. The sweat in my hair, running down my face and neck, had as much to do with fear as the humidity.

Part 2

The Jungle

Chapter 9

But the silence gave me time to think. When Abbie had woken and the light was good enough, we would make our way back to the bank where I'd dropped the jerry can, climb back up, follow the slope down to the bamboo and find the road. Even were there no petrol to be had in the village the search party would find us in the daylight.

My confidence grew and I felt only slight shame for my blind panic in the early morning darkness. I'd been sure we were being pursued, VC guerrillas a palpable presence at my back, expecting gunfire at any second, visions of the red remains of the lieutenant's head vivid in my mind. Now it seemed the girl might have been right. But I wasn't sure and who knew what this jungle harboured. I would not fall asleep.

So while panic faded deeper fears remained, as I sat there, at dawn, nursing a strange Asian baby in a strange Asian jungle. I was not prepared for this. A truck driver/soldier, dubious digger at the best of times, I looked at my only companion lying on the rocks beside the stream. In different circumstances she would have made for easy looking, but just then I'd have preferred a soldier. Lieutenant Jefferies would have looked better just then, or, if it had to be a driver, Lyle O'Malley, the platoon's number one volunteer, who knew as much about jungle warfare as some grunts. I was not prepared for this.

It had been easy to laugh. For a Vung Tau pogo, our only apparent danger the chance of reckless gunfire or the odd landmine, it was easier to laugh. Being alone and in a jungle took me back to my initiation, although the rubber plantation where it happened hardly compared with this, and, in the end, it turned out to be a laugh.

It was at Binh Ba, the plantation along Route 2, the road north to Ngai Giao, and on their first day out with the convoy, new arrivals incountry, called 'reos' for reinforcements, were sent into the rubber trees to 'recce' the area. Most sensed an initiation joke, an advantage being taken of their greenness, but unsure, did as they were told and went gingerly, on guard, into the trees. Only Tony Carmody had called the corporal's bluff.

"Sorry, Corporal. Not on my first day out."

So that we were all gob-smacked, even the corporal who loved this sadistic little prank. Until Moll laughed and then we all laughed, eventually even the corporal. It had been easy to laugh.

Then Al Stanley arrived, and he was the biggest laugh. Asking about tigers and stepping so slowly, so anxiously, through the rubber plantation. And looking back with such absolute dread on his face and we all striving to hide our laughter, not to spoil our fun. Then Al's rifle going off. All laughter stopping and the corporal charging off himself into the trees calling out for Al to come back. It was just a joke.

And everybody beside themselves when Al returned, except the corporal who was white-faced, because Al swore he saw a tiger. And Al copping all the blame because there were never any more recce patrols by reos into the Binh Ba rubber trees after Al, only much recalling of the different times and different reactions, and Al being asked at least once a day, "Seen any tigers today, Al?"

Soon after that he became 'Crazy Al', but not so much for that inauspicious start to his active service. Al was political. He got worked up every now and then with outbursts against our country's involvement in the war, for which we had no time at all because at a personal level he was so openly and uncontrollably nervous. And easily shouted down.

"Listen, Al," Bushfire Daniels would tell him "Next time we're up at Ngai Giao, head off into the rubber trees. First nog you come to you say, 'Excuse me. Where's the recruiting office. I'm a communist'."

And then Bushfire's mate, Barry Love. "You could shoot a few more tigers while you're out there."

At which Crazy Al went quickly back into his shell.

Tigers. It had been easy to laugh. But not now. Holding the sleeping baby I stared hard into the trees. I would be ready. I would fire if I had to. It would be them or me.

In the growing light I looked at the baby for the first time and saw a lightness in her hair colour. Thin and wispy though it was, it lacked the usual darkness of Asian hair. I put it down to the dim and dappled daylight. 'So tiny', was the comment you heard with new babies and the size of this one, even the thin piece of cloth wrapped around her loins, emphasised her helplessness.

But she was nothing to me, I told myself, certainly no one to die for. As unnecessary as our dash into the jungle might have been, we were alive and comparatively well, and for that I was thankful. I would feel much relieved though, when they were both unloaded, the body of the lieutenant taken care of, and I was on my way back to my unit.

A large striped spider dropped onto my trouser leg and I jumped as I knocked it away. It stumbled about deliriously at the edge of the stream until I pushed it into the water with the rifle barrel. The stream took it instantly. My movement disturbed Abbie and she let out a small startled cry and sat up suddenly, rubbing her eyes.

"Oh," she said. "How is she?"

"Asleep."

She stretched out her legs and began rubbing her knee. "You must need a break. Do you want me to take her?"

"Okay. When you're ready. And now that it's getting light I think we should get back to the Land Rover as soon as possible. If we can find the jerry can it'll show us where to climb up out of the gully."

She was watching me and the baby. "Thank you for minding her. How long was I asleep?"

"I s'pose nearly an hour."

She nodded and crawled across to the stream where she splashed some water onto her face. "Oh, God. I'm so stiff. I bruised my knee when we fell down that cliff into the creek. Can you hold her for a moment longer? I need to go to the bathroom." She reached for her handbag. "I guess I should go downstream, huh?"

"Downstream would be best."

I moved the rifle as she climbed past me, feet first, across the rocks.

She had barely disappeared among the leaves when she reappeared, terrified, her hands brushing the branches aside frantically. She pointed upstream. I got up as quickly as I could and scrambled uphill. She was right behind me again.

"Here," I whispered, turning and handing her the baby and as soon as Abbie took hold of her the baby started to cry. I cursed the sound as I pushed through the low hanging branches and some of them swung back and smacked her in the face. The squeaking cries of the baby grew louder.

When we reached a clearer space where the mountain stream fell into a pool I took her hand and we waded in. She slipped but maintained her grip on the baby as I dragged her to the side and we climbed up the bank away from the creek. I was hoping to lose our followers that way, whoever they were. I wanted to ask her but she seemed too preoccupied with moving on quickly this time and with holding the baby.

The thick undergrowth that surrounded the stream gave way to a grassy patch and we climbed through it on our knees. Flashbacks to jungle training reminded me of booby traps that could blow your legs off, and more than your legs. Hidden pits with bamboo 'punji stakes' planted rigid, sharpened like razor blades and dipped in shit to infect whatever flesh they penetrated. I wished I had paid more attention to methods of detection.

But grass made the going easier, for me at least, though we left an obvious trail and I kept looking back as we crawled. I saw no one beyond Abbie. We had more light then away from the trees and I could see her face. She was in some pain.

"You okay?" I whispered.

"No. My knee hurts and my arm is tired."

"We'll stop when we reach those trees. What did you see back there?"

"A man."

I had hoped it might have been an animal of some sort. The baby was crying. When we reached the tree cover I stopped and sat against a large tree-trunk. She sat, dropped the bag from her shoulder and changed her hold on the baby. I sat watching the grass, holding the rifle ready. Abbie moaned as she drew up her knee.

"Give me," I said. She passed me the baby and I held her in my free arm. Abbie panted audibly. "Tell me what you saw."

She moved her leg to get her knee more comfortable before she said, "I don't know. It was dark. Someone."

"Someone? You're sure it wasn't an animal?"

"No. It was a man."

"Just one?"

"Yes. I only saw one." She started to get her breath back. I waited, watching her as she rubbed her knee. "But I'm sure he wasn't one of those back on the road. I mean, I was behind him and it was dark and he was downstream a way, but he looked different somehow." While she spoke, the baby, lying in the crook of my left arm, stopped crying. We both looked at her. "Remarkable. What's your secret?"

The silence was a relief. "Do you think he saw you?"

"I don't know. But he must have heard the baby. Look. I'm going behind the tree before I wet myself, even more than I am already."

She slid around behind the tree and almost immediately I heard the flow of her urine. She looked more comfortable when she came back but grimaced as she arranged her leg again.

"Can you bend your leg okay?"

She nodded. "I guess it's only bruised but crawling through that long grass was hell."

I became aware then of a wet sensation on my mid-forearm. "Bloody hell! I've been shat on."

Abbie leaned across. "I hope she's okay."

"She's okay. She's sleeping like a ... a baby. They all do that."

"Do what?"

"That black stuff. I forget what it's called. It's something to do with their feeding before birth. Once it's gone they're more comfortable."

"How do you know all this?"

"I'm an uncle. Three times."

"Is that right? Well, she certainly looks more comfortable. Uncle." She moved in closer.

"Keep back."

"What?"

"I want a clear view of that grassy patch."

She crawled across to sit on the other side of me. "Give her to me now."

"She's sleeping peacefully."

"Please?"

As soon as she took hold the baby started to cry. "Oh, shut up."

"Give her head more support."

She looked at me and then changed her hold. The baby settled again and was quiet and Abbie looked at me with a smile so ingenuous I couldn't help returning it. It made me wish, and not for the last time, that we were alone together somewhere else.

"We'll have to get back to the creek before too long," she said.

"Yeh. Doesn't look like we were followed out this way. So we can search for the jerry can."

"Oh, sure. But I want to wash this diaper too. Or whatever it is. Not very absorbent, is it?"

"No. And I'd like to wash my arm. I'm wondering if we should head through that way, where there's more cover, and pick up the creek further downstream, nearer to where we first met it. Might avoid whoever you saw."

"He could be anywhere by now."

"Yeh, but if he was after us, he'll've gone upstream. And there were probably others with him."

"Okay. You're the soldier." She put her weight on one knee, holding the other one. "But wouldn't it be more that direction?" She pointed at the wider expanse of grass.

"I don't think so. That's too close to the way we came." She slung her bag over her shoulder. "Did you notice what he was wearing?"

"No. It was dark. In fact, his shirt looked so dark I think it might have been black."

"Black?"

"Yes."

"Let's go."

We set off again, steadily and without a sound, at last, from the baby. I stared about me. As we left the grass, the trees closing in around us provided some cover, but now that the dawn exposed us further, I imagined what else they could conceal and passed each tree with a sense of relief, as if the flora itself conspired against us. We welcomed the rippling sound of a creek and came upon a clear flowing stream surrounded on both sides by grass. Under normal circumstances it might have been a pretty scene. But we didn't recognise it.

"This is a different creek," said Abbie.

"Or else we're just further downstream."

We moved upstream to check. Sunlight now lit up parts of the grassy bank and flickered in the shallow water but then the undergrowth closed in. A low spiky branch ripped at Abbie's forehead and drew blood, but she insisted we keep moving. Then the stream diminished to a trickle.

I would learn one day that this mountain was predominantly rock and not thickly treed. By entering at the bamboo we had stumbled into the only forest section, but in our search for a way out that day it was big enough to confuse us.

I suggested we head downstream, hoping this little creek emptied into our original. Abbie washed the baby and I my arm and as we moved on we heard the murmur of more flowing water. When the undergrowth cleared we were standing atop a shallow cliff-face looking down at a stream at least three metres wide. It flowed swiftly in cascades and upstream tumbled from a high ledge to splash onto a loose collection of large rocks. I reasoned that both creeks we'd come across so far were tributaries of this bigger one. But I was guessing. The baby started to cry and we were lost.

We climbed down in this new gully and I pulled off my boots and socks to reveal blood-covered ankles and heels. Three or four leeches were busy at different parts of each ankle and there were bleeding openings where others had been. I had to drag hard to remove the hungrier ones.

Abbie was horrified, and pleased that her pants had stayed in her boots, denying them access. "And thank God they couldn't get at the baby." She was holding her out in front, smiling at her. Then she frowned. "I hope she learns to take some of that mixture soon."

I spied an opening in the rocks, almost a cave, on the other side of the stream near the base of the waterfall. We decided we could do with a rest, and cover, while we worked out which way to go, and made our way across the water, which was refreshing and tasted so clean I filled my water bottle. Then it was my turn to go behind a tree.

The opening of the indent in the rocks was wet from the waterfall's spray and the whole thing offered little more than cover for our backs, but I checked for residents and we crawled in. Leaning against the dry rock wall I put the rifle down pointing outwards while Abbie rocked the baby, who was crying again.

We looked at each other. She seemed close to tears herself. "I'm sorry," she said.

Chapter 10

"It's not your fault." I suppose I meant it though it would have been more difficult to say to someone who did not have a sore knee and scratches on her face. Cowering in that half a cave, at least not wondering now what was behind or in the darkness just ahead, I was able to look at her. Her eyes were tired and frightened, her forehead scratched and dirty.

The baby's cries were muted by the waterfall but no less persistent. Abbie unclipped the water bottle from her belt and took the piece of cloth from her handbag to try feeding her again. But it was all beyond the baby.

"Would you mind not watching? I'm going to try giving her my breast."

"Will that help?"

"I doubt it. I don't have any milk. But it might encourage her. She doesn't know how to suck on this and... I don't know, if we don't do something she'll starve to death."

"Well don't worry about me. I'll keep watch."

I looked away as she unzipped the top of her flying suit but she had difficulty holding the baby and I turned to look "Give me the baby. Just until you're comfortable."

I had handed her back and peered downstream but when the baby stopped crying I had to inspect. Abbie smiled, the baby at her small breast, and as if in response to our moment of mutual indulgence, the baby lifted her head away and gave out a desperate squeak.

"I didn't think it would last," she said. "Would you pass me that bottle?"

She held the bottle against her breast and poured but when she turned the baby in against herself she pulled away again.

"Maybe she's thirsty from all that yelling," I said. "Try this."

Abbie took my water bottle and repeated the process. The baby spluttered and cried and spluttered and cried and sucked, and sucked, in silence.

She had trouble nursing the baby with one hand and pouring with the other.

"Maybe if I do the pouring you can get a better grip." I poured too much. The baby coughed and spluttered and cried.

"Take it easy. You'll drown her. And soak me."

I got it more or less right, a steady dribble, and the baby settled into drinking again, then lifted her head from the nipple, cried once and closed her eyes. I took the bottle away.

"She was thirsty, poor baby." She was smiling down at the baby and gently rocking as she zipped her top. "She looks healthier already, doesn't she? Not so red and blue."

I had my first close look. Her hands and feet were pointing up into the air as Abbie put her fingertips on her forehead, touching the strands of thin, dark-auburn hair.

I asked, "Was Lin married?"

"No. Her husband went missing a few years ago. Almost certainly he's dead."

"The war?"

"Well, not directly. He was a university teacher and she was a student, when they met."

"What will happen to the baby?"

"I don't know. It'll be up to my father." And she looked at me a moment as she rocked the baby in her arms. "Who is also her father. Crazy, mixed up family, huh?"

When I said nothing she looked back to the baby. "Crazy situation. As if working in a war zone wasn't enough he goes and falls in love. And here lies the poor, unfortunate little by-product. And with her mother dead, God rest her soul, I'm hoping my father will want her brought up in America."

"Will he be able to do that?"

"Of course. Why not? She's an American citizen. Or will be. I guess there'd be the usual red tape and he'd have to okay it with Lin's family and prepare everything for her at home. But I'm sure that's what he'll want for her. Why not?"

She seemed lost in her thoughts and I said nothing. Sunlight touched the lower edge of the opening. I stretched my legs so that my boots hung outside, decided to pull them in and sat forward to look around. Nothing but rocks, rushing water and the thickness of trees beyond. Where the hell were we headed from here? I sat back and looked at her again, ready to put another question when the baby beat me to it. And all of Abbie's loving attempts to pacify her were wasted on her.

"Let me try." Ilifted her so that her head was rested on top of my shoulder, the way I had seen my sister and my mother do it a hundred times, without remembering until now. She cried on but when I gently patted her back she belched audibly, vomiting water, a few drops on the collar of my green army shirt. "Thank you. Shat on, now spewed on."

"Well, I'm a bit wet and sticky myself." Abbie pulled the top of her flying suit away from her chest. But the baby had stopped crying, settled back in the crook of my arm and seemed to like it there. She lay still and quiet.

"What is it with you? How do you do that?"

"The girl has taste. I was going to ask you. You were saying, back at Muc Thap, that the baby's mother, Lin, might have been in some danger."

"Did I ?"

"Something about working for an American company."

She bent to look around beyond us and seemed satisfied that for now, this was as good as any place to be. "I don't really know. I mean, I've only been here for a couple of months." She turned to me and thought for a moment before she said, "I got the impression that she and my father were keeping something from me. At first just the situation with the baby, but then, as I got to know Lin, I sensed that ... well ... you see Thi Lin Quang was not your average local woman. Make that, just, not your average woman. She graduated university, has lived in France and speaks fluent French and English. She was going to be someone, you know. I think she was biding her time. I'm sure that she was involved in .... concerned for .... her country's future. More than her interpreting and liaison job with the oil company would suggest."

She rubbed her knee and pulled it up under her chin as she spoke. "Of course this is mostly guess work on my part. I mean she was with my father for reasons other than political, as all the evidence indicates." She looked at the baby again. "Is your arm getting tired?"

"No. I'm okay."

"I've got a spare cloth in my bag. I think she'd fit on it if we lay it on this little sandy spot here."

The baby jerked her hands up as I placed her on the cloth but didn't open her eyes. We watched her hopefully. I couldn't help, for that moment, being moved by the size of her, the helplessness, lying there in a half-shelter, in the hands of children themselves, or not much more, and foreigners. But if some sense of responsibility stirred inside me, it was for the girl more than the baby who was at least close to her home. And my ultimate concern was for myself. Immediately beyond us an unknown rainforest loomed, just beyond that a country in chaos and beyond that a world in confusion.

"You were saying? About Lin?"

"Yes. Well, I'm guessing. But she was just too exceptional, you know, not to be someone. And my father said once, though he was clearly biased, that she ... he called her a woman of great intellect as well as a good heart. A leader, with exceptional vision."

"And the communists wanted her dead, you think? Because she was working for the Americans?"

She shook her head. "I don't know. Lots of people work for Americans." Then she looked at me again and seemed to summon her thoughts. "You know. She mentioned a name back there at Muc Thap. I couldn't make much sense of what she was saying. She was very concerned for my father, naturally. But she mentioned this name, Lee something Bar, something like that. It seemed to terrify her. I think she may have recognised him as the man who shot her. I must remember the name, as much as I can remember of it, to ask my father. Lee blank Bar."

"Have you ever heard the name before?" She shook her head and reflected in a way that made me feel she didn't want to talk about it anymore. I asked her what had made her decide to come to Vietnam to work.

She wasn't officially an employee of the oil company, and admitted it seemed crazy, as everybody was quick to remind her. It had to do with her relationship with her father, who had been coming to this country on business trips for as long as she could remember. He was convinced of the existence of substantial oil deposits in the South China Sea and finding and tapping them had become his life's work. And while the oil company was here supplying the military, he had been able to convince the American government that his survey unit should stay. And so politics stepped in. He was required to keep the Saigon government informed, in ways that irked him somehow.

All of this had stirred the curiosity of his daughter, over many years. She wanted to share, at least understand, her father's fascination with this part of the world, and the work that kept him so often away from his family. During her later teens in college he was away more than ever, increasing her need to experience his precious and exotic Orient.

The war alone stood in the way. And when it wouldn't end, didn't look like ending soon, she ignored all warnings, took her visa approval as a good enough guarantee of safety, and with a spirit of adventure not unlike her father's, went off to join him. She had turned twenty-one, finished college, and no one could stop her, not even her father.

He tried to stop her, as did nearly everybody she knew. She reminded him that they were now living in the seventies. Women, and she was one of them now, had choices. He worried of course but she was sure that he was also proud of her.

"At least he never calls me crazy, like some of my friends. One in particular. And so I thought if I got set in a career or married or something, I would never get here, and I'd always regret it." She stretched her legs out and folded her arms. "So here I am. Ironic, really. I have a brother who got as far away from the place as he possibly could."

"Where?"

"Canada. To dodge the draft."

I picked up the rifle and leaned forward for a better view. "Did you hear that?"

She shook her head, bending forward also. "I didn't hear anything, except the water."

We listened again, for some minutes, and then I sat back, but kept hold of the M16. "So. Your brother went to Canada. What does your father think of that?"

She leaned back and shifted her legs. "Well, he was disappointed at first. But I think now he might actually agree with him, though he's never said as much. He's become very understanding about it. And it can cause a few problems, though nothing serious, because he has to work with the military."

"They know?"

"Oh, yeh. Someone found out. One of them made a joke once that I should have been the son, and my brother the daughter. My father was not amused."

"Where does your mother fit into all of this?"

"My mother and father separated years ago. She used to say she just couldn't compete with a whole other country. Used to call it the other woman." She thought about this a moment before she turned to me. "Anyway. Enough of my crazy mixed up family. Why are you here, Private Ross?What are your reasons for coming to this war?"

"I was sent. Called up and sent."

"You mean you were drafted?" I nodded. "Did you mind?"

"Not too much. Not enough to resist."

"Or go to Canada."

"No."

She had her head rested on her knee as she watched me. "And how do you feel about it now?"

After listening to her I wanted to say something clever, at least informed, but there just wasn't enough in my background to allow for it. I had completed high school with a good result in English, average for the rest, but enough to scrape in an entry to a Law degree, largely at my parents' insistence. I quit before Easter, couldn't wait to enter the workforce like my mates.

My father hid his disappointment, I hid my shame, small as it was, and started work with an insurance company. Uni demanded full commitment, while a Monday to Friday office job, with regular pay, left weekends free for cricket. I was eighteen, with secret dreams of some sporting glory. And I reckoned I was no chance of achieving any sort of glory as a struggling, sleep-deprived, poverty-stricken uni student.

My thinking on the world beyond was no more mature. Whatever great geopolitical/economic wheels moved the world and its people, they turned with little or no appreciation from me. Conscription sparked some interest in the war but what I did understand about the reasons for it left me at best ambivalent. I suspected, as did many others by the late sixties, that the protesters might not be the total ratbag rabble we were told. And hanging around with Tony Carmody, and to a lesser extent Al Stanley, increased my suspicion that we conscripts might have been handed the rough end of some kind of political pineapple.

I had a friend from high school days, a clever friend but also a rebel, who tried marijuana and grew his hair long before the rest of us were game. He had taken part in demonstrations and declared his intention to conscientiously object if his birthday number came up in the draw, and go to jail if necessary. The last time I had seen him I was at home during our first big break in training, after basic, and he looked at my almost shaved head, with obvious amusement and less obvious pity and asked, "What's it feel like, Mark? Licensed to kill?"

But he had always been weird, a misfit, people said, and it was all so political, and when politics, on your personal list of likes and dislikes, ranked somewhere between algebra and shopping with your mother, its influence on your life's plans was about as significant. My parents had always voted Liberal. 'Better for business,' they said. I don't recall much family discussion on politics beyond that.

My father had served with the RAAF in World War 2. He didn't leave Townsville during the years of the war and met and married my mother there, but he was serving. My mother gave birth to their first child there, but she also was serving, as a nurse. That's what you did. The country was at war and you served.

I suppose there was some sadness in the fact that I thought more about how to get a leather bound ball between the bat and leg of an opposing batsman than I did about the reasons why I might be sent to war. Certainly my long-haired friend thought so, but that was the case. You served. Never mind what the brain might know, it was in the blood.

So that to the American girl watching me then I could only answer, "It's okay. I'm only a driver, which is just as well, because I'm no hero." She smiled at me. "What?"

"Nothing. It's just your accent. Forgive me. I like listening to accents. Where are you from? In Australia?"

"Brisbane. That's on the northern, east coast."

"Can you play tennis?"

"Not much. I play cricket."

"Cricket? I thought all you Aussies played tennis. I thought cricket was a game played by the English, especially Evelyn Waugh characters, at places like Eton and Oxford, where they say, ' I say' and 'Jolly good, old chap' and things like that."

"No. It's not like that where I come from."

The baby squirmed in her sleep and jerked a hand into the air, attracting our attention.

"Yes, miss?" said Abbie and we watched her settle again then looked around outside. "So. It's nice to rest but when do you think we should go?"

"Yeh, soon. So's we can find our way back to the road and pick up a lift as soon as possible, I hope."

"And they'll be out looking for us by now.It's just so nice though, to be able to rest without the sound of crying."

"Yeh. Without the crying."

She shifted herself again, holding her knee. "Oh, God, I hope we get out of this jungle soon. The first thing I'm going to do when I get to the embassy is have a very long shower."

"You should probably try to wash the dirt out of those cuts," I said.

She felt her forehead. "How bad are they?"

"They just need a bit of a cleanup. Do you want me to do it? I can see where they are."

"No, it's okay, thanks. I'll do it."

She reached outside the opening and held her hands under the water's spray. "Don't you have any injuries?" she asked, washing her face.

"No. I'm just tired."

"Me too." She settled herself against the wall of the cave again.

"Why don't we rest a while," I suggested. "Might make it easier to find the road.."

"Do you think we'll find our way back okay?"

"Yeh. Should be easier now we have full light."

It sounded braver and more informed than I was, but I couldn't say what was really on my mind, that I had no idea now in which direction the road lay, and in fact, was not prepared for this. Officially a trained digger, having done basic, corps and jungle training, I was, at that point, regretting my attitude, of doing just enough to get by, taking the least line of resistance. Okay you wanted me. I'm here. But don't expect too much. The conscript's excuse. You're interrupting my career. Cricket career, that is. First over the wall? First out of the trenches? No thanks. It might interfere with my unquestionable prospects, with my secret dream, to open the bowling for Queensland at the Gabba. Of course selection in my club's A grade team would be helpful first. At least I had sense enough to keep my dream to myself.

So I contemplated as I stretched out in that rocky little recess by the waterfall, my boots coming dangerously near to the sleeping baby. Afraid to hang them out of the opening, I dropped to one side, still sitting up and rested my head on the damp rock wall. I looked at Abbie, envious of the way she used the confined space. Her eyes were closed and she looked asleep already.

This sense of responsibility was foreign to me, even before the nation's random acquisition of my services. Until now, from the day they cut off my hair and put me in a uniform, keeping my head down, my mouth more or less shut and volunteering for absolutely nothing, had kept my short unremarkable military career free of serious trouble. Luck too had contributed, more than I appreciated at the time. I had applied for transport from basic training, my second choice among other support-soldier options, but I could have finished up anywhere. The admin officer whose task it was to allocate newly trained personnel to the various arms of the green machine, post basic training, who had for whatever reason elected to give me my second preference, also deserved my thanks. And there were soldiers known to me who had made it easier, one at least whose good natured kindness saved me in a very direct way from what would have been big trouble.

The work all came so easy to Lyle O'Malley, the slow-talking, troubleshooting hayseed from somewhere near the Murrumbidgee. He seemed born to be a drover, a gun shearer, a soldier, something heroic. And at the Jungle Training Centre at Canungra, if not for Lyle, I would have finished up on the CO's carpet, trying to explain my actions, or lack of them.

During a simulated ambush exercise our platoon had dug in beside a track to wait for passing 'enemy' and at about 4 a.m. I was startled into consciousness by gunfire. It was all done with blank ammunition of course, and it was just training, but my falling asleep would have earned me some sort of stiff, disciplinary boot in my slack, irresponsible arse, had I been found out. Lyle, our section leader as always, was right beside me. He had waited nearly all night for the confrontation to begin, and initiated it, while I slept and while he let me.

And Lyle's attitude was the same in Vietnam, as everybody saw soon after his arrival. Bushfire Daniels had run his truck off the road near Dat Do and bogged it in a paddy field. He claimed he had taken the narrow side street to save time but everyone except the officers knew Daniels' detours were entrepreneurial, not operational. Loaded with sand, nose-first in the mud, his vehicle seemed immoveable. His prospective local customer had abandoned him, and the sale of the sand, at the arrival of our platoon sergeant (Donald Duck, by nickname) who radioed the engineers for a grader to come and rescue the truck.

While he waited Daniels cursed the unfairness of the situation, the danger, army trucks, rice paddies, the war and the greedy, ungrateful Vietnamese, in particular a collection of their skinny progeny who had gathered, laughing, hoping for a handout, only to be chased away by the big redheaded Uc dai loi with his truck in the mud.

Then Lyle O'Malley arrived, climbed over the truck's cabin, opened the bonnet from where he stood in water on the front bumper and produced a shifting spanner from a pocket. He tinkered for a while, climbed back into the cabin, started the truck and slowly reversed it out. And so was called 'Spanner'. But I had known him from Canungra and to me he was always Lyle.

Well there was no Lyle or anyone else here to save my slack arse this time. It was all down to this soldier on his own, and the daughter of an American oil man with no military training. I closed my eyes but don't think I actually fell asleep.

Chapter 11

The throb of the helicopter registered so slowly with my tired senses that by the time I had scrambled out into the open it was out of sight beyond the treetops. The sound seemed to come from over to the side and it may well have missed us anyway. Still I swore as I looked around. It was just after 9 am and sunlight poured into the narrow valley making the white water sparkle. Some of that perception of malevolence in the forest had receded with the shadows but I hurried back to the shelter.

"Oh my God! Oh no!"

I climbed across the rocks to the cave and found Abbie bent over the baby who had now begun to cry. She was brushing her hands frantically along the baby's stomach which lay exposed because the cloth had come loose. Gathered in a grotesque little heap on the baby's lower stomach was a collection of black ants, feeding on the remains of the umbilical cord.

I helped Abbie remove the more stubborn ones and she clutched the crying baby to her chest. "Poor baby. Oh, poor baby. Let's get out of here."

"Is she okay?"

Out in the sun she held her out to see. The baby stopped crying to look at her. "I think she's okay. It gave me such a fright. I thought they were eating her alive. Oh, my poor baby." And she held her close again.

She washed her in a gentle flow at the stream's edge and then I held her while she dipped the little piece of clothing, wrung it out and laid it on a dry rock. I held the crying baby aloft for further inspection. We got her to drink some more water eventually and it seemed to calm her. She settled back in my arm again and her cries abated.

Abbie was looking around. "Doesn't it make you feel small."

"Yeh. Let's get going." I saw the hope in her eyes as she reached for the baby but she had hardly taken hold of her when the cries started. "Me?'

"No. She can just get used to me. Give me a break. You little jerk."

We set out along the tributary creek and as we moved through the tall trees and overhanging branches the baby stopped crying. But our movements the night before had been made in such a hurry we recognised nothing. We agreed to try to find our way to the grassy patch with the big tree where we had stopped and rested, but darkness distorts the look of any terrain and with no tracks to follow we had no idea where to leave the creek.

Abbie fell over at one point and landed on her sore knee again. She put the baby down gently, clutched her knee and groaned with such naked misery that I could have picked her up and carried her. Instead I took the baby.

Eventually we left the creek to find ourselves in a clear stretch that seemed more tree-covered than we'd imagined it should be, but then, around midday, we stumbled onto what looked like our tree from the early morning.

Abbie threw down her handbag and dropped to the ground. When she had taken a drink from my water bottle she said, "Here. You must need a break. Give her to me." When she took the baby she started to cry again.

She tried feeding her using the corner of cloth dipped in the mixture, but she wouldn't take it. She just cried. I put my back against the tree and rested the rifle in my lap. The noise went on, piercing the jungle stillness.

"Oh, for God's sake what is it then?" She took the cloth away.

"Maybe if you try the breast again?" Her glance at me was suspicious. A view of her open top might have been of personal interest to me in other circumstances, but not here. "I'm only thinking of the baby, and the noise."

The baby cried on. "It's so messy. Oh, okay, Goddamn it. Would you look the other way?" She was upset. I moved myself around a little. "Oh, I'm sorry. Can you help?"

She held the baby and I poured the mixture and after some initial refusals the baby sucked, and then stopped immediately to voice her disapproval.

"Oh, what now? I'm gonna finish up smelling like some old nanny goat. Oh, let's try the cloth again, huh. This is embarrassing."

I sniffed the bottle containing the goat's milk. Whatever milk there was in the mixture had gone off, or was close. I emptied the bottle onto the ground.

"Well," said Abbie. "Let's try some water again, with the cloth."

I took the baby while she did up her top and prepared the cloth and water bottle. There were struggles and cries but Abbie persisted until the baby had taken some. Quite suddenly, the cloth still in her mouth, her eyes closed. Abbie smiled at me and then pulled at the front of her flying suit. "I am getting so sticky."

The sleeping baby lay back in my arm. "I think it's best if we keep moving, while she's asleep. Okay?"

"I guess."She held out her arms.

"Ah ... maybe I should carry her again."

"Well, you can't carry everything all the time." She folded her arms, frowning at the sleeping baby. "You'd better give me the gun."

"What do you know about guns?"

"They go bang. I'll be careful."

I didn't like the idea, mostly because I was afraid of what might be in the jungle. "No. No, it's too heavy."

"One thing I do know about guns is that an M16 Armalite is not too heavy."

"Well, you look pretty tired anyway. Maybe we should rest a bit longer. Let the baby get to sleep properly."

She looked at the baby. "Before you trust her with an incompetent like me, you mean?"

"No. I didn't mean that. It's just ..."

"Yes?"

"Well maybe we should take advantage of the quiet. At least when she's quiet she's not telling everyone in coo-ee where we are."

"Everyone in coo-ee? What's that?"

"Anyone in calling distance."

"Coo-ee?"

"Yeh."

"Well apart from everyone in coo-ee I guess my knee could do with some more rest."

We settled back against the tree. I had the baby in one hand and the rifle in the other. It felt no less ludicrous this time, but I cared less.

"When do you think I might be able to nurse the baby, papa san?"

"How's your knee?"

"Bruised. Like my pride." I passed the baby over as gently as I could but she started to cry as soon as she was lying back in Abbie's arms. "Don't say a word. I know. Everyone in coo-ee."

I looked around, on edge, praying for the crying to stop and it didn't take long. But even in the quiet every tree, every bush, every lump of grass looked to me like possible cover for North Vietnamese soldiers, Viet Cong guerrillas or even wild animals. And how long would I last in any sort of contact? Who would ever know what happened to us?

But I was beginning to wonder why we hadn't been confronted already if there were enemy in this jungle. And why were there no tracks?

Abbie was looking down at the baby in her arms. Her face was sweaty and streaked with dirt and the cuts in her forehead were emphasised by the red in her face. She looked small. It made me want to appear calm so that I was better able to help her.

She caught me looking at her.

"You okay?"

It was a dumb question but she understood and nodded and gave me the faintest of smiles.

When we moved on again she took the baby. We trudged and climbed through the forest for hours. Sometimes we heard helicopters but they were always away in the distance and only once did we see any, and only for a few seconds. We might have stumbled into the original creek on occasions, the one where we first stopped, but as we climbed along beside it, recognising nothing and finding no jerry can, we lost heart and would then decide to leave the stream and look for another. The baby woke sometimes but she seemed to be weakening and cried herself to sleep quickly. Had I not been so tired I would have been more afraid.

On top of a ridge between two streams I climbed a tree, in the vague hope of seeing bamboo, rice paddies, even a road. Abbie sat down to rest and the baby slept. It had begun to rain which made the branches slippery and when I had climbed as high as I safely could I saw nothing but trees that were even taller with branches too wide apart for climbing. The rain increased our depression. It fell slowly at first in big droplets, harbingers of further discomfort, increasing gradually until it became steady and soaking even through the canopy.

Hunger pains began to trouble both of us but we tried to put thoughts of food out of our minds by drinking water and Abbie reminded me that the baby had had nothing but water, since her birth. I replenished my water bottle at every opportunity. Abbie produced a packet of chewing gum and divided half the contents between us. I put all of mine in my mouth and even when the sugar was gone I chewed long and hard on the tasteless remains, opening my mouth to the rain to give it some sort of juice. When I finally swallowed it I felt empty again and drank more water.

It was approaching 5 p.m. and we were climbing the same section of creek we'd tried a number of times, trying to find some sort of break in the trees on the slope where I'd dropped the jerry can, when Abbie called out. I turned around. She had sat down with the baby and was pointing at a wet crumple of white paper amongst the undergrowth. It was a tissue she had used the night before.

"Come on," I said. I pulled her to her feet. She looked so exhausted I took the baby in one arm. When she started to cry I didn't care. We were, I believed, nearly out of there. Even the rain had eased.

We couldn't find the jerry can or locate a likely section of the creek bank where we'd first arrived, so we made an estimate and started to climb. It was steep and I had trouble with both baby and weapon so Abbie took the baby. Her cries had become weaker but she persisted.

I was about half-way up the slope, well in front of Abbie, when I saw a movement up ahead. Someone stepped behind a large tree trunk. I jumped out of sight behind some small trees and scrambled back down the hill, signaling Abbie to take cover. We climbed into thick scrub.

"What?"

"Someone up there. Give me the baby"

"Why?"

But I was already taking her. "To shut her up." I clamped her head against my chest.

"Be careful."

"Listen! There's someone up there. In black pyjamas. Come on. We gotta go." I started to get up.

"You're smothering her."

"We gotta keep her quiet. Just for a minute. Come on."

But Abbie reached for the baby and started dragging her away from me. She screamed as soon as she was released from my frantic grip.

I was beside myself. "Leave her here! For Christ's sake. We gotta get outa' here."

"What?"

"They'll find her. She'll be alright. She's one of them."

Abbie was staring at me as she rocked the crying baby. She looked terrified but protective of the baby.

"Heh!" said a voice from above. And then we were staring at each other. The baby's cries had grown faint. "This what you're after?"

I picked up the M16 and edged out from under the branches. An arm protruded from behind a tree, holding the jerry can. "I found your gas can."

"Yeh?" I called out. I still couldn't believe it. "Well, thanks. Would you mind bringing it down here? There's a woman with a baby."

"You put that Armalite away."

"Yeh. It's alright. I have."

"It's okay!" Abbie assured him.

I watched him descend through the trees and scrub and growing darkness and when he pushed the last clump of vines aside we were confronted by a thin, pale faced man of average height, not long out of his teens. Straight brown hair almost reached his ears. The black T-shirt over faded camouflage trousers didn't conceal a lack of stomach, and he had no weapon. There was no smile. He looked more troubled than pleased with our presence. It was disconcerting. I wanted someone not only glad to see us but in a hurry to deliver us to Saigon. And someone with some aura of authority.

"Believe you dropped this last night."

"Thanks," I said, standing to take the jerry can from him.

"You mind tellin' me what ya'll doin' here?"

We looked at each other a moment and I said, "We were on our way to Saigon and we were, well ... we came into the jungle... to wait for daylight and we got.... lost."

"Carryin' a gas can?"

We might have felt like trespassers. "It's a long story," said Abbie. "But what are you doing here? You're not part of a search party?"

He considered thoughtfully before he said, "No, ma'am. Ain't part a' no search party." He looked at us, one at a time, with unabashed distrust.

"Oh. Well, who are you with?"

"Ain't with no one." I believe only our silence forced him to go on. "I have my own camp." He stopped to think again. Then continued cautiously. "Just nearby. Near enough to hear ya'll crashin' through the jungle in the early hours o' the mornin'. Baby cryin' n' all. Got so curious I came lookin' and found your gas can. Couldn't find you to give it back."

"Yeh," said Abbie. "We move pretty fast."

"Thanks for holding it for us. We'll need it. Our vehicle ran out of petrol." I gave him some details on our circumstances. He seemed to need reassuring.

He nodded, as if weighing up the veracity of what he'd just heard. "So, you're not from the army?"

"No." Abbie sat among the branches rocking the baby who was now quiet. She

explained her position with the oil company. I was her driver, but not with the American Army.

"I thought it don't seem right. When I heard the baby. But you said somethin' about a search party?"

"We thought you might've been with one, looking for us."

He assured us again that he wasn't, in a way that made whatever he was doing here, alone, on the mountain, his own private business.

I suspected he was one of those outcasts of the American military we'd heard about. Although they were supposed to be drug addicts lost in the labyrinths of the cities, living on the edge and not caring any more. This man said he had a camp in the scrub, like a soldier. He wasn't properly dressed as a soldier, and he could have done with more meat on his bones, but if he had turned his back on the military, gone on permanent AWOL, where were the signs of rebellion? His rejection of the American cause? Some sort of fuck the army statement? He had a faded bead necklace around his neck but dog-tags as well. Flowers would not have suited this guy's hair, certainly not his manner. There was something too blank, almost troubled if not menacing in his eyes.

But, though he didn't invite our confidence, he was American. And we needed help.

"We're looking for the road to Saigon," I told him. "Through Muc Thap, the village. Could you show us the way?"

His nod did not reassure us. He said I sounded 'English or somethin', as though whatever I was it could only be adverse to his situation. I explained my nationality and further details on how we'd finished up where we were.

He looked around, pushed a hand through his unkempt hair, considered deeply and turned back at us.

"Well, look. It'll be dark soon. Comes real quick in the jungle. Maybe ya'll wanna come back to my place. Have somethin' to eat. With your baby an' all." The invitation still looked like something of a burden. But then he smiled at last. "Ain't never had guests before."

If I hadn't felt so tired, and wary of his mood, I might have laughed.

"Your place?" said Abbie. "Guests? What about the war?'

"Yeh?" I added. "The VC?"

"Charlie don't use this little ol' mountain. Some boys come out from the village sometimes. Plant some stores, or somethin'. But I ain't never see no one come for 'em yet. The boys from the village know me. But I ain't showed 'em my place. Ain't showed no one my place."

"Well, thanks very much," Abbie said. "But, you see, there'll be a search party out looking for us."

He considered again before answering. "They won't see much now, ma'am. And it's dangerous to be out and about in the dark."

Chapter 12

He told us to call him Arkansas, and we never did get a last name. He was indeed an army deserter, but as he opened up to us that evening, you wondered if he was fully aware of the fact. Although he did ask us to keep his whereabouts a secret. His drawl was so pronounced I imagined it was put on, to achieve some effect. I didn't know that people actually spoke like Jed Clampett.

Still, for the first part of that night at least, even as he welcomed us into his jungle camp, I couldn't relax in his company. The cool nonchalance seemed affected, as though he wanted to be Paul Newman but from somewhere in his murkier depths Norman Bates kept emerging. And what was the source of that petulance around the mouth, fading only partly when he smiled? He had me worrying that he might be the type to run amok, turn, quietly and violently, on those around him. We're westerners, I felt like saying, and we mean well. Be friendly, for Christ's sake.

Some weeks earlier, he'd been part of an operation in the Muc Thap area, and soon after that, a mission into the central highlands. Those actions were followed by a spell in hospital in Long Binh. We weren't told why or for how long.

He turned almost wistful, gave Abbie a sad smile, as he described his time in and around Muc Thap. From the moment he saw the little village, and spoke to the locals, he knew he had to get back there. "Sweetest little place I ever seen. Like a little piece a' heaven in the middle 'all the hell."

Abbie and I glanced at each other. I'm sure she would have agreed with me that Muc Thap was little different from any other village. More remarkable for the usual signs of poverty than any special sweetness.

Then his talk turned military again. And not in broad and general terms. We were given specifics on what he and his platoon had done. Everything from the names of men to grid references. At least he seemed more relaxed with our company but I was glad when he moved on from operations.

He had simply walked out of hospital one day, convinced a pay clerk that he needed to empty his bank account for leave in Hong Kong, and hitched a ride to Saigon. From there he walked until he reached the village and made generous offers of payment for accommodation. But the people gently refused.

"I can always tell," he said, "when people don't want me around. But I couldn't go away. Not too far anyway. I had to stay somewhere near."

He moved onto the mountain. His savings from his stint in hospital allowed him to buy food and items for his home in the jungle. The people came to accept him. By their standards he was near to a millionaire. I asked why he didn't move into the village now that the people had got to know him.

"It's still a bit close for their likin'. Besides, I'm comfy here in the jungle."

Arkansas' 'comfy' was a consequence mostly of his camp. And it was a tree house no less, nestled in a leafy clump of branches that hung out over our creek. He had led us to it through the scrub. "Always take a different route, so's I don't leave no path." Then he dragged a piece of wood from the foliage. It was attached to a length of rope that disappeared amongst the branches three or four metres above our heads. A pull on the rope revealed it as a kind of ladder, with pieces of bamboo tied to it, spaced about a metre apart.

"Thanks anyway," Abbie told him. "But I can't climb that."

"It's fine, ma'am. Near to brand new rope."

We looked up at a platform of bamboo stalks barely visible among the branches. From what we could see it looked flat but with a slant towards the creek. He assured us it was built sturdy and safe. I suggested storing the jerry can in the bushes somewhere but he shook his head.

"I never leave nothin' on the ground. Oh. I ain't got no bathroom upstairs, either. 'Cept for 'mergencies. So, if you need it, I'll show you my downstairs bathroom. Little crick nearby."

We looked at each other. "I'm okay, thank you," said Abbie. I shook my head.

"Well, 'scuse me just a minute." He disappeared among the trees.

"Oh, my God," said Abbie. "What have we here? What are we going to do?"

"Not much we can do. I wish he'd shown himself earlier in the day."

She looked at the baby. "She's getting too weak to cry. We have to make sure he shows us to the road first thing in the morning. Presuming we make it through the night." Slowly rocking the sleeping baby, she looked small and scared and very tired.

When Arkansas emerged we had no option except to trust his rope ladder. He carried the jerry can and rifle, with surprising strength and agility, the rope swinging out over the creek bank. Abbie followed, painfully slowly. I carried the baby in my shirt, much to the consternation of her half-sister. And the baby started to cry, very weakly, as though cognisant of this latest peril in which her tiny new life had been placed.

The platform was roughly three metres square and felt almost secure, despite the slant and the notches and bows in the bamboo, and the thinness of one load-bearing tree. Half of the space was taken up with a one-man bivouac tent and a little rock fire place in one corner was covered with wide leaves we recognised from the jungle floor. An army chest sat beside it. Whatever dark, mysterious emotions I imagined might be disturbing the mind of our host, his camp was the work of a disciplined soldier, if marked with a personal touch.

He hung the rolled-up ladder and the jerry can on a branch stump. There were several of these, all cut and smoothed into hanging hooks to hold water bottles, cooking utensils and even a bamboo cup with a tooth brush standing in it. He put the rifle in the chest, though I insisted on removing the magazine which I buttoned down in a leg pocket. I was please to see no other weapon.

Several carved objects lay about. Bowls and cups made from hollowed-out pieces of bamboo. And on one of the branch hooks, a collection of multi-coloured bracelets and necklaces, but not the plastic variety. These were made from woven cotton. He told us the cotton had been given to him by the Montagnard people, an ethnic minority in the mountains with their own cultural dress, who had showed him how to weave them by hand.

But it all did little to calm our fears. We were at the mercy of a man who lived alone on a sloping bamboo deck in the trees of a forest in a very dangerous part of the world, a long way from our homes. What was he doing here, really? How had he lasted the nineteen days he claimed? I imagined what an AK47 rifle, let alone a machine gun or rocket propelled grenade, would do to bamboo.

We sat cross-legged, he furthest away, close to the fire place and the green metal chest. The trees moved in the breeze and I dropped my free hand to the bamboo looking for something to hold on to. Abbie did the same with both hands.

Arkansas smiled. He told us he had allowed for some movement in construction, though it was said more with pride in his work than concern for us. Extra bamboo formed raised edges all the way round and when the breeze eased the whole thing felt more sturdy.

When Abbie released her grip of the floor she took the baby from me and asked if she could use the tent to try to give her a drink and put her to sleep. He nodded, told her to go ahead. When Abbie left us he turned to his fireplace and set about cooking a meal.

He told me he was from the Ozarks, originally, where he had made tree houses as a boy. He liked to whittle and make things out of wood. "Everything from fishin' hooks to tree houses." The strong light bamboo he found here had made it easy, hauling the logs up with rope, and he had then spent a night in a tree nearby, watching, making sure no one came for him. And everything but the bamboo had come from the city, via the black market, once he discovered a few of the older boys in the village had contacts. The chest took longest.

As he spoke he tended the little fire he'd made on the collection of creek stones and I saw how the uncut hair accentuated his thin neck, the bony shoulders under the shirt. But as he stirred rice in a tin, boiled some sort of sprouts in a dixie dish and added a powder to both, as unsure as I felt about the man, at that point all I wanted was the food he was preparing.

When Abbie come out he shared the food around. I finished first, sat back and took my water bottle from my belt for a swig.

"Save some for baby," Abbie told me gently.

Arkansas smiled. With our dinner done he seemed more at ease. "Amazin'. You two wanderin' round these woods, like Mary and Joseph looking for a manger? Did you say the baby was your sister?" Abbie filled in some more of the gaps, including why we had left the road in such a hurry.

"Well." He sat back in a serious, proud way. "That sounds very right and proper. What you're doin' to save the baby. Most people wouldn't care, seems to me. Not about one little baby. And I'm sorry I frightened ya'll last night. Only went down far as the river. I never go 'yon' the river."

"That's okay," Abbie looked at me. "We frighten pretty easily."

"I ain't seen no one on this mountain to frighten me yet."

"Still. Wouldn't you be better on the ground? I mean what if a big storm blows? We found a small cave near a river. Maybe you could find a bigger one."

There was a storm so fierce one night that he had to find a place on the ground. It wasn't for him. He was glad to get back to his tree house next day. But he didn't like the rain.

"I get mighty sick a' the rain. But at least Charlie don't use the mountain. Too close to Saigon. And too rocky to tunnel, even in this thick piece a' jungle 'round the river. The VC They like to go underground. I p'fer the trees. Even in the rain. No one knows I'm here. And that's the way I like it. My only fear is snakes. Some of 'em live in the trees."

"Oh, my God," said Abbie, peering into the branches. "How do you ... What do you do?"

"Well, I leave them alone, they leave me alone, most the time. And they don't like smoke. Smoke makes 'em nervous." He looked up and around. ."I'm tryin' to get a roof. To keep the rain off. With mosquito net walls."

He pushed one hand slowly through his hair and stared off into the branches, then came back to us. "But you two have the tent tonight, with the sleepin' mat. With your baby an' all. The honeymoon suite." A real smile then, and it made for some transformation. Just for a moment a happy, welcoming host sat beside us, proud of his little joke.

"Oh. Are you sure? I mean, what if it rains? And the snakes?"

"I got me a hootchie, ma'am. You go right ahead."

"Well, if you're sure, thank you very much. You've been very kind. Could I ask you though. Would it be okay if we left to find the road to Saigon as early as possible? We'd like to make sure we don't miss the search party."

He nodded. "You sure are all fired up to get to Saigon. Can't stand the place myself. Gimme the J any day."

"Well the baby's getting weak, you see. She needs help as soon as possible."

When Abbie climbed into the tent I was pleased that the baby didn't start to cry.

"I'll just give them a moment," I said.

"Sure."

I thanked him again for coming to our aid.

"Well, thank the baby san. If I hadna' heard her I woulda' left ya'll alone. It didn't seem right. A baby in the woods, in the night. I had to see. I don't leave camp at night, as a rule. Once it's dark I just like to set a while and listen to the jungle. Nights like this, when the rain's gone, I like to listen."

We sat in silence a moment while he listened. My eyes were closing when he opened the chest and took out a shoe-box sized army-green container. Opened, it revealed a collection of the longest, fattest marijuana joints I had ever seen.

I had shared a few but was not a smoker. He lit the roll, dragged long and hard and swallowed the smoke, closing the container and resting back before exhaling and passing it to me. I stifled a cough as I breathed out the smoke. He took another huge drag, holding it again before he spoke.

"In the mornin', I go down to the village most days. Talk to the people. Give 'em gifts. Share my craft, when I've made something nice. And they're nice to me, mostly. I mean they're gooks. I don't even know if they're Christian. Could be Buddhists or somethin'. Major Hall. He said some of 'em might even be communists. And most of 'em don't speak any English, but they're nice. Like the Montagnards, the mountain people. They were nice too." He passed the joint to me again. "And there's a girl. In the village. Sweetest little thang. You know? She just... you know?"

I struggled to stay awake as I drew in some more smoke and passed it back. He dragged deeply on it again.

"Army's full a' goddamn hippies now. Fuckin' cock suckers gonna lose us this war. And I see that sweet little girl and I know. You know? I know then we gotta win this war. She don' speak word a' English, but it don' matter."

I don't know how much longer he went on before he realised I was leaning against the tree branch behind me, sound asleep.

"I'm sorry," I said when he woke me with a hand on my shoulder. "Been walking all day and half the night."

" 'S okay. Turn in. Use the tent. I'm gonna set a while longer. Have a smoke and listen to the trees."

In the almost total darkness I could just make out the baby lying in the middle with Abbie beside her, both of them on a narrow sleeping mat. I couldn't really stretch out but I put my water bottle in the corner, checked again that the rifle magazine was safely pocketed and lay down beside the baby. As my head met the bamboo floor I fell asleep.

Chapter 13

I awoke in Arkansas' little tent several times in the night, but never for long. On the first occasion I heard Abbie more than saw her, holding the baby, attempting to get her to suck water from the cloth. The baby only managed a few squeaks and settled again but Abbie held her, rocking her back and forth.

"Okay?" I asked her. She turned and nodded and I could just make out the shine of her eyes.

The second time I woke to the sound of a cry but not from the baby. When I saw it was Abbie, moaning in her sleep, I propped myself up on one elbow and shook her gently by the shoulder. She gasped as she woke, staring all around her, breathing heavily. "Where is she? Where is she?"

"She's here. It's alright. She's right here between us."

"Oh, God," she said, her breathing coming more steadily. "Oh, that was terrible. I dreamt she was falling ... about to fall ... off the edge."

"You okay now?"

"Yeh. If only this thing wouldn't move. I mean what if there was a storm? How does he stand it?"

I watched her settle again and this time I waited for her eyes to close before I closed mine.

Next time I sat up to find Abbie sitting cross-legged holding the baby. She nodded towards the tent opening and I became aware of a low, humming monotone and the rich, sweet smell of marijuana smoke. As my vision improved I could make out our host, sitting cross-legged beside his little fire place, now a small pile of white ash on the stones. His chant was unintelligible, his head and shoulders moving slowly with the words, and when I moved closer to the opening I could see his eyes. The vague and troubled uncertainty was now gone. His eyes were glazed, vacant and distant. Sweat rolled thick on his face and neck, soaking his necklaces, the dog-tags and peace beads. War and peace, hanging together, around the neck of that one ordinary man.

Abbie settled the baby again and lay down herself, and I fell asleep wondering if the man sounded angry or sad. But his chant spoke no emotion. Just a dull, meaningless hum in the jungle darkness.

And then the last time I woke that night, to find our host lying beside me. I sensed his nearness before I could see him, close enough to touch by hand without moving my arm. I lifted my head, strained to see Abbie. She had moved off the sleeping mat against the tent side and held the baby in close to her, staring at me, eyes wide. I listened. There was a light breeze but it wasn't raining. He had brought the smell of the smoke with him but the breeze moved the open tent flap and freshened the air sufficiently. He slept soundlessly. Fatigue was still with me, and the influence of Arkansas's dope, because I went quickly back to sleep. All four of us slept, each nearly touching the next, in a tent made for one.

I awoke a couple of hours later with a start. A grey/green morning was seeping through the jungle canopy and when I turned my head I saw Abbie and the baby immediately. The tent flap still moved in the breeze but the bamboo sat still. Arkansas was outside, stretched out in deep sleep, his head on a small sausage-shaped pillow, breathing noisily now in what was almost a snore.

Stiff from hours of lying on the hard surface, I felt rested for all that. When I sat up Abbie lifted her head.

"G'day," I whispered. "How do you feel?"

"Okay, I guess." She lay back. Her whisper was soft. "I'd love a bathroom. My kingdom for a bathroom."

"Don't push your luck. We were lucky to get a bedroom. Even if it meant sharing it around. When did he leave us?"

She sat up, shrugging her shoulders and shaking her head. She rubbed her knee and moved her head around in circles. "Want a piece of chewing gum?" She reached for her bag.

"Thanks. I wasn't expecting breakfast."

"You seem in better spirits."

"Yeh. Well we're nearly out of here."

And the man outside was no monster. For a while there in the night we had been bedfellows. And his tree house had proved safe enough. The jungle beyond him too, it seemed, was strange more than threatening and now provided a comforting breeze. As well as that, I felt an intimacy in our nearness to each other, together in Arkansas' little tent with the sleeping baby. And the gentle touch of ephemeral morning light, filtered through trees and tent, and the softening thing that sleep can do, enhanced all that I found lovely in her.

"I'm sorry about last night," I said. "When I first saw him I thought he was VC, and there'd be a lot more of them. I panicked."

"It's okay. It'd been a long, hard day."

"Well, we've made it. We'll soon be out of the jungle. And we've got the jerry can. We can go back to Muc Thap. Try and get some petrol."

"I guess." She smiled, a weak smile through her scratched, grimy face. "But let's get out of here as soon as possible. I'm sure the baby is getting weaker by the minute. And every time the wind blows my stomach rolls over. And," she lowered her whisper to almost nothing and pointed at the sleeping man outside. "That guy is crazy."

I nodded. "But he's going to save us."

"Well I hope so. He's a fruitcake. He sat there half the night chanting in some local dialect. Same words. Over and over. And got so stoned he decided to join us."

I checked Arkansas. "Anyway he's right out to it now."

"He's a pot head. And a deserter." She lowered her whisper even further. "Living in a tree, like a monkey. Crazy. No wonder he's not scared of being blown out of his tree by the wind. He's probably stoned all the time."

"We'll have to let him sleep it off now. And when he's awake get him to show us to the road."

She rubbed her fingers through her hair and turned her head from side to side. "Could I have a little of your water, please, just to splash my face?"

She poured some water into one hand and used it to wash her face. It only smeared the dirt.

"Take some more. And have a drink." With more water some of the dirt came off, revealing her white face. She took a drink and passed the bottle back to me. I washed my face, drank some water and looked at her. "You've still got dirt in those cuts on your forehead. Do you have any tissues left? Let me clean the dirt out of them."

"It's okay. I just want to get out of here."

"Okay." I mimicked her 'okay' a little. "But we have to wait. Cleaning them might stop infection."

Her look was a mixture of question and knowing. As she reached for her bag I took the gum out of my mouth. She gave me some tissue and moved her head in closer over the baby. I poured a little water onto the tissue and dabbed gently.

"Ouch."

"Sorry."

"That's okay. It just stings a little." She was looking around her, down at the baby, not at me.

"Are you done, doctor?" Her eyes met mine.

"Almost. The patient must be patient."

She was smiling, not at the lame joke, at my corny and dastardly plan. "You will leave some skin?"

"There. Perfect." She was still looking at me. I let the tissue paper fall and moved my hand down the side of her face to rest against her cheek.

She glanced at the baby. I moved closer and put my hand on her shoulder and when we kissed I moved in again and nudged the baby. She didn't make a sound. "Careful," Abbie whispered. "I'll be so glad if we can get her to a hospital quickly."

I put my hand under her chin and lifted her face. I was more careful but I wanted more of her. I wanted to hold her and when I got too close to the baby again, she pulled away. "This is crazy. We'll wake her."

"I'll come over there."

"No. You can't. There's no room." She was looking at me with that faint smile. Despite remnant smears of dirt her face was lovely. "There's more room on your side."

"Do you wanna come over here?"

"And give up my mat?" She pointed outside. "And with that man just there. How can you even think about...?"

"It's not easy. But you're beautiful."

"I am not. Don't lie."

"But it's okay. He's dead to the world and he did say it was the honeymoon suite." I moved over as far as possible against the side of the tent. "Look at that space. The baby's over there near you. There's enough room."

"Hardly. Careful you don't fall off the edge."

"It's okay. There's a ledge. The whole thing's stronger than you think. What's the big deal?" Her smile broadened. "What?" I almost forgot to whisper.

"This is crazy." But she looked outside once more and then lifted herself over the sleeping baby to squeeze in between us. "Ouch," she whispered. "Let me get my knee comfortable. And you need a shave."

"Sorry."

"It's okay. I hope you don't mind goat's milk."

"It's my favourite."

I kissed her lips and felt her fingers in my hair at the back of my head. But then she pulled away suddenly, turned her head to the tent opening and listened.

"It's okay." I reached for her again and she responded. We were half sitting, resting on one arm and I dropped myself down onto the bamboo floor. "Come down here."

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because the guy is there, and he's crazy. He's right there beside us." But she was still smiling. She glanced at the opening again and then dropped gently down beside me. "My God. Look at your feet. You've almost got your size twelves through the tent."

I moved in against her.

"I hope I don't offend. How I would love a shower."

"You're the loveliest nanny goat I've ever kissed."

When I made a movement that pressed us even closer together she opened her mouth wider. But then she pulled away suddenly and sighed.

"No." She sat up. "No, no." She took both of my hands in hers and placed them on my chest, holding them there. "No."

Climbing back over the baby this time she did not have the same control and she brushed against her and made her cry.

Chapter 14

With our guide to lead us, this time a more biddable jungle parted before us. When we passed a small pool Abbie took the baby's wrapping off, washed it and hung it from her belt and just before we reached the bamboo clumps the naked baby started to cry. She gave her to me, and while I carried the baby Arkansas took the jerry can.

He told me I was a 'number one papa san.'. He seemed comfortable with us now and I wondered what memory he had of our time together in the wee hours, if any. It wasn't mentioned. And I was pleased.

I would never have imagined I'd be so glad to see rice paddies. When we emerged from the jungle the sun greeted us mercilessly. It was a relief to see the road again and though I would never see it in the same light that Arkansas did, the village of Muc Thap looked almost inviting.

Abbie was carrying the baby when we stood on the roadside at the jungle's edge and when I looked at her I knew she had seen as soon as I had. There was no vehicle.

Saigon was a huge haze-covered sprawl in the opposite direction, thinly spread on the outskirts, concentrated at the centre. We walked out onto the road and looked in both directions as far as we could but the Land Rover was gone.

"It doesn't matter," said Abbie. "They'll be looking for us. They should be here for us soon." She turned to Arkansas. "Come with us. Surely you could get leave to come out here sometimes, if... if you wanted to."

He looked in the direction of Saigon for so long he might have been considering it. "No. No, thank you. And I'll be grateful if you don't tell no one where I am."

"But ... what will happen when your money runs out?" Abbie asked him. "I mean the people in Muc Thap won't give you food for nothing, will they? And some of them might even be enemy sympathisers. And what if you're hurt, or get sick?"

"Thanks for your concern, ma'am. I'll be okay. If I go back now, I'll be in trouble. I know that. Major Hall. He's a doctor. He said I can come back any time, but I know I'll be in trouble. And maybe this war'll end soon. So's we can all go home. But I can't go back now. I'll be okay."

"Well, is there anyone we could contact back home? Just to say you're okay. What's your real name?"

"Oh," he considered again. "Arkansas'll do. That's what they call me. And I'm makin' my home here, at least for now. The people here are nice to me. You guys look after yourselves. And your baby san. I'm sure she'll be fine once you get her home, back in the world. Say. I got somethin' for the baby. Might help keep her safe."

He took a little necklace from a pocket and placed it over the baby's head. She didn't move, and looked too tiny even for that piece of cotton lace .

I handed him the jerry can again. "You might find some use for this."

We thanked him again and I asked Abbie to wait a minute while I went to investigate the place where I judged we had left the vehicle. It took me a little while to locate Lieutenant Jefferies' body because he had been dumped in long grass some twenty metres from the road. But no attempt had been made to cover the body and eventually I saw the flies. Apart from being sickening the wretched sight only multiplied the tragedy. I didn't want to get close and left his dog tags with him.

As Abbie and I set off I looked around anxiously. "I hope they hurry. The search party." We looked back to Arkansas and waved. He raised a hand nonchalantly as he turned to head for the village.

"He has a girl in the village," I told her.

"Yeh, I heard him. He might think he has. I wouldn't be surprised if she hides when she sees him coming. And I'm afraid to think how old she might be. I'm going to tell my father about him. I think I have to. Before something really unfortunate happens to him. Falls out of his tree. Catches malaria. Who knows what?"

The morning had grown quickly hot, the road turned dustier by the minute, and when the baby started to cry the sound was even fainter than last night. I took her for a while, holding her against my chest to shield her from the sun.

"I'd like to give her a drink," said Abbie, "but it's too hot to stop and start messing with that handkerchief."

We walked in silence. The pathetic little cries were depressing and when they stopped altogether Abbie turned to look at her.

"Let me take her." The baby settled into the crook of her arm and didn't make a sound. "She doesn't need this thing in this heat." Abbie lifted the necklace over her head and dropped it in the dust. "For God's sake, where are the helicopters? The one that's looking for us in particular. Or a jeep or something. They're supposed to be looking for us. Before it's too goddamn late."

"When we get to Saigon ..." I hesitated and she looked at me. It wasn't a good time to put the question. Her face was creased with concerns and getting up a glow. A thin line of sweat rolled over her temple. But I was wondering to what extent I had been forgiven for my propensity to panic, as demonstrated more than once over the past thirty odd hours. "After you get the baby into a hospital and catch up with your father and everything." I paused again. "And if I can get some leave."

"Yes?"

"Well, I'd like to see you again? Before you go home?"

The answer was slow coming. "It all depends, doesn't it. I mean there are so many things to be fixed. It's all so messy now with Lin's death and I guess my father will want me home as soon as possible. Maybe he'll want me to take the baby, if he can't leave right away and that'll mean waiting till the baby is okay. There are just so many question marks."

She looked up at me as we thought about it. "There may even be some sort of inquiry, to which we'll both be invited. I mean the deaths of Lin and your friend were no ordinary wartime casualties, in the field of battle. Right now I just need to see my father, and get this poor little thing comfortable and well. And I was really hoping we'd be picked up by now. I can't understand it."

"Yeh. I'll probably be sent back to my base pretty quick anyway."

She looked at me again. "But after all we've been through, and your help with her, I hope we get to see each other again."

"Well. I would like to know how you got on. And the baby."

With her free hand she took hold of my arm. "And I would like to know how you... got on, too, papa san. But we'd better get baby san comfortable first."

\- 0 -

Abbie said that Saigon had been called the Paris of the East during French colonial years, when demure local girls in neat oriental dress served champagne to legionnaire officers who shared adventures as they looked out over the Saigon River from spacious, pillared patios.

We were walking into a different Saigon. As we got nearer, the farmlands receded behind us and small roadside settlements grew in size and number until they merged with city outskirts. They sprawled beyond the road and yet seemed at the same time overcrowded. For the first hour or so of the walk, there were trees for shelter. Though Abbie wanted to give the baby more water we decided not to disturb her sleep and moved on quickly.

Then there were few trees, and then none. The suburbs baked in the morning sun and the people lived in huts made mostly of recycled tin sheets, including old advertising signs, rusty but some still legible. So the walls of homes might announce the refreshing new taste of Coca Cola, or Budweiser beer, or boast the rugged good looks of the Marlboro man. One recommended flying United Airlines. Where the ads were in French the message was hardly less clear. Here and there television aerials rose from roofs in the fetid air, their rigid, right angled symmetry mocking the loose lack of it in the low slung buildings beneath. Technology's latest arrival, nascent but established, in this shambolic, slapped up world of transient life with all its naked struggle.

There were no clear spaces. All signs of farming were now behind us and I imagined the people who lived here made a living, where they could, from whatever the city had left over for them. In the evening it would sizzle with the relief of cooling rains. The dust would turn to mud. If the downpour stopped soon enough, metal and plastic would steam and gleam briefly at the setting sun. By mid morning of the following day most of the water would have gone and the dust returned.

I suppose sight serves memory best, but my sharpest recollection of that morning is the smell. A pungent ripeness, of food, of domestic birds and animals and people living close in the heat, and of the waste from that. Of life without the clean hard sterility of privilege. In a narrow laneway a couple of copulating dogs was locked together, back end to back end, and ignored by everyone.

As we neared Saigon the traffic increased. A cacophony of bicycles, motor bikes and Lambrettas weaved through the crowds. The odd car, mostly Renaults and Citroens, and all variety of military vehicles from Jeeps to semi trailers found their way through.

We moved off the narrow street with the rest of the people as American cavalry, a platoon of armoured personnel carriers, rumbled past, urgent and formidable. It was clear they weren't looking for us. The soldiers in the turrets showed some curiosity, but only one of them waved, scarcely a wave it was so noncommittal. The crowds returned to the road as the APCs disappeared in their own dust.

You can feel alone in a crowd. Until that day the physical difference between the people of this country and soldiers like me never bothered me. Armed and secure in numbers, our attitude to the locals was at best indifferent. There were exceptions. Blowfly, our camp garbo, treated them with unaffected respect. But now, moving deeper into the teeming humanity that was outer-Saigon, in the company of a white girl with a sick baby, I felt like one of Crazy Al's western imperialists, wading nonchalantly through Third World poverty, carrying an American-made weapon. Abbie didn't usually look that tall, the hair beneath her khaki cap that red. I was towering. Even the baby had the wrong coloured hair.

Every so often we were approached for money, usually by children. At first they seemed friendly, were not too insistent and we ignored them, up until an old woman with no legs sitting in the dirt beckoned to Abbie, and Abbie couldn't resist.

She sat near the entrance of a narrow lane that separated two of the million shacks along the roadside and she nodded her wrinkled grey head as Abbie approached, shifting her hold of the sleeping baby to take money from her bag. The children this close to the city were noticeably more forthright and we were not surprised when a group, an assortment of all ages, gathered to watch. But when Abbie handed a dollar note to the woman a boy of around twelve stepped in front of her. "One dollar," he told her. Four or five others moved in around him. There were smiles but they were demanding, not asking.

So much so that I stepped up with a hand out, not touching the boy but gesturing that he move back. He ignored me, refused to move and turned back to Abbie. "One dollar." I forced myself between them as Abbie stepped back and during the little melee a smaller boy grabbed Abbie's bag, so forcefully, tugging so hard, that he might have got away with it and vanished among the multitudes had not the whole business been brought to a stop. The smaller ones scattered first, Mr 'one dollar' last. Someone had snapped at them from somewhere behind, a woman's voice, older, controlled, and even with that upward inflection of Asian speech, holding authority.

I looked around and as people, old and young, assumed their customary indifference to our presence, no one showed herself as the speaker who had saved Abbie's bag, at least Abbie's bag. It was as if nothing had happened. The old woman with no legs had gone. I swore hard, tried to shake out the residual tension by looking menacing, dangerous, with a ready and able grip on the rifle, watching out for the older kids from the mob. But they had gone.

Abbie was visibly upset. Both hands, one holding the baby, the other her bag, shook uncontrollably. Her breathing came in short sudden gulps. I asked her if she was okay.

She took a couple of deep breaths and nodded. "Let's get out of here."

As we set off I recognised no one. They had vanished as suddenly and easily as they'd appeared. And then I saw a young girl, sitting on a bicycle, the only one of the people watching us, and watching us steadily. It was little Mai, but when I turned to tell Abbie she was talking to someone else.

I looked sharply to see who had attracted her attention this time. The woman had her back to me and I couldn't make her out. And I never did see her face. She had appeared from nowhere. There was something eerie in the way Abbie, who had been walking so close beside me, was speaking to the woman before I knew she was there.

The woman spoke then, and when I moved closer to listen she moved, slightly, deftly, to keep me from seeing her. It was some time later when Abbie told me that the woman was Lin's sister.

She had a light, grey shawl over her head and wore nondescript local pants and shirt. She was taller than her sister and there was a stoop to her wiry, almost scrawny body. She bowed her head as she spoke to Abbie but for all the passive humility of her stance and even with her back to me I could sense a strength in her, the sort of resilience that was there in her sister and even in the old man I presumed to be their grandfather.

Abbie's concentration on what she said was absolute and when I moved in close enough at least to hear her, she made sure her face remained out of my view.

"Is not good," she was saying. "Your pere ... your papa ... is not there. Is not good."

"Well, you see, he'll be out looking for me. With a search party. Or in Saigon waiting for word."

"There is a man, Le Dang Bah. Kill my sister. I take baby ... orph ... orphalina."

"Orphanage? But she needs hospital treatment. Look at her. She's getting very weak. Please wait till I see my father."

The woman looked around her, down the street but not in my direction, and any impatience with Abbie was quickly controlled. "There is orph... orphanage, not far, I can tell you. The... the mama look after babies,...little babies. She look after baby,when... until... until your father come. You see? She tell us where baby go, you see?"She looked around again. There was another convoy approaching through the crowds and she spoke more quickly. "This mama, this... orphan woman know me. She tell me, you see? I know where baby go. Your father come, take baby. I know. You come, take baby. I know. You see?"

"Okay. Yes, I see. But please let me take her to a hospital first and then we can contact you in Muc Thap. My father will want you to know."

"But he is not there. Not there in Vung Tau. I take baby. I can tell you where... where to go to orphan... orphanage."

She turned to look at the convoy as the first vehicle came close up beside us. They were trucks this time, headed towards the city and I stepped out towards them as I waved.

I'd had enough of the outskirts of Saigon. The last one stopped.

"Wanna ride?" an officer asked from the co-driver's seat. I believe he was a captain.

He got out to let us squeeze in between him and his driver. I looked back as I climbed in but both Lin's sister and daughter were nowhere to be seen.

"Where to?" The captain had to shout above the noise of a transistor radio that sat on the dash. "We're on our way back to base but I guess a little detour'll be okay if it's not too far out of our way."

..... armed forces radio in downtown Saigon.

Abbie shouted back. "Can you take us to an army hospital, please?"

"Well, which one you have in mind, ma'am? If you're talkin' the field hospital out at Long Binh I'm afraid it's too far out of our way. There is a little'n close by here."

"Sorry. I don't know Saigon. But the baby is sick and needs help urgently. We'd like the best care possible for her."

The driver moved the vehicle away, the radio persisting, music starting up. It was all I could do not to reach over and find the volume control.

"Sure. Sure. Sounds okay. I'll just need to explain to my CO He's a nosy son of a ... gun. You know how it is."

He lifted a two way radio up from the floor and extracted the aerial which went out of the window high into the air . He barked call signs. The transistor radio was untouchable. Sunshine, lollipops and rainbows, everything that's wonderful is how I feel when we're together.

While he attempted to make contact with his base the captain looked at Abbie. His grin was friendly. "I gotta say," he yelled. "You're the first white woman I've ever seen south of the Dong Nai River." Then to me. "You mind tellin' me just what you and your ... ah ... wife, I presume, are doin' wanderin' round the dirty old streets of south Saigon with your baby? And don't tell me you were lookin' at real estate."

"I'm not his..."

The radio crackled and voiced its contact. As the man shouted explanations, the driver, as silent as his captain and the transistor were noisy, made a right turn while the rest of the convoy continued on down the road, his dark, poker face saying nothing. I felt relieved that the baby had not added to the commotion. She was now very still.

They left us in front of a building set back from the road, surrounded by a high concrete fence with barbed wire along the top. It was in a more or less tree-lined street, buildings with covered, concrete courtyards, relics of French times, and in spite of the odd broken wall, there were suggestions of a rough affluence, or the facade of it, behind the scarred pillars.

Two well-dressed, armed guards stood inside a locked gate. They did not look friendly from the start. Even when Abbie explained our situation, emphasising her citizenship, they were unmoved. She showed them the baby. "She's getting worse by the minute."

They looked at me. I explained my circumstances, careful to endorse all Abbie had said. They looked at the baby. "That baby's a gook," said one.

We all examined the baby. "With auburn hair?" Abbie explained her relationship with the baby. "Look. Is there any way I can call the embassy, please? My father would have contacted them. He may even be there by now. He would verify everything I've said."

"My unit will verify what I said."

The senior one went inside while the other watched us as we stood in the hot sun outside the gate. A nurse who came out looked at the baby with some sympathy but explained that the facility was strictly for American personnel. "We have trouble with these sorts of requests all the time."

"But I'm American. And the baby is half American, soon to be an American citizen. And," she could barely control herself, "I think she's dying. As we speak. And if she does you will be hearing about it from my father."

When the nurse brought out a doctor, a man who looked close to sixty, he took a look at the baby through the bars of the gate. "Bring the baby in. We'll sort out the paper work later. You'll have to excuse our caution. Usually they're just left at the gate."

I was asked to leave my rifle in a locker near the lobby and as we were led through, it was noticeable how much older than the average soldier the patients were. When a place was found for the baby it was in a staff room with a table and chairs and a sink and small refrigerator. A noisy fan did battle with the hot heavy air. The doctor gave instructions, the nurse left in a hurry and when he put the stethoscope onto the baby's chest she didn't flinch or make a sound.

"How is she, doctor?" Abbie asked.

The doctor listened for a moment. "She's very weak. We'll make sure we give her plenty to drink. We might have to put her on a drip, before we move her on to somewhere better equipped for babies." He listened some more then turned to Abbie. "You look pretty beat yourself. Would you like to get cleaned up, have the nurse take a look at those cuts?"

"Thank you. But I should contact my father first."

"When the nurse comes back she'll show you the office. You can phone from there."

"Thanks so much. Can I get through to the embassy from here?"

"Well, I think that'll be okay. Jennifer will know." He turned to me. "And what about you?"

"I should phone Australian headquarters, if that's okay. When Abbie's finished. I guess they'll send someone for me."

"Sure. Sit down. You look a little worse for wear too. These calls can take a while. Maybe you'd like to get cleaned up yourself, while you're waiting. Take a shower."

I was given a clean towel and a cake of soap. The only other man in the showers had a swollen knee and a huge purple scar running down the outside of his thigh. He asked me to help him and I gave him support while he hobbled out on crutches. "Much obliged." He grimaced. "Fell on the slippery son of a bitch coming in."

With the place to myself I undressed, stood under the flow of water and gave myself a prolonged soaking. When I returned to the staffroom there was no one there with the baby. Until the nurse came in.

"How is she?" I asked.

"She needs plenty to drink and she's a very undernourished little girl. We've sent for some formula and paediatric equipment from another hospital. I hope it gets here soon. We're not prepared for patients this young."

"Is Abbie still on the phone?"

"The girl? No. As soon as she made the call someone came for her. From the embassy, I think. Amazing how quick they arrived. She must be important."

"She's gone?"

"Yes. Just now. Oh, and she said to tell you thanks."

Part 3

Saigon

Chapter 15

That the baby would be next to go should not have surprised me. She was one of millions and not the hospital's concern. We all had our priorities. Our programs to follow.

Abbie had told the nurse that she would be back as soon as possible to see how the baby was going. The nurse smiled as she considered the possibility, and didn't like Abbie's chances. "I don't know that it'll be up to her, the way they came shooting over here to get her."

I hated her. She was young but had a plain face.

"Feeling better after your shower?"

"Yes. Thanks."

With Lieutenant Jefferies' body, as far as I knew, lying undiscovered, in a patch of long grass in Bien Hoa, my professional priority at that moment, was immediate contact with my headquarters. I was two days late reporting in. But I wasn't thinking straight. I was tired and distressed, and suspected the girl might have gone forever. And of course the nurse could be wrong. I'd seen how Abbie could set her mind to things.

"Would it be okay if I waited here for a while? Just in case the girl comes back, before too long?"

"Well, I guess. I'll have to see what the doctor says and he's very busy this morning."

I waited in the staffroom, for permission to wait in the staffroom, watching the baby, wishing now that she would cry, make a sound, any sound.

And then the nurse had her hand on my shoulder, shaking gently.

She offered me their only spare bed while I was waiting, in what she called the 'head ward', which I hoped meant the chief and therefore most comfortable ward. But I arrived there with the nurse to find that most of the patients had their heads bandaged. I asked her to wake me if the girl came back.

When I awoke about an hour later it was gradual and disturbing and not only because I didn't know where I was. The man in the bed beside me was crying. He sobbed without restraint, like a distressed child.

I sat up, struggled to collect my bearings, and felt intensely lonely. Here I was again at the mercy of strangers. I decided that if Abbie had not returned I would check on the baby and then see about using the phone. I was a soldier after all, with, as the lieutenant would have said, a job to do.

The nurse was sitting at the staffroom table with a cup of coffee. She was writing in a large book and she looked up and greeted me with a questioning look.

"Where's the baby?"

"At an orphanage."

"Has Abbie been?"

"No."

"Then who took the baby to an orphanage?"

"Her aunt."

I sat down, confused and resentful, struggling not to swear at the nurse. "What? What aunt?"

"The baby's aunt. She said she was here to take her sister's baby. She told us that the mother had died in childbirth, like the girl said. She knew about the girl's father with the oil company. Someone Klein, in Bung Toe is it? She described the girl. And you."

"But ... you were supposed to wait for Abbie."

"Look, I'm sorry. This woman's English wasn't too good but she was very concerned for the baby. That was clear. And she's her aunt and she knew of an orphanage that would take her. We told your friend from the start, when she arrived here making demands, we're not a children's hospital."

"Is the baby okay? I mean for an orphanage."

"Well, they take babies from birth. I'm afraid we've done all we could."

"What's the orphanage called?"

"She said the name but I've forgotten it. I find their language so weird and I was called away. We are very busy."

I wanted to grab her diary, presuming it was one, and write, Today I had a very sick baby to look after. But I didn't."Can't you... Can you tell me anything about the orphanage?"

"The aunt said something about a marketplace near here."

"Marketplace?"

"Yes. There's a small one nearby. She said you, well, the father that is, should go to the orphanage to get the baby."

"But you can't... you can't give us the name!"

She looked at me, indignant more than concerned at my tone. "No. I didn't think it mattered. The aunt can take you both to see her, can't she? The girl said she's a sister or something. I thought you'd be happy that the baby's aunt is looking after her."

"What did she look like, the aunt?"

"Oh, thin. And tall. Tall for a local woman. Don't you know her? She knows both of you."

"No. I don't. Did she give her name?"

"No. And it was a little strange."

"What was?"

"Well, I guess she was just caught up with what to do for the baby, but when I asked her name she ignored me. I thought she might be shy but it was strange the way she hid her face behind her shawl. But then when she bent to pick up the baby I'm sure I saw a scar across the side of her face, near her left eye. I think she'd been hiding it. She wasn't comfortable, but she wasn't afraid either. And she was worried about the baby. She was very genuine about that, even if a little strange in the way she wouldn't tell me her name."

Fatigued now more than angry, overcome with a sense of helplessness, I turned away from her. If Abbie didn't come back perhaps her father would. Or someone would be sent and the baby found through Lin's sister at Muc Thap.

I wanted to be at the hospital in case Abbie came back soon, to see what was to be done. And just to see Abbie. But I had no way of knowing when she might return and there was nothing I could do about the baby's whereabouts on my own. And I'd waited far too long already.

"Could I use a telephone, please?"

Obtaining the number of the Australian HQ was a struggle. Kangaroos and Yvonne Goolagong were helpful.

"Oh, sure. I know. A journalist unit, is it?"

"No. We're allies in this war."

"Is that so? The things you learn on the telephone, huh? Tell you what, buddy. You could've picked a better war. This one sucks."

I made two more phone calls - my only comfort being that Abbie might return during the process - when I was greeted with the reassuring sound of something like, "Ostrine heck orders." He sounded relieved that I was okay and promised to get a vehicle over there asap. I asked the nurse to take the phone to give directions, neglecting to say what had happened to the lieutenant.

Back in the lobby area I recovered my rifle and waited for my ride to arrive, and for Abbie to return. I imagined her disappointment. There might have been a hundred orphanages in Saigon. The guards at the front told me which direction the woman with the baby had gone, with open reluctance.

I waited there nearly half an hour when a dapper looking lance corporal with a well-groomed moustache and dark blue Service Corps beret tilted perfectly, arrived outside suddenly, stepped out of a well-kept Land Rover and slammed the door importantly. I took up my rifle and went to the gates.

With my ID established I told him about the lieutenant. The brightness left him, the moustache drooping dramatically.

"What happened? They've been looking down in Bien Hoa but I'm sure they haven't found any body."

I gave the first of my numerous accounts of the death of Lieutenant Jefferies, that one the shortest.

"Holy shit!" exclaimed the neatly dressed driver. "You got any gear to get? We better get going."

He didn't introduce himself. Maintaining what I instinctively felt was an uncharacteristic silence, he charged the Land Rover down the busy street. We headed off in the same direction that Lin's sister had taken and I was keeping a look out. But I had to get a grip of the door when he turned a corner. His driving was as reckless as his uniform was tidy.

He looked at me, shook his head and was about to speak, I'm sure, when I called out, "Heh! Just a minute! Can you stop here a minute?"

He slammed on the brakes. "What is it?"

"You couldn't reverse up, for a minute?"

He leant on the horn, put the vehicle in reverse and his foot to the floor. People and bikes behind us scrambled for safety.

When I told him to stop, the vehicle came to a jolting halt. I stood up on the seat.

"What's up?"

"See that kid on the bike?"

"You're jokin', mate. Must be a dozen of them."

"The little girl, over to the side. She's a sister of the baby I told you about."

I was sure it was Mai. She had come out of a nondescript, sand coloured building with no windows and as she vanished in the crowd on her bike I searched for a tallish woman in a grey shawl. But if Lin's sister was around I couldn't see her. The scarred, windowless building from which Mai had emerged had a sign over the door but my driver said he couldn't 'read nog'. The place was a little bigger than most houses in the street. It looked too dirty and uninviting for an orphanage but I had no way of telling.

I thanked the driver for stopping and asked if he knew the street.

"No. Not by name."

"Could you direct someone here, if you had to?"

"I'm hopeless with street names in this town but if they knew the market nearby I think I could."

"Market?"

"Yeh. That's the only way I found the hospital. They said near the little market place not far from the American Embassy. I took a punt that'd be the Canh Co Market. From there I just drove around lookin' for the guards at the gate."

I looked around, familiarising myself with the surroundings as much as I could. "And this isn't far from the hospital. Okay. Sorry to hold you up."

"That's okay." He scattered the immediate general populace in front of us. "Heh? You've seen some fuckin' war, heh, on the way up here?" He swore again. He was a driver like me. We weren't supposed to see any war.

He had no fear of crashing his vehicle though. I wanted to sit back, enjoy for the moment, the relief of being back in the safe hands of my employer, the Australian Army, but I had to hold on to the door again as he took a corner almost on two wheels.

But his confidence was contagious. I found myself smiling as he forced approaching motorbikes out of his way and yelled at them. "Wrong side of the road, Nigel!" In Saigon there was hardly a right side of the road.

I sat back, felt more relaxed than I had in two days. "Is it possible to get booked for speeding in Saigon?"

He grinned at me. "Yeh. But the MPs leave me alone and the local cops have got no chance. I s'pose you guys have gotta be more careful, heh, in convoy, out on the highways?"

"Yeh. Or we get shot at." He glanced at me incredulously. "Well, it happened once. A guy didn't stop at a check-point in time. Local cops opened fire."

At least we thought that was what happened. And Barry Love finished up with a set of bullet holes along the side of his truck.

My driver shook his head. "You can have that, mate. All on your own. Makes me glad I'm serving my time in this city. Mad as it is."

Chapter 16

At AFV headquarters I had to tell and retell the story, and then again over a radio phone to Major Collins, my company commanding officer. He asked many questions and there were several silences. He was very troubled.

The HQ officers were quick with their questions and one, a captain from Intelligence Corps, scribbled furiously the whole time I spoke. They asked about Lin, wanting to know whether she was armed or wearing any sort of uniform. Of course there were no questions about the baby.

When they finally released me it was explained that I was strictly confined to barracks, "pending further questioning". I may not have been suspected of anything but had I been Lieutenant Jefferies' killer, I wouldn't have been the first soldier in the war to murder an officer. 'Fragging' the Americans called it and of course officers everywhere had a special interest in it.

I spent much of my first twenty-four hours in Saigon asleep and when I finally surfaced properly from my allocated bunk at the Canberra Hotel, on my second morning there, I was issued some toiletries and a clean set of greens. At around 1pm Lance Corporal Kelleher, the driver who brought me from the hospital, bounced into the dormitory with the same spring in his step and news that my malingering days were over. He said it as though it had been his decision.

"Your story must have checked out. I'm to take you out to Tan Son Nhut Airport tomorrow for a Caribou flight back to Vung Tau."

"No more third degree?" He shook his head importantly. "Did anyone say anything about what happened to the girl, and the baby?"

"Sorry, no. Just that you're being returned to normal duties, unless your boss decides otherwise."

Corporal 'Killer' Kelleher struck me as a man who liked order in his life, war or no war. The moustache, to begin with, spoke of assiduous personal care. He was concerned about my dejected mood, in particular when his suggestion of a night at his favourite bar, guaranteed, he promised, to put the smile back on any man's face, did nothing to lift me.

"Cheer up. You're a free man. No more interrogation. Those guys can be very persistent if they don't like you." I didn't cheer up. "Well, listen. Since it's all about this American, all may not be lost."

Killer would help me find Abbie. He explained that the American Embassy was contactable but they wouldn't talk to "any old baggy-arsed private, no offence, from the Australian Army on a personal request."

The sergeant who placed Killer and me beside a phone, more or less in private, spoke with a soft sibilance that was almost effeminate. The Australian presence in Saigon had a more manicured feel than operations beyond. The Canberra, to begin with, was a converted hotel. No dust and mud, no sand-bagged huts and tents for these sons of Anzac.

When contact with the American Embassy was made Killer had to endure several confused replies before he reached the man he was after, a quartermaster sergeant who agreed to arrange a phone connection to the newly arrived American girl.

Killer winked at me. "Won't be long. Just a matter of closing the deal. Ever tasted American beer? Weak as piss, heh? Never underestimate the power of Aussie beer."

A phone connection to the embassy's female guest would cost me a carton of beer. I took the phone, but when a voice came on the line it was the same man, to tell me he would have to phone us back.

Killer gave me the number to pass on. "You know her, Sergeant?" I asked the American. "Seen her around?"

"No. But I've been told about her. She a red head?"

"Yes. That'll be her."

"Take it easy, buddy. I'll do what I can."

"Could you tell her, please Sergeant, that I may know where the baby is. It's important. She'll want to know."

"You know where the baby is. Uhuh. And you'll tell Killer I'll need the beer cold. It's important. Okay?"

We waited beside the phone for nearly half an hour before Killer's hold over the situation, mainly use of the phone, reached an end. He smoothed his moustache in contemplation, handed me a piece of paper with a number written on it and signaled me to follow. "You might want to keep that. It's the best number for the embassy."

We made a stop at the headquarters ORs' canteen while Killer bought the beer and then he seemed to spend five minutes seeking out Saigon back streets. "I've got some free time. My job today is to watch over you. Seems you could turn dangerous or something."

We arrived at a huge double gate with a guard standing inside and a few more in the guard-house. Killer stamped on the brake and called out. "G'day, mate. Got a special delivery from the 'stralian army. For Sergeant Stroud in stores."

"Paperwork?"

"No. Listen, it's kinda' unofficial. But if you'd put through a call to the man he'll okay it. Tell him it's from the killer."

The guard examined us contemptuously. "The killer? 'S'at you?"

Killer nodded and grinned. "This arse'ole knows me," he told me quietly. "Makes me go through this shit every time."

"Is this the embassy?" I asked.

"Tradesmen's entrance."

"What do you normally come here for?"

"Some regular pick up and deliveries. But also, off the record, the quartermaster sergeant here, Stroud, the one you spoke to on the phone, he can get his hands on all sorts of goodies. American pornos. Top grade scotch and bourbon. The sort that doesn't get through to most of us. And apparently, although I don't touch the stuff myself, the best funny weed you can smoke. The man can do the lot."

When we pulled up beside a loading bay, a soldier sitting on a box reading a Playboylifted his head from the magazine but made no other acknowledgment of our presence.

"'S'cuse me, mate. Sergeant Stroud around?" A card pinned to the man's cap said, 'Hero. First Class.' A sign on the wall of the storeroom said, "I left my heart in San Francisco. And my mind in Vietnam." And another, "If I had a home in hell and a farm in Vietnam, I'd sell the farm and go home." Of course the war became famous for these ubiquitous one-liners but if their bitter message ever reached the notice of our political masters it apparently made little or no difference to operations. The war dragged on.

I asked Killer how long he had been in-country.

"Three hundred and twelve. Cracked the big three hundred. Fifty-two and a wakey. That's short, mate. Is that short or what?"

"All in Saigon?"

"All in Saigon."

Sergeant Stroud had thick curly hair and a willing smile for a sergeant. "Killer, you bad-assed black-marketeer. What 'cha got for me?"

Killer reached over and patted the carton on the seat behind us. "Icy cold and pure gold, Sergeant. All the way from Oz."

"Beautiful, my man. You wanna leave it in the cold room over there."

"Sure. But listen, Sarg. We still haven't got to talk to that girl."

The sergeant expressed his frustration with those of greater rank but less sense. He disappeared and returned soon after. "You'll see a tree in a clearing around past the battery store. Park your vehicle there and nowhere else. Understand? She's gonna try and get down to see you."

Killer nodded. "Thanks, Sarg."

"Yeh, thanks," I added. I hadn't expected a personal meeting.

The sergeant looked at me. "Don't expect her to be alone. I'm told she's restricted, for her own safety. She came over here to see her dad. Must be crazy." He turned to Killer. "The large polished chrome door over there. That's the cold room."

Killer grinned. "Yeh, I know. I've been there before."

"And Killer." He leaned over meaningfully. "Stay next the tree. And drive very very slow."

We waited in the thin shade of a tall clipped tree and Abbie appeared from around the corner I'd least expected her to. She was wearing the same flying suit, or a similar one, but she looked clean and refreshed. A taller woman, perhaps ten years older, followed her closely and a soldier with a weapon followed her. While we spoke this soldier stood back watching quietly.

I wished Abbie and I could have met alone somehow. Her companion looked friendly enough but in a brisk, businesslike way. A straight-backed, square-shouldered woman, she observed the way Abbie and I smiled at each other with a mixture of amusement and disapproval.

As soon as we had made introductions Abbie said, "Do you know where the baby is?"

"I think so."

"Please tell us all you can," said Julie Shields, Abbie's chaperon. She smiled in a superior way. I told them about the latest appearance of Lin's sister and my sighting of Mai.

"I guess that's why that stupid hospital couldn't tell us much, Julie."

Julie had no comment on that. Had Killer or I had any illusions about our importance in the conversation that followed, or its outcomes, Julie Shields would have put us straight, perhaps without even opening her mouth. Of course to the Vietnamese this war was 'The American War'. The Americans were running the show. And Julie Shields was an American official, in charge. Every word she spoke seemed to illustrate her authority, and our subordination.

Sometimes it's only when you look back on something said, that the speaker's real, often secret motivation becomes clear. For all her cold officiousness, I imagined at the time that Julie Shields' only interest here was in recovering the baby, for Abbie and ultimately for her father. Abbie knew the situation a little better, but just then, she wasn't in a position to explain to me.

I had to reassure Julie that the woman who took the baby from the hospital was the same one who wanted to take her along the road, before we arrived in Saigon. It seemed important. I recounted all the nurse at the hospital had said. I had no way of knowing just how pleased Julie must have been to hear about the scar on Lin's sister's face. In any event she showed none of it. Abbie's hopeful look at her was not returned.

But her interest in the building where I had seen Mai was very clear. Nor did she hide her frustration at Killer's ignorance of Saigon street names.

"We could show you the place," I told her. "At least Killer could."

We all looked at Killer. He raised a hand that was rested on the steering wheel. "No problem," he said, grinning through his moustache.

Abbie's enthusiasm was met with Julie's abhorrence. Was there no way we could explain how to find the building?

Not really. Killer had only found the hospital through its nearness to the little Canh Co Market. To find the building he'd have to go to the market again, and 'cruise about a bit.'

Julie didn't know the market and when she turned to the soldier behind her he shook his head.

"Julie," said Abbie. "Didn't the nurse at the hospital say something about a market?"

"Just a minute, Abbie."

Annoyance upon frustration. If she wanted to find this orphanage, if that's what the building was, Julie Shields, embassy official, was stuck with these two lowly Australians, one who smiled far too much like Groucho Marx.

"It would only take ten minutes or so." The moustache told her confidently. "From here, till I find it again, that is."

"Are you sure?" She asked. "Because I have to be back here in less than an hour."

She then turned to Abbie, who had been following this with growing excitement.

"Now you know you can't come." Abbie opened her mouth but Julie continued quickly. "I'll take Chuck, I'll get the address and we'll work something out later."

"No, Julie. Please. I have to go. It must be an orphanage. And she's probably in there? I'm her sister. I have to be there. If it's safe to go in I have to see her."

"Abbie, no one will be leaving the vehicle. We'll get her at a more convenient time, when we've made the proper arrangements. You'll see her then."

"How will you know she's there if I don't come and see? Who will recognise her? And this could be my only chance. If she were taken somewhere else she could be lost to us forever. How would you explain that to my father?"

"Please. Don't get dramatic. We'll do this properly, in good time. She's safe, in an orphanage."

"Well, at least let me come along, to see where this place is for myself. If worse comes to worst, I might have to take my dad there myself to get the baby. His daughter. When he's okay again and free to go his own way. 'Cause nobody else seems to be too worried about her."

Julie relented but insisted that Abbie control her emotions. To me it all sounded a little too much like a mother's concern for a naïve teenaged daughter, but at that point I didn't understand the reasons for the restriction.

"And when I've made a note of the address, we come straight back, okay?"

Abbie nodded seriously, chastened but grateful.

Julie turned to me. "You're sure you recognised the child? The one leaving the building?"

"I'm sure."

She looked around a moment while we all watched her. "Well there's hardly room in there for five of us," she said. "And you're sure it's just a house?" We nodded. She turned to the guard, since that was what he seemed to be. "It's okay, Chuck. If it's not far I'll just take a look. I'll take a radio though, please."

The guard returned quickly with a radio.

A few minutes later Julie Shields leaned forward from the back seat of the Land Rover and tapped Killer on the shoulder. "If you don't slow this thing down, we all go back right now."

Chapter 17

No matter what Julie Shields thought, Killer Kelleher knew how to negotiate the busy streets of the city, albeit with ruthless authority. Nobody spoke. For the fifteen or so minutes it took Killer to get there at his reduced speed, we all concentrated on the route.

I would have liked to have asked Abbie about her last couple of days, the chance of a private meeting, anything, but Julie Shields' presence killed any hope of that. I consoled myself by assuming that Abbie was concerned only with the baby.

I didn't recognise the street until we pulled up outside the low, flat, concrete building. It had a large front door in a windowless front wall.

"That's the place," said Killer. "Right, Mark?"

"Yeh, that's it."

"Thank you," said Julie. "Drive on a bit, please, and turn around further down the street."

"Julie," Abbie asked. "What did the sign above the door say? In English?"

"Orphanage, I think. Okay, stop here and turn around."

Killer complied. Julie took out her note book and began writing. We looked around. It always amazed me how many people there were in the streets of any town at any time. I was considering this and didn't know Abbie had moved until Julie called out.

She stood on the road beside us. "I have to see, Julie. I have to ask."

"Abbie, please! Get back in the car!"

"I can't. Not until I've asked. She might be in there. I can't just leave her there. This might be my only chance."

"You do not understand the possible dangers. Remember what happened to... your friend. We'll look into it and be back for her when we know it's safe."

"But it's an orphanage. You said so yourself. The baby's aunt, Lin's sister brought her here for her safety, and so she would know where she was. What dangers could there be?"

"Okay, listen. I'll come with you. Okay? We'll go in together. Just get back in the vehicle and we'll drive up closer and I'll go in with you."

Abbie stood there, uncertain, undecided, and then took off, calling back, "I'll only be a minute!"

"Jesus," said Killer.

"I'll get her," I said and got out to give chase. As I did I heard another door close. Julie was coming after me.

I'm not sure exactly what was in my mind, except that I just wanted to be with Abbie, whatever happened. I gained on her quickly and some thirty metres from the orphanage she turned suddenly into a narrow side-street. Fighting through washing that hung across this street, I tripped over a bicycle as I saw her turn into an even narrower laneway.

A group of kids in this lane showed me where she was, with their eyes. They had been feeding several rats in a wire cage but turned to look at me, and then back at Abbie. She was standing in the shadows of a small, open, shed doorway.

She glared at me as I approached. "Where's Julie?" She put her head outside the doorway and I turned to look with her. She beckoned me inside. "Did she see you turn into this street?"

We stood there, like kids playing hide-and-seek, and there was no Julie. The real kids stared at us, their rats scurrying in circles, unattended.

"What are you doing?" I asked.

She whispered. "Trying to get to the orphanage of course, before Julie can stop me. Or you."

"Me?"

"Yes, you."

"I'm on your side."

"Well I didn't know that. It didn't look like it. I planned on just getting to the orphanage and see if I could see the baby, if she's in there. Have a look at the place. See who's looking after her. Maybe even take her with me if I could. I don't know. But I wanted Julie to be with me. I didn't trust her story about coming with me but I thought she'd follow in the car." She looked outside again. "And then I turned around to see you coming at me like a ... like a great big tackle for the Seahawks. I thought she must have told you to get me and I could see I wouldn't get there before you caught up with me, so I ducked into that lane, to try and lose you for a minute. Both of you. Pretty dumb, I guess, but I have to take a look inside that orphanage. I just have to. Do you think she'd be back at the vehicle yet?"

"I don't know. I wasn't going to stop you. I... I don't really know what I was thinking. I just ... ran."

She laughed quietly, looking into the street again. "Well that's sure as hell what you're good at. You dragged me all over Muc Thap mountain and now look where you've chased me. Into some godforsaken backstreet shed in downtown Saigon."

"How's your knee now?"

The laughter left her as she looked at me. "Much better, thank you."

"And your forehead?"

"Fine. You did a wonderful job."

"Show me." She looked up and I bowed my head for closer inspection, reached out tentatively. "Mmm. Perfect."

She shook her head, with a wry smile. "You are joking? Come on. Julie has a meeting to get back for."

Near the main street she touched my arm. "Don't be too quick. I want to make sure she's back at the vehicle so I can get to the orphanage."

"You're still going?"

"Yes. That's the only reason I insisted on coming out here."

"Do you want me to come with you?"

She nodded and then turned to me. "Would you?"

"Where is your father?"

"He's not well. He couldn't... be with us, today. Which is another reason why I have to make sure we stay in touch with the baby."

We moved into the main street cautiously but it wasn't long before we were out in the open looking all around us. The Land Rover was gone.

"What!" said Abbie. "Just what in the hell is going on?" I walked down the street to where it turned a corner but Killer, Julie and the vehicle were nowhere to be seen. "She can't do this! That meeting is not for half an hour. I know it isn't. Why did she do this?"

"Maybe she got angry. We did run away from her."

"Yeh, but we weren't gone that long. She didn't even..."

"And you did promise to stay in the vehicle."

She looked at me. "I thought you said you were on my side." I shrugged. "Oh, I know. You're right. But hell, I only wanted to check on the baby."

We started to feel conspicuous with people watching us and made our way to a wider section of the street, nearer the building, where there was more room to stop and think. Abbie frowned as she looked across the street. "It has to be an orphanage. Let's just watch it for a while. Maybe Julie will come back. She's just giving me a scare. Can you remember the way back to the embassy?"

"No. I don't think so. It's okay, Abbie. Every Lambretta driver in Saigon knows where the American Embassy is, I'm sure. And Killer'll probably come back for us once he's dropped Julie off."

"Killer? He doesn't look like a killer."

"No."

Alone in a strange Saigon street our mood grew sombre. Vacillation wasn't normally an Abbie Klein personality trait but she was unsure about the building, what it might contain, and equally worried by the prospect of a missed opportunity. Even when I volunteered to go in, which I did only out of concern for her dilemma, she wavered, sensed my reluctance, and decided it was her problem, not mine, since the baby was her sister. She was hoping the vehicle would turn into view, Julie on board.

Some kids in the street who had been watching us came gradually closer. "Heh," said the largest one. "You have dollar?" The younger ones stared at us while the older ones looked around . One had the stump of one arm showing in his shirt sleeve.

"Oh, come on," said Abbie.

I followed her across the road and she went straight up and knocked on the big front door. She looked up at me, almost smiling at the sound of at least one baby crying faintly from inside. When the door opened it was only slightly and a heavily-lined, brown face squinted at us from behind it, a woman about sixty. She was happy enough with Abbie but her smile faded when she looked at me.

"I'm looking for a baby," said Abbie. "Baby san." The woman looked us over again and made her preference for Abbie even more clear. "Baby san," Abbie told her. "My baby. Was brought here two days ago."

"Baby? You?"

"Yes. Mine."

The woman made a small downward motion with her hand to indicate that Abbie should follow her. I stayed close, forcing her to allow me in as well.

It was like an open barn, the side and back walls reaching only three-quarters of the way up to the wide sheet-iron roof, leaving a large gap at the top. There was a smell, a sense of sickness and dust, as if in some symbiotic, toxic mix, of baby shit and vomit and ubiquitous dirt. The place cried out for clean floors and walls, for windows, ceiling fans, and cots, proper babies' cots. Roughly thirty infants, mostly young babies, were spread out on mats on the concrete floor. There were two partitioned areas, one in each back corner, and the face of another woman wearing glasses appeared over one of the low walls.

She approached us with her hands clasped in front, as if she were about to say a prayer. Dressed in a white nursing-sister's uniform, a large cross hanging around her neck, her demeanour was altogether more friendly than her assistant's. Her cheery face smiled up at us.

Some of the children were asleep. Others cried. A few played games with each other while some lay still staring vacantly in front of them. Two or three reached out to the nursing-sister as she passed.

"We are looking for a baby," said Abbie. The woman nodded, smiling politely. "The baby was left here two days ago. She has kind of reddish hair." Abbie took hold of a strand of her hair. "Like this."

She nodded again. "Baby you?"

"Yes. Baby mine. You have one? With hair like this?"

I was looking around for her, without success. The other woman stood behind us listening. I felt like telling her to attend to the babies who were crying, or take a broom and mop to the place.

We followed the sister to the back and in one partitioned corner an assortment of bottles and washbasins was stacked on a bench beside a tap positioned over a rusty sink. Three very small babies lay side by side on a mat in the other area and Abbie knew as soon as she saw her. It was our baby alright. As undernourished as ever, with that wisp of auburn hair, and the same willful stare at the world around her.

"That's her! Oh, hello baby girl. Hello, honey."

Smiling serenely, the nurse picked her up. Abbie reached out. "Thank you."

The nurse held on to her. "This baby not you."

Abbie tried her hair again. "Look. Same." The woman looked pleased enough but shook her head"Yes, okay. But mama san dead. I am the baby's sister."

"Yes." she was nodding.

"But I am. We are half-sisters."

The little woman nodded still as she smiled and looked at the baby who stared vacantly. She looked too thin in the face, the eyes too prominent for a new baby. "The baby's aunt tell me to wait for papa."

The baby started crying. The woman rocked her patiently. Abbie looked distressed.

"Papa san." I pointed at myself and even Abbie stared at me. "Let me show you," I reached out for the baby but the woman recoiled calmly.

She even smiled at me. "You not papa. You Uc dai loi." The baby's urgent squeaks seemed not to perturb her in the least. She turned to Abbie. "I know you are sister. Name, Klein."

Abbie nodded. "That's right. We have the same father. And I can take her to him when... I will look after her and take her to him. And we will make sure her aunt knows where she is, and where she goes. I promise."

"Yes. How much money do you have?"

"How much money?" Abbie reached into her pocket and took out an American twenty dollar note. She turned to me, instructing me with her eyes and a nod. I took out a handful of notes and decided I could spare ten.

The woman inspected our thirty dollars dispassionately as she rocked the baby. "I must wait for papa. You must bring your papa." She was adamant, and her smile made her quest for dollars that much more unsettling. The Mother Theresa look didn't go with 'show me the money'.

"Please," said Abbie. "Can you look after her well? I will bring my father as soon as I can. Do you mind if I bring her some milk in the meantime? Would that be okay?" The woman was nodding. "And here, look. You can have our thirty dollars. For food, for all the babies."

"Yes, yes. Good. Merci." Like magic, my ten dollars disappeared into her dress pocket, forever. "And you must bring your papa."

The other woman led us to the door. When we had stepped outside she muttered from behind us, "One hundred dollar."

We turned. "What? One hundred dollars? For my baby?" She was nodding, her head bowed. "Are you saying if I pay one hundred dollars, I can have the baby?" She lifted her head as she nodded and her eyes made fleeting contact with Abbie's. "I ... I don't have that much with me. But I could get it."

The woman was still nodding as she closed the door.

"Did you hear that?"

"It'll cost you a hundred dollars." It was beginning to get dark. "Come on. Let's see if they've come back for us."

But even as we stepped into the street's growing shadows her spirits had lifted. "One hundred dollars. I'll pay that myself, if the embassy's not interested in getting her back for us. And we can come back tomorrow and get her if Julie's too busy today. And then get word to Lin's family."

I walked out into the street but there was no Land Rover. "Today is just about gone. And what about the other woman? She seemed to be the boss. She might want more."

But she was away with her anticipatory excitement. It was obvious you only needed enough money. The baby was as good as back in her arms.

Her father was ill and, for some reason, not popular with the embassy at the moment, but they would have to look after his child, no matter what they thought of him. Or find a safe and clean place for her. One that was better equipped and not so desperate for money, close by, where they could visit daily. She's an American citizen, for God's sake. They should come and get her for nothing.

"Where is Julie, anyhow? I can't believe she didn't come back for us."

I looked around anxiously for a Lambretta but the street seemed crowded with everything except the little cabs. "Let's at least head off in the same direction we came."

The afternoon clouds were unusually light and impotent. In the west a dying sun made a defiant final stand above a line of untidy shop fronts where the street turned out of sight. Its shafts picked out the dust in open doorways and on the narrow, cluttered sidewalks, where dogs scratched and kids crawled, women squatted, chatting and working at things, and men stood and smoked.

"Heh, papa san. Cheer up. We're getting our baby back."

I didn't cheer up. As we walked I experienced that out-of-place foreigner feeling again. Though these inner-city dwellers appeared more blasé about the presence of westerners, I was a soldier in uniform, this time without a weapon, and for all their apparent indifference, who knew what they were thinking?

Abbie had no such concerns. That irrepressible optimism bubbled on the surface. "Say. What made you say that, anyway? That you were the papa san?"

"I don't know. You'd gone from mama san to sister san. Thought I might as well have my two bob's worth."

"Two what's worth?"

"Doesn't matter."

"Who's bob?"

"No one. Can you see any Lambrettas?"

"No. Not if you can't. How tall are you?"

"Not tall enough to see any Lambrettas, at the moment." She took hold of my hand and squeezed it. I smiled as best I could. "You know, people have been known to disappear from the streets of this city without trace."

"Julie says it's safer these days. And I just feel so good that we're getting our little girl back. You know? My father will be so pleased when he finds out." I nodded without enthusiasm. "Would you have time to come out with us tomorrow when we come and get her?"

"I doubt it very much. It's not up to me. We were lucky Killer was free this afternoon. And it's not up to you either, is it? The last time I saw your friend, Julie, she didn't look too pleased with you."

She wouldn't hear my pessimism. Julie would come round. "One hundred lousy dollars for my little sister. It's nothing. Do you realise how worried I've been about her? I thought we might've lost her for good."

"Just the same. You better not count your chickens, Abbie."

She squeezed my hand again as we walked. "I wish you could be with us tomorrow. Without you we may have lost her. Julie has been nice but she doesn't understand. She's always busy. Up to her ears in espionage. " She stopped so that I had to turn round to look at her. "Heh? If you can't make it tomorrow, when will I see you again?" I shook my head. "Is this it for us, papa san? I'll never see you again?"

When I saw a Lambretta I yelled so loudly a hundred people looked in our direction. It was carrying two teenaged girls in traditional costume who looked down shyly as we boarded. Abbie took hold of my arm and we sat close. The daylight was fading rapidly.

I told the driver "American Embassy" and handed him a one dollar note. "No more passengers. Fini passengers." Abbie looked at me questioningly as we moved out into the traffic. "Have you seen how crowded these things can get?"

Off the street I felt more relaxed and took hold of her hand. The two girls watched Abbie furtively but when she caught their eye they looked away quickly.

"It's good to see you again," I said, "although you are a bit of a nuisance."

"Oh, don't remind me. That's what Julie thinks, I'm sure, though she wouldn't put it quite as bluntly as that."

"Who is Julie? What's she doing here?"

"Julie Shields is a career diplomat. This is her second stint in Saigon. I've been put in her charge, until my father is well again. As if I need to be. Apart from the locals she is the only woman there on staff at the moment. She's nice, in a patronising, or is that matronising sort of way. But she would much rather be attending to her more serious business. I am, as you so eloquently put it, a nuisance."

"But I also said I'm glad to see you. Tell me what's been happening. Last time I saw you you left in a big hurry."

"Yes. I'm sorry about leaving like that without saying goodbye but I really had no say in the matter. They didn't want to know about you."

"And is your father not well after finding out about Lin?"

The driver stopped to let the two girls out and Abbie pointed across the road at a big hotel. It was a grand old French construction with wide open front doors and a host of tables flowing out onto the pavement.

"Quick," she said. "Get out. It's okay. Come on." Dodging a thousand bikes we crossed the street and stood outside the Continental Hotel. The patrons were predominantly civilian westerners. "I've heard Julie talk about the Continental. Let's go."

"Now? What about Julie?"

"Well, she took off on us, didn't she? And this is safe. I mean look at it."

Four young men at the table nearest to where we stood were sharing beer from a large jug and they turned to observe us. None of them was wearing any sort of uniform and their hair was too long for soldiers on leave.

At a table beyond them two young men sat with an Asian girl in traditional dress. There was a large camera on the table and the two men talked earnestly before turning to us. One of them said something to the other and the girl smiled so broadly I almost expected her to wave.

"Come on," said Abbie.

Chapter 18

Of all that happened in those hectic days, one my clearest memories is of that hour or so that Abbie and I spent together in the comfort and safety of the Continental Palace Hotel. For that little while the winds of war blew somewhere else and we were able to draw breath, drop our guards, see each other at last in the light of an almost normal situation. We felt, temporarily, tenuously, in charge of our lives, from the moment Abbie jumped out of the Lambretta and I followed. Come with me, she was saying. We're in this together. And it's okay. We like being together. And with less confidence, less courage perhaps, I agreed.

"Am I dressed okay?" My army greens, signifying no rank at all, didn't seem right for a place like the Continental.

"I'm not exactly dressed for the Ritz myself."

She insisted on a table inside, taking my arm as we went through the doorway, and we found a table for two that looked out over the street.

"I guess this is a little irresponsible but when I saw the place I couldn't resist. This is our last time together, huh? I mean, really. And for God's sake, papa san. I hardly know you and you're the father of my child."

When I looked around she laughed loudly enough to attract some attention, in particular from a table of young men nearby. When a waiter arrived she ordered some sort of highball. I ordered a beer.

"Now," she said. "We can't stay too long, obviously. I guess Julie is worried and I'd like to know why she didn't come back for us. Though I'm kind of glad she didn't, at the moment."

"Me too, I guess."

"You guess?"

"No. I'm glad. Although Killer might be worried. He and I might both get into trouble. Anyway, what else have you been up to? I thought maybe they would've sent you home by now. You're not in any trouble, are you? I was told you're restricted."

Her restriction was supposed to be for her safety, she said, so her chaperone's abandonment of her today, for all that she might have asked for it, raised questions. There were many questions. And where she could answer them, and where she could only try, she wanted to share those answers with me, willingly, exuberantly. Sometimes I struggled to keep up. My understanding of this country had been as limited as my interest, and I was about to be given a glimpse of the sort of commitment that some, like Abbie's father, Jake Klein, were trying to make to its present and its future,

At present the man was in trouble. He was unwell. An attempt had been made on his life on the day that Lin was killed but, to date, his daughter had been unable to see him, though she was assured he was okay. 'Stable,' Julie liked to say. She promised Abbie that his assailants would be tracked down and punished and that he was in no more danger, but when Abbie suggested that Lin's killers might have been involved, Julie Shields and her colleagues showed surprisingly little interest, even when the girl was able to provide a name, Lee Dang Bah. Instead of enquiring about him, all their focus was concentrated on someone else, a woman.

"Who?"

"Con Ma Nu, they call her. No. I hadn't heard of her either and it's not even her real name. And we both know her. Well, know of her. It's an Intelligence code name allocated to Lin's sister, and let me tell you, that shy looking woman is very well known to them."

"Why? What's she done?"

That was secret, too militarily sensitive for civilian ears, but it was clear that Con Ma Nu, Lin's sister was the enemy. Abbie watched me as she considered, and then complained of her frustration at not being able to see her father to find out what was going on.

"Was your father very badly wounded?"

"Apparently he's okay. But I can't get details beyond what the hospital gives Julie."

He was at a big military hospital in Danang, which made a visit impossible because it was too far north, up in Central Vietnam, and hitching a ride with the military was too risky. In any event Julie was too busy. She said she was doing all she could to arrange a phone link, but the military were difficult to deal with when you were asking special favours, especially for a civilian, and one of a thousand patients, many with needs greater than his.

But Abbie switched readily to the positive again. "Anyway, my dad likes to keep in pretty good shape. He'll pull through. You know, I'm sure now that something was worrying Lin and him, from the day before we left Vung Tau. You see, Lin was going to have the baby there but on the day before we left she went out, something she seldom did, to see someone, a doctor or midwife, I think. And then, when she came back, she was on edge, and suddenly decided to have the baby at home, in Muc Thap. Something had scared them. And now the army has moved into the office temporarily while they investigate."

Nearly all the embassy's questions of Abbie had been concentrated around the person they called Con Ma Nu. When Abbie explained the sister's attempts to save Lin's life, her concerns for the baby, and Lin's desperate warning, her naming of Lee Dang Bah, Julie would only say that she didn't understand how ruthless the communists could be.

"Communists?"

She nodded as we sat back when the waiter arrived with our drinks. I looked around the big hotel room. It was relaxed and convivial and except for the uniforms, foreign to any suggestion of war. And Abbie's tale was already proving a bit much for me. Lin's sister certainly had no part in Lin's death. We both knew that. From what we had seen they were close. And if Lin's sister, known as Con Ma Nu, was a communist, was Lin? I was supposed to kill communists. Communists were supposed to kill me.

"Isn't this Lee Dang Bah the communist?"

She shook her head. "I have no idea. They're not interested in him. Only in Con Ma Nu."

I remembered Lin's sister's strange and secretive demeanour. The assistance she gave us, if not the rescue, on the streets of south Saigon. And the nurse's description of the scar, which, Abbie said, was particularly nasty and had precipitated all the excitement from the moment Abbie mentioned it to Julie. The appearance of Con Ma Nu on Saigon streets was the only reason we had got to go out to the orphanage that afternoon. Julie was familiarising herself with the whereabouts, looking for clues. It had very little to do with the baby.

What am I doing here? I asked myself. A nobody from nowheresville, hauled from ignorant obscurity, allocated a dump truck in South Vietnam and told where and when to drive it. Back home, drinks in a big hotel with a new and attractive female would mean, at this point, my parochial and self-conscious attempts at wit and savoir faire, and responses from her dependent on her degree of interest in me as a partner, for the future, the evening, or the next drink.

At this moment I could be preparing for a night on the town, Saigon no less, with Killer and his neat, Saigon-soldier mates. But I looked at Abbie, who had no one to turn to. Julie Shields' support was at best distracted. Her father, for the present at least, was beyond contact. There was only me.

I watched her take a sip from her glass and look out the window. "Julie's been good to me though. They could cancel my visa, bundle me back to the States, but she feels sorry for me. She's responsible for the embassy putting me up, until my dad is well again."

I followed her eyes, watching pushbikes and motorbikes moving past the window. It occurred to me how different the lives of the world's inhabitants could be, even beyond the obvious. I remembered some friends back home, a year or two older, getting to the polling booth too late to vote in the 1969 federal election. They had wanted to have their say on the war but the surf just wouldn't drop off in time. Here, people were fighting and dying over their country's political direction.

Abbie was looking down at her glass, and, as if the baby was already in her care, explaining her need to let Lin's family know. "Her aunt put her in that orphanage so they know where she is, or at least who has her. They don't want to lose track of her, naturally. The embassy people are amazed at her nerve, going into an American hospital, such as it was. But we know how willing that hospital would have been to get rid of the baby to an orphanage."

I suggested that she not go out to the orphanage alone. That you never knew who might be watching, or what might happen next. "Did you ever wonder how Lin's sister found us so soon after we got out of the jungle."

"I know. But we know it's just an orphanage and I'll have Julie and Chuck with me, I'm sure. Although I'd rather it were you. There's no chance? Tomorrow? If I got away as early as possible?"

I shook my head. "I don't have that sort of freedom. And I'm not sure I could find the street again. Could you? On your own?"

Of course she was nodding. "I took pretty careful note.''

I looked out through the hotel window again. It was now quite dark so that most of the traffic had their lights on. My first view of Saigon at night. I wondered if many of these people were involved in the war. Had sons, husbands, brothers, or daughters, wives, sisters, in the fighting. Or were involved in some secret way. In the service of people like Con Ma Nu?

We were told we were here to save them. They did not look like a people who needed saving. Even without all the concrete and glass and technology we took for granted, this city bustled and throbbed. Watching the rivers of people flooding its streets, their commitment to where they were going, I wondered what sort of force it would take to bring a city like this to its knees, sap its lifeblood, make it still. Politics might come and go but Saigon looked like it would go on forever.

It had been one of those rare days without rain and with the glare of the daylight faded, the city was easier to look at. I looked back to the girl sitting opposite me, who was also easy to look at. "Well, I hope your father gets better soon. And good luck and be careful tomorrow, mama san. I'll be with you in spirit." I sat back and finished my beer. "I would love to be doing this somewhere else."

But she ignored this, her mind still on the baby. "I have to do it tomorrow. And Julie will have to come with me, after I tell her that it's not only an orphanage but one run by two little old ladies."

"Who charge one hundred dollars per baby."

"That's right. And apart from that I think Julie'll want to have a look for herself. And she'll take Chuck. Chuck's ex infantry. He's seen action. He's been posted at the embassy and is sort of Julie's private guard."

"She has her own private guard?"

She flashed me a look. "Well, more of a driver really. He does have other duties. I told you. Julie's a career diplomat. The foreign service is her life and she likes the hot spots. She's actually sorry she missed the Tet Offensive. She was in Berlin in sixty-eight. The only thing Julie hates more than the press is communists. She says communists place their political aims above all normal human feeling, and some of her stories about what they do to uncooperative villagers are frightening. I think she wants me to see Lin in that light."

"Lin? Well, if they're sure Lin is a communist, and her sister, why would her sister want to harm her?"

"That's right. Julie gets very vague about it. It's apparently all beyond me. She'ssuggested, more than once, that my father's relationship with Lin didn't do his reputation much good."

"Your father's done nothing wrong, has he?'

She shook her head slowly as she looked around again. "My father is a scientist." But she lowered her voice and seemed momentarily to size me up before explaining that Jake Klein had made his concerns about the Saigon government all too clear, even to the military, which may not have been prudent. Because at the same time Lin had been found to be in some sort of contact with Hanoi. "And with their living together like husband and wife, his apolitical, geologist persona doesn't wash quite so well. And, though Julie wouldn't say so, I doubt it helps me get access to the hospital in Danang."

She took another sip and said nothing for a moment. I looked around for a waiter and noticed two uniformed recent arrivals at the table near us. I couldn't identify the uniform. They observed us closely, Abbie in particular, and only looked away as the waiter arrived and I ordered myself another beer. Abbie's glass was still half full.

She looked up from her thoughts. "You know, apparently Lin's sister spends most of her time underground, in the jungle. But she's naturally as concerned for the baby as I am. As is little Mai, her sister. And so, indirectly, the baby saved us, on the way into Saigon."

"And in the jungle," I said. "Arkansas said if he hadn't heard the baby he would never have gone looking for us."

"My little sister. Our saviour. I'll enjoy telling her all about it one day."

I picked up my drink as I said, "But Lieutenant Jefferies wasn't so lucky."

"No. That was horrible. His death so ... gratuitous. It was wrong, my father using you guys the way he did. That's one thing I agree with Julie on. But he was sure it was the safest way to get Lin and me out."

"Someone must have picked up the trail. I first noticed them in Baria."

"And they always seemed so calm. Especially Lin. So that I wouldn't worry. They were protecting me the whole time." She considered this a moment. "And I'm sure Julie has told my father how wrong he was to use the Australians. She sure told me. She said it made it look like he didn't even trust his own military."

"Would he know about the lieutenant?"

"I don't know. Julie says she passes on all information to him, when she can."

Abbie wanted to know about the young officer. I could tell her very little.

"He seemed English. I guess you all do. The way you say 'leftenant' for example. But him more so. He was one I could have imagined playing cricket."

"Yeh. And he did."

She took a moment to survey the big room again, meeting the looks from our close neighbours and I took the opportunity to look at her. The death of Thi Lin Quang had thrown us together in ways we barely understood and I wanted to touch her again, even at this moment, to put my hand on hers, surrounded as we were by unknown people with agendas to fit this volatile and mysterious world.

She seemed to read my thoughts. "Thanks for this, Mark." She smiled. "I guess I'm glad you chased after me the way you did. Even if you did scare me at the time."

"I'd chase after you any time, any place." It sounded immediately trite and frivolous, in particular after the torment she had just shared with me. When she made no response and reached for her glass I tried for some sincerity. "Listen. Not that I want to go yet, but will you be okay to get back inside the embassy?"

"Sure. I'm practically a resident there." She smiled again. "You worry too much. You know that?"

"Only when you're around."

She put the glass down. "And you're a bit of a smooth talker when you want to be, aren't you, papa san."

"Take no notice. I'm just feeling good about seeing you again." She watched me steadily, head rested on her hands. I said what I had tried to say earlier. "And I wish we were doing this somewhere else. And some other time."

She looked around again. "There is no place," she said quietly. "Nor is there the time."

"I often think about our night in Arkansas' tree-house."

"Do you? And which part of our stay do you recall most clearly? The staircase? The apartment? Perhaps our bedroom guest?"

"Have you told anyone about him?"

"Yes. But Julie's always so busy."

"What will happen to him? When she reports him?"

If Julie ever had time to report him, Abbie presumed soldiers would be sent to bring him back to his unit, and his senses. I imagined they would be military police. He'd be arrested for desertion.

"Well," she said. "We couldn't just leave him there. Up his tree. We couldn't just forget him."

"No. I don't suppose so. Or his honeymoon suite. I'll never forget that." She said nothing but her eyes stayed with mine. "Remember his honeymoon suite?" She nodded, smiling. "And now we'll probably never see each other again."

"You are not the only one to have thought about it. This war will actually end one day, you know." She sat back and took up her glass. "And you must remember you did catch me off guard. I was feeling good about things at the time. Thought everything was going to be okay. And anyway," she moved in closer again, "as I said earlier, Private Ross, I hardly know you. Because I talk too much and I never give you a chance to tell me about you. You played cricket in Australia is all I know about you."

"Well, after your family it's all pretty boring."

"All pretty normal probably. Tell me about your family. Do you have any ... immediate family? You don't have a wife and kids back in Australia, I hope. You're good with babies"

"Hell, no. No immediate family. Not in that sense anyhow."

"A girlfriend? Her picture in your wallet?"

"No. Nothing like that. I was still at home when I got called up."

"And who else was at home?"

"Just my mother and father. He sells real estate in Brisbane. My mum does too, now, although she's actually a trained nurse. I have two older sisters, both married."

"With many babies and they taught you how to handle them."

"One with three babies. One now in school. And actually it was my mother who showed me the most when she was babysitting them."

"Go on. What did you do? Apart from play cricket?"

"I worked for an insurance company, a big one in the city."

"Have you ever been outside of Australia before?

"No. Nor has anyone else in my family. We're a sedentary lot, I s'pose you'd say. Both my sisters live fairly close by. And my father is president of the local cricket club. At least I think he still is."

"Aha. And you are team captain. And star."

"No. I've never made it into the first grade, yet. My coach says that as a bowler I have good technique but lack killer instinct."

"Killer instinct? For cricket?"

"Yeh."

"Sounds serious."

"Well, not really. What about you? Do you have any ... immediate family?"

"Oh, God. You've heard too much about my family already. If you can call it a family."

"It's a family. But anyone else? A boyfriend?"

She nodded. "Ex. Quite ex. One of the last things he said to me was that I was crazy."

"You're not crazy."

"Thank you. But he's older than you and has a doctorate in psychology. He said my need to go traipsing off to the world's most dangerous country, in search of my father, was the result of my broken family. Apparently I'm trying to do what my mother couldn't. Keep my father at home. He said I am basically insecure, because of my unstable family. He wasn't very happy with me at the time."

"He was just sorry to lose you."

"Yes, I guess. But sometimes I wonder about what he said."

"Forget it. He was being mean because he was sorry to lose you. How old was he?"

"Thirty-six. Oh, I know. Don't ask. It's over." She sat back, picked up her glass and moved it around in both hands, not drinking.

He was fifteen years her senior. Had she been looking for security? Or had it been love? I preferred to imagine naïve, impressionable girl and impressive, older intellectual, egotistical, taking advantage.

"You met him in college. Where you were studying English." She nodded. "What sort of English?"

"English spread rather thin, I'm afraid. A sprinkling of all sorts. Milton to Mailer. I suppose it'll mean teaching. My brother is the bright one. And a scientist like my father. And now he's living like some hippy in a Canadian mountain town."

"Doesn't sound so bad."

But her eyes reddened and she put the glass down and looked away. "Goddamn this war."

We sat quietly looking out the window again. I still didn't feel that close to it all. More like a spectator who had witnessed a terrible accident. Lieutenant Jefferies was someone I worked with but for whom I had no special feelings. I was a willing contributor to the shoulder-tapping jokes. Thi Lin Quang, for all Abbie's accounts, was for me a mysterious foreigner. And I had a family whose movements I could have predicted almost on a daily basis, ready to welcome me home when the time came. At that moment, as close as I had been, physically, to the victims of the attack along that road in Bien Hoa, I was only sorry for the girl.

She smiled at me, forcing that confidence of hers through the sadness. "I just have to remember. I'm getting my baby back tomorrow."

We can do it. That was one of the most popular slogans used on American vehicles. The Americans. They loved their slogans. And they could do anything. She took a sip of her drink and I asked if she wanted a fresh one.

"No thanks. I can't stay for much longer. Julie must be starting to worry by now."

"Yeh. I should go soon too. Before the Killer and I finish up in big trouble."

"Oh, let's just finish this drink."

She took hers up for another small sip. Mine was empty. "Okay. I'll get myself one more then."

I looked around for a waiter. There was none handy and I decided to buy a drink at the bar. "Excuse me a moment."

I made my way through tables and chairs, nearly all occupied, past the lavish, colonial décor. I wished I could tell her something from my background that might brighten her mood, something away from the war. But my past seemed so ordinary in the light of hers. I had no picture in my wallet, not even a family photo that might, for a few moments at least, have taken her mind off what was happening to her family.

And no girlfriend. Even before my army call up the girl I was seeing had begun to tire of my absence on weekends, weekends that I filled with cricket, drinks after, and whatever clubs and pubs might follow for the singles in the team.

Saigon's Continental Hotel reminded me of Sandra at that point because we had often met at another grand old colonial style hotel - the Bellvue in Brisbane. The last time I saw her we had met there, only a week before I left for Vietnam. It had been six months since we'd been out together and when I called she explained that she was 'practically engaged'. She insisted on bringing a friend, her 'bridesmaid to be'. I'm sure she saw the meeting as a kind of voluntary civic duty, farewelling one of the troops en route to active service.

"You could bring a friend too. Yes, do that. One of the guys going with you might be nice."

Well, not nice for me. The one soldier who was going with me was Greg Urquhart, at present our company's driver/carpenter, the indispensable Mr Fix-it, and when I had explained my dilemma he insisted he join me with the two girls. We were sharing the same barracks block at Northern Command Personnel Depot at Brisbane's Enoggera base, effectively in transit, and if a friendship had developed between us, as a consequence of our waiting to go to the same overseas unit, then it was of necessity. We were stuck together. As I felt we were on that night.

None of this augured well for the evening. But I had called Sandra after drinking with a few cricket mates during that afternoon. My vision was clouded, hopes higher than good sense would have allowed, hopes, that is, for something like the passion we had shared on a few occasions in the past, heightened with a goodbye fling aspect, and sympathy for the heroic young digger off to do his bit.

"Yes? Great. It'll be great to catch up. Yeh, okay, I'll get a mate. No worries. The Bellvue? Eightish? Great! Can't wait!" Alcohol is of course a drug.

Sandra would have seen through my plan, heard the excitement in my voice. And she must have felt dragged from the past, as it were, because I had no one else. The uncertainty, the itinerancy of army life made relationships difficult to initiate, especially at a time when women in the forces were so few. And in the age of Hair, short back and sides meant you'd somehow missed the sixties, or spent your Sundays in a white shirt and black tie spreading God's word in the suburbs. Or you were in the army.

The first couple of hours of the evening went quietly, a little too quietly for me. And not only because of the time that had elapsed between then and when I left my mates. I heard too much from the bridesmaid about the wedding. Too much from Urquhart about the army. The presence of the girls underscored the differences in our personalities. If I triedfor a kind of droll, debonair banter, mixed with earthy Aussie charm, Urquhart didn't. No self-deprecating twaddle from him. He was blessed with more confidence and told it as he saw it. And the girls seemed to like it.

I could have cruelled it for him at any moment by asking about his wife and child, but I was enjoying too much the reflected glory from his overblown accounts of our military achievements, past and future. And I was also caught up with my own hopes for the evening. After all Sandra glowed, even more, it seemed, than in the past. It must be like old times for her, I decided. And she glowed as well, no doubt, in recognition and appreciation of the courage and self-sacrifice that I, her former lover, was about to display in foreign fields. Listen to my good mate here, beautiful, sexy girl. Because whatever heroics he claims for himself go ditto for me.

Her smile faded when her friend agreed to leave with her blind date, but I imagined that that concern for her bridesmaid-to-be, just then, was the product of some pre-nuptial bond between them, strengthening as the wedding approached. Then she had to leave at eleven and I escorted her out to the George Street footpath, was about to hail a cab when she informed me that her fiancé was picking her up. "We can give you a lift."

I sat in the back of a Chrysler Valiant, sobering quickly and answering Sandra's polite questions about my overseas posting, with enthusiasm and information as scant as Greg Urquhart's had been profuse. I don't know if my despondency prompted the fiancé but he felt the need to tell us that he almost wished his number had come up.

"I envy you in a way. Must be a great challenge."

He reached across and shook my hand outside Enoggera barracks. "Nice to meet you, Mark. Hope it all goes well."

Sandra got out, kissed me on the cheek and told me to take care.

I phoned her a week later, just before I embarked, to offer a well-meant goodbye. Of course she reciprocated appropriately, and warmly. I had wondered if I should bother her again but felt pleased that I had, up until she thanked me for bringing Greg. Her girlfriend had had a wonderful time with him. I suppose he was attractive to girls, muscular and athletic with blond hair and clear blue eyes that dared you to disagree.

And so, I couldn't resist. "Tell her he's married."

Soon after our arrival in Vung Tau, Urquhart had convinced everybody of his importance but, in truth, it was through his energy, versatility and all round competence that he established the sort of independence where he almost decided for himself whether he went out on convoy or attended to compound repairs.

He was a doer. At just twenty-one, a qualified tradesman, sometime professional footballer, with wife and child, anxious to start his own business as soon as he got home. During our off-duty hours at Enoggera he'd explained his plans to me, proudly, confidently. From what he said I thought his wife sounded more interesting than her virile young husband. A nurse who had wanted to be a doctor, until she fell pregnant, she had tried to have him excused from overseas service. "There must be a way out if you have a family." There were arguments. He didn't want a way out. No hiding behind a woman's skirt for this proud young digger.

And a good soldier he proved to be. But he was also a self-appointed authority among us. He liked an audience, held court rather than spoke to people, explaining in definitive terms all that they should know about whatever, usually things that interested him, especially Aussie Rules football, the building trades and even the military. I found him an unmitigated pain in the arse, although that might say more about my character deficiencies than his.

Chapter 19

Drink in hand I made my way back through the crowded tables of the Continental. With or without photo and whatever the ordinariness of my life so far, I felt a connection with this American girl and I stopped for a moment in disappointment when I saw her sitting at the same table but with another man.

He was one of the men in uniform from the nearby table, the one who had been watching us closely. He had thinning blond hair though he wouldn't have been too much older than I was and he smiled in a self-assured way as he stood to shake my hand.

"Excuse me. Please. Darren Adams, LA Times."

I glanced at Abbie who did not look as comfortable as before. He was still smiling as he sat.

"I was just saying that you're a pretty rare sight. Aussie, right?" I nodded as I sat down . "And... Can I ask you both what brings you here?"

"We were thirsty," said Abbie.

"Okay, okay. Tell me this though, please. What's your position at the embassy? I thought I knew everyone there. Are you new?"His smile broadened. "You look very young for a diplomat."

"I'm not a diplomat."

"Oh." He stopped, frowned, looked back to his table and seemed to make a decision. "Would you be the daughter of Mr Jake Klein, the oil man, by any chance?"

Abbie nodded. "But... I don't want to be rude, but we were about to leave."

"Oh. I figured maybe you were having another drink." We all looked at my full beer glass. "Could I get you one?"

"No, thank you. We really don't want anymore." She looked at me. "Do we?"

"No. We were just about to go. After this."

He looked at me and then turned back to Abbie. "Oh. Well, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to intrude. But, look, just before you go, could you give me just one moment to clear up a little scuttlebutt that's going around?" He didn't let her answer. "I mean, I imagine you know more about the personal side of what's happened to your father than anyone."

When Abbie didn't answer he went on quickly. "I'll come to the point, but first, let me say how sorry I was to hear about your father. I hope he's okay. I mean I don't know him but there's enough of our guys taking it without the bastards going after innocent civilians. But, you see, the word is, in some quarters." He left off for a moment and looked back at his friends again. The one who had come in with him was watching. "There's a rumour going around, and I'd really like you to clear this with me if you could, that your father had been in contact with some sort of Hanoi connection." Abbie was staring at him, though she said nothing. "And that it's about oil. Oil exploration. Maybe oil supply for the future?"

She was like a cornered bird, her eyes large. "I... I'm just a visitor here. Okay? I came over to see my father. I haven't been here long and I don't know what you're talking about."

"Sure. That's okay. I just meant that if you had heard anything, anything at all, I'd just like to hear from you, his daughter. I mean it's just a rumour at the moment, and a non-military, side issue, but stories still get written on the basis of rumours and I thought, if you could set the record straight."

She shook her head slowly, but he tried once more, speaking very softly. "I mean, if he thinks the communists are a safer bet for the future, he sure isn't the only one. And I'm sure his intentions are as patriotic as anyone else's."

"My father is a geologist with the oil company and ..." But then she checked herself, looked at me, her eyes asking me for help. Demonstrably, I downed as much of the beer as I could in one drink. "Look, I'm sorry. I can't help you and we really have to go."

"Well I'm sorry too," said the reporter with what seemed genuine remorse. "Sure. Of course. Just doin' my job, you know. I mean your father is just a little newsworthy at the moment and I sure hope everything works out for him. Look, if ever you want to talk to me." He handed her a card which she was slow to take.

We made our way down the steps and through the sidewalk tables. A group of soldiers walking past all eyed Abbie. We stood there on the pavement for a moment while she stared across the street.

"You okay?"

"Yes."

"Reporters ... always put the worst slant on things. We'd better be going. Get out of this crowd a bit and look for a Lambretta."

She seemed lost in her thoughts as we moved on. "I'm sure my father has done nothing wrong but I wonder if my being here makes it worse for him. All I really want to do is speak to him, make sure he's okay, sort out what he wants to do with the baby and then go home. Why should that be such a big deal?"

We passed a bar, just a narrow door with flashing coloured light bulbs over the lintel. Two bar girls lounged at the doorway, one on either side. They stared at Abbie but said nothing. I thought we had escaped when two soldiers lurched from the darkness inside, each with a girl in tow. "Heh, honey," one shouted at Abbie. "Don' ah know you from somewhere? Now don' tell me. Mobile. Yeh, tha's it."

"Yeh," his friend laughed. "Mobile, Alabama. '69."

We walked for a few minutes, not speaking, the noise of the traffic, the looks of passing soldiers, an incessant intrusion. The street darkened as we passed under the low hanging branches of a tree and Abbie slowed to a stop.

"We'd better find somewhere a bit brighter," I said. "So we can be seen."

"I don't want to be seen, here."

"I know, but ..." I looked at her. She was staring out at the frenetic chaos that was Saigon after dusk. She might have been looking at the end of the world. "You okay?"

Her nod was almost imperceptible. "Tomorrow. I'm worried about tomorrow." A flood of traffic roared past. "Do you think I'm crazy? Really?"

"No. I don't think you're crazy at all."

"People I know, or used to know, would be ashamed of what my father's done."

"They're not you, Abbie. They don't know about this place." I put my arm around her and drew her towards me.

"I wish you could come with me tomorrow."

As we stood there a boy about twelve years old seemed to materialise from the darkness somewhere in the small yard where the tree grew. "Heh, GI." With Abbie standing against me under the tree he couldn't see us clearly. "You want acid, man?" He wore jeans and an Hawaiian shirt. "Pure grade. Marijuana? You want a deal, man?"

We walked away. As we came out from under the tree's branches, he called out. "Uc dai loi? Uc dai loi number ten fuckin' cheap charlie asshole. Heh! Uc dai loi!"

When we hailed another Lambretta it was empty. I decided that this was because it was the oldest, slowest and noisiest operational taxi in the world, but the breeze was refreshing. The driver seemed overjoyed that I wanted to reserve it for us.

"The American Embassy!" I shouted at him. "And take your time!"

He nodded vigorously and I put my arm around Abbie, drew her in close and felt her relax against me. The city raged around us but that dangerously decrepit little cab got us to the embassy, probably the least sophisticated vehicle ever to have presented personnel at those famous gates and the guards were not impressed.

"Just a minute," Abbie climbed out and ran to the gates. I watched her talking to one of the guards. The driver began with what I presumed was his version of 'time is money', although he was still smiling as he spoke. When Abbie climbed back into the vehicle she handed him a dollar note and looking at me she called, "The Continental." That optimistic glow had returned to her face.

"What?" I said over the noise of the Lambretta.

"It's okay," she shouted. "It's not late. You'll be okay, won't you?"

"Well ... yeah ... I ..."

"I've left a message so that Julie won't have to worry. Hopefully that jerk journalist has gone. Maybe we should sit outside this time."

"No. You attract too much attention."

She took my hand. "Well, we don't know anywhere else, do we?"

"Jesus, Abbie."

"Oh, Jesus Abbie. Look. We will probably never see each other again. It might just be, my lover, that our stars are crossed."

And so we held each other again and I tried to ignore the world around us as we bounced along in that rattling, rusty little machine.

We didn't get to the Continental. A jeep from the embassy pulled our driver over. A thickset sergeant in formal uniform, strode back to where we sat together watching. I recognised him as he approached.

"Hi, Chuck," said Abbie.

"Miss Klein." He looked at me with open contempt. "You're to come with me, ma'am."

"I left a message. I won't be long." He didn't answer her. He eyed me again and then looked at her patiently. "Okay?" Abbie asked.

"Now, ma'am. Please."

"Well, can my friend come too? You see we have some things to ... to talk about and we won't see each other again. So ..."

"I can't do that, ma'am."

"But he's with me ... He's..."

"Now, please, ma'am. Please."

"Can you give us one minute? One minute, Chuck. Please?" He stood back no more than a metre from the back of the Lambretta. Its engine seemed even louder than before but the driver had no complaint this time.

She took my hand again. "Can I write you?"

"Ah, yeah. Of course."

"Where? What's your unit?"

"Thirty-seven Transport Platoon. Australian Logistic Support."

"Thirty-seven Platoon. Logistic Support. Vung Tau." I nodded. "I'll write," she said. "Surely I can write you."

"Okay, ma'am. In the vehicle, please."

She climbed out. "Bye. I'll let you know what happened. Okay?"

"Yeh. Bye." The sergeant made a small movement to indicate that time was up and she moved away with him. "Abbie," I said. She stopped. "Take care. You know. Tomorrow and everything."

She nodded as the young sergeant said something to the Lambretta driver. When she was seated in the jeep he strode back to me. I wondered if his marching gait was exaggerated for effect. His uniform looked too tight for his thickset body and beads of sweat lined his brow as he ducked his head beside the vehicle's rusty roof. Even his face seemed muscular.

"From what I've heard about them, I don't much like Australians. They sneak around the jungle like the goddamn VC. They're too quick to pull out and too scared to use their ammo." He looked up at the jeep. "That girl's an American. You stay right away from her, y'hear."

I didn't say anything but I met his stare. I reckoned I knew more about that girl than he did.

I wasn't really that late getting back to the Canberra but the soldier on guard duty didn't like my story, until I mentioned Killer.

"Am I glad to see you, mate." Dressed in civvies Killer was brushing his hair in the bathroom mirror. "I stayed in specially to make sure you got back alright. Where were you? I went back there twice looking for you. Second time it was bloody dark."

"We went into the orphanage. And then got a Lambretta."

"You went into that building? Determined little bit a' gear, your girlfriend, isn't she? Well I'm glad it was just an orphanage and you're alright. Was the baby there?

"Yeh."

"And what's gunna happen? Did she take it?"

"No. Not yet."

"Well what have you been up to then, old son? That embassy woman insisted we go. What a bitch. I would have been back earlier to get you but she made me stop to get street names, where they've got 'em. And when we got back to the embassy she gets out of the Land Rover, after I've driven her back, and says, 'Now go back and get the lovers before they do something they regret, or one of them regrets.'"

"Which one?"

"She didn't stipulate. But I reckon it was you." I cursed Julie Shields. Killer laughed. "Mate. The feeling is mutual, let me assure you. It is my considered opinion that she would gladly have your gonads if she could." He took a small pair of scissors from his kit and began trimming his moustache. "Anyway, can I recommend a local bar where you can lose yourself in cold beer and the loveliest ladies this town has to offer. You seem a bit down again."

I declined.

"No? Could be the best thing for you. And what about your reputation? I've heard you truckies like to give the piss a very serious nudge, given the opportunity."

I began undressing for a shower, paying him scant attention, coming to terms with the probability of never seeing Abbie again.

"Speaking of which," he went on, "I've been meaning to ask you. A guy I know got posted to Vung Tau. I did driver training with him at Puckapunyal. Henry Mollineau. They called him Moll."

That got my attention. "He's in my platoon. Same hut."

"Yeh? I didn't know him well, but everybody knew of him. Remember at Pucka, theythreatened us with driving lawnmowers for the rest of our nasho if we weren't competent on the trucks? It was all crap of course but the sergeant, old rough nut named Doyle. Remember him? He told Moll the only way he'd avoid two years on the mowers was to beat him in a drinking competition at our last night piss-up."

"And did he?"

"Well, he's not pushing lawnmowers for a living. Now I bet Moll'd take up the offer of a night out in Saigon."

"I'm sure he would. But not for the girls. He doesn't like the bargirls much."

"No. I don't see him as a ladies' man." Killer pulled his head back from the mirror to examine his handiwork, and seemed pleased.

"It almost got him into trouble one night in Vung Tau, with an American."

"Yeh? What happened?"

\- 0 -

Formerly a bank clerk in Sydney, Moll Mollineau had almost failed the call-up medical because of his weight. At school, and for a couple of years beyond, he rowed and played low level rugby, but it was more about the social scene than the sport itself. The young doctor conducting his medical had been a rower himself and liked this recruit's attitude if not his fitness. Most people did, even the NCOs at basic, including the sergeant who told him, "I'm gunna work you so hard, Recruit Mollineau, by the end a' this little holiday camp you'll look like a fuckin' pull-through!"

In which Moll only saw humour. In Vung Tau he was famous for his performances, especially in the boozer, and had drunk so much beer since his arrival nine months earlier that he could no longer button his shirt. You needed your characters. Al Stanley, Crazy Al, was a crack up, but at the same time he stirred up tensions with all his 'give peace a chance' raving. Moll settled everyone, took the bitterness out of the laughter.

On that night in town when he upset an American, his sense of humour saved him. He had stood up at our table to order drinks and one of the girls with us, a particularly young one, laughed out loud. "Heh. You have baby san in your belly."

Moll turned on her and looked furious the way he could. "You cheeky little harlot! No more Saigon fucking tea for you!"

An American at a table next to ours turned. The girl had shown no ill feeling, might even have understood Aussie humour better than the GI, but he felt a need to defend her. "There's no need to talk to the girl like that." He looked unhappily drunk, more troubled by something personal than concern for the girl's honour. "You should show more respect."

Moll was still standing. The girl grinned at his tee shirt, stretched beyond all proportion. "Oh, I've shown her respect. I've shown her enough respect tonight for her to go out tomorrow and buy a new bike for everyone in the family."

The GI looked at the smiling girl and some of his chivalry died. "Say. Where you guys from anyhow?"

"We're from Australia, mate," Barry Love told him.

He frowned hard. "Ss... stralamite? That in Texas?"

"No. It's in the Pacific."

"And the Indian," someone from WA shouted.

"Indian? Never can figure Indian names."

"You go to Honolulu and turn right," said Moll. " 'S'got a big red rock in the middle of it. You can't miss it."

The American watched Moll so long and hard that we thought he might start something. But then the girl caught his attention again. He seemed to accept that he was caught up in a lost cause and turned away, until Moll invited him to join us.

By the end of the night he was laughing with us, and then stumbling away with the same girl, turning as he did. "Say, Moll. Just where you guys from anyway?"

No one tried to tell him again. Why spoil the joke? And by then he was one of us.

"Goddamn Indians," he laughed as the girl led him away.

Part 4

'Leaving on a jet plane'

Chapter 20

It seemed that from the time of my arrival in-country some nine months earlier there had been talk of a withdrawal of all troops from the war. By the morning of my return to base the rumours had become a reality. I was told we would all be home by Christmas. Militarily at least, Australia's part in the war would soon be over.

Of course the news was met with great rejoicing, each night the boozer upped its output. Everyone got happier, superficially at least. Because in those final weeks, as the whole deployment drew officially to a close, frictions developed. Differences emerged, or intensified, began to rankle, in ways they hadn't before. The extra alcohol fired things up, but I wonder now if the withdrawal itself wasn't behind more of what happened than we realised at the time.

I was as instantly happy with the news as anybody, even though, in quieter moments, caught up in memories of Abbie Klein and all that had happened, I realised that this new and exciting turn of events put an even more definitive line under all of that. Abbie was gone for good. I would soon be home. With all emphasis on getting troops out of the country as expeditiously as possible, there would be no more one-off, out-of-the-blue, special deliveries to Saigon or anywhere else. Not for anyone. The last time I had seen Abbie, sitting in an American jeep, in the safe, sure hands of Sergeant America, and then lost in a swirl of Saigon traffic, those fading glimpses really were the last I'd see of her. So I believed.

Not that any change in our general situation was noticeable on that morning of my return. As I stepped from the airport bus the greeting from Greg Urquhart was all I might have expected.

"Is it true you fragged the prefect?"

I recognised the peremptory tone immediately, partly from memories of our time together back in Enoggera, including the night of our double-date. But I had to look around as the bus swung away before I saw him up on the roof of the workshop shed about to bang in some nails. "Heh. Your bum buddy missed ya."

He meant Tony Carmody. As our time together in the same platoon went by, Greg Urquhart's dislike for Tony and me became more obvious. We were tolerant of, almost friendly with Crazy Al Stanley, highly-strung, political Al, the platoon embarrassment. Where most of us used Al as a figure of fun, Urquhart despised him, his slurs, even when laughing, all spite and venom, without humour. He had wanted Al reported and charged for unauthorised discharging of a weapon on the day Al claimed he saw a tiger in the rubber trees. Everybody else was happy to leave it as an in-joke, no harm done. Not Urquhart. He seemed to want an army, perhaps a country, a world, where the Al Stanleys were eliminated and he took any acceptance of the misfit as an affront to everyone else in the unit.

I ignored him and headed straight for the admin office. Larger things held sway in my mind, as rested as it was now. Deliverance from the turmoil of the last few days was a comfort, but the whole thing still weighed heavily.

Urquhart had no further comment. He might even have served a worthwhile purpose, brought me back to the reality of where I was, back with the boys, at the blunt end, and there was considerable consolation in that.

What annoyed me more than Urquhart's 'nice to have you back' was the grin on Lyle O'Malley's face. Lyle, my saviour from jungle training at Canungra, who had let me sleep for hours while our section of the training platoon lay set for ambush. He was standing beside his truck in front of the shed, looking like he endorsed Urquhart's suggestion about my part in the death of Lieutenant Jefferies, the prefect.

Back with the boys alright. But I reminded myself that it was Lyle, 'the Spanner', our constant and willing volunteer, whose boyish grin was almost a fixture and usually easy to take, in fact good to have around. Still, my sensitivities had been rubbed a bit raw of late and I felt a distance, even from Lyle. His grin struck me just then as not only innocent but ignorant and stupid. I could have grabbed him and shaken him. For Christ's sake, Lyle, step out of your wonderful innocence for a moment and look at what's going on here. But he had turned away and found something on his truck that needed fixing. Sometimes Lyle just tried too hard.

I made my way across the compound, intrigued still by that grin, so much so that I almost turned to look back at the shed. Because something about Lyle had reminded me of Lieutenant Jefferies. It wasn't his grin at Urquhart's comment about the lieutenant's death. There was a likeness. Not a physical likeness. Something beyond that. Something more metaphysical. Despite their differences, I decided that the slow-talking, work-loving bushy from the Riverina, and our former terribly correct and disciplined junior officer, had the same sort of innocence about them.

Stark, often disturbing memories of the lieutenant sat in the back of my mind, and would for a long time after. "We're on an important mission here, Private Ross. Make sure you're on your best behaviour." "Aren't you forgetting something, Private Carmody?"Those sorts of little pomposities Lyle could never have uttered, no matter what army rank he might rise to. And yet I saw them now as born of an innocence not unlike Lyle's. With the lieutenant it might have been parceled up in more education and authority, but to me, it was the same sort of thing. An innocence. A wide-eyed, unshakeable capacity to believe in it all. And I realised that, in the army or out, I would never have been friends with either of them for long. They of so much faith. I of so little.

At the office even Joe Bartolino the admin corporal looked at me differently. "Wait there a minute, Mark." He disappeared into the next room and Captain O'Brien came out behind him to tell me that the major wanted to see me at 0800 hours next morning. There was none of the usual sardonic indifference in his eyes. "Are you all right, Private Ross? How do you feel?"

"I'm okay, Sir."

"Well if you don't feel okay in any way come straight back down here and let us know. If you'd like to see a doctor, even just to talk to, you let us know."

Back in the lines the scrutiny was less restrained. Everyone just wanted to know what had happened. Even Bushfire Daniels said nothing as I retold selected events, concentrating mostly on the killing of the lieutenant.

I got drunk in the boozer that night recounting the details to Tony Carmody, giving more emphasis this time to the Klein family, Lin and her sister. We were sitting at a small table farthest from the bar and when I'd more or less finished he looked at me calmly. "Are you okay?" That was Tony, his focus always on the personal. On our survival. On his wedding plans. The espionage, the politics of it all meant little. I could only imagine him, even during the happy times that he felt were guaranteed, taking each step through a prosperous and ordered life, with the same sober, rational consideration he was giving me at that moment.

For a time I had seen a kind of arrogance in Tony's absolute confidence in the rightness of his life's plan. And I admired him for it. It was a strength I didn't have. I had a thought, after that night, that if my life went off the rails at some time in the future, I could arrive on his comfortable, solid, middle-class doorstep, hug his three beautiful children, kiss his beautiful wife on the cheek, shake his hand and be fed and beered and sent, reassured, on my way. He was my link with stability, sanity perhaps. When I suggested something like that to him he said it would be fine, so long as, should the situations be reversed, I'd do the same for him.

"Is Al around?" I knew Al would be more interested than Tony in people like Jake Klein and Thi Lin Quang.

"Al won't be coming up. He's confined to barracks. Guard duty for the night."

"I thought I was the only one ever to get CB over here?"

"Well you know Al. He had a disagreement with an infantry sergeant in Nui Dat. They're doing special patrols around there now to cover the evac."

And so I was given the details. A complete pull-out and this time no rumours. Our transport unit's job was to bring all troops and gear down from Nui Dat to be put up at Vung Tau to await shipment. Nashos were priority, although as the movers of everything we drivers would be among the last to go. But the word was that Operation Southward, as it was called, meant we'd all be home by Christmas.

"Well I'll drink to that." I stood and headed for the bar.

"Listen," I said, taking a big swig as soon as I'd sat down again. "It doesn't mean everyone, does it? I mean, the Yanks are staying?''

"No official word. But they reckon they'll go eventually. Al's back with us tomorrow. He'll give you all the details. You know how worked up he gets about it."

Well no wonder Al Stanley was excited. All his 'unwinnable war' stuff was coming true. Of course words like 'retreat' and 'defeat' would be avoided. We were simply withdrawing. Leaving by the back door, Al would say, which was the way we'd come in. 'Importunate beggars at the back door', he'd read somewhere, who had asked the Americans, through the South Vietnamese, if we could take part. Hey, America. Don't forget us. Give us a guernsey. So said Al. So much so now that it worried Tony.

"He's not so easily scared any more. Mouths off about it more than ever. I'm starting to wish they'd sent him home when they had the chance. I think there's a real paranoia taking over. Worse than ever. He's talking ... mutiny."

"Mutiny?" I laughed. "Mutiny against what? The army?"

Tony laughed too but it was muted. "Yeh, well, if it wasn't such a joke it'd be scary. He reckons..." He smiled in spite of himself."He reckons we should make a stand. Make a stand! Like he's in a movie or something. He's losing touch with reality."

I took another swig. It was good to feel my senses being numbed. I laughed again. "Make a stand how? Against what?"

"He says we'd have everybody on side back home if we all refused to take out more infantry, on their patrols. The press would grab it and with all the demonstrations and protests back home we'd go back heroes."

"Heroes? Don't you get shot for mutiny?"

"Used to. I'm not sure what would happen now. But we wouldn't be heroes, that's for sure."

"I wonder why they didn't send him home in the first place. Couldn't they see he's nuts?"

"I think it's called confronting your fears. And it's not working. We're about to go home and he wants to get thrown in the lock-up. He doesn't care anymore. He sees this withdrawal as some kind of personal victory. The Yanks'll go too soon, he says. Pull out and lose the war. The mighty Americans."

"The Americans are just people."

He watched me for a moment before he said, "And it's a much bigger deal for them."

"It sure is."

"Al says when it's all over the Australians will count their dead in hundreds. The Americans in thousands."

"And the Vietnamese? What does he say about them? Millions?"

"He says there's too many to count. There'll only be estimates."

"And when does Al reckon the Americans will go?"

Tony didn't know. He watched me take another big swig of my beer can. He wasn't one to get drunk very often but seemed more flat and disconsolate than I would haveexpected, given the news of withdrawal. When I asked if he was okay his nod was not convincing. "What's wrong? You're supposed to be happy. 'Specially you. So much to go back for."

"That's what Chris said in her last letter. That I should be getting happier, I mean."

Christine was now into her second year of teaching, something of a sore point with her conscripted fiancé, simply because it was where he wanted to be. Tony Carmody was one of a family of seven off a dairy farm near Warragul. He'd met Christine at teachers' college and I knew that their marriage-to-be was their life. And we had all seen what letters could do. I looked at him before I said carefully. "You didn't get a...?"

"Dear John?No. No, she said in one of her letters that her eighteen year old brother was thinking of joining the army. I told her I wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy, certainly not on her brother."

"So?"

"Well, she said I sounded bitter, when I should be getting happier. I think she must have told her family and it wasn't what they wanted to hear."

It didn't seem cause for a break-up, but it worried Tony. In the following weeks of the withdrawal he tried on several occasions to leave with an earlier flight than his time in- country allowed. Blowfly volunteered his seat on one of the early flights but each request was denied.

It was felt by some that Tony's recalcitrance, though polite and restrained, was a consequence of his failure to make it into the conscripts' officer training course at Scheyville during basic. He had the education and leadership skills but not the attitude. I felt I knew him better. He just didn't want to be where he had to be, no matter where the army decided to place him. Never popular with the officers and NCOs, in the end he would leave with the final flight of national servicemen out of the country.

"Tell me about the redhead. What was she like?"

"Nice," I dropped the can heavily onto the table. "And educated. Got some sort of literature degree."

"But not much common sense." I looked at him and his expression turned apologetic. "I mean, to come over here."

"Yeh. She says herself it's crazy. I think, really, she's just ... lonely."

"That's not really surprising, is it? It's a funny place for a girl to be."

He listened as I lapsed once more into recent memories. At closing I staggered as we stood to leave. The canteen corporal watched us from where he was cleaning up behind the bar. "Don't stand too close," he called. "He's jinxed."

Chapter 21

It was Tony who shook me awake in the morning and I dragged myself into the showers as the rest of the drivers made their way down to the compound. "Good luck," he said.

"You'll need it," Barry Love added.

But the major was a respectful listener, as was the Intelligence captain who sat in the corner taking notes. When I said that the killers weren't aiming at Lieutenant Jefferies this man interrupted with, "What makes you say that?" They were the only words he spoke.

I was back in the hut late in the morning and fell asleep until I woke in a sweat in the mid-afternoon. I had another shower and lay back on my bunk wondering about Abbie. I decided she would be put onto a plane out of the country before I was. She may even have gone already.

The rain was starting when I heard the trucks coming into the compound so I hurried up to the canteen. Doug 'Smiley' Meehan, the corporal in charge, lifted his head from down behind the bar where he was loading beer cans. "You're early. Didn't you go out? Officers givin' you a wide berth?" He opened the can for me, as near as he could get to an offer of condolence.

I don't think Corporal Meehan knew his nick name was Smiley. No one was ready to tell him because he had a reputation for insanity, with violence, when drunk. Rumour had it that he took on the boozer job so he would have to stay off the booze. Few spoke to him except to order beer which he served with a brisk and absolute contempt. But he kept it cold.

I took a chair in the corner. The rain thundered on the tin roof.

But the memory of Lieutenant Jefferies was fading already in the minds of the men he had commanded and as the first wave of drivers bustled into the boozer out of the rain, even the withdrawal was being overlooked. The buzz was all about an even newer development in operations.

Bushfire Daniels, salesman of anything that would sell, including beach sand to the villagers at Dat Do, led them in. "Well they know where they can ram that," he declared, prompting laughter from the mob that followed.

I moved over to the bar. I had forgotten about the national day march in Saigon. It was taking place in a few days time, still required just one volunteer and I was surprised to hear that Captain O'Brien had agreed to let Daniels represent our platoon instead of Lyle O'Malley.

"O'Brien wants Lyle here," Barry Love told me.

"So what's Bushfire on about? Doesn't he want to go now?"

Barry was passed a can and laughed his high-pitched laugh as he took a swig. "O'Brien's told Bush he can go to Saigon for the march so long as he has Crazy Al as his shotgun on the Dat evac, right up until we go."

"Why's he need a shotgun rider?"

"We all do. No one goes outside without one now." With the army on the move extra precautions were being set in place. "A grunt was killed the other day. Army doesn't want any more."

So Daniels went on moaning and cursing about having to spend the rest of his working days in the company of Al Stanley and the more he did the more everyone enjoyed it.

"You seen Al since you got back?" Barry asked me as the group moved over to the tables.

"No. He's been on CB"

"Yeh. That's 'cause he's completely flipped. He's crazier than ever. He refused to take a load of grunts out into the scrub. Refused. And they're out to get him. They don't like jackmen, 'specially when they're mad like Al. And now they're down on all of us. All 'cause Al's a nut case."

Greg Urquhart had turned to listen. "Mutiny," he declared with his derisive laugh. "He's mutinied. I reckon they should court martial the bastard."

As we sat around the table, laughing at Bushfire Daniels' dilemma, I weighed things up carefully before I said. "I'll swap with you, Bush."

There was a moment's silence. "The rest of your time? With Al? You'd swap for that."

I nodded. "If I can march too. And if it's okay with O'Brien. I got to like Saigon."

"So do I. But not if I gotta spend every other day with Crazy Al Stanley."

Greg Urquhart was shaking his head. "That'd be right."

"You must be mad as Al," Barry cackled.

"You could mutiny with 'im," said Urquhart. "Steal a truck and head for Thailand and live happily ever after. Just the two of you."

Barry laughed and it annoyed me. With his narrow, sharp features, little moustache and brown hair hanging on his forehead, I thought he looked like a rat. Barry Love was Daniels' mate, and our longest server, the only one in the platoon then to serve a full twelve month tour, less a couple of weeks. He was also the only one to have been shot at during my time incountry, while we were out in convoy.

An Adelaide rev-head, Barry had been detailing cars for a living at the time of his conscription. His complaints about army life were superficial. After all, he got to drive vehicles, and, as often as he could get away with it, drive them fast.

On the day he picked up that set of bullet holes along the side of his truck, no action was taken against anyone. The incident must have shaken him. It bothered all of us. There was always an element of bravado, but as days passed Barry seemed to get comfortable with what had happened, almost cherished the moment, took photographs and sent some of them to friends and family back home.

"Me girlfriend's gunna be rapt," he said, looking at the photos.

"Why?" Moll asked. " 'Cause someone could've killed you?"

It was lost on Barry. "She's gunna think I'm a hero."

From that day on Barry Love could always tell the rest of us to "get some war up."

I had little to talk to him about, but Daniels had been distracted and if I wanted to wait for my chance, a chance maybe to get back to Saigon, I'd have to stay at the table until I could catch his eye.

"Bushfire? What do you think?"

He moved his chair closer to mine, outside the circle of merry drinkers.

"Yeh. I'm thinkin' about it, if O'Brien'll okay it. But see, I got this other problem." He looked around, rubbed the red bristles on his chin contemplatively, almost as if some ethical consideration weighed on his mind, which looked ironic, since probably nothing could be more antithetical to the Bushfire Daniels persona than ethical considerations. "Ya see. I had this other little venture goin', on the side, to make some spendin' money for the trip."

"What little venture?"

"Oh, just a little international trade, you know. Lots of girls in Saigon with expensive tastes. I didn't want to arrive there with no spendin' money. And I was just wonderin', since you're so keen to get back there, if you'd like to pull off a simple little deal for me." I watched him in silence. "It's nothin' really. But they're startin' to watch me a bit, you know. Not like that's a problem. The regs are all up to their ears with the evac. But I'm thinking, since you're so keen. You've had this funny look in your eye since you got back."

"Listen, Bush. I just want another trip to Saigon. I don't want to finish up on MP hill." The military police jail was situated on top of one of the sandhills.

"There's no risk. You drop a little load of goods various in a side street in Baria. Couple of nogs named Tran will be there to meet and greet you and give you lots of money."

"But there's artillery, isn't there? Armoured personnel carriers and heavy gear watching everything now. Makin' sure no one goes missing?"

"Yeh. They got 'em stationed here and there along the roadside, mostly for show, I reckon. They're not gunna care if a truck takes a little detour for a few minutes. They won't even know. You just say you're droppin' off a pile of laundry. Tran and Tran are always on time."

"Tran and Tran?"

"They're brothers or somethin'. Slimy pair of bastards but their money's as good as anyone's. Nothin' to it. Two or three minutes and you've got yourself a nice little pile."

"What's in it for you?"

"Fifty-fifty seems fair. I set it up. You deliver and collect, c.o.d. Fifty-fifty."

So I asked the age old question. "How much?"

He took a swig from his can and looked around him for a moment. "You're not gunna believe it. You stand to collect, for two minutes work, ten thousand dollars."

I didn't believe him. He nodded and moved in a little closer. "Fifty-fifty. So you finish with five." And he knew that my next question would be about the 'goods various'. "Of course for that amount the customers are expecting a little more than the usual grog and ciggies. They're expecting a supply of smokes, but on this special occasion, as a farewell gift, they'd like to take the truck they come on as well." He moved on quickly. "Now wait a minute. It's not really that big a deal. All the army cares about now is gettin' out with no more casualties. What's one truck? One less to load on the ship."

"You're serious."

"Yeh. Blood oath. It's good money. Good, easy money."

"You want to sell a truck. Bushfire, army trucks are not for sale. The army likes 'em. They're worth a lot of money."

"Yeh. A little shit'll hit the fan. And we'll all be back home in Oz, and everyone'll be happy about that, and no one will give a rat's about one dirty old truck."

"What would I say? I mean there'd be trouble. An inquiry."

"That you took some clothes into the laundry. I've arranged it just near the laundry there. When you came back out, truck's gone. What could you do? Nogs are thieves. Everyone knows that." He laughed and I couldn't help laughing with him but then I shook my head. "Don't look like that. Finish your beer. I'll get you another one."

I sat back and drained my can. He strode to the bar, joking with someone there while he waited for the beer and getting caught up in another conversation. I wondered if he was organising another 'little venture' and just how much he was taking home. And here I was considering one of his deals. But he might be my ticket back to Saigon.

Bushfire Daniels had been a fitter and turner at the steel mill in Wollongong before the army. Expelled from school at fourteen, he had started his apprenticeship early, knocked around with an older crowd, grew up, if that's what it was, young. At the time of his call-up he'd been living with a single mum, five years older. He liked to give us detailed descriptions of their sex life and he seemed so comfortable with the more outrageous segments that what should have stretched credibility somehow didn't. Even the menage a trois."Fair dinkum. I was like a kid in a lolly shop. Didn't know where to start."

He also bragged about the freedom the relationship gave him. Friday night at the pub, Saturday the races, Sunday the footy. And other girls. Hardened women before their time, they sounded like, who enjoyed long sessions of pool at the pub as much as the boys did.

And yet he wrote to his girlfriend regularly and he'd bought jewellery for her and toys for the toddler from the PX store at Saigon's Tan Son Nhut Airport. None of it was cheap, and he planned on buying more on his way home.

But as a soldier, he was all about making his national service serve him. When he alone volunteered for the South Vietnam national day march in Saigon, the officers saw it immediately for what it was, a chance for a change of night life, and they ignored him. But conditions had now changed.

He was still talking at the bar. I looked around the canteen. Conversations were loud, competing with the drumming of rain on the roof. The biggest crowd sat at the corner table near the bar. Moll Mollineau at the centre. Lyle O'Malley beside him, his physical

opposite, grinning, his head bowed forward as though he had something to be ashamed of.

Moll was laughing, which was a little unusual. More often than not he'd be the only onenot laughing. At the centre of it all, as drunk as anyone, but with nothing more than that ironic grin on show. Unless engaged in one of his tirades at someone who hadn't measured up to his standards, someone who'd let down the group and its culture. Then he was all anger and outrage. The night Al Stanley had labeled the infantry 'cannon fodder' for example. That had sent Moll into one of his more memorable rages. He even got physical that time, leaping from his chair, leading with his belly to push Al off his chair, no hands, belly wobbling enormously from the assault, and Moll looking fit to burst with angry indignation. Everyone else was laughing, even Al, almost. Because no matter how serious the victim's misdemeanour, or how intense Moll's admonishment, the joke, in the end, was always on Moll, at least as much as the driver on the end of his vitriol. Moll made sure of that.

There was nothing particularly self-mocking about the Bushfire, returning now to my table. He was all business, despite the gruff, licentious laugh as he left the bar. Immorality on two legs, coming at me with beer, freckles and red hair, and deals to rip off Australian taxpayers to the tune of one army truck.

"So, wha'd you think? Want some good easy money or not?"

"They wouldn't let me go to Saigon," I said as he sat down and handed me a can. "Even if I got away with it. What's Collins going to say? 'Lost your truck? Dear me. Take a trip to Saigon to get over it'."

He threw his big head back and drank. He burped and watched me, his small eyes showing nothing. "Ten thousand US dollars." He leaned forward in earnest. "Listen. These two nogs told me, weeks ago, that we're withdrawin' and that the army won't care about one less truck. They told me. They know more about what the army's doin' than we do. Millions of dollars go missing in this fucked-up country every week.It's all arranged. They'll have the money. But they want the truck."

"But I wouldn't be allowed go to Saigon."

He shrugged. "You might. You can't help it if this country's full a' thieves. Anyway. So what? It's still a lot of money. What's the big deal about going up there anyhow, after what happened last time?"

"I want to go back there." He was watching me. "And they wouldn't let me." He said nothing and I shook my head. "I won't sell army trucks, Bush."

He sat back, exposing his belly. "Not even for ten thousand dollars?"

"No, thanks."

He picked up his can suddenly and took another drink. "Nah. I can't either."

"What?"

He shook his head. "My mate at the post office who exchanged the money has gone home. Ten thousand might scare the other guy there." And then he laughed out loud. "Had to try you out though, didn't I."

"You prick."

He laughed louder.

"What?" Barry Love wanted to know.

But he just shook his head and turned to me. "Five might be okay, from two different people."

I shook my head."Anyway. I don't even know if they'd agree to a swap."

"They should. O'Brien doesn't like the idea of me goin'. And you're skinnier than me. But, I won't say I don't want to go no more unless you do the swap. You have to take Al as your co-driver for the rest of your time, and make this delivery."

I looked at the corner table again. Moll was shouting at someone. The usual histrionics, and the whole table was laughing.

"Just the smokes? No truck?"

"Okay. Just the smokes."

"How much?"

"One thousand dollars. Five hundred each."

The rain had eased when Daniels turned his attention back to Barry Love, Greg Urquhart and company. Moll's table had settled. Someone's failing had been exposed and castigated and they were back to drinking. Moll's fierce glare fading to wry smile, he looked pleased enough with the company again.

Unlike any other private soldier I knew, Moll Mollineau had attended a prestigious private school. 'A social student,' he told us. Chief party organiser for the rugger set, he enjoyed all that raucous, boys-at-play kind of mateship. And he didn't even have to be in the army. He had known a doctor, father of a school friend, who would have given him a certificate for asthma, to ensure he failed the medical. Moll declined. And on the night he put Al Stanley on the boozer floor, we learnt that he had applied for infantry from basic. "I thought, fuck it. If I'm going to be a soldier I might as well be a real one." No one asked why he'd failed, but his application raised him in our estimation, to the point where he had become our moral guardian, of sorts. A few, like Tony Carmody, thought him a bit too proudly dissipated and self-indulgent, but we all went along with the joke, accepted his harsh judgments, and harsher reprimands, because in the end, they were about working in, about group harmony. All the heavy boozing notwithstanding, Moll had this moral streak. And he was good for morale.

He disapproved of shirkers, light drinkers, even the prostitutes in town, although a cynic might have suggested that this had less to do with morality and more to do with the irreverent bar girl who had asked him if he had a baby in his belly. His authority was never officially recognised. Lyle O'Malley had recently been given his lance-corporal's stripe but we knew Moll's authority existed beyond the essential irrelevance of army regulations. It was about the way we lived with each other, about morale, group morality.

He was laughing again as I finished my can to leave, laughing hard, harder than I'd ever seen. Red faced, exposed stomach a giant jumping jelly in his lap, he looked like he could be reduced to tears at any moment. It was infectious for a moment but then it seemed to undermine his usual cool. And got me wondering. Could Moll really be that happy? Drinking all that beer? Making himself an old man before his time? He took a swig from his can. Self-inflicted, that was Moll. Had he gone too far? And where to from here for the joker? Would the Bank of New South Wales still want him on a teller's counter looking like that?

He was still laughing as I left the boozer. Laugh, Moll. Laugh till you cry.

Chapter 22

By the end of the next day, back with the convoy, I had decided against Daniels' venture. I took Al Stanley as co-driver, and even had that been as unbearable for me as it was for Bushfire, I would have told him no.

Abbie Klein was probably back home in Seattle. If not she soon would be. Her father's health might have improved to a stage where he could take care of the baby and I couldn't imagine the American Embassy accommodating a non-essential visitor for very long. So I saw no reason to go back to Saigon and so, no reason to make any clandestine roadside deals with the likes of Tran and Tran.

As well as that it seemed most of the army's Armoured and Artillery Corps were stationed somewhere along the road to Nui Dat. Phouc Tuy Province suddenly looked like an open and unequivocal war zone. So I resigned myself to spending the rest of my active service as part of the evac convoy and not getting back to Saigon. I felt lucky to have come through my time in the jungle and in the big city unscathed, and soon now we would all be home.

Al, however, was cracking. The whites of his eyes seemed larger than ever. He looked nervously at each APC we passed along the road as though they belonged to the enemy and he didn't seem to know how to talk to me. I decided not to broach the topic of mutiny. He'd gone quieter on the idea since his confinement to barracks. It only inspired laughter and one corporal had threatened to tell Captain O'Brien.

There were times when I regretted having joined in the laughter at Al's expense. He hadbeen such an easy target, with his almost constant state of anxiety, something to break the boredom. It was never the threat of attack from our enemy, the communists, that frightened Al. It was his comrades-in-arms, us, his digger mates. Anyone could reduce him to a state of overt fear, almost to tears. You only had to look angrily at him to see his eyes widen. Bushfire Daniels liked to sneak up on him and shout just to watch him jump.

Al had filled his days as contentedly as most of us so long as everyone was kind. He had newspapers, political books and history books sent over from home and he borrowed

Time and Newsweek magazines from the hospital library. Any of which could set him off. We were 'pawns of American imperialism', at which he could be quickly put in his place, and become the victim. "You're the only prawn, Al."

At Captain O'Brien's recommendation, Al was examined by a psychiatrist at the hospital. Al said the doctor seemed more interested in his sex life than anything and when he was satisfied that Al was heterosexual, deemed him fit to complete his tour.

"The shrink probably fancied 'im," was Greg Urquhart's comment. He had hoped Al would be kicked back home in disgrace, with all necessary haste.

We were turning onto the Baria Road when I asked him if he wanted to know what happened to Jefferies. "Everyone else does."

"Yeh," he said, without conviction, in a distracted way. I told him, briefly, avoiding the bloodshed. "The poor bastard." He looked at me. "How are you going to live with that? Are you okay?"

"Yeh. I'm okay. I was the lucky one. Are you okay?"

He turned away, ostensibly to look at another armoured vehicle. "What do you think?"

"Well you look a bit pale and drawn. Like you're heading into the war or something."

"We are."

"Al, they reckon there's so much hardware kickin' about here no half-sane enemy soldier would show his face for miles."

"Yeh, but they go looking for 'em. Last week a guy was shot and killed. The patrols we take out, search and destroy, they go lookin' for enemy. It's crazy."

"It must be part of the plan. They're protecting us during the withdrawal."

"Would you like to be shot during a withdrawal? Think of it. We're leaving. We'll be home soon. 'Cept for that dead bloke. And any others that get killed now. They go home in a plastic bag."

"That's the war. You can't do anything about it."

He was quiet for a moment. "You can try. I still reckon we should refuse to take any more out."

"Sorry, Al, but that is crazy. You'd be on CB again. Or worse this time. Refusing to carry out orders. You can't do that. That's big trouble."

"Not with this war now. Not anymore. Anyway, I don't care. You know? I really don't care anymore. I'm just so sick of the bullshit. I don't care what they decide to do with me anymore."

But for someone who didn't care anymore he looked tense and troubled, the deceptively quiet, apparently calm kind of troubled. The martyr before the ultimate self-sacrifice? Or was it more the condemned before the ultimate punishment? I turned my thoughts to my own wellbeing, because I had begun to feel genuinely relaxed, looking forward to the evacuation. It meant we really were going home.

I had a look at the laundry shop in Daniels' Baria side-street. It was back from the road and looked like a deal could be done there quickly but I imagined how tiresome preparations for a march would be, and then the march itself, with Abbie out of the country. And I looked again at Al, who, as co-driver, would be implicated should anything go wrong. Sick-of-the-bullshit Al, wound up so tight already, just performing regular duties, that he looked to me like he needed to see that psychiatrist again.

North of Baria the number of APCs and tanks along the roadside increased. The crews sitting on top of the machines seemed relaxed as they watched us pass but the whole scene looked more seriously war than anything I'd seen before. The paradox of withdrawal. It raised the tension. Al said the armoured display had been brought on by the death of that infantryman, which would have had repercussions at the highest levels. Powerful decision makers somewhere had decreed passionately, "There must be no more."

"Take it easy, Al. There won't be any more. Look at these tankies. Like cats ready to spring into action." He looked at them nervously, unconvinced. "Soon you'll be Alan Stanley, private citizen, again. Back in the furniture shop." His family had a furniture manufacturing business in Sydney. "Driving the delivery truck. Is that why you put in for transport, after basic? Your truck driving experience?"

"That and I thought it might keep me away from this place."

"I asked for clerical, hoping it'd keep me away from this place. I put transport second choice. They must've needed drivers for the civil aid program."

The convoy swung onto the dirt road that led into Nui Dat. We were wet with sweat already. The vegetation around us looked bursting with rich, green life, trees and long grasses clambering for dominance.

I spoke in what I thought might be a kind of therapy, to keep Al talking. "I wonder how long this road will last after the Dat's all packed up and gone. The way everything grows here."

"The Americans have a program for killing off the vegetation. Shows how desperate they are."

I changed the subject. "How big's your factory, at home?"

"It's small. We have a couple of cabinet makers and it's custom made stuff. My father makes a lot of the furniture himself."

"Quality furniture, I'll bet. And soon it'll be Stanley and Son, quality furniture. This'll all be a fading memory."

He was quiet again before he said, "Stanley's not our real name. Not originally."

"No? What is it then?"

"Stanislowski."

"Really?"

"Yeh. And Alan's not my real first name."

"What is?"

"Alexi."

"Alexi?"

"Yeh."

I laughed. "Alexi Stanislowski."

"Don't tell anyone. My father had it changed by deed poll. Promise me you won't tell anyone. Specially Urquhart."

"I thought you didn't care anymore."

"Urquhart is different. He still scares me. Promise you won't tell."

"Where'd your father come from?"

"Poland. Both my father and mother came out to avoid the Nazis."

"How do they feel about you coming to this war?"

"They worry. They're worriers. But they're pleased to be in Australia and they've worked hard and done okay. You know. They want me to do what I'm told. Be a good Aussie, and all that. They're glad I didn't get infantry or something like that."

"Alexi Stanislowski."

"Promise you won't tell."

I promised.

Like me, Al Stanley had no one special to go home to, outside of family. A former girlfriend from school days had eventually found him too intense.

"Fancy that," I said.

His parents, and the girlfriend, had been disappointed when he failed to matriculate into university. Too much of his own choice of reading at the expense of school requirements. Even as a kid he was marching to the beat of a different drum, in his head at least. When the call-up notice arrived, his parents' worries increased visibly. They didn't say so but they knew their boy was no soldier. And war appalled them. It was a part of the Europe they'd left behind.

"I made the mistake of telling them about my bit of trouble recently. Their last letter was a real nag and they won't send any more books. And they've told my cousin to stop sending them too. I shouldn't have told them."

I thought about my letters home, hoped I wasn't whinging too much. Tony Carmody was wondering if he'd said the wrong thing to his fiancee recently, and caused worry. Mail was so important, our only link with the real world, the world of our futures, of our loved ones.

Not that mail was always so serious, especially to some. Bushfire Daniels came to mind, sealing an envelope joyfully one Sunday evening a couple of weeks earlier. "Now that's a love letter. That's got everything in it but the spoof."

Barry Love's appreciation had bordered on hysteria. "Put some in!" he shrieked.

But a few days later Barry was not so happy, thanks to a letter.

Joe Bartolino had followed us into the hut at the end of that day, and, as usual, tossed letters around like confetti.

"Carmody, Carmody, Carmody."

"You don't need that many, Tony. Give us one."

Until Barry exploded. "Fuckin' bitch!"

"What?"

We all turned to hear. Even Joe stopped delivery. Barry was upset. "Slut! Fuckin'..."

"What?"

"Me girlfriend. Me ex girlfriend. She's doin' it with me mate."

"Who says?"

"She does. She reckons ..." he was reading. "Fuck me! She reckons they were pissed and she was sayin' how much she missed me and everything ... and he says why doesn't she try doin' it with him while she thinks of me."

"How thoughtful of him."

"Lie back and think of Barry."

"She didn't used to drink. And ... fuckin' bitch! She reckons ... listen to this. 'Only. I'm so sorry, Baz. It worked the first few times but then I started thinking of him'. Fuckin' prick! I always knew he fancied her. Bad enough he's got me car."

Barry's FC Holden. We'd seen the picture. Deep-polished, British racing green, cream, vinyl upholstery, cream spats over the wheels, chrome grille and fluffy dice. It had been his CV for his job and he'd left it for his mate to look after.

He went back to the letter. 'Sorry, Baz. I can't write any more for crying. 'Cause I know this is gunna be the end of a beautiful relationship.' My oath it is, bitch!" Barry threw the letter to the floor.

"Forget it, Baz. Look at it this way. You're a free man again."

"Yeh, Barry. And it sounds like your girl was easily distracted."

"Shut up, Al! You crazy shit. What the fuck would you know about it?"

We all shut up. Whatever the circumstances a 'dear john' was no laughing matter and the empathy in the room, for the moment, was as real as Barry's anger. He cursed again and threw one of his boots at the hut wall. "Bush," he said. "Let's get pissed tonight."

The temporary solution. Letters, for better or worse, could make a big difference to how we handled our time.

From now on, Al said, his letters would be all about the good news of coming home.

Chapter 23

It had clouded over by the time we reached the gates into Nui Dat. The 'pearly gates' they were called but the atmosphere was more hadean than heavenly as we passed through. An APC stood on either side of the road and a big MP sergeant, in slouch hat, not bush hat, glared at me as he shouted, "Slow down."

The famous camp itself, which had nestled discreetly among the rubber trees, was littered with empty spaces. For several years now each one of those spaces where tents had stood represented a home of sorts to the hundreds of men who had come and gone. I wondered again how long it would take until it looked like no one had ever been there. We passed piles of tents and equipment and soldiers packing and stacking until we came to our designated check point.

"Wirraween, Sir," I called to an artillery captain who waved me on and pointed. We turned down past the infantry lines, 'grunt valley', until a corporal stepped out in front of us. I gave him the password as a tent was quietly dropped nearby. Someone laughed softly but when I looked the men had begun folding it up without speaking.

"Hurry up," said the corporal in a low harsh voice. "They're waitin' for ya." He pointed.

A few large raindrops hit the windshield as we made our way under a large rubber tree where three tents still stood. A dozen or so blackened faces turned towards us but there was no greeting. I noticed Al twitch as another corporal, short and tough-looking, came towards us. He had to stretch up to see past me. He was glaring at Al.

"Who the fuck let him out?' Al looked directly to the front, a deathly pale. "Heh! Jackman! Who let you out?"

"What do we do?" I asked him. "It's my first time on the job?'

He turned his belligerent face at me. Drops of perspiration were running down his face over the black grease. "You wait for fuckin' orders, don't ya. And when you get 'em, you carry 'em out." He looked at Al again. "Don't ya, jackman."

"Listen, mate," I said. "You get us our orders and we'll carry 'em out. Take it easy."

"Gilly," someone called from behind him. "Come on."

The sergeant who stepped in front of his corporal wasn't much taller and looked younger. Blue eyes shone out from the black. If not for the alertness and serious intent of those eyes it might have been a clown's face.

"You got any problems with following orders, driver? Like your mate here?"

"No."

" 'Cause we don't want no risks. We're short. We're extremely fuckin' short and we don't want no one goin' to pieces on us. Even on the drive out." I nodded. "Now we're not takin' your mate. Okay? We don't want no risks. And he's a risk."

"Shit, look at this, Sarg." It was the corporal.

"What?" shouted the sergeant.

"Have a look."

The sergeant left me and then called, "Heh, driver. Come here!"

I got out of the truck, starting to feel like Al looked.

"Can you tell me what the use of that is?"

I looked at the truck's tray. It looked like the usual troop-carrier, seats running down each side, enough to hold up to ten men on each. I didn't know what to say.

"Jesus fuckin' Christ," said the corporal.

"The seats are supposed to be in the middle, son," said the sergeant. "Lookin' out. If we engage enemy on the way out we'd rather shoot them, not each other."

"Sorry," I mumbled. "First time out. No one told me."

"I bet your mate didn't tell you," said one of the soldiers.

"Fuckin' pogos," said another.

"Can you change 'em over now?" asked the sergeant.

"Don't know. Never done it before. I'm usually on dump trucks. Just a sec." Al was sitting motionless in the co-driver's seat. He looked like one of those birds that keep perfectly still, hoping no one will notice them.

"Al. How the fuck do you change the seats over?" He was annoying me now. Couldn't he see we only had to follow orders a little longer and we'd be out of here? And soon enough, out of the whole campaign, the whole country. What was so special about him? It was nearly all over, for Christ's sake. Yeh, Al. We all agree it's a horrible, fucked-up world, but sometimes you've just got to get on with it. These crusaders, whether committed soldiers like Greg Urquhart and Lyle O'Malley, or revolutionaries like Al, dragging the rest of us into their slipstreams.

"Al! The fuckin' seats in the back! What's the deal?"

"You need a special spanner," he said in a hoarse whisper.

"Well where's the spanner?"

"Back at Vungers. They do it back there."

"I didn't see anyone changin' seats over."

"Most of 'em are done already."

"And we can't do it here?"

He shook his head. I cursed and turned to face the wrath of these black-faced infantrymen. "It has to be done back at Vung Tau, Sergeant. Sorry. I didn't ..."

I was met with a chorus of abuse.

"So we're s'posed to sit there lookin' at each other," the corporal spat bitterly. "And give the enemy our backs."

" 'Kay, listen up," said the sergeant. "We're out a' time anyway. You'll have to watch carefully on your opposite side. If anything happens, do not shoot." He waited a moment. "Drop immediately to the middle and get over to the other side. Corporal Gilbransen will give the orders. You will be extra vigilant. Look fuckin' hard." He lowered his voice.

" 'Kay. Let's go."

While the men climbed onto the truck the sergeant strode up to the cabin, passenger side. "Get out!" he ordered Al. Al didn't move. "I said get out!"

Still Al didn't move. The sergeant opened the door, grabbed Al with both hands and dragged him out. Al hit the dirt so hard I wondered if he broke anything. When he turned around the dust on the side of his face was flecked with blood.

"I haven't got time to deal with this shit now. I'll make my report out later and you will be spending the rest of this war locked up! I'll make sure of that!"

Al had scrambled to this feet. Someone spat at him from the back of the truck as he watched the sergeant who turned and climbed into the passenger seat.

"Let's go. You know the road out to the Horseshoe?"

When we emerged from under the rubber tree the rain was steady. Men worked around us in quiet little groups as we passed through the continuing demolition. In the rear-view mirror I could see some of the men in the back of the truck. They looked grim and tense in the falling rain.

"What's his problem?" asked the sergeant. "The enemy have never engaged a vehicle yet, to my knowledge. It's not their style. They fight in the scrub. And we're only patrolin' 'round the fire support bases."

"He's always scared." But that wasn't quite correct. Al hadn't always been afraid to go out on the road. "And he's a bit crazy. Crazy, that's his nickname. He reckons no one should have to go out anymore. That bloke who was killed last week. That upset him." The sergeant said nothing. "He's cracking up. Hope he can hold on till we go home."

"Did he know 'im?"

"The guy who was killed? No."

"What's he know about upset then?"

"Did you know 'im?" I asked.

"No. Different company. But we lost our last bloke not so long back."

"Were you there? Where it happened?"

"Yeh. Same operation. I wasn't near 'im. Different platoon." He stopped for a moment. "They called 'im 'Wakey'. Every mornin' he woke up, first thing he said was how many days and a wakey he had left. Wouldn't a' made any difference now, with the withdrawal."

"How'd it happen?"

He was slow to answer and for a moment I was sorry I had asked.

"He had his back to the enemy, actually, behind a tree, reloadin'. Fuckin' grenade. RPG goes off behind, down behind the assault line. Piece a' shrapnel pinned 'im to the tree, through the gut." He was quiet again. "Boss was callin' to 'im after it's over. Tellin' 'im he can come out from behind the tree. Then they find 'im stuck to it. Gut can be the worst. Prob'ly took 'im a while to die but nobody could hear 'im in all the noise."

He sat quietly. I watched the road ahead intently. Al's mutiny was against this man, who lived so many of his days hoping there would be another. It was like accusing the gun instead of the shooter, not that Al was accusing any of these men. But his pathetic little protest, no matter how he justified it in his own mind, was aimed in the wrong direction, at the wrong people.

The sergeant must have been thinking about it too. "I won't be makin' any report, about your mate. I'd probably be in as much trouble as 'im. 'Specially the way this war is now. And I'm too short for the hassle."

He was short. We were all short. We just wanted to get home.

About half way out to the Horseshoe the rain began to fall heavily. The sergeant stared into the bush beside us, as did the men in the back, in spite of the rain.

"Just up here at this clearing," he said.

I had hardly stopped when they all dropped from the truck onto the muddy ground and vanished into the trees. Not a word was spoken. In the grey haze of the rain they were like ghosts.

I turned the truck around, reversing three times, fearful of mines. Relieved to be heading back, I checked the rear-view mirror as I moved away from the clearing and saw nothing but muddy road and wet trees and falling rain. Conscious of extra engine noise I kept the speed steady, and drove in the middle of the road to avoid the slippery edges. When I came up behind a man on a motorbike I stayed there, forcing him over into the puddles.

Al was sitting under the big rubber tree drinking a cup of coffee when I got back. He had washed his face, exposing the missing skin on one side.

"Okay?" he asked. "No worries?"

"No worries. Where'd you get that?"

"Cook inside. I did basic with 'im. Come on, I'll get you one."

"We're due at the checkpoint to see what we take back."

"You got time for one cup."

He was more relaxed. Happy perhaps to see me back safely, or was it because he felt he'd made another political point?

Crusaders. I drank my coffee wondering if Abbie Klein was one. With her single-minded determination to keep track of her father's baby, a baby of unconventional parentage to say the least. Shouldn't her priority be getting herself out of here a.s.a.p., given the situation? It was her father's problem. Shouldn't he be left to sort it out when he's up to it?

It would be a good thing, surely, if Julie Shields and the embassy had cut her visa and sent the girl home where she belonged. Crusaders. Disturbing the peace of us lotus-eaters. I just wanted to go home.

My tension eased as we finished our coffee and climbed into the truck. And somewhere, out near Dat Do, and the fire support base they called the Horseshoe, infantrymen were moving through the scrub in the steady soaking rain.

Chapter 24

We dropped a load of boxes and tarpaulins at the ordnance supply shed and back at the transport compound I went searching for the tools, and the expertise, to change the seats over to the middle. Lyle O'Malley was in the service shed, as he so often was, and he just about did it for me.

I walked up the bank from the compound to the lines and Bushfire was waiting for me at the hut doorway. "Listen. I got it all arranged. Even mentioned to O'Brien that you'd like to go to Saigon. He seemed interested."

"I'm not goin', Bush."

"What? Why not?"

"Forget it. Deals off. I don't need it."

"Al was that bad, heh?" He cursed Al and went on about the money and the trouble he had gone to. "I even asked Donald if it's okay to drop a load of laundry off at Baria and pick it up in the afternoon. No problem. You're thowin' away easy money."

"Well you do it then. I'm not interested."

"I will. Don't worry, I will. I'll take the lot. And you wanted so much to go back to Saigon."

"Not anymore."

He cursed Al again. I went into the hut with nothing more on my mind than a shower and a cold beer and was greeted with a letter lying on my bunk.

"Dear Mark, (Papasan!)

Julie said she could get a letter away quickly with a diplomatic priority bundle so I took advantage. She told me the Australian section is pulling out soon.

I wanted to let you know what happened after we were interrupted. I won't be going out to get the baby this morning but I'm not giving up on my little sister. Especially since I still haven't spoken to my father. It has me wondering if he's in worse shape than they're telling me. So I'm getting Chuck the driver on side and will wait for a better time. Julie says my dad won't be in any trouble. They just see him as naive for getting himself involved with an enemy agent but he's done nothing wrong, legally. I'm staying on for a few more days so that I can get a civilian airline out, through L.A. to Seattle and he will follow me soon after, courtesy the Air Force.

Which brings me to the point of this. I was really sorry about the way we parted, papa san. Would it be possible for you to give me a call here? I realise there might be restrictions but was hoping that you might get some sort of dispensation after your ordeal up here. If it's at all possible I would love to hear from you again before I go. If you can make a call it's best to ask for Julie Shields in the Attaché's office. That should get you through direct. I hope this finds you before you go home. I thought I should at least try since I'll be here for a few more days. Here's hoping.

I must hurry now.Bye.

Love,

Abbie. (xxxx etc!)

I put the letter back in the envelope and buttoned it down in one of my leg pockets.

"Where's Bushfire?"

"Boozer."

I had Daniels out of the canteen and on the way down to the admin office in five minutes. "What brought this on? I think you're too late, mate. The office'll be closed. Joe's in the boozer."

The office was closed.

The hut was empty when I got back there. Every night now the canteen was crammed full with celebration and unending renditions ofLeaving on a Jet Plane. I decided to take advantage of the quiet and get an early night although as I climbed into my bunk something sparked a loud cheer. Probably Moll. He'd been in full flight when I'd chased up Daniels, standing on the table. Or was he dancing? Ignoring Smiley, the canteen corporal's demands to get down.

Then they were leaving on a jet plane again and I lay awake listening to the rain and remembering, going over in my mind my approach to Captain O'Brien next morning. His opinion of Bushfire Daniels was an asset but I knew I would need more than that.

What had brought this on? Daniels' question made me realise how much I wanted to see Abbie again. Was I in love, the real thing, whatever that is? The pop songs said so. And when I touch you I feel happy inside.

My sister, two years older, came to mind, back when I was sixteen. She had seen me at the local movies holding a girl's hand and I remembered her singing in the hallway at home, where I could hear her from my bedroom. "I wanna hold your ha..a..a..a..an..and. I wanna hold your hand."

"Shut up. Or you'll find another cane toad in your purse."

But in love? That wasn't me. That was for the serious and selfless, or at least the mature, those willing and able to see the world beyond their own immediate needs. My most immediate need at that time was survival for the next few weeks, to ensure a safe return to the world of my former immediate needs. Important immediate needs, like skittling the wickets of as many batsmen as I was capable, drinks after, drinks after that. Then off to town, where the girls were. What happens to such of life's important needs when love, honour and 'til death us do part' raise their obstinate and obtrusive heads, demanding commitment, something of which I wasn't capable, even were there someone in need of it specifically from me?

I suppose we are all, to some extent, a product of our times, although it seems to me the sixties, the Age of Aquarius, arrived a little late in sleepy, subtropical Brisbane. But there were new freedoms, like the pill for girls, and more choices, allowing us to put the adult responsibilities of our parents' generation on hold, to please ourselves, and dream on some. And dream I did.

I had sense enough to know I wasn't ready for university. First priority, a place in the A grade cricket scene. Serious, full time relationships were to be avoided, which presumed I was actually in demand. In fact I was possessed of more self-doubt and shyness than I would have admitted to, but the occasional girl was prepared to overlook my immaturity, show enough interest and offer enough attention to keep my ego more or less intact, superficially at least. So that, on any given Saturday night, fortified with enough beer and the company of mates, I was out on the town, swaggering around the night spots like the man in the song. And all the girls dreamed that they'd be your partner. When it was me doing the dreaming.

And of course none of my dreams, realistic or ridiculous, could have been hindered by the arrival of this American girl in my life, even were she looking to do so. We were two people a long way from home, from different continents, at a time when world travel was an exception. She would soon be leaving for some huge and different other world called America, always beyond mine. Mine meaning, first up, my insignificant part in the support role of a subordinate military ally, and beyond that, even further removed, absolute obscurity, antipodean suburbia. This could only come to nothing, my pre-army ambitions were safe, even if, just now, I wanted so much to see her again.

The splash of approaching boots in the mud outside woke me, then excited voices, louder as they grew nearer. I could smell their beer-fed arousal as they came in and had I not been half asleep, I would have sat up to see what was happening.

"Keep it down. We'll go for a row if we get caught."

Daniels said, "I know. Let's not invite any officers."

"What about Crazy Al?"

"You serious? He's not gunna say nothin'."

"Yeh. He's too up himself for refusin' orders again."

"At least he's been given a touch up for his trouble this time," said Barry Love. "The fuckin' lunatic. One to the grunts. Good on 'em."

Hands rummaged through ice buckets and beer cans were opened as Tony Carmody came in. "Heh, T.C. Beer?" I saw his hesitation before he joined them. "Seen Al?"

"No."

"Wonder where he's hidin' ?"

"What about all that rapist shit? T.C. You're a rapist."

"I know. I heard him."

"I think the whole camp heard 'im."

"We're all rapists. Let's tell O'Brien Al reckons he's a rapist."

I missed most of the conversation from there. As I drifted off to sleep they were still drinking and talking about going home and home itself and the picking up of their lives when they got there. For the moment Al was forgotten.

The silence and the sudden darkness half woke me. I would have gone back to sleep but felt, immediately, a tension, an anticipation in the air. Al came in as silently as he could and I knew that every ear in the hut was tuned to the sounds as he undressed, pulled his mosquito net down over its frame and climbed into his bunk. There was a tinny, crunching sound, a muffled curse from Al and then empty cans dropping onto the floor. They had filled his bed with their empties, laid flat and covered with his sheet.

"You're not allowed drink in the lines, Al," said Daniels.

Suppressed laughter burst forth from several bunks, Barry Love's the loudest. Al was kicking cans under his bunk. When he climbed into it there was silence, thick with anticipation.

"Raped anyone today, Al?"

"Al?" Silence. "Al? You're a rapist." And then a long silence. "You're a rapist, aren't you, Al."

"Yeh. So are you," he said eventually.

"Am I a rapist, Al?"

"Yeh."

"Me too, Al?"

"Yeh."

"We're all rapists, heh, Al?"

"Yeh. That's what they're saying."

"Who's they?"

"Protesters at demonstrations in America. I read it in Time magazine. It's not so much about the way we treat the women." His had started quietly, tentatively, but his voice picked up with an uncharacteristic confidence, even showed a frustration. "We're foreign invaders, interfering in another country's business. It's immoral, A kind of rape."

"We don't rape no one, you mad bastard."

"Yeh, and all that shit you were on about up at the boozer, Al," said Barry. "How we're all rapists. You forgot to mention the communists. What about them, heh? Forcin' everyone to be communist whether they like it or not. They're the rapists. And murderers. They're real good at killing their own kind. And that's why we're here. For the people who wanna be free like us. We're savin' 'em from communism. So go and stick it, Al. You wouldn't know."

Whatever Al had said in the canteen had had a ripple effect, the like of which I'd never seen or heard before. They were stirred. Barry Love wanted to offer insight for argument, beyond the usual abuse. It was an example of how political people had become.

I imagined Al's protesters, a more serious bunch than we in Australia could ever muster. At one American university the national guard had shot a couple of them dead. And even in laid-back Oz, feeling had risen like never before. I had stood in Queen Street during Brisbane's contribution to the moratorium demonstrations and witnessed the passion on the faces of the uni students leading the march. "One, two, three, four! We don't want your fucking war!" A middle aged man, among the spectators near me on the footpath, was shouting back. "Better men than you fought and died for the freedom you enjoy. It's rabble-rousers like you lot need some army discipline!"

They couldn't hear him but a woman about his age, a little woman carrying her shopping in a string bag and walking behind the students, did hear him.

"Why don't you go to the war, Dad, and take some of your warmonger mates with you. Instead of kids who aren't old enough to vote!"

There were some cheers from the crowd and not only for her courage. It had become that divisive, had intruded so far into our sun-soaked culture that someone like Barry had answers. Barry Love, cold war authority. Analyst of east-west political dichotomy.

But Bushfire was concerned at this slip into seriousness, and aided by his mate as well. "Al?"

"What?"

With mock concern, as if talking to a child. "Are you ... insane?"

But the laughter only spurred Al on. "Do you know what else the demonstrators are callin' us, Bush?"

"No. What else are they callin' us, Al?"

"Baby killers."

"Baby killers? Baby killers and rapists?"

"Yeh."

"Heh, Al? How many babies you kill today?"

"Dunno. There's no way to count 'em all."

Some of the laughter must have been audible in the officers' hut. But Al wanted to continue. "They've dropped more bombs on this country than were dropped on Germany in the whole of World War 2. You think bombs discriminate?" But only a few of them heard him and he turned on Barry Love whose laugh was loudest. "Heh, Barry? You know why you can't count how many babies you killed today? 'Cause you got such shit for brains you couldn't even count your fingers."

The laughter was threatening then. Barry said, "I think you better shut your crazy fuckin' mouth now, Al."

"Yeh, shut up, Al." Someone added with a yawn. "Stop encouraging him. I want some sleep."

But Al was charging up. "Aw, shut up, Al. That's brilliant. Listen to me. This war is killing babies." The intent as he stared around at everyone in the semi-darkness encouraged more laughter. But Al didn't hear. He reached under his mosquito net and grabbed a magazine from the wooden box he kept beside his bunk. "It's all in here. If you don't believe me. And what are they dyin' for?" His voice quavered with emotion. "What have they done to us? You think a bunch a' commies are gunna come and take your house? Set up a rice paddy on the M.C.G?" He was encouraged by the silence, dropped the magazine and gained control. "And I'd like to know where all the rich boys are, if all these rice farmers are coming to take our land and our money? Heh? Where are they? Why aren't they here to protect their money? Anyone here rich? Doubt it. They're all back home, getting ahead. Organising a rich future. While we're here living in this shit."

"Don't cry, Al. You'll be home soon."

"You gunna be rich, Barry? Heh? Fat fuckin' chance. You'll be back detailing cars for that car yard in Adelaide, if they still want you."

He was in our real world now and a silence followed. For a moment at least Al had us all thinking. Even Tony Carmody joined in. "If it's being rich you want, Al, you won't get it with communism." I sat up in my bunk and nearly everybody else was. I doubt anyone was asleep. Tony went on. "Communism is just an economic, social plan, to organise people. Which means you have to trust in the leaders, and people will always want more than that to trust in. To put faith in. Communism gives you nothing to believe in."

"It doesn't give you democracy either," came a serious voice from the darkness.

"Democracy? Look where democracy landed us. Democracy is only as good as the information we get. And they just keep lying. And you know one of the biggest lies? That we're fighting for our country. We're not fighting for our country. We're fighting for western capitalism. Which means we're fighting for the rich, and I've not met one bloke over here who comes from a rich family. Have you?"

Barry laughed. "Pity western capitalism if you're fightin' for it."

"Fuck me!" Daniels almost shouted. "What is this? A political meeting?" Which meant, let's get back to making fun of Al.

"It's a political war, Bush," said Al with an earnest, almost a confidence, that annoyed not only Daniels.

"Shut up, Al."

"Following the Americans, to keep us safe. That's politics." He stared around, collecting his thoughts, and the look on his face, the huge eyes in the darkness brought back the laughter. He looked like some strange monkey, the mosquito net a cage in which he was doing weird things that made an audience laugh. But he wasn't hearing it. He turned to Tony. "Tony. My point is ... if I was going to be rich, if I really wanted to be rich, I wouldn't be here."

"Maybe that's just up to you. There's no perfect world but at least we have the freedom to choose. You can whinge the rest of your life or get on with it. It's up to you. You just don't let things get you down."

"Yeh, Al. Stop whinging."

"You're just jealous, Al. 'Cause you can't hack it. It's up to you."

His voice went up again. "It's not up to me. If it's up to us, where are all the rich boys? Heh?" He was looking around again. "Why is it just us types? Me and ... Barry and ... "

Tony kept trying. He sounded genuinely concerned. "There are no ... types, Al. People aren't any better or worse because they're rich. It's all in your mind. You just be what you want to be."

Al stared, an agony of mixed emotions. Jesus, Tony. If I can't make you see. And when he had no answer Daniels laughed. "It's all in your loony, fucked-up mind."

"Anyway," said Barry. "You have to get your job back. It's the law."

"Yeh, Al. And you said you were goin' back to work in the family business. You're lucky."

"Lucky? After this! Lucky?" Al calmed again, his voice steady. "Listen. I wouldn't expect too big a welcome home." He waved the magazine at us again. "You should see what they're sayin' about us. You think we're goin' home to a big ticker-tape welcome? Like we won the premiership or something. I don't think so. Not this time. And the only ones worse off than us after this will be the nogs. They'll be left to clean up our mess. Bury all their dead. Dead babies." He stopped and the silence was so profound we could hear his breathing. He lowered his voice further. "And dead babies mightn't fit too well with the Anzac legend, diggers. There were no dead babies at Gallipoli. Anyway. I've had enough. I'm out of it. I'm not a part of it anymore."

Everyone was quiet, until Daniels tried again. "Gunna mutiny again, Al? Who's with Al in a mutiny? We'll start with Smiley, so we've got some piss for after."

"I'll let you into a secret, Al," said Barry. "You never were a part of it. 'Cept maybe with tigers. You've chased all the tigers out 'a the Binh Ba rubber trees."

Barry's giggle came to an abrupt halt when a figure appeared in the doorway.

"What the fuck is going on in here? Did I hear the word mutiny?"

We didn't recognise the voice at first because he'd changed and lowered it. "Urquhart. You prick." Relieved laughter filled the hut.

"Did I hear the word mutiny? Well? Private Stanley?"

But Al lay back, suddenly quiet, recognising a threat that wasn't present before. Greg Urquhart didn't want him quiet. Barry and especially Bushfire weren't happy with the night so far either. Al had almost achieved a kind of victory. Certainly he hadn't been cowed as usual. They wanted more fun. Urquhart wanted fun too, but for him fun meant punishment.

"Come on, Al. Give us your plans for mutiny." Al sensed the malice but there was no safety in silence, just a portent that was undeniable. Because Urquhart would not be denied. "You still reckon we're all rapists, Al? Am I a rapist?"

Barry laughed, perhaps in extended relief after the scare. "I'm a rapist, aren't I, Al."

And Al might have been buoyed too by some relief, or by his earlier freedom, because he sighed, as if resigned to his fate and said, "Well, you're not such a bad rapist, Barry. 'Cause you're too stupid to know you're doin' it."

There was no laughter then, only movement. Even Moll, who had taken no part in the conversation, swung his legs over the side of his bunk to watch.

It was the cue Urquhart had been working for. "Al? You still haven't told me. I don't wanna be left out. Am I a rapist or not?"

Al was quiet, but of course it was too late. Pre-emptive Greg Urquhart spoke with the calm confidence of the man in charge. I could imagine the look on Al's face. The same as it had been in the truck that day. The stare, not of the martyr but of the condemned. "You know what I reckon, Al? I reckon you got a thing about rape. That psychiatrist reckoned you might be a bit of a sheila."

Daniels laughed and got up off his bunk to stand beside Urquhart, overlooking Al's. "Wha'd'a you say, Al? All us rapists here. Maybe you'd like a bit."

And then Barry was beside him. "Yeh, Al. Wha'd a' ya reckon? You fancy a bit?"

Everyone else was now watching the scene. In the darkness I saw Daniels signal someone and they gathered around Al's bunk and threw his mosquito net back. His struggle was pathetic. Even Urquhart laughed as he said, "Roll 'im over. Roll 'im over."

Someone threw the magazine away. It flew up into the air and hit Moll's mosquito net as it came down to the floor. Al began to moan, a woeful, sobbing sound.

"Shut up," said Urquhart, "you mad bastard."

Holding one of Al's arms on the far side of the bunk from the rest of us, he pushed his head into his pillow with his free hand and when he let go Al was quiet. But he began to thrash about and Urquhart grabbed his leg. Someone took the arm. Barry and Bushfire were on the side closer to me, Barry holding an arm and Bushfire a leg.

Tony got out of his bunk and I stood up beside him. Moll was standing now, in front of us. We were accustomed to Al being the hut victim but tonight was turning into something else.

Al was on his stomach and when Daniels pulled his shorts down he moaned again.

"Shit. He is a sheila."

Tony and I moved in closer, Moll still in front of us.

They were laughing as Daniels signaled for someone to pass him the nearest beer bucket. It was mostly cold water but he found a large rounded chunk of ice still intact and shoved it between Al's buttocks. His scream was so feminine that laughter exploded at a new level. Barry and Bushfire were in such raptures they lost their grip. Only Urquhart had hold of a leg which Al was able to free in his thrashing panic and it sprang up and hit Urquhart on the side of his head

Al broke free and ran for the doorway, pulling his shorts up as he went. Nearly everyone was laughing. Not least because, despite his terror, one part of Al had registered some degree of incongruous if involuntary excitement. It jumped around in front of him as he made for the doorway.

Urquhart failed to see the humour. "Grab the cunt!"

We stepped aside to let Al pass. Bushfire and Barry gave chase but they were laughing and Al was as good as gone, so that they were not prepared for Moll. No one was. As Daniels reached him he dropped into a half crouch and then lifted, driving his shoulder into Daniels' chest, ramming him into the nearest locker and pinning him there. Barry stopped in his tracks.

Urquhart pushed passed Barry as Daniels hit the locker. I put my arm up. He pushed it aside and glared at me but then everyone's attention was on Moll and his captive. Bushfire Daniels was no lightweight but it was clear he was going nowhere. He struggled, panting heavily, until Moll relaxed his hold and stood back. The two big men stared at each other as they recovered their breath.

"What the fuck, Moll?" Daniels panted. "What was that? Was just a joke."

But his complaint was already an apology. For you didn't cross Moll, our moral guardian, unofficial leader, for all his self-destructive excesses. He had decided that a moral line had been crossed. A line too far. So that the shenanigans were suddenly over. Moll had spoken, without saying a word. No minor player in platoon culture himself, Daniels stared at him, and there was an unmistakable repentance in his, "Fuckin' 'ell, Moll."

Moll was too winded to speak and his body heaved with the effort of his breathing but there was no hint of humour in his eyes as he turned to Urquhart, who returned the stare.

"Fuck him, Moll," he said. "Fucking big mouth deserved a scare. Who's he think he is?"

"And it was just a joke," Daniels added. "Fuck me. What was that all about?"

Moll looked back at Daniels while he said this and then turned and slumped slowly back to his bunk. He sat on the side of it, his breathing huge and taking a long time to steady.

"You alright, Moll?" It was Lyle O'Malley. A few drivers from the next hut had followed Urquhart in, attracted by the commotion. They stood around now with the rest of us.

Moll still panted. "No," he said eventually as he exhaled.

"You better lie back. Take it easy." Lyle looked around at the rest of us. "I reckon the only reason O'Brien or Donald haven't been over here is they think it's just part a' the fun a' goin' home." He looked back to Moll. "You alright yet?"

Moll nodded. "Any piss left?"

"No," he was told. "We drunk it all."

We watched Moll in silence. He looked around and was about to lie back when Bushfire said, "Hang on, Moll." He put his hand into a bucket under his bunk and produced a beer. Moll took it without a word and emptied the can without stopping. He belched, lay back on his bunk, chest still heaving. "Fuck it," he said. "Just, fuck it."

Nothing much else was said. Lyle and the others wandered off and everyone got back into his bunk. I noticed that Greg Urquhart was already gone.

Chapter 25

I couldn't sleep. Someone's snoring made it impossible and put me in a bad mood. After about thirty minutes Al had not returned. How long was he going to hide somewhere, in just his shorts, while everyone else slept on through the hot night?

I pulled my greens and boots on and went outside. The humidity was building again after the rain and I walked around the huts, up around the canteen and the mess hut. When I couldn't see him in the immediate vicinity I went down to the compound.

"Al. You there, Al?"

I walked down beside the row of trucks, past the admin office and as I headed for the workshop shed I saw a movement and then the shape of someone standing in the shadow.

"That you, Al?"

There was no response until I had almost stepped into the shadow of the shed. Then a mocking voice. "That you, Al?" It was Urquhart. I wondered if he had seen me wandering around the huts and followed me down, or had been down here already, looking for Al.

"Where's Al?" I asked him.

There was a different, quieter sort of confidence about him, as though he had just finished something, or was about to. "Fuck Al! Let's you and me settle it, eh? Let's settle it." The words were slurred. The usual self-assured swagger was there but not the brisk alertness. "You want your poofy mate, first you gotta take me."

I wasn't much of a fighter, certainly not as good as I imagined, but even were he about to let me, I couldn't walk away. Stirred, angered by what I'd just seen in the hut, at that moment I just couldn't stand him and I told myself I had a small reach advantage and a strong right arm. More than all of that, I was sober. Still, I would avoid a fight if I could. "You're pissed, Greg"

"Fuck me. You're all talk. You and your mates. The talkers."

He came towards me then, belligerent, hands on hips, daring me, close enough for me to hit him and when I didn't he took a jab. Sober, I'm sure he would have finished me off from there but the punch was just slow enough for me to move to the side so that it grazed one ear.

Hate flooded to the surface. I wanted to hurt him, put him in a place he wasn't used to, on the receiving end, the victim. He stumbled as he was straightening up and I was able to push him hard, so that he fell back against the corrugated iron wall. It seemed to sober him. He was steady on his feet suddenly, shaping up and moving in. This time I didn't wait and I caught him enough by surprise to land a punch in the middle of his face. His head went back and blood spurted from his nose.

He knew how to fight. Untroubled he moved in again more cautiously, faked with a left and drove a right which could have knocked me out had it caught my jaw squarely. But I had moved my head back enough and got my left arm in his way. It still jolted me. Andenraged me. I charged him, which should have been the end of me but it caught him by surprise again and though he hit me with another right on the left side of my chest I absorbed the pain, grabbed him and used my height and strength, and sobriety, to force him into the wall. I used everything I had, put all my weight behind it, and when he hit the wall with me up against him, he went down.

I was as relieved as I was pleased. When he tried to get up I pushed him down again. He was winded and the alcohol had taken hold but when I stood back he struggled up. I could see he wanted to go on with it so I moved in quickly and he lurched to one side so that I was able to force him to the ground again with less effort.

"Fuckin' leave it!" I said, puffing and shaky.

He looked up at me as he panted and spat blood that leaked from his nose and managed to communicate pride and contempt even from there. I shut up. He didn't want to leave it. For Greg Urquhart it was a black and white world. You were a soldier or a poof. You were a man or you weren't. You won a fight or you lost it. You didn't leave it.

I had a headache from the knock on the chin but most of the pain came from the left side of my chest between rib cage and shoulder joint. I stood there getting my breath back and trying to make my chest pain ease. He made a move to get up again and when he fell back I was pleased. I walked away and left him there, spitting blood at the dirt.

I was relieved that he didn't come into the shower block while I was there but the shower freshened me so that I lay wide awake in my bunk. Even when I got my left side comfortable sleep wouldn't come.

I picked up the magazine from the floor, sat up in my bunk slowly and turned on my torch light. It didn't take long to find Al's article. It took up several of the earlier pages and featured a colour photo of a demonstration, covering half a page. The opening paragraph made much of an attempt by the protesters to throw some sort of animal blood, pig's blood was suspected, at the marchers in a military parade. I didn't read where it had taken place because my focus was taken up by the faces of the protesters and the placards they waved above the crowds of people. Women against rape in war and Baby Killers. I took the magazine back to Al's bunk and dropped it into the box where he kept his collection.

I put my mosquito net back over its frame and lay down. But I still couldn't sleep so I took Abbie's letter out of my pants pocket, turned on my torch light again and read it one more time.

It was some time after three o'clock when I fell asleep and Al had not returned.

I dreamed I was driving a strange car in some unknown location, the surroundings grey, mysterious and unrecognisable. Abbie was in the back seat and Al Stanley next to me and when a car loomed up beside us Abbie called out in alarm. I turned into a side street but it offered no refuge beyond its narrowness which prevented the car, still following, from coming up beside us again. The sky darkened as I drove and the street seemed endless. It was walled in on both sides by huge, indistinct and featureless facades, cracked and broken in parts and with no doors or windows. The walls increased the darkness and then merged into the trees and vines of thick forest which hung across the road, closed in on us, blocking the sky and the remaining light. Still the car followed, close behind us, though no shots were fired.

On we went into the darkness, frantic, unable to stop, unable to see what lay ahead. In the rear view mirror the vehicle looked close enough to reach out and touch, relentlessly forcing us on. Then Abbie screamed. I'm sure there were no gunshots but when I looked at her she was carrying a baby, a baby covered in blood.

Her scream was enough to wake me and I lay there in a sweat, relieved to find the whole thing had been a dream, one of those that feel so real you can recall certain details. I slept more peacefully after that, though such dreams would never truly leave me. This was a precursor of things to come. And that one I remember to this day.

In the morning the pain in my chest was worse though I had full movement of my left shoulder. Al was back in his bunk and I waited until he had gone to the showers before I approached Daniels.

"Bush. Come on. Let's get down to the office early. Get this swap sorted if we can."

He struggled out of his bunk and even after he'd showered and dressed he was quieter. In the short time Al remained with us after that night neither Greg Urquhart nor Bushfire Daniels nor anyone else bothered him. And Al was quieter as well. There were no more mutinies.

We stood at ease before the captain in his office while he examined us a moment. "Why? Why the sudden interest in a parade, a parade where you most likely won't know anyone. And after all that happened?"

"I'd just like to go back up once more before we go, Sir." A rough, brief, almost imperceptible flicker of sympathy crossed his large-featured face and I was encouraged. "I got to know a few of them at the Canberra. And, it would help me get it out of my system. The death of Lieutenant Jefferies. What happened, I mean."

Which was to say too much. Some of the old cynicism returned. Captain O'Brien and Lieutenant Jefferies had been better friends than we all imagined and the captain was awake to any pretence on my part that his death was some personal loss.

"Help to get it out of your system?" he said.

"Yes, Sir."

"I see. For a start you wouldn't be staying at the Canberra. You'd be put up in an American barracks block, at Camp Alpha, and up until the march you'd be practising for it." He looked at Daniels. "I'll give you this, though. Physically you're a more presentable proposition than the alternative here. Which isn't saying much. You both look a little drawn. You look particularly green around the gills, Private Daniels. I trust that noise last night wasn't caused by any late night drinking sessions in the lines."

"No, Sir."

"I hope not. Sergeant Miniver will be checking tonight. So what do you say about Private Ross's request?"

"I don't mind swapping, Sir. Private Ross has been through a lot."

"Well," the captain sat back in his seat. I braced myself for the sarcasm. "This is a turn up. The Bushfire, a philanthropist. Ready to deny himself for his platoon mates."

"Yes, sir."

"What a stout fellow. Why is it that I smell a rat, Mr philanthropist?"

"Sir?"

"Command is not so keen on this parade now. If I get wind of anything untoward going on there will be no trips to Saigon." He looked directly at Daniels. "Maybe not even to Nui Dat. We'll be needing more hands on truck cleaning soon. Do I make myself clear?"

"Yes, Sir."

"That'll be all, Private."

Daniels came to attention, saluted, turned briskly and marched from the office, like a soldier with nothing more on his mind than his duty. The captain looked at me again. "You can go to Saigon again, Private Ross."

"Thank you, Sir."

"How are you feeling now?"

"Okay, thanks."

"Bear in mind that this parade is serious. Don't expect to be off to the Canberra whenever you feel like it."

I caught up with Daniels going across the compound to his vehicle. "Who's Phil Ansodist?Whoever it was?" he asked.

"Forget it. No one we have to worry about."

"You better get up to the boozer quick. Get the smokes on board. Got fifty?"

"Fifty what?"

"Dollars. Smiley won't do nothin' without payment in advance. Here's my fifty."

I swore as I took his money. "I'll have to get mine from the hut on the way round."

"He leaves the boxes at the back of the boozer. One's marked 'laundry'. Put that one on last. It's got some old clothes stuffed in the top of it."

When I drove off I saw Al coming across the compound. He was looking at me in bewilderment so I drove over towards him. "Back in a minute!" I shouted.

Corporal Meehan or Smiley took the 100 dollars from me over the bar and began counting it immediately. He indicated the back of the canteen with a nod as he stuffed the notes into his hip pocket.

I was loading the four boxes, the one marked 'laundry' facing out the back, when someone stepped out from beside the canteen hut. I turned quickly. It was Greg Urquhart on the way to some job, hammer hanging from his carpenter's belt, and he looked at me as he passed and said nothing. His nose was red, eyes bloodshot, but they did not challenge. In the brief look we exchanged, I detected a calm about him, almost a humility and a hint of respect. There was, as always, that pride, but muted, without the supercilious smile for the lesser men around him.

Urquhart didn't know I had taken no part in last night's drinking. Why would he know? Apart from Blowfly, just about everybody spent those last nights getting drunk. And even in his silence I sensed that, to him at least, we had made contact, reached an understanding, in the best way he knew how. Unfortunately for him, it was based on a false premise. It had not been a fair fight. It was particularly unfair when you considered his attitude. He was an absolute asset to the army, a respected member of the group, courageous defender of the status quo, like a good loyal dog. I suppose that made me more catlike, one out, always looking for a comfortable place in the shade, and resorting, when cornered, to secret weapons, on this occasion the agility and the stamina of a body free of alcohol. But all's fair in love and war, which is to say it's not. I have not spoken to him since that night.

Chapter 26

By the time I got back to the compound with my illegal load, the trucks were nearly all lined up.

"Where you been? Crazy Al thinks you're tryin' to hide from 'im," said Donald Duck, the convoy commander, in his hoarse, forced way of speaking. He had one foot rested on the dash of the Land Rover. Sergeant Duncan Miniver was an ex-tankie and had sustained some sort of throat injury which made speech difficult for him. So he had become Donald Duck.

"Had to pick up a load of laundry," I told him. "Dropping it off at Baria laundry shop. Only be a minute."

"You can have two, and no more. Get up front so we don't have to wait for you. And in future do your own washin'. Baria'll be off-limits soon."

"Sarg."

Al climbed in and I drove up near the head of the line. As prearranged, Tony Carmody followed me in his truck. He had said it was the least he could do for a crazy man. Then I had Al to explain it to. He looked tired but more willing and relaxed than I'd expected. Al Stanley was more heavily built than either Barry Love or Lyle O'Malley, and possibly Tony Carmody. You just didn't notice. With a different attitude he could have improved his physique significantly. But attitude is a mental thing, and Al's mind was elsewhere. It seemed a shame to take such a rare contented look off his face and when he asked about the boxes I ignored him.

"How are you? Sleep alright?" I looked at him. The scratches on his face from the day before still showed.

"Yeh, I'm all right. Thanks. No infantry to pick up, heh? Just gear and equipment. No infantry."

"Yeh. Now that Lyle has shown me how to get the seats right in the back. Where were you, last night? I went lookin' for you."

"Did you? I was in the guard house. They know me from CB and gave me a bunk. Couldn't sleep though. I waited till it started to get light and went back to the hut." He sat looking straight ahead for a moment. "Listen. I'm sorry about all that last night. I just lost it. I'm just so sick of this place. Sick of the whole thing."

"Did anyone tell you about Moll, after you took off?"

"Yeh. Moll. Who'd've thought. I thanked him."

"Wha'd he say?"

"He told me to fuck off." I laughed and Al smiled. "You know, I thought, before I left to come over here, that there'd be some antiwar feeling among the troops. At least some. In America there's a big movement of soldiers against the war. They're already calling them veterans and they join the protesters when they get home. I'm hoping there'll be the same sort of thing when we get back home."

In my single-minded concern for my own survival I never considered such things but I wondered at Al's optimism. I was reminded of a night in a sparse, hard, Canungra canteen where we'd been granted a night off and a television set to watch one of those big world title fights between Mohammed Ali and Joe Frazier. There must have been a hundred men squeezed into the room, all weeks, maybe days, from embarkation to the war. Ali had recently declared his refusal to be enlisted and the vehement, clamorous cheering for his opponent surprised even me. There wasn't one voice for Ali. "Kill the loud-mouthed conshi!" was given unanimous support. Good luck with your revolution, Al.

We passed by the first APC parked along the Baria Road. Some kids had gathered around but two of the crew, lounging on top beneath their temporary shelters, ignored them.

"What are those boxes?"

When I didn't answer he turned to look at me. "We're gunna make a little detour in Baria. Just for a moment. For laundry."

"I thought you did your own washing."

"It's not really washing."

"What?'

I had to pull the truck well over as a small American convoy passed. It was a busy road."I'm doin' a deal for Daniels. I have to."

"Why? What do you mean, have to?"

"I want to get back to Saigon, Al. The only way I could get Daniels to swap for the parade job was to sell some cigarettes for him."

"Black market. Black market is evil. It's Bush Daniels. It's not you. Jesus, Mark. I thought you were okay. You and Tony. I thought ... "

And away he went. I was an accomplice in the sort of corruption and exploitation that prolonged this despicable war, to the detriment of the suffering, poverty-stricken masses whom we purported to want to help. Black market was symptomatic of the evils of rampant capitalism, another reason for the coming revolution. Etc.

"For Christ sake, Al. Leave it out, will you? We're happy. Remember? We're all going home. Leavin' on a fuckin' jet plane. Happy. Okay?"

But then he expressed concern for his position. Was he an accomplice of mine, since he was in the vehicle? He grew pale as he spoke and eventually I turned and shouted, "Shut up!"

He looked scared then and shut up.

"It'll only take a minute. We'll be back in the convoy in no time. And you won't have to get out of the truck."

"How much money are you getting?"

"Doesn't matter."

"Holy Jesus."

"Listen, Al. If you don't shut up about it I'll tell Urquhart your name's Alexis Stanis...what's a name."

"Holy Jesus."

Despite the same name Tran and Tran were opposites in appearance. They stepped out from under an old iron awning beside the laundry shop and I pulled the truck in as close as I could to the building.

One was plump and well-dressed in white shirt, grey slacks and black leather shoes. He had the air of the senior partner and stood silently in the background against the wall. His accomplice was wiry in cheaper semi-western dress and sandals but he was the front man. "Where Bush?" he asked with an amiable, decadent grin.

"Not come. No Bush. Can you hurry? My sergeant waiting." I pointed behind me to the road.

He grinned again and nodded. He held up two fingers. "Truck. Sell truck too."

"No. Cigarettes only."

"Bush say truck too." He held up two fingers again. "Truck too."

"No. No truck, okay? Only cigarettes."

I climbed up and began pushing the boxes off. The thin Tran took them as they tumbled off and stacked them under the awning. He was stronger than he looked.

I walked over. "Okay?" He nodded and smiled. "Money?"

"Truck?"

"No. No truck. Just the cigarettes." I pointed to the boxes.

"Bush say truck."

"No Bush. No truck. One thousand dollars, please." He nodded and smiled. "Come on. One thousand."

He was still smiling. The fat one showed no expression. "No truck. No money," said the thin one. "Bush say truck. No truck. No money."

"Look. Bush say cigarettes, One thousand dollars. My sergeant up there. He come down here soon."

But they knew this was an empty threat. I went under the awning and began picking up the first box.

"No. Cannot take Nui Dat. You see? Cannot take Nui Dat." I dropped the box heavily and kicked a hole in the side of it. The man's grin did not fade. "Truck too. You see. Truck too." He held up the fingers again. "Tell Bush we send money when cigarettes sold."

"Send the money? Where send the money?"

"Uc dai loi. You give me name. You go home soon, see? Uc dai loi. We send money."

"To Australia? You want a name to send money to Uc dai loi?"

Of course he nodded and grinned. And I was too angry, felt too foolish even to smile at the proposition. "Name? You want name? Uc dai loi?" Perversely, his grin encouraged me. "Okay. Send it to Major fuck up, Uc dai loi. You got that?" His grin was enormous now and I wanted to kick his teeth in.

"Mark!" It was Al. I looked up to see the Land Rover coming down the narrow side street. I ran to the truck and started it.

"What've you been doin', Ross?" Donald Duck's voice seemed more strained than ever. "Well? What took ya?"

"Little disagreement about cost. It's all fixed."

"Catch up with the convoy. Now. And that's the last time you stop off here. Right?"

He pulled the Land Rover back to the side and I charged past. I was relieved to see him turning in the street to follow me. It didn't occur to me until later that I was supposed to be stopping there on the way back to pick up the washing.

"What'll Daniels say?" said Al.

"Fuck Daniels."

He wanted to call off the swap and even asked O'Brien, who showed him the door without discussion. He cursed and carried on. At boozer closing time he even wanted to fight me, until he stood up and found it too difficult to stay on his feet.

"Ask Al," I told him. "He heard it all. There was nothing I could do about it."

But he blamed Al as much as anyone for his loss.

\- 0 -

The following day, the day before I left for Saigon with the newly formed marching detachment, we drivers in the evac convoy arrived back in camp, and immediately sensed a change. Not an obvious change. There was something in the air, something amiss. As we climbed out of our vehicles to head for the showers it felt too quiet. Not even a shout or curse from the workshop shed, a clang of metal on metal, a revving engine. A group of soldiers hung about the admin office, hangdog, listless, unsupervised. When Barry Love called out to Daniels, who was among them, he turned away, shook his head.

When repairing a flat truck tyre you had to be careful when hammering down the last steel ring, the one that locked a fully inflated tyre into the wheel rim. Until they were hammered right into place these rings could spring off the wheel, with such force that one had left a deep dent in the iron roof of the workshop shed.

As part of evacuation preparations a small detail was left in camp that day to finish the tyre repairs. The party included Al Stanley who had volunteered immediately to avoid going to Nui Dat and the man in charge, Lance Corporal O'Malley.

Lyle would have been doing most of the work himself but he hadn't hammered this final ring on. It was said that Al did, although no one could get any sense out of Al after the event so that it was never finally established. And it didn't really matter by then.

The wheel had been turned over, with the final ring facing down, so that when it came off it shot the whole wheel into the air with tremendous force. Standing over the wheel at the time, preparing to stack it with the other repaired ones, Lyle took the full force in the face.

Al Stanley reacted so hysterically that he was taken to the hospital with Lyle where he was sedated until the next medevac home. This time there were tears, his distress unstoppable without medication.

I rose early the next morning and packed quickly so that I would have time to visit the hospital before the bus to Saigon arrived.

I was only able to see Lyle. The doctors had worked through the night to repair his face and make it as near to its original shape as possible, but you could see that even when the stitches and the swelling were gone, it would be a face that people could hardly bare to look at. He had been horribly and permanently disfigured. It just wasn't him anymore. I never did have a lot to say to Lyle and even on this day, when I really tried, there seemed to be nothing. It was so hard to say something when I couldn't stand to look at him.

While I was in Saigon Lyle was taken home on the RAAF C130 Hercules medevac flight. I knew something of that home from stories he'd told me when we shared a tent at Canungra. Four younger siblings still at home with his mother, who was just sixteen years older than Lyle and had recently started her first full time job at the local hospital. The father was long gone.

His girlfriend Narelle, always at him to tie the knot. Lyle too busy with work. Picking oranges at Griffith, pears at Shepparton, grapes at Mildura. Sometimes shearing, even the odd roo shoot back of Ivanhoe. It wasn't just the money. Or the mates. It was the work. He loved the work.

And then came the army. Yeh, sounds good. I'll be in that. At basic they wanted him to apply for infantry. He could join the training squad, maybe stay in Kapooka for his two years. But Lyle wanted action and someone told him transport was the go now, in the later stages of our part in the war.

A week or so after I returned from Saigon, just before we all went home ourselves, we found out that Lyle had died at home. Some internal complication? A blood clot? Or simply the reaction from Narelle, the looks on his family's faces? It could well have been the latter. He wouldn't have wanted to cause any trouble. He deserved a blaze of glory, not a flying truck wheel, but in the end there is no blaze of glory, just another dead body.

In dark insomnious nights of later years, visions of Lyle would remind me of the luck of survival, and shed an unsightly light on all the innocent courage that perished. And inseverely self-absorbed, 2 or 3am moments, on my own survival, on those selfish, duplicitous tendencies of mine that helped secure it, and the luck, mostly the luck. So that before I finally slept I would remind myself that life can be unfair, and when you wake in the morning, it does, as they say, go on.

Although the unfairness can seem infinite, and relentless. At one time in those later years, I went through a list of Australian servicemen killed in the war and his name was not among them. Lyle might have died in Australia but he was killed in Vietnam.

Part 5

The World

Chapter 27

On the parade bus to Saigon I sat thoughtful and downcast among what was otherwise a happy group of thirty odd Australian soldiers from different Vung Tau units. A friendly captain from A.L.S.G. central admin had welcomed us aboard and reminded us of the importance of our mission. We had been chosen as our country's representatives in the commemoration of our host nation's national day.

The soldier sitting next to me, a storeman from the engineers squadron we worked with, nudged me good-naturedly. "Six and a wakie. Soon as I get back I'm on the big silver bird out'a this shit hole. So short I can taste draught beer. Won't it be great to be back in the world, eh? Out of the funny place."

We passed a convoy of troop carriers coming out of the turnoff road to Nui Dat and some of the marchers yelled at them from the bus windows. "Get some war up!" the engineers storeman leaned past me to call out. He told me later that in six months he hadn't been outside the camp at Vung Tau, except to go to town.

In Bien Hoa I watched out for the road to Muc Thap and as we went past it looked as insignificant as any other track that turned off the highway into the rice fields. The captain wanted everyone to sing and couldn't get much response with Waltzing Matilda. But when someone started singing a different song they all joined in.

All my bags are packed. I'm ready to go ...

The storeman sang at the top of his voice. I couldn't join in. Singing had too much of the sound of celebration about it, when I felt more like a minute's silence. Perhaps I was being a little too precious in my melancholy. You have to take the good with the bad and I was at war after all. It was bound to get ugly somehow. And we were about to go home. But in all that singing, in fact in all the effervescent rejoicing of those final days, I had this presentiment of some kind of anticlimax, a hollowness. For me a shadow lurked behind all the good cheer, laughing with us, and then at us, quietly, bitterly, and persisting when the singing was over. The cloud behind the silver lining. That's all I could see. I wondered if anyone else felt the same. Certainly no one on the bus that day. In my downcast mood I went searching for signs further afield, among those I knew.

I thought of Tony Carmody's worrying letter. During his nearly ten months incountry Tony had deliberately not taken any photographs. He wanted to pretend it didn't happen; walk back into civvie street and pick up where he left off, as if nothing had happened, until one day the memory was gone forever. And yet, in those last weeks, his attitude grew increasingly sombre.

There was Greg Urquhart's anger. Moll's diminished sense of humour. Al's mutiny, that wasn't .

Blowfly, our mumbling but contented garbo, would fly out on the last flight of nashos with Tony Carmody because each time he was supposed to leave he went to see his girl in town, one last time, and missed his flight. Captain O'Brien gave him orders to stay in camp the night before the last plane's departure but MPs caught him sneaking onto a Lambretta late that night. He was accommodated in the guardhouse up until his departure time the next day, at which the MPs escorted him to the airport bus.

And when I returned from Saigon I would find out also that Barry Love, our longest server, had been put on the medevac emergency flight with Al and Lyle. He had come back to the hut from the canteen, taken his M16 and gone searching for ammunition. No one knew what he had in mind. He had been admonished by Donald Duck during the day, but he was always in trouble for speeding. Tony claimed he had been writing to his ex to ask her to meet him, but he was whisked away so quickly his motivation remained a mystery.

But were any of these much more than life's inevitable hassles? Was my search for misery just self indulgence? I had met soldiers, Aussies, who considered this war little more than an inconvenience, if protracted and sometimes scary. Bushfire Daniels saw it mostly as a joke. For Captain O'Brien, Joe Bartolino and the rest of the regulars it would probably mean promotion. And the majority of our troops, you could tell, felt pride in their service. What's wrong with me? I'm going home. In one piece. Shouldn't I be thankful?

Sing, mate. Be happy. We're going home.

To a ticker-tape welcome.

Shut up, Al.

So kiss me and smile for me. Tell me that you'll wait for me.

\- 0 -

We were put up in a big American base called Camp Alpha, not far from Tan Son Nhut Airport, with barrack blocks that seemed to go forever. We were given one of these.

The 2 IC of the outfit, a staff sergeant also from central admin, looked at me strangely when I asked about a phone. "Thinkin' of callin' home?" he asked.

I asked an American shambling past outside our building but when he mentioned something about the mess I thought he had misunderstood me.

We were more or less confined to barracks that afternoon and evening. We spent the next day practising and in my distraction and frustration at not being allowed to get to a phone, I became a liability to the marching effort. Everyone but me was in good spirits and the captain was very tolerant, calling me aside eventually to ask if anything was the matter. And I exploited the man's good nature. I didn't want to make too much fuss lest I got sent back to my unit. It was "just my shoulder."

"Does it bother you when you march?"

"Yeh. I can't swing my arm properly. Just yet."

"Okay. Fall out for today. See how it is tomorrow. If it gets worse we'll see if we can get a doctor to look at it."

Back in the barracks block I was showered and ready to go in ten minutes. I was stuffing my savings (minus fifty dollars!) into my hip pocket as I charged out the door and the staff sergeant was coming up the steps.

"And just where are you going?"

"To find the RAP, Sergeant."

"An aid post? Here? What for?"

I explained about my wounded shoulder and the difficulty with marching.

"War is hell. You looked okay a minute ago. Racing out 'a here like the proverbial Bondi bloody tram."

"I want to make sure I get an appointment to see a doctor tomorrow, like the captain suggested."

He looked at me squarely. I felt like asking why it mattered. Why wasn't he back on the parade ground? "Show me." I took off my shirt and gave secret thanks to Greg Urquhart and his right fist. "Looks more like a bruise than a dislocation. Swing your arm." A sergeant who thought he was a doctor, when all I wanted was a telephone. I winced as I swung my arm. The sergeant/doctor looked unimpressed.

"You can't just roll up to an American Aid Post. You'd need some sort of authorisation. A doctor would probably only tell you to rest it anyhow. So I think that's what you better do. Just rest it." I returned to my bunk, nursing my left arm in my right. He followed me. "What's your name?" I gave him my name and unit. "We're not up here for a Saigon party. Your CO must have told you there'd be no malingering."

I nodded my head, looked suitably shocked. He'd seen the bruise. How could he think such a thing? I was here to march, for my army, my country, for the whole free world. When he had gone I waited a half an hour, in an agony of frustration.

The ORs' mess was a huge cafeteria. The selection of meats and ice creams alone seemed unlimited. When I asked a soldier for directions to the telephone area he pointed, and I was pleased he did. Another introspective, sotto voce American. It was as though responsibility for the war rested on all of their shoulders collectively, right down to the ordinary soldier. I suppose they had their loud-mouths somewhere.

I took Killer Kelleher's phone number for the embassy from its safe place in my wallet as I sought out the telephones. All were occupied when I found them but fifteen minutes later I was being told by a member of American embassy staff that Julie Shields was not available. It took some explaining before I was able to convince him not to hang up on me. I became, by way of self-introduction, the 'rescuer of Jake Klein's daughter'. For a while I feared that Chuck had spoken to him about me and the character of my nation.

"Hello."

"Abbie?"

"Julie Shields speaking."

"This is Mark Ross." Even if she didn't remember my name I was sure she must have recognised the accent. "The Aussie who brought Abbie from Vung Tau."

"Oh, yeh. Her rescuer, I'm told."

"Is she there? Please?"

"No."

"Oh. Has she gone home?"

Her pause seemed as deliberate as it was cruel. "No. Not quite."

"Well, she wrote to me and said she'd like to speak to me before I go home." This was met with another silence. "So, I ...ah ... I was wondering if she might be ... available ... to talk to. Or when might be the best time to call back, do you think?"

"Hold on a minute." She sounded very bored.

I looked around at the line of soldiers waiting their turn, all in their loose-fitting greens. The graffiti on the wall next to the phone featured statement and response. Nixon! Withdraw now!was coupled withI wish his father had withdrawn. Uncle Sam loves mewithThat's good. 'coz everybody else thinks you're an asshole.

"Can you get to a phone at say seven tonight?" asked Julie Shields.

"Yeh. Yeh, no worries. Yeh, I can do that."

"Okay. Take it easy, please. I'll keep this line free at seven o'clock. If you're late, youwon't be able to talk to her." I was about to express my thanks when she moved on quickly. "So, if you can't call at that time, please don't bother us again. Because the girl is going home tomorrow."

"Tomorrow?"

"That's what I said." And she hung up.

I didn't go back to the barracks. With a few hours to wait I sat in the mess hall until I attracted unwanted looks, then wandered around the camp, avoiding my barracks block, keeping the mess in easy reach.

Around six o'clock I found the big hall full of soldiers. There were no Australians but I joined a queue and was asked no questions as I took my selection for dinner. The soldier who sat down opposite me at the table looked no more than seventeen. He returned my nod.

"You guys got a great selection on the menu here. I'm from Australia. Staying here to take part in the march."

"You've come from Australia for a march?"

"No. No, we're stationed at Vung Tau." I could see he knew as much about a place called Vung Tau as he did about the march. I left him, too anxious to eat much.

"Hello."

"Julie Shields?"

"Mark? This is Abbie, Mark."

"G'day, Abbie."

"Hi. This is a surprise. You got my letter, huh? So, where are you now?"

"I'm in Saigon."

"You're here in Saigon? How did you manage that?"

"It's a long story. Listen. Is it true you're going home tomorrow?"

"Yes. You called just in time."

"Is there any way I can get to see you?"

There was silence for a moment. "Yes. One way or another." Then she spoke so quietly I could hardly hear her. "I mean, this is my last night. And you've gone to the trouble to get here. Thank you, papa san."

I looked around a moment, wondering if I looked as pleased as I felt. The queue had diminished. "When and where, can I see you?"

"Just a minute."

I looked around again. A small embarrassed message on the wall said, I think I'm in love with my hand. And then from some more enigmatic soul, if just as sad,Minnie Mouse is a bitch.

Her voice came on the line again. "Can you be outside the embassy in an hour?"

I had to walk back through the mess hall to find my way to the base entrance and I saw the engineers storeman from the bus trip. He called out and waved. I waved back and kept walking, almost breaking into a run. Out in the street Lambrettas were difficult to find and instead of arriving early I was a few minutes late.

Abbie was sitting in the back seat of a jeep, just inside the gates. Julie was in front of her beside Chuck the driver who started the engine and moved forward as the gates were opened for them. He glared at me as I approached. I climbed in beside Abbie and as the vehicle moved off she gave my hand a quick, secret squeeze.

"Where are we going?" I asked quietly.

"You'll see."

We sat in silence. When Abbie smiled at me she looked beautiful.

The French-styled building where we stopped was a restaurant. A sign above the arched doorway said 'Mon Cherie'.

"Abbie," said Julie, "Would you mind going in and checking with the manager?"

Abbie looked back as she entered the restaurant. She was wearing a light cheese-cloth dress and looked taller in heels higher than her usual boots.

Julie turned to me. "I presume you must be AWOL again." I opened my mouth to explain but she wasn't interested. It wasn't a question. "But I'm allowing this little dinner date to happen because Abbie asked me to, and she is going home tomorrow. But you must promise me, as she has already, that you will not leave the building." She watched me as I nodded. "Now you have a watch." I nodded, again with no real need to. "The time is now twenty fifteen hours. Okay? Now if you are not, both of you, standing under that archway at twenty-three hundred hours exactly, I will contact your military police and explain where you are, or where to start looking for you."

I tried to look indignant but said nothing because that's what she wanted. This conservation was one way only.

"Now I am not bluffing. I would not hesitate to report you, and, if I felt there was any need, report you for molesting a young American female. And my concern for the wellbeing of that young woman is such that if I were to call your military police, and they not respond, I would make sure that mine did. Am I clear?"

Chapter 28

"Bloody hell," I said. "Do I look like the Boston strangler or something?" We watched the jeep disappearing in the traffic.

"Forget it. She's being very nice really, to me at least. She says she owes it to my father, as an American citizen, to make sure I'm safe at all times. I'm supposed to stay inside the embassy until I go, unless I'm with her or Chuck, and this being my last night, she's sticking her neck out a little for me." She looked at me. "But, because it is my last night, and this restaurant is safe. Come on."

I would learn one day that some diggers attended restaurants in Saigon, but not many, and mostly during the earlier years when troop commitment was minimal. By the seventies the bars were the established haunts, and on this night I felt the sense of occasion. Even were Julie Shields as cold and hard as I imagined, she had looked after us on this night, in her restricting way, until 11 o'clock only.

The 'Mon Cherie' had that dusty, unkempt look on the outside, despite the arched entrance, but the inside was far removed from the gaudy vulgarity of the bars I was used to. It was like a greenhouse. Profusions of tropical plants sprouted everywhere, some in huge pots others in hanging baskets. And we might have been in an American officers' club, one where a team of servants removed all traces of dirt, corrected any suggestion of shabbiness, each day before the clientele arrived. A host of ceiling fans blended with the atmosphere and worked in respectful silence.

Big tables were host to groups while couples occupied smaller ones, all separated from each other by the abundance of flora. I had never seen such pretty local girls, dressed in the traditional silk costume called ao dai, the sophisticates, obviously, of those who associated with visiting servicemen, all of whom in this restaurant were American. A four piece band played quietly in one corner amongst the fernery. A gentle version ofFerry 'cross the Mersey, with an Asian accent.

Although all tables were privately positioned, the maitre de showed us to the most conspicuous in the middle of the room. They had opened large French doors at the sides and I could see empty tables in an outdoor section.

"Julie's idea?"

Abbie smiled her agreement. "Prearranged. But don't be too hard on her. She said this is the best and safest restaurant in town. And she said it's safe because it's probably communist owned. Yet, look at it. It's full of Americans. I know my father will appreciate that little irony when I tell him."

We watched the band. "People around every corner, they seem to smile and say,

We don't care what your name is, boy, we never send you away."

Once again I had the sense that my plain greens jarred with the surrounds, announced my military lowliness, but I took comfort in the soft music, the decor, my anonymity and the company of the American girl. She was smiling her confidence, in the place, the whole world it seemed, even in me, my initial edgy glances at those around me notwithstanding.

"You know," I said, "I've already eaten. Sorry. While I was waiting to call you they were serving dinner at the mess."

"It's okay. I'm not really hungry either. I'm more ... excited."

She was the object of several glances, more discreet than I was used to. "You look nice," I said.

"Thank you. Julie took me shopping. An Indian place. It's a change from those flying suits, huh?"

A waiter arrived with a menu. We explained that we only wanted drinks and I ordered a beer and Abbie a coffee. "So," she said. "Tell me. When do you leave? Do you know exactly?"

"Two or three weeks."

"And how on earth did you get here? Julie is convinced you are some kind of deserter." I explained about the march. "Yes. I did hear something about it."

"We were allowed out tonight. The others were heading for the bars."

The waiter served us. Abbie was looking around her as I took a big drink of my beer. "I wish we could have a table out there," I said. "Do you think maybe if I asked?"

"We're being watched, I believe. Wait till we've finished these drinks. And I've told you my big news."

"What?"

"Guess who's coming home with me?"

"Who?" I suppose it was a stupid question but at that moment I was caught up with the pleasure of her company and not thinking straight, and wished, for one crazy second, that it could be me.

And so, the primary reason for that light in her eyes. She was taking the baby home. It was all arranged. Some of the arrangements she would rather have not made, and as she explained these more dubious parts of her plan, shadows of doubt and regret crossed her face's otherwise perfect brilliance. But it was done. They would fly out together tomorrow.

"I have Chuck on side. I haven't told him everything of course but he's become kind of my driver. Julie is way too busy and he's taken me out to the orphanage most days."

"She's still in the orphanage?"

"Yes."

Her father was still not well enough to help her, nor even to accompany them tomorrow, and she looked down, considered her cup of coffee as she told me that when he does go he might go straight to another hospital in the States.

She had not seen the baby since our visit to the orphanage. The women were persistent in refusing her entry, and she chose to acquiesce, needing their cooperation, their unqualified agreement when it came time to take her. Chuck preferred to stay in the vehicle and never had time to wait around but she knew the baby was there because the price was now two hundred dollars, not one hundred, and of course there would be no money with no baby in exchange. She was disgusted and angry at having to barter for a human being, and her own sister, but it was countered always by the excitement of getting her out.

As further proof that the baby was still there, Abbie had seen little Mai outside the orphanage on her bicycle, waiting and watching the way she did. She would not approach them and Chuck wouldn't stop to let her talk to the child, so she would have to leave it to the woman in charge at the orphanage, who knew Mai and her family, to inform them that the baby had gone to America, to be with her father, and her half-sister. She hoped that one day, as an American, she might return to visit. She may even be entitled to dual nationality.

"One thing at a time, Abbie."

Which dulled some of her brightness, but only momentarily. Because her plan was all in place. She had paid an official at the airport, the one in charge of non-military departures, three hundred dollars, and had been back to see him to confirm the date and time. A baby was easy to add because, obviously, she would need no seat.

Chuck was her willing and obedient assistant in all this. Well, her driver at least. He knew nothing, yet, of the central plan and her commitment to it. He had agreed to take her to the orphanage to give the women milk for the babies, one in particular, and twice he had driven her to the airport, believing she was shopping at the PX store. And he always waited in the jeep which left her free to make arrangements. She said he was more amused than surprised when she suggested she might take the baby with her when she went home, so she had dropped the subject, not wanting to push the friendship. At which she looked at me.

"A kind of friendship, that is. He still treats me like the helpless civilian. I had to convince him that I was okay inside the airport without him. I told him I preferred to shop alone. I'm afraid..." I waited while she considered something. "I think I might have to expect a call from Chuck sometime, after he goes stateside." She assured me with a smile that the army sergeant, her new friend, would never be any more than that. It was all about the baby. And thanks partly to his help, the baby was going home.

Tomorrow, when she emerged from that awful, smelly orphanage, her little sister in her arms, she knew Chuck would be supportive. Not that she was getting too carried away with his friendship or his amused sympathy. Her greatest asset, where Julie Shields and her driver were concerned, was their indifference. They had nothing to lose and didn't really care. With Jake Klein incapacitated, they saw the baby as the business of her Vietnamese family. And Julie was too busy with her work, with the war. She would not even have time to see Abbie off at the airport. A goodbye at the embassy was all she could afford.

"I feel a little two-faced about not telling her, because she has been nice, 'specially now I'm going home. But I couldn't count on her reaction.I can't risk it. Whereas Chuck...well, he's a real soldier. Good at following orders."

Her father's health, the frustration at not being able to speak to him, were troubling. She had wanted to tell him, to prepare him, but she was sure it would be a great lift for him ultimately, wherever he was taken, to find his daughters, both his daughters, home and safe.

"Is there any chance you can get away to see us off tomorrow?"

"I don't know. I'll certainly try."

"I mean, she's your baby san too."

"Your coffee's going cold."

She sat back and took up the cup. I drained my beer glass.

"It has to work, Mark. She's my sister. I can't just leave her here." She leaned forward. "If we all go, and even if the South hangs on, they will not be sympathetic to the children of Americans. And it'll be worse if they fall."

"I hope she handles the flight okay. She looked pretty sick last time we saw her."

"Well, the orphanage nurses were very grateful for the milk I took them. And I'll take some more with us on the plane."

She looked around the restaurant. It would have been easy to forget the war for a while in a place as sedate as the 'Mon Cherie', but as she took a sip of her coffee and replaced the cup there was concern in her eyes again. "I can't wait to get her away from this terrible war. Do you know, around forty thousand American soldiers have now been killed."

I had heard that the number of Australians was now five hundred. "Speaking of the casualties of war, has anyone been sent out to the mountain at Muc Thap, to find our friend?"

"I doubt Julie's passed the information to anyone. She hasn't said so."

Where did that leave Arkansas? Still living in the trees, smoking and chanting through the night, hoping that one day soon we could all go home. I presumed that the longer he remained that way the more fearful he'd become of returning to his unit. And how would the army treat him if he did return? Desertion was a serious crime.

Years later I made enquiries. I wrote to the US Army for information on a Major Hall, army doctor, stationed in Vietnam in 1971. Nothing came of it. I never heard of Arkansas again.

My drink arrived quickly. "So, you're all set to go?"

And she was nodding happily again. "I've filled out an emigration form, stating the name of her father. Once he claims her it'll be fine. And I had to name her, on the form, so I called her Thi Lin. Thi Lin Klein. What do you think? I hope my father approves. But that can be sorted out at home. The thing to do is get her there. I mean, they can't send her back." I sat back to admire her. "Having you here is a good omen too. I wanted so much to tell you, papa san. Because you understand. But I must say, I had no idea I'd be telling you like this, in a restaurant like this. We can thank Julie for this, and she has no idea I'm taking the baby."

"Chuck might have told her, that you talked about taking her."

"No. He wouldn't believe I could arrange it. And he's on my side. I think he finds Julie a little too obsessive. Oh. And another strange thing Julie's done. Quite out of character."

Her coffee cup was nearly empty but I dared not interrupt to ask if she wanted more. She wanted to talk, and when this girl wanted to talk, I wanted to listen. Looking around us she lowered her voice even further and leaned across the table.

"She showed me two files, or part of them. One on Thi Lin Quang, communist agent. The other on Con Ma Nu, communist guerrilla commander. Can you believe that? She is so determined to show me how wrong my father was - how much his relationship with Lin put him in danger.

"They make for fascinating reading, what I saw of them. My best friend in this country, present company excepted of course, was a communist agent. So of course to Julie and her colleagues my father was cavorting with the devil. And Con Ma Nu is even higher on the wanted list than Lin was. Much higher."

Thi Lin Quang was not her name when she first attracted the attention of government agents at Saigon University in the late 1950s. She was an active and vocal member of an active and vocal left wing group which was led by a history professor who later became her husband. Abbie added that this man was Mai's father and if Lin's commitment to an independent, communist government of her country could have intensified it did when he mysteriously disappeared. Her older sister had taken an active part in the defeat of the French and was already a communist organiser.

Listening to Abbie's little history of her late friend, Thi lin Quang, as seen through the eyes of American Intelligence, it occurred to me that it said something about her father too. When he took up with a local woman Jake Klein did not choose one of the acceptable Saigon socialites.

With a group of fellow revolutionaries she had gone to Paris to study history and politics, with a deliberate Marxist bias. She also became fluent in English, making several trips to London where she developed friendships with other communists or sympathisers, some of them expatriate Americans.

In 1965, as the American military presence in her country was building massively, she returned and was immediately recruited by the Hanoi government. Her name was changed to Thi Lin Quang and she was assigned to undercover work in Saigon, beginning as an interpreter with the American oil supply company. The file posed questions as to the length of time she stayed in this position, expecting that such an attractive, multilingual woman would have been moved on sooner, most likely to a position where she could infiltrate organisations of military importance. It noted however, that she had finished up with the small exploration section of the oil company in Vung Tau and suggested that the Hanoi government might have wanted information on where oil might be discovered.

Lin's work relationship with Jake Klein was not mentioned so that it seemed they had no knowledge of their personal one either. In fact no personal reference to the company's chief geologist was made up until Lin's death. Abbie presumed his work would have been closely monitored when they discovered her links with Hanoi, but if there was a file on Jake Klein Julie would not tell his daughter about it.

"You don't think your father was used by Lin?"

She shook her head instantly. "Julie wants me to think so. But they'd been together for years. And I saw the way they were together. You know? And she had his baby, for God's sake. They loved each other. I know they did."

"So, do they have any idea who attacked him yet? And why?"

"Remember Le Dang Bah? The name Lin and Con Ma Nu both gave me. Well he was found to have an alibi. So Julie tells me. But she also told me that my father had been beaten on the same day that Lin was attacked. I'm sure this Le Dang Bah was behind it."

"Maybe he was the one she saw in Vung Tau. You said someone had frightened her, the day before she left."

"Yes. Or she saw someone else who recognised her. From the past, I mean. And that someone passed on the information to him. I wish I could've seen my father before I go. Julie assures me his attackers will be brought to justice but that Le Dang Bah has been cleared. But I'm sure he's involved."

Abbie said the file on Con Ma Nu was much longer and consisted mostly of lists of ambushes and attacks on American units, going back to the days of advisors; attacks, it was alleged, led or organised by her.

"They don't know her real name. Con Ma Nu means 'ghost woman', or something like that. They are particularly bitter about her because for years she was trusted. It took American intelligence some time to realise that a woman of such humble background could be so influential and so treacherous."

I thought about the few times I had seen Con Ma Nu, the unflappable yet intense attention she had given her sister on the night of Lin's death, the quiet strength I had sensed even as she spoke to Abbie in a crowded street. The same quiet strength I had seen in her sister, though with Lin there was a warmth as well. Fanaticism was something I had never seen before, a life given to a cause, consumed by the war, the struggle, until, with Con Ma Nu at least, there was nothing else to her, nothing else to see.

"What made her like that? Where'd she get the scar?"

Abbie shook her head. "They don't know. They're just glad she's got it. There's no mention of any personal life at all. My father says America makes the mistake of judging these people from a western perspective. They don't understand that dying for their country is more than just honourable. For them it's like a religion. The more of their blood spilt on their soil, the closer is their bond with it, which makes for a strange paradox. The more of them the American Army kills, the further they are from victory over them."

"Did your father get this from Lin?"

"Yes. And Julie says it ignores all those people who would appreciate an American victory, and their treatment at the hands of the communists. But it shows how close he and Lin were. How committed they were to each other in more ways than I ever realised. And now, I must save their baby, and get her home, while her father is not able. Before.."She looked around but everybody in the restaurant was preoccupied with each other. "You know. We are definitely pulling out. Leaving it to local forces. 'Vietnamisation' they're calling it, and 'withdrawal with honour' is the catch-cry. Now there's another paradox. That one designed for public consumption."

She took up her coffee cup again. What was left must have been quite cold but she didn't notice. She was too full of tomorrow, the excitement of getting her half-sister away from the war. She looked pensive for a moment before she went on quietly.

"You know, my ... ex friend said once, that if America loses this war some good might actually come of it, for us I mean. We might learn some humility. Withdraw a little from the world. Get back some innocence. To use a literary allusion, we might rediscover some of our Huckleberry Finn origins. Be less like Captain Ahab, trying to strike the sun, trying to be God. When you've been on the mountain top for long enough you can start to think you might be God. Sorry. I'm raving, aren't I?"

Sun-striking Captain Ahab had lost me a little, but I knew what humility was and it seemed to me that the few Americans I had met were humble enough, including her, for all her confidence. I once asked a GI in a bar what he thought of his government at that point. There had been reports of withdrawal and I imagined I was being clever.

"It's not an easy situation," he said seriously. "The communists are a slippery foe. But I guess the government's doin' a pretty good job."

His modest faith stopped me. Their disillusioned graffiti said little about pride too. The generals might talk the war up, but the average soldier on the ground was as far from any mountain top as anyone could be.

"I really hope you can make it tomorrow. My plane leaves at ten o'clock."

"I'll do whatever it takes, short of shooting a certain sergeant, but I can't promise."

The band had started a song called Make It with You. I wanted to reach over and take her hand.

"You know, Julie even told me things about herself." I made my feelings obvious but she insisted. "No, it's interesting. She was once married. To an army officer, while she was in Germany. She was hurt. I think he was fooling around and she was the last to know. She was in Germany to improve her German and started working there for the army and moved into the diplomatic service. When her marriage broke down she moved away to make a new start and decided to pick the hot spots. To lose herself in her work, I guess, that sort of thing. But I'm sure she still carries a torch for this guy in Germany."

"And now she doesn't trust soldiers. Any soldiers."

"Maybe. But it makes you think. Maybe we're all here for some crazy reason or other."

"Maybe."

She smiled at me and I thought she was beautiful. "What's your crazy reason for being here, papa san?"

"Me? You mean you don't know? I was sent here to watch over you. I'm your guardian angel."

The band sang. "Heh, have you ever tried? Really reaching out for the other side?"

I reached across and took her hand. "Let's move tables. Go outside."

"We're not supposed to move."

"We'd only be changing tables and it looks so much cooler out there. Besides, we might never see each other again. This time for real."

"How long do we have?"

"Just a couple of hours. It's going on for nine."

When I managed to attract the waiter again he was reluctant to agree until I offered him ten dollars. I started at five. The three of us looked around for the maitre de and then moved outside. I went straight for a table in the darkest corner. The waiter complained about reservations but I ignored him, pulled out a chair for Abbie and he gave up and went to get my beer. I moved my chair in closer to her.

"I hope this doesn't get us into trouble with Julie."

I took her hand. "Who's Julie?" The waiter arrived and I sat back and drank some beer.

"In case you can't get there tomorrow, we must exchange addresses so we can write. Will you give me your home address?"

"No."

"No?"

"I don't give my address to just anyone. First you have to kiss me."

"I already have. Don't you remember?"

"That didn't count."

"I thought I felt the earth move."

"That was Arkansas's tree house, swaying in the breeze." I moved towards her.

She looked around. "My God. This is a restaurant." But she was smiling. As we kissed I brought myself in closer to her and knocked the table. The beer glass toppled over and I grabbed it as it rolled towards the edge. I swore. She laughed.

"Let's go," I said.

"What? We could be drawn and quartered just for moving out here."

"We've got over two hours. Let's find a place. A private place, Abbie. Just for once. Just the two of us."

"But this is Saigon. You told me once that it's dangerous to be out and about in this city."

"That was then. We're old hands at it now."

"Some guardian angel. What about the head waiter? The manager?"

"They're too busy making money out of American officers even to notice that we moved out here."

She looked around. She still had one hand on my shoulder and the other on my leg. I kissed her again. "You're beautiful. Come here."

She looked around coyly and then moved across to sit in my lap and sighed as she kissed me. A young officer and his girlfriend were grinning at us through some foliage from the other side of the patio. For a moment I felt like they might burst into spontaneous applause.

"Come on," I said.

"Where to?"

"The Continental."

"Again?"

"Well, where else? That's all we know."

I took her hand and led her to a bamboo fence low enough for me to step over. I picked her up and carried her. She probably could have stepped over if I'd helped her but it was an excuse to hold her. Hand in hand we made our way down an alley until, once again, we were in the hot, noisy streets of Saigon.

Chapter 29

We were encouraged immediately by the availability of Lambrettas. Three or four of them were lined up outside the restaurant and, keeping ourselves out of the front door lights, we beckoned one over.

The Continental Hotel seemed even more crowded than last time, with the usual variety of westerners, mostly non-military. We couldn't see our reporter and Abbie wanted to approach him if we could find him, before looking for hotel management and asking for a room. I wasn't as overawed by the place this time but she had concerns about who might recognise her and felt that for the price of a short interview the man might offer us some discreet advice, at least, on the business of renting rooms in Saigon.

Standing at the doorway, we surveyed the wide lounge area. Abbie frowned. "Of course journalists aren't known for their discretion, but I'm guessing he'll be more interested in information on my father than in my private life."

But as we looked around we realised he wasn't there.

"Well we don't have much time," I said. "Let's ask a waiter."

She took my hand. "Can we sit down for a minute? Please? He may come in."

There was barely a vacant table in the place and we were attracted to one, firstly because of the two empty chairs beside it, but also because we recognised the young man and the girl who occupied the other two. Last time we were here we had seen this couple at a table outside with another young man. I remembered how they had smiled at us as we'd entered.

Without either of us really saying anything, we headed for their table. Apart from our recognition of them and the fact that they looked around our age, something else drew us to them; a greenness, a vague vulnerability that we understood. And I was hoping that he might even be Australian. The girl was a local, in traditional dress, unusual for women in hotels, even the Continental.

"Excuse us." They both looked up and smiled. "We were wondering if you might be able to help us. We're looking for a reporter from the LA Times. Name of Adams."

"I'm sorry," he said. "No. I'm rather new in-country. The few Americans I know are New Yorkers." He was not American, but unmistakably English. Our disappointment showed and he apologised again.

"It's okay. Thanks."

"Can I help? I'm not a journalist but I am in the game. I'm a photographer."

"No. It's okay. Nothing really." Something about the way they smiled up at us invited my confidence. "We wanted to know about ... getting a room. What it's like here, you know. That's all."

"Here? At the Continental?"

"Yes. Well, we don't know anywhere else."

"Oh. I'm sorry. I don't know anyone who stays here." I was looking around for a waiterwhen he said. "Are you new in town?" He looked at both of us in turn. The girl was smiling at us. Abbie said no and I said yes, simultaneously.

"Well," I said, "we've been here for a little while. Abbie's been here longer than I have."

"Oh."

I was about to excuse us when Abbie said, "It's kind of a special occasion, you see. I'm going home tomorrow, back to the States, and there are always so many soldiers everywhere." He looked at my uniform but Abbie went on. "We don't know anywhere else except here. We guess it's okay, but thought we should check with someone. And this reporter, we know. Well he might be able to ... help us."

"Oh. Oh, I see." He looked at the girl who was smiling still. She seemed to find great amusement in the conversation. "Well, look, you're welcome to join us for a while. We can't help you much, I'm afraid, but perhaps your friend might turn up in the meantime."

"It wouldn't be an imposition?" said Abbie.

"Not at all." She thanked him and we sat. "I'm Piers Langford. This is my friend andassistant, Senlee." He reached across and shook both our hands as we introduced ourselves. The girl smiled hugely as she nodded to us individually. "Now, should we order some drinks?"

"Well, actually we have a time problem too. My leave runs out at eleven o'clock."

"Oh. That doesn't help your cause, does it?"

"No."

"New Zealand Army?'

"Australian."

"Oh. the accent's very similar, isn't it? I shared a flat once with a New Zealander. In Ealing, it was. Sixty-five." I decided he must have been older than he looked. He turned to Abbie. "And you're American?."

"Yes. I'm at the Embassy."

He was nodding. "Fascinating." He patted a large leather bag beside him. "You must let me get your photograph before you go."

"Which paper are you with?" Abbie asked.

"Well, strictly speaking, none. I'm freelance. But I am closely aligned with a reporter from The Guardian." I looked around at some new arrivals and he followed my glance. "I'm really sorry I can't help you."

"Oh, it's nothing really," said Abbie. "It's just, I'm going home, as I said. And we had some things ... things to talk about, you know ... and ..."

Senlee, who had not stopped smiling since we arrived, said, "You want to make love." We didn't answer and she said, "We are lovers too."

He took her hand. "Isn't she lovely."

We nodded.

"Piers," she said. "They could go to your room."

"Well, yes, except that it's not my room, is it. That's all. Although David won't be back tonight. And, actually, I'm sure he wouldn't mind."

"Oh, we couldn't do that," said Abbie.

"Well, we didn't plan on going back there for quite a while yet. No one else will be there so it'd be quite alright."

"You're sure it'd be okay?" I said.

"Oh we couldn't," said Abbie. "I mean, especially if it's not even your room."

"No. It's quite alright, I promise you. And you could bring me back the key. After."

"After your ...ah ... honeymoon," said Senlee and they both laughed again.

He held up a finger. "There is one small fee. I will want that photograph when you get back."

"When you look beautiful. After your honeymoon."

He wanted to show us the way but we refused when he explained how close it was. He gave us a key and went over the directions again. We thanked them both and promised to be back by ten-thirty. We heard them laughing behind us as we left.

Outside, a breeze made it cooler than usual. It didn't feel like rain. "I thought Asian women were supposed to be reserved," said Abbie as we made our way past the tables on the narrow sidewalk. "Maybe it's a legacy from the French." She took hold of my arm as we turned off the main road into a side street. "This country is full of kooks. But they were nice kooks."

The room smelt sweetly of incense and marijuana. I found a switch and the light revealed a larger room than I'd expected, with shower, vanity basin, mirror and continental toilet, all in a curtained corner. There was one bed beside the door and a mattress on the floor, in a corner beside an open balcony. The French doors were open so that the room was separated from the night outside only by a beaded curtain.

I parted the beads to look out over the balcony which was barely big enough for two people together. Abbie came up beside me, looking nervous. We were only one floor up but the building opposite looked dark and empty.

In daylight I'm sure that street of ramshackle structures would have looked like any another benign piece of big city squalor, or through more romantic eyes, a quaint corner of old Asia. But for us, at that moment, it served only to heighten our sense of alienation. Women were talking somewhere, a man coughed, and a baby cried. We were in a strange room, the temporary rented property of some man we had never seen, the friend of an English photographer we had known for maybe ten minutes. Still, despite my nervousness, I didn't want to leave. We were together, alone at last. .

Nor, it seemed, did Abbie.

"Turn off the light," she said. I put my arm around her then but she was looking around warily. "Pull the bed over, across the door. We don't want any unwanted visitors. And maybe we should take the sheet off. It doesn't seem right." I dragged the bed over and pushed it up against the door. Without the one sheet it revealed a mattress, clean enough but old, with stuffing hanging out at inconvenient places. I turned it over quickly, wondering at her next concern.

But she stood silhouetted before the curtain, her smile soft, eyes inviting.

Old Asia outside, quaint or squalid, was our friend then, as was the English photographer, his friend Senlee, his colleague the journalist we'd never met, and his room, his bed, despite errant mattress stuffing. And the cooling breeze, the gently rustling curtain beads, that filtered the soft light from the city outside, so that it flickered across Abbie's naked body where she lay on the bed. The whole weird world, inside this room and out there, was on our side, a part of our being here together.

"What happened there?" She asked as I climbed onto the bed

"It's just a bruise."

"Poor papa san. I'll kiss it better."

At first I had felt more overwhelmed by the situation than I wanted to show, but as her lips moved from my chest to my neck and then to my mouth, I lay down beside her, held the body I had dreamt of holding for days now. She moved on top of me as I ran my hands down her back, probed between her legs, felt the flick of her tongue grow more urgent. I rolled her off me as I kissed her neck, lifted myself above her and moved down to where the faint freckles faded into the whiteness of her small breasts, nipples raised. She lifted her stomach to meet me until she was arching her back and pressing herself at my mouth, her soft cry all the more wanton for her attempts to restrain it. And then dodgy mattress, the room and the world outside, baleful or benign, were all excluded. For a little while there none of it mattered.

When I lay down beside her she turned to me, kissed my face and settled in beside me. We lay still for some minutes before she said, "you know... you know the time you saw me, down at the office at Vung Tau. Do you remember? You were there with some men in an old truck."

"Yes. I remember."

"I thought you were an officer. You seemed to be in charge."

"I was supposed to be."

"Did you know that I saw you? I only came out of the office so that you would see me. I thought you looked impressive. I wanted you to see me."

"I saw you."

"What did you think?"

"I thought you were very ... impressive.'

She smiled and we watched the swaying rhythm of the curtain. "Tell me what you think of me, really." I was about to speak but she went on. "Do you think I'm crazy? With the baby and everything? Trying to get her home?"

"No."

"Some people do, you know. Just for coming to this country in the first place."

"They don't love you, like I do."

"Don't say things like that. You don't know me. Well," she smiled, "biblical sense now excluded. But really. We've only known each other for... little more than a week."

"Yeh. But I feel like we've packed enough into that week to last a lifetime."

"It'll be with us for a lifetime. I'm sure of that. And baby came on the day we met, so for her it's been a lifetime. Her lifetime, so far." She sighed. "See. The baby again. Are you sure I'm not just a bit crazy?"

"Maybe, when all's said and done, you're the only one who's sane. What's crazy about wanting to save a baby? Especially when she's your half-sister."

She turned to look at me. "Exactly. Thank you. So, you love me?" I nodded. She smiled and as she watched my eyes her look became more intent. "Enough to come to me, at home, in the States?"

She was watching me closely. Had I been as honest as she was I would have pondered the significance of such a question. And in a clear and open light the doubt in my nod would have been more obvious, but then I looked her in the eye and said yes.

The breeze now carried rain. It blew in through the curtain, splattered lightly on the floor near the balcony doorway. "I'll close that door."

"No. No, it'll get too hot. And... listen," she was watching me still, "don't say things you don't mean." I said nothing. "You could come and visit at least, couldn't you? And if you wanted to stay there'd be some problems, I guess, but nothing major."

The curtain shook more urgently as the wind blew and the rain fell against it.

"It'd be like old times. You and me and baby san. Well, I mean, while my father recuperates. You know. It was the baby who brought us together, indirectly. That's another thing I'm looking forward to telling her one day. But, listen. What are you saying, really?" She looked at me, her head rested on a hand. "Tell me. I'm doing all the talking here, as usual. What are you saying?"

"I'm saying... I'll come to you."

"And?"

"And ... Whatever."

"Whatever? Whatever what? I mean, how long would you want to stay? Would you want to live with me?"

"I lived in a tree with you."

"Answer the question," she said, quietly and gently.

I turned my head away, to ponder the significance of the question.

"I'm not even out of the army yet, Abbie. My life's not my own. But I'd love to see you after all this, if you want to see me. After all we've been through for a start, and the way I feel about you." I stopped to think. Her eyes were on me. "And what happens from there is hard to say. I've got a life in Australia, or did have. I'd have to sort a few things out there first. You know?" I looked at her. "But there's nothing I'd love more than to see you, away from all this. Somewhere nice and comfortable. No more borrowed rooms, tree houses. It'd be wonderful." She was still watching me. "But then ... I mean, I'd love to see you again, and see what happens from there, but hell, I'm not an American citizen for a start."

The wind and the rain had grown stronger. The curtain swirled and the rain came further into the room. She turned her head away and I looked around the strange, darkened room, wondering if, in that one little speech I'd spoilt everything, turned her off me, maybe forever. I had reminded her that I was pretty much a stranger, not really papa san. And I had probably sounded like I was getting ready to run again.

While I tried to think of something else to say, something clever that might somehow save me, I felt her hand on my cheek. I turned to her smiling face and put my arm around her. She lifted herself onto her elbows and moved closer, but as I put my other arm around her it was suddenly pouring outside, so hard we turned to watch. A wall of water pounded the tiny balcony, the wind blowing so hard that some of the rain reached the bed and we felt a few drops on our nakedness.

Abbie turned, lay down beside me again watching the deluge. She held my hand with both of hers, gripping it tight. Her head was rested against my shoulder and as she stared at the swirling curtain I felt her tremble.

"You okay?"

"I can never get used to this rain. It's so heavy it keeps me awake at night. I had this awful dream one night that the baby was out in one of these storms." I turned to watch the rain again. "It was a nightmare. I don't know where we were because she was alone, just lying there, unprotected, crying and being pounded by heavy rain. And it didn't stop. It just kept on pouring down."

The rain had eased when Abbie looked at her watch. "Oh my God." We had ten minutes to get back to the restaurant.

Our friends at the Continental were more than sympathetic but could do nothing but wish us luck. We didn't have time for the photograph. "We understand," said the girl. "We are lovers too."

It took us a few minutes to get a Lambretta and the one we did was so crowded the driver wouldn't take us. I gave him five dollars and asked if we could stand on the back runner. He took the money and charged off so that we had to jump on as he went past.

We reached the restaurant at 11.05 and yelled at the driver to stop down the street and it was just as well. The jeep was parked in front and Julie was standing at the entrance. We cut down a lane to get to the alfresco section and scrambled over the bamboo fence.

"Hi."

Julie turned. "Where have you been? You were not at your table."

"We moved outside."

"It was hot inside," I added.

She glared at me. "I think you should be considering what to tell your military police, should you need to."

"We've been talking," said Abbie, "and I guess we lost track of time. Thanks again for letting me do this, Julie, but I'm okay. It's all okay." Julie nodded, without sympathy, and indicated the vehicle. "Mark needs a ride too. Please."

"Where to?"

"Near the airport. I can show you," I said. "If it's okay."

"Abbie Klein. Sometimes I think I do more for you than I do for Henry Kissinger."

Abbie took my hand. I almost wished she hadn't. Chuck didn't turn to look at us but I could feel the hate rising from him. She said goodbye as I climbed out and mouthed the word 'tomorrow' to me as Chuck sped away.

I headed straight for the nearest bar. If I could find them I wanted to arrive back at the barracks with some of the marching squad, expecting Sergeant killjoy to be there to check us in, especially his favourite malingerer.

It was difficult to make out much at all in the bar. The proprietors had covered the lights with red plastic so that the whole interior took on a thick, smoky pink, the clientele like forms from another world, swaying silhouettes, in the heat and haze and loud music, careless of any real communication. Every soldier was drunk or stoned. A fat mama san sat blank-faced beside the bar watching her girls at work.

"Uc dai loi!" I tried to make myself heard above the din, predominantly In a Gadda da Vida, a popular song in such bars. The speaker box was right behind the mama san. When she turned to me her eyes were absolutely without expression.

"Uc dai loi!"

With a nod of her head she indicated a corner of the big room.

They were identifiable first by their civilian clothing, secondly by the size of the group. Americans were more inclined to be on their own with a girl, to pair off and spend their time and their money with that girl for the night. If you saw one Aussie you almost always saw a group. They went with the girls of course but before too long found their way back to their mates.

"Mate," said the engineers storeman. "Where ya been?"

"Talkin' to an American."

" 'Merican?"

"Yeh."

"Yanks're all drug aggics. Where were ya?"

"Over there. Didn't you see me?"

"Mate, I'm flat out seein' me hand in front of me face."

I bought the last round of drinks, anxious to be one of them. "How's the practice been?"

He nodded. "We're ready. We're ready. Where were you today?"

"Doctor."

He nodded again although I don't think he understood. His eyes looked ready to drop from their sockets. But they came to life when the music changed and soon every soldier in the place was singing, even me.

We gotta get out a' this place, if it's the last thing we ever do.

We gotta get out a' this place. Girl there's a better life for me and you.

Chapter 30

My best excuse to abscond once again from my countrymen, turned out not to be my injury but my lack of practice. "Well you're not much use to us now anyhow," said the captain. "You can watch the gear in the bus."

"Sir," I said quickly, "I'd like to rest it. It'd be easier here at the base."

"You said it only hurt when you marched."

"Yes. But since I can't march. I'd rather rest properly. Get it right to go home, a few days away. It might be a bit uncomfortable on the bus."

The captain was nodding. The sergeant wasn't. "What difference does it make?" he said.

I wanted to scream. Please go and march your new-issue, spit-polished boots-general-purpose off your feet. Just don't let me suffer this lie of mine any longer.

"Well, as I said, you're not much use to us now."

I hid my inner-joy, the violins playing inside my head and all that. Never had I felt so grateful for my uselessness.

But it wasn't until I had turned a corner to place the big base out of sight that I felt relieved, quickened my pace, though the sun was already fierce. Soldiers were putting up a barricade at the intersection of the road I was in and the one to the airport. The march was to start somewhere else and finish at this end.

An atmosphere of urgency prevailed inside the Tan Son Nhut Airport building, as intense as the humidity. The huge PX shopping hangar was almost deserted and in the departure lounge, where it was all happening, people milled about with a quiet anxiety that could be felt more than seen or heard.

I had arrived about nine o'clock and stood at the back, as inconspicuously as I could, where I could see everyone who entered the building. There must have been at least six queues although the place was so crowded they mingled into one another. I could see no arrivals section. Everyone seemed interested only in leaving, with little distinction between the one exclusively non-military line and the others. The officials did not look happy with their work. There were no well-wishing smiles for those departing and their eyes seemed to wander from their tasks, slyly, almost expectantly.

The time passed slowly as ten o'clock approached. I was confronted more than approached by two different officials. A local airport security officer said nothing to my explanation but continued to watch me from where he stood and an American military policeman wanted to move me on, insisting I did not have much more time to hang about the way I was.

Abbie came hurrying through the doorway carrying a small travel bag in one hand and the baby in the other. She smiled as I went to her but was clearly concerned. The usual host of eyes turned to look, but their interest was cold. Young, western and female, she was still just another someone on the way out.

"I'm so glad you made it," she said.

"I've been here nearly an hour. If the plane leaves at ten you didn't give yourself much time."

"I know. Complications. Nothing ever runs smoothly in this country. My God, isn't it hot in here."

"What happened?"

"Oh nothing to do with the baby. I mean, getting her was easy. But she's not well. I think she's very sick. I don't think she's been getting much of the milk I gave the orphanage."

She held her out for my inspection.

"As soon as I get her on the plane I'll get some milk or something to build her strength. I don't know what they've been doing for her. And they didn't want to tell me anything. All they cared about was the money. They said the money would save many more children. Anyway I've got these." She produced a syringe and a small medicine bottle containing some milk . "I knew they wouldn't give me anything at the orphanage so I took these from the embassy first-aid room, to give her something while we're waiting for the plane. Not that we have much time now."

"What was the hold up?"

"Chuck. I feel so stupid. I was sure he'd be okay about my taking the baby and thought I should tell him about my plans, what I'd arranged, before we headed out there. He turned against me immediately. Went all rules and regulations and refused to take me. I had to get a Lambretta, when I could get away from him, and I'm sure he'll tell Julie as soon as he realises I've gone.

"You know, they've had that orphanage watched the whole time. I think the only reason he ever took me there was that it might bring out Lin's sister, Con Ma Nu. That's all they care about. I didn't even risk saying goodbye to Julie. But if she comes here to try to stop me, hopefully the plane will have gone." She looked at the baby and then back to me. "And, apart from everything else, Chuck's suspicious about last night."

"Did you say anything?"

"No. Of course not." She looked around her, through the crowd. "That's my section over there." I looked at the officer at the non-military check-in counter. He was looking around him as he processed passports.

"What's it got to do with Chuck?" I said. "With any of them?"

"Nothing. It's my business. Or it should be. Mine and my father's. Oh, if I can just get her out of here, Mark. Home, for when our father arrives. Look, I'll go over to the check-in gate and make sure I'm on time. I think I only have a few minutes. Then, we can maybe try to feed her. It was too crowded on the Lambretta."

"Yeh. Go on. I'll wait here."

She looked up at me. I thought she was going to cry but then she reached up and kissed me. "I'm so glad you made it. And I have her. We have her." She looked at the baby. "And we'll fatten those little cheeks and bring her back to normal colour. She's sick because she's been without us, you see. Sick without her mama and papa san."

"You'd better go and check in. Make sure it's okay."

"Yes. And listen. Write your address out for me. We still haven't exchanged addresses."

She moved off through the crowd, soldiers and civilians parting to let her pass and as she moved out of my sight I heard the baby start to cry. By the time she had returned it was high-pitched and desperate, a cry without hope.

"There, there," Abbie rocked her to and fro. "It's okay now, baby."

I hated the sound. People turned to look, intruding on our pathetic little privacy, our last few moments together. "Is it okay?"

"Yeh. He's there. I wanted to make sure it was the one I paid, but he's too busy to talk.."

The baby's cry weakened noticeably but it was still there in the stuffy air, adding to the tension. Aggravating, unwanted, it challenged the order in the room, a voice for the chaos beneath.

"Don't cry, baby." Sweat ran down the side of her face as she tried to speak over the desperate screams. "It won't be long now. They'll have something for her on the plane." She took the phial of milk and the syringe from her bag, then looked at me. "Please come, Mark. I mean when you can. It could work out, you know. And you were so good with her."

I wanted to tell her, yes. Of course I will come to you, Abbie. You know I will. But the baby was crying and Abbie was crying too now. Not that you would notice from a distance, just a tear in each eye as she rocked the baby and tried to feed her and make her quiet.

"Here. Let me take her."

"Thanks." Agitated, she struggled to extract the milk. Lying on my arm, the baby squeaked pathetically. She still seemed not to know how to suck, even when Abbie tried to squirt it into her mouth. When it was all but gone I don't think she had swallowed a drop. "Oh, please, baby. Oh hell. I'll have to go."

But I wanted to say goodbye properly. She was too upset and we hadn't exchanged addresses. "Hold on. What about you just talk to the guy and make sure it's all okay. See how long you've got. Maybe there's more time than we think. I'll hold the baby."

"Okay. You're sure?"

"Yeh. Sure. Give me the milk bottle thing. Maybe I can get her to take that last bit. Go. Quick. And see. I'll stay near to you"

She made her way through the crowd again and I followed, keeping my distance. She looked small, just a girl, and trying to take with her this crying baby. I wished then that I could go with her, to share the load, as we had done.

The baby's cries died further. I looked at her. There was something frighteningly skeletal about the hollow cheeks and eye sockets. Her skin was red and blotchy. I was dipping the syringe into the little container when Abbie called out. "She's coming with me! She's coming with me!"

I put the phial and syringe in my pocket and moved in closer towards her, as did some airport officials including the security guard who had questioned me earlier.

"No! No! She's coming with me!" She told the man at the counter. "You know she is. You told me she could. I paid you, for God's sake!"

I pushed forward with the baby. Someone grabbed my arm and I pulled free. "Abbie. What's wrong?"

"He says I can't. They won't let me take the baby."

When more officials had gathered they remonstrated with her. Two American MPs joined the group, including the one who had questioned me.

"You wanna step over here, ma'am, while we sort this out." His arm gently on Abbie's elbow, he took her out of the line. The passport official turned to the next person in line and seemed to forget Abbie immediately. I followed her and the MPs.

"Tell them, Mark. Please. She is my sister and I'm taking her home."

"That's right."

"And who are you?" I told him. "And why are you not with your unit?"

"I've got special permission to see her off. We're close friends and I helped her with the baby. And the baby is her sister."

He examined me a moment, glanced at the baby, lying there on little more than the palm of my left hand, and then turned to Abbie. "You cannot take the baby, Ma'am. She has no passport. No visa. She does not exist."

Abbie looked at the baby. "What do you mean, does not exist?"

"On paper. She has no rights. Certainly no right to go home with you."

"Listen. She exists and she has rights." She took a paper out of her pocket and handed it to him. He studied it. "Look. There's her name. She is the daughter of Mr Jake Klein. If you contact the embassy..."

"Ma'am. This emigration paper is not valid. And she must have a boarding pass." He looked at her. "And the embassy just contacted us. The baby is not to leave. And I'm afraid you are to wait behind too. Someone from the embassy will be here soon to explain."

Abbie stared, lost for words. The baby had stopped crying now and when I looked at her she was asleep but with her tiny facial features so drawn it did not look like a sleep that would last.

"We're sorry, ma'am." He was a big man with a slow drawl.

Abbie looked at the baby. "Let me have her," she said to me. As I handed her over the baby started crying, short, desperate little cries, more troubling for their shrill tone than the noise. "She is my sister, and our father is wounded," she told the big MP "And I can't just run off and leave her."

Julie came in carrying a basket like a bassinet with two carrying handles. "Give me the baby, Abbie."

"No. I'm taking her, Julie."

"Just put the baby in here. It might quieten her. I have something very important to tell you. Thanks fellers." This to dismiss the MPs. "Please, Abbie."

Abbie placed the baby gently into the basket but she kept up her feeble cries.

"Now. You have to cooperate, Abbie. We've given instructions for the plane to wait but the pilot can't stay too much longer." She raised her hand to her forehead. "My God. I can't hear myself think." The baby cried on, pitiful but incessant. "We'll have to leave her somewhere. Just so we can talk."

"No!"

"I can leave her safely with the MPs while we..."

"The baby stays with me! Though I'd appreciate it if the MPs or someone could get a baby's bottle, if there's such a thing around here, before I get her onto the plane."

"Please be calm, Abbie. Look. It'll be a little quieter down the front there."

The waiting area was almost full but there were some vacant seats at one end of the front row. Julie put the baby's basket on the end seat. Abbie looked concerned at the baby's cries but then we were both watching Julie. She looked perturbed, in a way I would never have thought possible.

"What is it, Julie," Abbie asked.

She seemed to be thinking deeply. Beads of sweat covered her forehead. Julie Shields had an even-featured, well-shaped face. She was used to being in control of situations. I could imagine her, when she chose to leave Germany, deliberately prioritising her life's needs for the future. Choosing the hot spots. Placing, from then on, intellect before emotion, career before romance. But without the practised cynicism, the constant search for advantage that usually masked her face, she was an attractive woman.

She stood there, gathering her thoughts. Above the buzz of business inside the airport there was a rumble of thunder and as it faded we could hear marching music in the distance.

"Abbie. I... I have some bad news. Some terrible news."

"What is it? Is my father okay?"

The baby cried on. Julie glanced at her in frustration but seemed just as worried for her own sake. She looked around and then rubbed her eyes before she spoke. "Look. Can we move along here? Just a little away from the... noise. Please. I want you to sit down. Give me your bag."

Anxious to hear what Julie had to tell her, Abbie handed her her bag and reached out to touch the crying baby as we moved along the row.

"Please be quick, Julie. I need to get her a drink."

"Just leave a couple of seats. Sit here, where... where we can think."

There were so few spare seats I stood beside Abbie, where she sat, as did Julie on her other side. I turned to look through the louvred windows in front of us. Outside on the tarmac, some distance from us, a big jet moved into view. In the basket, three or four seats from us, the baby's crying was still audible above the noise of people.

Julie placed Abbie's bag on the seat beside her and put her hand to her eyes again. "Abbie. On the day... on the day when Thi Lin Quang was killed your father was attacked as well. He was very badly beaten. He has been in a very serious condition ever since."

Abbie was staring up at the taller woman. "You told me he was getting better."

"Listen, Abbie. Please. I have just been informed that he... he has died. He died last night."

"What? You said he was okay. You said he was stable. What's going on here, Julie? What are you saying?"

"I'm terribly sorry, Abbie. The information from Danang was always sketchy. I was hoping he might recover. I didn't want to worry you, but last night he passed away."

Pain enveloped Abbie's face. She stared. "My father is dead? He died... last night? Why... why didn't you tell me last night? Or this morning?"

"Please try to understand, Abbie. I was only just now informed."

"I'm about to take the baby home, for him, when he comes home... and... he's... " Abbie looked ready to cry. She was staring at the plane on the tarmac, absorbing the fact of her loss. When she next spoke her voice rose, became shrill with emotion, almost hysterical. "He can't be. Don't tell me this... when... when you said... you've been saying all along, that he's stable. How can this be? I don't trust you, Julie. I'm taking the baby, no matter what you say."

"Abbie. I would not... I would never tell you something like this unless it were true."

"But you've been telling me..." She looked up at me, tears in her eyes, and then at Julie, struggling for some impossible equanimity, some impossible understanding. "I'm still taking the baby, Julie. Even if what you say is true. I'm still taking the baby."

Julie looked away. "You can't, Abbie."

"I have to. With no mother, and now, if you say, no father. How can that be?" She brushed tears from her eyes as she tried to hold them back. "Why didn't you...? I have to take her. There's no one else to look after her. To properly look after her."

"I am really so sorry, Abbie. I know this is a terrible shock, but it's not that simple. She has no rights. There is no record of her birth. She cannot get a boarding pass."

"You could fix it for me. It could be her life, Julie. You have to... do something."

"Abbie. You're upset, naturally, but you can't just leave with a baby. She has no name. No parents to claim her. Even were she granted refugee status as an orphan, which would take time, she would be one of thousands. I have contacted your mother to explain the situation and she only wants you arriving home. Not an orphan who has nothing to do with her."

Abbie looked up. "You had no right. My mother has nothing to do with this. And the baby has a name. I named her. I can be... the parent. Her name is..."

"It has to be done legally, Abbie. Now your mother will be at the airport to meet you. She's looking forward so much to seeing you, safe, at home. And once you've settled again, I'm sure you'll see that going home alone was for the best."

"Best for me. Not for my sister." She looked at me again. "This can't be happening."

There was another roll of thunder, then the sound of the marching band, a little louder now as the parade approached the Tan Son Nhut district. Two young men in uniform moved along the front to take two of the seats between us and the baby. I stepped back to make sure I could see her. She had stopped crying.

Abbie turned again to Julie, wiping her eyes with a handkerchief, trying still to hold back the tears.

"You've been very good to me, Julie. Letting me stay. And I thank you for that. But, I'm sorry. I don't trust you. Because some things never did quite add up for me. Why is it that just now, just after Chuck would have told you that I have the baby, ready to take her home, why is just now that you come rushing into the airport to tell me... to tell me that my father..." She let the tears well in her eyes then as she stared ahead, surrendering to her misery, a signal, I thought, of her final defeat, a willingness to comply. I put my hand on her shoulder.

She looked at me. "I have to stay calm. For the baby. I have to." Then clearly, controlled, with a bitterness I had never heard from her before. "How long is it since my father died, Julie? Who killed him? And how long is it, really, since he died?"

For a second Julie fumbled with her answer, defending herself and sympathising at the same time with this young, unwanted guest who had been placed in her charge. So that Abbie was able slowly to build her case. Emotion seemed to strip away inhibition, even as she held control. She became, for as long as that control remained, a quietly angry and bitter accuser, refusing now to hold back.

It was all a lie, she told the diplomat. Her father had died on the same day as Lin. And the baby had been bait to lure Con Ma Nu, who would have disappeared from the scene completely had Abbie stopped visiting the orphanage. Abbie's presence equaled the baby's presence. More than anyone Abbie was the baby's destiny. Any chance of the guerrilla commander surfacing in the vicinity of the orphanage, as she had already, would vanish if the American half-sister stopped visiting. Someone, perhaps Mai, would simply be sent to collect the baby. And it was easier to keep Abbie making those visits if she thought her father was alive, and improving, ready to be united with his daughters in America. The baby, to Julie and her colleagues, had been nothing more than bait. This latest story, that her father had died last night was just another arrogant and egregious lie. Lies. The stock-in-trade of diplomacy. He had been dead for days.

Julie watched with sympathy, slowly shook her head and permitted herself an uncharacteristic frankness. She agreed, proudly, that there was a determination to eliminate Con Ma Nu and her 'death squad', which would make the lives of many Americans much safer. Jake Klein's killers, she did not know who they were yet, had wanted information on Thi Lin Quang's whereabouts. And they had gone too far. How they had gained entry into the Vung Tau compound was a matter under investigation, but they would be caught and punished for murder, the murder of an American citizen.

It did little to placate the accuser. Abbie looked ahead again, staring, as if undergoing some cathartic sense of release in this quiet, white-hot lashing out, blaming.

Julie must have been pleased with the death of Thi Lin, she said. So why not Jake Klein? Someone from the embassy had informed the Saigon government of Lin's true identity, so they could set that murderer Lee Dang Bah onto her, and he had included her lover, her cohort, in the attack. They were killed on the same day. And then Julie could inform Abbie of her father's death when she was out of her hair, back home in the States, the whole sorry saga of the Kleins and their little bastard gone for good. And good riddance. Only Abbie had spoilt things, by daring to take the baby.

She glared fiercely through her tears. Her outburst, as contained as it was acrimonious, might have appeared irrational to an impartial observer, too desperate to hurt, or at least too confident that she could see all, the trauma of Julie's news of her father notwithstanding. For me, whatever the truth, Julie was the villain. As always, Abbie could do no wrong.

Julie now looked almost as distressed as she did. She took the bag from the seat next to Abbie, put it on the floor and sat, turned in towards her.

"That's not fair, Abbie. I know you're very upset but there are many things you don't understand. You know that you've been waiting in Saigon these past few days for this commercial flight. And to suggest that I or anyone else at the embassy wanted your father harmed is ridiculous. He was medevaced immediately from Vung Tau to Danang for intensive care. As an American citizen he was entitled to our protection but I had no idea about his... relationship with Thi Lin Quang. I suggest, if you want to blame someone, you direct your anger at those who attacked him. They are murderers and will be brought to justice. That's a promise."

Abbie looked at me, her face thawed. She remained controlled but tears welled again and then further accusation and challenge seemed beyond her.

Julie moved closer to her. "You should never have come here. We warned you from the start and we only approved your visa at this end because it seemed reasonable at the time. You hadn't seen your father for some time and he was working in Vung Tau. I have tried to make your time here as comfortable as possible, but it's a hard, cruel place. The normal rules of decency do not apply. And you don't belong here. From what I've come to know about him I'm not sure your father should have been here either."

Abbie was drying her eyes. She looked pale and drawn. "I'm still not going without the baby, Julie."

"I'm afraid you have to."

"No. I won't. Now more than ever I won't. She is too sick for her family here to look after her properly. And you could inform them. And establish contact with her." She was struggling for control again and I sat down beside her and put my arm across her shoulders. She looked at Julie. "You say my father has died. Please let me save his baby."

The diplomat was staring through the window at the plane on the tarmac. "Do you really know what you're saying? What you might be letting yourself in for? How difficult all this could be, even when or if she were granted citizenship?"

"Yes. You know how important this is for me. Now more than ever. I know you could authorise a boarding pass, sort out the legals. And I will stay strong for her. I'm all she has now."

Julie turned to her. "This is a huge decision, Abbie."

I stood to check on the baby at the end of the row of seats. The two soldiers sitting near the basket returned my look and I put my hand gently on Abbie's shoulder. "I... I'll try to give her some of this." I was taking the little bottle and syringe from my pocket, "while you sort out..." I didn't finish, discovering that the container had emptied into my pocket. I glanced at the baby as I hurried past to look for the MPs. She lay still and quiet.

Initially the big American military policeman who had dealt with us earlier ignored my requests. "That plane should have left by now." But when he looked at the two women, saw Julie's earnest manner, sitting as close as she was to the girl as she spoke, he seemed to sense the exigency and turned and led me to a small kitchen area.

"I can't find any milk here."

"Water will do."

He poured some water from a tap into a paper cup. As I made my way through the crowd to the front row I took the syringe from my pocket. Julie was sitting even closer to Abbie now, explaining, I imagined, procedure and the immediate emigration difficulties. Although I wondered, if that were so, why they hadn't moved already. Was Julie still trying to persuade against taking the baby?

And then I was beside the seats, and standing dumbfounded. Because the basket was empty.

I looked around the immediate area. The baby was not with Abbie, who was intent now on what Julie was saying. Despite their empty hands, I looked suspiciously at the two men in uniform. They were leaning forward, watching the plane out on the tarmac. I dropped the cup and everything where I stood. The baby was gone.

I looked around the airport. All staff seemed occupied on the constant departure flow. On instinct, I turned to the main front entrance and saw a little girl walking calmly through the doorway. She was carrying a baby.

Chapter 31

I called out as I ran to the entrance. "Abbie! The baby!" I had to move quickly and watch the child and didn't risk looking back.

The marching parade was now passing in the street outside, line after line of soldiers, all American. The sky was overcast. A squadron of US Air Force Phantom jets zoomed in overhead, coming in low out of the clouds in the direction of the marchers and then swinging away over the city. I looked both ways through the spectators and with the scream of the aircraft lingering in the hot air I saw the girl disappearing into the crowd.

When I had almost caught up to her she turned, stopped and faced me. For all its emaciated little body the baby seemed bigger in her arms.

"Mai?"

There was no defiance or challenge in her look. Not even a plea. Just a sadness, and a resignation so devoid of all the emotions I expected to see, that it seemed to express a tremendous knowing. She just looked at me steadily.

The band section of the parade, somewhere in the distance, had started up with Yankee Doodle when Abbie arrived behind me, with Julie behind her. They came to a stop beside me and we all watched the little girl. Abbie crouched down, moving in closer, slowly, afraid the child might take flight. But she did not look scared or ready to run. Her face's melancholy found new depths, a hint of contempt, as she stood there watching Abbie, gripping the baby who now lay still and quiet, her face turned in against the girl's chest.

"Mai. Can I have baby, please?" Mai made no move to go but neither did she offer anything. "She is my sister too, Mai."

I sensed a movement in Julie, standing beside me, checking her watch, and when I looked I saw Chuck coming through the crowd.

"Sister," Abbie said, pointing at herself and then moving her hands towards the child gingerly, like someone wanting to calm a frightened animal.

"Abbie." Julie was being careful too, but her voice wasn't as gentle in the commotion of marching feet and Yankee Doodle approaching from somewhere down the street. "I'm sorry. The plane. If we're going to do this we have to go."

"Please, Mai. I will take the baby to America. Where her papa comes from. She will have a good life and we will tell you where she is, I promise." Mai did not move and nor did she look afraid. She watched Abbie and it was strange to see a tear form in one eye and roll down her cheek without her facial expression changing. "Maybe ... Maybe you could come too, one day."

Julie crouched down too then. "Abbie. You can't say that. It's not fair to the child. Please leave this to me now. I know where the family lives. I will follow it up and do what I can do. But you really have to go now."

When Abbie touched the baby, one hand gently on the side of her face, Mai showed no resistance, so Abbie turned her full attention to the baby. But as she put both hands on her and tried to take hold she trembled. She seemed unable to do it. Julie said, "Abbie?" and with genuine concern. There were more tears in Mai's eyes then as Abbie tried in vain to take a hold. The baby lay perfectly still, too still. The little girl was neither handing the baby over nor keeping her and yet Abbie could not take her. Attempting again to get a better grip on the tiny body, her hands shook. She shuddered all over, even her legs shaking, and her head dropped suddenly and she fell to one side, her hands on the dusty street as she struggled to keep herself from falling over completely.

All three of us came down beside her. Julie took hold of her upper arm and I held her shoulder on the other side. "Chuck. Take a hold," said Julie. I was not pushed aside. Just ignored. They lifted Abbie to her feet. Her eyes were dazed, dull and defeated.

The marching soldiers continued on beside us, Yankee Doodle getting closer, so that Julie almost shouted. "You okay?" Abbie nodded faintly but speech seemed beyond her. "Now let's get you on the plane so you can rest, and then home where you belong. As quick as she's able, Chuck, before the plane takes off. Come on, Abbie. It's all been too much. You fainted. Take it easy now. You can rest on the plane. Let's go."

Abbie had no reply. Julie was back in charge.

"What about the baby?"

Julie looked at me but did not answer. She was putting her arm around Abbie and Chuck had hold of her elbow when I noticed that Mai was gone. I looked around and saw her disappearing into the crowd.

"There she is! Wait! Just a minute!"

When I caught up with her again the little girl was walking beside a broken concrete wall, behind the crowds who watched the marching parade and when I called her name she turned to face me with the same sad, knowing expression. The marching band had almost reached us now and I had to shout.

She showed no fear and I moved in quickly. In all the marching, band-playing din, the baby was still quiet. "Baby, please Mai! Quick! Baby for Abbie, her sister. To take to America!" I was down on my haunches, right in front of her, my arms reached out in open plea.

"Quick, Mai! Before the plane leaves!" There was a little space between her and the old wall behind her but she made no move away from me so I moved in closer still, reaching one hand out close to her. "Come with me, Mai!" I called above the band. "Come and say goodbye to Abbie! And to baby! We have to go quickly!"

But she didn't move and I reached out further and touched the baby, one hand on her cheek, the way Abbie had done. The band had reached us now, was right beside us, Yankee Doodle a crescendo of celebration as I put my hands on the baby. And there were tears in Mai's eyes again and her face broke and she shook with sobs as I moved in to take the baby from her.

The baby still showed no reaction to the noise of the parade and as I put my hands around her wasted chest and shoulders, there was no movement. There should have been something. If not a sound then some sort of reaction. Mai's grip had tightened but she let me turn the baby towards me. Her eyes stared, blank and glazed.

I looked at Mai, who was clutching the baby now while the soldiers marched past, the band blasting us. She let me put my hands on the baby's neck. There was so little flesh I should have felt a pulse easily. I tried again. Nothing. I put my hand over her mouth to force some reaction, some resistance. I took my hand away, wanting her to cry, begging her to cry as I had heard her cry so often.

But there was no cry. There was nothing.

"Come on, Mai! Come and say good bye!"

But as I moved to pick her up she tensed. Lifting her shoulders she moved out of my reach. She looked at me once, turned and walked away. She did not look back. She walked away slowly, carrying the baby, and vanished into the crowd.

I turned and began running down the street, beside the marching soldiers, dodging people as best I could, my mind turning to Abbie. Because there was nothing I could do for the baby now, or for Mai. And there was no time then to wonder where the little girl was headed. Back to her home in Muc Thap? Another body for the old woman to take care of? No time to wonder what all this would do to her. A child without a childhood. What becomes of her? Another Con Ma Nu, ghost woman? A creation of war. And nothing more.

Now, as I ran, my mind turned to Abbie. "You say my father has died. Please let me save his baby."

Chuck was sitting in his jeep near the airport entrance. He pointed to the doorway. "She had to go! The pilot couldn't wait any longer!" Inside Julie was talking to one of the MPs. I interrupted her rudely but she looked at me with genuine sympathy. "I'm sorry. She's gone. The plane is nearly twenty minutes late now. Did you catch up with ...?"

But I was gone. I ran down to the gate that led out on to the tarmac where a number ofguards quickly blocked my path. Adjacent to the gate there was a high wire fence with people lined along it and pressed against it watching the aircraft. I ran to the end of this crowd and saw her being escorted by the big military policeman. They were almost at the steps to the plane.

"Abbie! Abbie!" But the plane was whining impatiently and she couldn't have heard anything else. All other passengers were on the plane.

She stopped to take her bag from the policeman at the bottom of the steps and turned before she climbed them. I waved my arms but she was looking back at the gate. When she reached the door she turned again but very briefly. A hand went out to her from inside the plane. She stepped towards it and disappeared. The doors were quickly closed.

I moved through the crowd back to the gate and called to the MP as he passed through. "Heh! Please! Did she say anything? The girl? Did she say anything to you?"

"Nothin' that I could hear." He kept walking. "Was my job to get her on the plane. Sometimes I wonder who these embassy types think they are. That plane's been held up nearly half an hour for her." He stopped and turned to look at me. "And I suggest you get back to your unit now, soldier. Your girlfriend's gone."

"She said nothing you can remember?"

He glared at me. "Suggest you get back to your unit now, soldier."

I could have punched him in the mouth. I wanted to scream into his uncompromising, military face. I haven't got a fucking unit! I don't know what that would have meant. I just wanted to scream, to fight, to cry, for myself, for the girl on the plane, alone now and in shock, maybe for everyone who had been scarred, maimed or killed by this war. Everyone from Al Stanley to the infantry sergeant who had dragged him out of a truck at Nui Dat. "We don't want no risks. And he's a risk." Everyone from Arkansas the deserter, who'd climbed into a tree to lose himself in some hallucinatory hope that the war would end, to that wasted baby being carried through the streets of Saigon by a little girl who had to think and feel like an adult when she should have been chanting her times table during the day and playing with a doll at night.

"How many babies you kill today, Al?"

"I'm gonna do it, papa san. I'm gonna save my little sister."

"Yes, Abbie. Of course, Abbie."

But I'd have been screaming at a brick wall. Sounds like a personal problem, son. See the padre. And this man was just doing his job, serving, and he was in charge. "Back to your unit now, soldier."

As I turned away I muttered, "I haven't got a fuckin' unit."

"Wha'd you say?"

I ignored him. I still wasn't sure what I meant. I did have a unit and I would be getting back to it. Serving. That's what you did.

I felt him watching me but I stopped and looked around before I left the building. I couldn't see Julie Shields anywhere. She was not an inconspicuous person. She had gone.

Out in the street the jeep was gone too. I wondered if Julie and Chuck had taken off after Mai, the link with her aunt, Con Ma Nu, still priority.

The marchers were now local troops, though Yankee Doodle was still audible in the distance. I turned in the direction from which the troops came and walked into the crowd where the little girl had gone. Surely Julie would leave her alone at this point. They knew where she lived.

I saw no jeep but kept walking. Perhaps Mai had stopped of her own accord. Was having second thoughts. Had decided she would like to say goodbye. But of course she hadn't. Not far beyond the broken wall where I had last seen her I stopped. It was too late. I was chasing after a dead baby. Abbie was gone and the baby was dead.

The clouds closed in further as I walked back. I stopped again, at the wall, feeling alone,disoriented and then dizzy, lost, in a humid, darkening whirl of marching and music and crowds watching and not watching and the smells of the city and concrete crumbling into the hot dust around me.

I leaned against the wall, held my head in my hands, and moved along into some shade, finding myself under a rusty iron awning where a woman tried to sell me a little flag. A choice of American or South Vietnamese. She had a bundle of them in a cane basket rested on a pile of rubble and they were plastic and flimsy, the American ones short of at least twenty stars. When I shook my head she went back to eating rice from a bowl.

So I leaned there in the shade like a part of the broken surrounds and only the sight of approaching slouch hats would return me to the present, to the reality of where I was, although it was not until they were passing right beside me that I remembered. This was what I was supposed to be doing. I straightened up to see, but kept myself back, out of sight, the self-preservation instinct indomitable still. I suppose I should have felt some shame in myself, but my head ached as I struggled with images of my countrymen marching before me, of little plastic flags and the multitudes around me. And then with images of Mai and the baby, Julie and Chuck, and of Abbie. So I was beyond shame, even for my malingering self. And as my vision cleared, nor did I feel any sense of pride in the marchers. The anger I had felt inside the airport had subsided and morphed into a dull throbbing behind my forehead and apart from that, as I watched the Aussie contingent march by, all I could feel was a growing sense of sadness.

Compared to the Americans they were a very small group and individually they looked smaller in stature too, than the average GI The admin captain out in front, stepping out proudly, head high, reminded me of Lieutenant Malcolm Jefferies, and when I looked at the ordinary diggers following him, the pride in their step not quite as pronounced, I saw Lyle O'Malley. The same quiet, unassuming willingness.

They were just a group of pogos marching in the street, and the uniform, khaki polyesters, black belt and slouch hat with one side turned up, meant little if anything to the crowd watching them. And as the final small contingent of the big parade, they had to keep in step with the fading strains of Yankee Doodle. There was no Waltzing Matilda. But they did the job well, and with pride. Happy young men, pleased with themselves, looking forward to going home soon, back to sunny Oz, out of the endless rain. But all I could feel was sadness, and hopelessness.

I looked down, dropping my aching forehead onto one hand and saw the woman with the flags reach forward to feed a small child who stood near her, beside the rubble, bare feet in the dust, watching in silence, the final line of soldiers, the end of all the commotion. She looked like a small Mai.

Her mother, I presumed her mother, turned to me again, concerned perhaps, with my continued presence. I wondered what she made of it all. Was it anything more to her than a chance to make a few dollars? Whatever she thought of it, there was no going home from the war for her. These people lived with it. With the waste. The countless dead.

I felt shaky again, my head pounding. I could have sat down there in the dust and cried, like some abandoned lunatic, reject from all the regimented pride and glory that had just filled the city. So I stepped slowly, staggered, out into the street. Back to your unit now, soldier. And get that head up. Where's your pride? You're a soldier. At war. What did you expect? Funny hats and fairy-floss?

The crowded street came back into focus, the last line of marching soldiers well down the road, moving out of view. The brass section of the band in the distance had stopped, leaving only drums, their fading military beat signaling a close to the procession.

As I walked, the clouds hung thick and close, one more malevolence in the world, and at that moment of peak, late morning humidity, the air seemed perfectly still, and as the troops moved beyond my sight I felt a few raindrops on my face and quickened my pace until I could see them again. But I didn't have to hurry. There was to be a presentation ceremony at the base parade ground to complete the formalities of the march. I only had to make sure that I was back at the barracks block before they were all dismissed.

And so they marched, into the annals of military history, as they say, and under a heavy ominous cloud. Before they had reached the base, the cloud had become steady, permanent rain, and as they assembled on the parade ground it poured, so that there were no commemorative speeches and no celebrations. They were simply dismissed, in a vain attempt to get out of the rain.

Chapter 32

Wood. A smell, a colour, a permeating sense of wood, in the man, his wife and children, not just the cabin. He was above average height, his hair curly like his father's but darker, his face having some similarity with his sister's around the nose, but larger featured, with the beginnings of two creases between the eyes. I felt that here was the more circumspect of the siblings, with less of his sister's impetuousness.

But I relaxed in the warmth of his and his wife's hospitality, the politeness in their questions, all the 'you're welcome's to my thanks for things offered. It was partly for the lonely traveler abroad, and just the sort of people they were, but there was something beyond that, and in her as much as him, though at first he did most of the talking.

It was November, 1975, six months since the war ended, four years since Australia's withdrawal.

They seemed willing, almost anxious to trust. I could have been someone they already knew and I felt the need to reciprocate, to make the story of who I was brief but honest, with careful and selective references to Vietnam. It was clear they knew plenty already.

"We want to thank you for the way you helped Abbie. And the baby." I wondered if Abbie had told all, including my random preference for flight over fight in the face of danger, real or imagined. But Matthew went on calmly. "You didn't get to know my father, did you? When we were kids he was often away, but it was good to have him home, when he was there."

In that early part of the evening his wife hovered unobtrusively, attentive to children and cooking, but aware, I could sense, of everything I said.

We were waiting for Abbie to return his call. "Wesley didn't seem sure where she was but said he'd tell her when she arrives home." We moved from coffee to homemade wine. "You have to pour slowly. Leave the sediment in the bottom." Then to dinner, deer he had killed himself, which his wife, Joanna, cooked on a wood stove, working flues and vents while she attended to the two small children, telling them about Australia in a quiet, respectful way that left me little to add.

From the wood came warmth and after dinner when the children were in their beds inone of the two small bedrooms, another bottle of home produce, and marijuana that I found unusually easy to smoke. I would sleep that night in a fold-out bunk in Matthew and Joanna Klein's lounge/dining room.

"Abbie told us a lot, you see." The three of us had settled in around the big, rough-hewn table. "She stayed for a few weeks when she first got back and then went back to Seattle. It was like she had talked it out and went back to start again. We were glad to be able to help her in that way, to leave it behind."

"But she hasn't really left it behind, not completely." said Joanna. "How could she? Though she was encouraged to, but not by us."

Matthew looked at her as she spoke. "Which is a good thing." He turned to me. "She went back to Seattle to see Wesley. I don't know if she told you about him. He's a psychologist, very successful in his field. He's helped her to move on."

Joanna had a point to make. "She went back to finish her teaching diploma and living with him was... convenient. Which sounds more calculated than it was. She was mixed up. And she moved out when she started work. Not teaching. She didn't feel up to that. She works in a library and she's only been back with Wesley for a while."

"Well, it must be nearly a year now."

They respected that I had come so far to see Abbie, our mutual friend, her spirit as alive there as the fire in the fireplace beside us. That respect nurtured their openness, and the rough red did no harm to the geniality in the room either, nor did the weed, crisscrossing the table between Matthew and me like some symbolic ceremonial substance in a greeting ritual. It all had me explaining again why I hadn't tried to write.

But Joanna wanted to share the blame around. "Wesley wouldn't have encouraged her either. Oh, look. Abbie knows the way I feel. I can't tell Wesley how I feel because he never comes up here. He's career obsessed. Doesn't like kids. Although I think he's a kind of father figure to Abbie. And from what I know about the latest psychology thinking, talking about trauma is better than trying to shut it out, or lock it in."

"Well," said her husband, the gentle peacemaker, "he's clever. He's done well. And overall he's been good for her."

It was Joanna who suggested we call Seattle again, with concerns for the deteriorating states of our minds. Wesley gave Matthew a friend's number where he said Abbie might be, and when she answered and we got talking, the warmth and bonhomie in the conversations came more from my hosts than from either Abbie or me.

"You haven't seen the kids in ages," her brother told her. "It's time you did your duty as an aunt again. Listen. We have a visitor. A friend of yours, from a few years back. He's from Australia. Yes. That's right. Yes. I'll put him on."

Her voice was more measured than I remembered, and despite my excitement at the sound, and the effects of wine and dope, our conversation was restrained, under pressure from the presence of the others. "Sounds like my brother has gotten you a little stoned."

"It's great to hear your voice again. As I've been telling Matthew and Joanna, I should have written, or tried to call." I explained the reason for my presence, the ostensible, obvious one. "Travelling with friends. In the neighbourhood," and eventually, "Is there any chance we could meet up? Somehow? I'd like a look at Seattle. If you've got the time."

Which drew a silence, on the phone, in the room around me. I apologised, in a light offhand way, acknowledging the suddenness, and told her I'd be staying in town for about a week. Her goodbye was nothing more than goodbye.

Matthew was a project supervisor with a construction company working on a dam and on his way to work next day he dropped me at my motel with requests that I visit again the following night. If his friendliness had suffered at all from the night before he showed little of it.

Rejection unspoken is perhaps the cruelest kind. Where there are words, 'Get out of my life you selfish bastard,' there is release. It's all out there and you know exactly where you stand. I felt more stupid than hurt or angry. I had told myself so many times that to try to catch up with this girl on the other side of the world was foolish and delusional. Nobody at home need know of my stupidity, but I knew. Perhaps Matthew and Joanna knew. Their hospitality more out of sympathy than welcome for a new friend. I would see out the next couple of days. I felt I owed them that much, and my friends in New York were not expecting me yet.

At the end of the second day, when I arrived back at the motel from a tourist cruise on the lake, the motel manager handed me a message. Matthew would pick me up after work. I could never have avoided them, even were they not as hospitable as they were. But nor was I keen to see them again. In the end, I had come to this place to see someone else.

My mood that afternoon didn't help. During the day, one of a dozen or so tourists on a comfortable little converted ferry, I had listened to stories of frontiersmen, silver fossickers and silver miners, boom towns now ghost towns, and the indigenous people there before them. The captain made jokes as he spoke into the microphone. But I only half-heard.

I should have been as impressed as everyone else with the scenery too. The white, pine-clad mountains that rose like battlements from the water looked overbearing, their beauty fierce and intractable with cold, the reflections in the deep blue/green rendering them all the more encompassing. What am I doing here? I'm from a sunburnt country. A land of, well, wide suburban streets at least, with houses on stilts to catch any cooling breeze.

I chatted with an American family at lunch. Their little girl stared, recognised my loneliness where her parents wouldn't.

But I was lifted by the company of Matthew Klein, and the news he had for me. As the last of the day's grey light faded from the roadside snow banks, we arrived at his cabin along the valley road some twenty kilometres from town, and Abbie was there. And on that evening a feeling of relaxed self-assurance would take longer for me to achieve than it had on my first night with the Kleins.

I saw a new reserve in her, a more discerning look. Her hair was longer, tied back in a pony tail and lighter in colour and she came to me, touched my arm as she kissed me on the cheek, then stood back, hands clasped across her waist, her smile more cordial than excited. Four years, I reminded myself again.

We engaged in desultory chitchat. I thanked her again for writing. "Only took the Army a week to find me." Polite smiles all round. I apologised again for not writing back. She told me a couple of times that it was time she visited the kids, and, with more smiles, their parents too of course.

With dinner and wine things began to thaw. We talked of work and travel and Canada and Australia, and, eventually, living arrangements, and so, Wesley, 'the guy she lived with'. He had three books published now and would soon be head of his university's psychology department. And at around that time Joanna stepped deliberately in. "So, there's no significant other waiting at home for you, Mark?"

I gave a dumb-sounding reply about no one wanting me, and they looked disappointed. "I've had a bit of trouble settling, actually. As I was saying before, the office job I went back to after the army was boring. Australia has a good repatriation system and I had started at uni years ago, so I was able to take a study allowance and got about a third of a degree done, then ran out of money, and interest I suppose, and went back to work in another insurance office Then some friends of mine were doing a group travel thing. I got busy saving, and here I am."

Which left things out of course, and not just the mundane. The too much alcohol. The mood swings. One drunken performance had landed me in a police watch house until my father came to bail me out. Another, suspension of my membership from the cricket club. There were less dramatic but unfortunate decisions. Trying too hard at cricket without the proper fitness training until my shoulder broke down. My sporting career, modest as it was, was already behind me. I just didn't know it. But it wasn't all bad.

"I'm really glad I decided to come with them," I said. "I'm hoping the travel will help, you know, help me to settle."

They seemed to sense my reluctance with a sensitivity I was not accustomed to. At home a few friends and relations had let me talk it out, attempt to bridge a divide that was never quite bridgeable. They seemed happier when I stopped. My mother and sisters knew a doctor who was 'easy to talk to'. Counseling wasn't mentioned. You were meant to get on with it. The family encouraged my new interests.

"University? Okay, sure. Give it another go. But are you sure you're ready?" They could see something I could not.

I'm sure some rellies were more appalled than they showed by my public outbursts, wanted the simple spectacle of war hero, or modest, venerable returned serviceman at least, talking about the war, if at all, with soft, laconic manliness. And with that youthful, carefree smile back on his face. Marching proudly then, once a year, head high, medals swinging. Please. Cry, if you must, but keep your embarrassing tantrums to yourself, indoors.

And jail would subdue me. About eight months after my return a friend from uni had introduced me to a fellow player from his football team, who was also a returned serviceman, having spent those final weeks in Nui Dat. It was a Friday afternoon and we went to one of those big suburban pubs that proliferated around that time and were joined by a few other returnees from his former unit.

My friend left almost unnoticed as the war stories became more esoteric. They were all proud to have served. Enjoyed the sense of service and experience that came with a knowledge of names and numbers, of weapons and vehicles and places and operations.

Increasingly aware of my ignorance of all that real, on-the-ground, soldier stuff, I was the least willing contributor. And the least able. But I made an attempt, and in my account of the death of Malcolm Jefferies, the young officer became a tragic casualty in an important operation, the rushed delivery of two civilian personnel, for reasons I left unclear. I didn't mention the baby. Nothing military to be made out of that. Not even a proper name to throw up.

There was consensus that it had all been worth it in the end. I wasn't so sure, and I sensed their discomfort with my wimpy equivocations, and qualified my disagreement. "Well. For me personally it was probably the kick in the bum I needed, really. I took one of those veterans' grants and now I'm at uni."

That didn't help. A couple of them had been in Brisbane for the Springbok Rugby tour the year before. Uni students had led the protests and they all decried the demonstrators' carry-on. That took them to protesters one had witnessed at a welcome home march the year before. More disgust.

I felt I understood their attitude. What did a bunch of spoilt, middle class brats, affecting a kind of downtrodden, unwashed poverty, know about the war, any war? The shift in the country's mood, begun in the middle to late sixties, had gathered momentum during my time in the army and in the new zeitgeist the young were more outspoken, male and female. Feminism was scoffed at in conventional circles but not in the universities. The antiwar movement now felt justified and triumphant. I had felt a distance between other students and myself, and not only because I was older than the average. I made a conscious, and self-conscious effort to hide my immediate past.

And so it was with my drinking companions of that afternoon. They felt an alienation. They thought it was unfair and blamed the students. The world had moved on, and they had missed the peace train, which had arrived, young, brash and loud, while they were out of town, at war. It was all new and unabashed in bright psychedelic colours, full of hope and dreams and singing songs of universal love. And they had missed it, arrived home too late, left standing, huddled together, in a place that no one else could understand, a place grey with the fog of the past, with the fog of a war that had been lost, that no one wanted to know about. Still young men, they looked older than they were, and a little tired and bewildered by it all.

As the years passed most would bear the weight of their war, big, small or insignificant, and like everybody else, get on with their lives with varying degrees of success. The students and other demonstrators were, after all, a minority themselves, and largely despised. And their peace train was always doomed, last seen heading into dark clouds on the horizon, the love songs blown in the wind, as inconsequential as the laughter of children. For war never leaves us for long. And we all have jobs to do.

Like much of the population, my fellow ex-soldiers in that big suburban hotel on that hot afternoon, had little time for the peace movement, war or no war. I was irked by something a little too conclusive and self-assured in their unanimous view on the whole contentious business. The students were their enemy, and they knew not one of them.

And I was already quite drunk. "But what were the protesters saying?" I asked.

There were perplexed looks, which encouraged me.

"Did anyone actually listen to what they were saying? Apart from all the swearing and chanting. Maybe they knew what they were talking about. I mean, behind all the noise."

Some stared. Some looked away. It was as if someone had sworn out loud in church. I was reminded of Greg Urquart, his swaggering contempt as he faced me that night in the transport compound. "You're all talk. The talkers." He was a doer. Talk usually meant you were full of shit. I'm sure this group would have agreed.

"They're communists," said one.

"They attacked some of our mates during a welcome home march," said another. "Turned on their own troops."

"They should shoot the bastards," said one with a fierce glare. "That's what I reckon."

There were one or two amused almost embarrassed grins, but no one challenged him. He did the job on me too. I decided it was my shout.

They left soon after, all friendly enough except bullet-solution man, who ignored me.

So that I was left on my own to take solace in more alcohol, which would be my way for some years after that. And I wound up talking, or slurring, to complete strangers careless enough to accommodate a drunken fool rambling about a war in which we were no longer involved. They bought beer for the poor silly bugger. And then more, until he became a little too unhinged, moved beyond harmless, pissed ex-digger to a new and scarier mode, mumbling about some baby. "Do babies count? They don't count, do they? Babies don't count."

Anger bubbling over then. Incoherent rambling turning to incoherent shouting. A mad man, flailing and striking out as he drowns, taken down in a vortex of froth and shit and guilt and hate that only he could feel. To blame, to punish, perpetrators of a crime he could never clearly see. And with no one listening. "Listen to me! Fuck you all! Listen to me!"

Down and down, ending as an unsightly blot on the shiny bar room floor, the excrement of his own inarticulate rage. Something to be removed. As quickly as possible.

Step aside, please. Make way for insanity, temporary or otherwise, never a good look in these rolling hills of relentless suburban tranquility. Thanks for getting here so quick, fellers.

Outside the sun was shining. A perfect Queensland winter's day.

And so to jail, the watch house. It was a sobering experience. And frightening. Nothing like the clang of a cell door to make you sit up and take notice. Count your blessings.

Now wake up to yourself. What's so special about you? You survived, unscathed, so get on with it. Head up, Private Ross. Eyes to the front. You're only a victim if you choose to be.

But next day my mother would tell me I had changed, and it was clear she didn't think for the better. And so I had to leave it. I had to move on. There were at least no more police arrests.

But I only lasted another year at uni. Then took leave of absence. To get work experience and save money. That was my story. Maybe a little travel.

And about three and half years beyond that, four years since I'd last seen Abbie, I was telling my new North American friends how good travel had been for me. "... relaxing. Makes me feel more ready and willing to finish that uni degree, presuming they'll have me back."

Inevitably, I suppose, the conversation turned to the war. There were general observations on the fall-out, refugees, re-education, and then the two women were declaring their passionate support for Matthew's decision to dodge the draft, back when.

My concurrence then, and regrets. At which Matthew came quickly to my aid. "It was a difficult situation for all of us." And the women nodded so vigorously I almost expected someone to suggest a group hug. I would have agreed to that too.

So the war, our common bete noire, focus for our collective antipathy, helped loosen the mood further. There were early memories of Jake Klein, his fascination with the orient, and Matthew wondered if he should ever have gotten married. Conventions of the time and his youth, they said.

The baby, when mentioned at all, was more delicately handled, clearly sidestepped at times, too sacred for ordinary conversation, though she was there behind every word spoken on the war. Until Abbie seemed ready to break the silence policy. "I just wish we had had the chance to name her. Legally. Properly." We waited to see if that was all and she looked at me. "You know what I mean? It's as if she didn't exist."

I was pleased to take up her invitation. This was something I knew about, and something personal, that, for all the pain, brought back a little of the old Abbie. "She existed, Abbie. If proof of existence is in a name, you named her. It wasn't your fault that piece of paper wasn't legal. The country was in a mess but you did your best. You named her."

"That's right," said Matthew. "And that's how we should remember her."

She nodded. "Thanks, Mark." Joanna leaned across to put a hand on her shoulder.

"Cheer up," Matthew told her as he filled her glass, though it hardly needed it. "She was a part of our family and we'll never forget her." He raised his glass. "To the memory of Thi Lin, our sister."

And we all raised our glasses. "Thi Lin."

Abbie smiled but the sadness sat defiant in her eyes and I changed the subject in what I thought was a considerate way. But I was soon regretting my choice of questions. "Did you ever hear from Julie Shields?"

At least she seemed to welcome the diversion. Julie was now in Washington. She had suffered some level of depression, a nervous breakdown it was called then, but had recovered and returned to work. Her new position would keep her at home in the States. I showed more interest than I felt.

There was less drinking that night, and no dope, but when it came time to drive me back to the motel Matthew was too far gone, and his wife had children to think of. "Blame his wine. If they wake he never hears them."

Abbie, then, would drive me. "I can never get used to all this snow," she said, full concentration, staying in the low gears, the car losing traction sometimes and heading off towards the banks at the side. I made a few grateful references to the kindness of her brother and his wife, she explained a few of their quirkier methods of living in the forest with two little kids and then we sat in silence watching the white road ahead until the snow-free streets at the edge of town took hold of the tyres.

The motel sign was the only light in its street. Abbie turned off the motor and with hands on the steering wheel looked ahead where the snow lay light yellow beneath the sign. Snow, I realised, had a way of silencing things.

"Well. It's been great to see you again."

She nodded. "Thank you. Good to see you again."

I looked at her. She looked as pretty as ever in the yellowish light. "I like your hair like that."

"Thanks again. Longer hair suits you too." And then, as if sensing I was about to get onto something more serious, she asked how my cricket playing was going.

'Very slowly, if at all. It's finally dawning on me that I might do better out of education than sport. If I can ever get myself into gear and finish that degree.'

She turned to look at me. 'What discipline is the degree?'

'Law.'

'Law. That's pretty challenging, isn't it?'

'Yes. 'Specially for me. But I want to start back again next year and this time get serious, and finally get the thing done.'

'Good for you.'

When I turned to look at her she was smiling at me. She looked genuinely pleased, if not with my plan itself then at least with my wish to move on, to achieve. I was simply pleased to see her smile, wanted to reach out and hold her, and kiss her. Instead I asked her how long she planned on staying here with her brother and his wife.

"Tomorrow. There's a flight out tomorrow."

"So soon? That brings back more memories. Look, I realise this is a long shot and excuse me if I have no right to ask, but... is there any way you could come to New York with me? Just for a couple of days maybe. You see, one of my friends, Tony Carmody, I don't know if I ever mentioned him. He was in Vietnam with me. He'd like to meet you. He and his wife Chris haven't said so, but I think maybe one of the reasons they chose this American holiday, and invited me along, was so that I might try to look you up. We could..."

But she was looking straight ahead, shaking her head. She turned, the smile all gone."Thanks. But I have to be back. For work. I could only get two days off. But thanks."

And there was that reserve again, of the woman, no longer the girl, who had been there. Once bitten, by a world with the awful power to put a shadow in the sunniest face.

I waited, but there seemed nothing more for it. "Well then. Take care. Mama san." She flashed me a look, without reproach but giving me nothing, and turned away quickly. "And you can't come in, for a minute? Since you're going tomorrow."

This time her look had softened but she turned away again, sighed, looked troubled and watched the empty street ahead. "I can't, Mark. It's been four years. I have a new life. And it wasn't as though we had a normal relationship, was it? Thrown together for a few days, in a crazy situation, like leaves in a storm. And... you didn't write, at all."

"I know. And I'll regret it for the rest of my life. But, I didn't think you wanted me to. I mean... well, I'm just a bad memory, aren't I? Part of something you're trying to forget. So I guess this was a mistake. I shouldn't have come."

"No. It was never you I was trying to forget. And Wesley thought it best to... to leave it. Leave it behind. It's just... too late. He's been so good to me. You know? He's helped me get my life, back on track."

I considered this for so long that she turned to look and I asked her if she ever talked about the baby.

"We... I try not to. When they sent my father's body home I wanted to try to find out what had happened to her body. But Wesley was adamant. And he was right. It's best not to talk about it. To keep the nightmares at bay. The same old nightmares."

I nodded. I knew about nightmares. Malcolm Jefferies, slumped on a roadside with half a head, Lyle O'Malley, doing his best to smile. A baby, dead, in the arms of an adult child. And the running, always running, in a futile search for escape.

I wondered if we should talk about those same old nightmares some time. Talk to me, Abbie, when you're more able. We're in this together. It's not something we can just leave behind, as much as we'd like to, like some nightmare that didn't really happen, dismissible with the breaking of a brand new day, the turning of a new page. Talk to me, and I'll talk to you, the way we did. Mama san and papa san. Remember?

But when I looked at her I could see that should there ever be a time when we shared nightmares this was not it. "The other night. You didn't call back? Were you going to?"

"I didn't know Matthew had called. Wesley didn't call me, where I was, to tell me. We'd had a disagreement. I'm not living with him at the moment. I haven't told Matthew and Joanna because it's... temporary. I... I'll be going back." She nodded slightly, in emphasis.

The cold, yellow silence crept into the car, sat between us. Until I said, "If only we could've met at some..." which sounded pathetic and I took a shot at my usual target. "Jesus, I hate that fucking war." And that was just as trite, and pointless, but when I looked at her she was nodding. "So what now, Abbie? I ride off into the sunset, never to see you again?"

"No. We write each other. Of course."

"We write. For how long, do we write?"

"It's just that... I've put it all behind me. Why are you here, Mark? I mean, don't get me wrong. It's great to see you again, but what is it you want?"

I turned to look through the window beside me as a few snowflakes landed on the road. They seemed to add to the cold, whisper the folly of my being where I was. Four years, and I had not written. Not once. So she had moved on, of course. Her question still seemed a little unfeeling, but I didn't think it was something to rationalise over. There was no point in trying to be clever now.

"I just wanted to see you again, without really knowing it myself for sure, until now. I haven't been able to get you out of my system. Not really. Even when I kept telling myself I had. And now I've seen you, I want to... go on seeing you. More than ever. I guess I must love you."

She turned her head away. "That's very flattering but... not very practical. Or real. I mean, haven't you heard? Romantic love is bourgeois nonsense."

"Well, something brought us here, Abbie. And something more than just encouragement from friends and relations."

When she turned to look at me there was something almost submissive in her eyes, or sentimental, a memory rekindled. "You always could talk fast, when you had to."

I remembered her telling me once that the baby had brought us together, indirectly, but of course that was unmentionable now. She looked away again and we both considered the falling snow, its silence mocking the futility of words. Had mine come out smart even when I tried for honest? Just how genuine was I after all? I had spoken my share of bullshit to girls in my time and despite the self-destructive element, I'd grown accustomed to my self-centred lifestyle, convinced myself, I thought, of my own need to move on. Even as the plane dropped through the clouds to leave me here in a snow-covered Canadian town, I wasn't sure about what I was doing. And this girl had problems, was from a country far from mine. I had problems. Commitment shy, I'd been told by a girl I'd got to know at uni, with too many hang-ups. And I had almost no money.

But then Abbie was leaning across towards me, to kiss my cheek quickly, a kiss goodbye. "Thank you so much for coming all this way to see me. I really appreciate it." Her face lingered long enough for me to put a hand on her arm, and then the other, to feel her relent, bodily, the significance in the slight drop of her shoulders, a softening in those eyes.

When she put a hand on my shoulder I took hold and it was some minutes before she was pulling away, her face all passion and lovely. I reached for her, wanted more, but she sat back, sighed, bit her lip as she looked ahead again. And I knew. Even if what I'd just said sounded like some of the same old lines, what I felt was genuine. I was glad I had come all this way to see this girl. It felt right to be with her again. "Come inside."

She thought, then shook her head. "We shouldn't have done that. That just complicates things. I have to go. We have to think about this. Write me. Please. But go away. For now at least." She turned to me. "And think about this. And I will. And..." She sighed again, her breathing still audible. I just wanted to keep on kissing her. "I'll give you my new address."

"One more kiss."

"No. Please. We have to think about this." She was searching in the open compartment between the seats, urgent and shaky. "Goddamn hippies. Never any writing materials. Can you check the glove compartment?" The glove box seemed to have everything in it except pen and paper. "Look. I'm not sure where I'll be anyway. You could write care of Matthew and Joanna. They'll send it on. Would you?"

"Please, Abbie. Couldn't we..."

But she was Abbie the determined, with tears in her eyes, and then I was standing in the cold street, snow falling steadily, watching the car move away, at first too quickly, the wheels spinning, then slowly, taking her away, inexorably, like the turning of warm day into cold night.

I heard the manager's voice in the foyer as I stood looking out the motel room window at the falling snow and then he was knocking on my door, I presumed, to share a nightcap, take my breakfast order. "Go away," I muttered.

But when I opened it there she was. "Can we talk... just talk... please? I don't know, but I might be able to phone work, tell them I'm snowed in."

"Will I have to push the bed up against the door?"

It was thoughtless, said in the joy of seeing her and out before I could stop it. Her smile was subdued, almost sad, mellowed by four years of memories, the memory. But when she sat on the bed and turned to me I saw nostalgia enough to rekindle other memories, the shine of younger eyes never quite confident enough to deny a vulnerability, a girl, naked, nothing but a beaded curtain between her and the night, the faint smell of incense and marijuana, and the sweet taste of kisses shared opportunistically in the darkness of strange places where we'd huddled out of the rain.

As I closed the door I heard the manager telling someone that the snow would clear in the night.

And so she talked. Of her life over the past four years, of her work, her family. And things beyond that. She still had plenty to say, though with less of the bright confidence I remembered, and without that breathless edginess, the impatience with a world that wouldn't behave the way it was supposed to.

Eventually we slept. When I woke the curtain had lightened and I peeked outside to find the motel manager had been right. The snow had stopped. The sky was blue and the sun was shining on a bright new morning.

– THE END –

