Page 71 of Sisters Under The Rising Sun

‘Where is everybody?’ Norah asks.

‘Either at the hospital or on home visits. What’s going on?’

‘You’re moving, I’m afraid. Well, we all are, but Mrs Hinch has been told to tell you and a few of the houses that you’re leaving in one hour and to hurry and pack your things.’

Jean blanches. ‘Are you joking?’

‘I wish I was. Do you need some help to pack? We’re not leaving until the morning.’

‘I need to find the others and get them back here.’ Jean shakes her head, visibly upset. ‘I don’t believe this.’

‘Where’s Nesta?’

‘At the hospital, where she is every day and most nights. I’ve come back for a rest.’ Jean sighs. Norah can’t help but notice how exhausted her friend looks. ‘Will you let her know while I find the others?’

‘Of course.’

The two women nod at each other in grim solidarity before heading off to their respective tasks. There is nothing else that they can do.

Norah enters the hospital and comes to an abrupt stop. All around her are sick patients. Slouching off chairs, lying on the floor. Nurses move amongst them, soothing foreheads, offering water. Dr McDowell and Nesta are talking at the far end of the room. They turn as she approaches.

‘Norah, are you ill? You look so pale.’

‘I’m fine, I just have some bad news.’ She sighs as she takes in Dr McDowell’s and Nesta’s questioning expressions. ‘It’s … well, Mrs Hinch was summoned to Kato’s office a short while ago and told we are moving camp.’

‘When?’ Nesta asks.

‘You and some other houses are to leave in an hour, the rest of us tomorrow morning.’

‘Impossible!’ the doctor exclaims. ‘This is ridiculous. We can’t just up and move. I need to speak to Kato.’

‘I don’t think he’s going to change his mind; I’ll speak to Mother Laurentia to get you some help for the next twenty-four hours. I can only presume he wants the nurses moved today so they can prepare the hospital at the new camp for your arrival.’

‘Thank you, Norah. Nesta, take your nurses and go. I’ll see you tomorrow.’

Nesta quietly asks each of the nurses on duty to come with her, and with Norah, they head back to the nurses’ house.

They arrive in time to join the others packing up their kitchen, along with the few clothes they share. Their uniforms are lovingly folded and tied together in a blanket.

‘How can we help?’ Audrey calls as she pushes through the front door.

‘You could start in the kitchen. Only problem is we’ve no boxes or bags to put things in.’

‘Let’s just bundle them into sheets like a swag,’ Betty says.

‘A swag?’ Norah queries.

‘Ah, I know the answer to that,’ Audrey says with a proud grin. ‘It’s a bundle of your possessions that you carry on your back.’

‘Do you have them in New Zealand too?’ Vivian asks.

‘No, but I know you Aussies do. Come on, let’s make up some swags.’

The sound of a truck horn brings the nurses into the street, along with their pots and pans, cutlery accumulated along the way, and a few books borrowed and not returned. At the head of the camp, women and children are being loaded into two trucks. Everyone else comes out of their homes to wave them off.

‘We’ll see you tomorrow,’ Norah yells, as the trucks begin to pull away.

Ten minutes later, the women arrive in their new camp in the jungle. They stumble down from the truck and take in their surroundings. They are only about a mile away from Irenelaan, and the camp – more prison-like than the houses they have been living in – is a collection of barracks, hemmed in by barbed wire, with four sentry boxes, one at each corner, and a guardhouse next to a gate, through which the women are led.