White Gardenia by Belinda Alexandra

Author:Belinda Alexandra
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3, mobi
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2012-07-05T16:00:00+00:00

It was dark when the convoy of buses came to a stop outside a barricade. The camp guard stepped out of his box and lifted the post for us to go through. Our bus jerked forward, followed by the others, into the campsite. I pressed my face against the glass and saw the Australian flag flapping from a pole in the centre of the driveway. Radiating out from this point were rows of army barracks, most of them wooden but some made from corrugated iron. The ground between the huts was hardened dirt with tufts of grass and weeds poking through the cracks. Rabbits scampered around the campsite as freely as chickens in a farmyard.

The driver told us to disembark and make our way to the dining hall directly ahead of us. Irina and I followed the others to something that looked like a small aircraft hangar with windows. Inside we found rows of tables covered with brown paper and spread with sandwiches, sponge cakes and cups for tea and coffee. The agitated voices of the passengers echoed off the unlined walls and the bare light bulbs gave their tired complexions an even more sickly tinge. Irina sank down onto one of the seats and rested her face in her palms. A man with woolly black hair noticed her as he passed. He was carrying a clipboard and wore some sort of badge on his coat. ‘Red Cross. Top of the hill,’ he said, tapping her shoulder. ‘Go there or we’ll all be ill.’

I was excited to hear that there was a Red Cross office in the camp and slid into the seat next to Irina. I told her what the man had said, only I phrased it more politely. ‘We’ll go tomorrow,’ she said, pressing her hand into mine. ‘I’m not up to it tonight.’

The man with the clipboard stepped onto a podium and announced in heavily accented English that shortly we would be sorted into groups for accommodation. Men and women would be accommodated separately. Children would be accommodated with either parent according to their age and sex. The news was quickly translated around the hall and voices began to cry out in protest.

‘You can’t separate us!’ one man said, standing up. He pointed to the woman and two small children with him. ‘This is my family. We were separated all through the war.’

I told Irina what was happening. ‘How can they do such a thing?’ she said, still speaking into her palms. ‘People need their families at times like these.’

A tear dripped down her face and onto the brown paper. I put my arm around her and rested my head against her shoulder. We were each other’s family. Our roles had become reversed. Irina was older and of a more sanguine disposition than I was and it was usually she who gave me encouragement. But Ruselina was ill and far away, and Irina was in a new country whose people spoke a language she didn’t understand. On top of all that, she was sick.

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