by Robert Hillman
Jean Moir
This novel is about suffering, love, and courage. It is set in Almond Tree (a small town in south-east Australia), Hiroshima, London, and Moscow, in the years following the end of the Second World War.
Beth Hardy is a committed Marxist. She is trapped by the security services, and imprisoned for taking photos of a potential nuclear test site. She is sent to Moscow as part of a spy-exchange deal. Once there, she becomes disillusioned with Russia and Stalinism. She supports dissident groups by samizdat, copying banned texts by hand.
Initially Beth persuades the man who loves her to support her political activity, stressing that she has no need of a boyfriend. But his loyalty and courage visiting her in prison in Australia and Moscow awakens her capacity to love him for himself.
Wesley George Fox Heavenly Grace Cunningham (Wes) is a Quaker, returned from non-combatant duties in the war. Like other Friends in Almond Tree, he is known for his quality carpentry and building. People ask him about his faith. Should he contribute wood for burning an effigy (not of Guy Fawkes, but a Japanese general)? Should he use physical force to defend Beth from insult or injury? He is described as “a Quaker with a red tinge”. He shows great courage queueing day after day in ice and snow in the hope of seeing Beth in prison. After her release, and convalescence in London, Beth returns to Almond Tree and marries Wes.
Patty is Wes’s sister. She works as a volunteer nurse in Hiroshima, helping radiation victims. Wes says that as a Quaker she believes God wants her to do this, and she can never escape this task. She marries Kado, a Japanese doctor who lost his wife and four children to the bomb.
Deeply aware of the risks of deformity, Patty and Kado nevertheless have the courage to have two children. Both are born with minor, treatable conditions; indeed, their son heals without intervention. The children are sent to Almond Tree to have a better chance of growing up uncontaminated. Kado dies suddenly from an undiagnosed cancer. Patty continues work, dividing her time between Hiroshima and Almond Tree, but finally succumbs to radiation sickness.
The book is beautifully written, with great immediacy and vividness.
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Copyright 2022, Oxford Quakers
Forty-Three Newsletter • Number 515 • March 2022
Oxford Friends Meeting
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