My Beautiful Enemy

by Cory Taylor

  And all the time I waited to hear from Stanley, the way you wait for a miracle to happen, for the dead to come alive again or for your enemies to turn. At first I waited in hope, half-expecting him to track me down and write to me from wherever he was to let me know he was all right. But as time went by and no letter came I waited without hope, which was easier.

  21

  I never spoke to anyone about Tatura. For many years I kept silent about everything that had happened there. If anyone asked me about my war I told them I’d been injured in a flying accident and had sat out the last few months of 1945 in a desk job. I avoided the company of men who’d fought the Japs, or been imprisoned by them. This seems less the case now, but for a long time after the war ended, men were still judged by what they had done or not done in the service of their country, and one’s pride rested on this judgment. Needless to say, I wasn’t proud in the least—of my service record, or of my private feelings. The war, as I recalled it, had done me nothing but harm.

  May and Stuart were only the first casualties in what I think of as My Missing Years, starting in 1946 when I saw Stanley’s ship sail away and ending when I met him again in 1963. If I relate a few salient events of that time it is only for the purpose of illustration. After the war my one and only aim became to distance myself from my previous life, whatever the cost. I took a variety of jobs, including a couple of seasons as a shearer, before finding a sales job with an engine-parts supplier back in Brisbane. I divorced May in 1947 in order to remarry. My second wife’s name was Carol. She was a doctor’s receptionist; I met her at the races on a Saturday and proposed to her on the Sunday. We divorced in 1952. After Carol there was Margaret, a schoolteacher with two little girls from a former marriage. We married in 1953 and divorced in 1956.

  After Margaret I swore an oath I would never get married again no matter what because, try as I might, my heart was never in it. My wives, starting with May, had all said the same thing to me. You’re not here, they said. Even when you’re here you’re not here. I told each of them I didn’t know what they were talking about, but it was a lie. I knew exactly. They were talking about the way my climb up the company ladder consumed me, and the way I failed to take a real interest in anything else, including them. And they were talking about my coldness, which I’d tried to explain to them I could do nothing about. It was part of my constitution, I said. I wasn’t a warm-blooded creature, except sometimes, after I’d had enough alcohol.

  I rarely saw Stuart: I would drive down for Christmas every year to give him his presents and spend a desolate few hours at the Forbes house. But I was less comfortable in his company the older he grew. Stuart knew about Tatura because May had told him. Whenever we met up he wanted to know why I’d gone there instead of fighting on the front-line, and why I limped, and whether it was true the Japs cut off the heads of their own soldiers so they couldn’t surrender, because that’s what his uncle Ian had told him.

  I said it was true but that the Japs had changed since the war.

  ‘Changed how?’ he said.

  ‘They’ve modernised,’ I said.

  After he turned ten I decided he could fly up to Brisbane on Boxing Day instead of me driving all the way to Melbourne. And then I suggested he might like to come and visit me in his school holidays as well, because I found that I missed him when he wasn’t there, and that phone calls only emphasised his absence.

  In 1960, when a Japanese trade fair came to Brisbane I flew him up for the weekend so I could show him the gadgets and wizardry on show. It was also a way of impressing upon May, and her new husband Denis, that I was doing my best to be a good father.

  May had reservations. ‘What’s the point of the exhibition?’ she said. ‘I suppose they’re trying to sell us things.’

  ‘How else are they going to rebuild their country?’ I said. ‘They’re designing and manufacturing everything now, from sewing machines to high-speed trains, and we’d better wake up to them or we’ll be consigned to the dust heap.’

  ‘They have blood on their hands,’ she said. The Forbes had never forgiven the Japanese for Owen’s death. Like a lot of other people they were suspicious of anything made in Japan.

  ‘You shouldn’t generalise,’ I said. ‘There are good and bad Japs just like there are good and bad Australians.’

  ‘They murdered millions of people,’ she said.

  ‘I’m sure they’re very sorry.’

  Stuart seemed to have grown a foot since the last time I’d seen him. When I shook his hand I realised, with a pang of regret, that we were eye to eye.

  ‘How was the flight?’ I said.

  ‘Uneventful,’ he said. At fourteen he had a highly developed sense of humour. It relied on this kind of unadorned statement of fact, delivered with perfect seriousness.

  ‘No anti-aircraft fire from Moreton Bay on the way in?’ I said.

  ‘We caught them napping,’ he said.

  I drove him straight from the airport to Bretts Wharf where the Aki Maru was docked. On board was an exhibition of what the banners described as Superior Creations by the Japanese Automotive Industry. For half a day we wandered around from one booth to another while I instructed Stuart in the finer points of Japanese engine design. I explained how the Japanese had lost the war but were winning the peace, just like the Germans. ‘It’s sometimes an advantage to lose everything so you can sweep away the old and build something new,’ I told him.

  ‘Is that what you did?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘When you left Mum and me.’

  We were in my car driving back from Bretts Wharf to New Farm. I lived there by myself in a house overlooking the Brisbane River. I glanced across at him and saw again how like his mother he was, pale and freckled. He was grinning the same way she grinned when she knew she’d said something unscripted.

  ‘Did you miss me?’ I said.

  ‘You don’t miss what you never had.’

  He didn’t mean it as a rebuke, and I was very grateful to him for that. So grateful that over a Chinese dinner in the Valley that evening I drank more than I should have and opened up to him about the camp and the kids I’d known there. I even talked about Stanley, but without going into detail.

  ‘In another life,’ I said, ‘he would have been some kind of star. His name would have been up in lights somewhere.’

  ‘What happened to him?’

  ‘I have no idea. I presume he went back with all the others.’

  ‘Why didn’t you try to find him?’

  I must have looked angry because Stuart seemed afraid to say any more.

  ‘It wasn’t just a matter of looking in the telephone book,’ I said. My voice was shrill and I was immediately sorry.

  In the car going home I apologised. ‘It was such a strange part of my life,’ I said. ‘I think seeing all those people at the trade fair brought it all back to me.’

  It was true. Outside of Chinatown it was rare to see an Asian face in Brisbane. To climb aboard the Aki Maru was to enter a floating microcosm of Japan. On deck we’d been greeted with smiles by a bevy of girls in uniform and men in suits who all reminded me of Stanley and his family. It was like hearing a piece of music again after a long time and remembering exactly where you were the first time you heard it and who you were with and what you said or failed to say to them.

  ‘Mum says you never got over the war,’ he said.

  ‘That’s rubbish,’ I said. ‘I did fine.’

  Stuart went quiet after that and we drove without talking until we reached the house. Just as I turned into the driveway he turned and looked at me.

  ‘Why did you keep getting married and divorced?’

  ‘What kind of a question is that?’

  ‘Just curious.’

  I smiled to disguise my discomfort. ‘I guess I’m an eternal optimist.’

  ‘But you drew the line at more kids,’ he said, sounding very like May.

  ‘I’m not sure it was a deliberate decision
.’

  ‘It’s a good thing. In my opinion.’

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘Because I don’t think you like them very much.’

  I reached out and put my hand on his shoulder and patted him a couple of times because I didn’t know what to tell him.

  ‘Your mother knew what I was like when she married me,’ I said in my own defence. ‘I warned her.’

  ‘So why did she marry you?’

  ‘Why all the questions all of a sudden?’ I said, attempting a smile.

  Stuart glanced at me and turned away again.

  I took my hand off his shoulder and waited for him to get out of the car, but he wasn’t finished with me yet.

  ‘She said you could have changed if you’d wanted to,’ he said.

  I laughed. ‘Well she’s wrong,’ I said. ‘I’ve spent years trying to change who I was, and it hasn’t worked. I’m still the same person.’

  I opened the car door and we went inside. Stuart got ready for bed while I sat in my study drinking. When I went to the guest room to check on him he was reading the program from the trade fair, but he put it down when I came to the door.

  ‘You got everything you need?’ I said.

  ‘Yes thanks.’

  ‘It’s not true that I don’t like kids.’

  He looked at me steadily. ‘Okay.’

  ‘So now you know.’

  He continued to stare at me. ‘Why are you afraid to see Stanley again?’

  ‘I didn’t say I was afraid. I just said it wasn’t that easy. I don’t know what we’d have to talk about after all these years.’

  Stuart picked up the trade-fair program again and started turning the pages.

  ‘Just tell him how you feel,’ he said in his matter-of-fact way. ‘Tell him you’ve never forgotten him. Tell him he was the love of your life.’

  I have to admit I was shocked. My impression was that he’d heard this from May, probably more than once, and that he didn’t much care if it was true or not.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ I said.

  But I made a mistake. I should have sat down with him there and then and told him the facts. They are simple enough. I loved someone, then I lost him. It’s a common story. I hear similar tales all the time.

  I lingered in the doorway as if I expected an apology. Stuart closed the trade-fair program and put it on his bedside table.

  ‘I found the exhibition very informative,’ he said. ‘Thank you for taking me.’

  ‘I’m glad you enjoyed it.’

  And then we wished each other goodnight and I left the room, wondering how I was going to put Stuart on the plane home in the morning without making a spectacle of myself.

  22

  McMaster found out where I was and wrote me a letter.

  I’ve finally retired from my job in the Victorian Education Department and am enjoying a well-earned rest. Not that I’m idle for one moment. I recently returned from a trip to Japan where I had the most fascinating time. I managed to track down one or two of the families from Tatura and while my wife and I were in Tokyo they arranged a party for us. I’ve enclosed a photograph with the names of everyone on the back. They all remembered you very well and asked me to pass on their best wishes.

  Stanley was not in the picture. When I called McMaster to thank him for his letter he told me nobody knew where Stanley was or what had become of his family.

  ‘But I have feelers out,’ he said. ‘So I’ll keep you posted.’

  I heard nothing more for over a year. And then another letter arrived in the winter of 1963, this time with an address for Stanley’s mother in Nagasaki. McMaster had spelled it out in Roman script for me. Apparently, he wrote, the mother moved back to Nagasaki in about 1950, just before the Korean War, and Stanley definitely moved with her.

  Again I rang McMaster as soon as I received his letter.

  ‘How do I get there?’ I said.

  ‘We went by ship,’ said McMaster, ‘But it’s possible to fly.’

  My thoughts were suddenly racing. I would have to tell my sales manager to run things for a couple of weeks and I’d have to get my housekeeper to look after the house and collect the mail, but aside from these considerations there was no reason why I couldn’t go away, especially if I set up a few meetings with Japanese manufacturers in order to legitimise the expense.

  McMaster asked me if I was still on the line.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘You won’t be disappointed,’ he said.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Tokyo has to be seen to be believed. It’s like the war never happened.’

  I thanked him again and rang off. Then I sat and stared at the address he’d written out for me, care of a company called Chicago Night. The name suggested that their business might have to do with the cousin in America. Either that or it was a brothel.

  After I’d booked my flights I sent a note to Stanley’s mother to say how pleased I was to have learned of her whereabouts.

  I am hoping to get in touch with Stanley as well. You may remember that we were quite friendly in the camp but I’ve had no news of him since then. Please give him my best wishes.

  Yours sincerely,

  Arthur Wheeler.

  I telephoned May to tell her I’d be away for the school holidays, so I wouldn’t be able to take Stuart as planned.

  ‘Tell him yourself,’ she said. She didn’t sound very surprised. It was as if she’d been waiting for me to let Stuart down. I could imagine Denis in the background mouthing, I told you so.

  I waited while Stuart came to the phone. A thousand miles from where he was lifting himself out of his chair or coming in reluctantly from the garden, I pictured my son the way he’d looked the first time I’d seen him, how his little face had seemed so worried. And it occurred to me that my most consistent emotion, the sentiment that had governed my life, was grief.

  ‘I’m taking your advice,’ I said.

  ‘What did I say?’ he said. ‘I can’t remember.’

  ‘I’m going to see if I can track down that boy I told you about. The one I knew in the camp.’

  Stuart was only half-listening. He kept talking to May at the same time as he was talking to me.

  ‘Mum says to ask you to bring me back a transistor radio.’

  ‘It’s on my list.’

  He handed the phone back to May and I told her about McMaster’s two letters.

  ‘Where’s Nagasaki?’ she said.

  ‘They dropped the bomb on it,’ I said.

  ‘I know that. But where is it in relation to Tokyo.’

  ‘Two days on the train. Going west. It’s on the island of Kyushu. Actually it’s nearer to Korea than it is to Tokyo.’ I remembered the time Stanley had shown me Nagasaki on the map in the schoolboy history book from Matron Conlon’s library. I pictured his slender hand resting on the page.

  May said she had to go out and wished me a safe trip. ‘I hope you find what you’re looking for,’ she said.

  ‘So do I.’

  There was a pause and then she said, ‘I think we made a mistake getting married when we did. I didn’t think so at the time but I think so now. It was my fault. I’m sorry.’

  I told her I didn’t think it was anybody’s fault.

  ‘You tried to warn me,’ she said.

  ‘I didn’t try hard enough,’ I said. ‘I was so confused back then. I didn’t know if I was Arthur or Martha.’

  Which made her laugh. ‘That’s funny,’ she said.

  ‘It wasn’t at the time,’ I said.

  She laughed some more and her high spirits emboldened me, finally, to tell her I was sorry that I’d run out on her when I did and how I’d always regretted it.

  ‘I haven’t forgiven you,’ she said. ‘I don’t think I ever will.’

  ‘I don’t blame you,’ I said. And I meant it.

  ‘Don’t forget Stuart’s transistor,’ she said. ‘And bring me back some silk.’

&nbs
p; ‘How much?’

  ‘As much as you can carry.’

  23

  I spent my first two days in Japan touring motor showrooms in Tokyo with an interpreter I’d booked through my travel agent. Her name was Hiroko and she’d lived in America, first as a student, which I gathered was unusual for a girl, then as a secretary in a bank.

  ‘Why did you come back to Japan?’ I asked her.

  ‘To find a husband,’ she said smiling. Whenever she smiled she covered her mouth with her hand so I couldn’t see her teeth.

  ‘Were you successful?’ We were in the lobby of my hotel, waiting for a taxi to take me to Tokyo station so I could catch the train for Kyushu.

  ‘I’m still looking.’

  ‘What kind of men do you like?’

  ‘Actually I don’t like Japanese men,’ she said. ‘They never say what they think, unless they’re drunk.’

  I’d seen them in the hole-in-the-wall bars near my hotel, businessmen dressed in identical suits, sitting in rowdy groups and filling up the tiny spaces with their noise and smoke.

  ‘What about Americans?’ I said.

  ‘Americans tell you everything,’ she said. ‘I like that better. But my parents want me to marry a good Japanese boy. What about in Australia?’

  ‘We talk a lot,’ I said. ‘But it’s mostly bullshit.’

  She started to look in her dictionary but I told her she wouldn’t find it there, and I explained the meaning.

  ‘Oh you mean horseshit,’ she said, which made me laugh because she pronounced it the same way Stanley did, the emphasis on the second syllable.

  ‘For instance,’ I said. ‘I told my company I’m here to look at cars.’

  She looked confused until I explained that the man I’d asked her to track down in Nagasaki was not in the motor-car business but was someone I’d met in Australia during the war.

  ‘I see,’ she said.

  ‘The last time I saw my friend was in 1946.’

  Hiroko didn’t respond. She didn’t like to talk about the war. All she would say was that it was a very sad time but now was much better. She liked to point out that the Olympic Games next year would make Tokyo into a modern city just like London or New York.