by Peter Watt
‘Do you think Uncle Paul and Aunt Karin will be waiting for us when we dock?’ Lukas asked.
‘I think so,’ Jack replied as he lit his battered old pipe and puffed until a thick plume of smoke was blown away on a gentle sea breeze. It would be a hot and still day ashore. There was not a sign of a cloud in the pale blue skies. ‘Your Uncle Paul replied to my telegram when we were at Elston.’
En route to Port Moresby, the two had travelled south from Brisbane for a break in their journey, to a small coastal village called Elston. They had stayed at the Surfers Paradise hotel and spent three days swimming in the rolling breakers of the Pacific Ocean, fishing off Main Beach and sitting around at night playing cards with the other guests. Apart from soaking up the South Seas atmosphere of the hotel, Jack had also caught the train south to take a look at property in the towns of Coolangatta and Tweed Heads that straddled the borders of Queensland and New South Wales. He liked the area so much that he had purchased a block of land on a steep hill in Tweed Heads, planning to one day build a house there as a retreat from Sydney.
Lukas took a position at the bow beside his father and leant on the rail. The town rose and fell gently on the horizon. The land was a dusty brown tapestry dotted with native villages along the shoreline at Koki located to the east, while the tower of the Burns Philp office dominated the little township on the edge of the Papuan frontier. He was looking forward to his break from school to revisit the land that held so many fond memories for him. It had been four years since he’d been here, as his holidays had usually been spent in Sydney with his father at home in Mosman.
A few months earlier the opening of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, the largest single span bridge in the world, had dramatically changed things for citizens on Sydney’s North Shore. No longer did the harbour ferry provide most of the transport between the two shores. Jack, however, still preferred to travel by ferry to his Macquarie Street office, from where he managed his small financial empire. His enterprises took in real estate acquisition and development as well as his far off gold mining operations in New Guinea.
His charitable work for the families of the men who had not returned from the war was noted by many in power. And in the Sydney community Jack Kelly was quickly establishing a reputation as a benefactor among those families suffering the terrible displacement brought by the Great Depression. He had befriended the colourful premier of New South Wales, Jack Lang, known to his friends and enemies alike as the ‘Big Fella’ because of his imposing size. It was with the premier’s influence that places at the prestigious Catholic college of St Ignatius had been obtained for both Lukas and Karl. The two‘wild boys from the north’ had stuck together and, like Lukas, Karl had also established a reputation as a top rugby player. The two were inseparable and considered more as brothers than just mere friends. Their partnership was strengthened in the close hierarchy of boarding schools, with more than one fist fight against the older boys to establish their credentials. Most of the time they won the bloody, slogging matches, but even if they lost, they won the respect of the junior and senior students for their courage. Neither boy was known to back down against even the toughest of the seniors. And both were prepared to take risks that endeared them to the school as a whole, if not always to the staff.
Karl had grown to be a powerfully built young man. Both boys were bigger than their fathers and Karl also had Paul’s suave looks. He no longer spoke with a trace of a German accent and under the tutelage of the priests both boys had acquired the educated tones of polished radio announcers. More important to both fathers was that Lukas and Karl had sat their Leaving Certificates to complete their secondary education. Hopefully, the boys’ results would be good enough to gain them places in a university.
Jack turned to his son whose unruly hair was being whipped by the wind. ‘Have you any plans for the future when we return from Papua?’ he asked gruffly.
The years had slipped by in his busy life and he was about to lose his only child to the world. Lukas would take his place soon as a man. Jack suddenly felt the cold chills of loneliness. Since the day Erika had left him all those years before he had directed all his love and attention to his son.
‘I was rather hoping that you would use a bit of that money of yours to send me to Germany with Karl,’ Lukas replied with a cheeky grin. ‘You know that his old man is paying for him to visit the old country next year.’
‘And pigs will fly,’ Jack growled good-naturedly. ‘For a start you are too young and secondly you have to earn your own way there.’
‘I could work for you as one of your managers,’ Lukas continued in the same playful tone. ‘Start at the top and work my way down.’
‘That would be about the sum of it,’ Jack chuckled. ‘But I can give you something while we are here, working around the mines.’
Lukas raised his eyebrows. He knew that the work was dirty and dangerous, and the mine in an isolated location on the island’s frontier. For his father to suggest such an enterprise spoke of his confidence in his abilities. ‘Well, actually Father,’ he replied in a more serious tone, ‘I was thinking of going into law. Mr Sullivan has said that there was always a place in his firm as an articled clerk if my exam results were good – which they will be.’
‘When did all this come about?’ his father asked. ‘Just after you met young Sarah Sullivan by any chance?’
Lukas sucked in his breath. ‘How did you know?’
‘Kind of hard not to see how gawky you were whenever we were over at the Sullivans’,’ his father said as he puffed on his pipe and stared at the shoreline growing ever closer.
Tom Sullivan had become Jack’s chief solicitor and a good friend since their first meeting to discuss the will George Spencer had drafted. Tom’s sixteen-year-old daughter was a dark eyed beauty with grace and poise. She had aspirations to study medicine when she completed her secondary schooling at a prestigious convent. A bit on herself, Jack had thought when he had met Sarah Sullivan, but still a daughter any father would be proud of. He had also noticed that his son was well and truly under her thumb whenever they were together. But choosing a career in law meant that his son could also pursue his other great love in life, rugby union. It was a sport strong in the circles of law students. ‘I will talk to Sullivan when we return,’ Jack sighed. ‘In the meantime you and Karl stay out of trouble while we are in Moresby.’
Lukas feigned affront at the suggestion that he and his mate would get into any trouble. ‘Father, did you not pay all those expensive fees to see your one and only son become a gentleman, unlike my wonderful father who made his fortune grubbing gold without the proper permits?’
Jack glanced at his son and frowned. Was he being mocked – or was his son’s statement delivered with great affection? It was hard to say with the younger generation. They had lived in a world of relative peace and not had to experience the harshest realities of life. Lukas placed his arm around his father’s shoulders and Jack knew that his statement had been delivered with love.
‘It will be good to be home,’ he said, and Jack agreed with him.
Paul, Karin, Karl and little Angelika were all waiting on the wharf at Moresby to greet them. Karin hugged Lukas and cried with joy. Her other son was home. Paul shook Jack’s hand with a strong grip. ‘You are getting soft, old friend,’ he said with a friendly jab at Jack’s stomach under his immaculate white suit. He himself wore his work clothes of old pants and a many times repaired shirt. Jack noticed how strong and healthy his old friend looked and felt just a little embarrassed at how unfit he had become working from his office. ‘I have heard that you own Sydney now and plan to buy the rest of Australia within the next year or two,’ Paul continued as he turned to Lukas. ‘How are you young man?’ he asked in German.
‘Very well, Uncle Paul,’ Lukas replied in kind.
‘Ja, it is good you have not forgotten your German. It is the language of your grandmother’s people.’
Angelika stood beside her mother and fro
wned. She only vaguely remembered the young man from a long time ago when she was a very little girl. But she did recall that he was not a mean teaser like her brother Karl. Lukas grinned at her and the frown turned to a shy smile.
‘Don’t you remember me?’ he asked as he bent to look directly into her eyes. She appeared a little confused. A lot had happened in her nine years on earth.
‘You are Lukas,’ she replied slowly. ‘You and Karl got into trouble for taking Mummy’s dumplings.’
Lukas laughed at the incident that he had almost forgotten from six years earlier. Finally Karl stepped forward and both boys engaged in a feigned exchange of blows.
‘How are you?’ Karl asked. ‘It’s been pretty quiet around Moresby without you,’ he continued. ‘You should have come back early with me instead of hanging around Sydney with Sarah Sullivan.’
Lukas was about to protest that she was not his girl but instead countered, ‘And which of the meris have you been chasing, you big Kraut lughead?’
This brought on another bout of sparring. Their respective fathers shook their heads and walked down the wharf with Karin and Angelika beside them.
‘It is good to have you home,’ Karin said as she touched Jack’s arm with a gesture of affection. ‘Paul and I have missed you.’
‘Good to be back,’ Jack responded. ‘The place has a lot of memories for me. Both good and bad.’
A noticeable difference for Jack was that Paul drove them from the town to the plantation along a recently constructed track in his new Ford truck. The ride was bumpy but the track and truck turned the trip from what was a good day’s drive to just a few hours. The boys and Angelika sat in the back tray with the luggage. They called out in greeting to the villagers they passed, making their way to the market in Moresby. Conversation was limited as the noisy grinding of the transmission drowned out words as Paul constantly changed up and down the gears to negotiate the bends and bumps. All were glad when they reached the plantation after the long hot drive. Red dust had turned Jack’s immaculate white suit a pale pink. He stepped from the cabin and helped Karin down.
Dademo stood barefooted, wearing a starched lap lap around his waist on the verandah of the house. ‘Mr Jack, good thing you come back,’ he greeted with a flash of betel nut stained teeth. ‘I get the boys to bring your luggage.’
Jack thanked him and turned to Paul. ‘Sen decided that I could have him as my boss boy,’ Paul answered the unspoken question. ‘Paid the old Chinese pirate a good price to indenture him to me, but he has been worth it. Knows the business better than I do,’ he added.
Inside the house Jack noticed the improvements Paul’s share of the money had brought to the Mann family. A gramophone record player took pride of place beside a new piano and one wall was filled with book shelves and a good supply of novels, both in German and English. Jack had offered Paul a partnership in his mining enterprise but he had declined on the grounds that his life was tied to the land and not under it, as in mining operations. And so he had used his share to bolster his plantation, pay for Karl’s education, buy some luxuries for Karin and Angelika as well as put aside an amount in the bank for a rainy day. He had also purchased a little land in Townsville as a family retreat from Papua. In all he was happy with his simple life. A ‘rainy day’ had recently come in the form of the terrible financial depression, but his savings had kept the family afloat as the bottom fell out of the price of primary produce.
‘We have extended the house,’ Paul said as Jack followed him. ‘You now have a room to yourself. Lukas can sleep in Karl’s room. Get yourself settled in. Maybe go for a swim before dinner.’
Jack thanked his old friend and took his advice. He found the tropical water refreshing and stroked out strongly in the placid sea for a quarter of a mile, before making his way back to the beach where he collapsed on the gritty sand to soak up the last of the setting sun. Lying back, he could hear the gentle hiss of water rushing over the hot sand and the distant laughter of the plantation workers. A great feeling of peace descended on him as he stared up at the sky that was taking on a dark mauve colour.
When the sun was a great red orb on the horizon he rose and walked back to the house, now lit with electric light since Paul had also invested in a generator system.
The boys had hearty appetites and so too did Jack. He had missed Karin’s wonderful cooking. Fresh fruit followed and then the two men retired to the verandah whilst Karin relaxed with the magazines Jack had brought from Australia. The two boys disappeared into Karl’s room where they swapped stories of what they’d been doing since the last time they had been together in Sydney some weeks earlier.
Jack tapped his pipe on the edge of the verandah and refilled it with a plug of tobacco. Paul puffed on a cigar that he had been saving for Jack’s return. For a short while both men simply gazed out into the soft tropical night.
‘How are you coping?’ Jack finally asked, breaking the meditative silence.
‘Times have been better but we are coping well enough,’ Paul answered, watching the smoke curl lazily on the still air. ‘I have thought about diversifying into tobacco growing. I met a young man in Moresby a while ago who was giving it a go over on the Laloki River just north of here. He’d done a bit of prospecting up in Morobe on the fields. Last I heard of him he was back to work a claim he won in a ballot.’
‘Anyone I know?’ Jack asked.
‘I don’t think so. He is from Tasmania. A young fellow by the name of Errol Flynn. He came here in ’27 or thereabouts. Worked for a while chartering a schooner and I heard he had a run-in with the Dutch up around the Sepik when he went poaching bird of paradise for their feathers. He even starred in a film made in Tahiti by the Americans. In the Wake of the Bounty, I think it was called. He’s a character with a reputation around Moresby for having an eye for the ladies.’
‘Better keep the lads away from him then,’ Jack grinned. ‘They seem to be at that age where trouble can start with just the whiff of perfume.’
‘Ahh . . . but to be young again,’ Paul sighed. ‘Those days up in Finschhafen and Munich before the war.’
‘Know what you mean,’ Jack responded quietly.
Where had the time gone, he thought sadly. He was approaching middle age and was to all appearances a successful man. But there was a loneliness in his life. He was losing Lukas to manhood and had no one else to share his life and dreams with. Oh, there had been short interludes with some very desirable women in Sydney, but in the end they had left him either because they found him too absorbed in his work or sensed that he was not with them in spirit. It was as if he lived with the ghost of a love that haunted not only him but anyone else who tried to get close to him. And the nights were still hell. The nightmares came less often but he would still feel his hands shake when something reminded him of the terrible war. Would it ever really go away? Almost fifteen years had passed and yet it was all still fresh in his memories.
At length Paul decided that he must retire. The copra ship was due and he would have an early start with Dademo to ensure all went smoothly in the loading. He bid Jack goodnight and left him alone on the verandah. He was not alone for long. Karin came out on the verandah and sat in the cane chair vacated by her husband.
‘Would you like coffee before retiring?’ she asked.
Jack tapped his pipe. ‘I have never told you what a wonderful woman you are,’ he said quietly. ‘You have raised Lukas to be the man I always wanted him to be.’
Karin sat very still listening to the words that poured from his heart. ‘You have a wonderful son,’ she said with a choke in her voice. ‘I would have been proud to be his mother.’
‘You were,’ Jack replied. ‘More than you will ever really know. All those years that Lukas grew up on the plantation he knew your love. A love as good as any mother could have given a boy in need of one.’
Karin leant across and touched Jack on the arm. ‘I will always treasure every letter that he has sent to me from school, every hug
he ever gave me, every time he and Karl were naughty little boys. And now we are about to let our sons go out into the world and learn to be men. Oh Jack, I only wish that you had found the love that Paul and I have.’
‘I nearly did.’
‘Erika,’ Karin scowled. ‘She was never meant for you. She was not the person that you imagined, Jack. Although, as the sister of my husband I shouldn’t say it, Erika was a disturbed young woman. I think that even Paul knew that an evil existed in her that no one spoke of in his family.’
Jack took in a deep breath and sighed. Karin could sense his pain and wanted to reach out and take it from the man she had come to love, a wild and reckless foil for her Paul. ‘You still miss her.’
‘Not a day goes past when something doesn’t remind me of her,’ Jack said. ‘Not a woman I meet who I don’t search for Erika in. It’s been almost ten years and I still find myself wondering where she is and what she is doing.’
Karin fell into a silence as she struggled with what she knew. ‘I can answer some of your questions,’ she finally said, and Jack looked at her sharply. ‘Erika is married and living in Munich. She has a daughter just a little older than Angelika.’
‘Has she contacted you?’ he asked in a calm voice, attempting to hide what he felt.
And for a moment Karin regretted telling the Australian what she knew when she saw the pain etched in his face. ‘Paul received a letter some weeks ago,’ Karin replied. ‘It is from an old friend of his in Munich.’
‘Who is she married to?’ he asked.
‘A young man she met just before we left for Australia.’