How are your quarters?
Quite comfortable, thanks, Ma.
And you wouldn't do anything ill-advised?
Of course not, Ma. I intend to come back and take you dancing.
The conversation sounds credible. Though it's dying out, that understated language is still used by the sort of British gents my second husband, Laurie Burden, had business with. But in Doucette's day, it was a sort of safety net thrown over the cruelties that young men could inflict, and have inflicted on them.
The evening of his visit to his mother and aunt, Doucette caught the village taxi to the local railway station. He was about to be returned to Australia by a succession of military aircraft. A quarter of an hour after he left, an urgent telegram arrived for him. After some discussion, Lady Doucette and her stepsister called the police to come and collect the telegram and rush it to the station. The train had already left for London by the time they got it there, so they brought it back to Lady Doucette. They must open the telegram, the two women decided, so that its contents could be relayed to a number at SOE in Baker Street, London.
The telegram, from the International Committee of the Red Cross, begged to inform that Doucette's wife and son, Minette and Michael, were alive, and prisoners of the Japanese. They were presently held in Satsuoka internment camp in Japan, and were in moderately good health. The SS Tonkin, on which they had been travelling to join Doucette in India, had been intercepted in the Indian Ocean by the German raider Jaguar. Its commander gave Tonkin's captain a choice between capture and being blown to pieces. For the sake of his passengers, the captain chose capture. The Germans put a crew aboard Tonkin and sailed it to the Japanese port of Yokohama. From there, the one hundred and thirty passengers were taken by train to the upland town of Satsuoka and internment in a convent building.
The personnel at SOE failed to get the news to Doucette before his plane took off from Croydon airfield, but it was waiting for him when his plane touched down in Malta. Immediately, he sent a message to IRD, and Captain Foxhill passed the welcome news to Mortmain and Leo, who brought it home to Dotty and me.
By now, Dotty had forgiven Rufus for whatever had happened earlier. She and I had become firmer friends still, and on the days we didn't work, she showed me things to read – Auden, and TS Eliot's Prufrock verses and Mrs Dalloway, Sons and Lovers, and Stella Gibbon's Cold Comfort Farm. I began to write a few tentative verses myself, a sign that Dotty was having a potent influence on me. The other thing about her was that she spoke with great frankness, to the point that would actually be considered impoliteness in my own painfully polite family. In a bush town, a bank manager like my father was considered one of the gentry, and although the children of undistinguished English and Scottish immigrants, my parents did their best to behave in the manner in which they thought the British privileged classes did. With only an occasional etiquette guide, and tips on good behaviour in the weekend papers and the Women's Weekly for directions, they avoided uttering bruising truths. Dotty didn't. Thus the morning after Leo and Rufus brought Doucette's good news home, I found Dotty very depressed and, over tea, she was quick to tell me why.
This will make Doucette even more unstoppable, she told me. I'm glad the woman and her bairn have been saved, of course. But Jesse Creed showed me a report about how short the Japanese are of steamships. Doucette will want to blow up the entire Japanese merchant fleet now, and end the war. And he'll want Rufus and Leo with him. And Rufus will go of course.
I felt a pulse of fear too, and for the first time. Leo was so much part of my world that I had never doubted his survival. To an extent this was a symptom of my innocence. Young captains bearing the DSO and resembling Errol Flynn weren't in any real danger, were they? Leo had told me he and Rufus were chiefly advising IRD on equipment, and they kept fit because at any stage they might be needed as instructors. Leo had also mentioned that he and Rufus might be sent by sub on a non-attack run to lay a depot here or there in the islands, but would I keep that to myself. I asked him was he comfortable in a submarine, and he said, No reason why not. I mean, they've got air down there.
It was partly Dotty's unconscious demeanour of knowing so much more than I did. If she, a novelist and a poet, had grounds for alarm, then alarm must be the proper mode. I wanted Leo to be like Major Enright, stuck to a desk in Melbourne, going out to Essendon now and then to practise putting wing charges on military aircraft, so that he could in turn instruct commandoes on how it was done.
The simple truth was that I found it easier to believe in my own death than in Leo's. Earlier in the war he had come through the bombing of Darwin, and through whatever he and Rufus and Doucette had done. And in fact, the main lesson he took from the good news about Doucette was that he might now learn something about his father. From his contacts in intelligence, he told me, he suspected his father had also been shipped to Japan. But at least I had not got from him any sense that he intended to blow up Japanese fleets as a way of personally liberating his father. His father's capture was a phenomenon locked up in the giant nature of the war, beyond any individual input.
But Dotty's concern about Doucette and his plans put the first shock of panic into me.
As Doucette himself approached Australia, aircraft by aircraft, outpost by outpost, it seemed that the entirety of IRD devoted itself to interpreting Mrs Doucette's and her son's imprisonment. And Captain Foxhill had acquired through Colonel Jesse Creed a remarkable American aerial reconnaissance photograph, taken from a few hundred feet, of the building and its grounds, a photograph which Leo would show me one lunchtime when I came to his office. It was of a convent like any Catholic convent anywhere, but surrounded by rich farmland. The letters PW were hugely visible in the front garden of the place. The weather on that plateau, Foxhill had ascertained, ranged between 0° F and 75° F.
It struck me as very strange for the returning Doucette that he should know exactly where and at what temperature his wife and child were held captive. It doesn't seem so bad, said Leo of the place in the photograph. You could see in him the hope that his own father was held somewhere equally unthreatening.
One evening, Leo and Rufus came home with a gleam in their eyes. Doucette had returned. There would be a party at the Foxhills'.
Eight
In the office we congratulated the Boss on the news about his wife and son. Rufus and I noticed how hollowed-out he looked though, but he was excited too. When he smoked he left his cigarette unlit for a time and jabbed the air with it, telling us about the Silver Bullets, the new submersibles he had ridden in England. He showed us photographs and plans of them. He had a feverish light in his eyes which picked us up too.
We realised, I think, that we'd got a bit flabby in his absence. Our dagger-throwing skills improved marginally, so that maybe we could have got a job in a sideshow. But we had been drifting. Now we could feel the current was back, and the current was Charlie Doucette, the Boss.
He told us the submersibles would be testing for some chaps. Some of them wouldn't like this new device, there'd be cases of claustrophobia and panic, since you could lose all sense of up and down when riding them. I knew I was going to find it hard, just from the description of the tight mask, but I can't imagine that Rufus or Rubinsky or Blinkhorn or Doucette's old bowman Pat Bantry will have any problems. And we were exhilarated to think of as many as twenty of these near invisible craft creeping into anchorages with loads of limpets.
At calmer times, the Boss said that he had been rather comforted to see that reconnaissance photograph of his wife's prison.
Good old Jesse Creed provided that, Rufus reminded him.
Kind of him, the Boss admitted. The place, he said, certainly didn't look like a hellhole, and the good thing was in that climate Minette and the boy were a long way from the risk of malaria and dengue fever and beri-beri. He didn't make much of it in military terms, he didn't make the news the basis for any 'once more unto the breach, dear friends' speech. So we were a bit surprised by his in
tensity in the next overall planning meeting.
We were all in the conference room with its empty fireplace and a late afternoon hot wind from the Western District was blowing in at the door to the balcony. Everyone seemed awed by Doucette for a number of reasons – the submersibles as well as everything else. That stale old bugger Doxey had the chair of course, and there was Foxhill, Enright, D/Plans, the head of Navy Plans as well, then the head of IRD intelligence, and Colonel Jesse Creed. Rufus reported on the junks a shipyard in Melbourne was making for us, and the fact that the shipwrights thought the war was as good as over, and had no inhibitions about going on strike. It couldn't be predicted, said Rufus, whether the junks would be ready in time for use before that year's monsoon. Jesse Creed reported that the proposed base on Great Natuna would be equipped with Bolton longrange radios, but that operatives would be fitted out and trained in the use of the new hand radios called walkie-talkies. The Boltons would enable contact with IRD and the Melbourne Ultra signal centre, of which Jesse Creed was supervisor.
All at once, the Boss said, That's all very well, nice equipment I'm sure, Colonel Creed.
He was punching at the air with an unsharpened pencil. There was blueness round his eyes and I don't think he'd been sleeping well since coming back.
But, he said, I'm a little disappointed to find that no US submarine reconnaissance reports on the Natunas grace our agenda.
Creed said, I too am disappointed by that fact. I hear from General MacArthur's office that the combat demands on our submarines are delaying all that. I can assure you that I have labelled all my requests URGENT.
The Boss looked away towards a far corner of the room. He asked, But will we be waiting this time next year, and fobbed off indefinitely with the same excuses?
Creed told him he would certainly not expect that and would be personally disappointed if that were the case.
Well, said the Boss, I can only judge from results. I proceeded to SOE in London on the basis that something pressing had to be done, and that I must find some device to achieve that end. I have returned, the equipment has been loaded on a freighter and is on the way to us, and both the engineer-cum-inventor and the instructor from SOE are also on their way to take their role in the enterprise. I can't do any more, but you have not done what has to be done.
Creed said he was not the final authority on sub deployment. He said it was a matter of negotiation between himself and General Willoughby, his boss.
Our Boss said, Oh, General Willoughby! That very good friend of all British enterprises!
Creed got angry at that. He hoped the Boss wasn't accusing him of insincerity. That would be a serious hindrance to our new relationship, he declared.
But the Boss really put it to him, and not for the first time I began to feel sorry for the American, who didn't seem such a bad fellow. That's the whole point, the Boss told him. There's been no cooperation. You sit in on our deliberations, while yours remain undisclosed and mysterious and inconclusive.
We could all see that Creed was very angry now. But the Boss did not let up. For all I know, you might go off to General Willoughby and say, This and this are what that curious Doucette and his Australian chums are up to. So let's keep them busy with great dreams and promises.
Major Doxey ineffectually called for peace, gentlemen.
Doucette declared, I have an entire regiment of friends, and my own flesh and blood, not to mention eighteen thousand Australian prisoners, held by the enemy. I resent the Americans depicting my motives as empire-reclaiming.
Order! cried Doxey, and reminded the Boss that in his absence we had all managed these meetings without any rancour.
Then I have to tell you, said Doucette, that I'm appalled by the lack of progress you've made. We might as well have rented out the work to the British submarine flotilla on the other side of the country.
Major Enright shook himself like a dog who has just woken up to find there's a bone of interest to him in the room, and he put in his tuppence worth to cover his posterior. He said, You'll see in the minutes I've put a request in to the air force chaps to see if they can do a reconnaissance of the Natunas for us. I've also been onto D/Plans at MacArthur's HQ in Brisbane, and they report there has certainly been an unavoidable delay with submarine reconnaissance.
This did nothing to soothe either of the combatants. Creed said he didn't need to prove to Doucette that he was trying as hard as he could to get the joint endeavour off the ground. You treat everything I do, Doucette, like an arrogant Limey eccentric.
I happen to be an arrogant Irish eccentric, the Boss reminded him again, just for the sake of contradiction.
Doxey ended up clapping his hands, demanding that both gentlemen desist from further insult and innuendo. The Boss managed merely an icy imitation of being polite. He said that submarine reconnaissance will be essential to the Natunas plan. But he hadn't seen any indication that our friend Colonel Creed was as anxious as we were to get things in place.
Creed did a more diplomatic job, speaking about how he could understand that after the stress of a journey to Britain, and a long airborne return to Australia, anyone might be a bit edgy. And he himself wished he had made more progress.
I think Rufus and I felt a bit guilty. We knew as well as anyone that there'd be no running of a junk into Singapore once the monsoon turned against us. Yet although Rufus had visited the shipyard, to see the craft being built, we had personally placed no urgency on American reconnaissance. The Boss, coming back, had clarified everything, had got us all out of our file-skimming stupor, all our lazy initialling of memos and reports. It was like Peter Pan coming back to Neverland and straightening out the boys.
Back in our office after the meeting, the door with our knife scars in it firmly closed, Doucette sat behind his desk and made a gesture that Rufus and I should grab a chair each and pull up to it. The Boss's calm had returned. It was as if he had never lost it in the first place.
You're the pair whose opinion means something, he said. What do you think of Creed?
Rufus told us Dotty thought he was a decent fellow. She said he really liked that last jaunt of ours, Boss.
The Boss thought about this and remarked that Dotty's loyalty to all of us was exemplary.
Oh yes, Rufus agreed, but he reminded the Boss she saw through people pretty easily too, and she'd see through Creed if he meant us any malice.
The Boss thought and then declared, Doxey and the others will never understand my position. In some ways I don't blame Creed because he's been put in place in this committee to spy for General Willoughby. A fellow has to do what his superiors tell him. But I blame him for the hypocrisy of pretending to be a friend and supporter while he's doing us in.
Rufus said, I wouldn't have thought it was all pretence, Boss.
But again the Boss said Rufus was a kind man. Creed might amaze everyone by coming up with a reconnaissance of Great Natuna in the next few weeks. But the Boss didn't think that likely. So he wanted us to start planning a mission of our own. Back to where the Japs and MacArthur both don't want us to go, he said. We'd have to build up some records and files but we'd keep them amongst ourselves till it became clear Creed was useless. We wouldn't be left high and dry without a plan when Creed fails us.
Rufus asked him, Back to Singapore?
The Boss said, That's the neighbourhood we know. We'll call it Memerang. Remember those Malayan otters that we swam with that afternoon at Pandjang? Charming little blighters, but you can't see them coming in the water, and with these submersibles . . .
We talked away with each other, spinning theories. One idea was that Rufus could captain one of those junks they were building in Melbourne, and take it up off Sumatra to Pompong Island, say, while the rest of the party travelled by sub with the submersibles aboard it in the mine tubes, meeting up with him within reach of Singapore. There was that group of British subs operating from Western Australia, and the Boss knew the flotilla commander, Shadwell. So after junk and
sub met, everything could go over to the junk which could take us right up into the Singapore roads. We'd use twenty of the little submersibles, the Silver Bullets, said the Boss. Imagine the mayhem. Whereas I'm sure that this big pirate show they're talking about now has as much reality as the Wizard of Oz.
So you don't want to involve D/Plans? asked Rufus.
For God's sake not yet, Rufus, said the Boss. He's hopeless.
Rufus murmured, Yes. I can't say I'm sorry I tupped his wife.
This confession Rufus made wasn't up for discussion by anyone. The Boss asked for no further information on this, and as for me, I knew enough to confuse me already. I didn't like it, the fact Rufus took his chances with other women. To tell the truth, I'm a bit scandalised about the whole thing. For poor Dotty's sake as much as anything. And even though I know he's the bravest man there is, I have this permanent suspicion that it might affect the way he behaved, way out in some archipelago somewhere.
Nine
Ilearned a great deal through the Mortmains about life in Malaya before the war, and of how Rufus first met Doucette.
Doucette, and a friend of his from his garrison life in Belfast, Billy Lewis, owned a 19-foot yacht. They used to sail up the east coast of Malaya on the south-west monsoon. The east coast was not much used for recreational sailing, because it took some doing to get out there on the south-west monsoon, and during the north-east monsoon it was impossible.
Billy Lewis and Doucette shared a similar hatred of peacetime garrison work in Selarang Barracks. Rufus seemed to think that Billy and Doucette also had problems keeping up with the mess expenses, and living cheaply on the boat was a great saving as well as a great relief. In a 'good' British regiment, an officer might need hundreds of pounds a year to keep up with mess and sporting activities, and the Doucettes sent their son only a modest yearly allowance.
The Widow & Her Hero Page 10