by Phil Jarratt
‘Isabel, sir … Isabel Letham.’
‘Mighty pleased to make your acquaintance, Isabel, and please call me Paoa. That’s what my friends call me.’
The handsome Hawaiian held onto her slender hand for endless seconds. She was dazzled by the brilliance of his smile. And then Harry Hay broke the spell.
‘Duke,’ Harry Hay said, claiming Duke’s attention. ‘I want you to meet one of our finest young surfers and lifesavers, Claude West.’ Claude was visibly shaking as Duke swung back into his practised routine. ‘Pleased to meet you, Claude, and you must call me Paoa.’
‘This is one special fellow,’ Hay continued. Claude knew what was coming and struggled to conceal his embarrassment. ‘Were it not for Claude, your friend Cecil Healy may not be alive today.’
Duke showed genuine interest as Hay recounted the story of the last patrol day of the season, just before Easter, when Cecil Healy had swum without a line through heavy surf to reach two youths in trouble at the south end of Manly. Although he had managed to reach them and keep them from floating onto the rocks at Shelley Beach, even a champion such as he could not reach shore without a line.
While Healy struggled gamely to keep the two lolling heads above the water, another swimmer made his way out with the line, only to be reeled back in by a panicked crowd on the beach. North Steyne surfer Steve McKelvey was next to try, but when he, too, was hauled ashore prematurely, the beefy footballer expressed his disapproval by banging a few heads together as soon as he had recovered his breath, then stood guard by the reel with his fists ready as club junior Claude West, not quite sixteen, took the line and swam to the rescue. Slowly, carefully, the four men were brought ashore with no loss of life. After a similar rescue in 1911, Healy had been awarded a medal by the Royal Humane Society. Perhaps more medals might be forthcoming before the summer was out, Harry Hay wondered aloud.
‘The young chap’s made of the right stuff,’ Hay concluded. Duke nodded, taking in the story. He leaned forward and pumped Claude’s hand again.
‘I want to thank you personally and sincerely for your bravery, my friend. Cecil Healy is one of the finest men I’ve met, so I’m in your debt. If there’s any way I can help you while I’m here, please let me know.’
Speechless, Claude just nodded in response. Duke turned towards Hay, lightening the mood. ‘Say, where the hell is Cec, Harry? I wanted to get him up on the board.’
There was laughter all around, but it was Bill Hill who answered Duke. ‘Business commitments, I believe,’ he said offhandedly, wheeling the Hawaiian in the direction of Bill Corbett and the other pressmen. In another part of the yard the musical group known as the Violet Club (regulars at Sunday tea parties) began to harmonise on ‘God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen’. Mr McIntyre signalled to his staff that it was time to tap the beer keg out the back.
While the beer and the toasts began to flow at Boomerang, Cecil Healy was in his city office, typing up the account agreed to with Bill Hill:
Representatives of the Press were invited to witness a private exhibition of surf-board riding by Kahanamoku at Freshwater on Thursday. It was to have been the previous day, but the intention accidentally became public property, and as several thousand people were attracted to the vicinity, Association officials decided to postpone it. Business considerations, unfortunately, prevented the writer from being present.
The shadows were lengthening at Boomerang, the Violet Club had packed up instruments and left. Pressmen with deadlines were already back in the city, excepting Bill Corbett, who had filed for the late edition by telephone early in the day, and had since gone tankard for tankard with the Freshwater lads.
It was just a small group now, and when Duke was prevailed upon for a song, he didn’t need much persuasion. Fetching his ukulele from his room, he sang a song that was special to him, to all Hawaiians, in fact.
‘It was written a long time ago by Lili’uokalani, the last queen of Hawaii,’ Duke said, sliding his fingers across the strings. ‘I was just a little boy when the queen was overthrown and locked up in her own palace for years. She passed the time by writing the story of her life, and writing some beautiful songs, like this one. In Hawaii, we call it “Aloha Oe”, meaning “Farewell to Thee”.’ He cleared his throat, strummed a soft chord and sang in a mellow, lilting baritone:
Aloha ’oe, aloha ’oe
E ke onaona noho I ka lipo
One fond embrace
A ho ’l a ’e au
Until we meet again.
Watching and listening through the kitchen door, Isabel had tears streaming down her face at the simple beauty of the moment, and she noticed that some of the men, their emotions perhaps unleashed by the afternoon’s beer, were similarly teary. When Duke finished his song, there was no call for an encore, because nothing could have finished the day more perfectly.
Chapter 13
Christmas Day
Duke was awake long before dawn. He quietly slipped into his bathers, picked up his board from the back of the house, hoisted it onto his shoulder and hauled it down the track to the beach, digging it into the sand at the foot of the dunes while he surveyed the grey pre-dawn.
It was perfectly silent on the beach, save for the distant rumble of the breaking waves and the crunching of the sand along the shore, sounds so natural to him that he barely registered them. There was not a breath of wind. The unfamiliar southern stars twinkled their last as they began to fade to grey. As the Daily Telegraph’s essayist described it:
A pleasanter day could not have dawned. As the first rays of the morning sun tinged the calm ripples of the great Pacific, and turned blue night into crimson dawn, the earth was at peace. Cool zephyrs carried the sounds of some distant band of music heralding the break of day with ‘Christians Awake’; occasionally very rarely some choir could be heard saluting the great day, but the prevailing note everywhere was one of peace.
The turbulence of the ocean Duke had encountered the previous day had given way to an orderly procession of breakers, and even now he could see that it was not so very different from a small day at Canoe Surf—well, closer to it than yesterday, at any rate—and that thought momentarily filled him with longing for his home and his extended family on the Kalia flat.
It was not yet Christmas at home. He felt like sending the family a telegram, but surely the preparations for the Yuletide luau would be well underway by now, with the whole clan contributing. Momma would have already picked the young and tender leaves of the taro plant, mixed them up with chicken and baked them in coconut milk to make the delicious food that gives the feast its name. Papa and the uncles would have killed the pigs in readiness, and the younger children would have cleaned the lauhala (grass) mats and collected the leaves, ferns and native flowers for the centrepiece decorations that would sit upon the low tables on the lanai. Duke could almost taste the bowls of poi, the sweet potatoes, the strips of dried meat and fish covered in leaves.
Duke was a man of the world, a traveller not frequently given to homesickness after these recent years, but right now he knew he must fill his mind with other things or else tumble into the pit of melancholy that was the curse of all beach boys who stayed too long from their island home. He picked up his surfboard again and launched it into the shallows, then paddled fast through the break and into the line-up. The first visible waves of the day were drawn to him like a magnet, and soon he was upright and speeding along the green face, the cool, clear water parting beneath him.
‘How’re da waves, brudda?’
Walking back up to Boomerang, Duke was momentarily startled by George Cunha, sitting alone on the stoop reading a prayer book, then he laughed at his young friend. Born in Honolulu of Irish and Portuguese descent on his mother’s side, George, like his hapa-haole namesake, Brudda George Freeth, was sometimes more Hawaiian than the full bloods.
‘I shoot a few, brudda. You wanna talk da kine?’ Bot
h men laughed as Duke lapsed into the pidgin of the beach boys. It seemed like ages since they had spoken it. ‘Why don’t you take the board, George? Go ride a few.’
‘Another time, Paoa. As soon as we’ve had breakfast, Mr McIntyre has organised to take us to church. You’ll come, no?’
Duke carefully laid the board on the saw horses at the back of the house and sat down on the stair below George. ‘Church, huh? Well, you know what they say, bra. Refusal often offends.’
After the service, Don McIntyre introduced Duke and George to Hugh McIntosh. ‘Gentlemen, may I introduce Mr Hugh McIntosh, the leading light of entertainment and sport here in Sydney, and a great supporter of the Surf Bathing Association, I might add.’
While McIntosh greeted each of the Hawaiians warmly, his attention remained fixed on Duke, as if assessing how many ticket sales he might be worth. ‘It is indeed an honour, Duke, and I hope you will forgive my impertinence in addressing you thus, but we have so many acquaintances in common, I feel I know you.’
‘Please, call me Paoa,’ Duke said with a smile. ‘That’s what my friends call me.’
“Wowsers’ Camp”, Freshwater, Christmas 1907. Photo courtesy Warringah Library Local Studies.
‘I have had the pleasure to host Alexander Hume Ford during his Sydney visits,’ McIntosh continued, ‘and of course Jack London came out as my guest to cover the Burns-Johnson fight. More recently, I helped out our mutual friend, Healy, financially for his Stockholm campaign. And, of course, our women’s team. I believe you have made the acquaintance of Miss Durack and Miss Wylie. In fact I’m sure you will have as fond memories of Miss Wylie as she does of you.’
Duke kept smiling as McIntosh prattled on, but he did not like where this was going. Now he was back to Jack Johnson, the heavyweight champion who had made him a fortune, and how he had been a huge hit at the Tivoli Theatre. ‘You could be just as popular on my stage, Duke, and it would be lucrative. I know you’re an amateur, but there are ways and means. We will talk, won’t we?’
Duke noticed Isabel out the corner of his eye and began to excuse himself, Francis Evans filling the void with dexterity. ‘Yes, Mr McIntosh, we will arrange a meeting …’ Duke turned and walked the short distance to where Isabel stood with her parents, her mother quietly elegant in beige chiffon and bonnet, her father uncomfortably sweaty in a plain dark suit, and Isabel simply radiant in a cotton voile gown with skirts frilling from the waist. Duke extended his hand. ‘Merry Christmas to you, Miss Letham.’
‘And to you, sir,’ trilled Isabel. She introduced her mother, Jeannie, then her father, William, who was unsmiling as he shook Duke’s hand, but then spluttered: ‘We live not far from Boomerang. You are welcome, sir, to take tea with us at your convenience.’
‘I would be honoured,’ said Duke, smiling at the senior Lethams and holding eye contact with William until the old Scot believed that here was a man who might be trusted. He then bid the family good day and politely took his leave, pausing briefly to turn and observe Isabel as she sashayed down Raglan Street at her father’s arm.
Next on the agenda was a visit to the Manly Swimming Club’s Christmas morning carnival, at which Duke excelled in the plum-pudding scramble, and the Hawaiians saw for the first time Australian swimming’s handicap system. Impressed, Francis Evans later wrote:
I believe that the system of handicapping, which is so largely in use throughout Australia and New Zealand, if introduced into this country would boost swimming a thousand per cent. It not only tends to the development of the younger and inexperienced swimmer but also the speedy swimmer; further, it puts everyone on an equal footing and gives them an equal chance to win … In Manly on Christmas Day I had the opportunity of witnessing a handicap race wherein 125 contestants participated. This, I may state is a world’s record as to entries.
After lunch at the Pier Hotel with Cecil Healy and Charles Paterson and Mrs Paterson, the Hawaiians trained in the Manly Gentlemen’s Baths on East Esplanade for an hour and a half in front of a small but appreciative audience, before being received again for afternoon tea by the committee of the Manly Swimming Club. Towelling down in the change rooms after their laps session, George said, ‘Paoa, what did that fellow at the church this morning mean about Mina Wylie?’
Duke sighed. ‘Oh my, it’s in the past, George. I don’t think I want to talk about Miss Wylie. She’s a honey, that’s for sure, but I ain’t going to pay gossip no mind, not then, not now. And that’s all it ever was, brudda. Just gossip.’
Tommy Adrian drove the Hawaiians back to Freshwater in the late afternoon. At Duke’s instigation, Francis had requested a free night for the team, followed by a low-key weekend spent mostly at Boomerang, before they moved back into the city to prepare for the Domain carnival. But Tommy had other ideas.
‘Excuse me, Paoa,’ he called over his shoulder. ‘A bunch of the lads from the swimming club are camped up at Narrabeen tonight, cooking fish on the fire and having a singalong. You’re all very welcome.’
‘Will there be beer, Tommy?’ asked Duke, smiling.
‘I expect so.’
‘But what about your training program? You got some big races coming up, too.’
‘Yes, but it’s Christmas, Paoa, and even Cecil Healy says that all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.’
‘I’ll bet he does,’ laughed Duke. ‘But as much as I’d like to sit by a fire and sing songs and drink beer, tonight I got a date with my pillow, lumpy though she is.’
Miss Spink from the Kiosk had prepared a cold supper of salad and chicken wings that sat under mesh covers on the kitchen table next to a large pitcher of Mrs Pfoeffer’s lemonade. The Hawaiians ate quietly and perfunctorily, exhaustion having overcome the Christmas spirit, but when Francis got up from the table, he asked Duke to sit with him outside while he rolled a cigarette. They sat in silence at a card table under the moonlight, but when Francis had lit his smoke and puffed into the half-darkness, he said: ‘Is there anything I should know about Stockholm?’
‘Yes. The water is very, very cold.’ Duke laughed heartily at his own humour, but barely raised a grin from the team manager. ‘You mean any nasty surprises from over there that may come back to bite us?’
‘Anything that might raise, ah, issues, shall we say.’
‘Francis, one day soon when we’re both in the mood, I’ll tell you everything you might want to know about the Stockholm Olympics. But in the meantime, before you pay too much attention to what our friend Mr McIntosh might drop into a conversation to spice it up a little, maybe you should do some homework on this guy. I never met him until this morning, just like you, but I can tell you, Francis, I heard plenty about him, and it ain’t all good.’ Duke chuckled again, taking the edge off his words, but Francis had never heard Duke speak ill of anyone before. He made a mental note to do some digging and ask a few questions before his next meeting with Hugh McIntosh, to which, unbeknown to Duke, he had already committed.
Chapter 14
Boxing Day
It had been the quietest Christmas Day the present generation had known, the newspapers said:
It could hardly have been otherwise. Men may be callous, men may forget, but it was difficult for a whole community to forget, even yesterday, when Nature’s prevailing note was one of repose, that at the other end of the world things are happening. Thousands of Britons are fighting in the cold, bitter trenches of Flanders. Thousands of Australians are ready to do the same in Egypt … There was never a Christmas Day spent when the god of war had taken such complete command of the earth.
But if Christmas Day had been, for the most part, mild of weather and bleak of mood, it was clear from soon after dawn that Boxing Day would not follow suit. The day of the year above all others when leisure was celebrated would be spent at the beach by thousands of Sydneysiders. The Daily Telegraph reported:
Boxing Day of 1914 … war or no war, the
great bulk of people seemed to recognise it to be the proper thing to go, either individually or in family parties, to some pleasure resort and there spend the day more or less ‘quietly’. On Saturday, surf-bathing, that sport which more than anything else threatens to sap the popularity of the national pastime of cricket, was indulged in at all the suitable beaches, with more zest than ever … the Manly steamers carried huge crowds throughout the day, the fine, roomy boats making good time in the journey between the city and the favourite watering place. Thousands of merry-makers picnicked at Curl Curl, Freshwater and Collaroy, and other popular resorts, whilst Manly itself resembled a busy anthill.
‘It’s a bloody scorcher already,’ said Claude, having trotted across the rocks from Lewers’s Tunnel to meet Isabel at Undercliff Street. ‘Oh, sorry, Issie.’ She gave him that silly-boy look. As if she hadn’t heard swearing before.
Not yet seven, the morning had a bedraggled, weary feel, as though it had been up all night celebrating and now just wanted to get its job done and get some rest. A warm westerly breeze rustled the tussocks on the sand hills and streaky cirrus clouds patterned the sky. When the wind blew off the land in winter here, the mornings were cold, clear and decisive; you knew what the day would bring. But when it blew this way in high summer, anything might happen. It didn’t take much to set the spinifex alight, and in the few summers she had spent in Freshwater, Isabel had twice seen fire race down the valley towards the beach, devouring shacks made of little more than kindling, despite the heroic efforts of volunteer firemen, like Amos Randell, Bill Nixon, Roy Doyle and her own father.
A wind gust sprayed sand in their eyes and hair as the teenagers made their way across the dune towards the change sheds and the surf club, and it took them a while to realise they were not alone on the beach. Claude took hold of Isabel’s arm and pointed towards the water’s edge. On the firm sand at the tide line, Duke lay perfectly still and straight on top of his wooden surfboard, his big, strong hands clasped behind his head.