by Phil Jarratt
‘Do you think he slept there?’ asked Claude.
‘Maybe.’
Suddenly the big Hawaiian moved. They watched, riveted, hoping that this was not the beginning of some secret morning rite of Duke’s, but in another way hoping it was. Duke rolled to one side, stretching his long body, then repeated the stretch on the other side. Next he spread his arms across the sand and rolled his thighs until his legs were above his head. Isabel marvelled at the way he moved, so elegantly casual even as he twisted his torso into impossible positions. She was still busy admiring him when she noticed that he had twisted his head so far around that he was now looking directly at her.
As the hot flush of embarrassment radiated from her face through the rest of the body, Duke broke into his broad smile and, abandoning his routine, sat up in the sand and waved to them to join him.
‘Come on, Issie,’ said Claude. ‘He wants us to go down.’
‘I’m not so sure, Claude. You go on.’
‘Don’t be so bleedin’ silly,’ Claude shouted over his shoulder as he marched across the sand, and hesitantly, Isabel followed.
‘Well, good morning,’ said Duke, drawing himself up off the sand to greet the youngsters. He extended his huge hand to both: Claude shook it vigorously, Isabel slipped her hand into his for a moment, then performed an awkward little curtsy. ‘I do hope you had a wonderful Christmas with your families. I certainly enjoyed mine, even though my ohana’s a long ways from here. I mean my family. That’s what we call it in Hawaii, although it kind of means all of our family and friends, everyone you love.’
Claude and Isabel had sat down in the sand next to Duke without really noticing it, mesmerised by his chatter, the most they had heard from him. Granted, they had spent very little time with him, but here, on a lonely, windswept beach, he seemed at ease, in his true element.
‘I already feel like this is another home for me, right here. Maybe you guys can be my Freshwater ohana, and our hui can be at Boomerang Camp with all the good people I’ve met there.’
The idea of being part of Duke’s extended family thrilled Claude and Isabel. Claude felt confident enough now to ask a question. ‘Duke …’
‘It’s Paoa, remember?’
‘Paoa, are you going to ride the board?’
‘Oh, I had some fine shoots earlier just as it was getting light. That’s the best time, you know. The wind was still calm and the waves were smooth. I’ve had my share of rides for this morning, but maybe you’d like to try? Have you tried board-shooting, Claude?’
Claude shook his head but in fact he had two unpleasant memories of trying to ride a board at North Steyne the previous summer. He had been sitting at the shoreline, watching Tommy Walker showing the way for the handful of surf-riders out past the break—Walker was clearly the best at Manly, able to ride to shore with equal dexterity on his feet or on his head—when Geoff Wyld, a member of the North Steyne club, had offered him his board. Claude had managed two shoots on his belly, and for his third adopted a more adventurous pose, ready to leap to his feet. The board, however, had different ideas, plunging to the sand at take-off, then rebounding and delivering an almighty blow to Claude’s shoulder and the side of his head, causing him to see stars as he stumbled to the shore.
On the second occasion it was Walker himself who offered his board to a reluctant Claude. The result, although not as dramatic, was just as painful, with Claude managing to stand on the board momentarily before plunging face-first into the sand, causing a nose bleed that Walker had found amusing.
Claude West stretching on Freshwater Beach, 1915. Photo courtesy Warringah Library Local Studies.
Sensing Claude’s misgivings, Duke said, ‘I’ll swim out and help you onto a shoot or two. Come on, Claude, get into your bathers. You, too, Isabel.’ Neither had realised that in the excitement of their encounter with Duke, they had yet to visit the change rooms at the far side of the sunbathing enclosure. By the time they returned, Duke had the board ready in the shallows. He corrected Claude’s positioning, showed him how to paddle with deep and powerful strokes, then swam alongside as board and rider made their way slowly and uncertainly through the white water to the break.
Isabel sat on the beach with her sunbonnet bent around her ears to protect her from the sand carried on the warm wind. She was so intent on watching Claude’s progress that she was startled by the sound of a voice above her. ‘Why, good morning, ma’am,’ said George Cunha, dropping one of Mr McIntyre’s grey-and-white–striped ‘Turkish’ towels beside her and sitting down. ‘Mind if I join you?’ She did a bit, but said not, and they watched the lesson in silence.
After several failed attempts, Duke pushed the tail of the board hard as Claude paddled it onto the face of a wave and used the sudden momentum to leap to his feet as the board angled across the smooth green wall. Isabel and George could see Duke’s teeth glinting in the sunlight way out behind the break and realised that he was laughing as Claude struggled for balance on the speeding board. Then he launched himself into a body-shoot, flicking his frame across the wave, up and down, before finishing the ride with a ‘porpoise roll’ right in front of them. Isabel noticed with some trepidation that he was gazing intently at her as he walked up the beach towards them.
‘Now it’s your turn, young lady.’
Isabel nervously fidgeted with her Canadian swimsuit as Duke carefully pointed the board seaward and motioned for her to climb aboard. His giant hands guided her shoulders to the centre of balance and he steered her into the deeper water, explaining how to paddle. She felt his hands on her back as he pushed her through the broken waves and she shuddered just a little. She concentrated on the frightening physical reality of the moment, following Duke’s instructions and guiding the heavy board through the water to the best of her ability.
They pushed through another wave and she felt an enormous and sudden jolt as Duke clambered onto the board in the prone position behind her, his chin resting on her buttocks, his hands brushing hers as he sliced through the water.
‘Come on, let’s catch a wave together.’
The big man slid to the back of the board and turned it around with ease, using his feet as propellers. A wave loomed behind them and before Isabel even had time to consider her position, to express a reaction, Duke was digging deep into the green face of the wave as they gathered speed. He leapt to his feet, leaned forward and guided her first onto her knees then to her feet in front of him, his hands now firm around her slender waist.
As the wind flicked salt spray across them and they raced shoreward, she felt his body sheltering her, stabilising her. Suddenly she became aware that Duke was laughing—he seemed to do that a lot—as they came gliding into the shallows, and she wondered what involuntary noises she may have emitted in the dream-like twenty seconds that had passed since he had climbed aboard. And then they bottomed out on the sand and he skipped off the side of the board and lifted her lightly onto the beach.
‘Why, thank you, ma’am,’ he said. ‘You’re a natural.’
Claude was clapping his hands and whistling. ‘Good show, Issie!’ Ecstatic, bewildered, embarrassed and just a little bit askew, Isabel adjusted her swimsuit, not knowing where to look.
Fishermen were beginning to appear at both ends of the beach, carrying their rods and bait buckets out onto the rocks. A man was guiding a dog on a lead down the path from Beach House. Figures appeared on the sand dunes as the camps came to life and the civilised day began. Duke and George Cunha were ready to go. As they walked back to the surf club, Isabel, regaining her composure, spoke nervously in a tiny voice. ‘I … I don’t know how to thank you. It was … simply …’
‘It was my pleasure, young lady, entirely mine.’
Taking a deep breath, she tried again. ‘Father was wondering … come to tea, you and your teammates. Would five o’clock suit? Twelve Foam Street. I could draw you a map, or I could
come and get you.’
‘Well, that would be a delight, Isabel, and please thank your father for his kindness. We’ll find our way there, don’t you worry.’
Isabel rides Duke’s board, Freshwater, 1915. Photo from the Letham Collection, Warringah Library Local Studies.
By late afternoon the hot, dry breeze of the morning had gone, but in its place was a stifling stillness that Duke and George felt all the more as they set off for Foam Street in their heavy going-out suits. Although it would have been quicker to cut straight down to Moore Street and follow the tracks across the settlement to the Letham residence, they decided to avoid walking along the rows of camps and having to engage in the same banter a dozen times over, and instead followed Undercliff Road back to the beach where the crowd of surf bathers and picnickers had thinned out considerably, and they sauntered with few interruptions along the tide line to the northern headland to join Evans Street. Consulting the ‘mud map’ provided by Donald McIntyre, it seemed they merely had to follow the rough gravel track that was Evans Street until it petered out, then veer right into Foam Street.
But there was no avoiding Amos Randell, who sat smoking his pipe on the steps at Camp City.
‘Good evening to yez,’ he said, tipping his cap. ‘I hope yez had a lovely Christmas. Perhaps yez would do me the honour of joining me in the billiard room for a little Christmas cheer?’
Duke explained that they were late for tea at the Lethams. ‘Ah, the Lethams is it? You tell Willie to bring yez down here afterwards for a game and a convivial. That would be grand.’
It was a little after five when they reached the end of Evans Street, where Claude was waiting for them. ‘Just in case you took a wrong turn,’ he said eagerly.
‘But what if we’d come the other way?’ asked Duke.
‘Same difference. Wherever you go this side of Freshie, you have to come past here, unless you’re a rabbit or a wallaby.’ Claude looked pleased with himself, so the men laughed at his remark while not quite following it. As he led them along the track to the point where it widened enough for automobiles, Claude added, ‘Thank you so much for letting me use your board, Paoa. That was bonzer. There’s just one thing. Perhaps you might not mention to Mr Letham that Issie had a shoot. He’s a bit funny about that.’
‘Our lips are sealed,’ said Duke.
Twelve Foam Street was a simple wooden bungalow set back from the track, with the family automobile parked to one side of the sandy lawn, a thick hessian tarpaulin neatly protecting it from the elements. Next to the car sandstone slabs formed a path to the two steps up onto the timber-deck verandah, which, Duke noted, was very much like the verandah at Camp City, and, for that matter, the one at Boomerang and the surf club. Willie Letham was outside smoking a pipe. He was a thickset man, moustachioed and clad in dark trousers with suspenders over a white shirt. He had attached his Sunday-best collar, although the lack of a necktie suggested the slightly casual nature of the occasion.
Once the men had exchanged cordialities, Willie ushered them inside and down a central hallway to a back room, overlooking the small garden of roses and other inappropriate cool-climate species struggling for life in the heat, interspersed with shrubby natives and a few rows of vegetables. While the rooms to either side of the hall seemed somewhat dingy, this back room—what Duke and George knew as a lanai—was light and bright, the late-afternoon sun refracting through the mesh insect screens that covered the open bay windows. Duke noticed that Jeannie Letham had laid out a spread of quarter-cut sandwiches, some squat little cookies and a jug on a low table in front of a sapling Christmas tree, decorated with tiny gold-and-silver bells and baubles. A length of string tied across the tongue and groove side wall supported a dozen or so Christmas greeting cards. On the other side of the room sat a piano that had seen better days, and on it the small, framed photographs that told the family story.
While it was a very different scene to his own family lanai, the small details that make a family home—any family home—filled Duke with a sudden sense of joy at being allowed to share these small intimate pleasures, and he realised too late that he was gushing his greetings to the Letham women, who stood together in the middle of the room, performing the same peculiar half-curtsy he had seen for the first time outside the church on Christmas morning.
Jeannie Letham, a handsome woman who tended to ‘dress down’ in keeping with her role at the Women’s National Club, was on this occasion resplendent in a simple, elegant silver chiffon tunic, finished with a fringe. ‘Ma’am, may I say how lovely you look this evening,’ said Duke as he took her hand and bowed slightly.
Duke turned his attention to Isabel, clad in a simple white silk gown with no adornments save for a single gold chain at her neck. How could he have failed to notice that this smiling tomboy from the beach was such a vision of loveliness? He took her hand and smiled the smile that had already made a thousand holidaying hearts beat faster.
Isabel was grateful for the task of serving, and for the flurry of activity as jackets were removed, wicker and cane chairs taken and the delicate little sandwiches nibbled at thoughtfully. All of this was blessed relief from the conflicting emotions she felt when she saw Duke, thoughts she would rather not deal with in front of her parents, and certainly not in front of him.
‘You must try Mrs L’s scones,’ said Claude, offering the plate that Duke had taken to be laden with cookies. On closer inspection they were more like tiny bread rolls, with a thick layer of cream and strawberry jam dissecting them. ‘Mrs L’s scones are famous around here,’ the lad continued, and the Hawaiians felt obliged to try them.
‘More in the stove,’ said Jeannie. ‘Isabel!’ Isabel scurried through a doorway and returned with another tray of steaming scones.
‘Brand-new Fletcher Russell stove,’ said Willie, savouring the taste of a hot scone. ‘Cost an arm and a leg but worth every penny. Am I right, Mother?’ Jeannie nodded and smiled weakly, perhaps feeling that the purchase of household appliances was not an appropriate subject for such distinguished guests.
The conversation meandered from the upcoming events of the summer season—Isabel’s and Claude’s roles in the Venetian Festival in Manly chief among them—to Duke and George’s expectations of the series of state swimming carnivals just a week away, and to Isabel’s ambition to become a sports mistress at a ladies’ college. Duke observed that William Letham was a quiet, authoritative presence in his own home, contributing to the conversation from time to time in a thick Glaswegian brogue, much more difficult to understand than shopkeeper Randell’s lilting Irish.
When the food and lemonade had been consumed, Willie rose to his feet and clapped his hands firmly. ‘Mother, perhaps now a song for our visitors?’ Jeannie obliged, taking a seat at the piano and launching into a sweet rendition of Tosti’s ‘Mattinata’, a Nellie Melba showstopper, and followed it with the sentimental ‘Home Sweet Home’.
When Jeannie had finished the Hawaiians clapped politely until Willie interjected: ‘She’s a Scot, you know, Miss Melba. Daughter of an honest stonemason. Now, gentlemen, please join me on the front porch for a pipe and perhaps something a little stronger to drink.’
While Jeannie and Isabel busied themselves with the dishes, Willie led the two young Hawaiians back down the hall. Claude started to follow, but a glance from Willie stopped him in his tracks. Duke and George both declined the smoke but accepted a ‘wee whisky’, which Willie extracted from a small cabinet at the end of the verandah, along with three tumblers. As Willie poured the drinks, Duke’s eyes were drawn to a small, framed photograph on the wall. It was dark now, and although the lamp light was dim, he could read the inscription: it was the Sydney Stadium packed to the rafters on Boxing Day, six years earlier, for the world-title fight between Tommy Burns and Jack Johnson.
‘Your good health,’ said Willie, offering the visitors a tumbler and raising a toast. ‘And here’s to our boys. Te
ll me, gentlemen, when do you think America will be entering the war?’
Since even before he had won gold at Stockholm, people had been asking Duke questions—about war and peace and the place of the coloured man in society, and religion and who knew what else—that he felt totally unqualified to answer. In the few years of his celebrity, however, he had learned to dodge artfully, and for this question in particular, he was prepared, Bill Rawlins having warned him it may be asked.
‘Sir,’ he said, ‘that is a very good question, and one that is no doubt occupying the thoughts of the president of the United States and many of its citizens. In the territory of Hawaii, of course, we have no say in matters outside our own domain, but, like you, we pray for the safety of our Australian and British brothers and sisters engaged in this terrible conflict. Now, may I ask you about this picture on your wall? Were you at the fight?’ This was the tactic, and an effective one: deliver a sermon and move on quickly.
‘No, I wasn’t.’ Willie paused and laughed, for the first time. ‘I wasn’t there for that fight, nor the one that preceded it, when Burns made mincemeat of silly Boshter Squires, but, oh aye, I’ve seen enough of that building, inside and out. I helped build the bloody thing! It was for your man, McIntosh, a slave driver if ever there was one. Six weeks he gave George Hudson, start to finish, and the first thing George did was hire me as foreman. Twenty hours a day we worked, building walls by torch light. If you want to know why I’m no longer a builder, there’s your reason. Huge Deal McIntosh.’
Willie offered the bottle again, but it was declined. Pouring himself a generous nip, he continued: ‘And George Hudson, you may not know, is the feller that supplied the timber for your whatchamaycallit …’