by Derek Hansen
Angus began scheming the instant he set off down the track to his bach, walking as quickly as he could, as if trying to keep up with his thoughts. A hawk rose rapidly and silently in front of him and ghosted over his head, angry that Angus had disrupted its hunt right at the moment of kill. Angus’ only acknowledgement was to duck. He was too preoccupied to worry about birds or bush rats. Rosie had failed to close the door. She hadn’t entirely discounted the possibility that the Lieutenant Commander might be the father. He was delighted that she was going to have a child, but the circumstance could be better. He’d waited too long to accept half measures if full measure was still a possibility.
If Mickey turned out to be the father, would he want the child or give up his career in the Navy to live at Wreck Bay with Rosie? No! On both counts. Angus was sure of that. But would Mickey want his son brought up by the madman? No, again! Angus was nearly chortling with glee as the hypothetical scenario unfolded in his mind. Red would have no claim on the boy, and Rosie could hardly deny the natural father’s wishes. He imagined positioning himself as the boy’s kindly grandfather, charged with the responsibility of raising the child on Mickey’s behalf. That was an altogether more attractive proposition than playing a distant second fiddle to Red.
He heard a cat yowling ahead of him as he rounded the old pohutukawa and quickened his step. Bonnie was no match for the feral cats who’d have their way then rip her apart. He nearly stumbled in his hurry, then slowed as he recalled seeing Bonnie curled up tightly in the corner of the sofa as he’d closed the door gently behind him. He decided to write to the Lieutenant Commander. There were some things that couldn’t be said on radio.
CHAPTER
THIRTY-FOUR
Shimojo fished out deep for fifteen days. Once the attentions of the Orions were no longer directed at him, he turned north towards Great Barrier Island, running at full power by day, trawling in close by night. Sometimes, when he encountered dense schools of snapper, he adopted a normal zig-zag trawl and crossed and re-crossed the target. But schools large enough to justify the tactic were infrequent. For the most part, he steamed northwards. His freezers were clear and his crew were primed. Snapper were fetching record prices at the Tokyo fish markets. He had the opportunity and means to return the sort of profits the company – and his career prospects – demanded.
‘Who do you know on Great Barrier Island would write you a personal letter?’ Gloria asked archly as she dropped the plain white envelope with the copperplate handwriting onto his desk. She watched closely for a reaction, but there was none. The truth was, Mickey was too paralysed to react. He stared dumbly at the letter, immobilised by dread and foreboding. Gloria laughed. ‘It’s from my boyfriend, Angus. He’s probably asking you for my hand in marriage. Time somebody did.’
Mickey watched Gloria march primly out of his office before picking up the envelope and reading Angus’ name and address on the back. He didn’t mind that Gloria had played games with him. He would have minded less if she’d come in and told him she had a sexually transmittable disease. Everything else paled into significance alongside the plain white envelope. He didn’t have to open the letter to know its contents, and that the thing he most feared had happened. He slipped his pocket knife under the flap. At least Angus had shown enough wit to write ‘personal’ on the envelope, otherwise Gloria would have opened it when she’d opened the rest of his mail. And probably read it, too. He didn’t discourage her from reading his mail. Quite the opposite. She was his filter, protecting him from everything he didn’t need to concern himself with and familiarising herself with everything she needed to know. Mickey had never seen the point in withholding information from his secretary, but he was beginning to.
‘Dear Lieutenant Commander,’ the letter began. ‘I am writing to inform you that Rosie is expecting a child. She has made it perfectly clear to me that under no circumstances are you to be informed of this.’ Mickey groaned. Normally he appreciated directness, but these were hardly normal circumstances. ‘However,’ the letter continued, ‘as you may well be the child’s father, I feel you have a right to know. My advice is that you contact Rosie yourself, but I urge you not to admit any foreknowledge for my sake. If I may be so bold as to make a suggestion, you should indicate to her that on the occasion of your last visit, I intimated to you her intention to have a child. Insist on your right to know the outcome. Yours sincerely, Angus McLeod.’
‘As you may well be the child’s father . . .’ Mickey pondered the significance of the statement. Angus was nothing if not precise, reflecting years of preparing statements of evidence. If he was the father beyond doubt, or even the likely father, Angus would not have hesitated to say so. But all Angus had admitted to was the possibility. The news wasn’t good but not catastrophic. What he couldn’t understand was Angus’ role in the whole affair. Why had he written? Why would he care? It slowly dawned on him that Angus wanted him, not Red, to be the father, which opened the possibility that the letter might be more wishful thinking than substance. Yes, it was a possibility, but supposition was no basis for comfort. What worried him most was the fact that Rosie had not wanted him to know. He could only think of one reason for that.
‘Well?’
Gloria stood provocatively in the doorway. Whatever had happened to the formal protocol, Mickey wondered? It wasn’t regulation Navy conduct for personal assistants to pose in doorways and stick out their hips. ‘You guessed right,’ he said. ‘I refused Angus permission to marry you on the grounds that he was too old and that you had a career to consider, Third Officer Wainscott.’
Her smile vanished instantly and she stood upright, giving her skirt a quick straighten on the way. ‘Yes, sir!’
‘See if you can get an update on the position of all foreign trawlers and longliners in North Island waters, and see if there have been reports of any of them misbehaving overnight.’
‘Sir!’
Mickey watched a suitably chastened Gloria set off on her appointed task. He knew it was a largely pointless exercise and so did she. But there again, most of what they did was pointless. At least it would keep her out of his hair for a couple of hours and give him a chance to think. There was no cause for panic yet, he told himself. No need to take Gloria aside and confess his dirty deeds. So why did he feel such an overpowering need to punch holes in the wall?
Obviously he had to write to Rosie. But if the news was bad, did he really want to know before Christmas? Then again, did he want to go through Christmas with the shadow hanging over him if he was in the clear? He had a feeling that Rosie might not be able to add to his knowledge. There was another complication which he couldn’t ignore. Gloria clearly wanted to formalise their relationship, and he knew the pressure would be on for Christmas Day or New Year’s Day when the family were all together. But how could he go ahead and propose without first discussing Rosie? He was adamant that he wouldn’t build a new life on deceit, but wasn’t thrilled by the likely consequences of his confession, either. Reluctantly he picked up his pen and began to write. Bare the soul, he told himself. Truth invites truth. He didn’t want Rosie to lie to him, as he knew she was quite capable of doing.
Red and Rosie set up their workbench under a gnarled and sprawling pohutukawa. The bench wasn’t much to look at, just an old door fastened on top of two trestles, but no one could fault their choice of workplace. The stream that ran down from the ridges to seep into the white sands of the beach also kept Wreck Bay’s one patch of grass glowing with verdant good health. It made a cushion for the shells and a soft mat for their bare feet. Overhead, the pohutukawa was a blaze of crimson, one of a dozen or more lining the shore that couldn’t wait until Christmas to bloom. The trees were alive with bees, white-eyes and fantails. Out in the bay, pairs of blue penguins tooted to one another each time they surfaced, announcing their position and the whereabouts of the juvenile sprats they feasted on. This was the paradise Rosie had dreamed about, only in her fantasies she’d made pottery instead of bombs.
‘Remember, there’s no hurry,’ cautioned Red. ‘Saw slowly and make sure the blade doesn’t heat up.’
Rosie sighed and said nothing. Red issued the same warning at least twice a day. He’d agreed to let her help simply because of the amount of time it took to cut the cartridge cases open. But he watched her like a hawk, and justified his actions by maintaining that they’d watched each other just as carefully in Burma. Rosie knew better than to argue with anything that happened in Burma.
‘It’s tiring, boring work. Sometimes it’s tempting to take short cuts and saw the one spot too hard for too long. That happened to some of the blokes in Burma. They grew too weary to care and paid the penalty.’
Red’s cautions became a litany as familiar to Rosie as her father’s constant admonitions to grow up.
‘Remember cordite is an explosive. Be patient with it. If it doesn’t come away easily from the casing, leave it there.’
Rosie worked diligently, following Red’s instructions to the letter. Sometimes in the mid-afternoon, when even the bees were becoming drowsy, she thought she understood the reason for his caution. It was easy to forget that she was making bombs as she soaked up the filtering sun, the comfort of their togetherness and the close, intimate smell of the mossy soil. She’d begin to get lazy and saw one place for too long. When that happened she downed tools, stripped off and ran naked into the sea. Archie always joined her, eager to instruct her in the finer points of chasing mullet, and sometimes Red joined in. Rosie put the bombs and the coming confrontation with Shimojo out of her mind and joyfully played Eve to his Adam. She couldn’t recall being happier.
Her morning exercises and her daily work regime had changed her. She no longer fitted her skin as well as she had. Stretch lines had appeared at the top of the cleft between her breasts, even though they’d shrunk in size. When she held her arms up there was a telltale fold of loose skin beneath them. Her eyes, she decided, were like Rome. Many roads led to them, not as the result of laughter but of over-exposure to the sun. She didn’t care. She was fitter and stronger and happier than she’d ever been and over a stone lighter, although she knew she’d soon put the weight back on in the months ahead. What made their Eden even more special was that Angus had decided to pay the widow an extended visit and had taken Bonnie with him in a cardboard box. He’d helped raise the shells but wanted no further part in proceedings. At the end of their third straight day as a backyard munitions factory, Red decided they’d made enough bombs for the time being. They’d opened twelve more shells and made another twenty bombs.
‘You don’t think they’re still a bit too powerful?’ Rosie asked. She’d watched Red’s experimental detonation of his first two bombs and had been staggered by the size of the explosion. It had bred doubts which had gnawed at her and, even at this late stage, felt she had to air.
Red smiled. ‘They’ll make a big bang and a big splash and a vivid flash at night. They’ll look frightening. But they’re not going to blow a hole in the side of a trawler. They won’t blow a hole in steel. Shimojo’s not to know that, though.’
Rosie still looked doubtful.
‘Come on. Help me put this lot in the bunker.’ The bunker was a coffin-shaped excavation in a clay bank which Red had lined with corrugated iron held in place by stakes. The spare shells and the previous day’s production were already stored inside. As Rosie gingerly picked up one of the finished bombs, cork and fuse held in place by a plaster of Paris seal waterproofed with paint, she couldn’t help thinking that it reminded her of the round fizzing bombs anarchists threw in Buster Keaton movies. She waited until Red had wedged the benchtop over the bunker’s opening, pulled a tarpaulin over it and weighted it down with rocks.
‘I’ve had a busy day, Red,’ she said. ‘I can’t be bothered cooking. How about you make one of your vegetable rice dishes?’
‘Okay.’
‘And while you’re making it you can tell me why you’ve turned my garden into a fortress just like yours.’
They set off up the trail, Red leading. ‘They have to be properly enclosed, Rosie.’
‘Why?’
‘To discourage pilfering.’
‘By Angus, you mean.’
‘No, Angus wouldn’t steal our vegetables.’
‘Then who are we protecting them from, Red?’
He went quiet again, as she knew he would. At one time in his life there’d been good reasons why things were done a certain way, but many of those reasons no longer applied. Rosie knew she had to break his wartime habits if she was to stand a chance of bringing him home. She waited. Sooner or later he’d tell her she didn’t understand or, with luck, start opening up. The fortified vegetable plots might not lead her directly to the camp at the One-oh-five, but Rosie was determined to get there eventually.
‘After Archie was killed, I couldn’t take the beatings any more. Archie was my strength. I could be lying all broken up and bleeding on my bed barely able to breathe and Archie could still make me laugh. Sometimes I was so hurt and exhausted I just wanted to die. I wasn’t frightened of dying, I don’t think many of us were by then. But Archie had a way of making us feel indignant that we were letting the Japs get the better of us. Indignant, outraged, cheated. It’s hard to explain. Not long after he was killed, we were moved back to Singapore. We even travelled on the railway we helped build. Let me tell you, Rosie, we’d done a rotten job.’ He almost started to laugh but choked it off. ‘Bugger my days! It was bad enough building the bloody thing. It was hell riding on it. Over bridges knowing how suspect the foundations and pilings were. Along embankments filled with dodgy ballast.’ Red strode on, pushing himself, quickening his pace. Rosie forced herself to keep up.
‘When we got back to Singapore I scored a job in the vegetable gardens. We were all bloody hungry by then, not just us, but the Japs as well. If any man was caught eating or stealing any of the vegetables he was hauled off and shot. If anyone managed to sneak into the gardens and steal anything we were beaten up for not preventing him. In fairness, so were the Jap guards. The Japs were hungry, desperate and they knew they were losing. Some of the Asians working in the paddies were beaten to death by four or five guards with pickaxe handles because they were slow chasing birds away. They beat them right in front of us as a warning. It got so bad they beat us if they found leaves where caterpillars had been feeding. They caught an English sergeant one day eating a bit of Chinese spinach or something. It was probably worthless. One of the bottom leaves off the stalk. Man couldn’t help himself. He was starving and surrounded by food that he couldn’t touch. The Japs made him eat rotten green rice, forced a hose down his throat, laughed when his stomach swelled up and burst. Then they jumped on him. Half a dozen of them took turns to jump on his stomach, screaming in high-pitched voices like a bunch of mad women.’ He stopped talking and slowly turned around to face Rosie. His voice quavered and Rosie could hear his fear, even after twenty years. ‘It could’ve been me, Rosie. Just as easily have been me.’
‘Why?’ she asked levelly. His hands had begun to shake.
‘We all stole, Rosie.’
‘The difference is, Red, you were more careful. But keep going.’
‘We’d suck bits of leaves until they got soggy and started to break down. Bok choy, gai lan, cabbage, it didn’t matter. We took anything we could sneak into our mouths, shit-scared the whole time.’
Rosie reached up and put her arm over his shoulder. ‘But you survived. You might not think that was fair, Red, but there’s nothing anybody can do about it. War isn’t fair. It wasn’t fair for you, the English sergeant or those unfortunate Asians. War isn’t fair. Life isn’t fair. You can’t blame yourself for that because you didn’t make the rules. Now go home and raid your garden for me. When you have all you need, leave the gate open. You may be surprised to learn that absolutely nothing will happen. Nobody will steal your carrots or your beans. You’ll still get the odd snail and bird dropping in but they don’t use the gate anyway. Okay? I�
��m going to run a bath. Remember what I said and leave the gate open.’
‘It’s not right, Rosie.’
‘It’s not wrong either, hero. Go on. Show me what you’re made of. Give the Japs the finger. Leave the gate open.’
‘Rabbits, Rosie.’
‘With Archie the fearless bunny biter around, are you kidding? Well, at least leave the padlock off.’ Rosie turned up the fork that led to her bach, wondering what had happened for Red to speak so freely. She’d hardly had to push him. She’d expected him to hold off until he’d begun to cook their dinner and even then try to dodge the question. Perhaps she was finally making some progress. To the best of her knowledge he’d had no flashbacks since the night the trawler had tried to ram him, and he was more relaxed than she’d ever seen him. Perhaps the baby had something to do with it. Perhaps it was his exercises. She reached the edge of her clearing and stopped. The high wire mesh fence he’d built around her vegetable plot seemed to suggest a different reason altogether, and it frightened her. It suddenly occurred to her that Red was actually looking forward to his confrontation with Shimojo, as if fighting Japs was his vocation and gave him strength. She vowed not to let him go out against the trawler alone. He might be cavalier where his life was concerned, but he wouldn’t be with hers. And especially not with the baby’s.
The Navy alerted Angus to the coming storms, not that he needed telling to get down from Tataweka before night fell. Years on the Barrier had made him a good judge of weather. The barometric pressure was tumbling, bringing an end to the clear spring skies and gentle westerly breezes. Soon strong nor’-easterlies would come raging in and whip up the sea. This would mean an uncomfortable few days but there was some compensation. The rough seas would make it difficult for foreign fishing boats to come in close.