The Persimmon Tree

by Bryce Courtenay

  While I don’t suppose all this was exactly top secret, being privy, a fly on the wall, to the conversation of three men and one woman who were fairly important in the scheme of things was exhilarating for someone just turned eighteen and about to become the lowest form of life in the Australian army. It became clear that Archbishop Henry Le Fanu wasn’t simply high up in the Anglican synod, but that God’s man in Western Australia was also extremely knowledgeable on matters of the war. Later I was to learn that he was a personal friend of Mr Curtin and, until recently, Vicar-General for all the armed forces and so would be as well informed as anyone in the country outside the war cabinet.

  We hadn’t yet entered the gazebo for lunch and were standing in the garden with our drinks, an elderly butler hovering half hidden and out of earshot behind a stand of bright-red canna lilies with a tray, anxious to immediately replenish any empty glass, when Lieutenant Commander Rigby pulled me aside. ‘Nick, the Commander wants you to tell the story of your escape all over again. He’s read Marg’s notes but says he wants it from the horse’s mouth, so to speak. He also wants to know more about the American, how he survived and the others didn’t. He’s pretty sharp, so don’t leave anything out — the smallest detail may be important. He’ll be reporting to Canberra and he’ll want to know everything. You said yesterday the American knew the story. We must know as much, if not more than the Yanks about the incident on the beach. After all, you are the prime witness. Marg will be taking notes. I’m afraid this isn’t a casual lunch with your godfather, you’re centre stage, son. The only consolation is that it will probably be the last time you need to tell anyone what you witnessed on that dreadful morning.’

  ‘Thank you, sir, I’ll certainly do my best,’ I said, filled with sudden trepidation.

  ‘Oh, by the way, Nick,’ Rigby then said, ‘at lunch yesterday I brought up the matter of Mr Judge with my American colleague. He said it was just the sort of example of courage in the face of the enemy they were looking for. They may need a statement from you, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he isn’t in for the full box and dice in commendations.’

  I grinned, imagining the little bloke, sun shining scarlet through his Mickey Mouse ears, being medal-pinned by an admiral or maybe even MacArthur. Sometimes you’ve got to believe there is a God in heaven. But then a thought struck me. ‘But, sir, if the Americans talk about it and it’s classified top secret here, isn’t there a chance it will all come out?’

  Lieutenant Commander Rigby smiled. ‘Good point, Nick. Marg and I had to do a fair bit of tap-dancing at lunch yesterday, anticipating Canberra’s response while at the same time accommodating the needs of the Yanks. You’ve heard the old adage, “Truth is the first casualty of war”? Right now the Americans need a hero, but on the other hand we don’t want the full-blown incident on the beach to come out. That’s the problem in a nutshell. So, there’s the inevitable compromise. The story changes just a little, not in truthfulness, but by omission. Mr Judge is wounded during the sinking of the Houston and, clinging to a life raft, is washed up onto a lonely beach in Java where he lies unconscious. That’s when you find him, rescue him and effect a remarkable escape avoiding the Japanese and crossing the Indian Ocean in a small sailing boat. It’s not untrue. It’s merely a simplified version of the truth in order to accommodate our needs as well as those of the Americans. They have a hero and we have one who deserves a commendation but won’t, I’m afraid, be getting one.’

  ‘I see,’ I said, not at all sure that I did, but vastly relieved that I wasn’t going to be classified as a hero. My abject terror that the villagers would return, which left me too afraid to give the nine men a decent burial was not only affecting my dreams but also often enough penetrating my waking thoughts. To be named a hero would simply add further to my secret shame.

  We were all called to lunch, a serve-yourself affair of cold meats — pork, lamb and beef — potato salad, various other salads, canned pineapple, cold beetroot, raw onion, sliced white bread and butter and a large jug of orange juice. During the voyage on Madam Butterfly I had lacked the imagination to dream about such a variety of food. There were no staff on hand to help serve lunch and it was obvious that this was deliberate. I was there for four sets of ears only, with poor Marg having no time to eat as she took down my every word in shorthand.

  One good thing about being a loner, a listener and an observer is that you absorb detail. You remember the bits others forget or don’t notice, as well as every gesture used in a conversation. Our hands are often more articulate than our speech. Over the years close observation of people had turned me into a competent mimic and I’d also been told often enough that I had a good ear for accents as well as languages, not only Japanese, but also several of the native languages spoken by the various tribes in my father’s parish, though, of course, by no means all of them. In New Guinea there are over eight hundred distinct languages. I knew about five of them and could probably bumble my way through another five. If this sounds impressive, it isn’t; primitive languages have quite small vocabularies, about the same as those a seven-year-old might have in English. Moreover, Kevin had been a natural raconteur and I was equally a natural listener; after a month on board alone with the little bloke I could speak Chicago English better than he could. I’d scrubbed every word he’d spoken until it was squeaky clean, and if I haven’t always put it down exactly as he enunciated it, that’s because some of it simply wouldn’t make any sense on paper. But I decided if Commander Long wanted the full bottle, I’d tell it that way. It would be my last telling of the massacre on the beach and somewhere inside me I felt that if I told it precisely, as if in confession, exactly how it had all happened, blow by blow, I might overcome the nightmares that were already occurring. In this respect, I was to be proved entirely wrong. The Official Secrets Act was to have a profound effect on the remainder of my life.

  For the next two hours, give or take a dozen hastily chewed mouthfuls, I told the story from the beginning to the end, omitting nothing. For the most part the lunch guests seemed totally absorbed. The incident where I’d dropped the little bloke to catch the Magpie Crow brought the house down and even Marg stopped taking notes to laugh. They seemed to enjoy it when I changed to Kevin’s accent, and the story of his mother’s headstone had the Archbishop practically pissing his pants.

  When I finally came to the end it was three-thirty in the afternoon and I was exhausted. I’m not a naturally garrulous person but I guess on that occasion I could be accused of a liberal dose of verbal diarrhoea. But it failed to act, as I’d hoped, as some sort of catharsis. Commander Long, who had stopped me on several occasions to ask questions, was clearly no fool, a stocky, tight-lipped man who snapped out rather than phrased his questions, expecting immediate answers — although in the actual lips department he possessed a set of lips that belonged to the opposite gender, for they were as perfectly formed as a cupid’s bow and would have done Greta Garbo credit. As a kid he must have had a hard time at school. To my surprise, at the conclusion he congratulated me and confessed that it was one of the more memorable afternoons he’d spent lately. He’d made it sound like some sort of entertainment, although I hadn’t meant it to be. The Archbishop said it was an astonishing exhibition of total recall and Lieutenant Commander Rigby smiled and said, ‘We’re hoping Nick will consider joining Navy Intelligence.’ Only Marg Hamilton remained silent and when I glanced at her she had tears in her eyes. I wondered if, as I did, she felt that I’d said too much and in the plethora of words that accumulated during the telling had unintentionally diminished the massacre. The escape story of our voyage, the storm at sea and the many details of Kevin’s unfortunate childhood seemed to have overridden the tragedy on the beach. I felt secretly ashamed to be receiving their accolades.

  As for myself, I can’t ever recall speaking as much at any one time in my life. At the conclusion, all I wanted to do was to find a corner to hide in. If this was to be the last time
I ever talked about the incident, then I’d done my very best. Having done so, I promised myself, come what may, I would never repeat the performance. I strongly felt as if, in this final telling of the massacre, I’d betrayed the memory of the men on the beach. Ever present in my mind’s eye was the huge excitement of the nine sailors making it safely back onto land; then their care to place the unconscious little bloke under a bush out of the sun, a shirt forfeited and placed behind his head, even though he wasn’t one of them, simply someone, an unknown American sailor they’d hauled onto their raft in the middle of the night. I’d witnessed nine compassionate men slaughtered in front of my eyes, each losing his life to a vicious flashing blade that caught and held the soft morning sunlight.

  Afterwards, the Archbishop drew me aside. ‘Chief Petty Officer Hamilton has already initiated enquiries about your father, Nicholas. But, as his friend and Bishop, I’ve taken the liberty to exert a little further influence in the process of trying to locate him. We’ll check any boat that docks carrying civilians from Rabaul. We think one may arrive soon but as far as we know your father isn’t on board. But Commander Long has promised that when his men interview each of the passengers, as they will do, they’ll be instructed to enquire if anyone knows anything about his circumstances.’

  I thanked him and asked if he would grant me a personal favour, to which he readily agreed. ‘Your Grace, a ship named the Witvogel left Batavia the day before I did on the twenty-seventh of February, bound for Broome. It would have arrived roughly a week later. Is there any possibility we could trace the whereabouts of a particular family on board? I speak of the Van Heerdens, whose yacht I sailed to get here.’

  ‘Shouldn’t be too difficult, I imagine. I’ll have a word to Commander Long. By the way, he’s very impressed with you, Nick, and wants to talk to you. I’ve told him you’re about to join up and I think that’s what it’s all about. He’s a pretty brusque sort of chappie as you will have gathered, but you can trust him — fine mind, good man. You’d do well to listen to what he has to say to you.’ He touched me on the shoulder. ‘Well done this afternoon, I know it can’t have been easy for you.’ Then he handed me a cheque for twenty pounds. ‘Nothing worse than not being able to pay your own way.’

  ‘Thank you, Your Grace, I’ll pay you back,’ I said, knowing that he had solved yet another of my problems.

  ‘It’s a gift, rather overdue, from your godfather,’ he laughed. ‘I’m afraid ecclesiastics make lousy godfathers, Nick.’

  It was time to leave and to my surprise Marg came up and said, ‘Nick, I’ll call you at your boarding house around six tonight; perhaps you’d like to come home for supper?’ She grinned. ‘I don’t think either of us had our fair share of the splendid lunch. What about bangers and mash, fried onions, gravy on the top of the potato volcano — what do you say?’

  ‘Whacko!’ I accepted with alacrity, of course. It was the meal that most frequently possessed my imagination while on Madam Butterfly but I was rather surprised that she’d think to mention it to me out on the lawn of the Archbishop’s palace and not in the car or when we arrived back in Fremantle. Then she added, ‘Good luck, mate, you’re travelling back in an official staff car with Rupert Basil Michael Long, our esteemed boss, who you will have by now gathered sits if not on the right hand of God, then pretty close to Him.’

  We drove off, Commander Long and myself sitting in the back of a brown ’39 Chevrolet with white-wall tyres and driven by a sailor called Barnsey, although I wasn’t sure whether Barnsey was his nickname or legitimate surname, as Commander Long barked it out along with his instructions as if it was a military command. Barnsey, in return, made no sign that he’d heard him and throughout the journey to Fremantle never said a word. We were driving along the banks of the Swan River past the brewery when Commander Long turned, well, half-turned, to me. ‘Plans!’ he barked.

  ‘What, mine?’ I asked, surprised.

  He shot me a withering look. ‘Of course! Joining up, I hear. Army?’

  ‘Yessir.’

  ‘Nonsense. Can’t use you.’

  ‘I beg your pardon, sir?’ I asked, confused.

  ‘Sergeants calling you names on the parade ground, poppycock! Free spirit! Damned hard to find. Don’t want that drummed out of you, lad.’ There seemed no answer to this, so I remained silent. ‘Japanese. Jungle. Too young but sensible enough.’ He glanced at me. ‘Shoot? Handle a rifle?’

  ‘Yes, sir, in the cadets a 303, then a 22 at home in New Britain. It’s a good jungle weapon — light, accurate, you don’t need distance in the bush,’ I over-explained in an attempt to regain my composure.

  ‘Marksman?’ he barked.

  In fact I had been regarded as an excellent shot at school. It had been one of the reasons I’d been made battalion commander. The permanent training officer at cadet camp had written ‘Good tactician, bushcraft exceptional, can shoot the eye out of a coconut at a hundred yards. Excellent Duntroon material.’ It had been this report that had impressed the headmaster and inclined me towards the army without my having really considered any other branch of the service. ‘I guess I’m okay, sir,’ I replied.

  ‘Free spirit, Japanese, jungle, excellent shot… are you stubborn?’

  ‘Yeah, I guess so,’ I confessed with a slight grin.

  ‘Excellent, everything the military dislikes.’

  ‘How’s that, sir?’ I asked, growing a little bolder.

  ‘Free spirit, soon crush that, very bad for general discipline! They think the Japanese are for shooting, not for conversation. Jungle, leave that to the fuzzy wuzzies and dengue fever. Good shot? Snipers have not been needed since the First World War. Stubborn? Don’t tolerate independent thinking. Do-as-you’re-told-or-else philosophy.’ He shook his head. ‘No, lad, you’re quite unsuitable for the army,’ he concluded.

  Despite my trepidation at being seated beside the Commander in the confines of the big Chevy, I laughed. He wasn’t the humorous type and his highly specious remarks about the army were, I guess, the closest he ever got to being funny.

  ‘Sir, I would imagine, put like that, those are all the characteristics that would alienate any branch of the armed forces.’

  It was as if he’d anticipated my answer. ‘Ha! All but one!’

  I waited, not asking which one as undoubtedly he thought I would. My father would often build his arguments in this manner, forcing you to ask the critical question and then be saddled with the prepared answer, his form of argument game, set and match. I was an old hand at the technique of dumb silence that forced him to finally reveal his hand. Commander Long’s voice changed suddenly. ‘Nick, I can’t tell you too much, but we are going to need people with your skills. You are, I’m told, fluent in Japanese, you’re familiar with the jungle, you can handle a small boat, defend yourself and if your voyage across the Indian Ocean is any indication, you are prepared to make decisions and if necessary change them quickly. Son, I’m not the type to piss in your pocket, but we have a shortage of your kind of chap.’ He turned sideways to face me. ‘Now listen to me seriously for a moment. Australia is in real danger from the Japanese. If we don’t halt them in the islands… well, Australia, the top end anyway, is a goner. The Japs may never be able to get across the continent, come down south. But that’s what they said about Singapore, that the Japanese couldn’t cross Thailand and come down the Malayan peninsula and they did it on bicycles using jungle paths and crept up and kicked us up the arse while our British generals were gazing out to sea with our big guns primed and pointed at the imperial horizon! Rule Britannia, Britannia rules the waves!’

  He was treating me as an adult and I must admit I was impressed. The head of Naval Intelligence in Australia was taking the time off to talk to some snotty-nosed kid about war tactics. ‘I saw how quickly they, the Japanese, can move in Java, sir. The Dutch were caught napping,’ I said, rather pointlessly, adding my tuppence worth so that
I didn’t seem to be the complete ignoramus.

  ‘We all were. The Japanese have brought a new meaning to speedy land and sea invasion. What we suspect they’re attempting to do is to form an arch above Australia, a series of airfields, Guadalcanal, Rabaul, the Shortland Islands; they already have adequate landing strips on Buku Island and Kavieng on the northern tip of New Ireland. They possess long-range four-engine Kawanishi flying boats that make the Sunderland look like an airborne jalopy. Flying from Rabaul and Tulagi they could direct land-based aircraft from these airfields and make sea transport between Australia and the rest of the Pacific, in particular the west coast of America, very dangerous, if not bloody impossible.’ He jabbed a finger into my shoulder. ‘Nick, this is not top-secret stuff, but it isn’t for general consumption. It’s also where you come in.’

  ‘Me?’ I said, genuinely surprised.

  ‘You’re a bit young, but in every other respect you comply. We desperately need coastwatchers, men who can go behind enemy lines and survive; we also need people who can speak Japanese, who can tune into their field frequencies, watch their operations and get back to us. The Japs are directing their land invasion from on board ships, there’s a constant jabbering going on and we’re not getting any of the local ship-to-shore stuff. We don’t have the two things in combination, someone who not only understands Japanese — which, in itself, is hard enough to find — but who is also equipped to do the jungle duty. I admit you’re a bit young for such an assignment, but after listening to you today I think you can do it. I will admit, if it works, it will be a real feather in our cap with the Americans. You know the islands, speak some of the native languages, have proved you can survive in this terrain.’ He paused. ‘What do you think, lad?’

  I was silent for a moment, a bit overwhelmed to say the least. It was the last thing I could have contemplated or imagined doing as a member of the regular army. On the other hand, I’d always preferred to be alone and to make my own decisions. I didn’t see this as a particular virtue, but a necessity brought about by my childhood in Japan, being the son of a missionary in New Britain and my somewhat discombobulated career at school in Brisbane. In fact, one of the attractions of being in the regular army was that it was high time I learned to mix with other blokes. I was a big bugger, just on six foot three inches. I could defend myself, but, because of my size, seldom needed to. I thought the barrack-room life and the army might teach me a little more about the world around me. I’d decided that the army would in some strange way bring me out of myself. It would serve as Nick Duncan’s personal rehabilitation course. Now I was being asked to go back into the jungle, a loner once more. On the other hand, how the hell could I refuse? When someone asks you to do something important for king and country you can’t simply turn around and say, ‘Sorry, it doesn’t suit my personal plans, sir.’ Moreover, there was Anna — there would be regular leave in the army and I’d be able to see her. This wouldn’t be the case if I should be stuck in the bloody jungle on some mosquito-ridden island to the north. I wouldn’t even be able to write to her or receive letters from her: Nicholas Duncan, Poste Restante, Scratching his insect bites behind enemy lines somewhere. Eighteen-year-olds are bullet-proof and it never occurred to me to add to the picture the possibility that I might be captured and lose my head to a Japanese officer’s samurai sword.