The Persimmon Tree

by Bryce Courtenay

  ‘And I’d have to join the navy?’ I asked rather stupidly. ‘Be land-based, but in the navy?’

  ‘Well, initially, it’s the quickest way. We’d arrange a short-term commission for you in the Royal Australian Navy Volunteer Reserve; this would last for the duration of hostilities, until the end of the war. Then you’d be seconded to the Allied Intelligence Bureau, which is inter-service. They control the coastwatchers and one or two other bits and pieces I can’t talk about.’

  ‘But I’d be trained where?’ I asked, thinking of Anna.

  ‘There’s a short course starting in two weeks’ time, it takes place at HMAS Cerberus, which is near Melbourne. I feel sure I can get you on it.’ He turned to me. ‘Then you’d have to do a training course in the use and maintenance of a long- and short-range field radio as well as a course in codebreaking. You’d do that elsewhere, but I’m not at liberty to tell you where that is.’

  I was silent for a while, looking out of the car window. We were passing a row of flowering gums that stretched to the horizon on both sides of the road, large sprays of brilliant pinks and orange and red, indigenous to Western Australia and, in terms of their blossom, the most brilliant of all the many varieties of eucalypt. It all seemed so normal from the window of the travelling car, so settled and forever and not to be disturbed. The landscape had the same peaceful appearance of a child sitting in the branches of a tree, lost in a book, oblivious to the dangerous world around him. It would be two weeks before I started the course; I had the Archbishop’s twenty pounds and I still had five quid left of the money I had originally intended to use to buy my passage in a tramp steamer from Java. If I could fix up some transport (Lieutenant Commander Rigby, I felt sure, would help, or the inimitable Marg), wherever Anna was I might be able to get to see her for a few days at least before reporting to HMAS Cerberus.

  I took a deep breath and turned to Commander Long. ‘Yes, okay, thank you, sir,’ I said, and in those five words completely changed my life.

  ‘Good man’ was all he replied, and he stuck out his hand and we shook. The clasp wasn’t as firm as I’d expected. ‘I must say you’ve added a new dimension to butterfly collecting, Nick,’ he said. Then leaning slightly forward he tapped Barnsey on the shoulder. ‘Don’t spare the horses, we have to get back to Perth to catch the night train.’ Barnsey nodded, putting his foot down, and the big car began to gather speed.

  I knew I hadn’t been the reason Rupert Basil Michael Long had come across to Perth, but was simply a small complication he found himself incidentally involved in: a random, single-colour piece in the jigsaw puzzle he supervised. Now with my unimportant destiny decided it was time, as Kevin would say, ‘Ter kick the dust. Vamoose’, and to get on with the job of winning the Intelligence war.

  Back at Mrs Beswick’s boarding house I asked if I might take a shower. ‘Didn’t you have one this morning?’ she enquired.

  ‘Yes, but I’m going out tonight.’ On a sudden inspiration I added, ‘I’ve got a date.’

  She gave me a small asinine smile. ‘That’s nice, dear, but you must appreciate there is a war on. Please don’t ask me again, we ration everyone to one shower a day.’ She pursed her lips in disapproval. ‘You may choose morning or night, but not both.’ Then she handed me the key to the shower block, tied with a piece of string to a large wooden toggle. ‘We’re all expected to do our bit,’ she proclaimed. Cold-water showers were evidently another generous concession she’d made to the war effort.

  Peter Keeble had left me a second shirt and so I washed the one I’d worn during the day under the shower and, finding a hanger in the rickety wardrobe, I hung it from the window clasp of my first-storey bedroom, making sure the hook was firmly round the clasp and buttoning the wet shirt up to the collar so that a sudden gust of wind wouldn’t carry it away. With a bit of luck it might be dry in the morning, whereupon, I felt sure, I would discover a whole new set of war-effort rules imposed upon the use of the communal iron and ironing board. After weeks of wearing what had eventually become a ragged pair of khaki shorts and a torn shirt, dressing up to go out was a nice feeling and the idea of having dinner with Marg Hamilton was brilliant. Normally I would have been overcome with shyness; she was pretty and even in her uniform she looked glamorous. But she was also quite a bit older than me so she probably thought of me as a big kid in need of a good feed. She was dead right about this last aspect. I’d dropped a lot of weight on the voyage and, besides, had eaten almost nothing at lunch with all the talking I was expected to do. But even in the two days I’d known her — and, of course, Lieutenant Commander Rigby — I’d overcome my shyness and knew that she was not only a pretty lady but also a very nice one. She couldn’t have been more different in appearance to Anna: while her chestnut hair was also dark it gave off a different sheen, she had lovely green eyes and quite a prominent nose, not big, but not the little button that was part of the oriental look Anna inherited from her mother. Marg was also really nice in front, not at all flat. Even under the Wrans uniform you could see she had a terrific figure that tapered to a small waist, and she had firm buttocks. I think I’ve already talked about her long legs. I admit I wasn’t much of an expert at these things, but a man’s got a pair of eyes and anyway, that’s what I saw when I looked at Marg Hamilton.

  I was waiting at the front gate of the boarding house at half-past six when a little chocolate brown Austin 7 came to a halt in front of me and beeped and there was Marg smiling at me. I laughed. She’d said she’d pick me up and I thought… well, I don’t know what I thought — perhaps that we’d probably go to her place by bus, so the little Austin was a big surprise. I got into the passenger side where my head bumped up against the inside of the roof, so I sort of hunched down a bit and brought my knees up to my chest. Marg laughed. ‘There’s a thinga-me-bob under the seat that lets you slide it back a bit and gives you more room. I forget how big you are, Nick.’

  ‘This is nice,’ I said, patting the dashboard of the Austin 7 and activating the lever under the seat that yielded another three or four inches so that I could remove my knees from the base of my nostrils.

  Marg changed into gear and pulled away from the kerb. ‘It was my brother’s,’ she replied.

  ‘Was?’ I enquired, not thinking.

  ‘He was killed in Greece last April.’

  ‘Oh, Marg, I’m so sorry,’ I said, reaching out and touching her lightly on the arm. My father would have pointed out the trap that lay in the word ‘was’ and chided me for not spotting it. ‘Language is full of road signs,’ he’d say. ‘Each sentence is the precursor of the next and carries its paraphrase. We build argument and meaning with words and you must always be aware of the cornerstone, of the “was”.’ But I’d clumsily missed it. I thought of my father, anxious for him but all the while knowing that his fine mind was far from being a practical one, that he almost certainly would have helped everyone to board the boat to escape the Japanese and then remained behind himself, convinced that his knowledge of their language and their peculiar ways meant that he would be able to make some sense of the invader and in so doing make it easier for those who were forced to stay behind.

  Marg looked at me, her big brown eyes suddenly glistening. ‘It’s all right, we’ve come to terms with it. You have to, or life simply treads water.’ This time the cornerstone was the ‘we’ve’ and I avoided taking it further. The meaning of the sentence would, I knew, eventually be revealed. Marg hadn’t spoken of her family or mentioned a mother or father or any siblings. ‘It’s a joyous little car,’ she said at last. ‘It runs on the smell of an oil rag.’

  We arrived at a block of red-brick flats, typical of the ugly buildings that seemed to have sprung up everywhere in the thirties, and Marg stopped outside one of the garages built on either side. I peeled myself out of the little car and opened the garage door to allow her to drive in. I noticed blue smoke coming from the exhaust when she’d stopped and I’d opene
d the car door for her. ‘You probably need an oil change,’ I said, knowing that it was a sign it was needed urgently.

  ‘Oh, do I? Thank you, Nick. My brother, John, would be furious if he thought I was neglecting his precious car.’

  ‘If you’ve got a jack I’ll do it for you. The tappets also need adjusting.’

  ‘Tappets? Thank you. Wherever did you learn about motorcars, Nick?’

  I laughed. ‘On the mission station you learn to do a bit of everything, jack-of-all-trades and master of none,’ I quipped nervously, quoting the old cliché. I’d always been at home around machinery; it was logical stuff and you could usually work out what was wrong. I was happy that I could do something useful for Marg, as thus far it had been a one-way street. I would use some of the Archbishop’s money to buy the oil and grease. The car probably needed the spark plugs changed and timing and points adjusted too. Although the tyres seemed in good condition, returning from opening the garage door I saw that both front tyres were beginning to wear on the outside edge, so the steering probably needed realignment. It was all stuff I knew how to do on an Austin 7. As a motorcar, mechanically it wasn’t a great deal more complex than a Singer sewing machine. It would give me an excuse to come back, although I wondered briefly at this thought. But after weeks on board with the little bloke as my sole companion, just the presence of a pretty female was an exhilarating if somewhat nervous-making experience.

  Marg’s flat was on the ground floor at the back of the building, with a bit of a yard where I think I met the cornerstone I’d deliberately avoided — the ‘we’ve’ turned out to be a dog of indeterminate breed named Timmy and a Burmese cat of aristocratic lineage, every inch a princess, with the improbable but entirely appropriate name of Cardamon. Timmy was a bitser without a bad bone in his black, white and mottle-eared body, appended with a perpetually wagging tail. He was the kind of dog more likely to welcome an intruder than chase one away. The cat… well, what is it they say about the difference between dogs and cats as pets? Dogs have masters and cats have servants. Marg explained that, like the Austin, she had inherited the cat and the dog from her brother. ‘I’m not sure how I would have coped without the two of them at my side when the telegram came. We’ve survived together.’ She smiled a little sadly, patting the lolling-tongued Timmy and stooping to pick up Cardamon, who placed her elegant paws over Marg’s shoulders and snuggled her pretty head into her neck, purring like a tractor in a most unregal manner. ‘I guess they’re my family now,’ Marg commented.

  Carrying the cat indoors, Marg led me into the tiny though pleasant lounge room and invited me to sit down in a comfortable old leather chair, placing Cardamon on my lap. The cat stood up for a moment, arched her back, turned about and then settled happily into my lap, accepting as her due my stroking her sleek, lavender-coloured neck and back.

  I was probably just an overgrown kid to Marg, but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t nervous in her civilian presence. She was attractive in her Wrans uniform but now she wore a green cotton summer dress (I would later learn it was known as a ‘shirtmaker’) that buttoned down the entire front and was belted at the waist. With this she wore sandals, her arms and legs bare and tanned, though not as dark as my own where the tropical sun had burned my skin almost black. It was as if sunlight had brushed her skin lightly in passing to give it a soft, almost translucent sheen that was very, very attractive. Well, actually a bit more than that. This added to the sum of her assets in no small way. What can I say? I’d be lying if I denied there were no stirrings going on below. This immediately made me feel guilty about Anna, although I wasn’t really being unfaithful in my mind. It was just that the part of my body doing the stirring seemed to be a quite independent part of me and possessed of a mind of its own. But as I felt sure Marg was playing more mother than lover, I was grateful that Cardamon’s purring presence was seated over the offending area.

  In the food department Marg proved true to her word — three whopping great beef sausages, a mountain of mashed potato, the full volcano, with brown gravy filling the crater, fried onions smothering the snags and three green beans. ‘Must have something green on your plate, Nick,’ she chided, smiling. I rather wolfed down the meal, not pausing for too much polite conversation. Marg, for her part, had one sausage and a big pile of beans and no potato and did most of the talking. ‘Poor darling, you must be starving. All that talk and not a bite for either of us, never mind if the narrator or the amanuensis starve!’ she said, cleverly teasing me with the word I’d used the previous day. Then she added, ‘Men simply don’t think and men in uniform are the worst of the lot!’ She paused, stabbing her fork into a bean, then lifting it from the plate and holding it suspended. ‘Commander Rupert Basil Michael Long is like a bull in a china shop, about as subtle as a kick up the backside,’ she accused, mixing her metaphors as my father might have pointed out.

  ‘Well, he certainly doesn’t beat around the bush,’ I said, adding yet another metaphor for good measure.

  Marg looked at me, her expression suddenly serious. ‘Nick, you don’t have to do it, you know.’

  ‘Do what?’ I asked.

  ‘Become a coastwatcher. With your brains and knowledge of Japanese, there are lots of other opportunities in Intelligence. Codebreaking, for instance.’

  ‘Yeah, he said something about doing a course.’

  ‘No, some of us have done it, but it’s basic stuff. With a good command of Japanese you are different. We’re going to need interrogators, translators, as well as codebreakers who can operate at a sophisticated level. Commander Long has become obsessed with having men behind enemy lines.’ She looked suddenly angry. ‘The war in the Pacific has hardly begun and already we’ve lost two coastwatchers, one to the enemy and one to dengue fever.’

  ‘Who’s “we”? Commander Long hinted at some other organisation.’

  ‘Nick, you’re trying to deflect our conversation. Just remember I’m an Intelligence officer, I shouldn’t even have mentioned codebreaking, a taboo word in Intelligence. You also know I’m not going to tell you who the “we” is. Can we stick to the subject?’

  I was being thoroughly reprimanded and at the same time was witnessing yet another quality of the remarkable Marg Hamilton. She didn’t put up with bullshit! I was an expert at changing the subject in a conversation; it’s part of being a loner, when you don’t want to give away too much about yourself. I thought to apologise, then decided not to. It had been worth a try, anyway. I shrugged. ‘It’s stuff I know how to do. I mean the jungle, boats, living off the land and from the sea. I’ve been doing it since the age of twelve.’

  She must have noticed that I’d finished my meal because she returned her fork with an impaled bean to her plate. She’d also all but completed her own dinner, only three more beans survived, not counting the one on the fork. She rose from the table, dabbing her pretty mouth with her napkin. ‘Come and sit down,’ she instructed, pointing to a small couch covered in a material patterned with hibiscus blossoms in pink and red. It was the brightest object in the room and I rather liked it, as it reminded me of the manse garden in Rabaul. All it needed was hummingbirds feeding on the nectar.

  I sat down and Marg sat beside me, half turned to face me, her slender legs crossed. She was wearing a perfume that triggered a yearning in me, something in my long-ago past — maybe my mother had worn a similar one. ‘Nick, you’re only eighteen but already you’re more of a man than anyone I’ve ever met,’ she began. If she saw me blush she ignored it, and continued. ‘You have a gentleness that is going to drive women crazy and a toughness they are going to be unable to resist. You have brains and beauty.’ I guess by this stage I must have been roughly the colour of beetroot because she laughed. ‘Men can also be beautiful, but if you prefer I’ll change that to “looks”; looks along with brains and a tough inner core that women will beat down doors to get to. The butterfly collector and the young man — it’s an irresistible comb
ination.’

  It was all a bit much and for a moment I thought she might be gently sending me up. But then I saw that she wasn’t. ‘You could have fooled me!’ I mumbled, trying to grin but feeling my mouth go strangely lopsided. In a sense, I suppose, Anna had beaten down my door in the compound of De Kost Kamer when she’d brought me dinner, but then, I reminded myself, at that stage she wouldn’t have known if I was a two-headed monster with crocodile teeth.

  ‘Don’t throw it all away, Nick. Don’t do what Rupert Basil Michael Long wants,’ she said, pressing her hand upon my knee.