Remember Me (30 page)

It was Gary who told me that the club had closed down. Kids just weren’t interested in it any more. Its closure coincided with the introduction of television. For me the news came like a death in the family. It had been such a large part of my young life I thought it would go on forever. It seemed wrong that kids wouldn’t ever gather there again for three nights a week, or catch the ferry over to Waiheke Island for ten action-packed, fabulous days at Camp Jasper.

Captain Biggs left the Church Army some time after I’d set sail for England, never to return to New Zealand, except for brief holidays. I don’t know what happened to him. I hope life treated him kindly for everything he did for us. Of the kids around my age who attended club, three became lawyers, a couple became doctors and several became teachers. Most of us rose above our humble origins and made something of our lives. I think Captain Biggs can take a large part of the credit for that.
I still have two black-and-white Kodak photos of him, one posed with Eric, Maxie and me and the other with a bunch of us on Waiheke Island. He still looks awkward with his big head and Dick Tracy jaw. It’s a pity we can’t see his heart because I’m sure it would rival Phar Lap’s in size.

Last but not least there’s Mack, the man whose encounter with the U-boat caused all the trouble and gave rise to this story. I still fished down at the breakwater after we moved to Epsom, even though going there involved an epic bike ride. (Doubly epic coming home.) We’d sit and fish together like old pals and exchange stories. If the day was hot, sometimes I’d arrive and find him asleep propped up against one of the pilings. That was my last contact with him and my last memory of him. Mum wrote to me in London to say that she’d read in the
Auckland Star
that Mack had passed away. A fisherman had found him lying in the sun propped up against the pilings, only this time he wasn’t asleep. Mum, Dad and Rod returned to Richmond Road to attend his funeral, which was held in the chapel, and followed the hearse out to Henderson, where he was laid to rest alongside his wife.

Mum dug up the eulogy I’d written years earlier from among my essays. Rod read it out during the service on my behalf.

Could there have been a more fitting postscript to Mack’s story?

‘Derek Hansen, take a bow. You have written one of the most entertaining, gripping and powerful novels of the year’

Sunday Telegraph
on
Lunch with Mussolini

‘It is no coincidence that two great novels linked with the Second World War have come out of Australia…Keneally’s
Schindler’s Ark
and now Derek Hansen’s
Lunch with Mussolini’

Glasgow Herald
on
Lunch with Mussolini

‘Hansen is a great novelist. Only the bravest and most confident writer could grant his characters such intelligence and insight and still remain in command.’

West Australian
on
Lunch with the Generals

‘
Lunch with the Generals
is a rare book and a rare story that blazes life and death and love from every page…the style sparse yet detailed, the sign of a brilliant storyteller’

Courier-Mail
on
Lunch with the Generals

‘I was drawn in…and swept along by Milos’ story, concerned about his fate and Hungary shattered by war. More to this lunch than I first believed.’

New Zealand Herald
on
Lunch with the Stationmaster

‘Hansen has already thrilled me with his Great Barrier Islandbased
Sole Survivor
and I chortled with him through his hilarious
Fishy Tales
. I’ll look forward to munching with him again soon.’

Taranaki Daily News
on
Lunch with the Stationmaster

HarperCollins
Publishers

First published in Australia in 2007
This edition published in Australia in 2010
by HarperCollins
Publishers
Australia Pty Limited
ABN 36 009 913 517
harpercollins.com.au

Copyright © Derek Hansen 2007

The right of Derek Hansen to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him under the
Copyright Amendment (Moral Rights) Act 2000
.

This work is copyright. Apart from any use as permitted under the
Copyright Act 1968
, no part may be reproduced, copied, scanned, stored in a retrieval system, recorded, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

HarperCollins
Publishers

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77–85 Fulham Palace Road, London, W6 8JB, United Kingdom
2 Bloor Street East, 20th floor, Toronto, Ontario M4W 1A8, Canada
10 East 53rd Street, New York NY 10022, USA

National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication data:

Hansen, Derek, 1944–.

Remember me / Derek Hansen.

ISBN 978 0 7322 9017 7 (pbk.).

ISBN 978 0 7304 4353 7 (epub)

A823.3

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