The Persimmon Tree (21 page)

The building we drew up to sat right on the pavement, squat, blunt, three-storey, red brick, designed by a government architect seemingly at the height of the Great Depression, for it gave off a sense of ugliness and austerity that would cause anyone entering it to despair of a visit that might lead to a positive outcome. It was, in appearance, the kind of building where documents are stamped and licences issued for all the dull and ordinary pursuits in life. But miraculously, from a circle cut into the cement pavement not ten feet from the entrance, its perimeter fitted with heavy steel ribs and banded hoops that rose about five feet to protect its mottled trunk, grew a Western Australian flowering gum, ablaze with outrageous stems of pink blossom, each flamboyant stem humming with bees gathering nectar. I automatically scanned the blossoms for a butterfly, a Monarch perhaps, a peripatetic species that seems at home in almost any environment, but on this particular day only the bees were in possession, hogging the pollen.

I was taken along a dark wood-panelled corridor and up a set of wooden steps to the first floor, where the downstairs linoleum floor had been replaced by dark-brown carpet, and then up another set of carpeted stairs and along a green-carpeted corridor, into a large office that contained a large old-fashioned desk and behind it a chair and another chair in front of it. A steel filing cabinet stood against the left-hand wall. The floor was polished wood and from the window behind the desk hung a lopsided Venetian blind, one end of which fell below the windowsill and the other rose above it to reveal a small triangle of light through the bottom pane of glass. The walls were newly painted and bare. I was told to sit on the chair facing the slightly bigger one at the opposite side of the desk, whereupon my two minders left the room, closing the door behind them.

If the atmosphere in the room was intended to intimidate me it was succeeding very well. I began to feel vaguely guilty, though I wasn’t quite sure what it was I should feel guilty about. The trouble with finding yourself isolated in a room like this is that you immediately assume you’ve lost even before you’ve opened your mouth. I began to think what my interrogator might use against me. Was it the nine men I’d left unburied on the beach in Java? But surely they’d understand that I would have been deeply fearful that the murderers might return? I would explain that, to the best of my ability, I’d given them a Christian burial.

Or did they think I might be a Japanese spy? It would be difficult to explain why I was in Java looking for a butterfly when any sensible person, knowing war in the Pacific was imminent, would have kept well away. But they could soon enough check on Kevin and they’d know he was fair dinkum.

Maybe they thought I’d stolen
Madam Butterfly,
but her papers were in order; besides, in the context of the panicked evacuation of Batavia, even if I had, it could hardly be considered a war crime.

I decided it must be the Japanese connection. My passport showed that I had been born in Japan and among my papers was a British embassy document to say that though I had resided in Tokyo until the age of eleven, I was entitled to Australian citizenship by virtue of my father’s nationality. It had never occurred to me to ask whether my birthplace entitled me to Japanese citizenship. The citizens of Nippon so deeply despised Westerners that I couldn’t imagine them granting me automatic citizenship by virtue of birth. As a child in the company of the adult Japanese I, or any other child of foreign blood, was never referred to by name, but simply and contemptuously as ‘It’.

The door opened and turning around to see if it was my interrogator I was met by a thin woman in her fifties wheeling a tea trolley. Judging from her lined face she’d seen a fair bit of life, a working-class lady to the last sinew in her body. Her over-powdered face had no other make-up and the tiny vertical lines engraved around her mouth, some of them caked with talc, indicated she was a heavy smoker. She wore a black, somewhat down-at-the-heel shoe on her left foot and on her right a navy-blue felt bedroom slipper with the area around the big toe cut out. Her hair was covered with a hairnet and she wore a cotton uniform, dark green with large white buttons down the front.

‘You’ve hurt your toe,’ I remarked needlessly.

‘Nah, it’s me bunions, love,’ she said, pointing to the slipper. ‘This one’s playing up. It’s the weather, must be rain comin’, can always tell.’ She looked down at the slipper, shaking her head. ‘Perfectly good pair of slippers me daughter gave me for Christmas, seems a shame havin’ ter mutilate ’em like this. Cuppa, love?’

Without waiting for me to reply she began to pour from a large aluminium teapot into a white cup, then added a splash of milk. ‘No sugar. Sorry about that, it’s wartime. Yer have ter bring yer own or go without.’ She paused, handing me the unsugared tea. ‘Now, what I want to know is this. All them lads fightin’ and gettin’ our sugar, which I don’t resent, not for one moment… but they ain’t usin’ no more sugar than they did when they was back home, are they? They’re not takin’ four teaspoons at the front when before they only took two at home. So, answer me this. What’s happened to all our sugar?’

I laughed. ‘I really don’t mind my tea either way,’ I replied, not knowing the answer to the great sugar mystery.

‘That’s not the point, is it? If you ask me, it’s them government blokes in Canberra, the buggers are hoardin’ it.’

I rose from my chair to take the cup from her. ‘I’m Nick Duncan,’ I said.

‘Dorothy, love. Bickie? Only Arnott’s digestives.’ She laughed. ‘The war. Only the generals get chocolate bickies.’ She stirred the tea and put a plain brown biscuit on the saucer before placing it beside me on the desk. ‘Better do one for his nibs. He never drinks it, but gets grumpy if he thinks he’s been neglected.’ She poured a second cup, added no sugar and placed a chocolate biscuit in a separate saucer beside the cup. ‘It’s so the chocolate won’t melt against the side of the cup,’ she explained.

‘Er… who… whose office is this, Dorothy?’

‘Nobody’s,’ she replied. ‘His nibs uses it when he comes down from Perth.’

I pointed to the chocolate biscuit. ‘Is he a general?’

She laughed. ‘I don’t think so, love, he put himself on the chocolate bickie list.’

She left and it seemed only moments later that a small bald and greying man, with what remained of his hair combed over and stuck to his scalp, and wearing steel-rimmed glasses, entered. He propped at the door, holding it open, and I rose and turned towards him. He seemed oblivious of my presence. He wore a navy woollen suit, the jacket of which was shiny from wear at the back, and I could see had no chance of buttoning around a pumpkin-sized paunch. Everything about him was small except his stomach, which looked as if it belonged to someone else and he’d simply borrowed it for the day. White shirt, nondescript dark-blue tie and a returned soldier’s badge in his lapel. He held the door open, allowing a woman to enter. She carried a bentwood chair and a notepad and he made no attempt to take the chair from her. She was taller than him, about five foot nine, with a slim figure in a plain, light-blue cotton dress and appeared to be in her mid-thirties. Her nice chestnut hair was swept up into a bun behind her head and she wore no discernible expression. At first you thought she was plain but when you looked twice you could see, with her hair allowed to fall loose and a bit of make-up such as lipstick and stuff, she would be quite pretty. I rushed forward and took the chair from her and waited for them both to pass me. The little guy still chose to ignore my presence and went straight to the chair behind the desk, hefting a briefcase onto the desk and sitting down. Then he poked a finger into the tea to see if it was still hot. The lady walked to the side of the desk and waited for me to place the chair down. ‘Thank you,’ she said in a pleasant voice. ‘I’m Marg Hamilton, I work here. I’ll be taking notes.’

‘Nick Duncan,’ I said, smiling.

I was beginning to feel decidedly awkward, standing in khaki shorts and shirt and brown sandshoes, waiting for the old bloke behind the desk who was reading from a single piece of paper to pay me some attention. I wasn’t game to simply sit down, not even sure if I wasn’t under some sort of arrest.

‘Hurrumph!’ he growled, clearing his throat, then reached for his cup, took an absent-minded swallow, replaced it on the desk, missing the saucer by several inches, but somehow managed to find the chocolate biscuit, which he held suspended in one hand while he continued to read from what I assumed was some sort of briefing paper that had been left for him on the desk.

I glanced over at Marg Hamilton, who was seated with her legs crossed at the ankles. Nice long legs. She grinned at me and then glanced quickly at the man, then back at me, lifting one eyebrow almost imperceptibly. She was plainly in sympathy with me and I told myself I liked her.

I’d been back in civilisation only a few hours and was already growing weary of the self-importance people seemed to place on the roles they played in the business known as ‘the war effort’. The old bloke now opened his mouth, giving me a glimpse of silver and gold fillings, and swallowed the entire biscuit, licking his fingers where the chocolate had melted. Then, still ignoring me, he unclasped the straps of his worn briefcase and withdrew my passport, some of the additional papers I’d handed to the Lieutenant Commander on the wharf and, to my surprise, Anna’s embroidered handkerchief of the Clipper butterfly, and finally the oilskin wallet I’d made to protect the Magpie Crow. He looked up at last and seemed to notice for the first time that I was still standing. ‘Sit, please,’ he said crisply, and when I was finally seated he reached over the desk to shake my hand. ‘Henry Customs,’ he said, barely touching my fingers in a handshake as firm as a dead squid.

‘How do you do, Mr Customs?’ I said, smiling and then withdrawing my hand, adding, ‘Nick… Nick Duncan.’ I wasn’t at all pleased that they’d been through my knapsack, probably when we’d been at breakfast.

‘No, no, it’s Henry… Mr Henry, Commonwealth Customs and Immigration,’ he said irritably, glancing at the secretary.

‘Oh, I’m sorry, sir,’ I said, blushing and then looking rather sheepishly at the secretary myself. She returned my glance with a secret little smile.

Henry reached out and picked up my passport, then leaned back in his chair and allowed it to fall back onto the desk. ‘Japan.’

‘Japan?’ I was still rattled from the introduction and didn’t catch on immediately.

‘You lived in Japan,’ he accused.

‘Yes, sir, I was born in Tokyo.’

‘Why was that?’ he asked. I was reminded of Kevin’s description of the social worker who had asked him if he slept with his mother. This question seemed equally stupid.

‘I don’t think I had much choice; my parents conceived me there, sir.’

He jerked his head towards Marg Hamilton. ‘I must remind you that this is an official interview, Mr Duncan,’ he said. ‘Every word is being taken down in shorthand.’

To my surprise Marg Hamilton, using a deliberately didactic tone, read from the pad, repeating the words, ‘Japan?’ spoken by me, then Henry’s ‘You lived in Japan,’ then my ‘Yes, sir, I was born in Tokyo,’ followed by his ‘Why was that?’ and concluding with my somewhat facetious reply. ‘Do you
really
want it put down just like that, Mr Henry?’ she asked, looking directly at him.

‘No, no, girlie, expunge,’ Henry blustered, then turned to me. ‘Do you speak Japanese, Mr Duncan?’

‘Yes, sir, my father and I left when I was eleven, by which time I was bilingual.’

‘And your mother? She Japanese?’

‘No, sir, French, she died when I was five.’

‘You speak French?’

‘No, sir, I was too young.’

‘Your father, why was he in Japan?’

‘He taught English and was the headmaster of the International School in Tokyo. It was run by the American Embassy.’

‘Where is he now? Have you contacted him?’

‘He’s an Anglican missionary in New Britain, hopefully escaped before the Japanese invaded, and no I haven’t; we only arrived this morning and I have no news.’

‘Then how do you know the Japanese have invaded New Guinea?’ he shot back, head cocked to one side, one eye half-closed.

‘Lieutenant Commander Rigby of Naval Intelligence told me, sir.’

‘Write that down, girlie,’ Henry shot out.

Marg Hamilton looked up and while she didn’t exactly sigh you just knew she was doing so inwardly. ‘It was on the wireless, Mr Henry.’

‘Write it down… write it down, Rigby, Naval Intelligence. Loose talk costs lives,’ Henry insisted. He reached out and picked up Anna’s carefully folded handkerchief and placed it in front of him, opening each fold carefully as if it might contain something. It was finally spread out showing the embroidered butterfly in the bottom right-hand corner facing me. ‘What is this?’ he demanded.

‘A handkerchief,’ I replied.

‘A woman’s handkerchief?’

‘Yes, sir, it’s a keepsake.’

He stabbed a finger at the square of linen. ‘The butterfly? That mean something, some sort of code?’

I laughed. ‘No, sir, it’s an embroidery of a Clipper butterfly.’ I was damned if I was going to tell him any more. If I should do so, the next thing would be that he had turned Anna into the Mata Hari of the Dutch East Indies.

He reached for the oilskin wallet and tossed it in front of me. ‘Open it,’ he instructed.