The Persimmon Tree (91 page)

Just as well. The planned Australian invasion was based on the fact that there were twenty thousand Japanese troops in Rabaul. When Japan surrendered, this calculation of the enemy’s strength proved to be wildly inaccurate. In fact, there were one hundred thousand Japanese. Their front-line troops might have been weakened from sickness and starvation, but Rabaul was the main garrison and the troops there were reasonably well fed and in good health. If we’d invaded it would have been an absolute bloodbath. For all his manifest faults, there ought to be a shrine to MacArthur in Australia for saving our soldiers’ lives by vetoing the unnecessary actions proposed by the pompous and vainglorious Blamey and his cohorts, and denying them the ordnance to invade.

Late in July 1945 Major Peter McVitty called all the coastwatchers together and said he’d received a somewhat puzzling and elliptical signal discouraging any unnecessary offensive activity over the next fortnight.

We were as stunned as the Japanese to hear the announcement that America had dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima, followed shortly after by another on Nagasaki. Then came the surrender on the 15th of August 1945.

I felt greatly honoured to be invited, along with all the other coastwatchers, to be present in Rabaul on the 6th of September when the Australian Lieutenant General Vernon Sturdee (thank Christ it wasn’t Blamey!) formally accepted the surrender of the Japanese forces in the region from Lieutenant General Imamura on board the British aircraft carrier
Glory
. It was all over bar the victory marches, the ticker-tape parades and the joyous dancing and cheering in the streets of our cities and towns.

It was the start of the salvage company Judge, Popkin & Duncan Pty Ltd, Island Trading and Salvage Merchants. It was also time to find Anna.

‘
Inside is your butterfly handkerchief

and also eighty persimmon seeds.

You must sow five immediately,

because I am five years behind now.

Then, you must sow one seed each year on my birthday.

You must promise me, Nicholas.
’

Anna Til

Beautiful Bay, Port Vila,

New Hebrides, 1950

WITH THE WAR OVER
I had one final task ahead of me, and that was to find Anna. While I counted myself extraordinarily fortunate with the women who had graced my young life, the most special of them being Marg Hamilton, I had never forgotten Anna. I would be fibbing if I said that every day I read the letter she’d sent to me from Tjilatjap via Colonel Woon, but I certainly did so at least once a week. My fear, of course, was that she’d perished at the hands of the Japanese.

In any eastern or western society Anna would have been seen as a beautiful young woman and my hope was that this factor had saved her life. The stories of the Japanese use of comfort women were beginning to circulate in the first weeks after the Japanese surrender, told by Dutch refugees coming to Australia from Java. It wasn’t difficult to speculate that Anna may have been forced to act in that capacity. I wasn’t at all sure how I would react to this possibility. My hope was that it wouldn’t matter — that she’d still love me and I would feel the same about her. I certainly wasn’t concerned about her virginity, but rather about how she may have been affected, and how she might regard me.

There was a constant niggling thought that I’d only known her for a few weeks and that people change, particularly under difficult circumstances. I knew I’d changed, changed enormously. I’d grown up to discover that within me there was a killer and a lover. I hated this dichotomy but was forced to accept that Nick Duncan was no longer the ingenuous butterfly collector to whom Anna had professed her love.

If I had changed, then how much more would she have changed? I even asked myself the question:
Why don’t you just remember her fondly as a teenage fling, your first love, one that was never consummated? Remember Anna as a beautiful girl you met when you were both young and innocent and the world was a different place, before hate and violence and killing had become the paramount occupation of most of the so-called civilised world?

Lying in a sleeping bag in the jungle, I would think: How could I possibly expect to resume our relationship from the time of her tearful farewell when she stood on the deck of the
Witvogel
, clutching the little box containing the Clipper butterfly?

After hours of silent argument, I’d all but convince myself that it was pointless trying to find her. When this happened, I’d pat the breast pocket of my jungle greens where the butterfly handkerchief she’d embroidered for me rested in a flat oilskin wallet I’d devised so that the thin cotton material didn’t disintegrate and stain from the sweat of a jungle patrol.

The handkerchief had been my talisman throughout the periods of active combat. It was with me at Bloody Ridge, at Mount Austen where I’d killed the sniper and captured Gojo Mura, and at the subsequent ambushes of Japanese patrols in New Britain. It had been in my breast pocket when I’d found my father. I would often take it out in the dark and run my fingers gently across the butterfly embroidery and then I’d hear myself saying, ‘Don’t give up, Anna, I’m coming to get you. Nick’s coming, darling.’

I’d never addressed Anna as ‘darling’. It was a word I’d not had occasion to use and one I would not have fully understood at the time. Marg Hamilton had been the one to first introduce me to its intimate as well as its casual, throwaway meaning. But in my mind messages to Anna I found myself attaching ‘darling’ as an adjunct, almost as a prerequisite to the development of our invisible and imaginary relationship. It was as if the ambiguity of the word more deeply enhanced and established what now seemed, after so much time, a tenuous ‘ships passing in the night’ relationship. Thus the little cotton butterfly handkerchief served as a constant reminder that continued to stoke the embers of my memory of Anna and kept the flickering flame alive.

I began the process of finding Anna in an obvious manner. I called Marg. Who else? ‘Marg, who do I contact in Canberra to see if Anna Van Heerden came into Australia?’

‘Department of Immigration and Customs,’ she replied, then laughed. ‘You will remember Bert Henry, the first day we met? Thank God he’s long retired.’

‘Yeah, but do you know someone I can — or you can — call, so I don’t have to go through all the red tape?’

She phoned back several days later. ‘No luck, Nick. No one of that name has ever entered Australia.’

It was a dead end, another disappointment. Perhaps Madam Butterfly was purposely avoiding me. How could that be? I was certain she’d try to come to Australia; after all, we’d promised each other that we would meet here and she knew how to contact me through the Archbishop of Perth.

The little bloke, anxious to get under way with the salvage operation, was less than impressed when I told him I had to go to Java and expected to be away at least a month. The account in the bank had reached an astounding twenty-five thousand pounds and he was panicking that what he called the ‘Eternal Revenue’ would somehow come looking for what he also referred to as the ‘stash’.

I had located most of the big salvage sites in the Pacific, using my own observation and getting Belgiovani to ask on the Intelligence network, posing the question as if some official plan existed. The main Japanese source of non-ferrous scrap metal was Rabaul where, after the peace treaty had been signed on the decks of the
Glory
, I’d done the survey myself.

We also possessed an important asset in the form of ex-Major Peter McVitty, who had been my senior officer during my time in New Britain as an erstwhile member of the coastwatchers’ detachment. As a civilian he was still heavily involved at a senior level in ANGAU, the Australian New Guinea Administration Unit. This organisation was busy re-establishing Australia’s post-war colonial administration in the islands.

Peter was in an ideal position to ‘facilitate’ and to influence the outcome of a great many things and, at my suggestion, had taken an interest in scrap metal. Not many people had woken up to the potential bonanza offered by the wreckage of war. Even fewer had the necessary resources, skills and equipment to handle the task. With Peter scrutinising the tenders and making use of all the bureaucratic and legal quibbles available to a skilled lawyer, many of our competitors’ tenders were rejected.

Peter McVitty, once a lawyer and now turned post-war bureaucrat, had agreed to help under two conditions: that he benefit personally from the result of our salvage operation, and that we use his brother Stan for our legal work. Stan was the head of the well-known, respected and somewhat silvertail Melbourne law firm McVitty, Swan & Allison, which had been established by their father in the early 1920s.

This sort of jiggery-pokery wasn’t my area of expertise and I referred it to the little bloke, who was fairly busy milking the last of the quartermaster advantages to be had in Brisbane before repatriation to the States. Stan McVitty proved reluctant to come to Brisbane, claiming that he was much too busy with important clients and couldn’t spare the time. The little bloke wasn’t accustomed to being treated in an offhand manner and took a fair bit of umbrage as baggage down to Melbourne with him, hitching a ride in a military plane. He would later recall the experience.

‘He fat, he bald, he got dis long nose and one o’ dem crocodile smiles like Father Geraghty. When I tell him what we want to do he ask, “Scrap metal? Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”’ Kevin mimicked. ‘Den he says again, “Scrap metal! It’s hardly the kind of thing a senior partner would handle.” Den he look at me an’ he shrug an’ sigh, “Oh well, as my brother Peter is involved, I daresay we’ll have to take you on.” So den I ask him where he fight in da war? I’m trying ta be sociable, ya know, nice, smiling, ’cos I don’t want dis guy ta see I think he’s a fuckin’ asshole. “Flat feet, old chap,” he says wit dat crocodile smile. “Some of us had to stay back to mind the farm.” Nick! Dis ain’t right! We dealin’ here wit a fuckin’ draft dodger!’ Which, coming from the little bloke of ‘I want ya ter unnerstan’ —’ fame, was perhaps just a tad hypocritical. If the judge hadn’t given him the choice of joining the US Navy or going to prison, there is absolutely no doubt the little bloke would have ended up as a very artful dodger.

‘Mate, we’re stuck with him; we’re going to need his brother, Peter. You’re going to have to let the crocodile continue to smile.’ In fact, Kevin’s ‘Crocodile’ — as we all came to term Stan McVitty — promptly handed the legal ramifications of our business to a junior, one of the few female lawyers in the country. Miss Janine de Sax called Kevin and asked if she could fly up to Brisbane to get a proper brief. Kevin agreed and asked me to sit in on the meeting together with Joe Popkin.

It was a frantic period for my two American partners, as neither knew when they’d be repatriated. I was proving my worth as the third musketeer by buying essential equipment. Before I was demobbed and when still in New Britain I’d purchased two eighty-foot wooden coastal boats and a landing craft, mooring them in Rabaul. All three were virtually brand-new and I bought them for a song since the local American ordnance officer, a nice bloke, Captain John Tulius, seemed happy to get rid of them. A day later I met him in the officers’ mess and bought him a beer. ‘I hear you were with the 1st marines on Guadalcanal?’ he asked. ‘Won the Navy Cross at Bloody Ridge?’

I laughed and replied with my by-now practised rejoinder: ‘Wrong place at the right time.’

‘Can’t let that go unrewarded. What say we make it two landing craft with spare engines, same price.’ You can say what you like about Americans, but in Nick Duncan’s war I never met a bad one. As it turned out we’d underestimated the amount of stuff lying around and the extra landing craft eventually proved a godsend.

Based on this single piece of sheer good fortune I was appointed the purchasing officer for the company, but not without a lesson in the art of buying from Chief Lewinski. Our needs ranged from a couple of bulldozers, welding equipment, spare parts, generators and a small crane for lifting heavier items right down to other items such as clothing for our crews and workers. Heavy construction was Joe’s department and expertise, but a black American sailor couldn’t be seen bidding at an American army disposal auction. So he’d do the spotting and the pricing and I’d do the fronting up at the auction. Da Chief called me, together with Joe Popkin, into his office and began by congratulating me on the purchase of the two boats and landing craft, especially the spares. ‘Joe here will tell ya, spare parts are everythin’, Nick. Always see ya get spare parts. Jeeps break down in the jungle — ya wanna know ya got the parts to fix ’em. Same wid a boat at sea. But first ya gotta know the auction system, son.’

‘Yes, thank you, Chief. I haven’t a clue. I’ve never attended an auction in my life,’ I admitted.

‘It ain’t the auction, it’s what happens before that’s important, Nick.’

‘Ah, there’s a process before?’ I asked naïvely.

‘Well, it ain’t official, son.’ He turned to Joe. ‘Ya pack six dozen cold Bud and a small tin wash tub wid ice in the Packard, Joe. When ya get to the depot find a nice place to stand where the potential buyers pass by. Joe, ya standin’ in ya navy uniform and ya yellin’ out, big grin, nice polite, “The US Navy wud like to buy ya a beer, gennelmen.” Soon ya got yourself the main crowd, all wid a Bud in their hand. Then ya establish the ground rules.’

‘Ground rules, isn’t that what the auctioneer does?’ I asked.

Chief Lewinski smiled. ‘These’re the non-official ground rules, son, known in the purchasin’ and procurement business as “the prior arrangement”. Ya decide amongst yourselves who wants what and how much each wants to pay. After that, it’s just a matter of mutual respect.’ Joe grinned and I looked concerned. The Reverend John Duncan’s son was getting into collusion, an area I knew nothing about and in which I wasn’t over-keen to advance my knowledge. Sensing my reluctance Chief Lewinski continued, ‘Nick, there’s enough for everybody. Ya don’t want some cockamamie auctioneer to get himself a big bonus for exceeding the estimates. Uncle Sam don’t need the cash, ya do.’

I must say there has to be a dishonest streak in everyone. It worked like a charm as we bidders arranged amongst ourselves who would get what and what the chosen one was prepared to pay. I guess it was collusion, but in a good cause: ordinary blokes, some battlers, guys recently demobbed and doing a little planning for their future. Few of us had very much disposable income, and we were benefiting from Uncle Sam’s largesse. ‘Ain’t nobody got hisself hurt ’cept da man wid da white beard and da big hat decorate wid da stars ’n’ stripes,’ Joe said happily each time we returned from a successful auction.

But if we were learning fast in the area of procurement, what the three of us didn’t know about the law and the rigmarole involved in setting up a company was practically encyclopaedic. The meeting with Janine de Sax was to change everything. She proved to be smart as a whip and nice to boot, but more importantly she was totally discreet. Her immediate advice was to use a tax haven. She outlined a scheme to set up a holding company in Port Vila, the capital of New Hebrides, which was now administered jointly by the British and the French as a condominium. ‘No tax of any kind and well away from the prying eyes of the Australian Government,’ she advised, then added, ‘I hope you don’t mind, but I’ve incurred some expense on your behalf by consulting with a top young barrister named John Kerr with whom I was at university. We sought a second opinion with a Sydney colleague, Garfield Barwick. Both are agreed that if domiciled there your company will be immune from Australian law and therefore taxes.’ She looked up, a trifle concerned. ‘I hope you don’t mind; it seemed money well spent on lawyers’ fees.’