The Persimmon Tree (92 page)

Joe drove her back to the airport in the Packard and Kevin and I had a beer at the Bellevue. Sally, by the way, had long since left, sailing as a war bride, married to an ex-US Navy doctor who was to set up a practice as a neurosurgeon in Boston. The funny part was that while I’d been introduced to him the night we’d attended the dinner dance at the officers’ club and he’d sent over a bottle of French champagne, I couldn’t for the life of me remember his surname. Whatever the married Sally Forsythe now called herself, I hoped she’d be very happy.

‘Now dat what I call a lawyer,’ Kevin said, fixing himself a cigar. ‘I’m tellin’ yoh, Nick, dat one smart lady. Dat Crocodile smilin’ asshole, he gone done us a big, big favour.’

It was then that I told him I’d be away for a month at least and was going to Java to find Anna.

‘Wassa matta wit you, Nick? Yoh got broads fallin’ all over demselves ter get to yoh.’ He pointed at the bar. ‘Nobody could get inta Sally’s pants and yoh done it widout buyin’ her a drink, nylons or chocolates — sweet fanny! Bren Gun says ya a born natural magnet fer womankind. Now ya gonna go to Java to find yerself some li’l girl yoh only know’d three weeks when yer catchin’ fuckin’ butterflies, who been under da Japanese occupation fer years and — who da fuck knows what happen to her in da meantime? Maybe she ain’t even wit us no more. You crazy or somet’in’, buddy?’

‘Kevin, I’ve got to go. I made myself a promise.’

‘Den
un
-promise yerself, fer fuck’s sake! Yoh hear what I’m sayin’, buddy?’

Naturally I went straight to Marg Hamilton. I took the plane down to Melbourne, where I stayed at the same boarding house where the Virgin Mary’s mother worked as a day cook. She welcomed me like a lost son and still smelled the same — of fried onions and Johnson’s baby powder. Mary was already in New York. ‘Her family, the whole mob, they live in a compound. It seems the father is someone real important and doesn’t want his kids to leave him. Ain’t that nice, Nick?’ she informed me proudly.

I’d previously booked a table for two upstairs at Florentino’s, and was already waiting and rose to greet Marg when she was ushered to my table. She kissed me. ‘My goodness, Nick, fancy “Flory’s”. You
have
come up in the world.’

I blushed. ‘I wanted to take you somewhere good, Marg, so I phoned our lawyer and she suggested here.’ I looked around at the murals. ‘I’ve never been in a place as nice as this before.’

‘You must have a
bombe
Alaska for dessert, it’s their specialty.’ She looked up at me. ‘Lawyer, and a “she”?’ Her eyebrow just slightly arched with her query.

I told her about the salvage idea and about Janine de Sax. ‘She would have been a partner in the firm by now, but she has two children, two girls, and refuses to work eighteen hours a day every day of the week,’ I said to impress on Marg that she wasn’t some two-bit shyster lawyer.

The waiter came and we ordered, steak for me and fish for her — no accounting for people’s taste, even that of the beloved Marg. I’d eaten enough fish sailing the mission boat as a kid to last me a lifetime. ‘Marg, I want you to help me get to Java. To find Anna,’ I said as soon as the waiter had departed.

There was silence. Some silences are just silences. But this one was heavy and hung in the air like a dark cloud. Her red lips were drawn in a pucker and her eyes downcast. I could see she was upset and shaking with anger. ‘No!’ she exploded — just the one word, loud and hard so that people at other tables turned to look.

‘Why?’ I asked. She was going to marry Rob Rich, I still adored her, but our relationship was long over.

Then it came out slowly, carefully. ‘Nick, I fell in love with you within minutes of entering the office when that ridiculous old man from Customs, Bert Henry, was interviewing you as if you were a dangerous alien. You were brown as a berry and where your tangled mass of hair parted at the back of your neck your skin was tender and vulnerably white. You were an astonishingly beautiful young boy in faded shirt and shorts, both virtually in rags — but clean rags. You’d sailed halfway across the Indian Ocean in a tiny boat, avoiding the Japanese and caring for a wounded American sailor. Your innocence was palpable. I loved you almost from the first moment. When you said, with a shy smile, that you were a butterfly collector, I nearly wept. Then I watched the beautiful boy be hijacked by Rupert Basil Michael Long, who quickly and expertly exploited the fact that you were obsessed with finding your father. I witnessed your sadness when Anna, your first love, failed to arrive in Darwin. Then I watched my beautiful boy go to Guadalcanal and when he came back he wore medals for bravery but his soul was corrupted and his beautiful young body was broken. He went back and he found his father. It was the same brave heart and determination that had sailed across the ocean, but it was a different man. The butterfly man had lost his innocence. I didn’t care, you were alive, Nick. You’d made it through to the end. My beloved boy was safe. Yes, you were still my beloved boy, even though by then I’d found my true partner. But the young, improbable love of that part of my life was back, battered, hard-eyed, but back.’

She stopped and looked at me and I thought she was on the point of weeping. ‘No, Nick, there is civil war in Java. The Dutch who ran with their tails between their legs from the Netherlands East Indies now self-righteously want to claim it back. It’s a nasty, brutal little war where white men are the enemy. The Indonesians, as they’re calling themselves, have a right to their independence, but that is not a matter for you or me. Anna, if she is still alive, will make her own way out. There is an active refugee program. If she isn’t there then you are just as likely to be caught in the crossfire.’ She suddenly looked furious. ‘No, no, no! I will do nothing to help you! In fact I will do quite the opposite. I will do everything I can, everything Rob can, to prevent you going!’

‘Marg, please; I didn’t mean to upset you. I’m truly sorry that I asked you.’

‘And what the hell does that mean in Nick-speak? That you’ll find another way to get there? Like finding your father? Nick, grow up! Your Anna is probably dead. If she isn’t, she’s permanently and psychologically damaged. Even if you found her, you’re not the same Nick and she’s not the same Anna. War changes everything, everybody. Anna’s particular war under Japanese domination may have scarred her forever, destroyed her life. For God’s sake! This isn’t a pair of lovers running into each other’s arms in slow motion against a backdrop of the setting sun.’

‘Is that your last word?’ I asked, not happy at her chastisement.

‘No! My last word is “No!”’

The waiter arrived and put down our plates in that manner waiters have when they sense a quarrel — perhaps they’re trained to be invisible and obtrusive at the same time. Marg Hamilton rose and threw her napkin onto the table. ‘I don’t feel like fish!’ she declared, then stooped to pick up her bag and gloves and walked out of Florentino’s, past the murals and down the stairs.

The steak looked delicious, but I didn’t eat it. I sent it back. When the waiter looked concerned, fussing and protesting and offering to replace it even though it was obvious I hadn’t touched it, I glared at him. ‘Bring me a bloody
bombe
Alaska,’ I growled.

‘I’m sorry, sir, we do not serve
bombe
Alaska on Monday. It’s the dessert chef’s day off.’ He reminded me of Fernando at the Bellevue. ‘May I suggest crème caramel?’

‘No, you may not! Bring me the bill,’ I demanded in a more mollified voice. Being back in civilisation wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.

I found a café in Bourke Street just down from Florentino’s and ordered a toasted egg and bacon sandwich and a milkshake. Still upset, I asked the little sheila with rat’s-tail hair and acne who was serving me, ‘What’s crème caramel?’

She shrugged. ‘Never ’eard of it.’ She turned and yelled to the bloke behind the counter, ‘Hey, Tony, what’s cream caramel?’

Tony shook his head and called into the back of the café, ‘Hey, Mama!’ Seconds later a stout lady arrived and stood at the door, wiping her hands on her apron. ‘What’s cream caramel, Mama?’ Tony asked.

‘Crème cara-mel’a?’ She said the words as if they were poetry. ‘Da brown sugar — da raw one — wid butter inna dish. Den bit cream, three egg, milk, bit honey, bit vanilla, mix all up, pour inna da bowl an’ put in slow oven one hour, it set’a just like’a jelly. Why you ask’a me, Tony — you want crème cara-mel’a?’

The next most likely person who could help was Peter McVitty. I guess I could have gone to see the dreaded Rupert Basil Michael Long, but he had one agenda too many in his nefarious mind and I thought it wise to stay out of his clutches. Peter had a fair bit of clout in Canberra; he’d been (and for all I knew, still was) on the committee of the Directorate of Research and Civil Affairs. The title covered almost everything and nothing. It was a somewhat shadowy group that had a large influence over ANGAU which, in turn, was largely responsible for shaping the policies designed to bring New Guinea and the other islands back into the Australian colonial fold. This group had been brought together by Alf Conlon and was said to include some of the brightest in legal, academic and government circles. The members were being groomed to be the movers and shakers of post-war Australia. I called Peter in Canberra and made an appointment to see him.

When I asked Peter if he could find a way for me to get to Java, his eyebrows shot up. ‘Java? There’s a civil war going on, Nick. Nasty business. Under Japanese occupation they missed out on fighting in the big stoush, now they’ve created a war of independence of their own. Very messy. We’ve decided to back the Indonesians in the United Nations and the Dutch are not real happy with us. They point to the fact that we’re going back into New Guinea and why can’t they do the same in what they insist on calling the Netherlands East Indies? Arrogant bunch, three hundred and thirty years of colonial rule and they want more.’

‘They’ve got a point, though — I mean us and New Guinea, the islands,’ I said.

Peter McVitty smiled. ‘Selective perception, old chap, it’s redolent in all governments. What’s good for the goose in this instance is not good for the gander. The conscience we took to the United Nations in San Francisco got lost somewhere in the air over the Pacific. You’ve heard it all before: “We’re different, our indigenous population are still head-hunters, a hundred years away from self-rule, can’t possibly be left to manage on their own.”’

‘Seems wrong though, doesn’t it?’

Peter McVitty looked at me sternly. ‘Nick, for Christ’s sake, don’t venture that opinion to the blokes from External Affairs. They’ll immediately conclude you want to go to Java to stir up trouble. We’re not neutral but we won’t interfere with the outcome.’

‘No, of course not,’ I assured him. ‘I simply want to get to Tjilatjap and have no intention of getting involved other than to try and find a friend,’ I said.

‘Friend? Let me guess. Female. Dutch or Javanese?’

‘Half and half, Javanese mother; someone I met before the war.’

‘You sure that’s wise, Nick? There’s been a lot of water under the bridge, mate. Young Dutch women had a rough time under the Japanese.’ He didn’t need to elaborate. ‘My personal advice is to stay well away.’ He smiled. ‘But I’ve worked with you long enough to know your determination. By the way, how is your father?’

‘Recovering slowly. He’s been ordained a bishop.’

‘Nice, do we get him?’

‘You mean the islands?’ He nodded. ‘Yes, New Guinea, New Britain,’ I laughed. ‘Anywhere there’s malaria.’

‘Nick, I can’t promise; right now Java and Sumatra are officially “no go” diplomatic zones, but that may change. I’ll see what I can do.’

‘Do I hang around or go back to Brisbane?’ I asked.

‘No, no, hang around. It will be “Yes” or “No” pretty damn quickly. Where are you staying?’

‘I’ll find somewhere.’ I rose and, reaching over, shook his hand. ‘Thanks, Peter. Whatever the outcome, I appreciate your help.’

‘Wait a mo’, Nick.’ He picked up the phone. ‘I’ll book you into the Hotel Canberra. Parliament’s in session and they’re announcing the interim budget tomorrow. Canberra’s booked out, but they have to keep a couple of rooms vacant in case someone important to the government unexpectedly arrives in town.’

After checking into the hotel I went out for a walk and I must say, for a national capital, Canberra was less than spectacular. Back at the hotel I found a message waiting for me: ‘See
you for drinks, your hotel, 1800. Peter’
.

Over a whiskey and soda (beer for me) he said, ‘The notorious Nick Duncan luck is still holding. There’s a delegation going to Batavia, or as the leader of the proposed Republic of Indonesia, Sukarno, refers to it, Jakarta. You will be attached as an observer.’ He grinned. ‘That’s a word that covers a multitude of sins.’ He paused, sipping at his scotch. ‘Only catch is, they’re leaving from Perth in two weeks. You’ll have to make your own way overland; the rest is taken care of.’

‘I owe you, Peter, thank you.’

‘Yes, you do, Nick.’ He grinned. ‘Just make bloody sure that salvage business of yours is a huge success.’ Then he added modestly, ‘By the way, it wasn’t all that difficult to swing. When you joined Naval Intelligence you signed on forever. You’re still on the reserve list, so it’s time you got something back. All the committee did was to call Commander Long in Melbourne to check on your past performance and I’m told he simply said, “Give him anything he wants.”’ Peter grinned. ‘As they say in the islands, “Yu numba one fella.”’