The Widow & Her Hero (23 page)

It seems so. Leo had the decency never to trouble me.

We were drinking our tea by now. I steered him to that
old standby topic of where else he was going while he was
at this end of the earth. The winter sun was on his face and
enhanced the sense he exuded of a life well lived, and a
mind still active.

Oh, I've already been some places, I've just visited
Melbourne again, he told me. It's changed, but it's still
Melbourne. I always liked that place. It had a lot of character.
And before then, we were up in Cairns. That's changed
too since we were there, but you only have to scratch the
surface to see the old town, the houses on stilts. There's
something about that coast that won't let it be turned into
a total Florida. The mountains behind, I suppose.

And this is your last call? I asked.

Yes. I don't expect ever to see lovely Sydney again. The
truth is, Grace, I discouraged my wife from visiting today.
I really wanted to see you alone. To talk about Leo and the
others. To clear my slate.

I really didn't like that sentence.

Yes, I said, feeling that peculiar flinch. I appreciate that,
Jesse. But there's my slate, too. What condition will you
leave that in?

I'll try to be careful, he assured me. I know nothing
about Leo but what reflects glory on him.

I was pleased to hear it.

He paused. He said, I remember a meeting I had up in
Cairns one day with Doucette and Leo and Dotty's husband.
I should tell you I was certainly trying to make a bridge with
the guy – Doucette, I mean. Dotty's husband was fine. And
nothing had happened between me and Dotty at that stage.
But I wanted to work with Doucette because I could tell he
was a special kind of man, and I could see he and his expedition
could be an important business and might get lost in
the wash-up. With our help it could be something special.
That's what I believed anyhow. But he had a lot of contempt
for Americans, that guy. He thought we were fools, an idea
easier to argue now than it was then. But even if we
were
fools, we were the fools that were running the game, and
everyone else, even Mountbatten, a fool enough in his own
right, had to come to terms with us. Doucette thought I was
being sent to clip his wings or spy on him and take his
project off him. In fact I was genuinely concerned about him.

Why? I asked.

Because he was a terrier dog. And without our help, he
should never have been encouraged to go again, you know.
I'm sorry to say that, it must be painful for you. Cornflakes
didn't prove that the thing could be done again. It proved
that the thing could be done once.

It seems you were right about that, I told him.

A silence grew and although I understood that the longer
it went the more we'd be landed back with the business of
cleaning his slate, I could not think of a word to utter.

Suddenly, he said, My superiors, General Willoughby,
General MacArthur. They believed Doucette's attempt to
go back to Singapore was an imperial gesture, to set up a
British claim for the place after the war. I know that from
the standpoint of the present, their attitude might seem
hypocrisy, but we Americans were genuinely all in favour
of the Malays getting their self-determination, and
Churchill and Mountbatten wanted back that which was
theirs.

None of that mattered to Leo, I said. He just wanted to
smite the Amalachites. He would have gone anywhere.

I know that, he conceded. But I was aware of one big
problem I couldn't tell Doucette about. That was, if he kept
Memerang to its timetable, it would coincide with General
MacArthur's invasion of the Philippines. And the Philippines
would take up all our attention. And that's exactly
what happened, Grace.

Creed seemed to have been parched by a few minutes'
conversation and drained his tea to moisten his tongue.

I was still in Melbourne in late October 1944, he said.
I hadn't been moved forward to the Philippines because I
was fielding all the interceptions of Japanese radio traffic.
You must know by now that early in the war we'd captured
Ultra, the Japanese code, and we'd been intercepting all
major signals and orders since mid 1942 onwards. These
intercepts were absolute gold, Grace. Ultra. The absolute
standard. And we needed to be careful how we reacted
to the messages we intercepted. We couldn't react, for
example, in a manner that showed we had the code.
Because we needed them to go on using it. So we could
afford to take actions that looked to the enemy like skilled
guesswork or good luck, but we couldn't take action which
indicated foreknowledge. You understand that?

Of course I understand that, I told him, but my jaw was
set, like the jaw of an unbreakable instead of a friable
woman.

Okay, he said. The recital of this triumph of intelligence
now, decades after, seemed to cause him as much melancholy
as it did me.

So every day, he continued, as you might imagine,
the Ultra intercepts were argued about, and as a mere
lieutenant-colonel I had an advisory role in that. Some
intercepts had to be ignored – we could have swooped in
and saved this or that endangered officer, say, but that
would have shown foreknowledge. That was the point, the
intercepts dealt sometimes with local matters, with the
movement of prisoners, say. Then at other times with
considerable tactical issues, and then the entire strategic
plans of the Japanese.

Look, I said. I've read the appropriate spy books. I'm up
on my le Carré. None of this astonishes me, Jesse.

He looked me in the eye and spoke flatly. By way of
Ultra intercepts, he told me, I knew by late October that
Memerang was in trouble.

I felt that prickling sensation, like the soul breaking out
in hives.

You're saying you knew, Jesse?

There was an intercept from the Seventh Area Army in
Singapore that more than twenty Caucasian people had
been engaged in a defensive stand on a junk in the northern
part of the Riau Archipelago. The message said they had
dispersed using sampans and canoes, and had infiltrated
many islands of the archipelago. Even though the Kempei
Tai hoped for cooperation from its network of agents, strict
watch was to be maintained. And as we sat round the table
in Melbourne, orders came from the Philippines, from
General Willoughby's office, to say nothing to IRD yet.

It meant they could have signalled the submarine to pick
them up at once.

You were sleeping with Dotty . . . and you wouldn't save
Rufus.

The old general covered his eyes with his hands.

I was tempted to call Foxhill, but I was also inhibited
. . . Next day or so we intercepted a Seventh Area
Army message that four of Doucette's people were dead in
combat and the others being hunted. Now I know what
should have happened in an ideal world – we ought to have
made up our mind to release the information to IRD so
they could get a signal to the British submarine, that character
Moxham, to move into the pick-up island with all
speed. But there were risks in warning IRD. So we were
coming to a decision. We didn't have any idea then that
Moxham would dawdle criminally round the South China
Sea trying to find targets, or that he'd only visit the pick-up
island once . . .

I could guess everything he was going to tell me. That
their plight had been known. That they had been written
off. Someone as precious and complex as Leo written off
by people in temperate, secure Melbourne, just for policy's
sake. I stood up. All the blood had raced to my brain.
I could feel the inner pressure against the bone of my skull.
The room swayed promisingly. So I'll die, I thought. I won't
have to listen.

I am sorry, said Jesse Creed.

He stood too. He wanted to hold my shoulders but
I backed away.

That's been a weight on me for years, he said.

He was distressed, sure enough, but now he implied he
had transferred the weight. When I could think again, I
found that for reasons I couldn't understand I did not want
him to claim too much responsibility in front of me. I
wanted to curse him after he'd gone. It was as if the normal
denunciations just weren't adequate for dealing with him.

Well, you said you had a merely advisory role, I told him
through my teeth, as if it was my job to comfort him.

No, not exactly, he said, refusing to be silent. I had the
power to change decisions. With some danger to Ultra, sure.
But of a very low order. I was asked my opinion. I felt I
could have persuaded the committee. I believe I could have.
But at the moment I should have spoken, I remembered
Doucette, and all I felt was annoyance at him for getting
himself in this mess. If you'll excuse me, I thought, let that
British bastard stew in his juice. He'd sneered at every
gesture of friendship and cooperation I'd made. He'd
pushed ahead with his Gilbert and Sullivan, tally-ho trapeze
act. To hell with him! To hell with him! Then by the time I'd
got over my rancour, I thought, Jesus, you have to raise it
again tomorrow. But by then there was another flood of
Ultra intercepts which kept me up all the following night,
and it would have looked strange for me to revisit yesterday's
business when thousands of men were dying in the
Philippines. Basically, I lacked the moral courage to do it.
I consider it the great dishonour of my career.

His
dishonour. He might boast of that, but he still
retained his remarkably robust face, and any torment he felt
had not halted him from dressing his old bones in a camelhair
jacket and golf shirt and cream slacks and loafers. I felt
my newly calm anger working along with my old familiar
bewilderment, and a sense of being stung into brutality.
Who did he think he was to make this confession to me? But
fortunately I now lacked the physical endurance to beat him
with fists, just as he lacked the endurance to receive such a
beating. I felt affronted though, and this might have been
the greater part of my anger, that I was being made party to
nothing more than some sort of spiritual bookkeeping on
Creed's part. And I felt for him too some of Leo's anger for
the desk soldier, the ones who drew up plans for jungle
forays, or supplied the gear of champions.

The thing is, I told him, you weren't condemning
Doucette. You were condemning Leo. Doucette had chosen
to throw himself on the first bonfire he found.

He made a concession with his hands. Remember
Foxhill? he asked me. In the tartan pants? He was organising
a group to go in by sub and fetch the survivors. Well,
by that stage we knew it wasn't much use. They were all
dead or captives by Christmas, except two, and we thought
they'd probably drowned.

And you were wrong about that too.

Maybe. Anyhow, telling Foxhill to call off Memexit
didn't involve any chance of jeopardising Ultra, and so I let
him know.

Jesse Creed spread his hands further. He seemed to be
expecting something more from me now. He was lucky
that I did not know which viper of a sentence to sting him
with first.
The great dishonour of my career
. How sad for
you, that you discovered you were a bastard! It didn't stop
you breathing, progressing, mating, breeding and aging
and finding travel insurance at the age of ninety-two.
I certainly didn't intend to absolve him, and I itched to
attack him as I had Hidaka. And then it struck me. As I
was ready to curse and whack him, I thought, You poor
old bitch! What are you about? Doing what you could,
and inadequate to Leo. But they all were inadequate to
Leo. Foxhill, Doucette, Rufus. All of them. Eddie
Frampton, Captain Moxham, Jesse Creed. At eighty-four,
why not just let yourself go in peace? The ghost is satisfied,
the ghost has had its explanations, the ghost has
departed the scene. Just ease up now, you foolish crone.
And be Leo's widow from this point only in honourable
name.

Never mind, I suddenly told him, conceding nothing,
dismissing him. I had scorn, too. All the stuff you try to lay
at my door, you'll have to take all that with you when you
leave. I'm going to get a bottle of gin. You and I will drink a
health to the men you let down. Then you can go off in your
car and make of it whatever you want. I'm not here to help
you feel easy about 1944. You can go to hell for all I care.

He nodded. That's a good Australian curse, he said. And
I deserve it.

When I brought the gin, he sat because I told him to.
With the drink in front of him he looked so much like an
aged lost boy. He laughed. I'm not supposed to have this.
Ruinous to a guy's blood pressure.

I think you'll get through to tomorrow, Jesse. You
always have.

He shook his head. He looked eroded now, and I was
pleased it had gnawed at him, the same thing that had eaten
at me. And at a calm level I acknowledged that after the
century I had lived through, I wasn't nearly as surprised that
day as I would have been had he told me in 1945.

Here's to Leo, I said. He abashed me by beginning to
weep. Tears made his handsome, aging face look more
squalid and rheumy. Ah, I thought, good. He should know
some indignity.

Don't think of sending me a Christmas card, I told him.

He said, I don't think there'll be any more Christmases.

As if they know they're feeding important theatricals, since the
trial the rations have got better – some fish with our rice. Then
one day little Hidaka smuggled in a dozen egg tarts in his
valise. Succulent. We were groaning with joy like a pack of old
ladies. He said, Steamed buns next time. But they haven't
turned up yet.

Yesterday, a week from the trial, we suddenly got called up
by Sleepy and told to get our mattresses and mess tins. We were
sweating a bit because we didn't know whether it was the final
walk, but Jockey talked to a Chinese orderly again and found it
was routine after all. Naturally enough, we're hoping to wait
the war out. Anyhow, as Sleepy led us to another wing we could
hear some poor wretch being beaten somewhere on the lower
floor. His screams were bouncing from gallery to gallery. In the
end, we found ourselves at a cage, in a corner of the gaol, bars
three sides and brick the other. There were bunks in there, some
bed-rolls too, and so we were all going to be together till the
finish, whatever the finish is. And crazy old Filmer looked at
the cell and bed-rolls and said, Well now, chaps, we can really
perform the play.