The Widow and Her Hero

8

In the office we congratulated the Boss on the news about his wife and son. Rufus and I noticed how hollowed-out he looked though, but he was excited too. When he smoked he left his cigarette unlit for a time and jabbed the air with it, telling us about the Silver Bullets, the new submersibles he had ridden in England. He showed us photographs and plans of them. He had a feverish light in his eyes which picked us up too.

We realised, I think, that we’d got a bit flabby in his absence. Our dagger-throwing skills had improved marginally, so that maybe we could have got a job in a sideshow. But we had been drifting. Now we could feel the current was back, and the current was Charlie Doucette, the Boss.

He told us the submersibles would be testing for some chaps. Some of them wouldn’t like this new device, there’d be cases of claustrophobia and panic, since you could lose all sense of up and down when riding them. I knew I was going to find it hard, just from the description of the tight mask, but I can’t imagine that Rufus or Rubinsky or Blinkhorn or Doucette’s old bowman Pat Bantry will have any problems. And we were exhilarated to think of as many as twenty of these near invisible craft creeping into anchorages with loads of limpets.

At calmer times, the Boss said that he had been rather comforted to see that reconnaissance photograph of his wife’s prison.

Good old Jesse Creed provided that, Rufus reminded him.

Kind of him, the Boss admitted. The place, he said, certainly didn’t look like a hellhole, and the good thing was in that climate Minette and the boy were a long way from the risk of malaria and dengue fever and beriberi. He didn’t make much of it in military terms, he didn’t make the news the basis for any ‘once more into the breach dear friends’ speech. So we were a bit surprised by his intensity in the next overall planning meeting.

We were all in the conference room with its empty fireplace and a late afternoon hot wind from the Western Districts was blowing in at the door to the balcony. Everyone seemed awed by Doucette for a number of reasons – the submersibles as well as his record. That stale old bugger Doxey had the chair of course, and there was Foxhill, Enright, D/Plans, the head of Navy plans as well, then the head of IRD Intelligence, and Colonel Jesse Creed. Rufus reported on the junks a shipyard in Melbourne was making for us, and the fact that the shipwrights thought that the war was as good as over, and had no inhibitions about going on strike. It couldn’t be predicted, said Rufus, whether the junks would be ready in time for use before that year’s monsoon. Jesse Creed reported that the proposed base on Great Natuna would be equipped with Bolton long-range radios, but that operatives would be fitted out and trained in the use of the new hand radios called walkie-talkies. The Boltons would enable contact with IRD and the Melbourne Ultra signal centre, of which Jesse Creed was supervisor.

All at once, the Boss said, That’s all very well, nice equipment I’m sure, Colonel Creed.

He was punching at the air with an unsharpened pencil. There was blueness round his eyes and I don’t think he’d been sleeping well since coming back.

But, he said, I’m a little disappointed to find that no US submarine reconnaissance reports on the Natunas grace our agenda.

Creed said, I too am disappointed by that fact. I hear from General MacArthur’s office that the combat demands on our submarines are delaying all that. I can assure you that I have labelled all my requests ‘Urgent’.

The Boss looked away towards a far corner of the room. He asked, But will we be waiting this time next year, and fobbed off indefinitely with the same excuses?

Creed told him he would certainly not expect that and would be personally disappointed if that were the case.

Well, said the Boss, I can only judge from results. I proceeded to SOE in London on the basis that something pressing had to be done, and that I must find some device to achieve that end. I have returned, the equipment has been loaded on a freighter and is on the way to us, and both the engineer-cum-inventor and the instructor from SOE are also on their way to take their role in the enterprise. I can’t do any more, but you have not done what has to be done.

Creed said he was not the final authority on sub deployment. He said it was a matter of negotiation between himself and General Willoughby, his boss.

Our Boss said, Oh, General Willoughby! That very good friend of all British enterprises!

Creed got angry at that. He hoped the Boss wasn’t accusing him of insincerity. That would be a serious hindrance to our new relationship, he declared.

But the Boss really put it to him, and not for the first time I began to feel sorry for the American who didn’t seem such a bad fellow. That’s the whole point, the Boss told him. There’s been no cooperation. You sit in on our deliberations, while yours remain undisclosed and mysterious and inconclusive.

We could all see that Creed was very angry now. But the Boss did not let up. For all I know, you might go off to General Willoughby and say, This and this are what that curious Doucette and his Australian chums are up too. So let’s keep them busy with great dreams and promises.

Major Doxey ineffectually called for peace, gentlemen.

Doucette declared, I have an entire regiment of friends, and my own flesh and blood, not to mention 18,000 Australian prisoners, held by the enemy. I resent the Americans depicting my motives as empire-reclaiming.

Order! cried Doxey, and reminded the Boss that in his absence we had all managed these meetings without any rancour.

Then I have to tell you, said Doucette, that I’m appalled by the lack of progress you’ve made. We might as well have rented out the work to the British submarine flotilla on the other side of the country.

Major Enright shook himself like a dog who has just woken up and realised that there’s a bone of interest to him in the room, and he put in his tuppenceworth to cover his posterior. He said, You’ll see in the minutes I’ve put a request in to the air force chaps to see if they can do a reconnaissance of the Natunas for us. I’ve also been onto D/Plans at MacArthur’s HQ in Brisbane, and they report there has certainly been an unavoidable delay with submarine reconnaissance.

This did nothing to soothe either of the combatants. Creed said he didn’t need to prove to him that he was trying as hard as he could to get the joint endeavour off the ground. You treat everything I do, Doucette, like an arrogant Limey eccentric.

I happen to be an arrogant Irish eccentric, the Boss reminded him again, just for the sake of contradiction.

Doxey ended up clapping his hands, demanding that both gentlemen desist from further insult and innuendo. The Boss managed merely an icy imitation of being polite. He said that submarine reconnaissance will be essential to the Natunas plan. But he hadn’t seen any indication that our friend Colonel Creed was as anxious as we were to get things in place.

Creed did a more diplomatic job, speaking about how he could understand that after the stress of a journey to Britain, and a long airborne return to Australia, anyone might be a bit edgy. And he himself wished he had made more progress.

I think Rufus and I felt a bit guilty. We knew as well as anyone that there’d be no running of a junk into Singapore once the monsoon turned against us. Yet although Rufus had visited the shipyard, to see the craft being built, we had personally placed no urgency on American reconnaissance. The Boss, coming back, had clarified everything, had got us all out of our file-skimming stupor, all our lazy initialling of memos and reports. It was like Peter Pan coming back to the Neverland and straightening out the boys.

Back in our office after the meeting, the door with our knife scars in it firmly closed, Doucette sat behind his desk and made a gesture that Rufus and I should grab a chair each and pull up to it. The Boss’s calm was back. It was as if he had never lost it in the first place.

You’re the pair whose opinion means something, he said. What do you think of Creed?

Rufus told us Dotty thought he was a decent fellow. She said he really liked that last jaunt of ours, Boss.

The Boss thought about this and remarked that Dotty’s loyalty to all of us was exemplary.

Oh yes, Rufus agreed, but he reminded the Boss she saw through people pretty easily too, and she’d see through Creed if he meant us any malice.

The Boss thought and then declared, Doxey and the others will never understand my position. In some ways I don’t blame Creed because he’s been put in place in this committee to spy for General Willoughby. A fellow has to do what his superiors tell him. But I blame him for the hypocrisy of pretending to be a friend and supporter while he’s doing us in.

Rufus said, I wouldn’t have thought it was all pretence, Boss.

But again the Boss said Rufus was a kind man. Creed might amaze everyone by coming up with a reconnaissance of Great Natuna in the next few weeks. But the Boss didn’t think that likely. So he wanted us to start planning a mission of our own. Back to where the Japs and MacArthur both don’t want us to go, he said. We’d have to build up some records and files but we’d keep them amongst ourselves till it became clear Creed was useless. We wouldn’t be left high and dry without a plan when Creed fails us.

Rufus asked him, Back to Singapore?

The Boss said, That’s the neighbourhood we know. We’ll call it Memerang. Remember those Malayan otters that we swam with that afternoon at Pandjang? Charming little blighters, but you can’t see them coming in the water, and with these submersibles…

We talked away with each other, spinning theories. One idea was that Rufus could captain one of those junks they were building in Melbourne, and take it up off Sumatra to Pompong Island, say, while the rest of the party travelled by sub with the submersibles aboard it in the mine tubes, meeting up with him within reach of Singapore. There was that group of British subs operating from Western Australia, and the Boss knew the flotilla commander, Shadwell. So after junk and sub met, everything could go over to the junk which could take us right up into the Singapore roads. We’d use twenty of the little submersibles, the Silver Bullets, said the Boss. Imagine the mayhem. Whereas I’m sure that this big pirate show they’re talking about now has as much reality as the Wizard of Oz.

So you don’t want to involve D/Plans? asked Rufus.

For God’s sake not yet, Rufus, said the Boss. He’s hopeless.

Rufus murmured, Yes. I can’t say I’m sorry I tupped his wife.

This confession Rufus made wasn’t up for discussion by anyone. The Boss asked for no further information on this, and as for me, I knew enough to confuse me already. I didn’t like it, the fact Rufus took his chances with other women. To tell the truth, I’m a bit scandalised about the whole thing. For poor Dotty’s sake as much as anything. And even though I know he’s the bravest man there is, I have this permanent suspicion that it might affect the way he behaved, way out in some archipelago somewhere.