The Widow and Her Hero

4

Leo and the Boss travelled to Melbourne in the belly of a bomber, the noise atrocious, the vibration worse than the Pengulling at the point of engine-strain, and the cold far too intense for tropic-weight clothing. When they landed at Essendon, Leo borrowed a greatcoat and, waiting for a car to take him and Doucette into Melbourne, made a trunk call to my office.

Dear, dear Grace, he said plainly. My sweetheart.

I said, You’re back! And I began bawling, as was normal. I did not know where he had been and would not for years yet, but I knew he had gone into a forest dense with perils and come back with a voice still fresh, if not refreshed. I believed till that second I’d been confident he’d come back, but now my previous naivety on that point seemed ridiculous and I could see I had been oppressed by the waiting.

Are you still unbooked? he asked. Has some Yank claimed you?

What a question! But how are you?

You wouldn’t believe how well I am. Would early December be okay?

He had a calendar in front of him.

What about Saturday, December 8th? I know I can get leave. The Boss has assured me.

Yes, I said. That will be it then. My darling.

I had never before called anyone darling in my life. Endearments sounded rusty yet compulsive in my mouth. I would, just the same, need to be accustomed to using them. I also knew well enough what would accustom me. Sex without fear.

From Essendon, Doucette and Leo were driven to a big old house in South Yarra, Radcliffe Hall, the sort of place built by someone who made a fortune in the gold-rushes, more lately having been a temperance boarding house and now the headquarters of IRD. The sentries on the door saluted them – they had blancoed webbing and gaiters on the rare occasions I went there myself. Piss-elegant, Leo said. Leo and the Boss who had worn sarongs or gone naked on the deck of Pengulling, were rewarded now with military ritual. And there was more to come.

They entered an office, where the saluting mania continued. The three officers who had stood up to meet them were, as I imagine it, like publishers greeting their best-selling authors. One was Major Doxey, the chief of IRD, and another Major Enright, Director of Plans/Army, and the third a strange, merry-looking fellow wearing a sort of Highland cap with ribbons and tartan pants. This was Captain Foxhill, an officer at IRD who had escaped with Doucette from Sumatra, and who would prove a good friend. After meeting the genial Foxhill later at a Melbourne party, I wondered how he managed to walk around the streets of Melbourne in those pants without attracting cat-calls from Australia’s common soldiery. The answer was that he did, and that he didn’t care. Whereas the other two were professional soldiers of administrative talent and stultified instincts – my opinion, of course, based not only on Leo’s but on ultimate social contact.

These three officers made a huge fuss of the two visitors and the whole Cornflakes operation. Major Doxey said what they had done was top hole, it was the ploy IRD had been waiting for, not that it had been totally lacking in earlier success, but this had been on a scale which none could ignore. SOE in India and Britain were beside themselves with delight.

Foxhill told them he was probably the humblest officer who would congratulate them. Because there would be a party at Government House that afternoon – the governor-general Lord Gowrie was visiting Melbourne, had come down from Canberra by plane and was installed there, the regular governor of the state being away on some civic duties in the bush. General Blamey would be there, and although no public announcement or fuss would be made, both gentlemen wanted to meet Doucette and Leo.

Foxhill asked about the mention in Doucette’s report that native junks seemed to come and go in the Singapore roads without much molestation.

Doucette confirmed it, saying that next time a party should simply take a ride by sub, pirate a junk and use it to launch folboats from. After the operation, the folboats could return to the junk which, having finally met with the submarine one night, could be sunk with explosives. Everyone already took it for granted there would be a next time, and Doxey said it was the right moment to bring in Colonel Creed. He picked up a chunky black phone in front of him and spoke into it.

Doucette’s success, Leo noticed, had not made him kinder to Creed. When Creed entered there was handshaking all-around, and Creed congratulated them, but Doucette seemed a little upset that Creed even knew what had happened. The American laid on the praise, which, as Leo told me, was not a bad experience.

Creed took a seat at the table. Why am I here? he asked. Well, for one thing I’m here to tell you we have unimpeachable and independent information that the enemy was genuinely shaken by your activities.

He said that his boss General Willoughby was very impressed, and not just General Willoughby, head of intelligence, but the boss, MacArthur himself. He said that it might at last be possible for the Americans to help out in some way in some future, larger scale operation. The idea of cooperation pleased him. Everyone loves a winner, said Creed, and this will convince my people you are winners.

I can see in my mind’s eye the way Doucette lifted his head then, the little half-inch toss of the head, a sparse gesture full of infinite contempt which I would sometimes see at parties, particularly if Doxey were about.

We know from the record of this meeting, as conveyed to me by the indefatigable Tom Lydon, who tracked down the minutes in the archives, that Doucette said the offer was most kind but that anyone could see from the success of Cornflakes that there was a strong source of brave, competent and adaptive young men amongst the Australians.

Doxey, Enright and Foxhill seemed alarmed at this rebuff. The lean Colonel Creed remarked that Major Doucette saw him as a crass opportunist, but he hoped to prove otherwise.

And in that spirit, said Creed, in that spirit… And he exposed a great and dazzling plan to Doucette and Leo. Sounding all lazy and languid and like a cowboy. What if a permanent raiding party were put ashore at Great Natuna Island, east of Malaya, south of Indochina, north of Borneo? With junks built in Melbourne but convincingly Oriental. From the Great Natuna a raiding force could operate throughout the South China Sea. If Free French commandos were involved, there could be attacks even on Saigon.

Doucette nodded and frowned. He looked towards Doxey and Foxhill. They both gave confirmatory nods. Doxey said General Durban from SOE London had been out to see General MacArthur, and had got a pledge of cooperation. Creed looked gratified. He seemed to be convinced that Doucette would soon be looking at him with new eyes. Basically, old sport, he said, you’ll be raider-in-chief in the South China Seas. We’ll have you raiding airfields and shipping. Everything you tell me you like!

Even Doucette was impressed and excited, though warily so. He was still distracted, trying to reconcile his mistrust of Creed with the golden idea that had been held out to him. The idea that he could be a pirate chieftain!

When Doxey told Doucette then that first the British wanted to see him in London at SOE headquarters, they had a few things they wanted him to look at, Doucette said, That’s good. I can go and visit Mother.

They put Doucette and Leo up at the Windsor, the flashest of old gold-rush hotels. A pressed uniform with captain’s pips on the shoulder sat on Leo’s bed, so he went to Doucette’s room to report a mistake had been made. It appears not, said Doucette. Doucette had just discovered he was a lieutenant-colonel as well, and Rufus Mortmain was lieutenant commander. Doxey said Mountbatten’s headquarters in India were so impressed that they intended to recommend decorations as well. Doucette said, Makes my rant to the men look pretty silly.

At the time, Leo wrote to me a letter which was an account of that heady afternoon.

I have to say, Leo would write, I feel a bit of the vanity of it all. There’s something intoxicating about getting an extra pip on your shoulder. Stupid, I know. Gives you ideas of military self-importance. I wish you were here, to see how seriously we’re being taken.

In the dusk that afternoon, they were driven by a staff car up the long botanic-gardens-like grounds of Government House to the front door, where a fellow in a frockcoat opened the car door for them, and another with an umbrella led them into the portico and told them he hoped they had not got too wet, sir. They were taken into a great hall lined with portraits of former governors, whose names adorned rivers and mountain ranges in the great State of Victoria and the immensity of the Commonwealth of Australia.

Inside a ballroom, a waiter asked Leo would he like sherry. He didn’t like it, but equally, he didn’t fancy his chances of getting a beer. He saw Foxhill across the room in his tartan pants and started to cross to him, but was all at once taken by the elbow by a young English captain in dress uniform who steered Leo directly to the centre of the room, into the open veldt of the place, away from paintings and ferns and other items of protection. Here in the middle of the floor, where the more important dancing couples would have danced had this been a wedding or a state ball, Doucette was speaking like an equal with three men, two of whom Leo knew from newspaper pictures. One, dressed in a morning suit, was the governor-general, Lord Gowrie, a lean man, popular for having toured the troops in Northern Australia and New Guinea. The other was a very portly fellow, famous General Blamey, former Commissioner of Victoria Police, pudgy and yet somehow commanding, and swaying a little, toe to heel, with a glass of Scotch in his hand.

Some of our boys like the fact he’s a bit boozy, Leo would write, and that he looks such a man’s man. I think he could have been a bit less so. He had interesting, crinkled-up eyes full of roguery, and all up reminded me of a cross between Santa Claus and a pub-owner.

Tall Lord Gowrie extended his hand to Leo and spoke, thus condemning him to further danger. Easy for Lord Gowrie, in his vice-regal serge. And what he said would draw hoots of laughter now, if it didn’t cause widespread incomprehension. He said to Leo, Captain, may I express the admiration of the British Empire.

The admiration of the British Empire!

All the grandiloquence of one age becomes one-liners for a later generation, before becoming utterly incomprehensible to the next.

And General Blamey was muttering his version of the same thing. Bloody fine, said Blamey. Bloody fine.

Lord Gowrie said that his friend, the governor of Victoria, who had so kindly loaned him these digs, possessed some excellent maps in his library. He turned to Doucette and asked him whether he and his young friend Waterhouse could perhaps show him, after the party, their operational movements on an atlas.

General Blamey was pleased with the idea and passed his glass to a waiter for a refill. Leo decided not to judge him for that. He was, after all, one of the fellows who beat Rommel. But then Doucette adopted a solemn air which confused Leo. Doucette said, I was so distressed to hear about Patrick, Leonard.

That’s most kind of you, said Lord Gowrie, and I wish I was a rarity amongst parents who’ve lost sons in the Desert campaigns, but I fear I am not. He knew General Blamey here, by the way.

Yes, said Blamey solemnly. He was a very fine young man, Lord Gowrie’s boy.

Lord Gowrie found even this much reflection on Blamey’s part painful and changed the subject, asking after Doucette’s wife and son. Any word?

No news, Leonard, said Doucette. Thank you for asking.

Lord Gowrie said he didn’t want to offer false comfort. But it takes ages for the Red Cross to get news…

Doucette declared that a kindly thought. In a half-embarrassed voice, Lord Gowrie explained to the other generals that Mrs Doucette and the little boy were missing. They’d been on the Tonkin.

Doucette, perhaps to distract attention, nodded in Leo’s direction. Captain Waterhouse… his father is a POW of the Japanese.

General Blamey looked solemn and said something Leo quoted to me occasionally, sometimes half-joking in boastfulness after sexual athleticism, for like many he thought Blamey ludicrous. Well, he said, they’ve felt the sting of the family, son. They’ve felt the sting.

The British general who had till now been silent, whose red tabs looked so much more vivid than Blamey’s desert-bleached ones, now joined the conversation. He seemed to address Doucette and Leo. He hoped that his own journey from London, specifically to visit General MacArthur, had broken down the American resistance to cooperation and the use of MacArthur’s submarines. MacArthur was very worried that the British and Australians would use their occasional special operations as the basis to claim back the whole region when the war ended. Now according to the Americans, that couldn’t be permitted, because it was imperialism. But, complained this general, it’s not imperialism when he declares he will return to the Philippines

Lord Gowrie murmured, Well, of course, we’d expect Malaya back. I mean, after all, it was taken from us without benefit of international law.

The tall English general turned out to be General Durban, the head of the Special Operations Executive in London. He said that with a bit of American cooperation, he could see the whole of the South-East Asian zone busy as a church fete with airfields and ports blown to pieces by Australians and Free French and wandering Britons like Charlie Doucette.

Later, after everyone had left, Lord Gowrie got one of the Asian atlases from the Government House library, and Lord Gowrie and Charlie Doucette and Leo ended up with it spread on the floor, recounting their dartings back and forth, Subar to Bukum, Pandjang to Pompong.

By the time we were finished, Leo told me, we’d pretty well managed to amaze even ourselves.

How I loved him for choosing a sherry at Melbourne Government House instead of asking for beer. He really was just a boy from the bush, a Grafton boy, despite the fact that he had also lived in the Solomons amongst the colonial administrators and their children. They were the bush gentry in places like that, their civic dignity paper-thin and under threat from marital or alcoholic scandal. Leo was therefore fascinated by real gentry, the members of English or Anglo-Irish clans who produced a governor-general in the family like the king of spades out of the magician’s hat.

I’m sure if I showed Rachel some of Leo’s occasional scribblings on events like the first wonderful day back in Melbourne, she would point out that I get one mention from Leo and Doucette gets so many. I notice it myself. But this was a statement of the preoccupations of that day of glory, that hour, that martial – not marital – moment. Doucette was there, and so was triumph, and triumph is a two-dimensional condition. That’s why Leo wanted me there, to add an element. A man, a woman and a hotel room, the simplest joy. The young Leo would not have wanted to hear me talking like that, of course. But it’s longing and misery that are three-dimensional.

Even as he remembered the evening, and relayed it to me (without any of the geographic details of the mission) during our honeymoon, Leo runs the risk of looking from the perspective of the present like a stooge of Empire. But it was not about Empire. It was about Doucette and Rufus. And apart from that, it was his region the Japanese had taken, his island childhood in the Solomons they’d tried to annul. Yet it has to be admitted that the concept of Empire was not offensive to him, or to any of us. He – like me – had made our school procession to country showgrounds to celebrate Empire day. The Empire was a system as eternal and fixed in structure and God-ordained as the solar system. Besides, nine-tenths of all we made went to feed, clothe and equip the Empire. But that aside, it was something more ancient and eternal still that drove Leo. Something mythic or chemical or cellular or all three in Leo and his friends. The summit of their lives had so obviously been that liquid darkness in which they had affixed their limpets!

That was so clear that I did not question or feel particularly threatened by it. It would be Mortmain’s wife Dotty who would try to make me more discontented at that reality than I had so far thought to be.