Return to Paradise

by James A. Michener

  Australians who serve you a gargantuan meal often stop to apologize: “If we had the ships, we’d be sending this to England. They earned it, not we.” An Australian who attended the cricket matches in England in 1948 says, “We prayed, with tears in our eyes, for an English victory against our own lads. It was no use. For eight years, the English blokes hadn’t had enough to eat.”

  Each Australian state has a personal emissary of the King, in whose name the government is conducted. The Commonwealth also has a governor-general, and not even Labor’s appointment of a party hack to that exalted post—formerly held by dukes of royal blood—made the institution cheap. Explained a tough old banker, “I swallowed me gorge and thought, ‘Not even the person of a labor flunky can dim the King’s prestige. He’s here with us.’ But in what a vessel!”

  On the Melbourne shrine, the word AUSTRALIA never appears. The dedication is to “the honoured memory of the men and women who served the Empire.” In the most revered chamber, the flag of honor is the Union Jack. The Australian flag stands to the left.

  Economically, Australia’s tie with England—they don’t use the word Britain much—makes a lot of sense. Australian wool, meat, butter, wood and sugar are natural British imports. And British products like good cloth, crockery, heavy machinery, ships, and all the odds and ends of a commercial nation are needed in Australia. With no other country could the great continent carry on so purposeful an exchange of goods.

  The devotion to things British can best be seen in Melbourne, where the Lord Mayor in his regal trappings has said, “As long as I’m in office, councillors shall appear at state functions in knee breeches, cocked hats and lace waistcoats.” He is an excellent administrator and implies that when he’s gone the Labor crowd—only ten out of thirty-three but growing—can wear overalls if they like.

  In Melbourne, too, one can see the stately British procedure in Parliament. In the Legislative Council Chamber—an upper house elected by people who pay a certain amount of taxes—the party leader in wig, white stock and black robe sits at a desk containing an ornate hourglass. About him, on benches of brilliant red plush, sit the members. Above is suspended a canopy embellished with shells and a lion and unicorn. Behind is the throne chair with regal carvings kept empty in case the governor might wish to attend. Stately arches support a blue and gold ceiling.

  Sessions start at 4:45, but are not broadcast as are the proceedings of the lower house—“It would be so frightfully dull”—but the Council does debate the rash laws of the lower house. They turn back legislation that is too liberal, and then the lower house passes it anyway.

  Members receive about $2,200 a year and are elected for long terms. They get free railway passes and a vacation pass for their wives. They address one another in the archaic terms of parliamentary procedure, whereby one’s mortal enemy becomes “My dear, dear friend, the honourable and gallant member for Woop Woop.” Courtesies out of the way, the slaughter proceeds.

  Nowhere can the British spirit be more finely studied than at the West Brighton Club in an unpretentious suburb of Melbourne. Here the leaders of the South, men of good fellowship whatever their calling, gather each Saturday night in hallowed ritual.

  The bowling green is unsurpassed. The tennis courts are tended daily. The clubhouse was built eighty years ago and may never be changed. It is a low, rambling building with billiard rooms, a large bar, card nooks and a pot of cheese.

  Members gather at six to discuss the day’s doings. At seven, the elderly clerk—he’s had the job for generations—becomes excited about the seating and checks it carefully with the president, who runs the largest internal airline in the world. Now members move into the dining hall, which is hung with mementoes of many wars. German propellers, giant brass shells, spears from New Guinea, helmets from France, and toques from the desert remind the members of how precariously the life of Empire has hung at times.

  The food is incomparable. A ruddy-cheeked surgeon as wide as he is tall, well known in America, carves the roast. A leading architect serves the chicken. Grilled fish, five vegetables, four cheeses, a quart of beer per member, and oddments comprise the meal.

  The talk is good. The waiting list for members is endless, for members never retire. A good dozen are over eighty, lusty, bright old men. A rejection from the club is binding for life. The last three who were blackballed were for typical reasons: one told smutty stories when a guest; one had welched on gambling debts; one lit his cigar before the toast to the King.

  Finally, as the salad is being served—for thirty years, the same man has made the salad—the president rises and in a voice fraught with emotion cries, “Gentlemen, the King!” A shuffling of chairs, old faces looking up, and each member salutes the embowered corner where the three great portraits stand. In the middle, the King. To his right, Churchill. To his left—F.D.R.

  A member starts the club song:

  One hundred years from now

  It’ll all be the same.

  One hundred years from now …

  Somebody else will be in the soup,

  And the world will still go on.

  Like the West Brighton club, Australia remembers America’s part in the war. A fruit seller says, “It was glorious! I had five prices for a melon. Australian civilian, one bob. Australian army, two bob. American, three bob. American soldier with a girl, four bob. Marine with a very pretty girl. Sky’s the limit!”

  In a land bound with government red tape, citizens still laugh about the American colonel and the postmaster. Said the colonel, “The Japs may land at any time. We’ve got to have 16 phones.” Replied the postmaster, “Ah, yes. Fill out these forms. In triplicate. And have them notorized.” Patiently, the colonel did so. “It won’t take long, will it?” he asked. The postmaster gleamed: “Perhaps two weeks. One mustn’t rush Canberra, must one?” As the colonel left, the postmaster tucked the applications into a pouch which would go south, some days later. He had no sooner done so than his phone rang. It was the American colonel. “Thought I’d better tell you. The following sixteen call boxes have no telephones.” And he rattled off the addresses of sixteen booths from which he ripped the necessary phones.

  Americans astounded the Australians. The hard work, the good spirit, the efficiency and, above all, the tractors were marveled at. Many Australians dislike Americans, but you never find an engineer or contractor who doesn’t say, “You chaps know how to do things.” And anywhere in the North, people say frankly, “The Japs could have walked ashore. Our own government announced that it would sacrifice everything north of Brisbane. America saved us.”

  Today in Parliament it is admitted that Britain can no longer defend Australia, and it is obvious that Australia cannot do so alone. It is therefore openly acknowledged that future defense must rely upon American power.

  At the same time, Australians don’t trust America. Diehards cry, “The Yanks’ll take over!” Cultural leaders say we are intellectual barbarians. Bright young things, many of them confessed Communists, stigmatize us “the champions of reaction.” And people attached to England contend that any step toward America is treason, since it must be a step away from Britain.

  Little points exacerbate. For example, there is no copyright agreement between Australia and America—because an Australian law left out a few simple words—and some American publishers pirate material. Therefore, all Americans are crooks.

  In Labor’s Federation House, Sydney, an artist-and-writer’s union is holding a protest meeting. Carl Lyon, a handsome man of fifty, is speaking. “Three years ago, I had two comic strips running in several newspapers. Now I have only Black McDermitt. In one. Why? Because American strips are dumped on our market.”

  A short-story writer reports, “In Perth, I tried two weeks to sell a story. Finally, the editor showed me a 3,000-word American story complete with art work which he could buy for $1.02!”

  A committee reports. “In the forty American comic books we studied, there was nothing but murder, rape,
sexy drawings, sadism and gangsterism.”

  “How do they get in?” the chairman cries. “I thought there was a law.”

  Carl Lyon speaks. “Sure there’s a law. But this trash is sold to New Zealand and London and then comes in as British.”

  The committee chairman continues: “And newspapers won’t protest because if they don’t run Dick Tracy and Superman, they lose sales.” So American novels, technical books, and critical magazines reach Australia in limited quotas or not at all. We are represented by comic books.

  Even so, Australians know a great deal about America. A favorite joke is, “You have the Democratic Party and Bob Hope. We have Labor and no hope.” Newspapers often carry page-one headlines in this proportion: from Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra, 30%; from Europe, 30%; from New York (all U.S. stories are so dated) 40%.

  American movies are almost as popular as English ones. An average program might be: 7:20 American newsreel; 7:30 another American newsreel; 7:40 English newsreel; 7:50 Mickey Mouse (cheers); 8:00 cowboy picture; 9:20 intermission with advertising slides; 9:30 intermission continues, but with advertising movies; 9:40 Australian newsreel; 9:50 color comedy (cheers); 10:00 Humphrey Bogart feature; 11:25 handsome color film of God Save the King. A program like that, if the patient lives, is bound to make Australians aware of what’s going on in America.

  But smart economists point out that if their country should ever move into the American orbit, it would be economic suicide. America would never absorb the raw materials that England now does. Our wool men, meat growers and timber producers would wreck Congress if we ever imported enough to keep Australia’s economy alive. At present, we take some wool, lobster tails, tennis racquets, orchids, lead, zinc and gold. But not enough really to matter.

  If international trade were arranged on ideal lines, a ship would leave Australia with raw materials for England; then carry to America manufactured items valuable because of British styling and polish; then pick up automobiles and heavy machinery for Australia. There appears no hope for such an arrangement. So Australia and America drift apart.

  Wise Australians deplore this. They think it a tragedy that Japan is regarded as America’s natural Pacific ally. “You can’t trust them!” they warn. “They’ll betray you again!” Responsible newspapers have proposed that American forces use the Outback deserts for atomic research. “Fifty thousand Americans would then visit us every year. They’d see that we are their natural allies.”

  There are other Australians—many, I fear—who are determined that Australia shall ally herself neither to England nor to the United States—but to Russia. I can foresee the day when Australia, faced by a resurgent Asia, will have to choose between Russia and America. It is apparent that this great continent-country is even now in grave danger of a permanent occupation by Asia. It could well be that under duress, Australia would prefer domination by Russia to annihilation by Indonesia, India or China. For the present, our fleet postpones the fatal decision.

  I wish I could write these last words in red: Forget that Australia needs us. We need her. She is our forward friend. She is now what Hawaii was a generation ago: our first line of defense against trouble in Asia. We must cement our friendship with her. For in her, we have an ally that can be trusted, a splendid people who can be relied upon.

  The Jungle

  Australian women are essentially of the nineteenth century. Perhaps that is why so many American soldiers married them.

  From the moment she stepped onto the wharf at Sydney, John Millstor looked at her with longing eyes. She was slim, very well groomed and provocatively pretty. She was nearly thirty-five, yet her manner was that of a much younger girl half shy, half sure of her beauty. “Any man would look twice at her,” Millstor thought. He leaned against the bridge of the Roviana and hummed a satisfied little tune which kept time with the woman’s confident steps. “And she’s my wife!” he chuckled.

  Now the wharfies noticed her approaching the ship. At first they said nothing, but as her long legs flashed past they began to whistle softly. Finally, when she took her first step onto the gangway a bold dock hand cried, “Ah, those Yankee women!”

  In embarrassment she reached for the second step, but her fashionable skirt made this difficult and one of the wharfies bleated, “Oh you babe!” She blushed and started to run up the gangway, but again her skirt hampered her, and the rough Australian stevedores cheered.

  When she reached the top step her husband, pipe in hand, came forward to greet her. The wharfies watched him kiss her and one shouted mockingly, “Oh, you lucky cobber!”

  “Enthusiastic audience,” Millstor laughed, taking his wife by the arm and leading her back along the deck to a cabin aft of the bridge.

  “This is a trim little cruiser,” she said approvingly.

  “Cruiser!” he echoed. “A real Lloyds A-I bucket.” He edged her past a bulkhead and up four steps. “Before you, the bridal suite!”

  Liz Millstor studied the tiny cabin with the dirty floors. For a moment her heart failed. To have come all the way from Boston for a vacation on such a bucket! Then she controlled herself and said cheerfully, “Oh, John! It’s a darling little boat.” Impulsively she kissed him on the ear and cried, “A wonderful tramp steamer for a honeymoon!” She kissed him again. “Even if it is a second honeymoon, twelve years delayed.”

  “It’s not really much of a cabin,” her husband apologized. “But it does have running water. And that’s something.”

  “It’s everything!” she exulted, flicking the faucet with her graceful fingers. Then, as the water protestingly trickled out, she began to pirouette about the dismal cabin as if she were a danseuse jammed into some corner before the ballet started. “It’s a darling room for lovers,” she cried joyfully. And then abruptly she did the one thing best calculated to frighten her husband and kill his enthusiasm. She caught his two hands, kissed him on the lips and whispered, “Oh, we shall have a wonderful trip, shan’t we?”

  An involuntary shiver crossed Millstor’s shoulders and for a moment he could not reply. Then in a much subdued voice, from which the gaiety had been dispelled, he said, “It’ll be magnificent, darling.” Then, as if not even his wife’s words could completely subdue his anticipations, he said quietly, “I’ll be standing by this post and I’ll cry, ‘Darling, here it is!’ And you’ll come protesting to the door.…”

  His wife peeked around the edge of the door and raised her arm dramatically toward the horizon. “Guadalcanal!” she gasped in a mock-tragic voice.

  John Millstor laughed. When he first proposed this trip Liz had scowled. “Oh, John! You’re like a worn-out football hero creeping back to Notre Dame to drain another sip of glory from the dregs. You’ve got to stop reliving the war.” She had gone to her cabinet of prized possessions and rummaged for the President’s citation. “See,” she teased. “Even Roosevelt, curse the name, says you’re a hero. Isn’t that good enough?”

  He had tried to explain that he wanted to revisit Guadalcanal not because he had been a minor hero there but because it was a vital part of his personal history. “Don’t you want to see it?” he had asked.

  “Of course I want to, John dear,” she had replied, adding sulkily, “but it does seem a little ostentatious to be the very first old grads arriving for reunion.”

  Even now, here in Sydney on the eve of departure, it still surprised John that he had stood firm. Usually, in recent years, he proposed many courses of action which his wife had studied with the impartiality of a judge. He noticed, however, that the decisions always went against him. This time he had been adamant. “I’m going to Guadalcanal this winter. Please come along.”

  “Why, of course, darling!” she had graciously surrendered. “We’ll leave the noisy little brats with Mother and we’ll have a South Seas holiday. Delicious!” He had not bothered to explore her usage of that inappropriate word, for he sensed that it implied ridicule of his nonsensical idea. But here she was in Australia. Even more astonishing, here she
was on board Alec McNair’s dirty old Roviana. John Millstor was content that things had worked out so well.

  “Guadalcanal!” Liz repeated mockingly. “You must call me early that morning.”

  “What do you mean, ‘morning’?” he asked blankly.

  Kissing him on the ear to kill the insult, she whispered, “I’m sure you’ll be up most of the night, looking for the island. Won’t you?”

  He thought for a moment and agreed somewhat stuffily. “Why, yes, I suppose I shall.” But in that moment of time, while the evening ferries scuttled back and forth across beautiful Sydney Harbor, he was deeply impelled to try once more to explain what Guadalcanal still meant to him, and the urgency of sharing was so burning within him that now he might have succeeded where always before he had failed. But a strong, rough voice interrupted.

  “ ’Lo, John. ’Lo, Mrs. Millstor.”

  The Americans turned to greet Captain McNair. He was a huge man, about forty. His shoulders were broad, his eyes deep set. He had a striking black beard that reached a good five inches below his chin. He obviously liked being a sea captain. He stood there with his hands jammed down into his coat pockets. “I never thought we’d lure you aboard this scow,” he rumbled, shaking Liz by the hand.

  Instinctively John placed his arm about his wife and said, “She’s a wonderful sport. Said she’d travel by the Roviana or not at all.”

  McNair chuckled. “I should’ve thought our refighting the war the other night would have scared you away. Sort of a sample of what you might have to put up with on the trip.”

  “Nonsense!” she replied. “I know you two men were heroes up there. And I’m mighty proud of you.” Impartially she grabbed the elbows of her P.T. boat daredevil and the Australian coastal pilot who had guided Halsey’s cruisers up The Slot.

  McNair was embarrassed by her hand and stepped back to survey his insignificant ship. “You can see why they call these tubs the Goal Posters.” Fore and aft twin booms had been erected for the discharge of diesel drums and the loading of copra. Each pair of booms was braced by a lateral crossbar that gave the appearance of a football goal post “As a class,” McNair boasted, “the Goal Posters are the worst ships afloat. And the Roviana is the worst of her class.”