by Derek Hansen
He wouldn’t have a clue.
As I rode home my brain set about tidying up the loose ends. Mr Holterman had said nobody could help Mack but I’d proved him wrong. If he was wrong about that then I thought it was likely he was wrong about life being unfair. It meant I could abandon my test and just treat the knockout final the same as any other game without the pressure of other issues riding on the result. My world was getting back on kilter.
That night at club I told Captain Biggs and all the boys about the snapper I’d caught and how the seagulls had pecked it and how it’d got run over by the Ford Prefect. They killed themselves laughing, especially when I told them how we’d still eaten it for dinner. This was also the first Rod and Nigel learned of the snapper’s provenance, but they were good sports about it. I then told the story of how I’d lost the big snapper trying to lift it out of the water and got more laughs. Then I told everyone how I’d gone up to the hospital and told the same stories to Mack. When I said that Mack had laughed out loud, they cheered. Captain Biggs put his hands together and closed his eyes in a silent prayer of thanks. He tended not to do that in front of us because we’d razz him about it. But it was too much for him. His friend and parishioner who had tried to kill himself had somehow recovered the will to live. The errant lamb was returning safely to the fold. That was cause for rejoicing and Captain Biggs was man enough to ignore us and thank God right there and then.
Afterwards he put his arm around me like a proud father, face beaming. I think he would’ve liked to lead us all in prayers of thanks for Mack’s deliverance but that would’ve been going too far and he knew it. He saved our joint thanks for the brief prayer that always ended club nights. I didn’t mention my essay.
When club broke up at 8.30 and my clubmates were still milling around in the street outside, I told them about my conversation with the dragon. They lapped it up, amazed I’d had the nerve because that wasn’t the sort of thing I normally did. Eric, who had also suffered the dragon’s scorn, nearly pissed himself laughing. Nigel even looked at me with something approaching respect. Whata day! I’d saved Mack and now I was king of the kids. I didn’t want it to end so I told them about my encounter with Sister Glorious and how it felt to have my head jammed between the best pair of tits in Auckland. I couldn’t help myself. Give me an audience and I never knew when to stop. I always had to go the extra step.
At 9.30 that night, shortly after I’d gone to bed, the hospital rang Captain Biggs and suggested he come in.
Mack had suffered a heart attack.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Mack was a fisherman. He was the best fisherman on Great Barrier. He was the best fisherman on the La Rita. He was the best fisherman I ever met. I like to think that he is now sitting down and sharing stories with that other great fisherman, St Peter.
AN EXTRACT FROM THE EULOGY PREPARED FOR MACK’S FUNERAL
I didn’t find out about Mack’s heart attack until after school. Mum’s notice board was back outside the shop and that’s how I discovered what had happened. I turned and sprinted as hard as I could up to the Church Army, my heart bursting with guilt, tears blurring my eyes. I’d told my pals about Sister Glorious. I’d broken my promise to God and now God was punishing me by giving Mack a heart attack. It was my fault! Captain Biggs opened the door just as I was about to charge through the doorway into the hall to his office.
‘Ooof!’ he shouted.
I knocked him backwards about a yard and ended up sprawled on the lino. Doubtless you’ve seen cartoons where a bull charges a lamppost and ends up sitting on its haunches with stars spinning around its head. I was like that bull. Captain Biggs helped me up and held onto me because I was dizzy from hitting him so hard.
‘What happened?’ I said.
‘You just ran into me.’
‘No, to Mack.’
Captain Biggs sighed and crouched down until our eyes were level.
‘I was going to say something but I didn’t want to worry you. Besides, Mack was starting to get better.’
‘That’s right. He was great yesterday.’
‘The doctors warned me this could happen. They were worried about blood clots. They wanted to thin his blood down but could only go so far because of the risk of him starting to bleed again internally.’
‘Can I see him?’
‘He’s back in intensive care. If another blood clot breaks free he could have another heart attack or a stroke. To be honest with you, the doctors didn’t expect him to survive the night. It’s a good sign that he did. But if he has another heart attack it’ll be all over. We have to face that possibility.’
That didn’t surprise me. I didn’t need Captain Biggs to prepare me for the worst. I’d already accepted that Mack was as good as dead, anyway. My parents, aunties and uncles often mentioned someone who’d had a heart attack and died. That’s what happened when you had a heart attack. You died, you ended up in Coxs Creek. One followed the other like the tail on a dog. I didn’t remember them ever talking about someone who’d had a heart attack and lived. Heart attacks were fatal. End of story.
‘Are you all right?’
I nodded. It was safer to nod.
‘I’m going up to the hospital now.’
I guessed what was coming next and resigned myself. Yesterday was fabulous, today was the pits and sinking.
‘If you’re not using your bike this afternoon, could I borrow it?’
Why not? Maybe it wasn’t my fault that Mack had suffered his heart attack but it would serve me right if Captain Biggs stacked my bike for blabbing about Sister Glorious. I watched him ride off then sat down to write a eulogy. I’d never written one before and wasn’t sure what to write. But with Mack as good as dead, starting a draft of his eulogy seemed a good idea. I hadn’t been allowed to attend the funeral when Mack’s wife Anya had died and I wanted to make sure I could this time. I wanted to say goodbye to Mack properly and I thought if I wrote a eulogy I’d be allowed into the chapel to read it. If I wasn’t allowed to read it myself, I planned to give it to Captain Biggs to read on my behalf. I figured they’d at least allow me in to hear it being read.
I also wanted to write a eulogy so people would remember the Mack I knew, a good, loyal man who life had treated unkindly. I wanted people to remember the young Mack who’d patiently won Anya’s heart and then her hand in marriage. I wanted them to remember Mack the fisherman with the body of an All Black, who lived a simple life on Great Barrier; the man who’d given up the life he loved to help his sick wife; the man who’d befriended the boy across the street and taught him how to catch fish. I didn’t want them just to remember Mack as a drunk.
I’d only put down a few tentative thoughts when the irony struck me. Just days earlier I’d written the essay that had brought Mack back to life. After all the years of bearing his secret burden he’d been set free. When I’d left him twenty-four hours earlier he was laughing. Laughing for the first time in such a long time. He’d taken his billet libre from his pyjama pocket to read again how he’d been exonerated. He’d handled the folded papers like they were the Dead Sea Scrolls. Just when life once again beckoned him, he’d been struck down. It seemed so unutterably unfair and unjust.
When my puppy was run over the weight of sorrow had been unbearable. I couldn’t imagine the world continuing. It was the first death of someone or something I loved and there’d never be another time in my life when I’d feel despair so keenly. With Mack it was different. I just felt crushed, too sad for tears and too unhappy for words. I screwed the top back on my bottle of ink and cleaned the nib of my pen. I closed my pad for another day. Mack was dying and may even be dead. Death should mean something but it was becoming increasingly apparent that it didn’t have to mean anything. It could be totally pointless.
I finished my eulogy over the following two days but it appeared I’d jumped the gun. Mack hung on and hung on, fighting for his life, while Mum’s notice board sat outside the shop and Captain Biggs phoned in updates. I
knew Mack was tenacious—his courtship of Anya had proved that—but what was tenacity to a blood clot? He was destined to fail as King Canute had failed. Heart attacks were fatal, death was inevitable, and everyone knew that. Every day when I came home from school I expected Mum’s notice board to proclaim the worst and I kept revising my eulogy. But Mack hung on and hung on and then, ten days later, I read that he’d been moved out of intensive care.
That evening, just as I was helping Mum bring in the mat and notice board to shut up shop, Captain Biggs came to tell me Mack had asked to see me and he wanted me to write a letter. He arranged to take me up to the hospital the following afternoon after school.
‘Why does Mack want you to write the letter?’ he asked. I could see he was hurt at being usurped. That was the sort of thing he was supposed to do for his congregation, part of his job. ‘Who does he want you to write the letter to?’
‘I haven’t the foggiest,’ I answered, although I certainly had my suspicions. The naval base at Devonport and the War Memorial Museum featured prominently among them. I guessed Mack was looking to substantiate my claim one of the raiders had laid the mines that had sunk the Niagara, and maybe even confirm the sailing date of the troopship. ‘Why can’t he write the letter himself?’
That’s when I discovered another little blood clot had gone for a wander and this time it had lodged in his brain. Mack had suffered a stroke and partially paralysed the right-hand side of his body. Mack couldn’t wipe his backside, let alone write a letter. This news had never made it on to the notice board because Captain Biggs hadn’t told anybody. He didn’t want everyone to worry. He said he’d been told the paralysis may only be temporary and in time Mack could make a full recovery. Captain Biggs’s heart was in the right place but sometimes his brain definitely clocked off. I thought it best to keep my eulogy on hand for a while.
We walked past the dragon like Leper and Son. Captain Biggs smiled in her direction but he would’ve got more response from an Easter Island statue.
Mack had been put in a different ward, a smaller ward with only four beds and one sash window to let in light. Apparently it was what they called a ‘quiet room’. Mack was propped up on pillows but the other three patients looked dead. Guess you couldn’t get quieter than that. Half of Mack’s face creased in an attempt at a smile when he saw me. It was unnerving.
‘G’day, Mack,’ I said.
‘…Gerr-ray…’ he slurred. Just saying g’day was an enormous effort.
‘You wanted the lad to write a letter for you,’ Captain Biggs cut in. Sometimes I wondered why my parents had bothered to give me a name.
Mack nodded.
‘Who do you want him to write the letter to?’
Mack struggled to frame words.
‘The navy?’ I suggested.
He shook his head.
‘The War Memorial Museum?’
He shook his head again and began to get agitated.
‘…Inyin…’ he mumbled.
‘Inyin?’ I glanced at Captain Biggs. He looked as mystified as I felt.
‘…Inyin…er-rer…’
If I hadn’t written ‘Mack’s Story’ I would never have guessed. When I write, the sounds of the words run through my head and when I rewrite a lot they run over and over. Whole passages lodge in my memory. Mack’s ‘inyin er-rer’ struck a chord.
‘The submarine commander?’ I asked incredulously.
Mack nodded furiously. He wanted me to write to Christian Berger? For all I knew the U-boat commander was fish food. I thought of destroyers depth-charging the crap out of him. I thought of the essay Mr Holterman had yet to help me write. I thought of Sunderland flying boats bearing down on his U-boat, forward guns blazing. I thought of all the movies I’d seen where U-boats finally got their comeuppance.
‘How in the heck can I write to him?’ I demanded. Mack was sick but the idea was preposterous.
‘…Eeze…’ Mack gasped. His whole body began to spasm. His face flushed red. He looked on the verge of another heart attack.
‘It’s OK,’ said Captain Biggs. He took Mack’s hand to calm him down. ‘I’ll help him. I’ll help him write the letter and make sure it gets sent to the right place. It’s OK, it’s OK.’ This was the captain at his pastoral best. He turned to me. ‘We’ll do it together, right?’
I thought Captain Biggs was out of his mind. I was about to say so in no uncertain terms when I noticed Mack staring at me. I saw the hope, the pleading and the desperation in his eyes. He’d suffered a heart attack, a stroke and being hit by a van, on top of sixteen years of remorse and guilt. All he wanted, when you got down to it, was a favour from a pal. My problem was that it was a favour akin to a miracle. Nevertheless, he made me feel ashamed. What he was asking for was nothing less than confirmation from the U-boat commander that mines from the raiders had sunk the Niagara. He wanted to hear from the horse’s mouth that he wasn’t complicit in its sinking. He wanted to be sure my story was true so he could get on with his life or, as seemed more likely, die happy.
‘Mack,’ I said, ‘I’m going to write the best letter you ever saw.’
Mack closed his left hand into a fist in triumph, slumped back into his pillows and closed his eyes. I remembered how he’d loved my stories the last time I’d visited so I told him about my adventure in the drain and how it had inspired a story about a U-boat sinking a freighter. I knew Mack was listening because a smile crept back onto the left-hand side of his face, and his bed shook once more when I told him how I’d almost pissed myself when Nigel and Maxie had dragged the manhole covers back over the shafts. I told him about the water rising and my conviction that I was about to die. I know Captain Biggs was listening, too, because all the blood seemed to drain from his face. If I’d gone on any longer the nurses would’ve had to bring him a bed. I didn’t mind telling Mack in front of Captain Biggs because I knew I’d be swearing Captain Biggs to an even bigger secret before the day was out and figured another wouldn’t make much difference.
Captain Biggs threw another hopeful smile towards the dragon as we were leaving but he was wasting his time. We’d gone from being Leper and Son to Invisible Man and Sidekick. She could’ve read the newspaper through us. Captain Biggs looked thoroughly bemused.
He made me promise to come and see him in his office after dinner. I duly sat and told him the whole story from go to whoa, leaving out nothing. I even read the tatty first draft of ‘Mack’s Story’. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone look more astonished.
‘I had no idea,’ he said.
‘Now you know what you’ve let yourself in for,’ I said. ‘How the heck are you going to find the U-boat commander? He’s probably dead. Even if he isn’t you’ll never find him.’
Sister Glorious had brought us in two enormous mugs of tea while I’d been talking. I think she made it in an urn because Church Army tea had a taste all its own. I picked up my mug and took a sip. Sister Glorious had been gone for five minutes but the tea was still hot enough to burn my tongue. ‘How are you going to break the news to Mack?’
‘I said I could help and I can,’ said Captain Biggs. ‘Do you know that right now there are agencies all over Europe helping to trace missing and displaced people? Do you know something else? The Church Army is helping people contact those agencies. If Christian Berger is still alive, I’ll find him.’
Do you see why I liked Captain Biggs? I’d been treating him like he was some dumb cluck and then he pulls that rabbit out of the hat. He wrote a letter to the Church Army’s London HQ that night and sent it off by airmail the next day. Four weeks later we had an address. Christian Berger was one of the few U-boat commanders to survive the war and was living in Hamburg. I went to the hospital with Captain Biggs to tell Mack the good news. If the whole of Mack’s face could have smiled, his smile would’ve been something to behold. It didn’t take a genius to work out that we’d given Mack something to live for. Once more colour started to invade his cheeks. I thought I was finally looking
at an ending to Mack’s saga, the happy ending I’d feared was impossible to achieve.
Wrong, wrong, wrong.
There I was, twelve years old and fancying myself as a writer, and couldn’t tell the difference between an ending and a beginning. I helped Captain Biggs draft the letter to Christian Berger. I think if Captain Biggs had known what lay ahead he would still have sent it because he believed people were fundamentally good and decent and things always worked out in the end.
If I’d known I would’ve thrown the letter in the bin.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
‘Stop engines.’
The U-boat captain attempted a smile hoping to instil confidence and defuse the tension. The smile fooled no one. Lips were drawn thin. Fear visited every face. There’d been a time when the chance to attack a convoy had made his crew so eager he’d had to rein in their exuberance to prevent mistakes. Now there was fear—fear and resentment. Even if they were successful in sinking a few cargo ships it would do nothing to alter the course of the war. The war was already lost. All they could do now was lose their lives.
The captain listened to the soft monotone of his hydrophone operator, more aware than anyone of the risks they were taking and the consequences they faced even if they were successful. But his job was to sink Allied shipping until such time as he was ordered to stop, orders he knew would not be forthcoming until his country’s defeat was complete.
‘…target bearing 320…’ His hydrophone operator completed his sweep.
In a move both audacious and desperate the captain had slipped inside the defensive ring of destroyers into the heart of the convoy. He waited for the sub to lose speed almost all the way before raising the periscope. It was a precaution designed to prevent it throwing up a rooster-tail wake and announcing their presence. He hoped to get at least three torpedoes away before the destroyers homed in on him.
