The Widow and Her Hero

by Thomas Keneally

  In a sharp-edged early light they saw Doucette's tanker explode beyond all possible ambition in flame and smoke as deep-dyed and effusive as that of a volcano. Doucette wept and smiled and wept, and no one blamed him. The rusty third ship marked out by Leo and Rubinsky off Bukum, already a scene of frantic alarm, seemed by full day to erupt spontaneously and as if by its own will, not theirs. Leo could see its bows and stern both standing clear of the water, but only for seconds it seemed, before it accepted the force of Leo's and Jockey's daring and disappeared. It was a matter of awe now. Chesty Blinkhorn, muscular but very young, and his world until recently restricted to a country town, said, Poor bastards, as if he had not expected till now the scope of his commando ambition, and how much mayhem it could cause. And as repetitive explosions and repetitive alarms enlivened and stunned their morning, they drank their water and ate their rations and felt like the gods and demons they had become. They hadn't only stolen fire, they had planted it on others.

  For them, exhilaration overrode all other impulses. Each detonation enlarged their legend. Doucette was keeping count by means of his telescope. With their rods and fuses and magnetic make-fasts they had sunk at least 40 000 tons of shipping and God knew what in the enemy's cargo. Leo felt that he had nudged open his father's prison gate, that the walls were closer to falling. And he intended to give the walls a further nudge if asked to do so. They laughed and wept on the cloud-feathery peak of NC11 as explosions tore the sky. Nothing would ever be as wonderful a riposte as this, nothing would ever be as stylish. They had intended to steal the enemy's sense of safety, but were astonished now they had done so.

  They did not fall asleep until late afternoon, and behind their closed eyes the wonderful explosions recurred. With his head down, Doucette had murmured, Did you fellows notice how easy it is for native junks and prahu to come and go? They slept on groundsheets on their inured backs, and when they woke the awe at what they had done recurred to them and authorised all their future plans.

  That night they took three separate courses back to the meeting place at Pandjang Island. They were next to invisible on a normal sea. They knew and believed that. With daylight, Leo and Jockey simply turned to a convenient island shore, hid their folboat, and found the boon of a Chinese graveyard, where they were able to hide and rest, having been assured by IRD that the Malays kept away from Chinese graveyards. They needed a deeper sleep than they were able to get amongst the dead that day, but they were still stimulated. The tale of what they had done fuelled them overnight, and the repetitiveness of their single blade stroke induced in them a sort of euphoric meditation. In the darkness they skirted pagar lit by kerosene lanterns and heard fishermen within or from the shore, and they were as unseen as their deeds entitled them to be.

  A Sumatra came rushing out of the west and blinded them with rain and jolted them about on waves, but did not much delay them in the end. Before the next dawn, at two in the morning, they got to Pandjang and the bay where they had swum with the otters. The others all turned up within the hour, the Boss still complaining of the damage Rufus Mortmain had done to his steering.

  They took turns to watch for Pengulling. In last light they spotted it far out to sea, heading south as if towards home. Nav had come back, and they had somehow missed him, and he them. Pengulling looked like a vessel on which there was no dissent now, as it moved definitely Australia-wards.

  That was the night the monsoon started. They sat up under groundsheets and discussed their situation. Maybe they should paddle south to Pompong Island and live there off the cache of supplies till the monsoon ended, and then when the native prahu set off westwards on the trade wind, they would capture one and sail it to India, like Doucette had earlier. A little disappointing they wouldn't be home for Christmas, but they'd be home in the end. And they were not depressed, said Leo, except that he knew the marriage would be postponed further. He confessed later that he nonetheless had a sense I would tolerate such a thing.

  They began to build a hut. An old man and his grandson rowed in in a native kolek and this time Doucette went down and negotiated with the old Malay for food – a risk, but it had to be taken now. They completed their rough thatch shelter, and then finished some of their tinned rations with the fish the old man gave them for dinner, and lay down very tired and ready for a sleep, with Rufus Mortmain on watch.

  And then at eight o'clock there was a sudden frail density of blackness on the water. Pengulling was back. The young men had made the nerve-wrecked Nav return yet again. Doucette and his five abandoned their hut and paddled out. The reunion – well, it can be imagined. Nav the outsider, a bucket of worms, said Leo, talking endlessly. When Leo and the others briefed them, a form of intoxication possessed the men of Pengulling. They had all voted to come back, they told Doucette, except for Nav, who had been incapable of electoral activity. Yet he still got the navigation and steering right, and so there was a kind of admirable quality to him also.

  Everyone agreed, around dinner tables afterwards, that the trip back had been – yes, boring. The warrior Doucette claimed that these were the necessary longueurs a professional soldier had to face, and that they should be grasped for the sake of contemplation. (As if he were not himself the soul of impatience.) The blazing blue nothing at the centre of each second, he asserted, had to be seized.

  Meanwhile, as his sailors spoke of boredom, Doucette knew that Ulysses did not get home without passing through Scylla and Charybdis, Scylla being the six-headed monster which guarded its cave by lashing forth and devouring mariners by the half-dozen; and Charybdis being the maelstrom. Doucette knew that in surviving Charybdis, Ulysses lost a swathe of shipmates. Doucette's Scylla and Charybdis were that narrow hole in the gate, Lombok Strait. Nav was anxious about it for days before, in a continuous frenetic state, barking at the men but fussy about the duties of navigation which would get him safely back between the two monstrous shores, Bali to the one side, Lombok to the other.

  During the afternoon of the approach to the strait, Nav was in a flighty condition, repeatedly talking to himself, said Leo, mumbling co-ordinates. In darkness he was calmer and worked better, and he hoped to be through by dawn. Chesty Blinkhorn, who was on lookout with his head through the awning atop the wheelhouse, reported the phosphorescence of the bows of another ship coming up on them from astern and overtaking them with ease at a distance of a mile. It looked like a Japanese minesweeper or a patrol boat, but seventy-five yards long, he reported. Blacked out, it had the muteness of a blind monster, but its flag could be seen. In the wheelhouse Nav recited to himself a continuous stream of prayers and curses. Mortmain, naked but for a monocle, packed explosives around the radio, enough to break the back of the Pengulling if they were set off. Bantry put his rosary beads around his neck, Leo noticed, and lifted a silenced Sten gun to one of the flaps in the after-awning. Every one of them resigned himself to bloody, explosive death. Mortmain and Leo, observing through glasses, could see the lookouts on the Japanese vessel. On somebody's order, the Japanese ship kept pace with Pengulling, slowing down to a crawl to do so.

  What were Leo's true thoughts at this moment, if he knew them in the first place? He would have told me in the end, of course, if we had been married long enough, or it would have emerged in some illness or night scream. Five minutes passed of the most intense anguish. The minesweeper or whatever it was kept level pace with the creeping two-knot Pengulling. The Japanese vessel possessed two cannons, one on its foredeck and the other on the apron in front of the bridge. Leo did not know their calibre, but it was obvious to him that either could have obliterated them. So they lived for five minutes with the bitter certainty of what was to befall them, a certainty which only the young and irrationally hopeful could sustain.

  But for no reason then, the big vessel peeled away westwards, in the direction of Surabaya. It was surmised, as the men hugged and clapped each other's backs, that the Japanese watch officer, who must have had authority over the helm, had decided that so late at
night, and so close to the end of his watch, he did not wish to initiate the rigmarole of searching a fishing vessel for little result. He had been sloppy, he had wanted his bunk, and his discretion and sloppiness had saved them.

  I wish I could have heard that laughter. I wish I could plug into it at will. Rosary beads and suicide pills hanging not yet required from their necks. The rest of us are cut out of its echoes, however. It was one of those moments you had to be present at to understand how succulent it was. Another item for the legend, and another chain. The lucky Boss Doucette. Even Japanese naval officers-of-the-watch succumbed to the spell inherent in his blessed plans.

  On a permissive riptide, Pengulling swept through the Lombok Strait. And after what had happened to them, they did not mind the tides which then, beyond the strait, ran up contrary to delay them. For after a further day they pulled down their Japanese flag and the flag of the Singapore port administration. They were in range of Australian coastal bombers. Nav suffered a burst of manic delight, and ordered the wireless operator to send a message to a friend of his, an American at Potshot, with the news that Lombok Strait was lightly patrolled.

  The others could hear Doucette chastising Nav in the wheelhouse and later in the day Doucette made a speech over the evening meal, eaten under awnings on the tank amidships, which Leo recorded in his occasionally kept diary. It would seem, said Doucette, from a rash radio message recently sent, that some of the party expected to be welcomed back with parades, and to have our expedition written up in the weekend newspapers and made a newsreel of. I'll tell you now, said Doucette, that will not happen. Pengulling will be used again, and then there may be further raids on Singapore and other places using the methods we used. If you think your exploits are going to be spoken of in pubs, and that decorations will come plentiful and fast, then I suggest you should avoid any further association with this type of operation. In the meantime, you have the satisfaction of the secret knowledge of what you did.

  Nav sulked, but so did some of the younger men who thought their motivations had been questioned. Five days later, they made it into Exmouth Gulf and its desolate but well-supplied shore station USS Potshot. This was a desert shore richly endowed with the plenty of American logistics, but lacking in any extensive population and any atmosphere of triumphant return. Ulysses might have said, I resisted Circe and fought the Cyclops, and all the rest – Scylla and Charybdis, and the rudeness of the sirens – for this banal docking? Mooring there with sealed lips was not an exhilarating experience. Mortmain was left in charge, and Doucette and Leo were flown by bomber over the huge vacant earth to Melbourne for a debriefing. However secretly, they would be permitted to speak to select officers.

  Four

  Leo and the Boss travelled to Melbourne in the belly of a bomber, the noise atrocious, the vibration worse than the Pengulling's at the point of engine strain, and the cold far too intense for tropic-weight clothing. When they landed at Essendon, Leo, 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 un-booked? 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 eighth? 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 House, 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 wore blanco-ed 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 bestselling 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 party, I wondered how he managed to walk around the streets of Melbourne in those pants without attracting catcalls from Australia's common soldiery. The answer was that he did, and that he didn't care.

  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. 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 Mark L
ydon, 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 Great Natuna a raiding force could operate throughout the South China Sea. If Free French commandoes 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 Sea. We'll have you raiding airfields and shipping. Everything you tell me you like!