by Judy Nunn
Tim Kendall had named his firstborn after Robbie O’Shea. It was twenty-five years since Robbie’s death, but he was never far from Tim’s mind. In fact, with young Robert off at the war, Robbie O’Shea featured more and more in Tim’s thoughts these days.
If Robbie had survived, Tim reflected, sipping on his Milo, they would have gone into partnership. Like him, Robbie would now be a wealthy man. He’d hold the controlling interest in a chain of retail stores; he’d own shares in media outlets, both newspaper and radio, and he’d even boast a string of rental properties in Macleay Street. What a joke; Robbie would have loved it.
‘Not bad for two boys from Surry Hills and the Loo,’ Tim could hear him say. And he’d be right. Despite the fact that Tim mingled with the powerful and influential these days, he never lost sight of his roots. There was always Robbie’s voice in his ear saying, ‘Don’t forget where you came from, Tim Kendall.’
His thoughts turned to Kathleen and Caroline. He hadn’t seen Robbie’s mother and daughter for a whole three weeks, longer than usual, but he’d been very busy. He’d recently switched his affiliation from the staid, family-run Fairfax press to Frank Packer’s brash, more adventurous consortium and the necessary negotiations had taken up a great deal of his time. He must pay a visit to his princess, he told himself, and he must take Kathleen some more goods for barter, she would be running short by now. It was the only way in which Tim could help support them, he knew Kathleen would never accept money.
He tucked Kitty’s letter into his pocket, turned off the balcony light and drained the last of his Milo. He stood in the darkness for a moment, savouring a last look at the harbour lights before retiring, and then it happened.
There was a muffled explosion and, before his very eyes, the near side of Garden Island ignited. There was another muffled explosion. What the hell was it, an air raid? But there were no planes in the sky. An invasion? But there were no foreign ships in the harbour.
In a matter of seconds, warning sirens began screaming. Search-lights swept the waters and tracer bullets gleamed red as patrol vessels swung into action. Machine-gun fire cracked the air, then the sounds of heavy artillery, the whistle of shells, the muffled detonations of depth charges. The harbour was a battlefield, but the enemy was invisible.
‘What the hell’s happening?’ Ruth yelled, running to his side.
‘I don’t know,’ he yelled back, drawing her close as they watched from the balcony.
Kathleen dragged Caroline from her bed at the first scream of the sirens. ‘Air raid,’ she said, ‘get downstairs.’ It was probably another military exercise, Kathleen thought, damn them, but one had to play safe.
In the Bird household, Brian took charge. ‘Ada, look after Betsy,’ he yelled as he grabbed his gasmask and rifle.
‘It’s an invasion,’ his mother was screaming hysterically. ‘The Japs have invaded!’
‘I reckon it’s just an exercise, Mum,’ Brian said, trying to keep her calm. It sure as hell didn’t sound like one, he thought. ‘I’ll go out and check.’
Ada grabbed ten-year-old Betsy. ‘Shut up Mum!’ she yelled. Her mother was no use, and neither was her father, out like a light on the front room sofa. ‘Come on Betsy,’ she said to her little sister who was whimpering with fear, ‘get under the table, we’ll play cubbies.’
She pushed Betsy under the kitchen table and dragged the mattress Brian kept for such emergencies over the top. Then she crawled under the table herself and hugged her little sister. ‘See, love? It’s a cubby.’
Ada listened and, above the sound of the sirens and the gunfire and explosions, she heard her mother trying to rouse her father. ‘The Japs are coming!’ her mother was yelling. ‘For God’s sake, Norm, wake up! The Japs are coming!’
The Japs are coming! Ada tried hard to concentrate on Brian’s words—‘ I reckon it’s just an exercise, Mum,’ he’d said. ‘Just an exercise’, she told herself, that’s all it was. Ada trusted Brian. But she knew what was happening, she read the newspapers. The Japs had bombed Darwin, they’d scuttled ships outside Sydney, they were getting closer and closer. And she’d heard the stories too. If they invaded … well, young women were the plums weren’t they? Rape and murder, that’s what they said. If the yellow peril got into Sydney, she and her lot’d be the first to cop it.
‘It’s all right, Betsy,’ she yelled above the sirens and the guns as her little sister screamed with terror, ‘play cubbies with me, it’s just an exercise, that’s all. Just an exercise.’
Japanese midget submarines had attacked Sydney Harbour, the newspapers announced. One had even been sighted by passengers on a ferry between Garden Island and Bradleys Head. Another, entangled in the boom net at the entrance to the main harbour, had exploded. Garden Island had been shelled and the HMAS Kuttabul, a converted ferry serving as an accommodation ship, had been sunk, killing twenty-one sleeping sailors and wounding ten.
Fear and speculation abounded. How many subs were there? Had numbers of Japanese been landed ashore? Was the enemy hiding out around Woolloomooloo and the Cross?
It was eventually reported to the public that there had been only three midget submarines. They had been launched from outside the heads by mother ships, one of which later shelled Bondi Beach. midget 1-27 was caught in the boom net and destroyed by its own suicide crew. Midget 1-22 fired two torpedoes at USS Chicago, one passing under the American cruiser to explode harmlessly on the eastern shore of Garden Island, the other sinking the Kuttabul. Midget 1-24, observed by the ferry passengers, passed safely out of the harbour, never to be seen again.
The public was assured that all was safe, but the damage had been done. Convinced that the Japanese were hiding out in buildings close to the docks, people moved out in droves. Tim Kendall, like other landlords around the Cross, found it impossible to rent properties, twenty-eight flats in the Macleay Regis alone remaining vacant until the hubbub eventually died down.
The day after the raid, two plainclothes police officers called upon Kathleen.
‘Mrs De Haan?’ one of them asked.
‘Yes.’
‘May we come in, please?’ Senior Detective Sergeant Walton showed his ID and the two officers stepped into the front room as she opened the door for them.
‘We believe you are harbouring one Stefan Brandt.’ His partner standing silently to one side, it was obvious that Senior Detective Sergeant Walton did all the talking.
‘I’m not “harbouring” him,’ Kathleen retorted. Dear God, they’re going to hound the poor man all over again, she thought. ‘He’s a lodger, he rents a room from me.’
‘Is he in?’
‘No. He hasn’t been home for two days.’ Kathleen had actually been concerned about Stefan. It was the first time in the whole of the two years he’d been living at her house that he’d not come home of a night. She’d presumed he’d met a woman, but she’d worried a little nonetheless. What if he’d had an accident, or met with foul play?
‘Where is his room?’
‘Out the back.’
‘We’d like to take a look at it.’
‘Well, you can’t.’ How dare they, she thought.
‘We have a warrant.’ Senior Detective Sergeant Walton nodded to his partner, who took a piece of paper from his upper pocket.
Kathleen waved aside the document which the policeman held out, she had no reason to disbelieve them, but she was outraged nonetheless. ‘What gives you the right,’ she demanded, ‘Stefan’s not an enemy alien, his papers are in order, he’s a Dutchman from Java, and he works for the Dutch East IndiaCompany.’
‘I’m afraid you’re wrong, Mrs De Haan.’
‘Oh?’
‘He doesn’t work for the Dutch East India Company …’
‘Well, he did.’
‘… he has never worked for the Dutch East India Company, his papers are not in order, and he does not come from Java.’
The policeman was watching her closely. They both were, reading her every reaction
.
‘Furthermore,’ the policeman concluded, ‘he’s not Dutch and his name is not Stefan Brandt.’ Kathleen looked, dumbfounded, from one to the other. ‘Now if you’d be good enough to show us his room?’
Silently, she led them out the back and unlocked the door to Stefan’s room, then she stood to one side as they searched.
It took them only minutes to find what they were after. A radio transmitter in the cupboard, in the top drawer of the desk numerous photographs of warships and carriers, and rolled up on the little desk in the corner, an intricate map of Sydney Harbour with military and naval installations circled in red. Secure in the knowledge that Kathleen would never intrude upon his privacy, Stefan had gone to no pains to find secret hiding places.
Kathleen accompanied the policemen back inside. She led them into the front room. ‘What is he? Who is he?’ she asked, fearful of the answer.
‘He’s German,’ Walton answered, ‘we’re not sure of his name, we know several aliases he’s used over the years. All of them Dutch.’
Kathleen felt sick, and suddenly unsteady on her feet, she sat down on the sofa. Not only had she housed an enemy spy, she’d defended and protected him. ‘The Japanese submarines?’ She looked up at the two men who stood before her, and her voice, too, was a little unsteady.
‘Possibly. They certainly had advance information.’ Walton felt sorry for the woman, he was sure she was telling the truth, but she’d have to be investigated nevertheless.
He wondered himself just how key a figure Brandt might have been. They should have picked him up on Saturday morning, he thought, the moment the Yank had reported him as a suspect, but they’d decided to leave it until Monday, nobody wanted extra paperwork on a Saturday. Walton wondered whether it might have had an effect upon the Japanese raid if they’d picked Brandt up. Oh well, he supposed they’d never know.
‘We’d like you to come with us and answer some questions, Mrs De Haan,’ he said, not unkindly. ‘Is there someone you’d like to telephone? Someone who could help you?’
She telephoned Tim Kendall.
The Japanese submarine attack on Sydney Harbour was the final straw for Susan Kendle. Time to leave, she decided. She was seventy-four years of age and far too old for this. She detested the war but, in all honesty, she couldn’t argue against its necessity. She hadn’t been able to even at the outset. And now that Australia was threatened, she was frustrated at being unable to help. If she were younger she would have been one of the driving forces behind women’s involvement in the war. No longer did women sit around sewing socks for men being needlessly slaughtered; now they drove lorries and taxis, they worked the land to feed the people and they joined the forces to protect their country. Women were proving their worth and being recognised for it, and Susan was proud of her sex. If only she could do more. God, how she hated being old.
Susan Kendle’s financial contribution to the war effort had been invaluable but, money being meaningless to her, she’d lost sight of that fact.
Susan had been astonished to discover that, with the exception of his partnership in Kendle and Streatham, her father had left everything to her. Kendle and Streatham was indeed the bulk of his wealth, but there was much else besides. Mostly property, including Kendle Lodge itself, together with various trust accounts, shares and investments. Susan had presumed that, after her condemnation at his hospital bedside, he’d leave his money to someone else. But then who was there? He’d never give it to charity. She could only assume that, even on his deathbed, Charles had hoped his money might force her hand. That, through the sheer guilt of her inheritance, she would persuade her son to embrace the Kendle name.
Charles had been desperate to preserve his name under any circumstances. His will instructed that, in leaving his share of the controlling interest in Kendle and Streatham to Godfrey, the name of the company was never to be changed. ‘Kendle’ must remain forever. If his name was not to be carried on by his blood then it must be sustained by his business interests.
Ironically enough, even that contingency had been destined to fail, Susan thought. She saw the Streathams a lot and she knew the difficulties they were suffering. Godfrey Streatham III was a young man of the utmost integrity, just like his father and grandfather before him, and he would most certainly have honoured his commitment had he been able. But it had been impossible to preserve Charles Kendle’s name simply because it had been impossible to preserve Kendle and Streatham itself. The stores had been sold and were shortly to be converted to office space.
Only Kendle Lodge remained and, as a gesture to her father, Susan had maintained the name. In the late thirties she had made a personal visit to the Wunderlich Company to arrange an emblem to be erected above the main doors of the Lodge.
Wunderlichs had barely scraped through the Depression, their Redfern factory reduced to a skeleton staff, but they had survived by the sheer ingenuity of the brothers and the diversified range of building products they supplied. The outbreak of war, however, brought about substantial changes to the company. The production of essential goods and contracts with the American and Australian Armed forces saw their profits rise and Wunderlichs was once more a force to be reckoned with. The company had remained a family concern, run principally by the offspring of the original brothers, but to Susan’s surprise it was Alfred Wunderlich himself who had personally overseen the design of the Kendle Lodge emblem.
The old man must have been well into his seventies, she’d thought as they sat in his office, yet, lean and fit, he looked a good decade younger.
‘Moulded zinc is still the best,’ he said. Alfred Wunderlich loved his work with a passion and he had no intention of retiring, there were another twenty years in him yet. ‘And we should keep the motif of a yacht, I think, like the original emblem we designed for Kendle and Streatham.’
‘Yes,’ she agreed, ‘Father loved his yachts.’
‘I suggest something large and impressive.’
‘Most certainly,’ Susan agreed, and they shared a smile. Mr Wunderlich appeared to know her father well, she thought. Charles Kendle had not been a man given to subtlety.
Once erected, the sign indeed proved most impressive. A magnificent yacht in full sail was emblazoned with the words ‘Kendle Lodge’, beneath which, in smaller lettering, was ‘War Veterans’ Hospice’.
Susan had spent a vast amount of her father’s money converting the old family mansion to a convalescent home for returned soldiers. She’d set up a charity trust, in perpetuity, to be operated by the Red Cross Society, with one proviso only: that the hospice always remain known as Kendle Lodge.
Her father’s name lived on as he’d wished, she’d made sure of that. But, most delicious of all ironies, it served an altruistic purpose. She knew that he wouldn’t have thanked her for that.
Susan waddled up the gangplank and onto the Manly ferry. She’d become bigger than ever in her latter years and it made getting about rather difficult. This would be her last ride on a Manly ferry, and the thought saddened her a little. But she was ready to leave. Tomorrow she was heading south to Tasmania aboard an apple steamer bound for Hobart. Tasmania, Susan was convinced, was the only remaining escape, the war was everywhere. Besides, she needed to get away from this heat. She swept her dampened, unruly hair from her face. It would be Christmas soon, and Sydney’s December swelter was insufferable. Well, for fat old ladies anyway.
She gazed out at the Bridge, saddened also by the knowledge that she would never see it again. To Susan, as to many, the Sydney Harbour Bridge was a symbol of triumph.
Australians had embraced many distractions during the Depression. Radio had become increasingly innovative, and to crowd around the wireless set of an evening was a welcome escape for families who lived a miserable existence. And then there were the ‘talkies’. Many would spend their last precious pennies to elude reality in a darkened picture house. Other distractions were the sporting heroes, not least of all Donald Bradman who carried Australia on his bac
k each time he went in to bat. And the great Melbourne Cup winner, Phar Lap, whose triumphs were eagerly followed throughout the country, and whose untimely demise in America stimulated endless debate in dole queues and pubs.
But for Sydneysiders there was, above all else, the Bridge. Completed at the height of the Depression, it had created jobs for thousands, and given hope and pride to the city’s people. As its mighty span grew, foot by foot, over the eight years of its construction, it came to symbolise more and more the triumph and endurance of its people.
I will miss the Bridge, Susan thought. As she watched the giant steel coathanger recede into the distance she thought of her father. He’d been on her mind a lot of late. Probably because she was leaving Sydney. For better or for worse, her family had had an impact upon this city, and this city had had an impact upon them. She wondered whether, as the last of the Kendles, she should feel guilty at abandoning Sydney.
She walked to the starboard side of the ferry and looked at Manly Pier looming ahead. No, she didn’t feel guilty. Not even a little. She’d done her bit.
‘Gene!’ Caroline opened the front door to Lieutenant Gene Hamilton of the US Marines.
‘Hello, Caroline.’
It had been eighteen months, but he was as handsome as she remembered. His composure seemed a little ruffled, however, as if he wasn’t sure as to how he would be received.
‘Come in,’ Caroline opened the door wide, ‘we’re having a cup of tea in the kitchen.’ Of course, Gene thought, when were Aussies not having a cup of tea in the kitchen. ‘Gran’ll be thrilled to see you. She always said that she owes you an apology.’
That smile. She was irresistible. He wished he could suggest they just go for a walk, he longed to be alone with her. ‘A cup of tea’d be great,’ he said as he stepped reluctantly inside. Kathleen De Haan owed him an apology? He’d all but accused the woman of being a spy.
