The Persimmon Tree

by Bryce Courtenay

  ‘Why do you always refer to him like that, using all his names?’ I asked, again deliberately evading an answer to her plea.

  She threw back her head, her chestnut hair swinging and for a brief moment covering her pretty face before settling, at the same time withdrawing her hand and making me immediately wish she’d return it to my knee. She wore a look of impatience. ‘He doesn’t see men. He only sees solutions. He doesn’t see a beautiful and exceptional eighteen-year-old with a lust for life. He just sees a radio operator behind enemy lines. For him it’s a jigsaw puzzle…’

  ‘Funny you should say that,’ I interrupted. ‘That’s exactly what I thought. I was a one-colour component, one of those pieces you know must belong to either the sky or the open piece of ground in front of the giant’s castle. When we shook hands and I agreed to go to HMAS Cerberus he tapped the driver on the shoulder and told him not to spare the horsepower. I doubt if we said a dozen more words on the rest of the way to Fremantle.’

  Marg leaned forward and replaced her hand on my knee, the closeness of her breasts made it difficult for me to breathe and that part of me below the waist with its singular mind was in all sorts of trouble. ‘It’s the Rupert and Basil and the cherub lips. In combination they’ve destroyed him; the Michael never had a chance. What do some parents think they’re doing when they so carelessly saddle a child with names of past family? It must have been hell at school when he was growing up.’

  I grinned. ‘Try being a butterfly collector some time!’

  Marg laughed. ‘At least you were big enough to defend yourself. Rupert Basil Michael Long is very short and must have been a pathetic little bundle of misery as a child.’ She was leaning very close, her beautiful breasts almost touching my shirt, her hand on my knee, lips wet and slightly parted. Her perfume sent me dizzy with desire. If I hadn’t been sitting already I feel sure I would have gone weak at the knees. Her hand slid down into my crotch and at the same time our lips met. I’d like to think this last bit was due to my assertiveness, but I don’t think it was. Anna and I had swapped tongues a fair bit so I wasn’t the complete novice, but now it was below the waist that I was coming apart big time. Marg’s clever fingers had the buttons of my fly undone and the rest acted like a jack-in-the-box.

  Marg ceased kissing me. ‘My goodness, Jumpin’ Jack!’ she exclaimed. She gave me a wicked grin. ‘Nick, I’m sorry, there’s a fire down below that needs my urgent attention or it might get out of hand.’ I was surprised that she was also breathing heavily. Next thing you know, she’d slid from the couch and onto her knees on the carpet in front of me, then put her mouth on Jumpin’ Jack, her lips sliding down to his base, then slowly back. It was the most exquisite feeling I’d ever experienced.

  Now, I know every adult male in the world has probably experienced what Marg was doing to me. It hardly qualified as an aberration and every pimply schoolboy includes this in his fantasy agenda, imagining the soapy pads of his fingers as a pair of luscious female lips. I’d even taken D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover, where such a moment is described, to the masturbatory peace and quiet of the outdoor toilet on the mission station when my father, in yet another of his birds-and-the-bees moments, had handed me the book at the age of fourteen and said gruffly, ‘Instruction for the use of essential gender knowledge.’

  There is a first for everything, for laughter and pain, for certainty and uncertainty, for joy and sorrow, and mostly we forget to inscribe these firsts in our book of memories. Often our first intimate sexual encounter is awkward, conducted between two inexperienced would-be lovers, as might have been the case between Anna and me, had she consented. We let the moment escape, thinking perhaps that this initial sexual fumble must improve, that eventually we’d acquire a desirable memory of the moment, one as we imagined it should be. All I can tell you is that I felt no sudden stab of guilt concerning darling Anna. If conscience plays a part in these things, then mine had gone walkabout. Marg stroking me expertly with her lips was for me akin to dying from pure pleasure, but instead of dying I felt as if I would explode from within with sheer joy. Crying out, I knew I was unable to contain myself. It was then that Marg, as if by magic, unbuttoned the front of her dress. I don’t know how she’d managed to snap open the hooks and eyes that held her brassiere, but her beautiful breasts were bared in front of me, and at the moment I could no longer contain myself, her mouth withdrew and she moved forward and cupped her breasts about a now thoroughly jumping Jumpin’ Jack, enfolding me so that I came against her softness. Then she rose and straddled my knees and allowed me to clasp her glistening breasts. ‘Rub them, darling,’ she said. ‘Gently, this part of me is for you.’ It was the first time I had experienced the true generosity of a woman giving herself to a man. ‘That was the entrée, Nick. Into the shower and then the bedroom for the main course,’ she instructed.

  ‘Yes, ma’am,’ I sighed. ‘Anything you say.’

  Together in the shower, gloriously hot, Jumpin’ Jack recovered quickly. Towelled and glowing, Marg led me by the hand to the bedroom, to a double bed with crisp white sheets and what eventuated as the hardest-working night I had ever enjoyed.

  ‘First a small ritual we need to go through, Nick. In case you’re unfamiliar with their use, let me begin by explaining that I’m in Naval Intelligence not just for the duration of the war but as a permanent career. I am also a big girl now and a very careful one. Intelligence teaches you that,’ she said, using a clever double entendre.

  I started to blush. Was she going to ask me if I’d brought any French letters? ‘Marg, I’m sorry,’ I stammered. ‘I never thought… er, anticipated.’

  ‘No, of course you didn’t, darling boy,’ she interrupted. ‘The nicest surprises are the unexpected ones. As long as you remain rigid I shall be at rigid attention,’ she said, again cleverly while neatly removing my embarrassment. She produced a small square package, tearing it open. ‘Naval issue. Kindly lie back and think of England,’ she laughed.

  ‘I’ve never been to England, or even to where I think you’re taking me,’ I said, trying to break the news of my virginity to her and in the process being too clever by half.

  ‘Oh!’ She grinned. ‘Am I not the lucky one then! I shouldn’t be surprised if in one night we enjoy several journeys to the nicest places, Nick.’

  The trouble with writing about making love — I don’t want to call it sex because to me it was much more — is that all the words are worn out. In Marg’s arms and experiencing her lovely body I had come alive. Something dormant in me had emerged and making love was as much about the experience of being held closely, intimately, as it was about mutual gratification.

  From the age of five I had been denied even the simplest physical comfort a child might expect from a mother. The Japanese woman who thereafter took care of my daily needs seldom touched me; to her culture I was an ‘it’, a Western child and certainly not worthy of a spontaneous or any other show of affection. Anna was the loveliest thing I could imagine, but Marg was a woman. I don’t know how to describe the difference, but a young bloke, particularly a virgin, needs to be taken by the hand and led into the wonderful mystery of the female body while, at the same time, being shown how he must please his partner as well. Marg was a willing teacher who made no bones about her own demands and in me she had new clay to mould in any way she wished. I had more than discovered sex. I had discovered the wonderful mystery of womankind.

  By morning I was utterly exhausted. Marg brought me breakfast in bed: scrambled eggs, toast, orange juice and a pot of tea. She was wearing a pretty, oyster-coloured dressing-gown and sat on the edge of the bed. ‘Nick, that was lovely. More than lovely. I hope you enjoyed yourself as much as I did?’

  ‘Marg, I don’t know what to say except — thank you.’

  She smiled and bent and kissed me lightly on the cheek. ‘It’s my call, you do understand that, Nick, don’t you?’

  ‘Your cal
l?’ I wasn’t sure what she meant.

  ‘My bed, my body, both belong to me alone. You must understand, Jumpin’ Jack doesn’t have proprietorial rights.’

  I blushed furiously. It hadn’t occurred to me to expect such rights. In childhood I hadn’t ever enjoyed the proximity to the opposite gender that establishes the roles of the male and allows young blokes to make assumptions so that they think of a woman as a lesser being in the pecking order or in the bedchamber.

  ‘Marg, if what happened last night was all that happens to me until I die I shall be eternally grateful to you.’ I think she must have seen that this wasn’t simply morning-after grateful boy-speak. I had grown up a whole heap in one single night, but that didn’t make me feel as if I was entitled to an encore; to any more than she had already so very generously given to me.

  Virginity in a male is a much overrated possession that has nothing to do with inner purity but is simply evidence of a lack of opportunity. I knew that I had been especially privileged in the manner in which I had experienced the second birth of the male, his delivery into manhood by a good woman. Now I tried inadequately to put this into words. ‘If you’re lucky, really lucky, you get a Marg Hamilton to terminate your virginity with an exquisite experience such as last night,’ I said, hoping I didn’t sound over-sentimental or sloppy or even pompous, knowing there was an element of my father’s pedantic syntax involved.

  Marg brought her hand to her brow, drew back her chestnut mane and laughed. ‘Nick, you really are a thoroughgoing rascal! But I think that may be the nicest compliment I have ever been paid. Darling, don’t let them bury you in the jungle. Please!’

  I spent the morning in town buying a can of engine oil and a pot of grease. Examination of the spark plugs indicated that they were just about on their last legs. I paid a motor mechanic two shillings to lend me the equipment to adjust the tappets and timing, and a set of spanners to fix the wheel alignment, as well as a jack to lift the Austin sufficiently off the ground for a big bloke to crawl under the chassis. It took me most of the morning to source all the stuff I needed but then, of course, I realised that under wartime conditions taxis were unavailable. Finally I paid four Aboriginal kids who were hanging around a sixpence each to carry the jack while I humped the other stuff back to Marg’s flat. I was sweaty and tired as I paid the kids. ‘No fags, you hear… lollies only!’ They laughed, running off.

  I found a pair of overalls in the garage that had obviously belonged to Marg’s brother. I undressed, conscious that I only had Peter Keeble’s clothes and the clean, unironed shirt hanging from the boarding-house window. The overalls fitted more or less, with the legs about six inches short and a fair bit of my chest showing where the metal buttons couldn’t meet the buttonholes. I worked on the Austin 7 all afternoon and into the early evening. It was obvious that under Marg’s stewardship it had been badly neglected, but it was still a bonzer little car and there were careful touches everywhere indicating that her brother John must have kept it in tip-top condition.

  It was nearly six o’clock in the evening when I’d completed the mechanics, returned the tools, and washed and polished the Austin to within an inch of its life. I must say it scrubbed up really well. Underneath all the grime the duco was perfectly even and didn’t have a scratch on it. Marg arrived back just as the sun was setting, the soft red glow of sunset reflecting on the little chocolate-coloured car, making it look brand-new. In a peculiar sense, I had tried to do for Marg’s car what Marg had done for me the previous night. The strange thing was that I was still in love with Anna, but I knew that in an entirely different way I loved Marg Hamilton. Or do you think that’s just Jumpin’ Jack’s influence?

  ‘Goodness, Nick. I can’t believe it!’ she exclaimed. ‘It looks simply wonderful!’

  I wiped my hands on the polishing cloth even though they were dry and didn’t need wiping. Wiping your hands on a bit of rag when customers approach is an essential prerequisite for the serious mechanic. ‘I hope it goes better than it looks,’ I said rather pompously. I must admit I was just a tad pleased with myself.

  ‘Come in, you need a shower. Have you eaten?’

  ‘Scrambled eggs in bed this morning,’ I replied. In fact I had entirely forgotten to eat lunch. I indicated the shiny little car. ‘Want to take her for a spin?’ I offered.

  ‘Nick, I’d love to, but petrol is much too scarce for a joyride. It’s only meant to be used for official business. So later, when I take you back to the boarding house, you’re still official business and that’s permitted within the laws of petrol rationing. Now go and have a shower and we’ll have something to eat. I have some news.’

  ‘Good or bad?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t know, but you probably won’t like it,’ she replied.

  I had a quick shower, not enjoying the hot water as much as I should have. I was anxious to hear Marg’s news, knowing it might be about Anna or my dad, but first she made me sit at the table and eat the remains of a cold leg of lamb, a salad, and bread with a thin scraping of butter. After pouring me a cup of tea and placing it beside me, she sat opposite me at the kitchen table. ‘Nick, there’s no news of the Witvogel arriving in Broome. We’ve also checked Darwin.’ She spread her hands. ‘Nothing.’

  My heart sank and I brought my hands up to hold my head, my elbows leaning on the table. Marg had no way of knowing how I felt about Anna. In the tell-everything at the Archbishop’s luncheon, I’d played up Piet Van Heerden, and Anna had simply been his daughter who’d gone butterfly hunting with me and embroidered the handkerchief in the form of a keepsake. Loving-hands-at-home stuff you might expect from a teenager.

  ‘It’s Anna, isn’t it?’ Marg asked, and I knew from the way she asked the question that she hadn’t been fooled for a moment. ‘Oh, Nick, I’m so sorry,’ she said, reaching over and touching my arm. ‘Look, it doesn’t mean too much, a number of ships were diverted to Colombo — we’re trying to check there. It may take a few days. Going through a ship’s manifest is asking a lot from the busy port officials, especially with a harbour packed with merchant and passenger ships carrying refugees.’

  ‘Or it may have been sunk by the Japanese,’ I said despondently. There had been frequent reports that the Japs had sunk merchant ships carrying civilian passengers.

  ‘Yes, that’s a possibility,’ Marg said, not evading the issue. ‘Nick, we can only live in hope.’

  Marg drove me back to the boarding house, the little car purring like Cardamon the cat, but I felt too down-in-the-dumps to take any pleasure from its newfound power and quietness. Marg kissed me at the gate. ‘Can you meet me at the office about lunchtime tomorrow? We should have some news by then,’ she said.

  I waited until she’d pulled away, the little car trapping the reflection from a street lamp. I confess I was close to tears as I opened the front door to be confronted by Mrs Beswick in slippers, hairnet and curlers, holding up my shirt. ‘Can you explain this, please?’ she demanded, prim-lipped.

  ‘Yes, it’s my shirt.’

  ‘It was hanging from the window?’

  ‘Yes, I know. I washed it and hung it out to dry.’

  ‘We do not tolerate garments hanging from windows, Mr Duncan. Don’t you know there’s a war going on?’

  Despite my extreme annoyance and the fact that the last thing in the world I desired was Mrs Beswick’s coathanger mouth and pale grey accusing eyes confronting me, I felt compelled to ask, ‘What has my shirt hanging from the window got to do with the war?’

  ‘Ha! Signals! Enemy signals. Shirts in windows are well-known signals. It’s the fifth column, they’re everywhere!’

  I grabbed the shirt from her startled grasp. ‘Mrs Beswick, get stuffed!’ I said, marching past her and proceeding up the stairs. I’d never in my life insulted a woman.

  ‘I’ll be calling the police!’ she yelled after me. ‘We can’t have spies. This is a respectable boardi
ng house!’

  I turned on the landing. ‘You wouldn’t be related to Bert Henry, would you?’ I asked.

  ‘Bert who?’

  ‘Never mind! I’ll pay you what I owe you in the morning and be gone from this bloody fleapit before breakfast.’

  ‘Breakfast is included!’ she shouted back.

  Sometimes you’ve just got to laugh or you end up crying.

  PART TWO

  ‘You must tell my story, Nicholas, because I am too ashamed.’

  Anna Van Heerden

  a.k.a. Madam Butterfly

  CHAPTER SIX

  ‘Feathers can fly and so can I!’

  Katerina Van Heerden

  ANNA WATCHED AS THE Witvogel moved out of the harbour, trying to keep her eye on my rapidly receding form as I waved from the docks. She was surprised how quickly an image disappears. In only a couple of minutes the people on the wharf had become a blur of noise, for the sound of the people left behind seemed to endure longer than the focus on any one person. I had become a dot, then part of a smudge.

  Already she was regretting the decision to stay with her family and not sail with me in Madam Butterfly to Australia. She knew she was in love, but love was an entirely new experience she had no way of evaluating. She had resisted making love to me, giving me her body, because at the time she’d felt it wasn’t right, that she should wait, maybe even until we were married.

  But now she wasn’t so certain. She was afraid that I’d somehow disappear, that had she made love with me I’d be forever a part of her. No matter what happened I would have been her virgin lover, her introduction to coming into true womanhood. Now I might become no more than a memory that would fade in time, a boy that had quickened her blood and made her feel different, wanted and loved.