The Persimmon Tree

by Bryce Courtenay

  ‘I promise I’ll think about it,’ I said, to ameliorate Marg’s concern that I’d be wasting my youth alone in the jungle, that I’d suffer from dengue fever and malaria, and that reporting on the movements of the Japs should best be left to older locals who had been trained for a couple of weeks in the use of a short-wave radio. Marg always saw things clearly. She would have made a good ship’s captain.

  She was now, quite possibly, the only one left of the people I loved and who were important in my life, and we were about to be separated by the width of Australia. The idea of going to England for further training sounded okay, but judging from the news on the radio, 1942 wasn’t exactly party time in Britain.

  Nicholas Duncan was back to being a loner, and the prospect of spending time in the jungle didn’t overly concern me. It was an environment I understood better than the city and, yeah, I admit, there’d be a chance to catch butterflies. If Anna had been in Australia or Marg closer, then I might have had second thoughts — although I don’t know.

  However, as things stood, being my own boss in the solitude of the islands sounded a lot better than being a young naval sublieutenant buried in a submarine or aboard HMAS Something and being blown out of the water by a Japanese destroyer. I guess all navies are roughly the same, and I’d heard enough about the US Navy from the little bloke to make me wary. Moreover witnessing the slaughter of the shipwrecked sailors from the Perth on that lonely beach in Java, then our own lucky escape across the Indian Ocean on Madam Butterfly, left me somewhat indifferent to the romance of a career at sea. Sailing is one thing, but surviving at sea or being blown to kingdom come quite another. If I was going to die I wanted to have some say in the matter.

  I’d been issued with a travel warrant to be presented to the movement officer at Perth Railway Station, together with my booking slip for second-class travel to Melbourne, all meals included. There were lots of blokes in uniform, air force and army, boarding the train, but no navy. They kept glancing at Marg, probably wondering what a young bloke like me was doing with a terrific sort like her. They probably concluded she was my sister; that is, until they saw the farewell kiss.

  When I entered my compartment an air force bloke made room for me at the window. ‘Jeez, you don’t muck around, do you?’ he said admiringly. Then, as the railway guard gave a sharp blast from his whistle and called ‘All aboard!’, slamming carriage doors as he worked his way down the platform, Marg reached into her handbag. ‘This arrived ten minutes before I left the office. Your godfather, the Archbishop, received it in the afternoon mail and phoned. We had it come by naval motorcycle dispatch rider. You’ll want to read it on the train,’ she said, smiling and handing through the window a fairly large envelope addressed to me with a round printed circle on the left-hand corner that read ‘US Army Air Force Command Mail, Colombo, Ceylon’.

  I accepted the envelope, looking at it quizzically, but almost before I could comment the guard gave a final blast of his whistle and the train started to pull away. ‘Nick, I’m so glad you came into my life, albeit briefly,’ Marg said, reaching to touch my outstretched hand and, I could see, trying hard to restrain her tears.

  ‘Marg, I love you!’ I called as the train gathered momentum and moved into the darkness where her lovely face was only just visible on the fast-disappearing platform.

  It may seem improbable, but I was so upset about leaving Marg that I quite forgot about the envelope I held in my hand. So much had happened; in only a matter of a few weeks my life had changed immeasurably. I guess I’d grown up, in some respects even beyond my years. The air force bloke must have read my thoughts. ‘Christ! It isn’t easy, is it, mate?’ Then he explained. ‘I left my wife and two kids all recovering from the measles. God knows if I’ll ever see them again. Wife and two little faces looking real crook and sad from the window and me walking down the front path off to war.’

  I opened the envelope and withdrew Anna’s letter.

  Tjilatjap, Java

  5th March 1942

  My dearest Nicholas — This was struck through and directly below it Anna wrote:

  My darling Nicholas,

  I do not know if you are alive and have come in the Vleermuis already to Australia. But I think it is so, or I would feel it in mijn heart.

  … My stepmother commit suicide in the river, she is jumped in the river and Kleine Kiki she cannot rescue her because she cannot swim. They have not found the body. Mijn father he is also drunk since Batavia.

  … Nicholas I love you. I am very sorry I did not let you make love to me. Maybe I will die and not know how it would be to make love to you!

  I love you, my darling Nicholas. Forever!

  Anna — Madam Butterfly X X X X X!

  P.S. I have always the Clipper butterfly. I will keep it till I die.

  I love you!

  A

  I sat stunned, but confess I didn’t cry. Anna’s letter told me everything we had professed to each other. It told of her love for me and her hopes for the future, but nothing about what would happen to her once she was stuck in Java with the Japanese about to arrive. The suicide of her abusive stepmother must have been very difficult for her, and then having to cope alone with Piet Van Heerden’s drunken behaviour. Funny, I’d always thought the big Dutchman was full of shit. Some blokes who seem totally in command of their environment can’t hack it when they’re removed from their comfort zone.

  We’d had a maths master at school, Mr Bruce Batten. We called him ‘Bastard Bruce’ because in class he was a genuine megalomaniac who delighted in tormenting kids. As vice-principal he was permitted to cane boys. He proceeded to do so on a regular basis and with atavistic delight. He was also one of the two masters in charge of the cadets. When we were on a weekend camp in the bush he’d taken a platoon of first-year students on a map-reading course in the morning and they were due back in time for lunch. By midnight he hadn’t turned up and I was sent out with four volunteers to find him. It was a full moon so it was not difficult to see and, as we were not avoiding an enemy, we walked in the open, calling out. We came across their camp in a small dead-end canyon at three in the morning. The juniors had gathered a stack of firewood and made a fire and were sleeping soundly around it. When we woke them, apart from being hungry and devouring the rations we’d brought with us, they were in reasonably good spirits.

  However, Bastard Bruce was not amongst them. One of the kids told us he’d seen him heading further up the canyon and he’d seemed pretty frightened. I eventually discovered him about twenty feet up the end wall of the canyon, sitting on a narrow ledge, whimpering. When he was asked to come down he had trouble with his shaking legs. He was exhausted and it took us nearly five hours to get him back to camp, one of our blokes taking the kids ahead. I’d only had to cope with Bastard Bruce for those few hours and I’d found the experience thoroughly distasteful. Poor Anna would have had to deal with her drunken and pathetic father from the moment they’d left Batavia.

  As the train chuffed through the night I realised that Kevin and I had been still out to sea, within the range of Japanese warships and aircraft, when Anna had written the letter. Now, anything could be happening to her. One thing was certain: there was likely to be no news, or very little reliable information, out of the island for the duration of the war.

  I removed Anna’s embroidered handkerchief from my wallet, and when everyone had gone to sleep, I spread it across my knee. Searching for the raised stitching of the embroidered butterfly with the tips of my finger, I placed my hand over it and recited Psalm 23 aloud, though softly. This was the psalm my father had rejected in favour of the Irish blessing when writing his letter. Every schoolboy knows the words off by heart:

  The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.

  He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.

  He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of right
eousness for his name’s sake.

  Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.

  Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.

  Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.

  There I was in the middle of the night, crossing the continent with five other blokes who were sound asleep, reciting the psalm as if by so doing I would keep Anna safe. Even though my father was an Anglican missionary I didn’t consider myself particularly religious. But there are occasions when we reach for the comfort of words, and God has created some of the very best. I guess, if He was listening, He may have thought me a bit of a hypocrite. I’d just come from the arms of one woman I loved and here I was asking Him to protect another I also loved. It was what my father might call spiritual bigamy. I was unable to separate the two kinds of loving, and now both of the loved ones were lost to me. I would, of course, write to Marg, but she might as well have been in Timbuktu for all the hope I had of seeing her in the immediate future. I realised with a shock that, if I ended up in the islands, I might never see her again, or at least not until the war was over, whenever that was. Who knows? I might be dead by that time, although I didn’t think I would be. Like most blokes of eighteen, I thought of myself as bullet-proof.

  The crossing took three days and nights: first main stop was Kalgoorlie, then across the Nullarbor Plain to Port Pirie, Adelaide and finally Melbourne. The ever practical and thoughtful Marg had sourced two Japanese books for me, explaining that they had been taken from an old Japanese couple who had been interned when the war broke out. ‘I can’t imagine why they wouldn’t allow them to take a book or two with them,’ she said at the time. Then she added, ‘Intelligence makes some weird decisions. How a couple well into their seventies, having lived in Broome for fifty years, could be considered dangerous enemy aliens beats me.’

  ‘Broome? They probably came over for the pearl diving and stayed on,’ I interjected.

  ‘Maybe. Anyway, I found these in the restricted departmental library and, in the name of Naval Intelligence, confiscated them. I thought it might be a good idea to brush up on your Japanese while on the train. I’ve covered them in brown paper and I suggest you don’t let any of the passengers see you reading a Japanese book or they’re likely to report you to the conductor.’ She laughed. ‘You don’t want some boofhead police sergeant escorting you off the train at Port Augusta.’

  They don’t refer to it as the ‘outback’ for nothing. There’s not a great deal other than saltbush to look at from your compartment window. The two volumes were both classical Japanese tales: The Story of Genji, which I hadn’t read, and The Forty-seven Ronin, a tale of honour and great heroism that I’d read as a young boy. My father had urged me to read the first one as a child, but I’d somehow avoided doing so. Inscribed on the flyleaf of both books, rather poignantly, were the names Shimuzi Masa and Shimuzi Korin and the date, 1892. Now the books proved to be a great deal more interesting than the scenery as we crossed the seemingly endless Nullarbor.

  We came into Spencer Street Station early on the fourth morning and I said goodbye to my fellow passengers; not a bad mob, although they’d carried on a bit, teasing me about the final kiss on the platform. By the time we’d reached Melbourne, the thirty or so seconds it had taken to kiss Marg goodbye had extended in their imaginations to at least an hour of ardent groping that stopped just short of having sex in public. The last words to me from the air force bloke were, ‘Be faithful, Nick. You don’t come across a good sort like that every day, mate!’ This brought the house down — well, the compartment anyway.

  So Nick Duncan, the passionate platform lover, found himself alone in a strange city that was just beginning the workday. My written instructions were that, upon arrival, I was to report to the Naval Recruitment Office in Olderfleet Buildings, 475 Collins Street at 9 a.m. sharp and present the recruitment officer with a sealed envelope that was enclosed herewith. I asked a bloke carrying a briefcase where the office was and he said it was five minutes’ walk and pointed up the tram tracks outside the station. I had at least an hour and a half to kill, even if I allowed fifteen minutes to find the recruitment office, so I checked into the railway café and blew some of the travel allowance I’d been given on ‘the works’: fried eggs, sausage, bacon, tomato and three pieces of toast with a pot of tea that held two cups. I still had time on my hands, so I walked through the city and went and stood on the bridge over the Yarra River, watching the schoolboys sculling on the lazy brown river. Melbourne seemed like a nice place with a park practically in the centre of the city, just across from the station and the railway yards, and stretching beside the river.

  I found the recruitment office without difficulty. The ground-floor reception area, more like a small hall, was beginning to fill with young blokes, recruits like me who’d been waiting for the doors to open. We were instructed to queue behind either of two desks, at each of which a female petty officer in uniform sat. Both were quite attractive, and I chose the queue with the prettier of the two, a redhead. Someone in the crowd gave a wolf whistle and, seemingly from nowhere, this big bloke in the naval uniform of a chief petty officer appeared and in a voice that rose above the noise in the crowded hall shouted, ‘There’ll be none of that! You’re in the navy now!’ The whole hall went dead silent. Then he added, ‘Snotties are entitled to admire silently and that’s all, gentlemen!’ which caused a roar of laughter. My turn came soon enough and I handed the envelope to the pretty redhead. She opened it, read it briefly, then raised the telephone, dialled, waited a moment, then responded to the voice on the other end, ‘Sir, I have Nicholas Duncan, the recruit recommended by the DNI in Fremantle.’ She listened for a few moments, then placed the receiver back on the cradle. ‘You are to go to the second floor,’ she pointed. ‘Take the lift. Ask for Commander Rich.’ She smiled, then handed me the original letter and wrote my name and the date on a small card that read ‘Access permitted’. She stamped it, then signed her initials under the date. ‘Hand this to the commander when you get there, Mr Duncan.’

  ‘Nick, Miss,’ I replied, thanking her. ‘Your name is… ?’

  Her eyebrows shot up in surprise. ‘Cheeky! Definitely officer material,’ she grinned, sending me off with a backward wave of her hand.

  Yet another important lesson learned. I was simply being polite and now had been inadvertently instructed in yet another of the techniques of approaching a woman. With my sort of loner background, I was taking a bloody long time (despite, thanks to Marg, not being a virgin any longer) to learn how to flirt. The bloke who’d whistled when we’d come in probably knew all the techniques for picking up a sheila while I hadn’t a clue.

  To my surprise, Commander Rich stood as I entered his office and walked around the side of his desk to shake my hand. ‘Rob Rich, nice to meet you, Nick.’ He pointed to one of two easy chairs. ‘Please, have a seat.’

  ‘Good morning, sir,’ I said, somewhat nervously sitting where he indicated. I’d been expecting to be shunted along with all the other recruits and treated like the mishmash we were, and so all this upstairs stuff came as a total surprise.

  ‘Welcome. I will be your commanding officer on HMAS Cerberus. I’m just up for the day and thought we might have a chat.’

  ‘Yes, thank you, sir,’ I replied. Something was definitely weird. You didn’t have to be Einstein to know that a raw recruit to any of the armed forces doesn’t get sent into the office of the commander for a friendly powwow. Feeling decidedly awkward, I handed him the letter. He reached over and took it, then placed it on his lap without glancing at it.

  ‘You come to us rather highly recommended, Duncan,’ he said.

  ‘Sir?’ He could see I was confused and had no idea what he was
referring to. ‘You mean Lieutenant Commander Rigby?’ I asked, surprised.

  ‘Amongst others. I refer to a note from the Archbishop of Perth.’

  I could feel myself blushing furiously. ‘Sir, please ignore it. He’s my godfather!’ I begged.

  He seemed to be amused. ‘Also a two-liner from God Himself.’

  I sensed I was in some sort of trouble. ‘God, sir?’

  ‘Commander Long — but take no notice of the “commander” tag; in Naval Intelligence he packs a bigger punch than any admiral afloat. I also have a transcript from Lieutenant Commander Rigby telling of your exploits prior to landing in Fremantle. Very impressive. You’re the first eighteen-year-old snotty I’ve come across to have his life marked “Top Secret”.’

  Now I knew I was definitely in trouble. First the Archbishop’s letter, then a note from Commander Rupert Basil Michael Long (as Marg always referred to him). His notes were obviously as clipped and precise as his speech.

  I was conscious that Commander Rob Rich was, in a manner of speaking, my new headmaster and I sensed I was about to cop a real serve. ‘I’m sorry, sir,’ I said lamely, looking him directly in the eye. Surely he must see that I had nothing to do with anything coming out of Perth and Fremantle? If someone was pulling strings, then it wasn’t my fault and was in fact the very last thing I would have wanted or expected.

  ‘Right then, let’s get on with it. You are not yet officially a snotty so we will consider this conversation off the record. However, there are one or two things I feel I need to straighten out before you join the navy.’

  ‘Yes, sir — thank you.’ I was suddenly twelve again and standing up at prep in front of my school boarding house, having arrived late in the first term to boarding school. Grimy Ferret, our housemaster, was asking me questions, a distinctly acerbic tone to his voice. My naïve answers were meeting with howls of orchestrated laughter from the other pupils. Only unlike Grimy Ferret, this guy, Rich, wasn’t milking the interview for cheap laughs.