The Persimmon Tree

by Bryce Courtenay

  Seeing Mary seemed to somewhat ameliorate the hurt of Marg. They were not to be compared and I don’t mean that in a derogatory way. They were simply different women. Marg Hamilton turned me into a man, first gently, then wonderfully and stridently, demanding as much as she gave. The Virgin Mary was full of the contradictions of her working-class background and her Catholic faith, giving selflessly as much as she could without tearing the cellophane from the sheets in her glory box.

  In fact I had lost both of them, one to my superior officer and the other to the Mafia. There wasn’t a whole heap of my immediate past left, come to think of it; not much of my distant past was there either. But, as always happens, no sooner do you think the past is gone forever when it returns to bite you in the bum.

  The note delivered to the hospital by a military dispatch rider, who didn’t leave his name, simply read:

  Hiya, Hero! Call me urgent! Bris. 9287. Ask for Petty Officer Kevin Judge. If yer cain’t call, write to Navy Procurement Office, Turbot St, Brisbane.

  Your best buddy,

  Kevin

  P.S. Brisbane is in Queensland but I ain’t seen the fuckin’ queen yet.

  Making a phone call from the hospital wasn’t easy. The phones, only two of them, were in the corridors, there was always a queue of patients lined up and you had to have the exact amount of money to put in the slot. Frankly, it was a pain in the arse. I figured the little bloke, whose petty officer title seemed to me about as jumped up as my promotion to lieutenant had been, probably worked in a warehouse at the US procurement depot. They’d have to find him and then I’d run out of change and there’d be the usual tongue clucking and ‘Shake a leg, mate’ going on, with the queue growing longer by the minute. So I decided to write. The big mystery was how Kevin’s note to me came to be delivered in Melbourne by a military dispatch motorcyclist, whereas mine would probably be opened by the censor and take ten days to arrive. That’s the strange thing about wartime. In the attempt to speed everything up, everything slows down.

  In the ten days that passed before I heard from the little bloke again I received a note from Marg Hamilton asking if she could visit. I’d recovered a little emotionally and didn’t want to appear churlish, so I swallowed hard and wrote back to say I’d be glad to see her. I told myself once again that I had absolutely no right to feel aggrieved. Marg had handled everything, as usual, with complete decorum. I was the sulky bugger with the chip on my shoulder.

  Nurse Parkes had arranged for two lounge chairs (heaven knows where she found them) to be brought into the alcove and I sat in pyjamas and dressing-gown, reading. There wasn’t a great deal of choice in the hospital library, which consisted largely of books left behind by previous patients. I’d selected a Raymond Chandler novel. I forget its title, but I recall I’d just read a sentence that brought me back to reality in the context of Marg’s visit: ‘Dead men are heavier than broken hearts.’ I was still alive and kicking, my heart was still pumping and I was about to turn nineteen. I guess my life wasn’t entirely over. For Christ’s sake, pull yourself together, Nick, I silently urged.

  She came in wearing her WranS uniform with her lovely chestnut hair shining. At work she usually wore it tightly swept up to accommodate her hat — cap? — I could never decide quite what it was. I instinctively knew she’d let her hair down, worn it loose for me. She knew how much I loved the shine, the colour and thickness. She was even prettier than I remembered.

  ‘Nick, how lovely.’ She looked genuinely pleased to see me and her eyes sparkled. I started to rise from my seat, but before I could do so she’d bent down, placed her hands on the points of my shoulders and planted a generous kiss squarely on my lips. Then, drawing back, ‘I’ve been dying to see you, darling,’ she declared happily.

  I grinned stupidly, nervous, licking my lips, tasting her lipstick. ‘I’ve been dreading this moment and, as usual, you’ve handled it with aplomb,’ I declared.

  ‘And that’s another thing! I’ve missed the only eighteen-year-old man in Australia who can string a sentence together using a natural and extensive vocabulary. I like “aplomb”; it sounds like an expensive pudding.’ She turned and settled herself in the chair opposite me, arranging her long legs.

  ‘Too many grown-up books as a kid, and a bibliophile Anglican missionary father who thinks every truly noteworthy word has at least three syllables or doesn’t get used too often,’ I replied, grinning. In a matter of moments Marg had, as usual, settled things down. I wondered to myself if there was any situation, no matter how fraught, that Lieutenant Marg Hamilton couldn’t handle. She could, I felt sure, turn a major metropolitan earthquake into an orderly evacuation. With her at his side, Rob Rich was almost certain to reach the rank of admiral.

  ‘You look perfectly ghastly, darling. What have they done to you? I hear you’ve had malaria, amongst several other nasty things. We’re terribly proud of you, Nick. Rob told me about the twenty-second MacArthur thing and your “goanna medal”. That’s naughty. It really is no such thing. He says you’ve earned it twice over and that the Americans love you.’

  She’d slipped his name in so naturally that I hardly felt the jolt in my chest, although I noted she was speaking a tad too fast in an attempt to conceal her own anxiety. ‘Marg, he’s a great bloke,’ I said. ‘Congratulations.’ The six words came out like regurgitated razor blades.

  ‘Thank you, Nick,’ she said in a quieter, slower voice. Then she looked me directly in the eyes. ‘Nick Duncan, don’t you ever think for one moment that I didn’t and don’t still love you,’ she scolded. Then she threw back her head, her lovely chestnut hair momentarily covering her face, then curtaining to swing back into place just above her shoulders. ‘I loved you with aplomb! You were simply the most delicious pudding!’

  Marg rose from her chair and came to kneel in front of me, taking my hands in her own and looking directly at me. ‘Nick, I shall be terribly sad if we can’t remain loving friends for the rest of our lives. I shall never trivialise the special time we had together. What I said in my letter about locking the memory of you in my heart, I meant. When I’m an old woman I shall remember a beautiful young man I once had the privilege to love.’

  I felt ashamed at the sudden tears that ran down my cheeks. Aren’t women the ones who are supposed to cry? I have no idea where the tears came from. They just came out of nowhere.

  ‘I’d like that — I’d like that very much,’ I heard myself saying.

  Loneliness can be a bugger of a thing.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  ‘Yoh can say dat again, buddy!

  Opportunity only knock once.

  When da good Lord place it in ya way,

  it ain’t logical yoh gonna refuse it.

  Matter of fact, where I come from, it a downright sin.’

  Kevin Judge, aka ‘Da Judge’

  Brisbane, 1943

  I HAD WRITTEN TO the little bloke saying that when I got out of hospital I was entitled to a month’s leave, and I’d like to come up and see him. I asked if he knew of a boarding house where I could stay and take it easy. I explained that I had just my kitbag but I wanted a bit of luxury after Guadalcanal and the hospital — somewhere clean where I could have a decent mattress and a hot shower (if necessary more than once a day). Also, as my appetite was slowly returning, I wanted a place that served a decent hot breakfast.

  I had four months’ pay plus allowances in my pocket: nearly sixty pounds. By soldier standards at twelve shillings and sixpence a day, it was a veritable fortune and I would be able to treat myself and pay my own way with the little bloke and his friends. That kind of money isn’t left under your pillow and I decided I’d put it in the bank when I got to Brisbane. My father had an account at the Bank of New South Wales that had originally been used to pay my school fees and to buy any books he wanted brought home on school holidays. It was probably still open with one or two quid sitting in it.


  The priority telegram read: EXPECT YOU STOP ALL TAKEN CARE OF STOP LOTSA ACTION WAITING STOP KEVIN.

  Then a day later a dispatch rider delivered an envelope to the hospital that contained a priority movement order made out in my name, with the date yet to be filled in. It entitled me to fly to Brisbane from Essendon Airport. The trip was getting more and more bizarre.

  I guess if Belgiovani could make sergeant then Kevin could make petty officer, but Beljo had a remarkable skill, while Kevin’s only demonstrable accomplishments appeared to be his ability to climb through toilet windows into supermarkets and to sell numbers tickets and black-market cigarettes. These didn’t seem to me to be the kinds of talents that led to promotion in any of the armed forces, except perhaps for our own underhanded bunch — and they were as far removed from Kevin Judge as it was possible to get and still be on planet earth.

  As Ross Hayes (the doctor) had indicated, my recovery wasn’t quite as fast as I’d hoped. By the end of January I was up and about, although two trips into the city, one with Marg and the other with Nurse Parkes, left me pretty whacked on each occasion. Marg visited several times and I must say it made a big difference. I can’t pretend I didn’t still lust after her, because I did. But there you go, she was proving to be a great friend and I can honestly say I think she enjoyed visiting and wasn’t just doing it to cheer me up.

  Towards the end of January, Mary Kelly arrived unexpectedly with Fiorelli in tow. I had imagined a version of Belgiovani, whereas the bloke who came in with a serious-looking Mary was almost my size, trim and hard as a jarrah log, with the looks of what in the twenties used to be known as a ‘matinee idol’. He stabbed his forefinger at me and then turned to Mary, balling his fists, his expression fierce. ‘Dis duh guy been messin’ wid ya, baby?’ he asked. They must have seen the look of bewilderment on my face because they both burst into laughter. Fiorelli extended his hand. ‘Nice tuh know ya, Nick. Mary tell me you a regular guy and a hero, got yoself a medal from duh big guy.’

  ‘Fat lot of good it did me,’ I grinned, pointing. ‘That little bitch left me in the cold and went and took up with a Yank!’

  Much laughter ensued and Mary, grabbing Fiorelli’s arm and looking up at him, said, ‘See? I told ya, mate!’ — although what she’d told him I shall never know.

  They stayed a while and when they left Fiorelli preceded Mary and, parting the curtains, turned and pointed a finger at me again. ‘You come Stateside — Noo York, you hear, you our guest, buddy.’ He looked over at Mary. ‘You say solong ta Nick nice, babe,’ he said, drawing the curtains behind him.

  Mary, left alone with me for a moment, kissed me… if not passionately, the contact was more than perfunctory. ‘Cheerio, Nick, luv ya!’

  ‘I hope Fiorelli’s getting a little hero worship, kid!’ I whispered.

  ‘Nick! What kind of girl do you take me for?’ she retorted with a pretend look of shock on her pretty Irish face. ‘Goodbye, sweetheart,’ she said softly, kissing me again. I was left with the memory of a flame of red hair as the Virgin Mary parted the curtains and exited my life.

  By mid-February I had received advice of my next posting and was sufficiently recovered to leave for Brisbane; Nurse Parkes, using the office phone when matron was doing her rounds, made all the arrangements. We’d grown rather friendly but she had a boyfriend who was practically her fiancé; he was in the air force and you don’t go there. The article in the Women’s Weekly had been published and it was such a success that in the following issue a full photograph of her face had appeared on the front cover with the caption ‘Nurse Suzanna Parkes — The Compassionate Face of War’.

  Matron was not pleased. Overnight one of her nurses had become known nationwide. She’d called her niece into her office and afterwards Nurse Parkes came into the alcove looking upset and repeated what Matron had said to her, mimicking her clipped voice. ‘The old cow said to me, “A nurse’s vocation is a selfless and silent one. We do not splash our faces over the covers of magazines! You come from a very respectable country family, Nurse Parkes. I simply cannot think what my sister, your mother, will think.”’

  However, her mum was delighted and wrote to both Nurse Parkes and her sister, to say how proud they felt in Suzanna’s home town of Bairnsdale. So the matron gave tight-lipped permission when Nurse Parkes insisted on coming with me to Essendon, where I would get a flight to Sydney before going on to Brisbane. We hitched a ride into the city in the back of one of the hospital ambulances. It was on its way to Spencer Street Railway Station to pick up casualties who were arriving.We were dropped off near Collins Street and made our way to the Block Arcade for a quick cup of tea. Nurse Parkes had arranged for us to be taken to the airport by the Army transport shuttle service that left from the Olderfleet Building.

  Because I’d lost so much weight, Marg had organised for me to go to Myer and have a new uniform made up — the tropics and more than a spot of mildew hadn’t been too kind to the old one. The fitting had been done on one of the city excursions after which I’d returned to the hospital totally whacked. When Marg visited and I tried to arrange payment she simply said, ‘The navy owes you, darling.’ I decided to wear my new uniform to the airport just in case the travel movement order wasn’t fair dinkum — at least they’d see I wasn’t an impostor.

  When they announced the plane to Sydney Nurse Parkes, standing on tiptoe, kissed me. ‘I’m going to miss you terribly, Nick. But make sure you don’t come back,’ she said, close to tears.

  ‘Thanks, Suzanna, you’ve been a brick. I won’t forget you. Tell your bloke in the air force that the infamous winner of the goanna medal says he’s a bloody lucky bloke to have you. I mean it!’ I said with emphasis. It was the first time I had used her Christian name and Nurse Parkes started to weep softly, knuckling her tears, then waving me goodbye.

  By the time the plane landed in Sydney I was feeling exhausted — even thinking longingly of the crisp white sheets at the hospital. The accommodation at Mascot for officers in transit was noisy and not conducive to a good night’s sleep. I was glad to get out of there and take my seat on the dawn flight to Brisbane.

  Arriving at Eagle Farm Airport I took a bus to Brisbane Railway Station and then sought directions to Turbot Street on the edge of the city. The US Navy Procurement Office had taken over a large four-storey building. At the gates I was accosted by two navy shore patrol personnel who, though not quite as tall as me, appeared a damn sight wider around the shoulders now that I’d lost forty pounds of weight. They were the kind of blokes with whom you decide not to argue even when they’re still approaching from some distance. The fact that I was wearing naval uniform and, these days, a bit of fruit salad on my chest, didn’t seem to impress them and they failed to salute.

  ‘Sorry, Lootenant, this a restricted area,’ one of them said before I’d even opened my mouth to speak.

  ‘I’d like to see Petty Officer Judge,’ I replied, looking him in the eye. I was the officer and they were the enlisted men, and while I don’t care much about these things, there is a respect for rank, even between Allies. I had been taught you are saluting the rank, not the man.

  He glanced at the second gorilla and smiled. ‘That just about every-body in Bris-bane, sir.’

  ‘Petty Officer Judge?’ I asked, not sure he understood. Then I added with a touch of acerbity, ‘I’m not asking to see your commander in chief.’

  ‘That just about who you is asking to see,’ the second big ape chortled.

  The Americans were very unpopular in Brisbane. The infamous Battle of Brisbane had taken place early the previous year when a goon like one of the two standing in front of me from the US Military Police had shot an Australian soldier named Edward Webster. It was the culmination of weeks of brawling, initially aggravated by resentment that the better-paid American troops, with their access to the PX, nylons, chocolates and other goodies, were pulling all the prettiest local girls, lea
ving the scrubbers for our blokes. It had resulted in two nights of pitched battle involving a couple of thousand soldiers from both sides. After the incident, not only the troops but also the locals, with the exception of the girls who were the original cause of the fracas, thought the Yanks were somewhat on the nose. Now I sensed a bit of reciprocated feeling coming from the two naval patrol guys barring my way.

  I attempted to smile, though not over-successfully. ‘No, you don’t understand. My name is Nick Duncan and Petty Officer Judge and I are friends, old war buddies.’ Then I added as further explanation, ‘We sailed together in a yacht across the Indian Ocean escaping from the Japs.’ No sooner had I said this than I realised how absurd it must sound.

  A look of incredulity appeared on their faces and they started to laugh. Then one of them stopped suddenly. ‘Hey, wait on, that happen to him. He got himself a medal for doin’ that.’ He looked up and asked, ‘Wha’ cha say the name was, sir?’

  ‘Duncan, Lieutenant Nick Duncan. Why don’t you call Petty Officer Judge? That will clear this matter up,’ I assured him.

  ‘I can try, sir, but Da Judge, he don’t take calls. He only make them.’

  ‘The Judge?’

  ‘Yeah, that him,’ he said, not explaining. ‘Wait on, sir, I’ll try.’ He walked over to the guardhouse situated within the main building, returning a minute or two later shaking his head as in disbelief. ‘Sorry, sir, no disrespek intended. It just that every day lots o’ people try to see Da Judge.’ He grinned. ‘I’ll get my fat ass kicked if I let somebody in who ain’t legit. Follow me, please, Lootenant.’

  We climbed the stairs to the first floor, which seemed entirely occupied by women in naval uniform working at comptometer machines. They were known as WAVES and I assumed they were somewhat similar to our Wrans, although they didn’t seem to be subject to the same naval discipline. Marg once claimed that she’d met dozens of them in the course of her work and she’d never yet found one who knew what the acronym stood for. Then she’d told me: Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service.