The Passion and the Glory

by Christopher Nicole

  That was the only blight on returning to Pearl. Because at last he was at sea again, and in good company. Commander Phillips had been given his file, and had looked him up and down when he had joined the ship. ‘I’m told you like fighting Japs more than living,’ he had remarked. ‘Well, mister, that is what this ship was built to do, and that is what she is going to do. Welcome aboard.’

  Walt didn’t doubt that they were going to get on. In this second year of total war the Navy had gotten around to separating the men from the boys; he had been told, privately, that Commander Waite had been given a desk job. And now it

  was a business of taking the fight to the enemy. The Japanese were reeling from their defeats at Midway and in the Solomons, and now from the death of their greatest hero.

  ‘Our orders,’ Phillips told his officers when he returned from the Admiral’s headquarters, ‘are to penetrate behind the enemy perimeters and destroy any and everything we can. Our operational area is the Bismarck Sea and north and west of New Guinea. We leave tomorrow morning and we’re not coming back for two months. So if you’ve anything you’ve left undone, get off and do it. I want every man back on board by ten tonight.’

  ‘You coming on the town, Walt?’ Ensign Galt asked.

  ‘You guys go ahead,’ Walt said. ‘I have one or two things to do.’

  He wandered up to the club, ordered a beer, sat down and looked over the room. He knew nobody there, but he supposed one or two might know him, at least by height and reputation. And most could recognise his medal ribbon. But he showed little response to their attempted greetings, and they gathered he wanted to be alone. In fact, he didn’t, but brother officers weren’t the company he sought. The trouble was, there was only one person’s company he wanted, and she wasn’t available. Coming back to Pearl was too much like stepping back into the past, and it was only just under a year ago. To walk through the gates might be to encounter Janice Te Hota. If she had been pregnant she would have had the baby by now. If she had been pregnant, by him, he was the biggest shit on earth for running out on her. If she had been pregnant, by him, he was an even bigger shit for not going looking for her now, if only to see his child.

  He reckoned he was the biggest shit on earth.

  But there was something he knew he was going to do, and he wouldn’t be able to think straight until he had done it. He finished his beer, went to the telephone booths, and thumbed through the book. O’Malley. J.B. That had to be Jordan O’Malley; there wasn’t another one with those initials. He closed the book, went outside, watched three waves walk by, and felt sick. That too had happened just under a year ago. And these also turned their heads smartly and saluted the officer. But none of them was Linda.

  He went down the steps and walked towards the gate. To go looking for her would make him an even bigger shit. She was no doubt happily married and wished only to forget that afternoon in the bungalow. But that was the only happy female memory he had.

  He hailed a cab, gave the address he had noted down from the phone book. It was in a quiet suburb of Honolulu, and he made the taxi stop on the corner, paid him off. He’d worry about getting back, later. He walked along the pavement, looking at numbers. The houses were mostly bungalows here too, small and neat, with well kept lawns and flower beds, automobiles parked in driveways, several with children playing in the garden. Because it was Saturday afternoon. He had forgotten that. O’Malley would be home. Yet he knew he was going to call. To come this far and not do so would be absurd.

  He found the number, looked up the path at the house. It wore the appearance of being asleep or abandoned; the only sign of life was a sprinkler revolving in the centre of the lawn. There was not even a car in the drive, and the garage stood open. So they were out: he was lucky to the end. But he wanted her to know he had been there.

  He opened the gate and went up the drive, climbed the short flight of steps to the porch, rang the bell. It was possible that they had a housemaid. If not, he would tear a page from his notebook and slip a note through the door. Trouble was, what could he say that would not get her into trouble with her husband; she would hardly have told him about her pre-marital fall from grace.

  He heard footsteps inside the house, took a long breath as the door opened … and stared at her.

  Linda stared back. ‘Oh, my God!’ she said.

  Walt swallowed as his gaze drifted down her body. He thought she was more lovely, and even more desirable, than ever — at seven or eight months pregnant.

  Linda licked her lips, and stepped back. ‘You’d better come in,’ she said. It was less an invitation than a wish to get him out of sight of any prying neighbours.

  Walt took off his cap and stepped into the cool gloom of the house. He heard the door close behind him, knew he had to say

  something. But how he wished he’d stayed at the club.

  ‘When did you arrive in Pearl?’ she asked. ‘Or shouldn’t I ask that?’

  ‘I guess you shouldn’t.’

  ‘But you’re off tomorrow. Why don’t you sit down.’ She led him into a comfortable lounge. ‘Drink?’

  ‘Ah … no thanks.’ Carefully he lowered himself into a chair.

  Linda mixed herself a martini. ‘Jordan plays golf on Saturday afternoons,’ she explained.

  ‘Does he … ?’

  ‘He knows I was unofficially engaged, once.’ She sat opposite him, the glass held in both hands. ‘Sure you won’t change your mind?’

  ‘I’m on duty at nine.’

  ‘Seems I’ve heard that story before,’ she said. ‘Well … I hope you don’t mind if I do. Or do you think it’ll hurt the baby?’

  ‘What does your gynaecologist say?’

  ‘That it’ll hurt the baby.’ Linda drank. ‘It’s not yours.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I shouldn’t have come.’

  ‘Agreed.’

  ‘It’s just that … heck, I love you, Linda. I have always loved you, I will always love you.’

  ‘What about Janice Te Hota?’

  ‘She was a mistake. For God’s sake, if you’d only let me explain … ‘

  ‘She explained.’

  ‘Eh?’

  Linda shrugged. ‘She wrote me a letter. Told me how you’d been lovers for some time. How she was pregnant. God knows how she found out my name, but I guess it wasn’t difficult. Or maybe you told her.’

  ‘Of course I didn’t. Not until … we were never lovers. We had one tumble. Hell, I was going off to war.’

  ‘And the baby?’ Her tone was slightly less cold.

  ‘I don’t even know if there was one. I haven’t seen her since that afternoon.’

  Linda frowned at him. ‘You ran out on her, after making her pregnant?’

  ‘So I’m a rat, if I did that. But I don’t know she was pregnant. Or if she was, if it was by me. And I loved you.’

  ‘You are a rat,’ Linda said thoughtfully.

  ‘For loving you?’

  Her eyes flickered up. ‘Maybe that too.’

  ‘Linda … that afternoon was the happiest of my life. Until we got back to Pearl.’

  Linda finished her drink, got up, poured herself another. ‘Maybe it was the happiest of mine too.’ She was standing with her back to him. ‘But it was just an incident. If it’ll make you feel any better, you weren’t the first.’

  ‘Eh?’ he asked again.

  She turned, leaning against the bar. ‘I had a tumble too, at college. I thought you’d have noticed. Had I been a virgin there’d have been some blood about, I guess.’ She made a moue. ‘Had I been a virgin I couldn’t have enjoyed it so much. Or maybe given you as good a time.’

  Walt tried to think. But he knew it didn’t matter. It wouldn’t have mattered had she told him then. In fact, now he thought about it, he had subconsciously known there had been more on her mind than lovemaking … the way she had looked at the sheets afterwards, almost guiltily. And it certainly didn’t matter now. He got up. ‘Then what the hell did we quarrel abo
ut?’

  ‘We didn’t quarrel,’ Linda said. ‘We never had the time, remember? I was upset, I guess. Sure, I had a conscience. But mine had been before you proposed, Walt. There were none after. But I did love you. I still reckoned we might straighten it out when you came back from patrol. Only … before you did, that woman wrote me.’

  ‘And you believed everything she told you,’ he said bitterly.

  ‘She was pregnant, for God’s sake.’

  ‘I don’t think she was.’ He moved across the room to stand in front of her.

  ‘Okay,’ Linda said. ‘Maybe she was lying. Maybe I made a mistake. God, I made a mistake. But you don’t change mistakes by wishing they hadn’t happened, Walt. I’m married. I’m about to bear a child. Nothing can change that.’

  ‘What possessed you to marry?’

  ‘Oh, fuck you,’ she said. ‘Why the hell shouldn’t I be

  married? This guy asked me to marry him, and I said yes. I was fed up with the Navy, anyway. I only joined it because you were in it. I wanted out.’

  ‘He’s not service?’

  ‘No, he’s a building contractor.’

  ‘And he wasn’t even drafted?’

  ‘He has a Four-F condition. Something wrong with his toes. You wouldn’t know it by looking at him. He can play golf and tennis. But he could become a liability at any moment, if he was in the services.’

  ‘And you’re happy about that.’

  ‘Why don’t you get the hell out of my house,’ she said. ‘He’s my husband.’

  They stared at each other.

  ‘And you love him,’ Walt said.

  ‘He is my husband,’ she repeated. ‘And he is the father of my child. Now, go away and fight your shitting war and leave me alone.’

  He stared at her for a few moments longer, then turned for the door.

  ‘Walt,’ she said.

  He checked.

  ‘I … that afternoon was the best I ever had, Walt. Maybe the only good one I ever had.’

  He turned back to face her. Her cheeks were wet. He took a step towards her, and she shook her head.

  ‘I think that would hurt the baby. Keep safe, Walt. For God’s sake keep safe.’

  *

  Stefanie watched the Papuan running through the bush towards the house, and had an overwhelming sense of deja vu. But not fear. She was interested at that reaction, rather than surprised by it.

  ‘Japanese come,’ the man said.

  ‘How many?’

  ‘Many, many,’ the man said. ‘They are burning villages, houses. They are saying all land within twenty miles of coast must be evacuated. They are taking all white people to Man-okwari.’

  Stefanie looked at Bhutto, who had hurried on to the verandah. ‘What must we do, mistress?’ the butler asked.

  ‘There is nothing we can do,’ she said. ‘We have done all we can. How far away are they?’

  ‘They are at the next plantation,’ the messenger said.

  ‘That is forty miles. They will not be here before tomorrow. Your people must choose, Bhutto. You are not European. The Japanese may drive you from your homes, but if you do not resist them, they will not harm you. Go with them. Or better yet, leave now. Take your people and go south, before they get here. Go back to your villages, and wait, until the Americans get here.’

  ‘You will come with us, mistress?’

  Stefanie shook her head. ‘I cannot.’

  ‘But you, mistress? They will harm you, if you stay.’

  ‘I will go to Mr McGann,’ she said. ‘We will hide in the jungle until they have gone. Fill a sack with food for me. Things which will last for some time. Quickly, now, Bhutto. Everyone must be gone when the Japanese get here.’

  She went upstairs before he could argue. She was wearing her usual garb of slacks and a shirt, canvas shoes. She could not improve on that. She looked at her bed, at her dressing table, at the perfumes and jewellery which waited there. But she could do nothing about them, either. This chapter of her life was closing. It might well be the last chapter in her book. Yet she was happy. She would spend the last few pages with Clive, as she had spent nearly a year of great happiness, with Clive.After thirty nine years of not knowing what happiness was, she could not complain at having found it just before the end.

  *

  ‘You know of this spy. You have maintained him,’ Hashimoto declared. ‘You must tell me the truth.’

  The Dutchman stared at him. He was a middle-aged man, with greying hair and a thin, malaria ravaged face and body. His clothes were shabby, and he had not shaved recently. He looked more dazed than afraid; his house was burning only a few yards away.

  ‘Speak,’ Hashimoto commanded.

  The man shook his head. ‘I know of no spy.’

  ‘You are lying. Speak, or you will suffer. Your family will suffer.’

  ‘You cannot do that,’ the man protested. ‘We are innocent. We know nothing of any spy. We have grown copra, nothing else. Now you have burned our home. What more can we give?’

  ‘You can tell me what I want to know,’ Hashimoto said. ‘Beat the woman,’ he commanded.

  The Dutch woman, in contrast to her husband somewhat plump, gasped in terror as she was forced forward by the waiting soldiers. Her arms were carried above her head and secured to the cross rail of the truck before which she and her husband had been standing. Joan, seated in the command car some fifty yards away, clenched her fists in horror as the woman’s clothes were torn from her back. If she was used to this treatment herself, it had never been quite so brutal since Christmas Day, 1941, and she had not seen it done to other people either, since then. And this was not a sexual caning. The Japanese soldiers struck the woman with their rifle butts, smashing them into her back and then into her belly as she twisted and screamed. Her husband tore himself loose and ran forward, but was brought to the ground and beaten where he lay, again with rifle butts.

  Joan covered her eyes, while her whole body trembled.

  The Dutchman also screamed, but briefly. ‘I think he is dead,’ Osawa said, seizing his hair to lift his head, then letting it drop again.

  ‘Throw him on the fire,’ Hashimoto said.

  ‘And the woman?’

  ‘Oh, throw her too.’

  ‘Oh, God,’ Joan whispered. ‘Oh, God.’ And only a few days ago she had been thinking that she was happy. ‘Oh, God!’

  The woman was dragged across the compound and thrown behind her husband on to the flames. She uttered only a moan before she died.

  ‘Stupid people,’ Hashimoto said. ‘What is next?’

  ‘The van Gelderen plantation,’ Osawa said. ‘My men are already there.’ He grinned. ‘You will enjoy meeting Mrs van Gelderen, your excellency. She is a very pretty woman.’

  ‘Then as you say, I will enjoy meeting her. Let us make haste.

  You are sure she will be there?’

  ‘If she is not, she will be in the jungle,’ Osawa said. ‘We will find her, your excellency.’

  Joan vomited.

  *

  ‘Can we survive in the jungle?’ Clive asked.

  ‘T think so. For a while, at least. They will not stay long. It is that, or you must kill me now, Clive. I will not be taken by those men again.’

  ‘You will not be.’ He hesitated, looking at the radio equipment. It went against the grain to destroy it, but his orders were very clear. He sat down, opened the key, tapped out the message he had memorised before he had ever set foot on New Guinea: the two letters which meant, signing off. He repeated it once, but he had no doubt it would be picked up, as the monitors in Australia, and now on Guadalcanal were manned round the clock. Then he unplugged the radio set from the batteries and carried it outside. Stefanie watched him as he went to the edge of the cliff, and dropped the radio. It spun downwards, struck a projecting spur of rock, and disintegrated long before it reached the sea.

  ‘It served its purpose,’ she said.

  But now I do not have a purpose, Clive th
ought. Except to stay alive. And keep this woman alive, too. This woman. The only woman in the world.

  ‘We must climb the mountain before dark,’ she said.

  Clive nodded, strapped on his revolver, slung both his haversack of emergency rations and medicine and Stefanie’s hastily packed knapsack on his shoulder. ‘Will they not climb the mountain too?’

  ‘I do not think so,’ Stefanie said. ‘Not without knowing we are there. It is a very stiff climb.’

  They hurried through the bush, using the path beaten by the Papuans so as not to reveal their own flight. But they had to leave this where the land began to rise, sharply, into the lower slopes of Bukit Irau.

  ‘What will your people do?’ Clive asked.

  ‘My poor people,’ Stefanie said, pausing, while sweat rolled out of her hair and down her blouse. ‘I told them not to resist.

  To leave the plantation and go inland.’

  ‘Then you too can do nothing more.’

  She sighed, and they climbed again. Now the trees were thinning, and there was more lava than earth. They crawled across a slippery slope and found a rushing stream, bubbling down into the forest. ‘We won’t lack for fresh water,’ Clive said.

  ‘Fill the bottles,’ she agreed. ‘But we must go much higher than this.’ They climbed some more. She was remarkably fit. Clive found the going hard; he had spent too much time over the past year sitting on his backside on the clifftop. But he had lasted longer than he had supposed he would. And, like the woman, he had found happiness.

  Which was now coming to an end? They found a ridge, some fifty feet above the stream, and well above the trees, and lay there, panting, and looking out over the forest at the distant plantation, bathed in the light of the setting sun. Clive levelled his binoculars and made out the wind charger.

  ‘The messenger told me they are burning the plantations,’ Stefanie said.

  Clive lowered the glasses. ‘I have brought you catastrophe.’ She held his hand. ‘You have brought me great happiness. If we have to die, we will die together.’

  They ate, and slept, and awoke to noise in the distance. The rising sun played full upon the mountain, and they pressed themselves against the rock, only their heads visible. Clive wanted to use his glasses again, but Stefanie was afraid they might reflect light and reveal their position. They could only wait, while the sound came closer, and they could hear distant noise, and even some shots, travelling on the still air. ‘My poor people,’ Stefanie said again.