The Passion and the Glory

by Christopher Nicole

  Now she watched the American planes passing overhead almost daily. If the Japanese forces in Okinawa still resisted, sufficient of the island was now held by the Americans to permit their land based bombers to range over Japan at will, while the islands seemed ringed by the huge Anglo-American carrier fleets. They did not trouble Hiroshima; there had been only one small raid on the city. But it was odd to think that her brothers and her father were out there, trying to destroy her.

  Save that they did not know she was here. The thought which haunted her was that, if they did know she was here, they might wish to destroy her even more angrily. She was certainly guilty of giving help and comfort to an enemy, and what an enemy. But the confrontation was a long time in the future. No matter what had happened, she believed, as did most Japanese, that the Americans, once they secured Okinawa and had thus wrenched from her enemy all of his island conquests, would call for a negotiated settlement in preference to risking what could be several years of the most bitter warfare the world had ever seen; no one could doubt, after the way the Japanese had fought these past two years, that they would contest every yard of their sacred homeland.

  Where even that would leave her she didn’t know. But she did know that she did not want to see Japan destroyed.

  *

  The chances of a negotiated peace seemed increased by the death of President Roosevelt on 12 April, only five days after Yamato had gone down. Hashimoto was with her then, and they drank sake together like the old married couple they had become, and looked for better things.

  These were not immediately apparent. The new president, Harry Truman, was obviously finding his feet, and the American attacks in Okinawa continued. The last defenders finally committed seppuku on 12 June. By then the Japanese had been forced to accept that they were very much on their own; Hitler was dead and Germany had surrendered, although the news was not immediately released.

  And that the Americans were going ahead with preparations to invade Japan itself now seemed evident. The bombings grew more and more severe, and a good deal of it was directed at the Inland Sea, in order to disrupt this vital thoroughfare, and also to destroy the last elements of the Japanese Navy. While the radio broadcast dire warnings of the even greater destruction which would follow, should Japan refuse to surrender and elect to fight to the bitter end.

  ‘That is diplomacy,’ Hashimoto told her. ‘They are rattling their sabres as loudly as they can in the hopes that we will be frightened. One would have thought they would know better by now. But when we ignore them, they will have to think again.’

  It was early August, and a hot, still morning. There had been no planes yet today, oddly enough, but it was still very early — just seven o’clock. Joan signalled the maid servant to clear away the remains of their meal, and went outside. She had become Japanese in her delight in a formal garden, spent a good deal of time admiring her little curved bridge and the trickling stream which filled the goldfish pond. Now, as she inhaled the fresh scent of the flowers, she heard the wail of the air raid siren, and looked up at four aircraft flying over the Inland Sea towards the city.

  Hashimoto joined her. ‘B-29’s,’ he said. ‘We had better take shelter.’

  ‘They must be on reconnaissance,’ she objected, used to seeing whole clouds of aircraft when there was to be a bombing raid. And in fact even as she spoke, the planes divided, two turned directly south, the other did a sweep to the right, over the northern half of the city, and then they also turned to the south and streaked away.

  ‘Well,’ Hashimoto said, ‘they must have seen whatever they were looking for.’

  The all clear was sounded, and Joan dropped to her knees to pick some flowers for her arrangement. An exclamation from Hashimoto made her raise her head, and with him she stared at a whitish pink glow in the sky, which was accompanied by a faint tremor.

  ‘An earthquake,’ Hashimoto snapped. ‘Quickly.’

  Joan never moved. She knew it wasn’t an earthquake. Then the heat took her breath away.

  *

  Clive McGann pushed open the garden gate and walked up the path between the neat flower beds. October was the beginning of the Australian summer, and all the flowers were hurrying into blossom; a suburb of Sydney might have been a suburb of any city in the world, in summer.

  He preferred not to think about the next few minutes. He had, in fact, kept his mind in abeyance for more than a year now. Because it was more than a year since he had seen Steffi. They had corresponded, of course, but with him moving about so much their letters had been irregular to say the least, and he had not actually heard from her for three months, since before the Japanese surrender.

  But he was here, as he had promised to be here. Steffi would be forty-three now. And he was twenty-eight. Did that matter? It hadn’t in the jungle below Bukit Irau. But things were different in a place like Sydney. Yet there was no reason for them to be.

  He rang the bell, and waited, then gazed at Margriet. Who gazed at him, her jaw slowly dropping.

  ‘Hello, Mrs Clarke,’ Clive said. ‘Stefanie about?’

  Margriet licked her lips. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘You’d better come in.’

  Clearly she had not expected him to return, Clive decided. And equally clearly she did not approve of her sister’s liaison with a man so much younger than herself. Well, she was just the first hurdle to be surmounted.

  ‘May I speak with her, please?’

  ‘Yes,’ Margriet said. ‘Yes. Please sit down. I’ll call her.’

  She almost ran for the stairs, while Clive took off his cap and sat in an easy chair; the lounge was comfortably rather than elegantly furnished. He remained looking at the stairs, and a few moments later Stefanie came down.

  She wore slacks and a loose blouse, sandals … and looked as astounded to see him as her sister. ‘Clive?’ she asked.

  He was on his feet, and taking her in his arms. She made no effort to resist him, but her body was stiff. ‘Steffi?’ he asked.

  ‘Did you not get my letter?’

  ‘Which one? I haven’t had a letter from you in three months. I guess I’ve been on the go.’

  At last she smiled. ‘Cleaning up.’

  ‘You could call it that.’ This time he sat on the settee, drawing her down beside him. ‘What was in the letter? Both you and Margriet are looking like you’ve seen a ghost.’

  Stefanie gazed back at him. ‘I asked you not to come back.’

  ‘Steffi,’ he said. ‘Don’t let’s start that nonsense. I love you. And you love me. Nothing else matters. Least of all does it matter if people talk. People are always talking about something. I want to marry you, Steffi.’

  She sighed. ‘When did you get in?’ she asked.

  ‘Last night. We’re on our way home to England, at last. Listen, I’ll book you a passage on a liner. I’ll almost certainly get there before you, so I’ll be able to get everything arranged. And the moment you set foot on English soil we’ll be married.’ She freed her hand and got up, moved about the room, restlessly. ‘Did you go to Tokyo?’

  Yes.’

  ‘Did you go to Hiroshima or Nagasaki?’

  ‘No. They’re not very safe right now. Those bombs apparently give off a lot of dangerous radiation, which hangs about.’

  ‘But those people are beaten?’

  ‘Oh, they are beaten. They are shattered.’

  ‘I have read that their leaders will be tried as war criminals,’ she said.

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Including that man Hashimoto Kurita?’

  ‘No, he won’t be tried.’

  She turned, sharply. ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because he’s dead. He was in Hiroshima when the bomb went up. That’s rather poetic justice, don’t you think?’

  She shivered, and hugged herself, and sat down again, opposite him. ‘And the English woman?’

  Clive shrugged. ‘Presumably she was with him. So we’ll never know who she was.’

  ‘I was sorry to
hear about your brother, and your father, Clive.’

  ‘Father will recover, although he’s being retired. Walt … well, I guess you could say that he lived life in the fast lane. That’s always likely to be short and sweet.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, and gave a quick smile. ‘I suppose the lane in New Guinea was very slow.’

  ‘Delightfully slow,’ Clive said. He leaned forward, took her hands again. ‘Steffi … ’

  She inhaled, and he heard the garden gate being opened. He turned his head; through the window he could see the man coming up the path. He was a tall man, but painfully thin, and he walked with a stick; yet he was certainly not as old as the thatch of white hair suggested.

  Clive felt as if he had been kicked in the gut.

  ‘He came back two months ago,’ Stefanie said in a low voice. ‘He had been in a concentration camp in Java all of that time. Yet he survived. Dreaming of me, and the plantation. He loves me, Clive.’

  ‘But you don’t love him.’

  ‘I must learn to do so. Because he also needs me. And he is my husband. And perhaps I have learned how to love, thanks to you.’ She watched the expressions changing on his face. ‘You made me very happy, Clive, but those were exceptional circumstances. We are back in the real world, now, and must live according to its rules. Please try to understand.’

  They stared at each other. But hadn’t he always known, deep down in his heart, that theirs was a relationship which would not survive peace and normalcy?

  ‘Does he know, about us?’

  ‘He knows that we survived, in the jungle, for more than a year. He has not asked me more than that, and I have not told him. But he will be pleased to see you.’

  The latch was turning, and she stood up. ‘I will always remember our love, Clive,’ she said, and went to embrace the man in the doorway.

  *

  ‘Incredible,’ Rear Admiral (retired) Lew McGann said, gazing at the still waters of Pearl Harbour. ‘Exactly four years, it all began, right here. 7 December, I guess that’s a date none of us will ever forget.’

  ‘It was 8 December where I was,’ Clive pointed out.

  ‘Of course, the Date Line. And I guess it began there pretty sharply, too.’

  ‘Pretty.’ Clive walked beside his father back to the automobile. Like Bill van Gelderen, Lew walked with a stick, but otherwise had recovered almost fully from the terrible injuries he had received in October 1944 — even if his service days were over.

  ‘It’s great to have you in Honolulu,’ he said, as he eased himself behind the wheel. ‘I wish you were staying longer. At least for Christmas.’

  ‘I had the devil of a job to get this fortnight’s leave,’ Clive told him. ‘Christmas is just not on.’

  Lew brooded at the road as they drove towards the bungalow. ‘And you’re staying with the Royal Navy?’

  ‘Do you have a better idea?’

  ‘Well … Brenda and I would kind of like to have you over here, you know. You’re the only one left. And I guess … not having any idea where Walt and Joan are … I made inquiries, you know. Most of the English women from Hong Kong came through, and I wrote to all the names I could find. Seems Joan survived the attack on the hospital, and was with the other women awaiting embarkation for the mainland. But when they were actually on their way down to the ships, she was hauled out of the line and taken away. None of them ever saw her again.’

  ‘Yes,’ Clive said, grimly. ‘You can’t do anything more, Dad. Where she happens to be buried, any more than where Walt’s body finally came to rest, isn’t important, beside the fact that they lived, and fought, and won.’

  ‘I guess,’ Lew sighed. ‘But we sure would be happy if you were to come and live over here.’

  ‘I’ll think about it,’ Clive promised.

  *

  He’s asking me to give up my career, Clive thought, driving the car slowly into Honolulu — he hadn’t driven in America, and thus on the wrong side of the road, since before the war.

  But did he have a career? The war might only have been over four months, but already economy was the only word that mattered. Ships were being laid up in every direction, men being demobilised. Even those who had looked on the Navy as a career before 1939. And he had undoubtedly taken a step sideways during those two years in New Guinea. He might hold the Distinguished Service Cross and Bar, and he might have been promoted to lieutenant commander, as promised … but he had missed two years of service at sea, and that counted on his record. Others had got ahead. So, even if he did make captain by the magic age of thirty-five, would he have a ship to command?

  It wasn’t as if there were any financial problems. With Joan and Walt both dead, he had inherited all of Mother’s money; he was a millionaire. He could take demobilisation and come to the States, and Hawaii … and do what? He had no idea.

  And it wasn’t something to be thought about right now, because he had reached the street he was looking for.

  He had come to Honolulu this time with more in mind than just visiting Dad and Brenda. He felt, oddly, that he had a job to do. But he also knew that he wanted to see this woman, who he knew so well, through Walt’s eyes. He did not dare attempt to reason why. Since leaving Sydney in October he supposed he had been in some kind of emotional shock. His two years in New Guinea had not only taken him out of the mainstream of the Navy; they had also taken him out of the mainstream of life itself. He had no friends any longer. He had never had any woman friends. He no longer even knew any woman at all well.

  Except for this one whom he had never met, and who he yet felt he knew better than even Stefanie. A woman who was either as cold and calculating a bitch as existed, or as brave, and unfortunate, as Stefanie had ever been. What finding out which was the truth was going to mean to him he did not know. But he knew he had to find out. Supposing she was still here.

  Somebody was; there was a car in the drive. He parked behind it, rang the bell, gazed at her when the door swung inwards.

  Her crisp features seemed to fall apart. ‘Walt?’ she whispered. ‘Oh, my God! They told me you were dead. Walt … ’ then she frowned. She had been looking at his height and general appearance. Now she was studying his features. ‘You’re not … ’

  ‘The name’s Clive,’ Clive said. ‘Walt was my little brother.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Oh, my God!’

  ‘May I come in?’

  She hesitated, then stepped aside. Clive entered the lounge, grinned at the little boy playing with blocks on the floor. ‘Hi, Walter,’ he said.

  The boy gazed at him.

  Linda had got some self possession back. ‘I’m sorry about just now,’ she said. ‘I was knocked for a loop.’

  ‘I don’t blame you,’ he said. ‘It was thoughtless of me, turning up like this. Perhaps I should have telephoned.’

  ‘Won’t you sit down?’ she asked.

  He could tell she was thinking like mad, about how much he knew, about what he might want. He sat down.

  ‘A drink?’

  ‘That would be very nice.’

  ‘I have some rum punch made up.’

  ‘Sounds delightful.’

  She filled two glasses, gave him one. He looked at the bar in the corner, long repaired.

  ‘Why did you stay?’ he asked.

  She glanced at him.

  ‘Walt wrote to me,’ he said.

  ‘Oh.’ She licked her lips. It was a curiously immature and uncertain gesture, but it was that quality about her, when added to her worldly-wise eyes and crisp speech, that enhanced her very real beauty. ‘I guess I like it here,’ she said.

  ‘Neighbours didn’t prove difficult?’

  Now she looked directly at him. ‘Just what did Walt tell you?’

  ‘Everything.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said again. She had remained standing by the bar; now she sat down, abruptly. Then she frowned. ‘How much is everything?’

  ‘Everything. I know it was he hit O’Malley, and then left you to ta
ke the blame.’

  ‘That was my idea, Commander,’ she said.

  ‘It was still a despicable thing for him to do.’

  ‘It was the only thing he could do, after the court martial.’ Clive frowned. ‘What court martial?’

  ‘So he didn’t tell you everything.’

  ‘Apparently not,’ Clive said. And neither did Dad, he thought. ‘I’d like to hear about it.’

  She shrugged. ‘He was court martialled for striking his commanding officer. Seems he had some reason for doing it — he wanted to start firing torpedoes at the Jap ships during the Battle of the Savo Sea and his commander wanted to surrender — so he was lightly sentenced. But to have a manslaughter charge against him so soon after that would have meant the end of his career. I knew how much Walt loved the Navy. He loved it a whole hell of a lot more than he loved me. And there wasn’t a lot of risk for me. I was never charged. Okay, so the neighbours were sticky, but I sat that one out too.’

  ‘Why? I mean, I know in the first instance you were waiting for Walt to come home, but after you heard he was dead, why didn’t you clear out?’

  ‘I didn’t hear, until a few months ago. When his letters stopped coming, I made inquiries, and someone was kind enough to tell me he’d gone missing at sea. Then … I guess I didn’t know what to do. I’d kind of built my life around that guy.’

  ‘And then some,’ Clive agreed.

  ‘So … the house is on the market,’ she said. ‘But property isn’t moving right now quite as fast as when we were actually fighting. Everyone who doesn’t have a reason to be here is going back home.’ She shrugged. ‘I guess I will too, when I sell the house.’

  ‘That’s important?’

  ‘Sure it is, Commander. O’Malley didn’t leave that much.’