The Turning Tide (18 page)

‘No. You don’t understand. Oh Jesus. I’m going to be sick.’

They looked at me in surprise as I ran out. I barely got to the latrine before vomiting. I went back, mopping my face with a wet handkerchief.

‘Sir,’ I said to the duty officer, ‘it’s not all right. They’re in trouble, the message says so.’

He looked at me with kindness.

‘Sergeant, it’s been a hard wait and I know they’re your friends. But I think the heat’s got to you. You need a rest, take two days off. That’s an order.’

I looked at him in horror but could say nothing more. I returned to barracks and lay down and stayed there for two days, staring at the ceiling. It was true I had a touch of malaria – it still hit me every few months – but I knew Alan wouldn’t have transmitted that word unless something was terribly wrong.

I tried for an interview with the CO but he wouldn’t see me. I was persona non grata. The gossip was I’d gone
troppo, off the deep end, imagining secret codes in the transmissions. I heard there was another message from Viper but they wouldn’t let me see it. They reassured me it had the authenticator, everything was fine and I just needed to rest.

Oddly enough, a few of the men believed me, but the CO didn’t. He was all gung-ho about sending in relief missions for Lagarto and Cobra. They needed relieving, God knows: Alf and the other blokes had been on Timor for over twenty months now, without once asking to come home. But couldn’t the brass see how unlikely that was?

Others were starting to have their doubts too, so to check up, a small party called Sunlag was parachuted into Timor two days before the date they’d told Lagarto. They hid and a couple of days later were appalled to see Japanese soldiers turning up at their meeting point with Alf, clearly a prisoner. But their radio was damaged and they weren’t able to warn Darwin for several days.

Amazingly, the CO didn’t bother waiting to hear from them: he sent in yet another group, which promptly disappeared. Once Sunlag finally got the word through about Alf’s capture, the brass at last acknowledged the Timor missions were compromised. But by then it was far too late.

By then, too, it was barely days before the end of the war. The idea of an ending had become a perpetually receding mirage. We knew men were fighting island to island, that Japan was being firebombed night after night, but who could truly imagine an ending after so long? The Japanese themselves swore they’d fight to the last man standing.

Then we awoke one glorious day in August to read about a bomb, a secret bomb of unimaginable power that
had devastated the city of Hiroshima. The Japanese were still defiant, then a second bomb annihilated Nagasaki. Six days later, on 15 August 1945, they surrendered. It was all over.

But of course it wasn’t.

We sent transmissions to the islands to tell the Japanese to lay down their arms, to release prisoners unharmed, but it wasn’t until early October that an army plane brought the Timor prisoners home to Australia. We waited at Darwin airport one humid morning, not certain who would disembark. First I saw Alf and Dosh and a few other men I knew coming down the steps. They were all terribly thin.

Then I saw Alan. He was limping a little and I could see bandages on his head and left hand. As he approached our welcome party I looked beyond him, but there was no one else. I didn’t ask; couldn’t ask. As the group dispersed, Alan and I were left. We looked at each other. His eyes were black with despair and he shook his head. We walked in silence to the waiting car.

A grenade explosion when they were captured had burst one of Alan’s eardrums. It had leaked pus for months and his hearing on that side was destroyed. The nails on his left hand had been ripped out over days of torture. They didn’t hurt the right so he could still key messages to Darwin. He joked about needing fewer manicures but he’d wince at almost any touch.

He told me Johnny had been shot one night by a crazy Japanese lieutenant and had died instantly. He didn’t say anything more, and I didn’t have the heart to press him.
He was soon demobilised and went back to his parents’ place in Sydney to recuperate.

The Lugger Maintenance Section was quickly closed down. Kanga told me he’d stumbled across senior officers burning stacks of papers from the Timor operations files. They said the order to destroy them had come from the highest level, General Blamey himself.

Trials were held in Darwin for the Japanese guards who had murdered and tortured the SRD men in Timor. But the brass refused to take the prisoners’ statements into evidence on what looked like an arse-covering technicality, and without that evidence the longest sentence handed out was only three months in gaol.

So SRD’s multiple debacles were swept under the carpet. The armchair warriors were issued decorations citing the Jaywick raid, and those responsible for the tragic, avoidable deaths in Timor erased their roles from the records.

Heartily sick of it all, I took up a servicemen’s grant in 1946 and went back to my engineering studies.

Chapter 18

Dinner with Lena and Ian and Suyin is excellent. We talk about Suyin’s work and Ian’s ships and Lena’s studies, then Suyin says, ‘Your turn, Mike. Please tell us about your godmother.’

‘All right,’ I say. ‘Well. When my mother was fifteen her family sailed to Australia, late 1906. Two of the sailors were friends – my father Danny and Sam Lee, who was half-Chinese. Sam and my mother’s sister Rosa fell in love. Then the ship ran onto a reef near Cape Otway and was wrecked.’

‘Not
Willowmere
?’ says Ian. ‘February 1907?’

‘Yes,’ I say, surprised.

‘Thought so. I was mad about shipwrecks as a kid, especially those on the Victorian coast. Can quote you chapter and verse.’

‘He can, too,’ says Lena. ‘But not now, Dad.’

‘Did many survive, Mike?’ asks Suyin.

‘I think most did, but Mum’s mother died soon afterwards of pneumonia. Anyway, Sam and Rosa eloped, which would have been a great scandal, except Sam’s mother Min-lu was a wealthy merchant and very influential in Melbourne.’

‘But wasn’t that when White Australia was a big deal?’ asks Lena.

‘It was, but my mother used to say that even then money trumped race.’

‘And what happened?’ says Lena.

‘Well, Min-lu took care of my mother. Taught her the trade in Broome pearl shell, a big industry at the time. Mum ended up in Broome and married Dad after the Great War. I was born there in 1921 and Min-lu became my godmother. There you have it.’

‘So, you lied, Mike,’ says Lena. ‘You’re not actually ninety-nine after all.’

‘Got me there, kid.’

‘That’s a bloody good story, Mike,’ says Ian. ‘What a place Broome must have been back then.’

‘My great-uncle and his family lived there,’ says Suyin. ‘Our family name is Wing.’

‘Not Billy Wing!’

‘That’s right.’

‘He was a lovely bloke, had a small shop, always nice to us kids. I went to school with his son, Eddy. Is he still around?’

‘They were in Singapore when the Japanese invaded,’ says Suyin quietly. ‘Billy did not survive, nor Eddy, nor
the rest of his family. The Chinese suffered greatly at that time.’

‘Yes. That’s true,’ I say. ‘I hadn’t heard about Billy’s family. I’m so sorry.’

‘I think everyone in my parents’ generation lost relatives,’ says Suyin. ‘It was a terrible period.’

Ian nods reflectively. ‘For so many people.’ He thinks for a moment then looks at me. ‘When was the last time you saw my father, Mike?’

‘On a jetty at a secret base in Darwin, early 1945. Boarding a ship for Timor.’

‘To do what?’ says Lena.

‘God knows,’ I sigh. ‘Relieve an earlier mission. Give the Japanese someone to chase up and down mountains.’

‘What happened?’ says Ian.

‘The enemy had captured a friend of ours. Tortured him till he’d work the Morse transmitter. They had the cipher codes, they only needed his hand.’

Lena looks puzzled.

‘All radio operators have their own distinctive timing, Lena. We could hear it was our man’s hand on the key and that was all the brass wanted to know. So they kept telling him – and the Japanese – whenever new missions were being inserted.’

‘Good God! How long did that go on for?’ says Ian.

‘Nearly two years. Operation after operation was compromised, dozens of servicemen lost. Not forgetting hundreds of locals as well.’

‘And my father’s mission?’

‘Caught as soon as they landed. Johnny and two Timorese died in captivity. Alan was tortured but survived.’

‘Alan?’ says Ian.

‘Alan Guildford. Johnny’s best friend. And mine. You might like to meet him one day.’

‘Is he the one whose partner died recently and you had to go to Sydney?’ says Lena.

‘Mmm, yes.’

‘The one who’s the father of your stepchildren?’ Lena says. Suyin glances at me with interest.

‘Yeah.’ Stop now, Lena.

She doesn’t.

‘The one who’s gay?’

Ian’s eyebrows go up.

‘Uh-huh.’

She ponders. No, Lena, no more.

There’s more.

‘
That’s
why you and Nana argued, wasn’t it, Mike?’

‘Lena –’

‘Johnny and Alan were lovers.’ She’s pleased at having worked out the puzzle.

I try a red herring. ‘Lena, your logical processes are a credit to your tutors, but they don’t necessarily apply in real life.’

She looks at me with that gentle turquoise gaze. ‘It’s all right, Mike. Things are different nowadays. You don’t have to protect your friends anymore.’

Ian takes a deep, unsteady breath. ‘Are you saying my father was a poof?’

‘No. I’m saying your father was a good man, a great soldier, a true friend.’

‘And this …
Alan
was his … bit of fluff?’

‘Ian –’ says Suyin.

I look directly at him. ‘No, Ian. I’m saying they loved each other, deeply, unshakeably. They had a relationship as solid as a marriage.’

He stands suddenly, the chair scraping on the floor.

‘Okay, that’s enough,’ he says. ‘I don’t know what kind of game you’re playing, you bastard, but smearing a dead man is beyond contempt. Suyin, come on. We’re leaving. You too, Lena.’

Suyin gives me an apologetic smile. ‘Goodnight, Mike. It was lovely to meet you,’ she says and picks up the baby carrier.

Lena stands slowly. ‘Dad …’

‘I mean now, Lena.’ He turns back to me. ‘And you stay right away from her in future,
Professor
, or I’ll make an official complaint.’

Lena looks back at me wide-eyed as they stop briefly at the cashier, then leave.

I contemplate the ruins of the meal we’d enjoyed. Sorry, Johnny. Even I can’t pretend that went well.

Before returning to university in 1946 I went home to Perth for a week, a glorious carefree week of drinks and parties and music and, best of all, my happy family. Even Anna was lighthearted, the weight of responsibility lifted from her shoulders.

One night in the sitting room, Mum put her fiddle down after playing an intricate sweet air. She said with a sigh, ‘It’s hard to believe it’s over, even now. But at least you never had to fight Ken Egawa, darling.’

‘No, thank God. I wonder whether he made it through the war.’

‘That reminds me, I found a lovely photo the other day when I was tidying up,’ said Mum. ‘There, under that book to your right.’

I moved the book and found the photo. I remembered it, from when I’d visited Broome in early 1941. Dad had taken it, so there was Mum, me, Yoshi, Betty, Ken and Mary, standing in front of some trees in our yard, laughing at some silly joke of Dad’s as he clicked the shutter.

‘We were so young and happy,’ I said. ‘It’s hard to take in how much has changed since then.’ I looked up. ‘What’s happened to the Egawas now?’

‘Old man Egawa died of pneumonia a year ago in the camp, son,’ said Dad, tightening a string on his fiddle. ‘Then when the war ended they put most of the prisoners on leaky old cargo boats and sent them to Japan, didn’t matter how long they’d lived here.’

‘Mary too? But she was born here.’

‘It made no difference. They sent us a Red Cross card,’ said Mum. ‘Mary wrote that they had hardly any money and were going to be landed in Japan in midwinter.’

‘Yoshi had family somewhere in the south, where Betty was staying,’ I said. ‘I’m not sure where it was.’

‘South?’ said Dad. We glanced at each other. I used to worry what would happen to Betty when the war finally came to Japan, but over the last year I’d barely given her a thought. It was as if I’d lost the ability to care about her, or even about Helen. Too much had happened and nothing seemed real.

‘I’ll have a look in my old things,’ I said. I found Betty’s letter easily and brought it back to the sitting room.

‘Hatsukaichi, on the Inland Sea, she says. Where’s the atlas?’

Dad and I sat on the lounge, flipped through the old family atlas. ‘There it is, the Inland Sea, and Hatsukaichi, there,’ I said, pointing.

Dad put his large wrinkled finger on a nearby dot and said slowly, ‘And Hiroshima, there.’

One evening in mid-1946 I heard a knock on the door of my room at my lodgings. I was surprised and pleased to see Alan. Apart from his thinness he was looking well, his scarred hand healed, his limp gone.

I took him to dinner in a small cafe but he couldn’t eat much. He said his stomach was still oversensitive to food after so long on watery rice. He was able to laugh a little, though I could see a deep sadness in him.

‘I’m going back to work soon,’ he said. ‘Postmaster-General’s Department found they couldn’t do without me. Are you happy back at university?’

‘Yes. It’s strange being five years older than most of the class, but the perspective helps too. My work’s better, more focused.’

He sipped from his glass of water. ‘Have you been down to Foster, seen Helen?’

I shook my head. ‘What could I say?’

‘Perhaps now, with Johnny gone, you and she …?’

‘No. She made it clear long ago I’m no more than a friend.’

He nodded. ‘There’s something I wanted to tell you. Couldn’t when we got back, didn’t have the words.’

I waited.