The Persimmon Tree (27 page)

It was nearly six o’clock in the evening when I’d completed the mechanics, returned the tools, and washed and polished the Austin to within an inch of its life. I must say it scrubbed up really well. Underneath all the grime the duco was perfectly even and didn’t have a scratch on it. Marg arrived back just as the sun was setting, the soft red glow of sunset reflecting on the little chocolate-coloured car, making it look brand-new. In a peculiar sense, I had tried to do for Marg’s car what Marg had done for me the previous night. The strange thing was that I was still in love with Anna, but I knew that in an entirely different way I loved Marg Hamilton. Or do you think that’s just Jumpin’ Jack’s influence?

‘Goodness, Nick. I can’t believe it!’ she exclaimed. ‘It looks simply wonderful!’

I wiped my hands on the polishing cloth even though they were dry and didn’t need wiping. Wiping your hands on a bit of rag when customers approach is an essential prerequisite for the serious mechanic. ‘I hope it goes better than it looks,’ I said rather pompously. I must admit I was just a tad pleased with myself.

‘Come in, you need a shower. Have you eaten?’

‘Scrambled eggs in bed this morning,’ I replied. In fact I had entirely forgotten to eat lunch. I indicated the shiny little car. ‘Want to take her for a spin?’ I offered.

‘Nick, I’d love to, but petrol is much too scarce for a joyride. It’s only meant to be used for official business. So later, when I take you back to the boarding house, you’re still official business and that’s permitted within the laws of petrol rationing. Now go and have a shower and we’ll have something to eat. I have some news.’

‘Good or bad?’ I asked.

‘I don’t know, but you probably won’t like it,’ she replied.

I had a quick shower, not enjoying the hot water as much as I should have. I was anxious to hear Marg’s news, knowing it might be about Anna or my dad, but first she made me sit at the table and eat the remains of a cold leg of lamb, a salad, and bread with a thin scraping of butter. After pouring me a cup of tea and placing it beside me, she sat opposite me at the kitchen table. ‘Nick, there’s no news of the
Witvogel
arriving in Broome. We’ve also checked Darwin.’ She spread her hands. ‘Nothing.’

My heart sank and I brought my hands up to hold my head, my elbows leaning on the table. Marg had no way of knowing how I felt about Anna. In the tell-everything at the Archbishop’s luncheon, I’d played up Piet Van Heerden, and Anna had simply been his daughter who’d gone butterfly hunting with me and embroidered the handkerchief in the form of a keepsake. Loving-hands-at-home stuff you might expect from a teenager.

‘It’s Anna, isn’t it?’ Marg asked, and I knew from the way she asked the question that she hadn’t been fooled for a moment. ‘Oh, Nick, I’m so sorry,’ she said, reaching over and touching my arm. ‘Look, it doesn’t mean too much, a number of ships were diverted to Colombo — we’re trying to check there. It may take a few days. Going through a ship’s manifest is asking a lot from the busy port officials, especially with a harbour packed with merchant and passenger ships carrying refugees.’

‘Or it may have been sunk by the Japanese,’ I said despondently. There had been frequent reports that the Japs had sunk merchant ships carrying civilian passengers.

‘Yes, that’s a possibility,’ Marg said, not evading the issue. ‘Nick, we can only live in hope.’

Marg drove me back to the boarding house, the little car purring like Cardamon the cat, but I felt too down-in-the-dumps to take any pleasure from its newfound power and quietness. Marg kissed me at the gate. ‘Can you meet me at the office about lunchtime tomorrow? We should have some news by then,’ she said.

I waited until she’d pulled away, the little car trapping the reflection from a street lamp. I confess I was close to tears as I opened the front door to be confronted by Mrs Beswick in slippers, hairnet and curlers, holding up my shirt. ‘Can you explain this, please?’ she demanded, prim-lipped.

‘Yes, it’s my shirt.’

‘It was hanging from the window?’

‘Yes, I know. I washed it and hung it out to dry.’

‘We do not tolerate garments hanging from windows, Mr Duncan. Don’t you know there’s a war going on?’

Despite my extreme annoyance and the fact that the last thing in the world I desired was Mrs Beswick’s coathanger mouth and pale grey accusing eyes confronting me, I felt compelled to ask, ‘What has my shirt hanging from the window got to do with the war?’

‘Ha! Signals! Enemy signals. Shirts in windows are well-known signals. It’s the fifth column, they’re everywhere!’

I grabbed the shirt from her startled grasp. ‘Mrs Beswick, get stuffed!’ I said, marching past her and proceeding up the stairs. I’d never in my life insulted a woman.

‘I’ll be calling the police!’ she yelled after me. ‘We can’t have spies. This is a respectable boarding house!’

I turned on the landing. ‘You wouldn’t be related to Bert Henry, would you?’ I asked.

‘Bert who?’

‘Never mind! I’ll pay you what I owe you in the morning and be gone from this bloody fleapit before breakfast.’

‘Breakfast is included!’ she shouted back.

Sometimes you’ve just got to laugh or you end up crying.

‘You must tell my story, Nicholas, because I am too ashamed.’

Anna Van Heerden

a.k.a. Madam Butterfly

‘Feathers can fly and so can I!’

Katerina Van Heerden

ANNA WATCHED AS THE
Witvogel
moved out of the harbour, trying to keep her eye on my rapidly receding form as I waved from the docks. She was surprised how quickly an image disappears. In only a couple of minutes the people on the wharf had become a blur of noise, for the sound of the people left behind seemed to endure longer than the focus on any one person. I had become a dot, then part of a smudge.

Already she was regretting the decision to stay with her family and not sail with me in
Madam Butterfly
to Australia. She knew she was in love, but love was an entirely new experience she had no way of evaluating. She had resisted making love to me, giving me her body, because at the time she’d felt it wasn’t right, that she should wait, maybe even until we were married.

But now she wasn’t so certain. She was afraid that I’d somehow disappear, that had she made love with me I’d be forever a part of her. No matter what happened I would have been her virgin lover, her introduction to coming into true womanhood. Now I might become no more than a memory that would fade in time, a boy that had quickened her blood and made her feel different, wanted and loved.

Her most ardent wish was that our romance should continue when the
Witvogel
arrived in Broome. But this too depended on so much: my arrival, her arrival, my joining the army. And then there was her father, who was not necessarily willing to settle in Australia, where there were no servants and where the lifestyle he’d taken for granted since childhood did not exist. ‘New Zealand,’ he’d declared. ‘The Maori, they are servants to the white people. We will sit out the war in New Zealand.
Ja
, then we’ll return to Java, to our rightful home.’ It hadn’t occurred to him that the Japanese might win the war, and when this was suggested he would loudly proclaim, ‘They lost it at Pearl Harbor when they were stupid enough to attack the Americans.’

Anna could recall that he’d been drinking excessively for nearly a year. He’d always been a big drinker, most of the men in the families they knew were very active with their elbows, but he’d always been affable, a happy drunk, a big man who prided himself on his capacity to drink beer and brandy and be the last man still standing at the end of the evening. But in the last year, first with the uncertainty and then the certainty of invasion, and the loss of everything he and his family had stood for throughout ten generations, she’d witnessed him slowly come apart. He’d grown morose, moody, resentful and, above all else, self-pitying and unable to hold his alcohol as he had once done.

He’d come on board already somewhat drunk, retired immediately to their overcrowded cabin and opened a bottle of brandy from the case he’d brought with him, refusing to come on deck with her to farewell me or even his homeland. He’d merely paused at the top of the gangplank when they’d boarded and turned to look down at the wharf. ‘We gave them everything and look at the bastards shouting at us. Underneath they’re still savages,’ he’d said of the small contingent of Javanese people who were openly jeering as they boarded the
Witvogel.
‘They were primitives when we Dutch arrived here, headhunters! It wouldn’t surprise me if they go back to their old habits now that we’ve left. So much for three hundred years of teaching them decency and clean living.’

Anna, though more Dutch than Javanese in her upbringing, wondered what her mother might have said to this, when at the age of fifteen she’d had the privilege of being seduced by the big Dutchman who’d accepted that, as a native, she was fair game for his every carnal desire.

Anna had often speculated whether she would have been allowed to stay within the family had Katerina, her stepmother, not been barren and a cripple and if there had been ‘pure blood’ children in the family. She loved Piet Van Heerden, who had never made her feel like a half-caste, chiding his bitter-tongued wife whenever he heard her disparaging her. But right from the beginning, as early as she could remember, she’d had to sing for her supper. Be his little darling. His
skatterbol
,
meaning ‘ball of fluff’. Her status in the family depended on his love and protection.

She could remember as a five-year-old, when her back was turned, her stepmother crossing the polished wooden floors silently in her wheelchair and taking vicious delight in slapping her across the head with the flat of her hand, while yelling out, ‘Bastard! Whore’s child!’ Her only refuge had been her papa, and as she’d grown older, she’d seen to it that more and more he depended on her love and reassurance. She had finally reached the stage when she could actually influence him, or perhaps a better way of putting it was that she could talk him into doing what she wanted.

Anna was only sixteen and thought of herself as no different to other girls of her age, but nevertheless sensed that she possessed an almost instinctive knowledge of males. She’d always felt beholden to her father’s moods and was, she admitted, over-anxious to please him and to anticipate his needs. It hadn’t been difficult, we men are simple creatures, and she had come to know that the males who cast furtive looks at her, even when she was a young child, were seeking something from her, though at the time she did not know what this might be.

It had come as an enormous surprise to her that she felt so wonderfully free and loved when we were together; no longer vulnerable, not finding it necessary to manipulate my affections. I was, after all, a big, clumsy butterfly collector who asked nothing more of her than that she be herself, the nicest and prettiest girl I had ever seen. I appeared to love her without any complication or demands, though she was perfectly aware of my desire for her and she’d secretly laughed at the thought of the ‘accident’ that had caused me to hurry to the outside washroom. She claimed our love showed through the way I looked at her, as if I couldn’t believe my own good fortune — which was perfectly true.

She’d blossomed, grown into womanhood, earlier than the other girls at school, those whose parents were both Dutch. At first she was ashamed, thinking this an indictment of her Javanese blood. Her stepmother had voiced this once when she’d said accusingly after her periods had arrived, ‘It’s disgusting, you natives are on heat at the age of twelve!’ But she’d soon noted the sly, hungry looks of the teenage boys belonging to family friends and the brothers of her schoolmates. Even older men, those of her father’s adult male friends, when they’d consumed too much brandy, dared to attempt to grope her if they found themselves suddenly left alone with her.

Anna had been a survivor all her life and so she hadn’t reported the wayward hands of her father’s male friends, knowing that Piet Van Heerden would respond violently. He was a big man with a violent temper and saw her as exclusively his personal property. Moreover, with her father on the warpath over her, Anna knew this would infuriate her viciously resentful and jealous stepmother, who would find a way to punish or taunt her.

The notion that she had a power over men, she secretly admitted to herself, was exhilarating. She was careful to hide this from her father and his friends; it was the first time in her life that she was not dependent on the goodwill of the male gender. It made her feel in control; she understood instinctively that she possessed a special kind of attraction that males lusted after and which amounted to a female’s power over the opposite sex.

Though careful not to be thought of as a flirt, she was aware that her lithe body had a way of moving naturally that produced a hungry look in men’s eyes. Anna countered this by averting her eyes when men looked at her and was careful never to flirt, but she didn’t attempt to change the way she walked or moved. She’d seen tall Dutch girls round their shoulders and keep their heads bowed in an attempt to appear shorter, pretty girls who lost their femininity attempting to hide their stature. She determined to always hold her head high, chin forward, open her shoulders and allow her body to maintain its naturally feline movements.

I had once remarked that her every move, her every gesture, appeared elegant. I recalled saying, ‘You seem to perform a beautifully articulated mime simply by moving, Anna.’ Whereas her stepmother had stabbed an angry finger at her when she was just thirteen and sneered, ‘
Swartz!
You move like a black woman. Show some modesty, you little slut!’

Now, standing forlornly at the ship’s rails, desperately trying to locate me among the smudge of people lining the docks and thinking me perhaps lost to her forever, she deeply regretted choosing her unravelling family and their voyage to safety in a grog-fumed cabin filled with snoring adults, where eight people were expected to share just four bunks.

She and the maid,
Kleine
Kiki, would have to sleep on the floor or perhaps on the deck. No, she realised that was impossible; the deck space had been chalked into squares that were now rapidly filling with desperate, quarrelling families who were aggressively policing their chalk lines. Their cabin also needed to accommodate Katerina’s wheelchair, their trunk and the baggage of the four strangers who shared the cabin. The baggage hold had been turned into people space and, despite paying the full fare three months in advance, they had been refused stowage for their on-board trunk.

When Piet Van Heerden had pointed out that they’d paid for two cabins that included below-deck trunk stowage, the first mate had laughed. ‘Count yourself lucky, sir. You have a cabin with only four extra people; we’re selling single chalked squares in the hold to large families for more than you paid for both cabins.’ He then suggested they might like to return to shore, where he was sure the owners would engage to fully refund their money.

‘What about my refund for the money I paid for the second cabin?’ Piet Van Heerden, already half-inebriated, asked belligerently.

The first mate delicately scratched the side of his nose with his forefinger, looking down in order to hide his grin. ‘Ah, we have no authority to refund bookings. You’ll have to write to the owners in Amsterdam, sir,’ he replied.

‘I ought to smash your teeth in!’ Anna’s papa had yelled at the man.

‘That would be a big mistake, sir,’ came the first mate’s sanguine reply. ‘Just say the word. It would give me enormous pleasure to escort a drunk and his family back to shore.’

‘Come, Papa,’ Anna cried, grabbing him by the arm. She shot an angry look at the first mate and then said, as if to her father, ‘Papa, you know how it is — some men are born bastards, while others become bastards when they’re given a little power.’

And so it had all started badly, and in addition she’d broken down in front of me, clasping her Clipper butterfly in its box to her chest as she said a tearful farewell. She’d been determined to remain dry-eyed and brave, but suddenly she didn’t feel in the least powerful or in control of her womanhood. Instead, the farewell, saying goodbye to me, filled her with uncertainty and even dread. She was back to being the little girl afraid of the future, who wanted too much to be loved.

As the
Witvogel
passed the two wrecks at the entrance to Tanjong Priok harbour she thought of
Madam Butterfly
,
its sails catching the breeze and the sound of the wind in the rigging, of being alone with me on the open ocean and watching the flying fish jumping ahead of the bow, two young lovers attempting to escape the pain of their suddenly topsy-turvy, brutal and unpredictable world.

She told herself she’d stayed out of loyalty to her father who needed her, although more and more Katerina despised her and all Piet Van Heerden needed was the oblivion of a brandy bottle. So what if I had taken her virginity? She told herself she’d rather I performed the ultimate introduction to her womanhood than anyone else in the world. A lovely compliment and one I would always treasure.

As they left the surrounds of Batavia and passed out into the open sea, Anna started once more to weep. She felt a tap on her shoulder and turned to see a fat woman with an incipient moustache. The angry-looking woman was wearing a floral dress printed with pink rosebuds and forget-me-nots that stretched over her enormous bosom, her mammaries using up so much of the fabric that the front hemline rose twenty-five centimetres above the back to reveal her fat, pink, dimpled knees. She appeared to be in her mid-forties. ‘Excuse me, but you’re standing in our square.’ She pointed to the chalkline on the deck. ‘
Mijn
husband works hard and he paid good money for this space. You cannot stay here. Can’t you see they’ve marked corridors for people to walk?’

The next two days at sea proved to be difficult ones for Anna; she slept hardly at all. Piet Van Heerden was perpetually drunk, Katerina more shrewish than ever, so that
Kleine
Kiki, also lacking sleep, was constantly in tears. The four other passengers — a bank clerk appropriately named de Klerk, his wife and his two thin-lipped, disapproving maiden sisters — were immediately hostile. Not that she blamed them, for her papa and stepmother were behaving appallingly. Her father was shouting out drunkenly, shaking his fist, angry at nobody in particular, and her stepmother was yelling at him to behave himself and then, in turn, taking her vexation out on
Kleine
Kiki.

But there was worse, much worse, to come. Thirty hours after leaving Tanjong Priok, when about one hundred and fifty nautical miles out at sea, the passengers heard a deep knocking sound coming from below and reverberating through the ship. The
Witvogel
suddenly stopped and was soon wallowing helplessly in the swell, the heat on board the impossibly overcrowded ship soon becoming unbearable.