For a time off the north coast of Australia, Pengulling had aircraft cover. But even this early the navigation officer was surly and wanted a drink. He snapped at Jockey’s tales. He did not get the point, or didn’t have the mental space to, and expressed a hatred of Jews which Leo said wouldn’t have been out of place in a Nazi. A distance grew between him and the other travellers, not because he badmouthed Jews but because he was not far behind in badmouthing everyone and wanting whisky.
At this stage, going to the fair, Doucette did not permit too much conversation. He had already told them he hated regular soldiering and been expansive on his un-regimental sailing adventures in the South China Seas. But now he used all the regular military tricks, filling the hours with the business of dismantling and reassembling weapons, of watches and drills. If that wasn’t enough, his occasional lectures on the Punic Wars were very successful. Having heard that fantastic word Singapore, they did not worry any more about propeller shafts or seas. It was as if the augustness of the target itself, and the supreme dangers it stood for, would keep them safe from lesser issues like drive shafts and rogue waves.
Approaching Bali they saw Japanese planes flying high, with intentions to inspect and destroy bigger shipping than them. From now on they would wear sarongs – all uniforms were put away, and they covered their bodies with brown stain. Leo says the stuff was utterly lacking in fragrance and grew smelly on the body. The Japanese flag was raised at the stern – it had been sewn up by someone’s wife in Melbourne. When other small ships were met in the fringes of the Indonesian archipelagos, most of the crew concealed themselves in the wheelhouse or below, or under the awning, while Doucette, himself slight of body with delicately designed hands, and fluent in Malay, together with the navigator and swarthy, small-limbed Mandarin-speaking Seaman Rubinsky were to remain visible.
There is a photograph of Mortmain, his monocle still in his eye socket, his body streaky brown, his lantern jaw a frank tribute to his ancestry, and of Leo, similarly bare-chested, standing together before the wheelhouse wearing their sarongs, demonstrating the hopeless innocence and valour of the idea that all that sea could be covered without the subterfuge being easily seen through. But they did take wise precautions. All smoking was forbidden, lest cigarette butts cast overboard might serve the Japanese navy as a clue to their infiltration. Toilet paper could not be used – it was too dangerous a clue as well. At night there was total blackout. Garbage and the leavings of their mess table were put in sealed tins which the men cast overboard and then filled with holes using Sten guns with silencers.
I see them cheering in particular in their sarongs as with mock ceremony the home-made Japanese flag was let fly from the stern. They did this without much thought for the situation international law placed them in now. Deceptive men ripe for punishment? They did not feel that way.
They lined up with the two volcanoes of Lombok Strait, and found themselves a little way off course at the western end of Bali, and then crept along to the strait, where the waters surged through so strongly against them that they were held there all night, watching the lights of Japanese trucks on Bali. Then while vapour still clouded Lombok, they crept through by daylight. They did not want to hug any coastline, in case they met Indonesian prahus or junks or patrols, so they made course north towards Borneo and then turned to port, lined up on nearly an exact north-west course for Singapore.
They had the cheek now, in these enemy waters, to begin to feel bored. ‘Bored’ was their reaction to a sea too broad and bright, and the sky too enormous, a brazen sun and their tiny refuge beneath the tarpaulin inadequate. I don’t pretend to understand how this might be called ‘boring’, since normal people would have brought an active anxiety to every second. In fact the navigator, Lieutenant Yewell, was not bored at all, and so was out of step with these fellows. One day a Japanese sea plane appeared above them. The aircraft circled the Pengulling as the navigator stood in his cabin swearing and preparing badly for death. When the craft flew off on a tangent, the others had to reassure him that it was not going off to summon forth patrol boats and other ships of war. But he was sick over the side, while having enough whimsy to tell the others he wished he was an alcoholic again, stuck in some mining camp, safe from everything but the arsenic and dynamite he managed, and his own hand.
Now they eased up the Riau Strait and in amongst that bouillabaisse of islands on the approaches to Singapore. They found there were too many Malay fishermen around big Pompong Island, which Doucette had thought of using as a base for his planned attack on Singapore harbour, but about which he now changed his mind. On a mid-September day in the tropics, with the Boss planning to turn west to another of his hides from the time he was rescuing people from Singapore, they found themselves under the scrutiny of a Japanese observation post on Galang Island. The navigator was again tormented, but Doucette decided it was best to keep north beneath the broad gaze of the marines of Galang. They calmed him in the end by letting him look through the telescope at the indolently chatting and smoking Japanese at the post, who were obviously unimpressed by their passage.
At night, in case, they puttered back to a little pyramid of jungle named Pandjang Island, and it was here that the three boat parties were dropped. Leo would tell me of the disappointment of the reserve canoe group, two Australian kids, one nineteen, one twenty, ordinary seamen by rank, rather extraordinary in their way however. These two were to wait on the Pengulling with the crew. It was the first day of October. The parties chosen would have the help of the last month of the south-east trades. On a dark beach, all but the navigator were ashore at the one time, helping the six raiders to creep their raiding gear and a little depot of rations amidst the palms behind the beach.
Here Doucette brought Leo to one side.
I want you to do me a favour. I want you to take aside the reserve boat chaps, and I want you to tell them to make the navigator come back. By that I mean by shaming him, bullying him… by whatever means. Do you understand? All right?
Leo was secretly comforted by this order, and since he didn’t want to ever become a permanent soldier, saw no problems with telling young men to coerce an officer. And so he spoke to the two youngsters, and passed on his message. Can we shoot the bastard? one of them asked him.
I don’t think you’ll need to, said Leo. Not unless you can navigate as well as he can.
On these infants of the Australian navy the reunion between Pengulling and the folboat men depended.
In the dark a question struck Leo that he couldn’t let himself ask. What if, combined with Yewell’s reluctance to come back, the engine simply blew up? It was the dark hour at which Leo felt he was in great danger, a feeling from which he would recover, he said, as soon as the Pengulling vanished to sea again before dawn to stooge around Borneo until it was time to meet them again here, at Pandjang.
I look back to 1943 and ask now who deserved such an outlay of gifts as these innocent young men intended to bring to Singapore. While Nav and the others hid and flitted and felt bored off Borneo.
It was cold in Canberra, and snow fell on the Brindabillas. The new girls in the typing pool by my small office called me Miss, which made me feel ancient. On Thursday night a group of us, office-veterans, went to dance at the Allied Forces canteen with air force men, Australians and Americans, and landlocked sailors. There were chaperons and most of us got away, flustered and talkative, by ten p.m. without what we called damage. The cold stars above the Kurrajong Guest House attracted my stare but were merely an enigmatic clue to the stars Leo might be under at the moment.