Nav sulked, but so did some of the younger men who thought their motivations had been questioned. Five days later, they made it into Exmouth Gulf and its desolate but well-supplied shore station USS Potshot. This was a desert shore richly endowed with the plenty of American logistics, but lacking in any extensive population and any atmosphere of triumphant return. Ulysses might have said, I resisted Circe and fought the Cyclops, and all the rest – Scylla and Charybdis, and the rudeness of the sirens – for this banal docking? Mooring there with sealed lips was not an exhilarating experience. Mortmain was left in charge, and Doucette and Leo were flown by bomber over the huge vacant earth to Melbourne for a debriefing. However secretly, they would be permitted to speak to select officers.
4
Leo and the Boss travelled to Melbourne in the belly of a bomber, the noise atrocious, the vibration worse than the Pengulling at the point of engine-strain, and the cold far too intense for tropic-weight clothing. When they landed at Essendon, Leo borrowed a greatcoat and, waiting for a car to take him and Doucette into Melbourne, made a trunk call to my office.
Dear, dear Grace, he said plainly. My sweetheart.
I said, You’re back! And I began bawling, as was normal. I did not know where he had been and would not for years yet, but I knew he had gone into a forest dense with perils and come back with a voice still fresh, if not refreshed. I believed till that second I’d been confident he’d come back, but now my previous naivety on that point seemed ridiculous and I could see I had been oppressed by the waiting.
Are you still unbooked? he asked. Has some Yank claimed you?
What a question! But how are you?
You wouldn’t believe how well I am. Would early December be okay?
He had a calendar in front of him.
What about Saturday, December 8th? I know I can get leave. The Boss has assured me.
Yes, I said. That will be it then. My darling.
I had never before called anyone darling in my life. Endearments sounded rusty yet compulsive in my mouth. I would, just the same, need to be accustomed to using them. I also knew well enough what would accustom me. Sex without fear.
From Essendon, Doucette and Leo were driven to a big old house in South Yarra, Radcliffe Hall, the sort of place built by someone who made a fortune in the gold-rushes, more lately having been a temperance boarding house and now the headquarters of IRD. The sentries on the door saluted them – they had blancoed webbing and gaiters on the rare occasions I went there myself. Piss-elegant, Leo said. Leo and the Boss who had worn sarongs or gone naked on the deck of Pengulling, were rewarded now with military ritual. And there was more to come.
They entered an office, where the saluting mania continued. The three officers who had stood up to meet them were, as I imagine it, like publishers greeting their best-selling authors. One was Major Doxey, the chief of IRD, and another Major Enright, Director of Plans/Army, and the third a strange, merry-looking fellow wearing a sort of Highland cap with ribbons and tartan pants. This was Captain Foxhill, an officer at IRD who had escaped with Doucette from Sumatra, and who would prove a good friend. After meeting the genial Foxhill later at a Melbourne party, I wondered how he managed to walk around the streets of Melbourne in those pants without attracting cat-calls from Australia’s common soldiery. The answer was that he did, and that he didn’t care. Whereas the other two were professional soldiers of administrative talent and stultified instincts – my opinion, of course, based not only on Leo’s but on ultimate social contact.
These three officers made a huge fuss of the two visitors and the whole Cornflakes operation. Major Doxey said what they had done was top hole, it was the ploy IRD had been waiting for, not that it had been totally lacking in earlier success, but this had been on a scale which none could ignore. SOE in India and Britain were beside themselves with delight.
Foxhill told them he was probably the humblest officer who would congratulate them. Because there would be a party at Government House that afternoon – the governor-general Lord Gowrie was visiting Melbourne, had come down from Canberra by plane and was installed there, the regular governor of the state being away on some civic duties in the bush. General Blamey would be there, and although no public announcement or fuss would be made, both gentlemen wanted to meet Doucette and Leo.
Foxhill asked about the mention in Doucette’s report that native junks seemed to come and go in the Singapore roads without much molestation.
Doucette confirmed it, saying that next time a party should simply take a ride by sub, pirate a junk and use it to launch folboats from. After the operation, the folboats could return to the junk which, having finally met with the submarine one night, could be sunk with explosives. Everyone already took it for granted there would be a next time, and Doxey said it was the right moment to bring in Colonel Creed. He picked up a chunky black phone in front of him and spoke into it.
Doucette’s success, Leo noticed, had not made him kinder to Creed. When Creed entered there was handshaking all-around, and Creed congratulated them, but Doucette seemed a little upset that Creed even knew what had happened. The American laid on the praise, which, as Leo told me, was not a bad experience.
Creed took a seat at the table. Why am I here? he asked. Well, for one thing I’m here to tell you we have unimpeachable and independent information that the enemy was genuinely shaken by your activities.
He said that his boss General Willoughby was very impressed, and not just General Willoughby, head of intelligence, but the boss, MacArthur himself. He said that it might at last be possible for the Americans to help out in some way in some future, larger scale operation. The idea of cooperation pleased him. Everyone loves a winner, said Creed, and this will convince my people you are winners.
I can see in my mind’s eye the way Doucette lifted his head then, the little half-inch toss of the head, a sparse gesture full of infinite contempt which I would sometimes see at parties, particularly if Doxey were about.
We know from the record of this meeting, as conveyed to me by the indefatigable Tom Lydon, who tracked down the minutes in the archives, that Doucette said the offer was most kind but that anyone could see from the success of Cornflakes that there was a strong source of brave, competent and adaptive young men amongst the Australians.
Doxey, Enright and Foxhill seemed alarmed at this rebuff. The lean Colonel Creed remarked that Major Doucette saw him as a crass opportunist, but he hoped to prove otherwise.
And in that spirit, said Creed, in that spirit… And he exposed a great and dazzling plan to Doucette and Leo. Sounding all lazy and languid and like a cowboy. What if a permanent raiding party were put ashore at Great Natuna Island, east of Malaya, south of Indochina, north of Borneo? With junks built in Melbourne but convincingly Oriental. From the Great Natuna a raiding force could operate throughout the South China Sea. If Free French commandos were involved, there could be attacks even on Saigon.