A chill wind was dimpling the surface of the river when we got home. Coming inside, we found a very sombre Foxhill drinking with the Mortmains. We could see the traces of tears on Dotty’s cheeks, so that at first we thought there might have been an almighty row between her and Rufus. Foxhill rose. Leo, he said.
Dotty and Rufus had also risen. Dotty said, Please, Foxy, let us get out of your way. And she and Rufus disappeared to the interior of their side of the flat. I felt a distinct pulse of fear at that moment. What could be so bad that Rufus and Dotty needed to make a space for it?
Foxhill said, Jesse Creed has access to a lot of information, you understand, Dig.
But we knew that already. How do you mean? asked Leo.
Well, you’ll be getting notification from the Red Cross. But I’m afraid your father… he’s been killed, Leo. After he was taken prisoner in Honiara they shipped him to a camp in the Philippines, and a month ago he was put with 200 others on a ship for Japan, the Terasao Maru. It was torpedoed by an American sub. The only survivors were a handful of crew members. Both Japanese and Red Cross sources concur.
I felt that primal convulsion of grief and the surge of tears, and began clumsily hugging Leo, trying to make hard contact with his flesh despite the fact that he was sheathed in an army overcoat still.
We have independent confirmation of it, Foxhill told us, to ward off any argument of hope. Of course, the American sub commander had no idea the ship was full of POWs.
Leo had not shed a tear but his mouth was open as if he was pathetically rolling probabilities around in his jaw.
Let’s sit down, he said. I insisted I take his coat off, as if that would ease the hour. Then we both sat down. I held him. Foxhill fetched him some whisky.
They were all below, of course, Leo reasoned with himself. The prisoners. The sub commander couldn’t have known.
Foxhill said, That’s right.
So he’s with my mother now, said Leo with a sort of primitive faith. Foxhill nodded earnestly, encouraging this sudden theology in Leo. That’s right, Dig. That’s exactly right.
Well, said Leo, blinking. He was a very skilled man. Never got over my mum dying like that. It changed the whole direction of his life.
The thing would have been sudden, I guess, Dig, Foxhill insisted. The commander said the thing just exploded amidships. One great explosion, no, two actually. The ship went up and then settled in an instant.
The sub commander said that? asked Leo.
Pretty much, said Foxhill. Just one thing – we can’t say anything yet, or have any public memorial service. I mean, for the moment can you just keep it in your own circle, Dig? It shouldn’t be in the paper or anything.
Leo looked at him, but dully.
What I mean is, said Foxhill, we’re not supposed to know about this yet. The Japanese don’t know we know. You understand, Dig? After the Red Cross tells you officially, by all means go ahead. But I suppose you’ll be off… on your adventure by then. If you’re up to it.
Leo shook his head. No, of course I’m up to it. No. This alters nothing.
But my fear was that it might alter a great deal, not least in Leo himself.
Eventually Dotty and Rufus reappeared. Foxhill informed Leo, I did tell the Mortmains why I was here. I hope that you don’t mind that, Dig.
Leo stood up to receive Dotty’s embraces. This bloody, bloody war, she said.
Yes, said Leo. But it will end, you know, Dotty.
Rufus muttered, a sort of melodious condolence, and poured more drinks. We all sat down. Leo began speaking spontaneously about his father. He had a hard life, you know. We have a good farm, but dairy farming’s tough. We were better off than most. Landed gentry.
He laughed at the idea.
Bush aristocrats. Seven hundred good acres. Flood plain. An educated man, too, my father. An agronomist. So when my mother died, he turned the farm over to his sister, my Aunty Cass, and her husband. And he took this job with the British administration in the Solomons.
But what was he like? I wanted to ask. This man I had never known. I did not even know if he was gregarious or reserved, loud or quiet. Leo had lapsed into deep thought in our midst. We were not going to find out much more.
That night as I held him, he said, He wasn’t without his faults, you know. I wouldn’t want to say that. He started drinking too much in the Solomons. But everyone did. And he let me run wild, and he had a woman. My nanny. Delia. A great, full-bodied Melanesian woman. A really jolly sort of person. I loved her. I didn’t quite understand that he did too. I can see now why the colonial wives were sniffy about him. Anyhow, most of them probably died on the ship, and Delia’s probably still on Guadalcanal, getting by.
After a silence, I thought Leo had gone to sleep but suddenly he said, He was a bloody good fisherman too, you know. And then, It would have been an awful death. Locked in the hold. It would have been hot, about 120 degrees, and it would have been foul and cramped. And then all at once the concussion, and water flooding in.
I could hear a little stutter of tears from him, merely a stutter, the habit of easy tears had been suppressed since his wild Solomon Islands childhood.
I said, You don’t have to think about that. Most death is hard. He wouldn’t want you to dwell on that.
Leo said, But I have to.
The flat was unheated, and for the first time I felt the malice of the cold of that southern city in winter.
Only two weeks later, Leo and Rufus left by train for Western Australia. It was another dismal night – we had had a last supper at the flat and went across to Swanston Street in a taxi. Rufus had a lot of business to attend to, supervising the loading of gear into the goods vans at the back of the passenger train. I met little Jockey Rubinsky, the young man of many languages who was too awed by the occasion to say anything meaningful to me. I was astonished to meet my cousin Mel Duckworth, the one who had brought Leo home to Braidwood in the first place, amongst the men boarding. Leo had not mentioned his possible membership of the Memerang group, and I thought until then he had a comfortable training job in Queensland. I’m just in support, said Mel. I’m like the lighting man on a student production. He had none of his New South Wales family and no girlfriend to see him off, and he gave an impression of being a little more lost than some of the others.
Leo took me aside. I’ll be back for Christmas. It’s going to be wonderful. I agreed with him. I’m not making empty promises, he said. The weather conditions mean we’ve got to be back well before Christmas anyhow. That’s between you and me.
I’m pleased to hear that piece of information, I told him.
Look, he said, you’re allowed to worry a bit. Just a bit.
I remember saying – wittily, I thought, for a woman doing her best – All right. I’ll indulge that luxury.
And listen, he said further, you don’t have to worry about other things. I believe there’s a searchlight battery of women at our training ground. You don’t have to worry about any of that. You’re the woman. There isn’t any other.
He put his lips to my ear. As for Rufus, he said through crushed lips, I can’t give any guarantees.
I’m not worried about women. I’m worried about your father.
I meant the influence his father’s death might have on him.
He kissed me. I’m not Hamlet Prince of Denmark, he told me. Don’t fret about that.
For some reason, on the cold station, the assurance was a comfort. Doucette turned up, with bright eyes utterly lacking in doubt or the madness I’d seen at the beach house. He was compact, full of a burning energy. Kissing my hand, he assured me he would look after his young friend Dig, and that I was to live blithely until Leo’s return. In the coming months I would remember and cling to Doucette’s air of certainty, and I would not tell Dotty about it for fear she would diffuse it with another story of the Boss’s Singapore berserkness.