Fishing for Stars Page 4

  ‘What, in a general or specific sense?’

  ‘Well, for instance, does the dream experience take place at the same location?’

  ‘Not always, though mostly it’s Guadalcanal; I’m on Bloody Ridge with the marines.’

  ‘You fought with the American marines at Guadalcanal?’ he asks, obviously surprised despite his calm manner. ‘I thought you’d mentioned Guadalcanal earlier, but I’d always imagined Bloody Ridge was strictly an American battle.’

  ‘It was. I was seconded from Australian Naval Intelligence – the coastwatchers section – where I worked as a Japanese translator for their Radio Intelligence Unit.’

  ‘You speak Japanese?’

  ‘Yes, I was born in Japan. My father was a professor of English, later turned missionary in New Britain.’

  ‘Bloody Ridge? Radio intelligence? You said earlier that you fought in the battle?’

  Christ, is he trying to trap me? ‘I was present at Bloody Ridge manning the radio, listening in to the enemy field transmissions. Towards dawn on the second night, with the Nips coming at us from every direction, things got a little difficult. I had my Owen with me and fired at them as they advanced.’ I grin. ‘It was either that or a Jap bayonet in the guts.’

  Tony Freeman looked at me doubtfully. ‘Owen? Are you sure? I thought the marines were using Springfield rifles then. I always understood the Owen submachine-gun was exclusively used in battle by our forces. An Australian invention, isn’t it?’

  Fucking smart alec; now he doubts the veracity of my story. Suspects it’s bullshit. Stay calm, Nick, don’t pop your lid. Attempting another grin, I say, ‘I see you know your weapons history.’ I think twice – will I or won’t I bother to straighten him out? What the hell, let him think what he wants. He was in Vietnam and ought to know the drill.

  ‘I received my training from the Special Forces Unit in Queensland where the Owen was my instructor’s preferred submachine-gun. We were trained to double tap, two shots, head and chest, in less than two seconds and, used correctly, deadly up to twenty-five yards. When I was seconded to the Americans I took my Owen along with four hundred rounds. Good thing I did as it turned out – there’s no better weapon for fighting at close quarters, or wasn’t at the time.’

  I am jabbering, anticipating, over-explaining, saying too much, in my own mind losing control. Freeman is obviously trying to get some sort of overall picture, threading the bits and pieces together to learn about Nick Duncan’s personal war. Not doing a bad job either and I have no reason to be angry with him. It isn’t that I don’t want to cooperate. It’s just that it is all so very bloody personal. I can’t see how spilling my guts to a psychiatrist will help, telling him how I wake up in the dark screaming and blubbing like a baby. I’m not prepared to share the whole fucking catastrophe with a stranger, even if he is a doctor.

  I hate the nightmares, hate revisiting the battlefield in the phantasmagoria of a dream, double tapping my Owen as the bastards advance, a Jap soldier getting close enough to lunge at me with his ridiculously long bayonet, parrying his thrust, reaching for the blade I keep secreted in my boot, coming in under his heart, seeing him sink to his knees, me staring down at the surprise on Anna’s beautiful young face as my wrist twists and the knife slices through the main artery from her heart. Then waking in the dark screaming, clutching the pillow, thinking I have Anna in my arms with a trickle of blood running from the corner of her mouth.

  ‘And Guadalcanal is where, for the most part, these nightmares take place?’

  ‘Look, doctor,’ I say, addressing him formally. ‘I’m grateful that you agreed to see me. I’m told you have a very busy practice, so I’m sure you won’t mind if we leave it there.’ I rise from my chair. ‘I’m grateful for your time, but after the graduation of my goddaughter – my primary reason for coming to Sydney – it’s back to the island.’ I take a breath. ‘There’s work to do before the dry season begins.’

  Tony Freeman shows no surprise. ‘Nick, it’s hard, very hard.’ He remains seated and starts talking in a quiet, steady voice. ‘A soldier never cries. If a mate is stitched up by a burst from an AK-47, dismembered by a mine blast or ripped apart by shrapnel, you don’t have time to grieve over him. The chopper comes down and you scoop what’s left of him into a plastic bag on the jungle floor or rice paddy and whisk the bits to Long Binh. A unit memorial service will be held before the end of the tour.’ He pauses momentarily. ‘But the feeling of numbness, emptiness, never goes away. You can’t tell your wife how you feel about your mate. The politicians who sent you over there don’t give a shit.’ Tony Freeman glances up at me briefly. ‘But sooner or later there comes a time to cry – for your mate, certainly – but also for yourself.’

  The feeling of numbness, emptiness, never goes away. His words strike hard, like a punch in the guts.

  On the night of my eighteenth birthday, after the first day’s sailing from Batavia, I’d pulled into an estuary along the coast of Java at sunset. Throughout the night I could hear the big guns as the allied battleships faced the Japanese navy in the Sunda Strait. I didn’t know at the time that USS Houston and HMAS Perth were sunk in the battle that followed. The next morning I’d witnessed the slaughter of nine Australian sailors from HMAS Perth who’d come onto the lonely beach in a Carley float. I watched helplessly as the natives hacked them to death with parangs in a killing frenzy.

  After the murderers departed, I was too afraid they might return to take the time to bury the dead, so I laid their mutilated bodies in a row on the beach, attempting in one instance to replace the head of a decapitated sailor. Using scraps of driftwood and string I fashioned a crude cross for each, placing it above their heads. Stricken with panic and frequently glancing over my shoulder, I recited an appropriate part of the burial service, a prayer I’d remembered from countless native funerals where I’d stood beside my father at the grave.

  I try to stop my thoughts, tell myself that Freeman as a young doctor working a chopper in Vietnam will have witnessed just about everything, and judging by what he’s just said, his experiences will have been hugely traumatic. I know I should pull myself together, but I can’t. Instead, I am consumed by sudden rage. For over fifty years I have buried the murders of those nine sailors so deeply, wrapping them in layer upon layer of pain and guilt, that I thought them safely gone, expunged from my memory. Now, in just eight words, he has resurrected that brutal morning on a lonely beach.

  ‘You fucking bastard!’ I yell, then stumble blindly from the surgery. I stop at the reception desk long enough to fling a handful of fifty-dollar notes onto the desk of the surprised receptionist.

  Rushing into the corridor, I press the lift button and the indicator shows it is five floors up. I am shaking like a child, lips trembling. If anyone follows I know I will attack. I am six feet three inches tall, big-boned, heavy-set. Even at my age I pack a fair wallop, which many a lazy or drunk member of a native crew has felt to his regret. I look about me wildly, see the exit to the stairs and make for it. It is three storeys down to the street, and the sound of my boots echoes in the stairwell like the clappers of hell. I arrive, bursting straight onto the pavement, where I am forced to stop, to bend over, panting heavily, my hands gripping my knees. The adrenalin that fuelled my flight is now all but spent.

  I glance up, deciding where to go next. Across the street is a small park. Still panting furiously I start to cross towards it, not realising the traffic lights are against me.

  Later I don’t recall the squeal of brakes or even the thump as the courier van hits me. I come to in the emergency ward of the Prince of Wales Hospital with Marg Hamilton sitting beside the bed.

  ‘We’re having you moved to St Vincent’s Private,’ she says calmly. ‘Food’s much better.’ Then she adds, ‘While you’re mending they can do your prostate examination. I’ll make enquiries.’

  ‘What? Where? How?’ I ask, looking about me, confused.

  ‘Broken left leg – the doctor says you’
ll probably be left with a limp – severe lacerations to your hip, dislocated left shoulder, possible concussion . . . this is not the jungle, Nick, you really ought to be more careful,’ she remonstrates.

  I wonder fleetingly if she knows about my spitting the dummy and running from Freeman’s surgery. Knowing Marg, she’ll keep that for a proper brouhaha at a more appropriate time when I’m capable of absorbing the full force of her displeasure.

  I sign myself out and I’m placed on a gurney and taken by ambulance to St Vincent’s Private in Darlinghurst where, unsurprisingly, I discover that Marg is a good friend of Doctor Light, the general registrar who attends me. They put a plaster cast on my leg and generally patch me up. I’m wearing more bandages than you’d find wrapped around a mummy. The drip into my arm must contain morphine because I don’t feel any pain. Exhausted, I fall asleep quickly and don’t remember Marg leaving.

  I wake up stiff as a board and bloody sore. It’s 6.30 a.m. and I press the buzzer to have a nurse come and hopefully slip me a painkiller and prop me up in bed. I think about yesterday and feel myself colouring . . . bloody silly old fart.

  Several hours later, sitting up in bed with my leg hoisted in the air, I look up to see Saffron enter my room. It’s a private room, so they allow her in this early. She takes one look at me and bursts into sobs, running over to kiss me, then she starts blubbing and talking at the same time. ‘Uncle Nick, Great Auntie Marg wouldn’t let me come last night,’ she tosses her dark hair mutinously, then rushes on, ‘so I got the Yellow Pages and called every hospital in the metropolitan area starting with the letter A and . . . and S for St Vincent’s was near the end of the list.’ She’s forced to catch a breath before continuing. ‘I called the public section and they checked and said you were in private. By the time I got through again it was nearly midnight and they told me you’d been given a sleeping pill and shouldn’t be disturbed.’ She pauses at last. ‘I’m so sorry . . . I’m so sorry,’ she repeats tremulously, fresh tears glistening, looking too beautiful for words.

  ‘Ah, I was pretty zonked from the painkillers; probably a good thing you didn’t see me yesterday, you couldn’t have woken me with a baseball bat,’ I say, comforting her. Then add, ‘But I’m proud of you for trying. For taking Great Auntie Marg’s smack square on the chin then slamming her back with the Yellow Pages. She can be a very formidable old lady. Now, let me see your artwork, darling.’

  Saffron draws back, grabbing at the sleeve of her T-shirt. ‘No, no, Uncle Nick, you’re not allowed to see my tat until it’s finished!’ She rubs self-consciously at the point of her shoulder.

  I laugh. ‘What? Is it bad luck or something?’

  ‘Could be,’ she says, wide-eyed. ‘No, not really,’ she laughs. ‘It’s just that I want you to see when it’s beautiful. In a couple of days it will have scabbed over, but it should have healed in a week or so.’ She winces, indicating my leg and the various bandages. ‘Does it hurt a lot?’

  ‘Nah, probably not as much as your tat did.’ I abbreviate the word as she did, thinking it sounds friendlier.

  Her pretty face grows suddenly distraught. ‘Oh, Uncle Nick, you won’t be there! At my graduation!’ Then her hand flies up to cover her mouth. ‘Ooh, ah, I shouldn’t have said that! It’ll be fine, I promise,’ she cries, attempting to recover.

  While I live in Vanuatu, Joe lives in New Guinea and runs our shipping and transport business there. Joe Junior and our general manager are in America on a buying trip. Fiery Frances, Saffron’s mother and an accountant by profession who worked for Anna, has had her passport temporarily revoked pending an inquiry into alleged bribery, concerning several local politicians and the Ok Tedi mine. While it’s all show-trial stuff and as usual won’t come to anything, it means she too cannot attend. Marg has, of course, been invited, but she has to speak at a protest rally against Gunns, the timber-milling giant logging old-growth forest for woodchips to export to Japan. Saffron will be alone if I don’t attend.

  I laugh and reach for her hand with my good arm, taking it and holding it to my cheek. ‘There’s life in the old boy yet, my sweet. I wouldn’t miss your graduation for quids.’

  ‘No, no, you mustn’t!’ she cries. ‘It’ll be too much for you.’

  ‘Two days is a long time; I’ve always been a fast healer,’ I joke. I release her hand in case it seems mawkish. Joe Popkin’s grandchild is special, has been since she was a small child, bright as a polished button. At last count I am godfather to eighty children, their parents all employed by the company. Many of them are smart kids. All will be or have been educated by the shipping company. If they choose to work, they’ll have sound careers, some in government departments (Anna’s idea), but this one, Saffron, is the jewel in the crown. ‘Princess Saffron,’ I say quietly, then immediately regret my sentimentality, thinking it may embarrass her.

  ‘Would you like a coffee, Uncle Nick? There’s a cafeteria in the foyer. I would have brought you one, but I wasn’t sure if you’d want it.’ Clever girl, she’s moved to keep the ship on an even keel.

  ‘Love one, Saffy, flat white, no sugar, large and strong.’

  Saffron kisses me and hurries towards the door.

  ‘Money!’ I yell.

  ‘Got some!’ she yells back, not turning.

  Marg Hamilton appears seemingly moments after Saffron departs.

  ‘Good morning, Marg,’ I say, not sure I’m thrilled by her arrival.

  Marg makes for the chair beside my bed, slightly breathless, clasping her large handbag. She bends over and kisses me. ‘I can’t stay long. After your unfortunate peregrinations yesterday, you’ve given me more than enough to do without having to play catch-up.’ She smiles, dropping into the chair. ‘How are you, darling? I couldn’t sleep a wink worrying about you.’

  ‘Fine. Well, a bit sore, but I can’t complain. I’m lucky – it could be a hernia.’ It’s a feeble enough joke and she doesn’t respond. ‘Thank you for taking care of me yesterday, Marg. Did you pass Saffron on your way here?’

  ‘Saffron? But she doesn’t even know you’re here. I phoned the hotel this morning to say I’d pick her up in the taxi on the way, but she didn’t answer.’

  ‘She told me about how you’d banned her coming last night. She checked every hospital in the Yellow Pages.’

  Marg’s right eyebrow arches slightly as she prepares to defend herself. ‘When I called and left a message at five, she was still out gallivanting. She called me well after six, just as I was leaving for a dinner engagement and I told her you’d had a small accident, just so she wouldn’t be alarmed. You were out like a light even before I left, so I refused to tell her where you were.’ Marg attempts to further justify her action. ‘She’s always been a strong-willed child; she’d have ignored my advice and been over to see you in a flash.’

  ‘She wasn’t gallivanting; she was at a tattoo parlour,’ I explain. Then realise what I’ve just said.

  ‘A what?’ Marg’s eyes almost pop out of her head. ‘Did I hear you correctly, Nick? Did you say tattoo parlour? Why that’s . . . well I’m shocked. Deeply shocked! What on earth has she had done?’

  ‘Got a butterfly as a tattoo, on her shoulder,’ I say calmly, trying to hide my amusement. ‘It’s her graduation gift from me.’ Please don’t let this stop now, God! I beg silently.

  Marg’s throat is wobbling like a turkey cock’s. Mid-wobble she senses my amusement. ‘It’s not true, is it, Nick?’ she exclaims, relaxing.

  I don’t want Saffron to be castigated over her tattoo. Marg has known her since she was a child and has always believed she has full reprimanding rights, earned when Saffron attended boarding school at the Presbyterian Ladies’ College here in Sydney. In a half-fib, I chide, ‘Just getting my own back, darling.’ Then add, ‘Saffy had every right to know where I was when she called you last night.’

  To my surprise, Marg apologises, a very rare event. ‘I wasn’t myself, Nick. I was worried and upset about you. I now realise I should have told her
your whereabouts.’ She lifts her chin slightly, making up her mind. ‘I shall apologise to Saffron . . . although I wish you wouldn’t call her Saffy. Saffron is such a nice name.’

  She really is a grand old dame; always has to have a comeback. I guess at seventy-seven with all her marbles and with a burning desire to save a world from which she will soon enough be departing, she has to be admired, despite her sometimes overweening manner.

  ‘That’s very gracious of you, Marg.’ Then thinking it’s probably better to delay the shock, I say, ‘By the way, do keep my little joke about the butterfly tattoo to yourself when Saffron returns. She’s gone to fetch coffee. Don’t want her getting ideas, do we?’

  ‘I wasn’t fooled for a minute! As if she would go to a place like that!’ Marg snorts, her confidence in Saffron and her expensive education at PLC Pymble restored.

  Saffron bursts excitedly into the room, takeaway coffee in one hand and the Daily Telegraph clutched in the other. ‘Uncle Nick, you’re in the paper, on the front page! Look!’ She props, clutching the Telegraph to her breast. ‘Hi, Great Auntie Marg,’ she says tentatively.

  ‘Saffron, it was quite wrong of me not to tell you the name of this hospital. I apologise without reserve.’

  If it’s not an effusive apology, Saffron has probably never seen Marg Hamilton contrite and I’d have to go back a fair way, too. I expect Saffron to accept gracefully, pretty eyes averted. No such thing. ‘That’s all right, Great Auntie Marg. No problems. I found out for myself,’ she says without rancour, cool as a cucumber, eyes fixed directly on Marg. The kid, like her mother, has plenty of fire. Then she remembers the newspaper and holds it out to me, crying, ‘You didn’t tell me you were a war hero, Uncle Nick!’

  ‘Gawd! Spare me! What now?’ I accept the newspaper with my good hand, then, turning to Marg, ask suspiciously, ‘You have anything to do with this?’

  Unusually, she doesn’t look at me directly. ‘All accidents are reported to the police,’ she allows obliquely, ‘that’s how the reporters get onto these things.’