Томас Кенэлли - The Widow and Her Hero

Meanwhile, as his sailors spoke of boredom, Doucette knew that Ulysses did not get home without passing through Scylla and Charybdis, Scylla being the six-headed monster which guarded its cave by lashing forth and devouring mariners by the half-dozen; and Charybdis being the maelstrom. Doucette knew that in surviving Charybdis, Ulysses lost a swathe of ship-mates. Doucette’s Scylla and Charybdis were that narrow hole in the gate, Lombok Strait. Nav was anxious about it for days before, in a continuous frenetic state, barking at the men but fussy about the duties of navigation which would get him safely back between the two monstrous shores, Bali to the one side, Lombok to the other.

During the afternoon of the approach to the strait, Nav was in a flighty condition, repeatedly talking to himself, said Leo, mumbling coordinates. In darkness he was calmer and worked better, and he hoped to be through by dawn. Chesty Blinkhorn, who was on lookout with his head through the awning atop the wheelhouse, reported the phosporescence of the bows of another ship coming up on them from astern and overtaking them with ease at a distance of a mile. It looked like a Japanese minesweeper or a patrol boat, but seventy-five yards long, he reported. Blacked out, it had the muteness of a blind monster, but its flag could be seen. In the wheelhouse Nav recited to himself a continuous stream of prayers and curses. Mortmain, naked but for a monocle, packed explosives around the radio, enough to break the back of the Pengulling if they were set off. Bantry put his rosary beads around his neck, Leo noticed, and lifted a silenced Sten gun to one of the flaps in the after-awning. Everyone of them resigned himself to bloody, explosive death. Mortmain and Leo, observing the other vessel through glasses, could see the lookouts on the Japanese vessel. On somebody’s order, the Japanese ship kept pace with the Pengulling , slowing down to a crawl to do so.

What were Leo’s true thoughts at this moment, if he knew them in the first place? He would have told me in the end, of course, if we had been married long enough, or it would have emerged in some illness or scream. Five minutes passed of the most intense anguish. The minesweeper or whatever it was kept level pace with the creeping two-knot Pengulling . The Japanese vessel possessed two cannon, one on its fore deck and the other on the apron in front of the bridge. Leo did not know their calibre, but it was obvious to him that either could obliterate them. So they lived for five minutes with the bitter certainty of what was to befall them, a certainty which only the young and irrationally hopeful could sustain.

But for no reason then, the big vessel peeled away westwards, in the direction of Surabaya. It could normally be surmised, as the men hugged and clapped each other’s backs, that the Japanese watch officer, who must have had authority over the helm, had decided that so late at night, and so close to the end of his watch, he did not wish to initiate the rigmarole of searching a fishing vessel for little result. He had been sloppy, he had wanted his bunk, and his discretion and sloppiness had saved them.

I wish I could have heard that laughter. I wish I could plug into it at will. Rosary beads and suicide pills hanging not yet required from their necks. The rest of us are cut out of its echoes, however. It was one of those moments you had to be present at to understand how succulent it was. Another item for the legend, and another chain. The lucky Boss Doucette. Even Japanese naval officers-of-the-watch succumbed to the spell inherent in his blessed plans.

On a permissive riptide, Pengulling swept through the Lombok Strait. And after what had happened to them, they did not mind the tides which then, beyond the strait, ran up contrary to delay them. For after a further day they pulled down their Japanese flag and the flag of the Singapore port administration. They were in range of Australian coastal bombers. Nav suffered a burst of manic delight, and ordered the wireless operator to send a message to a friend of his, an American at Potshot, with the news that Lombok Strait was lightly patrolled.

The others could hear Doucette chastising Nav in the wheelhouse and, later in the day, Doucette made a speech over the evening meal, eaten under awnings on the tanks amidships, which Leo recorded in his occasionally kept diary. It would seem, said Doucette, from a rash radio message recently sent, that some of the party expected to be welcomed back with parades, and to have our expedition written up in the weekend newspapers and made a newsreel of. I’ll tell you now, said Doucette, that will not happen. The Pengulling will be used again, and then there may be further raids on Singapore and other places using the methods we used. If you think your exploits are going to be spoken of in pubs, and that decorations will come plentiful and fast, then I suggest you should avoid any further association with this type of operation. In the meantime, you have the satisfaction of the secret knowledge of what you did.

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.

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.