Papua (20 page)

‘Don’t look so worried,’ he laughed. ‘I wouldn’t dare let anything happen to Paul or I would have to account to you. This is Dademo,’ he added as the young man clambered from the boat with a shy but broad smile. ‘He is going to keep an eye on things while Paul and I are off making our fortunes.’

‘You are right, Mr Kelly,’ Karin replied in a stern voice. ‘If anything happens to Paul . . .’ Her voice quavered on the verge of tears and Jack felt awkward.

‘It’s going to be all right, old girl,’ he said gently. ‘We will come back as the kings of Papua.’

Paul strode down to join them at the beach and greeted Dademo with an affectionate handshake and slap on the back. He then scrutinised the whaleboat. Jack tentatively stood aside and waited for his opinion.

‘We will be able to stow our supplies but will need a tarpaulin to protect them against the sea.’ Almost completely ignoring the Australian he turned to Dademo. ‘I see that Sen let you go for a while,’ he said and the two men walked up the beach, discussing what Dademo’s duties would be when they were gone. He had been expecting the Papuan as Jack had said before he left for Moresby that he would talk to Sen about borrowing Dademo’s ser-vices while they were away. But as Paul walked away with Dademo, Jack knew all was not well. He turned to Karin.

‘He is worried about me,’ she said to his unspoken question. ‘But I have faith in you, Jack, to look after my husband.’

With this weight thrust upon his shoulders, Jack Kelly experienced a sudden surge of doubt. He had not kept George Spencer alive. How would this situation be any different? Karin followed her husband up the white sands, leaving Jack alone to wonder just what they were getting themselves into.

The following day Jack and Paul put to sea. Karin and the two boys watched from the beach until the little boat steamed around a small headland and out of sight. Taking the two boys by the hand she walked slowly back to the house.

‘When will Dad be back?’ Lukas asked, as he looked up at the woman whom he had come to accept as the most important female in his life.

‘That is in God’s hands,’ Karin replied quietly, and looked away lest the boys see her tears and sense her uncertainty. It seemed that she was always saying goodbye to the man she most loved in the world. And every time he left she was never sure if she would see him again. This time was no different. She could feel the baby growing inside her, and burst into tears. What if her child was born without knowing the tender love of the man who had survived so much only to be killed on this wild, uncivilised frontier at the end of the world? The two boys glanced at each other and crept away. They did not understand why Karin should be so upset. They had seen their fathers’ cheerful smiles and waves as the boat pulled away from the beach. To Lukas and Karl such men were indestructible.

M
onths passed and there was no news from the two men. Not that Karin expected any as she knew that Paul and Jack were well beyond the frontiers. But each night she would pray for their safety, pleading to God to bring them home soon. It did not matter that they may fail in their endeavours. More important was that Lukas had a father and she a husband for her son and unborn child.

Her confinement was near and she knew it was time for Dademo to take over the running of the plantation whilst she took the day’s buggy journey to Port Moresby to have her baby delivered. She had grown to rely more and more on Dademo. He had proved an excellent manager and was respected by the local villagers who made up the labour force for the plantation. He was intelligent and had a basic but competent grasp of figures. He was also liked by the two boys who would beg him to recount the adventure he had with Paul in their search for Iris.

Lukas felt just a little jealous of Karl whose father had so bravely gone into the jungle to search for the beautiful lady. Dademo had told them that Iris was a princess taken captive by an evil pirate. He wished that his own father could have been on the quest. Dademo had once heard a story of such an adventure and was a natural storyteller himself. But his embellishments were eagerly accepted by the two boys. In Dademo’s version Paul had actually fought with the evil pirate captain but he escaped. Needless to say he also had fought with the pirate captain’s lieutenant and killed him.

Dademo had expressed the view that he should go with Karin on the potentially perilous journey to Port Moresby. But she had reminded him that he had the care of the plantation and the two boys to consider. He understood and helped her pack just a few personal items, and food and water for the difficult journey. The last thing Karin placed in her swag of items was Paul’s Webley & Scott revolver.

With a final briefing to Dademo just before dawn – and dire warnings to the two boys to do what the young Papuan overseer said – she was helped into the buggy and drove from the plantation. All going well, she would see the lights of Moresby just after nightfall.

Right on schedule three days later she gave birth to a baby girl.

‘Angelika,’ she murmured as she lay back in her bed in the newly constructed hospital in Moresby. ‘You are my precious little angel.’

Three days later Karin felt strong enough to travel back to the plantation with her baby despite the warnings of the stern matron who had acted as midwife and brought Angelika into the world. Karin had told her she was temporarily without her husband because he was, as she put it, ‘somewhere up bush’. That was the way of life for women who came with their men onto the Papuan frontier. They had to be just as tough and resourceful to cope with a life so far from civilisation with its running water, stores and medical services.

When Karin returned to the plantation she was met not only by the male workers but also their women who fussed over the little jewel with the tuft of golden hair like her mother. The baby lay crying in Karin’s arms with her little fists balled. It was a time of celebration for the labourers. The villagers killed a pig for a feast. Dademo had quietly supplied it from the master’s small herd. He did not think that Master Paul would mind it being killed before Christmas which was not long away. Karin did not go to the feast but retired to her house after the boys had poked at the little thing they most dreaded – a sister! And a very ugly one at that they both agreed.

As she lay on her bed with her daughter beside her, it occurred to Karin that Angelika had been born on the soil of this foreign land called Papua. Her daughter was not a German but a Papuan.

Christmas came and went without any news of Paul and Jack. Life went on and Angelika continued to thrive in the tropical environment. The two boys – when they were at home – grew used to the fact that she was the centre of attention in Karin’s life. School lessons continued whenever Karin could find the boys. And each day Karin would walk to the edge of the beach to gaze out to sea and intone her oft-repeated prayer: ‘Dear God, be merciful and bring my husband and Jack Kelly home to me.’

Five months to the day since Paul and Jack left on their expedition into the Morobe province of New Guinea, Dademo came rushing to the house. ‘Missus,’ he yelled breathlessly, ‘Master’s boat comes.’

Karin had been breastfeeding Angelika and immediately buttoned her blouse. She swept from the house with the confused, hungry baby bawling in her arms and hurried to the beach. Dademo and three of the plantation workers followed her. It was just on sunset and in the distance she could see the whaleboat puttering towards the shore. Karin’s blood ran cold. She could only see one figure standing at the helm, but it was too far to ascertain whether it was her husband or Jack. Two had gone out but only one returned – the words echoed in her thoughts. She gripped Angelika to her breast, almost smothering the baby until she bawled in her discomfort.

The boat drew nearer and finally Karin could make out that the lone, bearded figure was Paul, waving his hat over his head and shouting his greetings. Karin felt the relief of having her prayers answered. But she also experienced a terrible fear that Lukas had lost his father to the wild and savage jungles.

Unable to constrain her impatience to once again touch the face of her husband and with the baby still in her arms, Karin waded into the warm tropical waters until the sea was around her thighs, soaking the long dress she wore.

Paul did not wait for the engine to stop and leapt into the sea, leaving the old whaleboat to find its own way to the beach. Dademo and the three workers followed Karin into the gentle surf and guided the boat to shore. Paul surfaced and waded with all his strength towards his wife. His face was an expression of absolute joy as they came together and Paul enveloped Karin and their baby daughter in his arms. They were alternately laughing and crying as they stood in the calm seas, waves lapping around them.

‘Your daughter’s name is Angelika,’ Karin finally got out between hugs and kisses as they babbled their love to each other.

When finally they disengaged themselves from the embrace Paul could see the cloud come down over his wife’s face. He burst into laughter when he realised why she should be looking so glum. ‘I left Jack in Moresby,’ he said. ‘He will be back in a couple of days after he does some business with Sen.’ Karin’s expression of happiness returned. ‘And if you are wondering, you are now looking at one of the new kings of Papua,’ he added. ‘Jack did it! We are wealthier beyond your wildest imagination, my beautiful wife. You can buy a golden tiara for my little princess and a dress of silk embroidered with pearls fit for a queen such as yourself.’

They were indeed amongst the wealthiest people in Papua. The gold was exactly where Jack knew it would be and they had wrested a small fortune from the rugged mountain creeks. In a short time the rush was on but they had been amongst the first to pick up the prize, along with a handful of other canny men of Papua.

Two days later Jack returned to the plantation. He came with a bag full of Christmas presents for them all. It did not matter that Christmas was two months gone. They celebrated his return with a coconut frond for a Christmas tree. But for Lukas the best present of all was that his father had returned to his life.

T
he view of Port Moresby from the deck of the Burns Philp steamer had changed very little in the years since Jack and Paul had arrived to grub out their small fortune from the Morobe gold fields almost a decade ago. Jack stood at the bow of the ship as it ploughed through the calm blue-green waters and gazed at the hills nestling the little frontier town. It was still a place of government administrators, planters, gold prospectors, missionaries and a few misfits.

For a brief moment he thought about the time when the tall, quietly spoken Englishman George Spencer had stood on the deck of this same ship and observed the town as they had steamed in. They were both younger men then, with separate dreams of finding something meaningful in their lives. George hadn’t had the chance to find his. For Jack, his dream had to wait until he and Paul Mann had forged into the jungles of the Morobe province to sluice the rivers and creeks rich in alluvial gold. And how they had found it! Anything that could be used to carry the precious nuggets and specks was utilised: empty bully beef tins, socks and as much as they could jam into their pockets. Up the rivers, Sharkeye Park and his compatriots had been doing the same, unaware of the interlopers downriver.

The gold that had come out with Jack and Paul was smuggled back to the canny businessman Sen, who was able to convert it to cash on the black market in Singapore without the Australian authorities knowing of its existence. All told, they cleared around fifty thousand English pounds each from the transactions, with Sen taking a small percentage.

‘Father?’

Jack turned to see his son striding across the deck towards him. How grown up he looked at seventeen, Jack thought with a swelling of pride. Tall like his mother’s family but with the breadth in his shoulders of his own people. He had hazel eyes and a thick crop of unruly brown hair. Although not handsome in the fashion of the Hollywood movie stars, whose faces now flickered in the film palaces of the major cities, he still had the appearance of a young man who would break a woman’s heart. But Lukas had inherited his father’s restlessness, and boarding at St Ignatius college in Sydney under the disciplined care of the Jesuit priests had not tempered his wild ways. The occasional infractions had been conveniently forgiven by his performance on the rugby field. Lukas played with a brilliance that was spoken of as having the potential for him to one day play against England and the bone crushing All Blacks of New Zealand. Jack did not understand rugby. He had grown up playing Australian Rules, a game that had much in common with the rugged Irish brand of football. But he had come to appreciate the skill required in evading a team of young men intent on grinding their opponent with the oval ball into the turf.

‘Do you think Uncle Paul and Aunt Karin will be waiting for us when we dock?’ Lukas asked.

‘I think so,’ Jack replied as he lit his battered old pipe and puffed until a thick plume of smoke was blown away on a gentle sea breeze. It would be a hot and still day ashore. There was not a sign of a cloud in the pale blue skies. ‘Your Uncle Paul replied to my telegram when we were at Elston.’

En route to Port Moresby, the two had travelled south from Brisbane for a break in their journey, to a small coastal village called Elston. They had stayed at the Surfers Paradise hotel and spent three days swimming in the rolling breakers of the Pacific Ocean, fishing off Main Beach and sitting around at night playing cards with the other guests. Apart from soaking up the South Seas atmosphere of the hotel, Jack had also caught the train south to take a look at property in the towns of Coolangatta and Tweed Heads that straddled the borders of Queensland and New South Wales. He liked the area so much that he had purchased a block of land on a steep hill in Tweed Heads, planning to one day build a house there as a retreat from Sydney.

Lukas took a position at the bow beside his father and leant on the rail. The town rose and fell gently on the horizon. The land was a dusty brown tapestry dotted with native villages along the shoreline at Koki located to the east, while the tower of the Burns Philp office dominated the little township on the edge of the Papuan frontier. He was looking forward to his break from school to revisit the land that held so many fond memories for him. It had been four years since he’d been here, as his holidays had usually been spent in Sydney with his father at home in Mosman.

A few months earlier the opening of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, the largest single span bridge in the world, had dramatically changed things for citizens on Sydney’s North Shore. No longer did the harbour ferry provide most of the transport between the two shores. Jack, however, still preferred to travel by ferry to his Macquarie Street office, from where he managed his small financial empire. His enterprises took in real estate acquisition and development as well as his far off gold mining operations in New Guinea.

His charitable work for the families of the men who had not returned from the war was noted by many in power. And in the Sydney community Jack Kelly was quickly establishing a reputation as a benefactor among those families suffering the terrible displacement brought by the Great Depression. He had befriended the colourful premier of New South Wales, Jack Lang, known to his friends and enemies alike as the ‘Big Fella’ because of his imposing size. It was with the premier’s influence that places at the prestigious Catholic college of St Ignatius had been obtained for both Lukas and Karl. The two‘wild boys from the north’ had stuck together and, like Lukas, Karl had also established a reputation as a top rugby player. The two were inseparable and considered more as brothers than just mere friends. Their partnership was strengthened in the close hierarchy of boarding schools, with more than one fist fight against the older boys to establish their credentials. Most of the time they won the bloody, slogging matches, but even if they lost, they won the respect of the junior and senior students for their courage. Neither boy was known to back down against even the toughest of the seniors. And both were prepared to take risks that endeared them to the school as a whole, if not always to the staff.

Karl had grown to be a powerfully built young man. Both boys were bigger than their fathers and Karl also had Paul’s suave looks. He no longer spoke with a trace of a German accent and under the tutelage of the priests both boys had acquired the educated tones of polished radio announcers. More important to both fathers was that Lukas and Karl had sat their Leaving Certificates to complete their secondary education. Hopefully, the boys’ results would be good enough to gain them places in a university.

Jack turned to his son whose unruly hair was being whipped by the wind. ‘Have you any plans for the future when we return from Papua?’ he asked gruffly.

The years had slipped by in his busy life and he was about to lose his only child to the world. Lukas would take his place soon as a man. Jack suddenly felt the cold chills of loneliness. Since the day Erika had left him all those years before he had directed all his love and attention to his son.

‘I was rather hoping that you would use a bit of that money of yours to send me to Germany with Karl,’ Lukas replied with a cheeky grin. ‘You know that his old man is paying for him to visit the old country next year.’

‘And pigs will fly,’ Jack growled good-naturedly. ‘For a start you are too young and secondly you have to earn your own way there.’

‘I could work for you as one of your managers,’ Lukas continued in the same playful tone. ‘Start at the top and work my way down.’

‘That would be about the sum of it,’ Jack chuckled. ‘But I can give you something while we are here, working around the mines.’

Lukas raised his eyebrows. He knew that the work was dirty and dangerous, and the mine in an isolated location on the island’s frontier. For his father to suggest such an enterprise spoke of his confidence in his abilities. ‘Well, actually Father,’ he replied in a more serious tone, ‘I was thinking of going into law. Mr Sullivan has said that there was always a place in his firm as an articled clerk if my exam results were good – which they will be.’

‘When did all this come about?’ his father asked. ‘Just after you met young Sarah Sullivan by any chance?’

Lukas sucked in his breath. ‘How did you know?’

‘Kind of hard not to see how gawky you were whenever we were over at the Sullivans’,’ his father said as he puffed on his pipe and stared at the shoreline growing ever closer.

Tom Sullivan had become Jack’s chief solicitor and a good friend since their first meeting to discuss the will George Spencer had drafted. Tom’s sixteen-year-old daughter was a dark eyed beauty with grace and poise. She had aspirations to study medicine when she completed her secondary schooling at a prestigious convent. A bit on herself, Jack had thought when he had met Sarah Sullivan, but still a daughter any father would be proud of. He had also noticed that his son was well and truly under her thumb whenever they were together. But choosing a career in law meant that his son could also pursue his other great love in life, rugby union. It was a sport strong in the circles of law students. ‘I will talk to Sullivan when we return,’ Jack sighed. ‘In the meantime you and Karl stay out of trouble while we are in Moresby.’

Lukas feigned affront at the suggestion that he and his mate would get into any trouble. ‘Father, did you not pay all those expensive fees to see your one and only son become a gentleman, unlike my wonderful father who made his fortune grubbing gold without the proper permits?’

Jack glanced at his son and frowned. Was he being mocked – or was his son’s statement delivered with great affection? It was hard to say with the younger generation. They had lived in a world of relative peace and not had to experience the harshest realities of life. Lukas placed his arm around his father’s shoulders and Jack knew that his statement had been delivered with love.

‘It will be good to be home,’ he said, and Jack agreed with him.

Paul, Karin, Karl and little Angelika were all waiting on the wharf at Moresby to greet them. Karin hugged Lukas and cried with joy. Her other son was home. Paul shook Jack’s hand with a strong grip. ‘You are getting soft, old friend,’ he said with a friendly jab at Jack’s stomach under his immaculate white suit. He himself wore his work clothes of old pants and a many times repaired shirt. Jack noticed how strong and healthy his old friend looked and felt just a little embarrassed at how unfit he had become working from his office. ‘I have heard that you own Sydney now and plan to buy the rest of Australia within the next year or two,’ Paul continued as he turned to Lukas. ‘How are you young man?’ he asked in German.

‘Very well, Uncle Paul,’ Lukas replied in kind.

‘Ja, it is good you have not forgotten your German. It is the language of your grandmother’s people.’

Angelika stood beside her mother and frowned. She only vaguely remembered the young man from a long time ago when she was a very little girl. But she did recall that he was not a mean teaser like her brother Karl. Lukas grinned at her and the frown turned to a shy smile.

‘Don’t you remember me?’ he asked as he bent to look directly into her eyes. She appeared a little confused. A lot had happened in her nine years on earth.

‘You are Lukas,’ she replied slowly. ‘You and Karl got into trouble for taking Mummy’s dumplings.’

Lukas laughed at the incident that he had almost forgotten from six years earlier. Finally Karl stepped forward and both boys engaged in a feigned exchange of blows.

‘How are you?’ Karl asked. ‘It’s been pretty quiet around Moresby without you,’ he continued. ‘You should have come back early with me instead of hanging around Sydney with Sarah Sullivan.’

Lukas was about to protest that she was not his girl but instead countered, ‘And which of the
meri
s have you been chasing, you big Kraut lughead?’

This brought on another bout of sparring. Their respective fathers shook their heads and walked down the wharf with Karin and Angelika beside them.

‘It is good to have you home,’ Karin said as she touched Jack’s arm with a gesture of affection. ‘Paul and I have missed you.’

‘Good to be back,’ Jack responded. ‘The place has a lot of memories for me. Both good and bad.’

A noticeable difference for Jack was that Paul drove them from the town to the plantation along a recently constructed track in his new Ford truck. The ride was bumpy but the track and truck turned the trip from what was a good day’s drive to just a few hours. The boys and Angelika sat in the back tray with the luggage. They called out in greeting to the villagers they passed, making their way to the market in Moresby. Conversation was limited as the noisy grinding of the transmission drowned out words as Paul constantly changed up and down the gears to negotiate the bends and bumps. All were glad when they reached the plantation after the long hot drive. Red dust had turned Jack’s immaculate white suit a pale pink. He stepped from the cabin and helped Karin down.

Dademo stood barefooted, wearing a starched lap lap around his waist on the verandah of the house. ‘Mr Jack, good thing you come back,’ he greeted with a flash of betel nut stained teeth. ‘I get the boys to bring your luggage.’

Jack thanked him and turned to Paul. ‘Sen decided that I could have him as my boss boy,’ Paul answered the unspoken question. ‘Paid the old Chinese pirate a good price to indenture him to me, but he has been worth it. Knows the business better than I do,’ he added.

Inside the house Jack noticed the improvements Paul’s share of the money had brought to the Mann family. A gramophone record player took pride of place beside a new piano and one wall was filled with book shelves and a good supply of novels, both in German and English. Jack had offered Paul a partnership in his mining enterprise but he had declined on the grounds that his life was tied to the land and not under it, as in mining operations. And so he had used his share to bolster his plantation, pay for Karl’s education, buy some luxuries for Karin and Angelika as well as put aside an amount in the bank for a rainy day. He had also purchased a little land in Townsville as a family retreat from Papua. In all he was happy with his simple life. A ‘rainy day’ had recently come in the form of the terrible financial depression, but his savings had kept the family afloat as the bottom fell out of the price of primary produce.