Villa Maria Monastery, Tarban Bay, Sydney, 1944.

“Darling day!”

See Umie Takhei, 35, oriental, the hairstyle of a modern Japanese/American woman of the 40s. She wears a straw hat for shade—and a scarf for panache. And long khaki shorts and shirt with sleeves rolled up. She's alone in a litttle wooden skiff -- a crab pot lashed  on the bow.

Reflected light from the water makes her shockingly beautiful to the Marist novice on summer holidays from the Mittagong Seminary. Like staring at water sparkle, Alphonsus can barely look. It doesn't help she's caught him naked, up to his waste in the warm clear water of the secluded little bay tucked away in the upper reaches of Sydney Harbour. 

“ Yeah. ” 

A few paddle strokes and the streamlined little boat slips past, heading  into the half-submerged mangrove trees that skirt the shore.

Waiting till she's clear, Alphonsus turns and grabs mangrove roots to haul himself up the bank. Pulling on pants  he hurries back up towards the tall pines on the slope behind him. Then  he remembers his shirt and slides back down the slope to retrieve  it off a branch.

“Brother Andre!

Two elder Marist brothers sit in prayer on a wooden bench in the pine stand. The view before them stretches across Tarban Bay and all the way to the Sydney Harbour Bridge, a scribble in the distance. Alphonsus approaches, breathless.

“ A Japanese spy – she's gone up the creek!”

Without opening his eyes Brother Andre mumbles”

”Is the culprit with or without a paddle.”

The other brother in prayer emits a snigger.

Brother Andre holds up a hand to indicate  the novice must wait . Alphonsus  sees the little boat approaching, inverted with two legs protruding, a two-legged water tortise. Umie throws off the hull and unbolts the wooden doors that lead to the cool vault  beneath the monastery  building. She hauls the boat in and shuts the doors behind her.

Alphonse can’t wait for God. He sneaks up and  peers through the small window with the bars, cut in the sandstone. In the slant of light he can see wine casks, oars. Then 2 breasts. He drops to the ground – back to the wall.

The two elder monks are now approaching from the pine forest. Brother Andre has his arms extended.

“Welcome back Alphonsus! We look forward to your summer visits! Come here, come here!

Little round Brother Andre embraces the tall thin novice with genuine fondness. All three walk towards the arched veranda, talking as they go.

“Wait till you see the birds in the bay this year,  everyone’s been saying ‘Alphonsus will the love the Pelicans, Alphonsus will love the  Cukoos, hope the black cockatoos are still around when Alphonsus gets here’”.

Brother Peter adds good-naturedly. “ You’d think it was the damn secound coming.”

Brother Andre stops for a moment puts his hands on Alphonsus’ shoulders.

“ Your joy in the birds lifts our spirits. The world is short on joy.”

“Who’s the Jap in the cellars?”

Brother Andre laughs.

Inside Brother Andre’s office now, the three of them seated, the head brother leans across his big desk, using his hands in open-palmed gestures.

“Our faith requires us to believe that someone we can’t see is real. It should not come as too difficult to do the reverse.”

Umie  knocks and steps onto the room,  filling  it in the way that Americans do. 

"How-dy!"

“Alphonsus, this is our guest, Umie. Please always remember, she does not exist.”

Again Alphonsus is momentarily blinded by her oriental beauty, perfect skin, now in stark contrast with the faces of the two Australian brothers, sun damaged by years of working on the little farm that feeds the Villa Maria Monastery and some of the Hunters Hill locals.  Umie speaks in her forthright  accent.

“ We’ve met. Sorry if I embarrassed you ”

He  turns to Brother Andre.

“You're sheltering a spy? 

“Umie is American. We’re keeping her here, to continue her good work.”

Brother Andre shifts in his chair, not totally comfortable with what he’s revealed. Brother Peter takes over with enthusiasm.

“ We can keep a better eye on her than any internment camp.”

“Her good work?”

“ Umie does shorthand. She listens to Radio Zero and takes down prisoner information when the  mongrels give it out. Then she writes letters to the relations.”

Brother Andre takes a bundle of letters out from a draw in his desk.

"You must read the responses Umie gets, not-knowing is a cruel thing Alphonsus".

He undoes the rubber band from the bundle of letters. "Odd to think the joy a mother feels to know her son is in a Jap internment camp. There's 20,000 father’s and sons no-one’s heard from since Singapore."

Brother Peter, sees an awkward moment – says quietly.

“ Alphonsus’s brother was at The Fall, Brother Andre.”

“Oh!  I am sorry to hear that Alphonsus! Why didn’t anyone tell me?!”

Umie asks as softly as she can:

“What is his name, your brother? I'll listen out.”

Alphonsus doesn’t trust her. Father Andre gives him a “go ahead” nod. Alphonsus remains silent. Brother Andre lightens the moment, standing up.

“Umie's a real Yankie! She's been teaching us Golf – the movie stars are playing it!”

Brother Peter adds with a smile: “ And we’re mastering brush painting – Umie can paint a kookaburra in 5 strokes! You two will get on tremendously!”

Umie lowers her gaze as if to take the spotlight off Alphonsus. He softens, a little.

Alphonsus, and another novice from Mittagong, Archie, unpack their clothes and books. Alphonsus looks towards the third bed, not made up.

“Where did Richard end up, I thought he was still here?

Archie won’t say. Alphonsus knows that look. Archie can feel he’s being stared at.

“He left the brothers.”

“Just left did he?”

“I’m not allowed to tell you he enlisted ok, so I won’t.”

They avoid each other’s gaze – and keep unpacking. Alphonsus takes out a braille Bible, puts it on the little table beside one bed. His fingers fly over the little raised dots on the cover. He’s not blind – he’s dyslexic. All the letters jump around in his vision, so he’s learnt Braille.

Archie unpacks an ink bottle, fountain pen and writing paper.

“Promised I’d write when I arrived. – want me to do yours first cob?”

“Thanks.”

Alphonsus pushes open the shutters to reveal the view, all the way to the bridge.

“Do you reckon their mini subs could make it up to Tarban?”

“Like to see them try. So…’Dear Mum. Archie and I arrived safely from Mittagong, saw lots of new birds on the way. Yeah?” Archie has been writing it down.

“Yeah.”

Alphonsus is focused on the billowing clouds out above the ocean beyond the Harbour Bridge. He comes up with:

“ Don’t worry too much about Dominic Mum, I’m going to get all the brothers praying for him – that’s a lot of prayer power to drop on the nips.”

Archie grins sadly as he writes that down. He crosses himself, as if for Alphonsus’s missing brother.

HUNTERS HILL POST OFFICE

The Hunter’s Hill post office looks like it belongs on a model train set. In the mail- sorting room a woman teams open an envelope. She slips out the letter, carefully folds it open. She reads to herself a moment, then out aloud.

“That’s a lot of prayer power to drop on the Japanese!” She flicks the letter.

“There!” Her husband responds with:

“There what?!”

“Come Charlie, read between the lines! There’s something going on in that monastery. We should report this.”

“Opening other peoples’ mail is the only crime I’m seeing!”

She continues reading, looking for evidence.

“Saw lots of new birds along the way – new birds – that’s aircraft-- he’s giving away military secrets! ”

“The guy just likes birds for God’s sake Vera! Give me a look.”

He takes the pages off her, reads through the round spectacles on his nose. A frown – he quickly goes to the third page – whispers:

“Holy crap!”

“What is it?”

He reads “ It was fun coming by truck, even though you can come to the bay by bus and we may return that way. Bus! Return!”

“What Charlie?”

“What’s bus backwards?!”

“ Sub? Oh my Lord! You can come to the bay by sub!”

Charlie erupts into laughter and Vera whacks him with the letter.

Now in the monastery kitchen – Alphonsus holds a bowl of sliced raw fish with garnish. Brother Michael the thin cook says:

“It’s how she likes it. Just take it to her before it gets warm”

Alphonsus climbs the spiral stairs, up to the little door of the attic room, on the level above the dormitory. He is about to knock when he hears music. Dinah Shore sings ‘I’ll walk Alone’. Then the voice of a man, Australian with affected British vowels.

“That was Dinah Shore with her rendition of ‘I’ll walk Alone’ on Radio Zero where we wish all Australian troops good fortune and plead with them to surrender and be welcomed into the benevolent sphere of the Japanese Empire. Keep listening, because soon we’ll have more information on your loved ones who have gratefully surrendered at Singapore. Your son or brother may be on today’s list.”

Alphonsus does not want to disturb Umie from her work. He puts the bowl of Sushi at the door, knocks and retreats down the stairs. One level down and the door opens.

“Alponsus!”

“Yes Umie?”

“Thanks buddy.”

“Ok.”

He continues down the stairs and out into the sunlight.

UMIE’S ATTIC ROOM.

“ Albert Franks of Rockdale, Sydney, 19 years of age wants his mother Margaret and dad Wattie to know he’s been captured and is safe and well in a Burma prisoner of war camp where he will see out the war. Lucky for some!” That radio voice again.

A pen dances across a page as Umie’s little hand writes the calligraphy of shorthand.

“Also in Burma, Donald Peterson, 23 from Newcastle, New South Wales would like to inform his worried Mum Dot and sister Nell that he’s living it up, safe and well behind enemy lines in the care of the Japanese Army. Keep listening to Radio Zero for more on your missing loved ones. Your broadcast announcer today on Tokyo Radio today is David Charles with a song for all those sweethearts back home who the boys in uniform are missing so much. Billie Holiday and her band perform my favourite popular tune. Especially for you’n’me Embraceable You, for you’n’me”

Umie’s eyes lift at the song title and dedication. That’s their song. Her lips mouth:

“You-n-me”

Umie gets the homonym, and smiles softly. She picks up the framed photograph of a man 40 year old man in army uniform at a radio-studio microphone. Holding it to her heart, she stands and dances slowly, a bonsai waltz to fit the confined space of the attic room.

Later on the lawn, and Whack! Brother Peter hits a golf ball into the long fishing net strung out on poles.

Whack! Brother Andre misses his ball. Whack! Misses again.

“Your grip brother Andre!” Calls Umie from a chair under the cloisters.

Whack! Brother Andre’s golf ball shoots straight up into the blue, and falling earthwards, bounces off the tiled chapel roof , back into the air, finally ascending to hit the new marble nose on a St Mary statue – cracking it off – causing it to fall at the feet of the Samoan, brother Faluha. He picks up the marble nose with and caresses it with large brown fingers.

“Sorry brother, you ok!”

Brother Faluha looks towards Umie, composing, behind his dark eyes, the words he will use when he calls the authorities.

“I believe there’s a Japanese spy at The Villa Maria Monastery. She has a radio in the attic that picks up Radio Tokyo. I am not from the monastery. I am not from the Asylum. Thank you and God bless.”

He’s not sure - it’ll need more work before he makes the call. He goes back inside.

Alphonsus rides a pushbike in the morning sun, straining to take on the steep road up to the Hunters Hill hamlet. The last section is downhill and he rattles along at speed now. At the Post Office he takes a satchel out of the bike’s basket and rests the bike against the sandstone block wall.

Inside , he unbuckles the satchel takes out letters, four or so at a time, placing them on the counter in front of the postmistress. There’s 25 in all, addressed by hand, no stamps. The postmistress shoots a look to her husband. He approaches the counter.

“ Morning brother…?”

“Just call me Alphonsus mate. I’m still a novice – on holidays from Mittagong seminary”

“Nice to meet you Alphonsus -- my wife Valerie.”

“Pleasure.” says Valerie: “ The brothers have been busy writing correspondence I see, part of the war effort?”

“We have a brother who listens to Radio Zero. Good reception up at Villa. He knows shorthand, so when the Japanese give out soldier whereabouts he scribbles it down and sends it to the parents.

“ Well that explains it, doesn’t it Val? ”

She’s reading the addresses.

How much for the stamps please?”

“That’s ten, fifteen, twenty-five letters at tupence each –“

“—four shillings and tupence.” His maths is good.

“The brothers have been teaching you well. If a fit young man like you gets out of fighting I guess he’s gotta do something. ”

She slides open a little draw and takes out a sheet of stamps. Carefully rip – ripping some off, she exchanges them for his coins. As he takes them, turns to the side counter- and begins separating the stamps and licking them to stick them on the envelopes.

Finished, and squeamish from the glue, he steps outside and drops the letters in the red Post Office letterbox. He mounts the pushbike and cycles off back up the hill. Inside, the Postmistress watches him suspiciously, from the door – turns to her husband:

“Why would the Japs give out details about our boys?”

He rolls his eyes. “ To keep everyone listening, so they can brainwash ‘em. You should listen in, they play the latest swing numbers”

He playfully grabs her for a little 2 step together – gets her giggling.

COWRA POST OFFICE

A young, fresh-faced Maggie leaves the Cowra post office, satchel slung over her shoulder which she throws into a sidecar of a Triumph motorbike. Now she’s smoking up the country air, winding through the hills of bleached blond grass. Yellow-arsed grasshoppers kamikaze on her flying goggles. She pulls up at a farm , leaves the engine running as she unhitches the gate and swings it open. She gets back on her machine drives in, dismounts, shuts the gate and drives up to the house.

A man and woman come out onto the veranda, but not into the sunlight. Their faces are pale, drawn. The motorbike falls silent.

“You can just pop it in the box, y’know luv!”

“Don’t worry! No telegram! Some good news Mr and Misses Walters! He’s alive!”

The woman’s face lights up – she hurries down the veranda steps to take the letter and rip it open. The husband stays in the shade.

His wife’s eyes rest on the words – her tears make them a blurr . She hands it to the post woman. “Please Maggie – if you don’t mind.”

Maggie reads aloud, so Mr. Walters can also hear.

“Dear Mr and Misses Walters. I’m am pleased to inform you that according to broadcasts on Tokyo Radio Zero Hour, your son, Mathew Walters of the Australian Regiment captured in Singapore is alive and well in a prisoner of war camp at an undisclosed location. He sends you his love and asks for you not to worry”.

The woman takes the letter back, holds it to her cheek, where the thin paper blots up tears. The man comes down the stairs to put her arm around his wife, just before she collapses.

A periscope sharks into a Moonlit Tarban bay. The Japanese mini submarine slips to the surface and comes to a slow halt. The main hatch opens on deck. A Japanese submariner emerges, a rifle slung over his shoulder. He climbs down the side of the sub until he reaches water level. Then he steps off the steel rungs and places one foot on the water’s surface. Then the other. He walks on the water towards the shoreline. Suddenly he’s holding a rifle with a baby on the bayonet.

Alphonsus awakes. He opens the shutters carefully so as not to wake Archie. Below in the distance, beyond the pines, the moonlight catches on the bay. Alphonsus throws on some pants and a shirt, quietly opens the door onto the stairs. Glancing up he sees that Umie’s door, on the next level, is open.

He heads down the stairs and out onto the lawn, the moon unfairly giving him a long and obvious shadow. The air is still warm from the previous day when the South Easterly cool-change failed to arrive. He follows the stone wall and disappears into the darkness of the pines.

Emerging at the water’s edge, he sits on the upturned dinghy he and Archie had fished from earlier. Like in his dream, the moon is on the water. A mullet leaps in the channel, then leaps again. Alphonsus watches the gentle wind-ripple on the water, then searches the sky for stars. A fruit bat flies overhead. Alphonusus’s eyes follow its silhouette towards the mangrove, where the little figure of Umie stands naked on the water.

He blinks. Goes to sneak away but she’s seen him.

“ I’m standing on a log – there’s something in the water.”

He averts his gaze.

“ Probably just mullet. They come in at night.”

“I think it’s a snake, swimming.”

He’s not sure what to do.

“We don’t kill snakes! Brother Andre says God made them for a reason!”

“To kill me?! Come get me in the boat!”

Still avoiding looking at her, he flips the dinghy right side up.

“ My clothes are on the rock!”.

Alphonse picks up her shirt and trousers and places them carefully on the seat in the boat. He throws in the oars and pushes off, leaping aboard. Inserting the oars into the oar locks one at a time, he’s soon on his way with clean symmetrical strokes that make no noise dipping into the black water.

He glances over his shoulder to line up his approach. Almost there, he dips the left oar deeper to turn the dinghy. Umie bends to grab the edge of the wooden boat. He glimpses her petite body, her breasts momentarily swinging.

Umie ties her shirt around her waist and sits on her trousers. Topless, she looks ahead, over his head, towards the shore that he now has his back to. He pulls back on the oars, putting effort into not looking directly at her. Another stroke of the oars. Alphonsus can see her dark nipples in his peripheral vision. Another stroke. Both are modestly looking off into the trees. Alphonsus digs the oars in again and raises them, each dripping water. Losing the battle he looks straight at her breasts. The oars are stilled. She’s looking away still. The dinghy is motionless in the bay. Umie’s breathing is quickening. Alphonsus stares. And so does Brother Mario, peeking over a sandstone outcrop up the slope. A red-bellied black snake slithers towards his hideout.

Later.

Alphonse sneaks back into the dormitory, gently opening the door and tiptoeing in past Archie’s bed. He undresses and buries himself under the brown covers. He turns back to look at the small statue of Saint Mary on the small table in the corner, imagines her naked, her breasts. He hears little foot scuffs on the attic floorboards above him, Umie’s room. She is dancing with the photo of her husband again.

Alphonse and Archie are heading down to the bay. Alphonse carries a large bible.

They sit on a long wooden seat near the water’s edge. Alphonse hands Archie the Bible. He opens it up, turns a few pages.

“St Peter to the apostles?”

“Read where it says I can’t go and save Dominic from the Japs.”

“There wasn’t any Japs when the Bible was written.”

“ What about ‘I am my brother’s keeper’. Does that mean I could go and fight? What If I didn’t kill?”

“You’d be dead in a week – war is kill or be killed, idiot.”

“ Why are the owls and everything else around this place allowed to kill?”

“Because they’ve got to eat, drongo.”

“So if I was a cannibal?”

“Why are you here?”

“My mother. She threw me to the brothers and Dominic into the army. She had no choice – our father wasn’t around. She was hoping they’d fix my reading. In the end, I just got used to it. And you?”

“ I just feel better when I read the word, or pray with the brothers. It fills up a hole.”

“ Are we all supposed to have a hole? Is that what I’m missing?”

Archie laughs. “I just go by how I feel. I feel good being a novice brother. There’s nothing to think about.”

“There is if you really think about it, like, why is a monastery of men dedicated to a woman – instead of Jesus.”

“Never gave it a thought. It’s just Villa Maria.”

SYNDEY’S HYDE PARK CITIDAL - PRESENT DAY.

Ismal sneers: “That’s where you Catholics lost the plot. Women are unclean”

Alphonsus snaps.

“Your mother is a woman you piece of ISIS shit! And you’re about to tear her heart out for what? – some crap you read on the Internet?!”

Ismal jumps to his feet, knife ready to gut him.

“ I’m going to kill you now!”

Whack! He slugs the old man in the face, almost knocking his head off. A line of blood trickles from one nostril.

“You’re going to Hell son.”

“You Christians are deluded. Your god isn’t real.”

“ No god is real, they’re spiritual.”

Ismal thinks about that, then:

“Bet you screwed the whore?”

Let me finish and you’ll find out.

Outside the locked-up citadel the SAS are running through their options.

Now back in monastery.

The mid-summer air hanging about the monastery is stifling once more, with every soul waiting for the afternoon cool change to come from the south east around four.

Allphonsus sits at his open window, Brother Dominic’s book open in front of him. The sounds of Bing Crosby and the Andrews Sisters’ “Don’t fence me in” drift down from the open window on the attic floor above. The song comes to an end and the mellow voice of Umie’s husband, Charles, comes across the airwaves live from Tokyo.

“ That was for the Australian boys in the camps with their feet up, waiting for the war to end to get together with their sweethearts. Hello from Radio Tokyo – this is Zero Hour with Billboards top songs playing on our Jukebox.”

Sumie’s shorthand appears on a page, before the words from the radio can disappear in the air.

“ To all the Australian troops and the families back home who are listening in, relax and listen carefully to the popular tunes from America. The Japanese Emperor wants nothing more than peace in the pacific, under glorious Japanese rule. There is no further, news from the soldiers in New Guinea. But let’s go no any further with all the talk, put on your marching boots Australian troops, and do nothing but listen to Duke Ellington playing ‘Do nothing till you hear from me! Good advice there from the Duke.” And that will be followed by Glen Gray and his orchestra performing ‘My heart tells me, I believe my heart.’

Umie has been underling key words. She goes through them as the song begins:

Nothing more. No further, news. New Guinea. No further, news. Put up your marching boots. Do nothing. Do nothing till you here from me. My heart tells me, I believe my heart.

She listens to Glen Gray croon “My heart tells me – should I believe my heart?”

Checking with the song title she just wrote down Umie finds a difference. Her scribble reads ‘My heart tells me – I believe my heart’. There is no interrogative as in the song itsrlf.

Below, Alphonsus hears her footfall, heading for her door – faster than normal. She descends the stairs past his door, little feet going like fingers on a keyboard.

Brother Andre is deeply unsure studying the scribbles Umie has put on his desk.

Brother Peter knocks and enters.

“Umie has something she wants us to look at.”

He passes the scribbles to Brother Peter – stands and closes the shutters.

“Here is proof they are wrong. My husband is not a traitor. He is passing us coded military information.”

Brother Peter sits. Reads the underlined words:

“Do I believe my heart – love that tune.

Brother Andre says: “What do you believe he’s telling us, other than to do nothing?

Or is that the point?”

Umie charges in: “Australia is about to fight the Japanese in New Guinea. He’s telling us not to. He knows something about their intention.”

“Such as?”

“Such as they don’t intend to take Australia after they have New Guinea!”

Brother Peter reads again, this time with the melody: “My heart tells me, I believe my heart.”

Brother Andre takes a deep breath, looks out through the slats of the shutters.

“Even if we’re unsure, I suppose we should alert somebody.”

After a moment brother Peter asks: “Who do we speak to?”

Father Andre walks back to Umie and takes both her hands.

“ Umie my love, if you’re right, Australia could abandon New Guinea and save thousands of our boys, and some of their poor parents. But if you’re reading too much into Charles’s words.. We hide you here because your letters are a great comfort to the nation. If we make a fuss and bring attention to ourselves.. We don’t want you interned Umie my love.

Brother Peter adds: “There is another possibility we will have to consider.”

“ Charles is not on the Japanese side!” Umie is more insistent.

“I’m sure Umie, but if he is.”

Umie grabs her notes and storms from the room. For a few moments the brothers say nothing. Then Brother Peter gets up and closes the door Umie left open.