New Wife: Jake Five

[From Mr. Five’s unpublished memoir.]

Okay, my Ricky^[1] expects me to write this memoir and she says she will not read it until I am ready to show it and she’ll let me go over it with the good ol’ black highlighter. She says just write what comes to the old noggin. I just need to write about my crisp and fascinating life. I had plenty of time to write this fiddledeedee, but unfortunately, Mr. [Eight] wanted to be my best buddy, and mate, and possibly more. Not to mention keeping Smokey from ashes over my Ricky’s matilda,^[2] so I haven’t written a single page. And now Ricky is home, and she’s in a queer mood, so I should start writing.

Okay, I have the distinction of being in both a Nazi POW camp and a Japanese POW camp. I was sent to the African front in 1940. Met my future wife and soulmate when she was photographing this awful Egyptian general who shall go unnamed and he got quite rude. I was captured by the Nazis in the Fall of Tobruk in 1942, and went to a camp in that ol’ boot in Europe. I escaped when Hitler betrayed Mussolini, and all that dog’s dinner^[3] happened in 1943. Thank God I had Ricky’s help for that. I was assigned to the Pacific theater. Met some very interesting fellows there, some who got quite attached to me. But mostly, I met Ricky a thousand times. We vowed to marry if we survived this damn war. I was captured again in 1944, this time by the Japanese. Ricky helped me to escape then. Then the bombs fell and the Japanese kowtowed, so I proposed to Ricky as the peace papers were signed. Still married to my wife, no seven year itch!

Now, many fellows have asked me what the difference between Nazi and Jap camps are like. Well, you get parcels at the Nazi camps, whereas you just get mosquito nets at the Jap camps. Actually, when I was in the Jap camp, I thought to myself, this is how my mother, Hager, must have felt at the Bimbadeen^[4], around all these strangers, alone and lost. I have never been lost in my life, got an uncanny sense of direction. But often, I feel alone at parties, even with all the fellows surrounding me, and I want to scarp.^[5]

But Hagar did escape! She was placed as a kitchen maid in the household of Mr. George [Five], my late father, who was a handsome and charming widower, with six sons and a huge sheep station. He fell in love with her and when she got in the family way, he moved Heaven and Earth to get permission from the Chief Protector to marry her. And who could blame him, since my mother had such a bonzer^[6] soul, so optimistic and hard-working and faithful! Terribly ugly girl, though. And many thought she did Aboriginal witchcraft on my father, but folks says many wicked things. She told me I could be anything I wanted to be; even if I wanted to be a tomboy, I could be a tomboy. My governess told me only girls could be tomboys, and her Jane, her daughter Jane, said she could be a tomboy and I couldn’t. Then a month after I got a governess, my mother suddenly passed away from an illness. And my governess married my Daddy and became my new Mum, and her daughter, my sister, my late sister.^[7] Funny that. Couldn’t be any Aboriginal witchcraft there, she is a white lady.

Mrs. [One] is an awful lot like my stepmother. Very strict woman, very lovely, very white. I don’t mind white folk, I am pretty much a white fellow at this point, but I wish my Ricky would stop telling folks like that Nazi doctor that I’m 1/8 Aboriginal. I am sure he is reformed and he’s not going to start up a concentration camp again, but I don’t drop to that Aboriginal stuff. My mum died when I was only seven and she wasn’t biologically prepared to give me a male initiation. Didn’t get a chance to tell me about the woman’s magic either. She was Christian anyway, Church of England. I’m also part Greek and Irish, that means something too. Still, I love my Ricky, even though her rabbit trap^[8] does get her in trouble.

What did happen at the camp anyway? Has my Ricky gotten in trouble once again? My mum told me everyone has a heart of gold deep inside, so I guess Dr. Engelbert could be a good fellow. Ricky did tell me he suggested he tasted human meat, but I’ve tried that before and it only tastes like bad pork, and you do these things in war. Moreover, Dr. Engelbert hasn’t done anything with Mrs. [One], though she keeps throwing herself at him. And at me.

So yeah, I have had a break from Betty, but Benji has been calling most every day he can. He always wants to talk about Turkish oil wrestling, always putting his arm around my shoulder. And he is not a bad fellow, sure he has a heart of gold somewhere, but I think of poor Rose. Now he isn’t calling, but my wife is in the bedroom, expecting me to do my husbandly duties. She’s being awfully frisky tonight. These vitamins must be doing something to her. We haven’t done the Act since Easter and we were doing fine waiting for Christmas.

Look, it doesn’t happen every time we do the Act. For instance, the first time I laid with Ricky, I was too worried about Jap bullets to feel that way. But other times, whoa! I do feel like I need twelve hours to recover when I do. Not physically, I can get it up right afterward, but sometimes it just wears on my soul, you know? It’s not easy being a man, after all? Every fellow wishes he could give it all up some times, right?

I really should tell my Ricky, my wife, about Prince Dirk.^[9] And I should tell him it’s over. Lots of things I should tell her, really.

Well, this is enough typing for tonight. Once more into the breach.

1. Nickname for [Five]. ↩︎
2. Belongings. ↩︎
3. A mess. ↩︎
4. Cootamundra Domestic Training Home for Aboriginal Girls, which gave the children a full liberal arts education in everything from appliqué to yard work (but nothing for the Zs). ↩︎
5. Escape, run away. ↩︎
6. Good, excellent, beautiful. ↩︎
7. Jane [Five] passed away of Scarlet Fever in 1928. ↩︎
8. Mouth. ↩︎
9. Mr. [Five]’s nickname for the Muvian prince, Tiāroku. The Kingdom of Mu was officially neutral in World War II, but Tiāroku was sympathetic to the Allies. ↩︎