Return To Eden

By Richard Taylor

Taylor's series resumes in 1941 with Joe Armand-Joshua's son in Eden Lost-in Manila to purchase a ship. While there, he goes to the grave of Isabella from Eden Lost and meets Luci Blake, an American nurse. They fall in love as the Philippines are attacked by Japanese, but escape Manila to live out the wa

• Language: English
• Publisher: URLink Print & Media, LLC
• Release date: Sep 12, 2021
• ISBN: 9781647539320

Richard Taylor

Richard Taylor is Emeritus Professorial Fellow at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge

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RETURN TO

EDEN

RICHARD

TAYLOR

Return to Eden

Copyright © 2021 by Richard Taylor. All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any way by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the author except as provided by USA copyright law.

The opinions expressed by the author are not necessarily those of URLink Print and Media.

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Published in the United States of America

Library of Congress Control Number: 2021917320

ISBN 978-1-64753-931-3 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-1-64753-933-7 (Hardback)

ISBN 978-1-64753-932-0 (Digital)

11.08.21

"We’re the battling bastards of Bataan, No mama, no papa, no Uncle Sam;

No aunts, no uncles, no nephews, no nieces,

No rifles, no planes or artillery pieces,

And nobody gives a damn."

-Frank Hewlett, UPI, Manila and Corregidor

I shall return!

-General Douglas MacArthur

I can never go back there. - Joshua Armand

War is life’s dividing line.

-Elizabeth Norman, We Band of Angels

War was our marriage, the guerrillas our sons.

- Yay Panlilio, The Crucible

Life doesn’t always turn out the way we imagine.

-Luci Blake

Dedicated to

Technical Sergeant Wm. Murray McLeod

565th Signal Air Warning Battalion, U.S. Army

New Guinea and Luzon Campaigns

He returned with MacArthur

CONTENTS

Foreword

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty-One

Twenty-Two

Twenty-Three

Twenty-Four

Twenty-Five

Twenty-Six

Twenty-Eight

Twenty-Nine

Thirty

Thirty-One

FOREWORD

Inspiration for Return to Eden emerged from unsettling questions from Eden Lost—especially what happened to Joshua Armand? In Return to Eden, set during World War II, the indomitable spirit and enduring love of Isabella from Eden Lost still thrives.

The Eden-series was derived from personal experiences in Luzon involving national histories and culture. Uncle Murray McLeod’s service in New Guinea and his return with MacArthur to Luzon made one personal connection for me, adding to those of my own in the Philippine Islands, especially awarding POW medals to Filipino survivors of the Bataan death march.

This story was inspired by heroes and heroines of the critical guerrilla war in the Philippines during Japanese occupation. Some notables include Yay Panlilio & Carlos Augustin of The Crucible, Edwin Ramsey of Lieutenant Ramsey’s War, the nurses of Bataan in We Band of Angels, Robert Lapham of Lapham’s Raiders, Russell Volckmann of American Guerilla, Ray Hunt of Behind Japanese Lines, the American Red Cross in World War II as told in By His Side, Claire Phillips of Manila Espionage and the Film version I was an American Spy, and Margaret Utinsky of Miss U and POW: Angel on Call.

Chronicles of the war in the Philippines by those who did not survive may never be told; unfortunately, some amazing tales of courage, sacrifice, and tenacity were lost with those victims. The sacrifices of soldiers, sailors, marines, airmen, and merchant seamen in the Pacific was unquestionable, but often overlooked due to the priority assigned to campaigns in Europe. This novel imagines one storyline, one episode, in untold stories of war and love.

Return to Eden follows Eden Lost. Almost Eden, set in the Philippines, Vietnam and the United States during the Vietnam War completes the generational trilogy of war and love. This is a work of fiction based on historical precedents.

In the Beginning….

St. Johns River near Jacksonville, Florida June, 1940

"Who’s Isabella?"

Joe Armand casually tossed a loaded question to his father and in doing so, disturbed the dead. Joshua Armand, at seventy-one years, was noticeably shaken. He stood riveted to the helm of Saint Lela—a thirty-eight-footer, twin to Hemingway’s fishing boat Pilar.

The disquieting question evoked a vision from the grave, bending a spiritual time warp. For Josh this was a wound by friendly fire. An old familiar twinge plucked at his heart and his stumpy finger throbbed as it always did every time she stirred. Phantom pains and fleeting memories kept her presence in every room of his life—except where Joe and his mother, Sylvia, existed. Joshua had loved Sylvia, in a respectable sense, but it was Isabella who was foremost in his heart; ever young and beautiful in his eyes even as she was always just out of reach.

But her spirit endured with Josh.

Hastily, he fired up the seventy-five horsepower Chrysler, pushed it to sixteen knots, and summoned a passing wind to scatter her unexpected apparition. He couldn’t outrun the past, never had. Choppy waves popped the bottom of the hull, arousing other gloomy spirits from the rippling river. Saint Lela strained against resisting currents of air and water, seeking a safer haven for a faint heart.

The river’s narrow jaws stretched wider into an isolated and serene sweep where neither fish nor fishers lingered. Josh choked the engine and the heavy salt-water boat sputtered and drifted with the current. Steely eyes of a primordial alligator, their only witness, floated motionless on the surface cloaked in grassy shallows nearer shore.

Josh turned to confront the conveyer of the surprising question, his only son delivering a lost letter. Sylvia had cheerfully endured two years married to an anguished man before she died delivering Joe, their only child. Josh scrutinized him sadly then signaled to let loose the anchor to the muddy bottom.

Joshua Armand had inherited a lucrative shipping business and extensive properties and affluence amassed by his father, Josephus Armand. After losing his beloved Isabella, he sought only to bury himself in the business, expand his empire, use work to break free from haunting agonies of Manila. That had been his plan until he tried to salvage a middling life by marrying Sylvia, an attractive, wealthy and well-connected widow—but she was simply his consolation prize. When she died having Joe, Josh’s twice-broken heart left him more bitter than before and unsettled in his realm. Sylvia had thrived on the merits of normalcy, Isabella never had. He was lost in that wide space between them.

He put regular life aside and appointed his operations officer to run the company day-to-day while he raised Joe, fulfilling his obligation to Sylvia. Perhaps his obligation to Isabella could never be met. Now with war in Europe practically certain, he focused on the important business of meeting the requirements of a second world war.

Armand Shipping was based in Boston, but that New England city was colder than Manila, so he set up a branch in Jacksonville and managed from where he could watch over his citrus groves. There was more space to run from regrets or simply run horses with Joe during summer breaks from college.

Now this!

Isabella! Her name sang like a sad song of love and sorrow. Why did such lyrics resound now? He’d never spoken her name to Joe nor anyone else since that day in March of 1901, a day that never ended, a day relived only in the dreaded dark of night.

Where’d you hear that name? Not a question—a shot across the bow.

I ... I didn’t mean to upset you, Dad, Joe stammered. If you don’t want to talk about her ... never mind. But there was no retreating now. The genie escaped the bottle and was loosed.

Where’d you hear that name ... Isabella? The sound of it croaked in his throat, long cosseted in a secret alcove.

Her name was reserved for his private devotion aboard Saint Lela, or far out at sea on stormy and dismal nights in abandoned places, only whispered into west-breathing winds strewn with tempests. Isabella—an illusion which seared heart and mind.

He thought he was beyond her—had adjusted, adapted, accommodated, compensated—finally moved past what happened between them. Gabriel had not yet blown his dreaded horn but her image arose from the grave and confronted him again, as thinking about her always did.

I’m ... I’m sorry, Dad. Joe faltered, unbalanced by the startling impact of his innocent question. I didn’t mean to ... to ... intrude.

Josh’s fist clinched, menacing. Where? Damn it!

Dad ... I ... I, uh, was browsing through your old sailing manuals in a steamer trunk and found your letters to Grandpa Josephus. While you were in the Philippines, you wrote about her ... long before you met mom. You were ... in love with her!

You had no business digging those up! In the grassy shallows nearby, the alligator snapped its jaws on a school of fish passing innocently. It swung its mighty tail, creating ripples, forcing reeds to bow to power.

I know ... but I saw that sketch of you ... and her. ‘Making a Legend Together,’ it said. I was curious, that’s all. It was, like, you know, hidden under those musty sea manuals.

You should’ve left it there, he mumbled, drawing back. His private obsession now apparent to his son by Sylvia, a different woman. What he had kept concealed was now in the open and that was disquieting. They were in the same boat but in different worlds. Josh looked past Joe, beyond Saint Lela and the fussy river to another universe, an Eden long lost. Josh had misplaced an entire lifetime over there in three short years and was incapable of restoring it through the past forty. Their legend was buried with her in distant Luzon dust.

He sighed, resigned to having to explain. Pass me a cold one, he said.

Dreams of long-ago flicked past while the lazy river meandered at a timeless rate. Only the alligator was contented. Open one for yourself, Joe. Haul in the lines. This might take a while.

Josh turned up a long neck bottle and studied his son at work—a double of himself forty years before. Joe possessed none of Sylvia’s features, though he was the only living measure of her existence. And Joe understood nothing of substance of Isabella, one who having held Josh’s heart in her hands, leaving only invisible scars and unfulfilled dreams. His son was a copy of himself, without the trauma ... yet.

Joe expertly reeled in and stowed fishing lines. When he settled down with his beer, Josh began a fascinating story, one he had never shared. His true life began after Commodore George Dewey’s devastating attack on the Spanish fleet in Manila Bay in 1898. Joe listened, mesmerized by a history lesson he’d ignored in school. Josh regaled a version rehearsed only in dreams—so amazing it seemed only fantasy. He detailed his first encounter with the alluring Isabella on a dusty Manila street, his kidnapping and desperate rescue, how they straddled a dangerous line of divided loyalties, how they lived between Filipino rebels and armed American occupiers, a race run against time and harsh elements—a risky attempt to spare one hero from another. The contest was lost, then everything valued by him was also lost— Eden was lost.

Josh wiped away a disorderly tear, improper before Joe, but pointed a finger of caution to listen and not speak. He plunged ahead, as in Isabella’s cranky buggy, to the murky end of an unfinished story. He stayed mostly honest and true to things he knew.

As he wrapped up, the sky threatened to come down on them while even the sluggish river grew threatening as the once solemn moon hid behind marching armies of ominous clouds. On such a night Joe could no longer abide his father’s anguish. He welcomed nature’s interference; regretting having stirred a witch’s brew in the first place. Yet they had drank all the bitter dregs together.

The two men, old and young, sat wordlessly for a short time in a gathering gale, swaying with choppy waves and gusty winds rocking Saint Lela. The warm and gentle breeze that had blessed Josh’s unfolding narrative turned suddenly ghoulish with surging cold and heavy drops as it turned a tantrum. Lightning crackled and flashed quite close as thunder rumbled over a petulant cosmos.

Dad, it’s starting to rain ... really hard.

I’ve been rained on before, he said. We’ll be fine but we’ll never speak of this again. He gripped Saint Lela’s helm and revived the power of sleeping horses, whipping them furiously for home.

Joe shifted closer to his father and shouted over the clamor of the straining Chrysler engines, Have you ever considered going back? ... to the Philippines, I mean?

Never! I can never go back there!

ONE

In early 1940 Hitler and Mussolini formed an evil alliance against France and England. By April the Germans invaded Denmark and Norway and by May the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxemburg, then they breeched the impregnable Maginot line in France. English troops began evacuating from Dunkirk when German troops reached the English Channel. Churchill offered his rousing retort of blood, toil, tears, and sweat. Roosevelt finally increased naval tonnage by eleven per cent and three months later made the draft lawful. By the end of the year, the Lend-Lease Act was adopted, supplying equipment to allies in the war. War in Europe was now unavoidable for the United States.

Makalapa Naval Housing,

Pearl Harbor, Territory of Hawaii

Luci Blake faced a quandary. Celebrating her achievement was now spoiled since she knew navy lieutenant, junior grade, William K. Matthews would propose marriage. That, plus another unsettled matter with her father, added up to one good and two bads, a deficit any way she sliced it. All this when she should be on top of the world. Her mother could have helped iron out wrinkles with her father but she chose to stay neutral. Luci curbed her annoyance and decided to deal with each stressor calmly. The responsibility, after all, was all hers.

Her parents’ friends and their neighbors had gathered to celebrate her hard-earned certification as a registered nurse. She hadn’t invited any friends although her father invited Will. She knew her father would be disappointed when she refused to bring Will into the family, but a sudden change in direction for her career would be equally disappointing for him. A year after the death of her brother Larry, her father’s despondency and irritability had gradually declined, although recent war news had set the entire island on edge. This news would hurt him once more.

She could never replace her brother and she wouldn’t marry Will to fill his shoes either. She was equally devastated, perhaps more, when Larry drowned in Waikiki’s high surf while she couldn’t save him, and survived. She plunged into sports, skydiving, shooting, surfing, fishing, hunting, camping, hiking, taking greater risks, but nothing was ever enough. She wasn’t Larry. She wasn’t equipped as a man and she wouldn’t stand in for him anymore. She was tough enough, but she was an attractive redhead, a swimsuit model, not a college football player. She embraced her feminine side. But she absolutely would not marry Will.

She was not a female naval combatant either, though her father expected her to preserve family service tradition. Navy wives were secure in some ways, some assignments were even exciting, but more often they were lonely as their husbands sailed away to exotic places. Accepting Will’s proposal would leave both of them unhappy in the end. She couldn’t satisfy either of them. The time had come to stop pretending, to stand up for herself, strike out in a new direction. This she had decided.

Friday afternoons represented happy hour at the gathering place, this time at Lieutenant Commander Hank Blake’s senior officer quarters on the naval base where bleached white rows of housing lined up like finely polished teeth smiling down on Pearl Harbor.

Known as Hank to his peers, Hammering Hank to subordinates like Lieutenant, junior grade, Will Matthews, the naval officer clanged a shiny brass ship’s bell for attention, then hoisted his glass high to signal a toast.

Ladies and Gentlemen—recharge your flutes for a toast on this fine Hawaiian afternoon. Two Oriental houseboys in white jackets and black spit-shined shoes scurried to refill each glass with Veuve Clicquot Brut Champagne, the moderately expensive label signifying what everyone already knew was coming. Island neighbors who had known Lucille Elani Blake since she was in diapers mingled with officers and their wives from the Battleship U.S.S. Oklahoma, and some locals who had grown up with Mrs. Elani Kealoha Blake, now a ranking naval officer’s wife and Luci’s proud mother.

Elani’s flowing ebony hair, multi-hued flowering lei, and printed midnight orchid muumuu stood her apart from other navy wives, blending more with her native friends. Hank and Elani stood together like bookends—his crisp white uniform on one side, her soft flowing silk on the other—framing Luci in the middle in a modest black cocktail dress, a white magnolia blossom pinned to the narrow shoulder strap by a silver pineapple clip.

Will Matthews edged closer, laying territorial claim. Luci noticed.

Thank you for sharing this happy occasion with us. Today, our lovely Luci completed the first step in becoming a full fledged naval officer with her certification and licensing as a registered nurse. She’s on her way, steering her own unique course as usual. Please raise your glasses with me to honor Nurse Luci Blake.

Here, here!

Congratulations, Luci. We’re proud of you!

Semper Fi! growled the sole Marine officer present. His wife nudged him with her hip.

The receiving line was laborious—enduring hugs, kisses, handshakes and back pats from career-minded adults. Several glasses of Clicquot fortified her for this and her two remaining ordeals. When guests began drifting away to begin their real weekends, she made her first move—deal with Will first.

Her red hair, clipped short above bare freckled shoulders, fluttered carelessly in a gust from the harbor. Will, debonair in white with gold braid, seemed in his natural element near the navy’s watery berthing zone for war ships. She offered her hand. He took the bait. Let’s take a walk along the ridge, Luce. This was it. She’d anticipated the timing for weeks. Far out there, the big orange orb slid towards the westward horizon; closer in, majestic Pacific waters lapped at the sheltered pearl port. The only sound heard was their breathing and clicking of heels as they strolled side-by-side.

Will’s bleached uniform and shining epaulettes, dazzling under slipping sunshine, didn’t compare with the glittering diamond he presented. Luci was sure the sparkling, clear stone was mined in Johannesburg, polished in Antwerp, and procured though the naval exchange at Pearl. It was obviously expensive and as genuine as the gleam in his eye.

His intentions had been obvious for weeks, biding time for this very moment.

Luci, I want you to marry me, he said. Firm, solid, matter-of-fact—her consent certain.

She’d expected a bit more, but that was it. It came with no I love you, or I’d give my soul for you, or no promise to walk through fire or climb the highest mountain, no going down on bended knee. None of that—just, I want you to marry me! An implied directive from a lowly navy lieutenant, junior grade.

Luci well knew Will was the apple of her father’s eye, his replacement son. He clearly wanted her to have Will’s babies to carry on a testosterone tradition. He never said it, but she knew. She stuck it out with Will for two years, tried to light a fire, at least a spark of passion. It never happened.

Her mother told her she’d know what to do when the time came. She did.

Will ... I can’t marry you, she said. Matter of fact. I just can’t. It isn’t you, it’s me. I’m just not ready ... yet. Freckles on her nose and cheeks brightened under her flaming hair.

What do you mean? he said, flummoxed. We’ll both be in the navy, travel together, on the same battleship, you ... me ... and your dad, explore the world, have a wonderful life ... together. We don’t need kids right away. Just go places, do things, have fun ... us ... together.

Will ... I’m not joining the navy. I haven’t told Dad yet so don’t mention it. I need to do something myself before I commit to you or the navy.

Damn, Luci! He broke off, studied languid harbor waters for a response but not even a porpoise appeared. Assurance lost, he mumbled, I thought it was all set. The two of us. Your father already agreed when I asked him for your hand—he was happy. Your mother ... well ... she’s smug. But I thought it was set. I thought we had an arrangement.

Will, you’re a great guy and I’m sure you’ll be an admiral some day. But I don’t want an arrangement. I want a love so strong no man, no woman, no wars or typhoons could ever break it. I want more. I have to find it. Just me, alone.

Does this mean no, or just not yet?

I don’t know what it means, Will, but definitely not now. Maybe someday.

Damn! he said, raised a hand to touch her ruby windrustled locks, then drew back. Look, he said, eyes dropping to the high heels she kicked off, standing in bare feet. I’ve already paid for the ring and can’t send it back. And I don’t have any other ... candidates. Just keep it for now. If you change your mind, slip it on your finger and send me a telex. Then we’ll be engaged and I’ll break the news to your father, wherever we are.

Wow! Luci underestimated the force of her rejection, now apparent by his bewilderment. His latest scheme sounded like a shaky business deal, or playing the odds, hedging a bet, saving face or buying time. Okay, she said at last, giving him something to hang on to. She unfastened her silver chain with a dangling silver crucifix and allowed him to drop the ring onto the chain. She turned her back for him to fasten it, the cross and engagement ring falling between gently rising curves of her bosom.

So, you want me to keep it ... for now, she reconfirmed. And if I decide to marry you ... to send a telegram?

He nodded. He couldn’t find a smile to cover his disappointment. Emptiness. A single wet regret hung suspended in a dry corner of his eye.

She delved into his baby blues again through fading Hawaiian twilight, asked, And if I decide, Will, that I definitely won’t marry you?

We’ll steer into that storm when it blows, he said, shrugged. Gold shoulder boards caught a dying ember of sun, sparkled, his last glint of hope. And that’s how they left it—the ring between her breasts and Will strolling aimlessly downhill to steer his Chevy convertible back to the bachelor officers’ quarters, more alone than ever. Luci stood for a time, sorry for having wounded Will, a nice guy; adjusting to one predicament before tackling the next.

ⱷ

No easy out for Luci. A forthcoming assertion to her father, whom she dearly loved, was more difficult than letting down Will. She simply had to make her case and make it irrevocable.

So not to be overruled by navy brass, she was prepared to stand by her guns. Her mother had elected to wait in reserve. Elani privately agreed with Luci but would not take sides between those most dear.

You must bear the consequences of your decisions, Elani said. You can do this, Luce, but do it today. There was no avoiding the inevitable. Strike now.

Luci checked her slim, oval