by Simon Cleary
What does your General think of you now, James?
‘Look at what the war has done to us,’ she whispers.
Black on Aquamarine
Phelan lies on the floorboards beside his bed, his knees pulled halfway to his chest, the hard, bright light of day all around him. Penny left the bed with a kiss to his forehead soon after the first magpies, but it has taken him an hour to get even this far. There’s a heaviness in his body, and in his head, and the gym downstairs is too far. He lies on the floor, his fifty push-ups and fifty sit-ups ahead of him, one for each year, the annual increase a source of pride to him. He may not be getting younger, but he’s not bloody-well letting age get on top of him. He sits on the floor, but not with his usual vigour, primed for the day. Instead, he feels his bony arse, a flabbiness in his gut, his foggy head. He reclines, his hands behind his head. But the timber is cold against his shoulderblades, and after just one sit-up his head is throbbing and he lies back in the hardening daylight.
He could use this leave to catch up on everything he loves, but all he wants is sleep. And for the headache and mad ear-ringing to go away.
The day continues in slow motion. Phelan moves through the morning. The house and the street and the neighbourhood and all the city below them to the east are almost stationary.
His wife by the fishpond, his wife on the phone with her mother. His wife taking her daily medication. His wife gathering celery sticks and apples, slicing them and feeding them into a blender. His sick, pale-skinned, worried wife.
He watches her in silence, moving in silence. He has been away. That he is back seems irrelevant. He is untethered, he is dispensable. Might she die? Is it possible? Is it that serious? He follows her into the laundry and stands at the door and asks her again about her treatment.
‘How much more do you have left?’
‘It’s just the hormone drugs now.’
She seems genuinely optimistic. Is it just for show, for him? For herself too?
‘What do the doctors think?’ Phelan continues.
‘The oncologist couldn’t be happier.’
He nods.
‘Here James,’ she says, looking up, ‘this is yours.’
She presses a business card into his hands. Written on the Body it reads, black lettering on an aquamarine background. The card pulls him out of his torpor. He turns it over but it is spare, just the name of the studio and the address.
Already Kira and what followed feels like it happened to someone else. It is as if all that has occurred in the short time since returning to Brisbane has wiped a little wartime folly from his slate. As if real life is of vastly more consequence than a night’s escapade on a soldier’s leave. But now his wife innocently prods him with it.
He says the name aloud, standing there in the laundry, Penny shoving his clothing into the machine, ‘Written on the Body’, as if reading the words for the first time.
Penny looks over at him. ‘Are you talking to me?’
He shakes his head. But is she inviting him to tell her something? ‘Thank you,’ he says, waving the card, an attempt at nonchalance, watching Penny as she closes the washing machine door.
Phelan lies on the padded gym bench and feels nauseous. There’s no natural light down here, and one of the bank of fluoro ceiling tubes is fluttering. Fate’s judgement is brutally efficient, he thinks: he cheats on her, she dies.
He lifts the bar from its stand, taking the weight, his elbows locked. What has he done? He lowers the bar to his chest. This is precisely what infidelity can do. He begins a set of ten, desperate for pain. If the beat of a butterfly’s wings in the Amazon can unleash a hurricane on the other side of the world, why can’t an affair in Sydney kill a wife in Brisbane?
He can’t help himself. He looks up Written on the Body on the net. He adds ‘tattoo’ to the search engine, homing in on her, and the studio comes up. But there are no photos of her on the site, no bio either, just an online gallery and a short manifesto.
He reads:
Kira doesn’t tattoo skin. She tattoos bodies. Her work celebrates the human spirit, and is inspired by nature, ritual and divine forms of sacred mythology.
He clicks rapidly through her portfolio and finds mandalas and Celtic knot-work and stylised leaves and kingfishers and angels on pristine skin. A monarch’s wings. Rippling fish scales. Blacks and greys and blues and greens. He flicks through a blur of body parts, backs and shoulders and arms and wrists. Thighs and calves and ankles. The same hand – hers – marking them all.
But when he comes to a breast he stops abruptly, pulling his fingers from the keyboard as if he’s suffered an electric shock. On the screen a thin silver necklace with a thread of small diamonds falls high against a woman’s skin. Her right hand calmly covers her right nipple and much of the right side of her chest, her fingernails polished clear. But her left breast … The woman’s left arm is raised and out of photo, lifting her breast with its shower of tattooed petals into the centre of the image. But the petals are of no flower he recognises, no colour either. It is as if he’s caught some fresh blossoming, a spray of petals emerging from the dark fold beneath her breast, moulding themselves to the contours of her body, miraculously transforming it, the place where her nipple might be protected by the gentle shadow cast by the petals. Her skin is tantalisingly revealed in the tips of the artist’s translucent petals, before hiding again in the soft-brushed reds and grey-greens of the delicately inked floriade. As he watches, the breast disappears and something entirely new and beautiful emerges.
Does he misread omens? Despite cheating on her, perhaps she will not die.
Nowhere and Everywhere
Still no sleep. Three weeks have passed since Beckett, his leave extended on medical advice, and Phelan’s nightmares have only grown more vivid, repose more elusive, his judgements more damning. That as courageous as he might have been in going to Beckett, he should never have been on the patrol in the first place. An unanswerable what-if? And as brave as he might have been, when he got to Beckett he had nothing that mattered to give him.
He looks for sleep triggers in the dark, trying to distract himself, hoping to create a window for his exhaustion to enter and steal him away, if only for an hour or two. He runs through the list of men who’ve commanded the Australian Army, starting with the current Chief, lucky bastard that he is, and then, stepping back in time, each of the Chiefs of Army before him, then the long run of Chiefs of the General Staff, until eventually he reaches the two English generals who were in charge after Federation. There are milestones along the way: the wartime commanders, those who were knighted, the Catholics, those who went on to command the whole of the Defence Force. He knows them like a sheep knows its shepherds. He tracks them back through time, seeking a tunnel somewhere in the pre-history of this tribe of his, beyond names, that he might crawl into and disappear.
But he can’t escape. He tries the other sleep-lists he’s used over the years – national cricket captains, prime ministers, the names of boyhood pets – but nothing works. So he resorts to Hail Marys, a sleep mantra when he was a boy, masquerading even then as prayer. What fear does. He starts silently, decade of the rosary after decade, counting them on his fingers, and then more boldly, more desperately, his lips moving, murmuring the words.
It is with the first butcher bird’s call that he catches himself, plummets into shame, moans from the shallowness of his undeserving fear. Warriors on patrol’s eve are entitled to pray, sappers in a minefield, blood-soaked medics, Beckett in an irrigation ditch in falling light. But not him in his safe Brisbane bed. Oh the mockery! How his prayers mock his men.
Tinnitus could drive a man mad, the remorselessness of it. Even when the ringing in his ears withdraws, the relief is precarious, a few days’ respite at best. Because it always returns, and when it does it seems louder than ever. Constant cannon-shot. Whiskey helps as much as anything else,
at least temporarily. He can’t tell the doctor that, but it’s true. And temporary relief is still relief.
He gets into his uniform and drives out to the Gallipoli Barracks at Enoggera one morning for his scheduled check-up, followed by lunch with the brigade commander. His goal for the doctor’s consultation is just to get through it without giving anything new away, to kick the can of his return to Afghanistan down the road a little further, but not too far. The effort even that takes. By the time he reaches the Officers’ Mess he is drained.
Phelan stands before the sliding plate-glass doors of the wall-length trophy cabinet, waiting for the base commander, his hands grasped behind his back. No matter how close he leans in, the collection of baubles behind the glass won’t take shape. It’s the fucking glare, he thinks, blinking. The ceilings in this newly built mess complex are too high, the floors shine too brightly, there’s too much light blasting away, no secrets allowed, everything just too damned open and unwelcoming, not a single cigar ever smoked within these walls.
When he turns away from the cabinet two captains are standing in the archway looking at him. Before he can greet them they pivot and leave, the heels of their shoes squeaking on the floor. He is suddenly aware that what had been an empty room when he arrived, is now filling. How long has he been standing here staring into the trophy cabinet? Is it possible the nearby tableful of junior officers have dropped their voices to talk about him? The way they glance over at him, a look in the eyes of one or two, almost hostile. What is it? Scorn? They’ll know he’s on leave, of course, but do they read his mind too? Sense his weakness, his doubt? Is that possible?
After Penny’s daily morning meditation she goes online, so many messages of support, so many opportunities to practise living with gratitude for what she’s got. One of her girlfriends forwards a thread to her, with an explanatory note:
Hi there Penny Love,
This is all a bit strange. Probably shouldn’t forward it to you, with everything you’ve had to deal with, but I thought you’d want to know. James too. It’s just human nature, of course, to look for someone to blame, and no doubt it’ll all blow over in a couple of days. But let me know if there’s anything I can say to help manage it.
Love you heaps, Bec xo
Penny scrolls through the conversation, a discussion among a tight group of wives and girlfriends whose men are still over there. She doesn’t recognise any of the names. At first it looks like they’re just going over Beckett and what happened, but then she realises the conversation is not really about Beckett at all, but about James. And that it’s more than just garden-variety bitching – that they’re blaming him. Not with hints and innuendo, but openly!
She takes the phone out into the garden and sits on the bench with the laptop.
‘Bec,’ she says. ‘What’s this all about?’
‘Sorry, Love. I didn’t mean to upset you. But … I know, I know … it’s outrageous, isn’t it?’
‘Who are they?’
‘A couple have husbands who were on the patrol and are still out at the forward operating base … Fiona Gruen is married to the commanding officer and Louise Starc – the really filthy one – she’s married to a corporal at the base … the rest, well other than the girl who forwarded it on to me – she’s been a friend for ages – I don’t know any of them …’
‘They’re saying the patrol was only ambushed because the Taliban learned James was on it. They’re saying there was no need for him to be there—’
‘Army gossip, Penny Love—’
‘That there is footage …’
‘No surprise. They all have helmet cameras these days.’
‘That when the army’s review is completed, James’s career will be over?’
‘Yeah, I know … that’s a truly feral thing to say. That’s the thing it might be worth being a bit worried about.’
‘But is there anything in it, Bec?’
‘How do I know, Penny Love? But I doubt it. He’s a hero. I mean, you know better than anyone what sort of man he is.’
Phelan turns his ear towards the sound of the postman’s motorbike as it buzzes and bunts its way down the street. He rises from the weights bench, drenched in sweat, and makes his way upstairs, wondering about the postman’s route but unable to remember it. At the front window he furrows his brow, shakes his head, tries again to remember the route until he realises the engine noise has now disappeared at the end of a hilltop breeze. He feels an odd sadness come over him momentarily, so many losses. Beckett and now, possibly, Penny. Where do all the things one loses, great or trivial, go?
Phelan waits until the sound of the engine fades entirely before stepping out of the house. The bay and the sand island to the east are too far away to see at this hour, even if he’d looked. He scans the garden and the streetscape beyond. The street is empty. Phelan checks the letterbox for redbacks before reaching in and producing the bundle of mail, gathered with a thick red rubber band.
At the kitchen bench he sorts the letters into two piles, bills in one, the rest in another. He drops the rubber band into a glass jar squirming with them.
‘Don’t worry about any of that, James,’ Penny says, preparing lunch. ‘I’ll sort it out when you leave.’
He doesn’t notice she’s hung a bright red cooking apron over her neck. That she’s wearing matching lipstick and a change of perfume. He doesn’t see her resilience. Because his thoughts are flitting, because he’s opening bills, and thinking about their finances, about the mortgage, and how the quarterly electricity bill seems bigger than it should be, and whether or not Penny has cancelled the paper credit card statements because of the two-dollar fee, and he’s thinking he’s not going to ask her because that wouldn’t be fair, but that means he’s going to have to log on to check the account balance. That he needs to do it now, right now, and whatever Penny might think is more urgent it’s not, because if their finances have got out of shape, then it’s up to him to get them back into order, particularly given her health, and though Penny’s kept the house brilliantly while he’s been away, she misses things, which would be understandable given what’s happened.
Penny reaches across the counter and rests her hand on James’s forearm. He looks up, startled, wrenched from his thoughts by her touch. ‘Talk to me, James,’ she says. ‘Tell me about Sapper Beckett. Tell me everything. It’ll help get it off your chest, Darling.’
But it’s not on his chest. It’s inside him, in every sinew and every twitching fibre. It’s entered his bones, which are heavy with it now, death-heavy. It’s burrowing deeper, this very moment, even her request feeding it. His rushing heart, his fuzzy head.
‘Tell me, James,’ she says again.
He tenses.
‘I can’t,’ he replies. It’s an achievement to control his voice so he can get even those two words out.
‘Why can’t you, James?’ she asks gently.
But in his growing exhaustion he suspects her kindliness is a front. She’s too ready with her tenderness. What can it be but an attack? He’s cranking up, the prickliness in his skin, he can feel it, tightening and tightening. Leave me out of it! he wants to shout at her, though he has enough restraint not to yell. Just.
Instead he covers his face with his big right hand as his jaw clenches and his whole head begins to shudder, clasping his temples with his thumb and middle finger to still himself, to stop from screaming, and when eventually the moment passes he takes a deep breath and leaves the kitchen, leaves the house, leaves the street.
Beckett is nowhere and everywhere. In the park Phelan overhears a male voice of a certain resonance, and knows it’s not Beckett. Every kid playing every game of handball on the street is not Beckett. Beckett’s name isn’t mentioned in the cricket scores on the radio, though he has half an ear for it. Nor is Beckett beside him while he’s doing push-ups in the morning, matching him, head turned, smiling, t
his soldier he barely knew challenging him.
Come on, Sir, is that all you’ve got?
That voice isn’t Beckett either.
Everyone has their psych debrief in-country before they return, even him. He’d insisted, even though it was just leave, not a permanent return. Never ask someone to do something you wouldn’t do yourself.
‘It must have been heavy, Sir,’ the young psych says in his Tarin Kot room, the door closed for privacy.
The furrow in his brow is well practised, Phelan thinks, and no mask for what is probably just curiosity. Because of course this kid knows what happened – the bare outline is already common knowledge – or thinks he does. This psychologist with the job of ensuring no one’s going to run amok when they get home, that no one’s plotting mad revenge on some poor Arab family in some quiet suburban shopping centre in Bankstown. This kid and his ossifying diagnostic tools – someone’s idea of best practice risk management. As if homeward-bound soldiers don’t know what to answer already, as if they haven’t shared the questions around, taken the piss out of it all, conducted their own mock interviews among themselves. This kid who’s interviewing him about killing and being killed, who’ll plot his results on a graph and work out whether Phelan is a risk to be managed.
But now that it’s his turn, Phelan feels his heart race. What does the lieutenant with the soft hands and the pen hovering over a form really want to know?
Everyone knows what happened. Everyone will have an opinion. Phelan doles him perfunctory answers so he can tick his boxes. After every answer the kid looks up and asks the next question, clearly, slowly, articulating each word. It feels like a provocation, as if this lieutenant doesn’t believe him. Phelan looks at his watch, doesn’t hide it. Still the questions come, remorselessly. Drip, drip, drip.
Whatever it is this army psych really wants to know, Phelan will not tell. What it’s like to go out into the field when you’re not ready. What it’s like to know they put on a patrol just for you. A vanity patrol.