The Antipodeans

by Greg McGee

  Simple but effective. Once, on the fork below Masarolis, Charlie signalled, then dived off the track himself. He’d heard an engine in low gear labouring down the hill, and the two of them watched from the bush as a Republican troop carrier eased past. The villagers at Masarolis confirmed that the Republicans had been combing the forestry tracks for partisans, Italian and Slovenian, but didn’t seem to suspect the villagers themselves of harbouring or supporting, which was good news.

  To lessen the burden on any one village Charlie and Harry had rotated themselves through Reant, Valle and Masarolis, so they would be reasonably welcome when they turned up at dinner time. Charlie sang well for his supper, doing magic for the children and telling stories to the adults round the fire, of a world of tall skyscrapers where everyone had a car and an education and plenty to eat. Joe listened too, trying to understand as much as he could, and said little.

  On one occasion when Charlie was entertaining the children down at Valle, Joe heard an old woman mutter something in the local dialect that sounded like a curse: ‘Terrone.’ She was clearly using it to describe Charlie.

  Charlie was oblivious to any reservations the villagers had about him. He was also a very recent prisoner and perhaps hadn’t had time to develop the doubts and defences that had been necessary for survival in the camps. He’d been a tanker in the US 5th, driving a Sherman that had thrown a track soon after landing in Salerno. ‘A real bitch’, according to Charlie, because he and his crew had been picked up by a truckload of German infantry without firing a shot in anger. His main disappointment seemed to be that he hadn’t been part of the invasion of Sicily. His parents had emigrated from Palermo and he’d wanted to be able to tell them he’d been ‘home’.

  He’d been immediately sent to Germany by train. He’d attacked an air vent in the roof of the cattle truck with a pocket-knife, and he and some others had jumped into the darkness when the train slowed in the mountains above Gemona. He didn’t know whether the others had survived the fall.

  Joe told him about Dan, and Charlie said he’d be fine as long as he didn’t run into any Tigers. That was the first time Joe had heard Charlie express any doubt about the US of A’s capacity. For him, American technology, know-how and can-do was unbeatable. He hadn’t seen one, but he’d been told a Tiger could easily destroy a Sherman, that it would take four or five Shermans to have a chance of taking out one Tiger. They’d been warned that they’d have to go in with up-gunned M10s to have a show, if the rumours were true. Joe recalled the steel monsters he’d seen on the back of the trucks rushing south when he and Harry had taken off from San Pietro. They must have been Tigers, and the fear in Charlie’s voice was unsettling.

  According to Charlie, the Allies would be close to Rome already and would be here before the end of the winter. Joe knew that Dan would be in the vanguard of the Div and if North Africa was any indication the Kiwis would be among the first into Trieste. He allowed himself to think about seeing Dan again, and about the life they might have when they got home. There’d just be Dan and Sandy and him, the nucleus of what used to be a huge family. Old Mal would never relent, and Dan would never forgive him. The farewell party at the Ardgowan Hall for the local boys who went away was an embarrassment when not one of the Lamont clan turned up to see their eldest son off. Mal told anyone who’d listen that he didn’t want any son of his fighting for the English, but none of the clan had come to Dan’s wedding either.

  Dan and Sandy’s courtship and marriage had been really quick. Sandra Goode worked for McKenzie’s department store in Oamaru. Dan had first seen her on a Friday, late shopping night, when those who had cars would park in the trees in the middle of Thames Street and join the rest of the townsfolk walking up and down in front of the brightly lit shops pretending to be interested but really looking at each other, stopping for a catch-up with those they knew. One of the female mannequins in McKenzie’s had fallen over and Sandy had to go into the window to restore it.

  Dan was quiet like Joe, but much more likely to speak up if he had to. He waited until Sandy had gone back to her counter, then went straight in and told her he really liked the woman in the window. When she asked him which one, he smiled at her and said, ‘This one.’

  That’s what Dan reckoned happened anyway and Sandy never gainsaid him. They became engaged within six weeks. Sandy wasn’t worried that Dan was from the Devil’s Bridge Lamont clan or that he worked in the flour mill at Ngapara. Joe knew her father Fred. He was a coal merchant and ran his old Bedford out to Ngapara to fill the tray with big sacks direct from the mine, and sell them off the back of the truck around the streets of Oamaru.

  Sandy said she wasn’t ‘religious’ but had been brought up Church of England. To begin with she said she’d become a Catholic and was welcomed into the bosom of the Lamont family. But something changed in her, though she never said what prompted it. Maybe it was seeing the way Mal treated his daughters, maybe it was as simple as that. Or maybe the way he treated Dan. Whatever it was, Sandy decided she wouldn’t convert. When he heard, Mal called her and Dan out to Devil’s Bridge and read them the riot act. Sandy would never talk about what Mal said to her or what she said to him, but Dan told Joe that Sandy, blonde and small and pale, stood up to the old man and gave as good as she got.

  Dan said that after that he loved her more, if anything. He showed it by becoming Anglican for her, and they were married in a small service at St Luke’s at the bottom of the South Hill at the end of town. None of the Lamonts came, just Fred and Iris and quite a few Goode cousins, because Sandy was an only child.

  Ida had tearfully entreated Joe not to attend Dan’s wedding, because if he did Mal would cut him out of the family too. She was distraught, knowing she was about to lose her two brothers. Joe cried too, but there was no question that he would stand with Dan. That was the last he’d seen of Ida or any of his ‘sisters’.

  The wedding had been brought forward because New Zealand had declared war on Germany, the second country to do so after Britain, according to the newspapers. Dan used to laugh that Hitler must have been shitting himself. Dan was twenty-one and there was no question he would enlist, call-up or no. Sandy never once tried to stop him and in the two years between Dan’s going and Joe following him, Joe had got to know her. She was very direct and matter-of-fact and Joe had never seen her feeling sorry for herself that her husband of a few weeks had been called away to war. She lived modestly, carried on at McKenzie’s and saved Dan’s army pay for the deposit on a house when he got back.

  When Joe enlisted and was asked about next of kin and who he would entrust to oversee the bank account his army pay would go into, there was never any question. And now Sandy, according to Dan’s last letter, had joined the war effort. Joe would have expected nothing less of her.

  By the time he joined up there was some sort of provision for brothers to get younger brothers into the same units, and Dan said he tried to get Joe into tank or anti-tank, keep him away from the infantry. But whatever Dan had done hadn’t worked, and Joe found himself among the infantry grunts at Burnham.

  There were no more farewell parties this time. Only Sandy had turned up at the Oamaru railway station to say goodbye.

  * * *

  Thoughts of Fred Goode covered in coal dust as he manoeuvred those sacks off the tray of his truck and onto his back, the white worry lines in his black face, came to Joe when he woke next morning and looked at Charlie. Although the smoke from their fire was largely taken away by the chimney, some leaked out and curled round the cave to join the grit and dust that adhered to their sweat.

  There was a big stone trough with sloping sides up at the village. When he saw the late autumn sun hit the far side of the valley, Joe took off his underwear and trousers, wrapped himself in Bepi’s coat and carried his dirty clothes up to the trough. He started washing them, then wringing them out. A woman came down from one of the houses and gave him a bar of carbolic soap and
showed him how to do it properly, beating the wet clothes on the splayed side of the trough. Others came down with their own washing and laughed at Joe’s attempts. At least he thought that’s what they were laughing at until the kids started lifting up the back of Bepi’s coat. His bare legs had given away his nakedness underneath.

  Joe managed to get his clean clothes and nakedness safely back to the cave, hung the wet clothes on some of the ropy saplings nearby, then crossed to a stream about a hundred yards away to wash himself. That all took some time and gave him respite from Charlie, who was inside the cave.

  Early afternoon Joe was out to one side of the scree in front of the cave pulling his clothes from the saplings. They weren’t quite dry but the winter sun was going behind the hill soon and Joe reckoned his body temperature would take the rest of the moisture out. It was the turn of Masarolis to host them — a stiff uphill walk and then, with a bit of luck, they’d be sitting in front of someone’s fire for the evening.

  Joe had dropped the coat and was struggling into his underwear when he heard a footfall on the far side of the scree. It was just an instant, but unmistakable. Joe froze and listened. One of the great virtues of the cave was that it was impossible to sneak up on. You couldn’t get across the scree without sliding and making a noise. Joe heard the sound again, of someone trying to move very carefully across the slope.

  The saplings still had most of their leaves and Joe was struggling to get a clear view of the cave entrance. As he shifted carefully he heard another footfall. His heart almost stopped when he saw the figure who was trying to ease himself around towards the cave. He had his back to Joe, but the checked scarf and the cap with the red star were unmistakable. It had to be One-Eyed Jack. The Slovenians must have tortured Harry for information; they would be all around them.

  The intruder looked like a one-man munitions depot. He had belts of ammunition criss-crossing his back from shoulder to waist, German stick grenades hanging off his belt, and Joe counted four weapons, two rifles, a semi-automatic and a pistol. It was a wonder the bastard was able to stand upright under that load, let alone get across the scree. As Joe was wondering how or when he should warn Charlie, he caught sight of the man’s bare calves below rough serge breeches cut off at the knee. They were long and white and he’d seen them before. And he was wearing black patent leather shoes that were almost cut to shreds, but which Joe had also seen before, first on Don Claudio, then on Don Enrico.

  ‘Harry!’

  ‘Don’t just stand there,’ Harry called, unable to turn from the cliff. ‘Give us a hand, for Christ’s sake!’

  Treviso 2014

  30

  Her father’s instructions were very clear. They were on the page lying face up on the little writing table:

  My old mate Geoff has done his absolute best for me but warned me at the beginning that the cure might almost be worse than the disease, ‘except that you get to live’. Which, if you’re reading this, won’t happen.

  Best laid plans and all that. I’m not complaining, but what I’ve endured since this bloody menace was diagnosed has been brutal beyond anything I could have imagined or that Geoff could have described, and is now beyond endurance. I mean that. The pros and cons may once have made sense but they don’t any more. The only power I’ve got left is to say ‘Enough’. I’ve discussed this fully with Geoff and he agrees. If I relapse, it might be sudden if it’s my heart and all over quickly, and there’ll be no decision to make. But if it’s renal failure or something of that ilk — God knows, the possibilities seem endless — I might end up in a coma. Refer the local specialists to Geoff — his number is below. His advice was to make my position absolutely clear by way of declaration, which you’ll find attached. If I survive the initial relapse and am incapable of speaking for myself, please show the declaration to whoever is treating me.

  Renzo had to have read that when he was tidying her shoes away. How could he not? The declaration was attached by paper clip and it would have been easy enough for him to read that too, particularly when she recalled a conversation they’d had walking back from the bar. She’d told him that she had a meeting with the specialist tomorrow ‘to discuss procedures and outcomes’ for her father and that she was dreading it. He’d offered to come with her, if only to make sure that there were no ‘linguistic misunderstandings’. She told him that was very kind of him, which probably meant that he’d turn up.

  So far she’d ignored her father’s instructions. Worse than that, she’d told the hospital they must do whatever they could to keep him alive. The only phone call she’d made had been to the insurance company. But if Renzo came to the meeting with the specialist there would be someone in the room who’d know she was going against her father’s express wishes.

  Should she ring Renzo and tell him not to come? Would that be worse? It might be better to tell him why her father couldn’t die. Not here, not now. Not after she’d turned away from him in his moment of need in Venice. He’d already been lost in misery after whatever rejection he’d suffered at that little red door.

  If she told Renzo why she was lying to the specialist, would he understand? She couldn’t live the rest of her life knowing that was her last response to her father. They had to make him well enough to hear her say she was sorry, tell him how much she loved him, how much he had given her, how central he was to everything in her life, and how much she would miss him when he was gone. Surely then she’d be more able to let him go.

  Last night’s euphoria had been replaced by a nexus of anxiety in her diaphragm. She was fearful of the effect of all this stress on the baby, and that didn’t help either. There were life and death decisions to make yet she didn’t feel up to choosing whether to have a cup of tea or coffee.

  She dressed as if she’d be giving evidence in court and needed help in appearing credible — that pin-striped suit and the black brogues. She’d been brought up to tell the truth and wasn’t looking forward to being cross-examined on her lies.

  * * *

  In the event, she hardly got to say a word. The specialist, Signor Abruzzi, looked like a mad physicist, bald on top with a fringe of wild straggly hair and a goatee, while the mad physicist turned up in a stylish jacket, looking like Harley Street on holiday. Renzo didn’t get to say much either, as Signor Abruzzi ran through the history of her father’s ‘bloody menace’, acute lymphoblastic leukaemia, and its treatment.

  The insurer had put him in touch with Mr Paterson in Auckland, who had confirmed her father’s medical treatment. Signor Abruzzi consulted his clipboard as he read, and it sounded like a list of heinous tortures: the monthly lumbar punctures, induction chemotherapy, a battery of drugs, followed by radiation of the head and injections into the spine, then the bone-marrow transplant after his first relapse. Clare had fragmented memories of her father during some of those procedures, a bald skeleton struggling to draw breath.

  Reciting the list served its purpose. The attempts to beat this thing were exhausted, as was her father. Signor Abruzzi hardly needed to offer a prognosis, but he did, saying, ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Kostidis, but given his medical history and age, there are no more treatment options available to us.’

  She said nothing, and Signor Abruzzi then told her that Mr Paterson was of the opinion that her father ‘in any case did not want further attempts to prolong his life. Is that your understanding?’

  There was no oxygen left for lying. ‘What will happen to him?’

  ‘The most likely outcome is gradual systemic failure. But it might be the heart first and quite sudden. In the meantime, we can make sure he feels no pain, that he is as comfortable as possible.’

  ‘How long?’

  ‘Almost certainly within twenty-four hours, perhaps a lot sooner.’

  ‘Will he wake up before he dies?’

  ‘We don’t know. Probably not. Pain and discomfort would come with consciousness.’

  She�
��d come dressed for a trial but it had turned out to be a funeral. She tried not to cry. ‘I need to speak to him. Can he hear me?’

  ‘There is plenty of evidence to suggest that patients in his situation can hear what others are saying.’ Signor Abruzzi may have been trying to be kind, but it was enough.

  * * *

  Renzo drove her back to the hotel. He was sympathetic to her silence, didn’t offer any platitudes, for which she was grateful. They were driving along a street which ran parallel to the old city wall, still with its moat, presumably the same water that threaded through the heart of the old town and gave it air.

  ‘Your husband was Greek?’

  ‘Australian.’ She thought about saying more but couldn’t. It’d been quite a jolt when Signor Abruzzi called her Mrs Kostidis.

  She’d taken Nicholas’s name without a second thought. She’d been looking forward to being adopted into some Australasian version of My Big Fat Greek Wedding. But Nicholas always had an excuse for not taking her back to Melbourne and she didn’t get to meet his family until after the wedding in Auckland, to which only his brother Tony came. When they did finally get to Melbourne for a post-wedding party put on by Tony, it turned out to be a backyard barbecue in a scruffy suburban brick and tile that trapped the heat like an oven. They sat round on plastic chairs with cans of beer and Clare could feel the resentment in the oppressive air as Nicholas’s mother said nothing to her while his father tried to hide behind shitty bonhomie. Maybe they thought she had lured their son away from Melbourne and had deprived them of a wedding.