Soldiers

by Tom Remiger

  ‘She does not want a New Zealander. You people do not have a good reputation. Your fathers were not gentle.’

  ‘I don’t want a girl that isn’t willing.’

  ‘What do you mean, my captain?’

  ‘You know what I mean.’

  A silence. He noted the threads at the end of the upholstery.

  ‘Any girl here will take you and be glad of your money.’

  ‘So what is the problem?’

  ‘They do not feel safe.’

  ‘And what is to be done about that?’

  ‘Nothing is to be done about that. But we must consider your problem.’

  ‘It is not my problem.’

  ‘It is your problem. I think you should be accompanied.’

  That was all. A little trick to make him pay double. ‘I have no desire for two. I won’t pay for that.’

  ‘You misunderstand me. I wish a man to go with you.’

  There was a sick thrill in him at this. ‘We don’t do that sort of thing.’ His denial was not as strong as he could have wished, though not on his own account.

  She looked at him flatly. The make-up on her face had cracked along the wrinkles. She must have expressions some of the time, then. There was too much make-up.

  ‘No,’ he said.

  ‘Not like that,’ she said. ‘To watch. As security.’

  ‘I will not be watched,’ he said.

  Another girl appeared, naked, and departed. It seemed a deliberate ploy, or at least to have the strangeness of a dream.

  ‘A mirror,’ she said. ‘To stand with his back to you. But he must watch; you understand. It is a matter of propriety.’ At first he thought she said property. ‘Propriety must be preserved.’

  He slipped through the doorway as she said this. Bluey felt part of a theatrical performance. Any moment, he thought, the curtain will draw back.

  The mirror was edged with gilt, and there were gold threads at the base of the curtains, but the floor was bare wood. There was a vague smell of incense. The sheets were red.

  It was Morrie’s turn to be orderly officer. He tamped down his tobacco and smoked in an empty tent, reading The Gay Parisienne in a listless sort of way. He was thinking about his fiancée, unofficial as yet. ‘These disillusions are His curious proving,’ he remembered.

  Tiger had taken his platoon on a route march in the direction of some tombs he had heard were there. He had still not heard from

  Elaine. Perhaps she had already forgotten.

  Soon they would all be gone, fading like that Persian army into the desert. Their fathers had burned down the Wazzir, and sailed away to die.

  Breen had begun to investigate the captain. Still in the first flush of discovery, he found more to know about him every day. He watched the way he read a letter. He watched the way he drank a beer. He watched the way he glanced at himself in a mirror. He told himself that his life would depend on understanding this man; to pay such attention was necessary and good, in their interlude on the far side of the world.

  He had realised, somehow, that asking questions of himself would do no good. He would have it or he wouldn’t, and to agonise about it only made it more likely that he wouldn’t. He was or he wasn’t, and what happened in this strange time didn’t really count, and it wasn’t permanent, and who knew—after all—what might happen to one or to the other. He was young, yet.

  12

  It only took a week after they arrived in Egypt for the mail to be sorted out. This was good going, Breen reckoned. Among a few other letters from home—fewer than he might have hoped—was a letter from Tom Cousins. He read it carefully, then went to look for Sinclair.

  He found the captain outside his tent. Jock was sketching him. Jock was from his own platoon, a draper’s assistant whose last name was Gillies; he did not, as others did, reduce easily to a surname. Breen watched in silence. The drawing, in charcoal, showed Sinclair in profile, his shoulders angled away to the viewer’s left and his head turned slightly back so that one eye met Breen’s own.

  Breen hadn’t known that Jock could draw. It seemed almost dangerously intimate to be sketching an officer. Considered as an infantryman, Jock was too gentle, too quiet and too slow in his movements. He was a little excluded from the boisterous men around him. In short, he was the sort of man they all had the romantic idea would be first to die.

  Years later, the captain still had the brown-paper sketch of himself in Egyptian days. The worried eye in monochrome had something of the blue about it yet, but also the evasiveness of someone who cannot look at the man sketching him. By the time Sinclair looked at the picture again, throwing some reminiscences together and preparing to burn his diaries and forget the past, all he knew of Jock was hearsay that he was teaching pretty girls in Sydney. The soldiers came home and each of them wandered away from the others, looking for an emptier horizon and—some of them—with things to be ashamed of.

  ‘Finished?’ asked the captain.

  ‘More or less. Give me a moment.’

  ‘It’s for my fiancée,’ the captain said to Breen while trying to avoid moving his lips or turning his head. ‘Seems more personal than a photograph.’

  Breen made no comment to the captain. He had just finished enveloping several prints of himself smiling a little toothlessly in front of the pyramids. At least he had rejected the offer of a camel to sit on.

  ‘You’ve got a talent,’ he said to Jock.

  ‘Do you want me to do you, sir? It wouldn’t take long. I enjoy doing it, you know.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it. Thanks, though.’

  ‘As you like.’

  To sit and be drawn by someone—to have someone looking closely at you and trying to represent your looks and your character—seemed to Breen almost a violation of propriety.

  ‘I wish,’ said Sinclair, ‘that you could set up some sort of arrangement with mirrors while you were sitting for things like this. It seems a pity to be denied the pleasure of watching it all take shape, just because you happen to be the subject.’

  ‘That,’ said Breen, ‘would never do. Solipsism is the word you’re looking for.’

  ‘We’re almost always the hero of our own stories,’ said the captain. ‘I won’t deny it.’

  ‘Newman doesn’t think so,’ said Breen, before regretting it.

  ‘Indeed? I’d best hold still until it’s over, I’m afraid.’ The captain became a sphinx again, sunk into his canvas chair like a philosopher of some forgotten sect. ‘Do you have anything in particular in mind for this afternoon?’

  ‘Just to look about, I suppose. But there’s something I should talk about with you.’

  ‘I’d like to see my uncle’s grave,’ said the captain. ‘He died in hospital here. I might walk about the city with you a while, then wander off after him. I think I’ll have to take another of those bloody taxis. We can chat before that.’

  ‘Goodo.’

  ‘Do you remember the people in England,’ asked the captain, going back, as was his habit, to an earlier conversation, ‘when we left? If they treat us like that, how can we help but think of ourselves as heroes?’ His gesturing hands seemed to wave away Breen’s doubts.

  ‘I’d really quite like to talk to you, sir.’

  ‘Well, what about?’

  ‘It’s Cousins.’

  The captain kept still, but his eyes moved to Breen.

  ‘I’ve a letter from his brother. You see, I sent him a copy of Cousins’ last letter.’

  ‘I’m not sure that was wise.’

  ‘He deserved to get it. And I explained that we’d looked into it all.’

  ‘But?’

  ‘There’s no easy way to explain it. Have a read.’

  The captain sighed.

  ‘Shall we finish this later?’ he asked Jock. He wanted to talk to Breen anyway.

  Breen and Sinclair found a taxi and settled themselves into the back. The seats were cracked and the stuffing leaked out. There was the smell of vomit ineptly clea
ned.

  ‘One of the boys in the first echelon cut a taxi driver’s throat,’ said Sinclair a little too loudly. ‘And they traced him with a bloodhound from a cigarette butt. You wouldn’t think a dog could smell anything but the tobacco, don’t you think?’

  The back of the driver’s head was expressive. His hair was long and curly, perfumed in some way with oil. Breen noticed how surprising it felt to see it after all these months of men with cropped heads.

  ‘Have a read of it, then,’ Breen said. He handed over the letter.

  The captain read. ‘Murder’s a strong accusation,’ he said.

  ‘It’s one way to read the original letter. Just a way we didn’t think to read it.’

  ‘You can’t trust a bereaved family member to be objective about the idea of suicide.’

  ‘We didn’t think of it at all.’

  ‘It’s insane.’

  ‘I still think we should look into it.’

  ‘Is now really the time?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Breen. ‘Yes.’

  After a week in Egypt—a week of long marches and mock exercises for a battalion craving broad horizons and solitary space—Baird, the adjutant, had taken Breen aside. They had just finished dinner. ‘Had your munga? I’ll have a word with you, Breen, if you please.’

  ‘Of course.’

  They stood underneath a sheet of canvas pegged out from Baird’s truck. That, combined with a collapsible table and chair, was his office. Baird was looking like he had been living on his nerves too long. There must have been a lot to organise.

  ‘You’re quite close to Captain Sinclair, are you not?’

  ‘I suppose so. More than anyone else, I reckon. But we’re not’—he searched for the right word—‘intimate friends.’

  ‘Yes, yes, you are. Close, I mean. Not that it’s any business of mine what the two of you feel about one another. Look.’ His coarse hair framed a face which, Breen realised, was honest and tired. ‘The colonel’s a good fellow, but he’s not young and he’s not tough, and maybe he’s not the judge of character we could wish. Do you think the captain’s up to it? You’d know best.’

  ‘It depends what it is.’

  ‘I want to parcel Sinclair off somewhere at base while we’ve got a chance. I’m not prejudiced, but I have my reasons.’

  ‘I don’t see any reason to doubt him any more than anyone else.’

  ‘Taihoa, Breen. That’s what you think. What do you feel?’

  ‘I don’t see what you mean.’

  ‘I understand loyalty,’ said Baird. He ran his hands through his coarse hair. ‘We need efficiency and we can’t have doubtfulness, before we can indulge in loyalty, you see.’ He began what seemed to be a homily he had been thinking of for some time. ‘We can’t be human about this sort of thing; everybody has to be treated not as they deserve but according to what they can give. There’s plenty of dehydrated officers in the new reinforcements, wanting their old rank back. We could shift Granny up, have you—’

  ‘I think,’ said Breen, ‘that Captain Sinclair might suspect he has been treated differently enough already.’

  ‘Look,’ said Baird. ‘You know about my mother, don’t you? They’re crying out for officers in the Maori Battalion. I could be off there being a hero, all martial like what’s his name from up the Waikato. Ake, ake, ake. But that’s not how we play the game. I’m more useful here. And if you really want to play it like that, here’s the thing—’

  ‘That’s not what I meant.’

  ‘It’s a plan that could work,’ said Baird. ‘You’re like him, I know, in background and all the rest of it. But we haven’t treated you badly, have we? It’s not easy for me either, all these people looking at me. I can go off and be a fighting man in the battalion of noble savages and fit their imagining of what it means to be me, all brave and spiritual and not too book-smart, or I can stay here and have them all covertly wondering if a half-caste can handle paperwork and mispronouncing words at me to show how bloody tolerant they are. But for the future, it’s not enough to be a good Maori in the way they imagine us to be; I want to be useful in the way they can’t imagine, not the way that keeps the same old shit going while they think they’re honouring us. They’d love me for that and they just can’t handle this.’

  Breen didn’t know what to say. He settled for agreeing that he had not been treated badly, pretending that the rest of Baird’s outburst had never happened.

  ‘So where are we now? I have my doubts—and so does the old major, and so does Christie in intelligence. But the colonel thinks the world of him. What do you lot who are under him think?’

  ‘You really can’t expect me to answer that,’ said Breen. ‘I don’t think Christie should have been included in your deliberations.’

  ‘I know, I know. I’m sorry,’ said Baird, ignoring the second statement. ‘Treat it as me thinking aloud, if it helps. You might as well go now. No, don’t go. I’m sorry. And there’s something you should be aware of.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I talked to the colonel about moving you out into something different. He said he’d do it if you asked. And then you never did. Why was that?’

  ‘I was happy,’ said Breen.

  ‘He told you not to. He lied to you, Sinclair did.’

  ‘What of it? I know why he did, and I don’t regret it.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Baird. ‘I shouldn’t have asked that. It wasn’t any of my business.’

  ‘That’s all right,’ said Breen, feeling tired.

  As Breen turned away, Baird called out, ‘Don’t be shy of telling him what I said about a base job. He might even want to go. It’s no reflection on him personally; but we must have efficiency.’

  This last statement had made Breen angry: he resolved to say nothing of it to the captain.

  Now, in the taxi with Sinclair, Breen wondered whether he should say something. They were driving through a bazaar on the way to see some famous bridge across the Nile. Imploring hands were beating at their windows, sliding over its surfaces, caressing every part of the battered taxi.

  ‘I don’t know about this place,’ said Breen. ‘A bit grim.’

  ‘Do you like my new watch strap?’ said Sinclair out of nowhere.

  ‘Why the change?’

  ‘The leather was a bit much in the heat.’

  ‘I don’t know. Say you get a whack there, and you’ve got shards of metal all through your wrist.’

  ‘But I don’t have a rash now. It’s a bargain. No suffering now and possible bits of cheap alloy in the future.’

  Breen grasped the captain’s wrist, laid out for inspection before him. He held it for a moment, the face of the watch pressing into his hand, the captain’s arm across his body and the unfamiliar lines of another man’s palm laid out before him, as if he was begging for something. Their shoulders were pressed together, and Breen could feel the captain’s right hand loose beside his angled thigh.

  ‘We can’t just ignore it. Can we please talk it over?’

  The captain pondered how to respond. In some ways, neither of them was very contemplative. He decided on the easiest course of action. ‘If Cousins was murdered, if it were murder,’ he asked. ‘How would it be done? And why would it be done?’

  Breen pursed his lips. He looked as if he was remembering something. For a moment, he looked very sad. Then he pulled his face together and prepared to begin again. The necessary thing to do was to say the unsayable. But that could be worked up towards. ‘Let’s start with how. We can work out motive later. It seems to me that nothing would be worse than walking into machine-gun fire.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So either it was involuntary, Cousins forgot the risk, or he did not believe the risk to be real. It can’t have been the least dangerous option for him.’

  ‘I don’t see how it could be involuntary, or how a man would forget.’

  ‘It seems unlikely. I didn’t mean he was hypnotised or anything like that. I was more thinking—sa
y someone behind him gave his leg a good hard prod with a bayonet at the right moment. You’d jump up, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘You might.’

  ‘So that’s one option. Or he could have been ordered to do it.’

  ‘No,’ said the captain. ‘That’s one order you’d never obey. Even if you thought they were blanks, even then, the risk. And the only ones who could have given such an order are Tiger and Clark, and we know they had no reason.’

  ‘I’m not sure about Clark,’ said Breen. ‘But we’ll see. The other option, then, is that he was tricked.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘We know that he was a bit of a joker, that he was a bit resentful. Say he really, truly believed that they were blanks, and he wanted to get back at us. You’d stand up at the right moment and give everyone a heart attack; and the worst that’d happen to you is some bruises. That’s Bluey’s theory, by the way.’

  ‘You’d want to be bloody sure.’

  ‘That limits the number of people, though, doesn’t it? We didn’t know the machine gunners, but we did know who was giving them their ammunition.’

  ‘Right. So we’d be looking for someone in authority,’ said the captain. ‘Someone he’d trust if they let slip to him that it was all blanks.’

  ‘We come back to Clark,’ said Breen. ‘Or Tiger.’

  ‘Or me, or you, or Bluey, by that logic,’ said the captain.

  ‘Or Morrie as well. Hamilton. I’m going to scratch us three from the list, though.’ Breen’s fingers tapped against his pockets. ‘I wish we knew where that rumour came from. About the blanks. And I wish we’d had someone have a look at his legs and his side. If he’d been given a poke there…’

  ‘None of it make any sense, though. Either someone prodded him while ten or fifteen people were looking at them all crawl through—’

  ‘That’s not a huge risk, though,’ said Breen. ‘They’re crawling through longish grass. And if someone notices—it was an accident.’

  ‘But no one did notice. You’d think someone would.’

  ‘So the murderer’s lucky.’