Soldiers

by Tom Remiger

  ‘And I don’t like your second theory, either. Even if he really believed the whole show wasn’t real, it’s such a risk. Things could have changed five minutes beforehand. Tiger told them all straight out at the beginning that it was live fire. You’d think that was enough to cause doubt.’ Sinclair was speaking fast and passionately. ‘It’s such a small reward for the risk. You get to laugh at everyone and you probably get put on a charge; or you die.’

  Breen had nothing to say to this.

  They had moved into a richer part of town. The streets were full of people pushing past the crawling taxi.

  ‘So,’ said Breen. ‘We can exclude the privates of the platoon. It’s the corporals and the sergeant and the officers who could have done it. The only one with the ghost of a motive is Charlie Brennan; we know that he fought him once. He was behind him and could have jabbed him in the side with a bayonet.’

  ‘Do you know how many fights there’ve been? But, sure, if we’re playing this game, it seems more probable than anything else, and it’s easier than believing Cousins wasn’t taking things seriously.’

  ‘It’s the most likely method,’ said Breen. ‘Not so complicated.’

  A military policeman held up a hand while a convoy moved through. They came to a dead stop, watching the trucks rattling past.

  ‘The Australians, probably,’ said the captain. ‘I reckon the river must be up just ahead.’

  ‘I suppose.’

  There was a comfortable silence. They were growing to feel safe with one another, to recognise that some evasions were necessary.

  ‘Look,’ said the captain, just as the taxi came shaking back to life. ‘What are you hoping to achieve? You’ll never prove anything; there’s no one to help you. Everyone’s convinced it was an accident, except those who want to keep it quiet as a suicide.’

  Egypt surged about them.

  ‘If I can catch him,’ said Breen, ‘and he confesses, that’s something. We can’t allow a suspicion to go about. We have to think of morale.’

  ‘There are other problems to talk of,’ said the captain. ‘And we can hardly talk. Don’t go packing a sook—not at me—but I have to tell you that I don’t believe a word of it.’

  There was a crash as someone in the street kicked at the taxi.

  ‘But I’ll help you if you find him,’ said the captain, ‘and I’ll do what I can to help you find him, this villain I don’t believe in. For you.’

  The taxi swerved slowly to a stop.

  ‘It’s different,’ said Breen as he got out, and the captain wondered whether he was replying or observing; but then he said it wasn’t like home at all.

  The captain ignored the brown hand he put coins into. Breen thought about how the only time they touched Egyptians was when they were giving them money. By now they were walking past the supercilious bronze lions who guarded the Khedive Ismail Bridge.

  ‘She’s a serpent of a river,’ Breen said. He was thinking of Cleopatra, and of Caliban.

  He had bought a multi-volume Shakespeare from the YMCA man on the boat and set about reading it. He had read a few plays in school, but no more. It seemed a gap in his knowledge necessary to correct after Bluey’s speech; reading, sometimes aloud, he became fairly convinced that Shakespeare had at some point in his life been a soldier.

  Breen wondered if the captain had ever read The Tempest.

  They leaned over the broad ramparts of the bridge to look at the Nile. Breen was pretending to ignore the people pushing past. They were almost at the dead centre, where the keystone would be.

  ‘Do you hear that?’ Breen asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Laughter.’

  There couldn’t be anyone there. Not underneath them. Unless some child was stuck. But laughter. Mocking. He leaned further over the parapet to be sure.

  ‘Have a care, man,’ Sinclair said. ‘Twenty-eight inoculations if you fall in.’

  Breen thought how easily a push could unbalance him, and he imagined all those people pausing in the torrent of their days to laugh in unison at a Kiwi struggling and cursing in the water, trying not to swallow any of it while his hat floated away to sea. ‘Is it true,’ he said, ‘about the twenty-eight inoculations?’

  ‘I don’t know. It’s convenient to say it is. Otherwise they’d all be plunging in it for a drunken lark before we knew where we were.’

  ‘Look,’ said Breen. ‘I should tell you. Baird’s pulling a shrewdie on you. He wants you gone.’

  ‘Does he now?’ A hand tapped against a thoughtful pocket as the captain imitated Breen, perhaps unconsciously. ‘Maybe he’s right. I’m sure he’s thinking only of his duty. I’m not a rival, not by any means.’

  ‘Do you know why?’

  ‘Why I’m not a rival?’ The captain moved a hand in front of his chest as if to say: Look at what I am. He seemed almost to be enjoying the news about Baird.

  ‘I meant, why he doesn’t think you should come with us to Greece. If that’s where we’re going.’

  ‘Why do you think?’

  Breen didn’t answer.

  ‘I could do well at a base job,’ said the musing captain. ‘Plenty of new faces.’

  ‘I’d miss you,’ said Breen.

  ‘We must do our duty,’ said the captain, ‘even if it is our duty as perceived by a young stock agent.’

  ‘He’s good,’ said Breen. ‘I know the colonel thinks highly of you, but Baird’s white-anting you beautifully. And he’s good…’ The meaning of the word had changed subtly, and he paused as he realised this. ‘It’s not for mercenary reasons. He thinks it’s for the best.’

  ‘Cheer up, Daisy,’ said the captain. ‘He may die horribly on some foreign field, and yet leave me to take his place.’

  ‘Can’t you be serious?’

  ‘I can,’ said the captain. ‘Enough coffee-housing. Let us go to find my uncle’s grave.’

  He bowed to Breen, absurdly formal, and Breen laughed despite himself. He was furious, underneath, at the casually mentioned prospect of being abandoned.

  ‘Afterwards,’ Breen said, ‘we’ll start on Brennan. He’s the only one with a possible motive.’

  They walked together in the noisy streets.

  ‘There’s no particular reason to see it,’ said the captain. ‘The grave, I mean. But there’s no reason not to, and there are people back home who’d be glad of a description.’

  The cemetery, when—after unexpected difficulty—they found it, was a miracle of grass: scrubby grass, and patchy strands of it, but grass.

  ‘And where are the English graves?’ asked the captain.

  ‘They’ll be about.’ Breen was reminded of something. ‘Who was the Englishman I once saw you with, the night the bombs came down. Small fellow?’

  ‘Before Cousins was killed?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘A distant cousin, as it happens. A stranger to me, really, and not the sort of man my grandfather would have approved of. No eye for land.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I was remembering something.’

  ‘I thought your family had been in New Zealand forever,’ said Breen, unwilling to forget the English stranger as somebody of no importance.

  ‘A very distant connection,’ said the captain, privately amused by Breen’s jealousy. ‘But surely you have to deal with the same thing? People asking if you knew their great-uncle who went out to Sydney in 1907?’

  ‘I suppose so. He must have made an effort to come and see you, with the trains as they were and the petrol rationing.’

  ‘He was about to go overseas. It’s strange,’ the captain said.

  ‘What is?’

  ‘All this. It doesn’t end. There’s still people looking after the graves, and they’ll be at it for years yet.’

  Breen had an image of generations of little men giving their faces a quick shave and wheeling out their bicycles. Going off to their quiet work over the spreading bodies.

  ‘I’ve only ever seen a ph
otograph of my uncle,’ Sinclair said. ‘I wish I had a camera to send a shot of this home.’ In the photograph his uncle looked like a boy dressed up in an old uniform found in the attic. ‘I wonder why he stuck through with it. Gallipoli and all that. Then back here to die of, I think, dysentery.’

  ‘It was his duty,’ said Breen, as though that explained everything.

  ‘It’s no one’s duty to die,’ said the captain.

  ‘Sometimes, I think it has to be.’ Breen was standing straight, silhouetted by the sinking sun that had just begun to redden the sky. ‘For the good of others.’

  ‘Cheer up, you young fool,’ said Sinclair. ‘Maybe they’ll shoot Hitler and it’ll all be over.’

  ‘I don’t know that it’ll ever be over,’ said Breen. They walked to the gate. ‘You want a chance to wash your hands, somehow,’ he said.

  ‘I know what you mean.’

  13

  They only stayed in Egypt for a few weeks, long enough for the officers to exchange their pistols for new ones and the base kit to be packed up.

  Most of the battalion was loaded into a fine new liner. Breen’s and Tiger’s platoons, left over, found themselves crammed into a dilapidated steamer, along with Granny. ‘We can’t be trusted alone,’ said Tiger. ‘Someone needs to make sure we don’t go mad with our new-found power.’

  As they waited on the quay, they could hear the lines of soldiers ahead of them imitating sheep being crammed into the yards. It was a tolerated form of protest. Tiger looked at Breen and began a surprisingly good imitation of a dog barking. Beside him Clark gave a piercing whistle.

  The smell of sheep came up through the decks and there were tufts of wool caught at the protruding edges of things. Breen reached down and plucked one from the hinge of a hatch. He rolled the greasiness of it through his fingers.

  ‘Well,’ said Tiger, ‘that explains something. You can’t expect the poor overworked staff to be able to distinguish between men and sheep, anyhow.’ He stepped delicately over the deck. Breen was reminded of a cat avoiding puddles. His walk mingled pride and delicacy. It was surprising in such a large man.

  ‘Let’s find us a cabin,’ Breen said.

  Through the hatch was a sweltering vision. The men were loaded into the holds, crammed onto an uneasy substrata of packs and equipment. The smell was overwhelming enough to be unpleasant. The wiser ones were already staking out places on deck instead, and Breen walked through masses of them to accost a crewman who mutely pointed them to a cabin. He could not speak English.

  The cabin was small and filthy. A tap sent saltwater into a basin streaked with rust-coloured muck. There were two sets of bunks, and a porthole that would not close properly. As soon as the boat got underway the sea would come rushing through.

  ‘Pick us a couple more of the decent type, would you?’ asked Tiger, who wasn’t quite his normal self.

  ‘Who are you imitating?’

  Tiger grinned. Whenever he smiled, he didn’t show his teeth and he looked happier than anyone Breen had ever seen. His smile went all the way around his face.

  ‘Baird. I thought it was obvious. He’s been complaining about how you wouldn’t help him with the captain.’

  ‘What’d you think about that?’

  ‘You can’t speak ill of your superiors,’ said Tiger. He looked to see how Breen would take this before he continued. ‘I think we could do better. But, as my mother used to say, you take your lumps. At least he’s not a martinet for drill. Biggest waste of time in this man’s army.’

  Breen went to find Granny. He needed support if the talk was going to be like this. In the end, the cabin had Tiger, Granny, and Breen.

  Towards the end of the first day the weather began to get rougher. The waves took an irregular violence, and the ship’s captain—Greek, white singlet and uneven stubble, cigar and blithe competence—came down from his Olympian perch on the bridge.

  The cigar gestured. The men on deck were pushed back into the crowded holds, and disappeared through the hatches into a dim world of liquid heat and ceaseless motion. It was like a sauce just beginning to simmer; there were lumps and bubbles of slow movement. But there was the lateral sway of the ship too, gear toppling and men cursing. Breen and Tiger, seasick, watched with a feeling of vague guilt.

  Then the crew began to batten down the hatches. From the hold came a noise of protest, louder and more bitter with each moment.

  ‘Clark!’ called Tiger. ‘Sergeant Clark!’

  Clark emerged from somewhere surprisingly close. He was obviously lurking in order to avoid going down into the hold until the last possible moment.

  ‘What’s all that about then?’

  ‘I’d say they’re worried about getting out,’ said Clark. Breen thought that maybe he took stating the obvious too far.

  ‘Well, I shouldn’t say that there’s anything to worry about.’

  An Army Service Corps private (‘truck drivers not soldiers’, Tiger would say) was pushing past them. Breen remembered that, even by the standards of the New Zealand army, the ASC was not renowned for its military courtesy. Then the man astonished him.

  ‘You’re not down there, mate,’ the private said. ‘You’re up top in a nice dry cabin.’

  Clark turned to him, anger in his face, but Tiger held up a hand.

  ‘You’d best take my bunk,’ he said to Clark. ‘Breen will show you where it is. I’ll pop down there and keep an eye on things.’

  The private vanished while he could. Clark leaned against the shifting side of the deckhouse. He made no attempt to move. Over the rail the sea heaved up and down.

  ‘You don’t have to,’ Breen said to Tiger. ‘Some would say you shouldn’t.’

  ‘We can’t have them thinking they’re braver than we are,’ said Tiger. ‘And we don’t want them down there in the Black Hole of Calcutta kicking up bobsy-die. I’ll just sit below and do my knitting. And you know what? It’ll be drier.’

  ‘You don’t think I—’ began Breen.

  ‘One will be enough,’ said Tiger. ‘Besides, Clark’s broke again. Someone’ll have to keep an eye on my things while that magpie’s about.’

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ said Clark. His solid face was impassive. Breen couldn’t work out if he was flattered or angered by the joke.

  ‘Lighten up. Wait till you see how it feels to have the Mediterranean splashing about on your face. I’m the lucky one here.’

  Breen took his opportunity while the loading was going on. He slipped away from the bunk closest to the porthole into the one vacated by Tiger.

  Granny lay in bed and watched him do it. ‘Good man,’ he said. ‘Take your chances where you can.’ His face was a pale shade of green, but he puffed steadily at a cigarette. Their beds were straw palliasses, but the seawater had soaked them all. He tapped the ash away carelessly. The cabin smelt of old seawater, sweat, and damp tobacco. Underneath it was the smell of straw turning into silage.

  ‘It must be harder for you,’ Granny said casually. ‘Not being used to it.’ Granny liked his comforts. He was quite insistent that nothing would ever be as bad as the camps and troopships of the first war.

  ‘I can handle it,’ said Breen. ‘A bit of discomfort never hurt anyone.’

  ‘Sometimes it’s the making of a man,’ said Granny. He touched the wedding ring on his finger, trying to spin it around. That was a mannerism of his. ‘Take your man Morrie, for example.’

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘I knew him when he was just a silly young bugger. He was working for his father then, out on the farm.’

  ‘So?’ said Breen. ‘We get to be silly when we’re young.’

  ‘He was a handful,’ said Granny. ‘And then his father lost the farm in the slump, so Morrie packed up and disappeared. Good riddance, we all reckoned.’

  ‘He said something about this to me once,’ said Breen. ‘It’s impressive that he fought his way up and out of that to where he is now.’

  ‘And where’s that?’

>   ‘Well,’ said Breen, trying to remember: it was all a bit vague. ‘He gets oils and stuff to commercial buyers. He says he’s a salesman, but that’s modesty, I think. You’d have to know what you were about.’

  ‘This isn’t the sort of thing to bruit about the place,’ said Granny.

  ‘It’s not the most glamorous job, but it’s nothing scandalous.’

  ‘Morrie sells petrol all right, but he isn’t quite what he seems.’ There was a wicked gleam in Granny’s eye.

  ‘I don’t quite understand you.’

  ‘He used to work the pumps at a place down Nightcaps way. Left school at fifteen as a conceited thing, not especially strong; what was he going to do?’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘I keep up with his father, you see. He was a friend of my brother’s.’ That would be the brother who died somewhere on the Wallemolen spur, back a long time ago.

  ‘Not that it means anything.’

  ‘You’d think, though, wouldn’t you,’ said Granny, ‘that he’d be a bit more open about it? It’ll all come out eventually. We can’t help being as we are. But now he’s a good man; one of the best.’

  It wasn’t the sort of thing you could repeat—and he wondered why Granny, that downy old bird, had done so, except perhaps from a love of gossip—but it was a shard of knowledge about both men, to be collected even if it wasn’t quite material for the notebook.

  ‘Do you think Morrie’d be upset? About this coming out, I mean,’ said Breen.

  ‘Perhaps he wouldn’t mind. But it’d make his position difficult, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘We’re a classless society,’ said Breen.

  ‘Sure we are.’

  On the second day out, Clark started to get fidgety. There was nothing to do. They lay on their lumpy beds, hands behind their heads, and rode out the swells.

  ‘I think the boat’s turned around,’ said Granny.

  ‘That’ll be the second time,’ said Breen.

  ‘God knows what’s going on out there.’

  Clark said nothing.

  ‘Fancy a hand?’ asked Granny. ‘In the absence of a chess set.’

  Somewhere in the Mediterranean with the bones of a thousand sailors drifting beneath them, Breen said, ‘I don’t feel quite like it.’