Barbed Wire and Roses

by Peter Yeldham

  Muddy. Still more rain. An awful day. I’ve just learned Bluey is dead.

  The next page dated three days later was more extensive, and revealed his grief. Bluey had clearly been a deep and bitter loss.

  He could be a bugger, Bluey could. He liked a joke, liked a drink, and liked stirring things at times, but he was a good mate. We came from different worlds, but I’ve never had a better friend. I didn’t know he was dead until after I left the farmhouse. I finally had to go, had to leave M.L., who was crying. I tried hard not to look back. It would have been easy to stay with her. It was so hard to leave.

  We all thought it was just a flesh wound. I was sure Bluey would be in the hospital tent or at the base. When they said that he’d died — blood poisoning —I asked what kind of lousy doctors they were. I think I shouted that it was just a wound. How could he be allowed to die of a bloody flesh wound?

  I could’ve wept, only blokes here don’t. I wish we did. It would’ve been easier to weep. Or to go back to M.L., but I knew if I did there’d be no way I’d ever leave the farmhouse again. I’ll miss her, and God how I’ll miss Blue. He wanted to marry his girl in England and bring her home. He was the best and bravest of us, old Bluey. Old? Christ, he was only twenty-one.

  That night Patrick stayed for dinner with his mother. With the two of them alone, he took the opportunity to ask about the diary. ‘Did the army send it back? When Grandpa was killed?’

  ‘Darling, I haven’t the faintest idea,’ she said. ‘I wasn’t born then. And your Dad… he was three years old when that war ended.’

  ‘So it must’ve been sent to the next of kin. My grandmother, along with the rest of his effects, I suppose?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ she said vaguely. ‘I’m not sure. She didn’t confide much in me. She was an old lady when I met Richard. Not so much in years, but she seemed to have retreated into some kind of a shell. A very lonely and rather bitter old lady, that’s what I thought. Granny Jane. It’s what we called her when Sally was born, but she never showed much interest in you children. She died before your first birthday.’

  ‘Never remarried?’

  ‘No. Poor woman. Apparently her entire romantic life consisted of just a few days’ leave the army gave them for a honeymoon. And after the war there’d been so many men killed, there was a surplus of women. A widow with a child… not much chance for her.’

  ‘Or much fun for her, either.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did she ever speak of her marriage?’

  ‘I tried to talk about it once. She didn’t want to discuss it. Quite decidedly didn’t want to, she made that clear to me. Your dad said his father was never mentioned at home as he grew up. As if she could not forgive him… for being killed, I suppose. At least that’s what he and I always thought.’

  ‘What a waste.’ He hesitated, then ventured the question he’d been working toward. ‘Do you think Grandpa had a woman overseas?’

  ‘Patrick.’ She smiled. ‘How would I know that? And why the sudden question? Is there a mention of someone?’

  ‘Just initials. M.L.’

  ‘That’s a big help, darling.’

  ‘It was a woman. The diary says “her”. She was crying and he didn’t want to leave her. She was in a farmhouse.’

  ‘The plot thickens,’ Katherine Conway replied. ‘But do we really want to dig up family scandals when they’re all dead?’

  ‘Of course not.’ But he added as she glanced at him, ‘However, they are the grandparents that Sally and I never knew. It’s natural to want to fill in blank spaces.’

  ‘And you have a writer’s instinct to probe. Some would call it professional curiosity. Others would say you’re a stickybeak.’

  He laughed, and asked if she wanted to hear the passage. ‘Absolutely,’ she replied, and he brought the diary, reading her the requiem for the friend named Bluey. There was a brief silence when he finished.

  ‘How awfully sad,’ she said, and he realised there were tears in her eyes. ‘Stupid of me, but I’m crying for your grandfather, who couldn’t weep. And for Bluey, whoever he was, dying so young. Even for M.L. He didn’t want to leave her, did he?’

  ‘She didn’t want him to go. I wonder if Dad ever read this?’

  ‘He never mentioned it.’

  ‘If he inherited it from his mother, I wonder if she read it?’

  ‘Let’s hope not,’ Katherine said.

  ‘You think she’d have realised?’

  ‘I imagine she’d have made the same assumption. Which would hurt deeply. So few days of love in her young life, left with a child and no husband. Perhaps that explains her bitterness. I’ll be crying for poor Granny Jane in a minute, if we don’t stop this.’

  She made them coffee. He watched as she stacked dishes and ground the beans. Time had started its healing process. She moved like a woman younger than her seventy years, even appeared to look younger now the initial grieving months were over. She’d had her white hair cut shorter; it made a lively match with her alert hazel eyes. More importantly, she’d recovered her poise, her humour and sharp intellect.

  He had always been proud of his mother: at primary school, later in his teens and at university, he always thought she outshone the other mums on speech and graduation days. But he had never been more proud of her than now, coming to terms with the loss, being what she had always been — more like a friend and companion to him and his sister.

  She had also been his ally in the family when he had begun to write articles and poetry for Honi Soir, the university magazine, and after two years of studying law had come to the conclusion that neither life in a legal office nor combat in the courts had the least appeal for him, and what he wanted to do was write for a living. Her support, in the face of his father’s dismay and disappointment at what he called ‘this bewildering change of direction’, had created a special bond between them.

  When she returned with the coffee Patrick had switched on the late news. The immigration minister was on, his cold judicial voice demonising asylum seekers as he made his consistently repeated claim: he had reliable information that many of them were terrorists, and had secret agendas that he was unable to reveal for security reasons…

  ‘Darling, please —’

  ‘I’ll switch the bastard off.’ Patrick knew his mother’s political views, and saw her nod as the face of the minister diminished into a spot on a dark screen.

  ‘That’s all we can do,’ his mother said, ‘turn him off. But so many people believe that xenophobic bile. Others are convinced by the talkback ranters on the radio.’ She sat in an armchair and put the coffee tray between them. ‘I remembered something while I was in the kitchen… about the diary.’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘Your dad did mention it. I’d quite forgotten. I don’t think your grandmother ever saw it.’

  ‘Why not, Ma?’

  ‘Because someone sent it to Richard. Granny Jane had come to live with us then, but it was sent to him, not her.’

  ‘You mean this arrived when you were married to Dad?’ Patrick asked, surprised. ‘Not just after the 1914 war?’

  ‘No, about forty years after that war! Sally was a baby. And you, my pet, were just a work in progress.’

  ‘That puts it in the 1960s,’ Patrick calculated with a smile. ‘And he told you someone had sent him grandfather’s diary?’

  ‘Yes. Together with a letter, saying he might like to have it.’

  ‘Did you see the letter?’

  ‘Darling, I never even saw the diary until you found it today. It was just a passing remark. I don’t think he ever referred to it again.’

  ‘And you don’t know if he read it?’

  ‘He never said so.’

  ‘Or if Granny Jane read it?’

  ‘I doubt that. She certainly never mentioned it.’

  ‘Strange that nobody’s read it. Did you never feel tempted?’

  ‘Darling, I was up to my neck in nappies, plus pregnant with you and
trying to hold down a job. After all, it was just a war diary kept by someone I didn’t even know. I probably assumed your dad had thumbed through and thought it wasn’t of great consequence.’

  ‘Or else he did read it,’ Patrick said, ‘and didn’t like the inferences he drew about M.L and her farmhouse. So he hid it away without showing it to you or his mother.’

  ‘There you go again.’ She laughed. ‘Beware of writers in search of stories. How about this for a scenario? He put it aside to read and it got covered by years of tax receipts, all awaiting a dreaded audit that never happened.’

  ‘Ma,’ he had replied, laughing with her, ‘I suspect you could be right.’

  Patrick came back to the present with a start as Joanna nudged him. He realised the nominations for best director of a feature film were being read out.

  ‘You were asleep,’ she whispered.

  ‘Not quite,’ Patrick murmured.

  She shook her head in mock despair, then as the names were announced gripped his hand so tightly that her nails almost cut into his flesh. Hers was the third and last name. It was greeted with moderate applause in which Patrick could take no part because one hand was being fiercely clutched like a lifeline. The pressure increased as the envelope was produced that held the winner’s name. There was the customary byplay while the Eminent Person to whom this task was entrusted held it up to the lights as if to discover the name within. Then, perhaps hearing a muted sigh from the illustrious assembly, he set about unsealing it.

  No envelope, Patrick thought, has ever taken this long to open. Talk about fumble-fingers! Film industry award nights were inescapably full of this prolonged and counterfeit entertainment: amusing for the audience, highly stressful for the listed trio. He disliked these show-biz carnivals. When the cameras were finally switched off the glamour often deteriorated: jealousy, malice and drunken spats had been known to end many an awards party, providing spice for the following day’s tabloids. Patrick, regarded by his peers as a ‘journey-man writer’ of television series and serials (a polite surrogate for ‘hack’), had never been nominated for anything, nor did he expect to be. He was only there because Joanna, despite being a long shot in the betting, could not bear the thought of staying away from this public torment.

  ‘And the winner is —’ there was the customary pause to generate more tension as pre-set spotlights picked out the three candidates and television cameras caught the moment of strain as each tried to look nonchalant. In several million homes across the country the mass audience focused on these faces, enjoying the recognition of a nervous twitch on one, a rigid jaw on another and, in the case of his wife, a half smile that tried to suggest it didn’t really matter, it truly didn’t — it was an honour to even be here and be considered. While he admired her composure he knew this was a masquerade; her pulse was racing like a Formula One car, and if the bloody fool with the envelope didn’t get on with it either her nails would break or his hand would start to bleed.

  ‘The winner is… Joanna Lugarno for The Next Time We Meet!’ There was a moment of surprise, then an eruption of delight. She gave Patrick a joyful look and hugged him, while everyone around them cheered. He watched proudly as she walked to the podium, slim and stylish, the best-looking winner of the night (or so the press reported the next day), kissed the Eminent Person and made a short, graceful speech. The applause when she came back with the coveted award was deafening.

  They attended several parties, encountered no jealousy or any malice, hardly even a drunk, and went home in the early hours to their flat in Neutral Bay. Floated home, Patrick thought, Joanna on cloud nine all night long, deliriously happy. The rush of phone calls with congratulations and job offers began the following day while they were still in bed, tangled together after a night as ecstatic and fulfilling as their lovemaking had been when they first met.

  A month later Joanna signed a contract to direct a new film at Fox Studios. It was a political thriller with a background of the Sydney Olympics, and with the games due in three months’ time she was fully occupied with casting and script conferences. Patrick tried to interest her in Stephen’s diary, but she was preoccupied. Unlike his sister. Sally was intrigued, posing the question: Why had their father in all these years never mentioned the diary? Growing up they’d always known they had a grandpa who’d died in the First World War. It had sometimes even been a subject at family gatherings. Yet their dad had kept this account of his own father’s wartime experiences carefully hidden. Why?

  It was Sally who, after reading it, had helped Patrick search through the remainder of their father’s files, looking for the letter that had accompanied the diary. While unable to find it, they did discover a folder containing two other letters that confirmed their grandfather’s death. Letters of sympathy written to Jane Conway: one from the battalion padre, the other from the medical officer, both simply headed France, August 1918.

  ‘Trust Dad.’ Stephen shook his head. ‘These must’ve passed to him after Granny Jane died, and he stored them with all his papers and tax files.’

  Sally read the letters. Both were brief and formal, clearly no more than duty required. ‘Regret to inform you…’ She shrugged at the phrase. ‘That’s cold comfort for the poor widow. Just a few lines and the usual clichés.’

  ‘Maybe it helped her. They said he was courageous.’ Patrick pointed out the brevity was understandable, for there must have been a great many of these to be written and sent home.

  ‘At least it tells us when it happened,’ Sally agreed, for she had already searched the Commonwealth War Grave Commission web site, and found no trace of Stephen Conway’s last resting place there. On another list of the early AIF volunteers she did find his name and army number, but it lacked the details and date of his death. Puzzled by this, Sally had written to the records division of the War Museum in Canberra, but frustratingly received an acknowledgement of her enquiry and nothing else. They discussed it one night over a family dinner Katherine hosted at Northbridge, and decided a personal approach was required.

  ‘Aren’t you two getting a bit obsessive?’ Joanna remarked, tiring of the subject.

  Sally bristled at this. ‘Did you ever know your grandfather?’ she asked.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Well, we’re just trying to get to know ours.’

  Joanna shrugged and sipped her wine. Katherine refrained from comment. Patrick said they could use another bottle from the cellar and went to fetch it, wishing his wife and sister could at least find some common ground, even if there was little chance they would ever grow to like each other.

  It was mid-winter in Canberra and the sedate avenues of deciduous trees were stripped bare of foliage. A chill wind blew off Lake Burley Griffin. On the hill the parliament was in recess, and politicians had fled like migratory swallows to Europe and warmer climes.

  Patrick and Sally had an appointment in the building that housed the National Archives. There they were no more successful than she had been by letter or telephone, being passed from one puzzled official to another.

  Was it possible, Patrick asked, that a soldier who had fought in the First World War could not be traced? They had records of his enlistment, and he had been killed, the condolence letters proved that; but apparently there was no record of it. Was that possible?

  Highly unlikely, he was told.

  But was it possible, he persisted, and with some reluctance the senior official admitted — using the same emphasis — that under certain conditions, in the confusion of war, anything was perhaps possible. It was all so long ago. For instance, this roll was compiled in London, back in the year 1919 from records kept at the Infantry Headquarters, Horseferry Road, Westminster. The sources on which it was based were unknown. Papers may have gone astray. Were they sure they had the right name?

  We’re sure, Sally told him scathingly. Since it’s also our name, I think we ought to know. Patrick was dogged but more conciliatory, showing officials the cover of the diary. He read out the
names of places where Stephen Conway had fought. He even produced some faded photos they had collected from old family albums, including a picture of their grandfather in army uniform.

  We’ll make some enquiries, they were told, but both felt from the lack of conviction it would hardly lead to anything positive.

  What you mean is, it’s a big ask, Patrick had responded.

  If we’re honest, the official said, that’s putting it mildly.

  They had driven home dismayed.

  ‘Sorry, Sal… it was a wasted trip.’ He pulled up outside the apartment block in Manly where she had bought a unit after her divorce. It had spectacular views towards the northern beaches.

  ‘Not their fault. I suppose it is a big ask,’ she said. ‘Don’t rush off, we rarely see each other lately. Stay for a drink.’

  They went upstairs to the top floor. He stood on the balcony, watching the surf roll in on successive spits of sand along the coast while she poured them white wine.

  ‘Bloody marvellous sight.’

  ‘Bloody horrible mortgage,’ she answered, handing him his glass. ‘But worth it to see Jim’s face when he came here. Shaken rigid he was. He and his sweetie-pie are in a little flat at Artarmon. She hates it, complains it’s like a rabbit warren.’

  ‘And you’re delighted,’ Patrick said.

  ‘I try not to be. But I did tell him that since rabbits spend all their time fucking in warrens, he and sweetie-pie had clearly found the perfect patch.’

  He laughed. She was a year older than him; after a roller-coaster marriage and several career failures, she had finally found the right niche as a scenic designer.

  ‘Well, here’s to our grandfather.’

  They sipped their drinks with a sense of regret.

  ‘We tried, Pat. I don’t think we can do any more than this.’

  ‘Doesn’t seem like it.’

  ‘It bugs me. Not only that, I think it stinks — he volunteered to fight for his country and nobody gives a rat’s arse where or how he died. Someone, way back there, slipped up. Which means we’ll never know what happened.’