by Gregory Day
‘Wes,’ he said, gasping, as he saw me coming down with the rifle towards him. ‘I’m bloody glad I found you.’
‘What’s up? Has Costas arrived?’
‘Arrived?’ he said, looking confused as to what I might mean. ‘No, no . . . no . . . aw, but hell, I’m so glad I found you.’
My spirits sank. After two hours of solitude and scouting on the ridge I was back in the nuthouse. I felt bugger all for Perry Coghlan at that moment. All I could do was close my eyes and pray for the andartes to get a wriggle on with our fresh orders.
In a shaky voice, Perry said: ‘You loved him, didn’t ya, Wes. I know ya did.’
‘What’s that?’
He turned his lip up, like a sour taste had rinsed through his mouth. He’s bloody balmy, I thought. I couldn’t for the life of me work out what he was on about.
‘I’m talkin’ about Vern,’ he said then. ‘Your brother, Wes, on the Imperial.’
I waited, thinking, my turn to be silent, as silent as this room where I sit, on the rare occasions when the weather stills. I can feel now the way my toes clamped hard in my boots. And my jaw sets, as I listen out all over again for the mad bastard’s clarification.
In a hoarse voice but with that apologetic tone he’d taken on the other occasions when I’d berated him, he said: ‘Do you mind if we go back?’
I saw the pigeon then, the one I’d been looking for all afternoon. Flustering up from right beside us, climbing the air madly then swooping away on the diagonal from the high ground behind, before sinking smoothly through the sky of the valley between us and the tomb of Zeus. I watched, and it was gone.
*
‘He was on the ship all right. And I was with him beforehand. We were drinking together all that day . . .’
Back by the fire, both of us squatting tensely. Perry had on the sanest voice I’d heard since finding him on the beach. It scared the shit out of me.
‘Go on.’
‘We’d pissed it up. Your brother stood out. He had one of those local belts around his waist. Had his shirt off. I saw him come down the cobbles towards the fountain in the square there, in the smoke and the stink and that, in Iraklio. He had a bottle in one hand and a bloody meerschaum in the other. Singin’ too, at the top of his voice. And recitin’. He was wild with it, deadset. He had a few mates too, coming along with him. But he stood out. This big Welsh bastard told me he’d never seen anyone take it to the Hun like Vern had. Beyond the call, he reckoned, a one-man battalion. And now he was leaping into another mission, just as a way to . . .’
Perry Coghlan winced again, the sour look rinsing once more through his features. He went quiet.
‘Well, go on,’ I demanded.
‘Yair . . . well, anyway, me and a few of the blokes I was with got hooked up in it . . . and we propped outside this kaphenoi near the fountain in Iraklio, with your brother and the rest, and went at it. We had flagons of plonk and bottles of raki and that, and well, we hit it hard, yair. None harder than your brother.’
‘How do ya mean?’
‘Well, he was fairly out of control, Wes. I mean, I seen him climbin’ up the side of one of the bombed buildings there, right up to roof height, ya know, and walkin’ a ceilin’ rafter left hangin’ there, like he was in a fuckin’ circus and didn’t care. The building was stuffed, the timber of the rafter wasn’t gonna hold, but he did it with his bottle and the pipe, and singin’ and carryin’ on at the top of his voice about that “fuckin Pommy bitzer Tiny Freyberg”, even though we all knew he’s a Kiwi. He was recitin’ stuff, all this stuff I didn’t know, except “Charge of the Light Brigade” which I did, and then he’d call out at the top of his voice, no words, just a wild roar, like the whole war was a mad piss-up and the fun was done. And then he’d throw his head back with a lurch and all of us below’d be whooping him on but at the same time we were fair dinkum worried he was gonna fall and break his back on the rubble and glass below, and then he’d laugh his head off and shout, “Time’s up! It’s stumps, gentlemen. Last ferry’s leaving. Time please,” and he’d almost screech the please, and he started repeating it over and over, and he’s steppin’ bit by bit along this space where once the roof was and the chant just built and he was screechin’ it like some blasted cockatoo as he crossed and twistin’ his body about with no thought for fallin’ and “Gentlemen, please” became bloody drunken meaningful the more we said it, Wes. It was as if he knew we’d all had enough after the way Wavell spoke to us in the desert when we first got out here, and then what with the freeze up at Vevi and the retreat back down and then we came here thinkin’ . . . well, we took ’em on despite the fuck-ups, we watched the Junkers burn and now we were lettin’ off steam coz the whole show was a joke, Wes, you know that, and your Vern certainly did and his “Gentlemen, please! Last ferry” and all that was like us all cryin’ out, strikin’ up the band, lettin’ out one almighty head o’ sarcastic steam and we were bitter, laughin’, swiggin’, full of poison and then eventually he made it to this zigzag scrap of wall on the other side and stepped off the rafter onto the wall with his arms out wide and then he pulled ’em back in and just stood puffin’ on that meerschaum as cool as a cucumber. I’d never seen anythin’ like it.’
‘And the chanting stopped?’
‘Yair, the chantin’ stopped and, I dunno, he got himself down somehow and we all continued on down the lanes. But I’ll never forget . . . Vern up there. None of the others would either. He was conductin’ the orchestra.’
Perry reached for his dish where it sat in the dust and ash beside him. He ran his hand through his curls and looked panicky again. The bloke had two heads and now I knew that his trouble was about to become mine.
‘So, what next?’
He looked up at me, startled.
‘Aw, shit,’ he sighed, as if he’d just returned from some other country. ‘Aw shit, I dunno. It was late. But it wasn’t long then, the word got round the navy had been sighted comin’ into the bay. A few blokes took off down the hill straightaway but others hung back as long as possible. Some blokes were still settin’ Brens, with strings you know, strung between the triggers and whatever they could find, water cans, door knockers, so they’d fire and cover us leaving. I dunno about Vern, I lost touch with him then. But it would have been only an hour or so, I reckon, before we were all headin’ out onto the mole and up the bloody scramble nets.’
Perry Coghlan made a hissing sound, sucking air rapidly back through pincer teeth. Then his mouth opened but no sound came out. His head went back in a grimace, like he suddenly had a bad stitch.
Turning away, with full foreboding, to the flicker of flames I’d rustled up in the little circle of rocks, I said: ‘You right there, Perry?’
‘It’s what I’m tryin’ to tell ya, Wes.’
‘What? What, mate?’
He hissed again, like a rib was broken. ‘Well I dunno . . .’
For a long minute or so we were silent. Then: ‘On the way out past the fortress there, it was bloody chaos I know that, but I dunno who was where or what.’
‘Yair?’
‘But, aw . . .’
He exhaled, a slow breath, putrid with regret. He hissed again, this time wetly, like a black snake, and finally managed to speak.
‘I saw him when I woke up, Wes. You know, when the ship was hit. I didn’t recall I saw him, not till we, you and I, were back at the villa . . . and you mentioned him . . . and then I twigged . . . the Cress brothers . . . you two, the Victorians . . . I’d heard you mentioned but I didn’t put two and two . . . didn’t know who you were. Thought you were a friggin’ officer at first. And then I saw him . . . in your eyes.’
I waited now, threw oak on the fire, not caring about the smoke. It could cloud us, cover us for all
I cared, cut us off in a stone world where a truth could finally be told.
He’d begun, he would finish, things were about to get a whole lot clearer.
‘I woke up like I said, below decks, and didn’t know what the fuck was happenin’. It was dark down there, Wes, the ship was shudderin’ like a stuck bull, the sound was crashin’ about but there was this single light on the floor just along from me, I dunno how it came to be sittin’ there . . . but as I got up from the bunk it was enough for me to see the way and, as I went up, and I had no fuckin’ idea where I was really, or what was happenin’, you gotta understand, I saw two or three blokes on their backs in the hammocks near where the light was on the floor. And one of ’em was ya brother Vern. He had his arms thrown up behind, for sure it was him, no shirt, the belt around his waist . . . and anyway, I got meself up the stairs and through the hatch up onto deck and I saw the other friggin’ destroyer off to starboard and then it fired again and whack! the whole thing lurched. I tried to wrap my wits around what was goin’ on. Me ship had no one on it and was coppin’ it from what must’ve been the Hotspur, about half a mile off . . . and then, well, you know what I did, I already told ya . . . I went over to the edge and looked, and then I realised there was nothin’ else for it and I climbed the gunwale and . . .’
His voice trailed off. He’d climbed up onto the gunwale and dived into the sea.
He turned away from my gaze to the flames, took a moment, the fire mirrored in his eyes, then turned back. Lookin’ straight at me.
The facts settled in. Now spoken.
Then he says, ‘I was up on the edge, Wes, lookin’ into that black sea, needin’ more courage than I had. And you know what got me to jump? I thought of your brother up on that rafter back in the town just a few hours earlier. The sheer balls of him. His chant went screech in my head again like a fuckin’ cocky, “It’s stumps, gentlemen. Gentlemen, please!” and Vern lurchin’ about and jumpin’ down onto that zigzag wall, and I just shut my fuckin’ eyes on that, crossed myself and I jumped . . .’
It took only moments to form. The picture. Like a bullet in the guts. What he’d done, and what he’d slowly come to realise he’d done. Why Uncle Tassos had said he was lying.
Inspired by our Baby, our Baby who rode like Captain Moonlight and read Lord Byron to the ferrets. Our Baby who’d kept Mum company in the long dark months of her dying bed. Perry had left him to sleep off the war for all eternity.
*
I got up from the fire and walked slowly out through the bush tangle on the outcrop. I stood right on the edge above the valley. The island of Crete looked suddenly more ancient than old; drier too. The longer I stood there alone on that outcrop, with Perry’s news in my head, the deeper the silence seemed to be. I felt like a foreign scrap in my own hurtling dream. A stranger. On an island beyond our care.
I don’t know how long I remained out there, staring off into the air between the outcrop and Mount Juktas. I now recall a kind of fisting in the body, a damming of tears and sobs, as the truth of Vern’s death rose within me. And soon my wall was built. I began to coolly dissect what Perry had said. This was no official telegram to Lake Corangamite, no glorious death in the thrust of the conflict. The first sparks of my rage began to burn.
I turned in the dust and clawed my way back through sharp leaves in search of Perry. He would pay. My fuckin’ oath he would pay.
I found him stoking the fire like a frightened animal, the little cunt who’d said my brother was killed while asleep in the bowels of a retreating ship, sunk by his own navy just as the whole pointless stoush had momentarily slid into the hiatus of his dreams.
When he saw me, Perry raised his shoulder in trepidation. But he would have needed more than a shoulder, or even a claw or pelt, as I came crashing out of the bushes.
I went straight at him, as if to restore our Baby’s voice and breath. Grabbing him with my left hand by his throat and my right hand by his hair, I grew quickly catatonic at the touch. I threw his guilty little frame like a puppet onto the fire and then, holding him down with one hand on his neck and with my knee drilling into his kidneys, I fixed him to the scalding spot. Roaring now, in a voice I’d never heard out of my own body, with no regard for my own left hand which was also in the heat of the fire, I pressed him further and harder into the embers and coals until his squealing and screaming merged into breathless groans from the foothills of death. This satisfied me, the punishment beginning to align with the irreversibility of the crime, and so, blind to anything other than my own volcanic core, I screwed him down harder, grinding him even further into the heat. Then, as I released my clutch on his neck in order to re-grip and stamp this fire out once and for all with Perry Coghlan’s worthless uniform and flesh, he managed to twist out of my grasp and roll off the coals, languishing on the dry dirt of the cave.
I was panting, crouched, ready to leap. He rolled his body away from both myself and the fire, which at that moment were one and the same thing. In cooler air he began yelping, and then rolled over and over to put out any flame still biting at his flesh, right back into the shadows of the cave.
I stood still, taken aback by his escape, shocked by the image of terror in his eyes. I felt my own hand sting and a thick pall of smoke and confusion surround me.
Perry came to a whimpering halt on the cave floor between the huddled lumps of our two kits. Slowly helping himself up on the boulder in the middle, he stumbled further into the cave, making for the trickle of water. I grabbed my rifle from beside the fire and held it with both hands across my gut to steady myself. My burning hand seared against the sun-baked gunmetal. I, too, wanted to make for the trickle back in the cave but didn’t. Instead I gripped tighter on the barrel of the gun and kept my eyes on Perry.
He was shedding smoking garments as best he could, trying to slap the water over himself with his hands, which had not been burnt like his torso by the fire. The trickle was not ample enough for him to get right under, so those unharmed hands were his valuable tools. Eventually he stood naked, the flesh of his ribs and hips blurred ash and pink, raw, the red hair of his thighs singed off in strange designs where the pressure had been brought to bear. He was wincing and calling out with the pain. Even in the gloom at the back of the cave I could see he was scorched.
I stood with eyes stuck fast. A hot rope of urine shot down my trouser leg. I began to shiver and gripped the rifle even tighter. The pissing went on and on and on and when it stopped it occurred to me, out of some sane reservoir of thought and training, that I should have saved some of it for my burnt hand.
*
I sit here at the desk and once again put down my pen and switch off the lamp. On the other side of the window the eastern sky is deep and goes on forever. It is strafed not by Messerschmitts but by gales of rain. Behind me, a few well-grassed paddocks, clutches of paperbarks, a small racetrack, a shipwreck, and then twelve thousand miles of open ocean. Those vast waters are akin to my memory now, reaching all the way back into the west as they do, all the way back into the past.
I sit on a log beside the smouldering fire but far enough away not to be tormented by its still radiating heat. My Enfield is trained on the silhouette of Perry back in the slimy recess. We are like coves of different countries, creatures of different species, but caught, for strange reasons, in the exact same lair. As he continues to slap the mineral water onto his opened flesh, moaning and soaking his singlet and squeezing it out like a sponge onto himself, I sear internally at the brutality of what he’s told me.
Not a word is spoken. At least not to each other.
*
Minutes passed, then the hours; by dusk I had relaxed my grip on the rifle, I no longer trained it on Perry though it was still by my side. As night once again began its creep over the island he told me in one pained but clear sentence that he felt crook.
All I felt in response was my own hand
burn. I wanted a share of the trickle. I told him he should move his arse over to his kit and put on his second clothes. This he immediately did, though with difficulty walking, and when he slumped down amongst his things I picked up the rifle and made a beeline for the water.
I stood shivering in the darkness of that freezing, slimy wet back of the cave, my bad hand resting against the cool rock, letting the trickle run over raw wounds. With the soothing of the water I began to breathe a little easier, but the dousing of the heat in my skin was exchanged as if directly for my emotions. I saw Vern’s face, its grim expression as the sea filled his body and my memory of it. Torpedo blasts repeated over and over, the flames out on the sea began to roar in my head. Hot tears began to run stinging out of my eyes, until they were streaming down my cheeks. My soul, or whatever it is, rose up, in a silent cry.
Not twenty-five yards away Perry lay squinting, and making a mess of applying his one remaining bandage round his searing guts.
*
The sun rose machine-like the next morning. Before long we heard the familiar mozzie-whine in the distance. I crept out to aggressive light and felt like walking down into the village and handing myself in, so as to obliterate both Perry and I, and by consequence yesterday, and all the other yesterdays that had carried us to this malevolent lookout. I sighted a far-off Stuka but just as quickly it was nowhere to be seen, and before long the sound of it was gone as well.
I soon grew sick of the way the oppressive silence seemed to amplify the awful sadness I felt. To break the power of this spell I began talking fourteen to the dozen, telling Perry what I was thinking, how I’d throw his body off the outcrop after I’d shot him and no one except some rectangular-eyed goat in starved need of a half-charred carcass would be any the wiser.
‘There’s forgotten bodies lying all over this island after the last two weeks,’ I said. ‘What’s one more? As far as anyone knows you’ll have gone down in the boat yourself, rather than bailing like a squib and leaving others there to drown.’