Poor Fellow My Country

by Xavier Herbert

  ‘Look the jewels I got, sweet’eart . . . all yours . . . don’ go!’

  ‘Don’ let ’em go!’

  ‘Pull’em out!’

  The engine almost stalled — when — ‘Ow, Jesus!’

  ‘Christ . . . look’t his hand . . . cut off his fingers!’

  Someone had grabbed hold of the broken back window. Blood spurted like a fountain. The diversion gave the engine its chance. It roared again into full power. The car leapt forward. A few still hung on, shouting, but had no chance. Prindy changed to second gear. They let go. There was a cross-street only fifty yards away. Prindy swung into it, right.

  One last cry they heard as they passed out of sight of the staring mob — ‘Ohhhhhhhhhh!’ It was like the howl of a pack of rutting dogs when the bitch is taken.

  The going was not so easy here. Iron and timber littered the street. Prindy had to gear-down to negotiate it. Further down was another hotel, this with a crowd already outside. He avoided it by swinging into the next street. This was the main street out of town. It was littered, too, but offered no human obstruction. Soon they were clear of the wreckage. Soon they were at that cross-road which would put them on their way. As they swung into it, Prindy said they would get their gasolene at the Three-mile.

  As they approached the bridge that spanned the railway they saw smoke in the cutting on the town side — two plumes of smoke — a double-headed train. Prindy slowed down. All stared as if prescient of the fact that there must be something very special about this train — the last out of Palmeston.

  Certainly no odder train had ever run on that ragtime railway. It was made up of what must be just about all the functioning rolling-stock that could be marshalled in the shortest possible time. No consideration had been given to the usual balance of load. Vans, open waggons, cattle-cars, flat-tops, passenger coaches, were just anywhere. The only things in place were the engines and the last brake-van. It was entirely a passenger train. Its packed passengers must have been the last of the lily-livers unable to get away by other means, servicemen as well as civilians. Porky Jones was driving the leading engine, eyes fixed on the iron road ahead as if, like those earlier scary ones in the cars, he saw that Cowards’ Castle at the end. Most of the passengers were looking at the sky. They surely constituted an aerial bombardier’s dream as now located. None noticed the car plainly visible on the bridge approach, not even Chas Chase, the guard, and Col Collings, Acting Manager, both leaning out of the caboose looking for the Sons of Heaven. Then the train was past, leaving the watchers snuffling and blinking in the smoke of its hard going. They went on, turned into the main South road.

  They got another glimpse of the train, stopped at the Three-mile station, taking on more passengers, apparently, but wasting so little time about it that most of these were still clinging to the outside as with engines hooting their impatience and filling the southern sky with their pent breath she went on her way.

  Just as the train disappeared, the engine of the car conked out. Prindy said he must go and get gasolene. He alighted at once, to go heading for the station.

  Only one person had remained at the station when the train left. He was a tall man, dressed like a civilian, in dungaree overalls, but obviously accoutred like a soldier, with rifle slung over a shoulder and web-equipment. He was now heading away towards the railwaymen’s quarters, walking with a curious lope. It took Prindy only a moment of staring to discover who it was. He broke into a run, yelling, ‘Patannaford!’

  Pat Hannaford halted, stared. It was probably the red head that promptly popped out of the car that attracted him more than the fair-haired running boy. He swung towards them. He grabbed Prindy as they met, gave him a hug, asked him what he was doing there, but with attention really only on that racing figure with the flashing copper top. He opened his arms as Rifkah reached him. She fell into them, wept on his breast relief from fear that up to now had not been evident. He kissed her hair. When she raised her face he kissed her wet eyes. He asked, ‘For chrissake . . . what you doin’ here in the middle of a war, and everybody else done a bunk?’

  She gave a little explanation, promising more later, saying that they wanted fuel for their journey. He said they’d look for some, although he wasn’t so sure of finding it easily: ‘The cowardly bastards were fillin’ up everything they had with benzine last I saw of ’em. Try the Maintenance Inspector’s joint here. He blew through so quick he couldn’t’ve had time to see if his tyres was blown up.’ He led the way to a biggish bungalow amongst the quarters, talking: ‘The Japs blew up a bit of the tracks while they was straffin’ the Raff. Old Clarry gets order to repair it at once for a special train. He gets everybody on the job . . . then comes back, grabs his car, and off. The fettlers weren’t too far be’ind him, neither . . . takin’ the trolleys. You never seen a fettlin’ job done so quick. In half an hour they done what normally’d’a’ taken ’em a week.’

  They went into the garage. Nothing but oil. They went to a shed. Only kerosene. They headed for the house. Pat said, ‘Beats me, this bolt. You can understand the Greeks and Pongs and others doin’ it . . . although the Greeks I seen in Greece weren’t like that . . . standin’ up to the Hun with shotguns, and riskin’ terrible things hidin’ us blokes. But Aussies behavin’ like this mob today . . . well . . . who’d believe it! Looks like we’re still only bloody immigrants, no better’n Oxes and Pongs and all the rest. Jesus!’

  Rifkah asked, ‘You are not going avay, Pat?’

  ‘What you take me for?’

  ‘But you are badly crippled man.’

  ‘I’m a trained soldier . . . and I got arms . . . and them slant-eyed bastards come, I’ll ’count for at least a dozen of ’em before they get me. See this rifle. Know where I got it? Jes a while back. The Raff mob were in a panic, stopped the train to get on. I abused ’em for deserters. But they reckon they been told by their command it’s Every Man for Himself . . . that means full retreat, without discipline. So I promptly disarms one of ’em.’

  In the house they found a pressure lantern filled with gasolene. Pat declared that it was enough to get the car to the Depot, where they might find some left by the decamping fettlers. As they went to the car, he told them more about what he had seen of the panic bolt: ‘Believe it or not, but they even used the two night-carts . . . not the poor bloody yeller-feller nightmen, but high-up silvertails, with their high-class luggage stowed in the shit-can compartments. You wouldn’t read about it, would you? I’ll bet that when it comes out, no one’ll believe it. It’ll be considered a furphy. But I can tell you it’s God’s truth . . . and it proves that deep down the great warrior Aussie is nothin’ but a shit-house rat!’ Pat went red with feeling, spat.

  They reached the car. As Prindy was pouring from the lamp into the tank, Pat said, ‘Wait on . . . it’s runnin’ out.’ He bent down awkwardly, swinging out his artificial leg, rose, saying, ‘There’s a dirty big hole in it only a couple inches from the bottom. Looks like a bullet went through the top, come out there. She wouldn’t ’old ’alf a gallon as she is. Have to fix it. That ought to get us to the workshops. We’ll take the tank off and oxy-weld it.’

  They all got in.

  At the shops they were dismayed to find the difficult job confronting them in the first task of removing the tank. All bolts were badly rusted and would have to be cut out. They were about to settle down to it, when Pat, from grumbling, suddenly said eagerly, ‘I got a better idea. The old Sandfly?’ Then he called on them to follow him to another shed, where they found the little old shunting engine, normally used for work on the jetty, but laid up for repairs. He declared that they could effect these repairs in half the time it would take them with the tank, not have to bother about getting gasolene, and also be free of the refugee mob who’d be sure to be cluttering the road. ‘I’ll run you down in her,’ he said, ‘Then I’ll bring her back and make an armoured train out of her and fight the bloody Nips me own way.’

  The Sandfly was quite tiny compared with
the locomotives in general use, with only a bit of a coal-scuttle for a tender and water-tanks flanking her boiler. Stroking her work-worn flank with more than affection, Pat said, ‘You wouldn’t credit she’s the best part a ’undred years old, would you? She’s one the original locos used when this railroad was laid. The others gone long ago. She’s certainly got nine lives. Twice she’s been overboard at the jetty and had to be lifted out with a ship’s crane. She’s been off-agin, on-agin, to beat Flannagin’s old injin to hell. Normally she’d’ve been workin’ the jetty today. She’d’a’ never got out o’ that. Old Jack Tinball was drivin’ there today. He and the injin jes vanished, they say . . . him takin’ a pot shot at the Japs with a rifle he took from a sentry done a bunk. Way he’d’a’ wanted to go, I s’pose. Was always singin’ Old Soldiers Never Die, They Simply Fade Away. Poor old bugger! I never got on with him . . . but it was ’count that stinkin’ RSL. He could never see that it really wasn’t a veterans’ organisation, the thing it had been at the start to protect their rights, but a rort, taken over by the Exploitin’ Class, for the very purpose o’ keepin’ down the man who did want his rights. Echt!’ He spat. He moved to a small pile of parts from the little engine stacked on a workbench beside her, and described them.

  The link of the link-motion mechanism had cracked and been distorted by subsequent operation. The workshops fitters had been waiting for a new link to be made down South. ‘Lazy bastards,’ he growled. ‘If I’s a fitter I’d make every part of an injin meself . . . in fact, I’d make a whole flamin’ injin.’ He went on: ‘I s’pose it needs a new link in the long run . . . but I reckon this one could be mended to do the job for quite a while, simply be straightenin’, weldin’, grindin’, temperin’.’ He turned to Prindy. ‘I’ll want your ’elp. Know anything about blacksmithin’, young feller?’ Prindy answered that he had worked with his grandfather in the smithy at Lily Lagoons. ‘Okay, then. Let’s get to it . . . case there is an invasion.’ Pat turned to Rifkah. ‘If you could organise gettin’ up steam, eh? With that old blackfeller o’ yours. There’s kindlin’ and kerosene in the big injin shed.’

  Already the Pookarakka had found the kindling, a couple of lengths of packing-case pine, and was beating them as minga-minga as he sat singing softly in the shade of the water-tank. They didn’t ask him. Rifkah and Savitra did the job.

  While Pat and Prindy worked together, Pat gloated over the fact that he was about to own an engine of his own. No one could deny him ownership, when authority had fled, crying Every Man for Himself. It was the impossible dream of every engine driver to own an engine and run it as he pleased: ‘Like them first old drivers did . . . the blokes who drove for Stephenson . . . before they invented time-tables and runnin’ rules and regs and all the bloody rest that ties a man down to the orders of a ’undred bosses, not one of ’em knowing a link-block from a fire-bar, or for that matter one end the bloody coal-shovel from the other.’ He went on: ‘There must be plenty guns lyin’ round . . . machine-guns, light ack-ack. Must make up that armoured train when I get back from puttin’ you on your way. Get a crew from somewhere. Old Porky’ll come back if I talk to him. Might-be you’d like to be in on it? Remember that time we as ridin’ together, and I reckon you and me’s likely to do big things together someday?’ This last to Prindy.

  Like all things born of true inspiration, the fitting of the Sandfly, for what surely promised to be the liveliest adventure in her long career, was accomplished without a hitch. Repair and replacement took just about the same time as to get up steam: some four hours. Rifkah attended the boiler as she might the kitchen range at Lily Lagoons of a Friday afternoon, with such loving care that when at last the safety-valve announced full head, the plume that arose from it was like a Sweet Savour to the Lord — and she coal-smudged to the line of her bright hair.

  In the circumstances, it was natural that Rifkah, in the considerable conversation that passed between foot-plate and workbench, should confide much of the truth about the doings of herself and companions of late. In fact, by the time the job was finished, she had told Pat just about all; excepting the Love Idyll, which Pat, by the way he looked at her from time to time, was hardly likely to take as sympathetically as he did the rest. She also omitted to say that it was their intention to return to the Mission, making it sound rather that they were going to join Jeremy.

  The confession made a difference to what Pat had started planning. Reckoning himself now above Rules and Regs, he had included the others with him. First learning that they did not intend bolting to the South Pole like everybody else, he said he would find them a nice safe spot on the railway for a permanent camp, and in his peregrinations in his own little train would keep an eye on them. But the case was altered with Rifkah’s admission that she was regarded as a Security Risk, at least so long as those who so regarded her remained in the country. Pat had seen Cootes Blowin’ Through, as he called it, along with his Pommy mates. Hence they’d best start by keeping Rifkah out of sight as much as possible. It didn’t matter with the others. Even Prindy, smudged with grease, could be taken for a boong. ‘Matter of fact,’ said Pat to Rifkah, ‘With a bit more coal-dust on your face you’d pass . . . only for the hair.’ She laughed and said she’d cut off her hair. He said, ‘You do . . . I’ll turn you in!’

  But it was an idea to assume some degree of disguise. She had need only to blacken her face, wear a hat, and keep out of the way.

  Soon it was put to test. Bobwirridirridi slipped in to announce the approach of two whitemen. Pat flung his hat to Rifkah, then went to hold the intruders outside.

  The men were oldish, known to Pat. One said, ‘Heard you hammerin’. Wondered what’s goin’ on. Thought all the railway blokes’d sold out.’

  ‘Quickest and cheapest sell-out in history,’ said Pat.

  ‘I’ll say. But what you hangin’ round for?’

  ‘Puttin’ the Sandfly in runnin’ order . . . case I need her.’

  ‘What you need her for?’

  ‘Never know. She’s only injin left.’

  The men craned in. But Pat offered no invitation. One asked, ‘What . . . you got boongs for offsiders?’

  ‘Who else is there?’

  ‘Still a few old-timers hangin’ on.’

  Pat said, ‘Thought you’d ’a’ been evacuated.’

  ‘They tried it. But we been camped over Willy Lee’s. Goin’ back home now.’

  ‘Reckon you still got a ’ome? Awful lot o’ damage.’

  ‘Yeah . . . we seen it. We been in. Only come out to get our swags. Fair mob still in town . . . drunk, lootin’ . . . soldiers mostly. Nice lot of bloody bastards we bred up since Last Turn-out! Couldn’t be any worse if they was Japs.’

  The other said, ‘Japs wouldn’t carry on like that. I don’t like the slant-eyed bastards . . . but they always been the best behaved people in this town, barrin’ none.’

  Pat asked, ‘What’ll you do if the Japs come?’

  The skinny one of them spat. ‘Depends what they do. We got the makin’s of a Home Guard. We got arms. We’ll try hang on till the Yanks come.’

  ‘The Yanks? They was right in the lead in the big bolt.’

  ‘I mean the proper US Army . . . what Churchill and Roosevelt promised to defend us. Don’ worry. We’ll carry on. We’re all old soldiers.’

  The other growled, ‘Looks like we’ll have to start by puttin’ down that lootin’ mob.’ He turned to look away towards the town. ‘Here’s some of ’em comin’ now. They been patchin’ up old trucks and loadin’ ’em with loot. Don’t know what they reckon they’re goin’ ’o do with it . . . bloody thievin’ bastards!’

  Already a couple of loaded trucks from the town had passed, but without attracting much attention from those preoccupied in the workshop. This one announced itself not only with the sick roaring of its ancient engine, but with the bellowing of its crew. As it approached it was seen that they were all soldiers. Small wonder the engine protested, when loaded to the limit with goods and
men. The load appeared to consist largely of things like household refrigerators, radios, gramophones. The men at the back were perched on top, drinking beer from bottles. They waved their bottles cheerily to those watching from the shed.

  The thin old fellow growled, ‘Lootin’ like the common enemy. We’d’a’ got shot for doin’ that kind o’ thing in the Last Turn-out . . . wouldn’t you, in your mob, too, Pat?’

  Pat said dryly, ‘We was runnin’ too hard from the common enemy to pick up anything but our mundowies.’

  Both men frowned at this reminder of Pat Hannaford, the traducer of the Glorious AIF. One hawked and spat. The other said, ‘Well, we’ll be gettin’ along. See you round.’ Then as they started off, this one added, casting a sly glance back: ‘If you’re not goin’ chasin’ your mundowies again.’

  Pat grinned. ‘I’m an injin driver again, Chris. Any travellin’ I do’ll be on wheels in future. Besides . . . I only got one mundowie now.’ He shoved his artificial foot forward. ‘Thanks to your mates Churchill, Wavell, Tubby Tubs, and Co.’

  The others departed scowling.

  It was a fair test, because the engine was only twenty feet or so inside the shed, with only that little bit of a coal-tender screening Rifkah. Pat returned to be surprised to see her face entirely blacked. He laughed at first, then growled, ‘No . . . take it off. I’ll admit I married colour once . . . but it wasn’t for the colour, but because I was silly enough to think it a social responsibility. I got a feeling there’s sumpin wrong with marryin’ out o’ your colour. All right in the early days . . . and like old Jerry Delacy says, it might’a’ been a good idea if we’d’a’ crossed with ’em then . . . but colour to colour and white to white, I say now.’ Rifkah declared that she would remain black until the coaling for the journey was done.

  They did some test-runs up and down the yards to prove the job done on the link-motion. It appeared to be perfect. Next they marshalled a little train, three two-ton coal-hoppers, a small open waggon, a little brake-van with accommodation normally used for breakdown work. Pat said that, apart from use as mobile bunkers, the hoppers, at least a couple of them, would make first-class emplacements for guns, with protection for the crews. Coal could be got from them to feed the tiny tender simply through opening the chute at the side and catching it by the bucketful. Pat did the driving, while Prindy and Rifkah handled points and couplings. Then there were the hoppers to fill at the big bunker. After that there were supplies of oil, kerosene, and carbide to lay in. The latter was for the old-fashioned headlamp. They did it all without interruption. The Sun was setting as they rolled their little train, ready for the road, into hiding behind the Goods Shed.