by Kim Kelly
Evan’s still the real boss here, and he’s the manager, unofficially, so that he can stay union; I’m just the majority shareholder and signature provider. He says: ‘It’s neither appropriate nor entertaining any more that you do. Puts some off.’
‘Puts some off? Who?’
‘Me, for one.’
‘Why?’ I don’t need a ticket or a union card to break rocks in my own company if I want to. How’s one free scab upsetting you, when I’m not taking anyone’s coal? Jesus, how dippy does that sound?
Very: Evan says: ‘Because I don’t want you to, and that’s all I have to say about it.’
And off he goes, to labour, whether I want him to or not: he’s put himself on down the bottom stalls in section two with one of the younger blokes whose dad’s not well.
And off I go: idiot. But I can’t drop it now. Here’s my mess, lads: you clean it up, since I’ve got a bit tired of it, you finish the blasting, since my wife doesn’t approve, just about the first thing she said on rediscovering her power of speech. Only a few days to go and it is finished. Thank Christ.
By the end of the day I don’t know what’s got me worse: Francine, Evan or the limitations of my hopeless body. I’m that keen to be off and home and in the bath, I’ve come out into the light too quickly. Wish I’d brought the car today, I don’t feel much like a bike ride. I’m still squinting when I hear: ‘Danny!’
Stops me dead: my father’s voice. And there he is. It is Dad. Marvellous: now I’m hallucinating.
Squint some more.
No, it’s not Dad.
Flaming hell.
It’s my brother. Peter. Must be. I haven’t seen him since I was fifteen, but it’s him all right. Couldn’t be anyone else who looks like that: fair hair, like Dad’s; only other one in the whole family. And who walks like that, straight at me, slamming the ground with his feet.
‘What do you look like?’ he says, like I look stupid.
That’s what you say to someone after nine years. He’s smiling, but I’ve got an instant urge to deck him, like I’m thirteen and he’s just pinched a chop off my plate. And I could too, now: I’m bigger than him. Except it’s doubtful I could lift my arm that high.
Instead I say: ‘Well, hello to you too.’
‘Yep,’ he says. ‘Hello all right. Jesus, just look at you. Just look at you.’ What am I? A frigging bunyip? Then he says: ‘What are you doing back in the hole, you goose?’
What is this? Make Sure I Get The Message Day?
I say: ‘Is it your business?’
‘No,’ he says. ‘But Mum’s not happy about it.’
What? again. ‘Mum’s got you down from Newcastle to come and tell me this?’ I’m still having trouble believing my brother is here at all. I’ve been meaning to write to him for a year now; don’t know why I haven’t. Yes I do: haven’t known what to say. I’m good at that.
He’s not having any trouble with it. ‘No,’ he laughs, just like Dad. ‘I only stopped in on my way back from Orange; we’re moving there, next month. Mum filled me in on the latest; had to come and see for myself.’
He’s still looking me over: yes, so I’m filthy. I’m looking him over: he looks very flash: nice suit, nice tie, very nice pair of boots. The docks have clearly been kind to him. What is he? Thirty-four? He looks like a bit of a sharp one, and I’m having trouble believing that too.
I say: ‘Orange, ay? Gets even colder there in winter.’ Next big town on from Bathurst, not too far away. Don’t think you’re going to make a habit of coming round here and bailing me up like this. ‘What are you moving there for?’
‘Setting up a here to Woop Woop transport business: trucks. Not a lot doesn’t fit on the back of one. The money’ll help me cope with the weather.’ But then he drops the laugh. ‘Mum’s really had enough of you. It’d be a good idea if you stopped giving her things to worry about. I know you’ve had a rough ride, and maybe you think the job gives you something to control, but —’
‘What would you know about it?’ Stop right there: there’s nothing about you that says you’re one to lecture me.
‘Danny, I know about it.’ And he’s dead serious, there’s blokes all around us, heading up; Pete doesn’t care: he has come here to tell me something. ‘I know that at Kembla I lost my brother, our brother, and that it probably would’ve killed Mum if she didn’t have you to keep her busy, and to try to replace him. And that even still, I went in with Dad, because Dad had to replace him too. And I know that he didn’t have an option but to keep on: a nobody Kraut with strange politics and no religion and his heart ripped out six ways every day before sleeping wasn’t going to get a job worth anything anywhere else. But I thought he was so staunch then, the way he handled himself, though he must have been that shredded, I thought he could walk on water if he wanted to. Then when I was seventeen we were helping cart bodies, or what was left of them, after the blow-out, which I can still hear, and feel: it cracked windows in Wollongong. I found a mate’s leg; recognised his sock — his sister was shithouse at knitting.’
He stops there, rubs his hand across his mouth, looks into the drift behind me. I don’t know whether I hope he’s finished, or whether I want him to keep on for the next nine years. He looks at me again and he looks nothing like Dad; he’s got brown eyes, like Mum’s.
‘And even still, it took me eight years to get out, to leave Dad. Jimmy Skelton was the decider, though: when I saw the look on your face, as you were looking at him laid out; Dad telling you to run on to his mother; you doing it, as you’d do anything he told you to. Then Dad using Jimmy to bargain with Drummond over lamps, like it would count for something against the loss. Drummond giving in only because he’d lost too much on the strike the quarter before. It made me retch.’
‘What? That’s what happened?’ That was no one else’s business?
‘Yep. And everyone keeping shush about it, for your sake. You didn’t speak for weeks after you got home from the Skeltons that day; I tried to talk to you, and Dad told me to leave you be, that you had a mind of your own; you couldn’t even say goodbye to me. Don’t you remember?’
‘No.’ I don’t remember that bit. But I believe him. And I think I already know the answer to the question I have to ask: ‘Why was Dad so dark at you leaving?’
‘I don’t know, really,’ he says, ‘except that I think grief does strange things. Took me a fair while to come to it, but I think Dad was off his trolley with it; couldn’t see that I wasn’t leaving him, letting everyone down. I don’t blame him now; it’s sad, is all. I’m still cut, over Kembla, and over Dad, sometimes so sharp I … How can you not? When Mum wrote and told me about the loss of your boy, to add to all you’ve … then told me today about you coming back in here, firing and labouring, in the worst hole in the place, where Dad … I thought: here we go. Tell me if I’m wrong.’
‘You’re not wrong,’ I realise, barrel of this more than good oil smacking me in the head. ‘But I’m not Dad, am I. Too much of a sook: it’s the last time I’ll be doing anything like this.’ Then I have to laugh at the fact, at the truth of what I have done. ‘I am fairly off my trolley, though.’
‘Runs in the family, and you’re supposed to be the smart one,’ he says, smiling again, and looking very much like Dad again. ‘But you’re winning the sook competition: I’ve heard you’ve been painting — how sooky is that?’
Not very; not at all, actually: you try it. But I say: ‘Not as sooky as my sorry arse: I’m that fucking sore. How’d you get here today?’ Please have a trap.
He says: ‘I drove. Got a little model-T Ford to go with my filthy middle-class life these days. Fell off the back of a ship.’
‘Champion,’ I say. ‘Can I get a ride home?’
‘I don’t know, Danny, you’ll grubby up the upholstery.’
‘Do you want to come for tea?’
‘Can’t. Got to get back to Newcastle by the morning.’
‘You can stop for a minute; you haven’t met Francine yet
.’
‘Yes I have. Met her this morning at Mum’s. Probably shocked me more than anything else, that did.’
‘What did?’
‘That an idiot like you caught one like her.’
Prick. Good one, though. And I feel about half a ton lighter now; lighter still when he puts his hand on my shoulder. I’ve got a brother, haven’t I.
And I will feel even better shortly. Down to the final hours now: everyone’s knocked off from day shift, but I’ve got half-a-dozen boys down here with me, to move the last few tons off the floor, and getting a taste of just how boring breaking and shovelling rubbish for fuck-all is: they’ll never complain about shovelling shit in the stables ever again or the ragging they get from the miners if their skip tokens aren’t exactly where they should be. Of course I’m going to pay them quite a little something extra for the trouble; haven’t told them that yet, though. Sent one of them off to run up through the valley to tell France I’ll be late: for the last time. Very late, as it turns out: whose bright idea was it to let the boys at it? Like watching paint dry, in the dark.
But it’s done now: good job, lads. Leave the skips for the ponies in the morning, leave the last stretch of cementing to someone else, knowing this roof isn’t going to fall down for anything. Time to knock off. Forever, for me: go home. Get clean, get into bed. Give France a kiss or several, or maybe just lie there and look at her, with that little light back on inside her, thinking about the things I know I can do to try to keep it that way.
Then the whistles blow for evacuation.
‘Aw no,’ says one of the boys; they all look at me.
Aw no, all right. I say: ‘Don’t run, don’t fall behind. And stay put when we’re out.’
Spend the next half-hour wondering what’s happened. No one to ask down here; just us. Can’t hear anything, no one calling down to us, not that that means anything necessarily. But whatever it is it’s probably not big. Hopefully. Whatever it is it’ll be bad enough. Can’t see anything amiss along the way up the drift; not that that means anything either. But I can hear a huge racket above now, coming through the air shaft ahead: running, yelling. Jesus, it must be a fire, or gas; I’m sniffing the air thinking I can smell it, knowing, where we are, there’s less than a fart between us and anything that might have happened. That’s just too bloody marvellous: I missed every kind of gas on the Western Front, but I’m going to be asphyxiated or incinerated now, last day on the proper job, and I’m going to take six boys with me.
I tell them: ‘Run, and hold your fucking breath while you’re at it.’
I do, grabbing the slowest of them, all the while thinking that France has heard the whistles and how pleased she’ll be to hear of my final achievement. Nearly as thrilled as Mum.
Don’t breathe till pit top.
Here we are, one two three four five six, thank fucking Christ. And I can hear Billy above the pandemonium, still with that high voice, though he must be eighteen now, yahooing. Yahooing? And then I see all the lamplights, spinning through the night. There’s a couple of rifles going off; ponies raring up in fright. Mad. Billy runs up to me; he’s so skinny and slight he still looks fourteen; he looks like he’s about to piss himself, he’s that excited. He grabs me by the arm and says: ‘It’s over. The war’s over. Mr Drummond called, from Sydney, for you. On the telephone. He said we’ve won. Germany’s surrendered.’
I’m that confused, and starved of air, I just look at him. Drummond? Telephone. That’s right, we’ve got one of them now, for emergencies. And I’ve put Billy in the office, ‘assisting the night deputy’, because he’s too useless for anything else, and Campbell’s not my best mate for it. Where the fuck is Campbell? His nephew’s in Syria, that’s where he is.
Billy says: ‘Didn’t think you’d mind coming up in a hurry to hear that.’
No.
Didn’t have to blow four whistles, though, you little shit. Don’t say that, though. Can’t speak. Just manage: ‘Going home.’ Let go of the kid first; he rubs his arm like I’ve nearly ripped it off on the way up.
Walk home.
Shut the lamp off; just let it be dark, and quiet. But it’s not quiet: I can hear more rifles going off in town.
I get halfway home before I have to sit down. Didn’t think I’d feel like this. Thought I’d be happy. I’ve got to have a few moments here to believe it. A week or so ago Turkey surrendered and there was talk of the end coming, a lot of talk about the Light Horse and Aussie Captain Ross Smith in his aeroplane practically pulling off the victory on their own too. Talk of ceasefires, the German navy mutinying, Austria hoisting a white flag. There’s been that much bullshit flying around through this whole disaster that I didn’t let myself believe it. But you don’t bullshit about it ending, do you. That’s either a fact or it’s not. Must be true. You don’t hear that many guns going off in town every night, do you. And why else would Drummond telephone, to tell me; that was good of him. More than good: above our bullshit. Maybe even an apology, of sorts.
I am happy, I tell myself, and relieved. But everything I’ve ever reined in now just floods out. Better to do this here, on my own. It’s too much to think about in one go. Just too much. Wear myself out till I can only see the pictures, flicking one after the other. Fair few of them.
Then I have to sit here a while longer, with the anger. It sits hard in me like it’ll never shift from my gut. I’m that full of blinding hatred at the minute, for those that let this loose. So Britannia stays top monster: now we can all get some sleep. I wonder where Johan Schultz is, if he’s alive, wonder what he’s thinking, about going home. I wonder what it must be like to be an ordinary German today, hearing this news. Can’t imagine that: I’ve never picked a fight and then lost. Only been decked the once, thanks Dunc, and deserved it. I wonder what people will say and think here as they wake up to the extent of it; they’ll be relieved, and proud, for sure. Will they feel shame for their part in it? I doubt many will: why would you when there’s so much to be relieved and proud about? Just as you don’t need to be a fortune teller to see Hughes pressing the advantage now it’s over: the government will ride the victory for all it’s worth. That’s politics.
Feel the breeze on the back of my neck and float away from it. Let it go. I do, violently. Another good reason to be alone right now: I lean forward and chuck like the earth’s shifting beneath me.
And then that’s enough. Long piece of string, that was, and I can see both ends now: how lucky am I? Never forget that. Ever.
Go home, Daniel, clean your teeth and appreciate every break you’ve been given.
I run the rest of the way home through the silver grey dark; haven’t run anywhere since … since I picked up Stratho that night. And for the first time, seems like forever, they are my legs. It feels good, very good. And I decide that I’m going to run a bit every day from now on, just because I can.
FRANCINE
He clumps into the kitchen just on dawn, goes straight to the bathroom. I leap out of bed, run down the hall and then stand at the door, watch him cleaning his teeth. He reaches down to turn on the bath taps.
He’s so thoroughly filthy, I say: ‘You’re not going to make a mess of my indoor bathroom, are you?’
He says: ‘Just this one first and last time — special occasion.’
‘Mmn.’ Very special occasion. I tried to stay put when I heard the whistles, but ended up waking up Harry to fib to him that I had to go round to Grandma’s with Davie, trying not to sound panicked, with a thousand different kinds of hysteria surging, main one being: Holy Mother, he has blown himself up, and I willed it to happen, didn’t I; but then I saw the scene up Dell Street: singing, dancing, shouting; blabbered incoherently at Sarah and Mim, then came back home to wait. No morning whistle today: everyone’s having the day off so they can go completely berserk when the official announcement arrives. I say: ‘There’s no hot water, though.’ I don’t light the heater round the side till four o’clock.
He says: ‘Doe
sn’t matter, I’m boiling anyway.’
He must be too: his shirt is sweat-drenched. What’s he been doing out there all night? Don’t ask. I watch him take it off: rush of relief and delight at the sight of that pair of shoulders, that back: it’s a small country. I watch him take off the rest and hop in the water and I watch him wash. He flicks the flannel at me: gets me right across the face with the perfectly aimed spray.
He says: ‘Go and tell the boys to look after the littlies for a spell. I have to take you somewhere.’
‘I’m just about to make breakfast.’
‘Make it later.’
‘If you insist.’
‘I do.’
We go round behind the shed on the far side of the orchard. The sun is just peeking into our valley and everything is flushed through soft dusty pink.
This is the way to end a war. No need for any other language. I imagine there’s a fair bit of this sort of thing going on right round the world; I certainly hope so. I won’t contemplate any other possibility, not now. Let’s pretend that this love cancels out everything else. Highest thought ever.
SIX
JANUARY–DECEMBER 1919
DANIEL
If there is such a thing as the gods or whatever, this is what they do for a top cracking laugh.
I’m doing exactly what I should be doing, I’ve been so well behaved even I’m impressed. In the last few months I’ve been a good boss: staying out of everyone’s way, doing all the boring rubbish in the office, and getting plans for a proper bathhouse organised. And I’ve got some fat contracts underway for electricity production to kick in next quarter, to pay for a good deal of debt and bathhouse over a couple of years; found myself negotiating with none other than Drummond at one point too: he’s bought into a new mob manufacturing motor parts and bodies and approached me for supply; he thought he could get it for nothing, and I thought he’d come to love me: armed with France’s bottom price, I told him to bugger off and thieve from someone else.