by Mark Dapin
‘You had to have a mate, and Bathurst Billy kept me laughing. He’d had a tough life, but not the way he told it. It was one big joke, growing up with twelve brothers. Each of them used to bash the brother younger than him, and their dad used to bash them all. It was like being in the Nipponese army. War wasn’t much different to peace for Bathurst Billy.
‘I remember the day I first saw Katz. I thought, That poor bastard’s not going to live out the week. He was so thin, it looked like he’d already been a prisoner for a year. But the thing about Katz was he didn’t seem to care that he’d been captured. His job was to paint the war, and prisoners were a part of that war too. He’d managed to keep hold of his brushes because the Nips couldn’t think of any reason to steal them, and he hid his paints inside his mate’s fucking ukulele.
‘Bathurst Billy recognised him from Balmain. Bathurst Billy should’ve been called Balmain Billy, because he grew up across the road from the West End Hotel. He hated bloody Bathurst. His family called him “Bath-first” because he always had to be in the tub before his brothers.
‘I only realised Katz was a Jew when I went over to have a yarn about girls and found he knew Moishe – I mean Mick – through Frida’s sister Sally ava ashalom. I’d never been to Balmain. Katz told me about the smell from the soap factory, and a shiksa who worked there who’d take you to the storeroom for a shilling.
‘He was a funny sort of bloke – poncy but not a horse’s hoof. I always remember he gave me a cigarette. We still had tailor-mades then, and fellas still gave them to strangers.’
Jimmy examined each of his fingers, as if it were a cigarette.
‘When we first got to Selarang,’ he said, ‘we had to fix the place up, to build our own jail. The officers had us organised to get the water running and sort out the sewage, which was okay because everyone knew it had to be done. Then they told us to build an officers’ mess. Most of the time it was hard to know if the orders were coming from the brass or the Japs, but Schmegegge Freddy would’ve had the sense to know the Japs didn’t order the officers to build a separate mess.’
Jimmy bit his lip.
‘It was mostly Callaghan’s blokes in our hut, but there were also a few who hadn’t found their units yet. One of them was a fella they called “Townsville Jack”. He arrived two days after everyone else and when any bugger asked where he was from he’d say, “Townsville, Jack,” whether their name was Eddie, Pete or Alfonso.
‘He was a different style of bloke, Townsville Jack. Everything about him was long. He had long muscles on his arms, and fingers like rail spikes, and a big, open face that sort of fell open from his jaw. He had teeth like a horse, and a thick, black mane of hair that was already creeping back up his forehead, and these long, happy eyes. His smile made you want to like him, but it didn’t help you trust him. Until you knew him, you could never tell if he was laughing at you or himself or the farce of it all.
‘Another bloke turned up after Townsville Jack, a stocky fella called Quilpie who’d got lost somehow in the retreat. There were, I suppose, six places in the barracks where Quilpie could’ve bedded down: two on each end of the rows of bunks, and two in the gaps between.
‘“I’ll give you six-to-one he takes the space at the far end,” said Townsville Jack.
‘It was the first time he had spoken to me.
‘“How much?” asked Townsville Jack.
‘“How much what?”
‘“How much at six-to-one?”
‘“A million quid,” I said.
‘“I can’t cover it,” said Townsville Jack. “How about sixpence?”
‘Quilpie stepped further into the barracks. He looked in both directions, but he seemed more interested in the side of the room that we called “the West Wing”.
‘“Fair dinkum,’ said Townsville Jack. “Eight-to-one. Sixpence’ll get you four bob.”
‘Quilpie rubbed his jaw. He wasn’t the sharpest knife in the block, not by a long shot.
‘“I’ll take a ha’penny at seven-to-one,” said Townsville Jack.
‘The new man turned east.
‘“A penny at twenty-to-one that he goes west,” said Townsville Jack.
‘Quilpie took one step forwards, one step sideways, headed down the middle and made his way to the space that Townsville Jack had chosen at the start.
‘“You could’ve won yourself some lunch money,” said Townsville Jack.
‘“With what?” I asked. “I’m as broke as a boong.”
‘“I could’ve lent you your stake,” he said, “at five per cent. You’d still’ve cleared a few bob, and I’d’ve walked away with my pride intact.”
‘“I’ve got no security,” I said.
‘“But you’re not going anywhere,” said Townsville Jack. “C’mon, I’ll shout you a bit of tucker from the mess. I’ll give you ten-thousand-to-one they’re serving meat pies, twenty-thousand-to-one on steak and potatoes.”
‘I let Townsville Jack buy me rice and a vegetable.
‘“Delicious, mate,” he said, licking his fingers. “You can’t beat a Changi meat pie.”
‘I wondered if he was mad.
‘Townsville Jack and Bathurst Billy got on like a bloody warehouse on fire, because Townsville Jack could talk about horses until his teeth fell out, and Bathurst Billy missed the gallops more than he missed his mum’s baked dinners. He’d been an apprentice jockey at Randwick before he’d signed up. He was so small.
‘We had a sergeant major named Ramsay, who’d been with us since Tamworth. He was Callaghan’s right-hand man, a good soldier but a believer, you know. And believers are dangerous because they give their lives to something that isn’t there. For Ramsay, it was an idea of the army as the best place for men. In war or peace, in jail or in camp, if a man could be a soldier, he could always be a man.
‘So he came into our barracks, strutting like he was still in Tamworth, to choose volunteers to build the officers’ mess. Townsville Jack had the digger’s trick of disappearing whenever anyone wearing pips or stripes came around a corner, but Ramsay caught him asleep on his bunk after a night under the wire.
‘Most of the other lads scarpered but me and Bathurst Billy were slow to get started and Ramsay managed to collar us at the door. Townsville Jack woke up to Ramsay shouting an order in his face, and he tried to swat him away.
‘“Why can’t the officers make their own mess?” asked Townsville Jack.
‘“Yours is not to reason why,” said Ramsay, “because you haven’t got the bloody brains.”
‘Townsville Jack didn’t like taking orders,’ said Jimmy, ‘but he didn’t mind hard work, even though he didn’t exactly look for it. He was the only digger I ever met who enjoyed digging. He even had a face like a bloody shovel. We dug the foundations for the officers’ mess while Quilpie scrounged timber and Townsville Jack whistled “Colonel Bogey” through the gap in his teeth.
‘Townsville Jack was a friendly enough bloke but he didn’t give much away.
‘“Where’s the rest of your unit?” I asked him.
‘“I’ve applied for a transfer,” he said.
‘“You can’t apply for a transfer,” I told him, “you’re a prisoner of war. Where do you think you’ll get transferred to?”
‘“Out,” said Townsville Jack.
‘I couldn’t tell if he was serious. Blokes had some funny ideas in those days. They couldn’t get a grip on what had happened. I still didn’t realise that Townsville Jack didn’t accept it at all.
‘He turned back to his shovel.
‘“Where’d you learn to dig?” I asked him.
‘“Townsville, Jack,” he said.
‘In those early days there was a lot of talk about what had gone wrong. What I didn’t understand was, if they weren’t going to defend Singapore, why didn’t they evacuate it? Why did they just give us to the Japs? And if we’d fought to the end, how much worse would it have been? Sixteen thousand of us men died as Japanese prisoners of war, for no
bloody reason at all. Why didn’t they let us fight? You’d think we could’ve killed someone.
‘We were told they wanted to avoid a massacre in Singapore, that if we didn’t fight the Japs too much, they might not take it out on the civilians, but that was the worst fucking joke of all.
‘Fucking joke,’ said Jimmy, clenching his fists. ‘Fucking joke.’
He thumped the table, jumped up and paced across the living room, swearing at the walls. I got frightened again, but he quickly calmed down.
‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Sorry, sorry, sorry.’
He linked his fingers.
‘It’s a long story,’ he said. ‘It’s hard to tell it in the order it happened. The film in my head . . . it flickers. Sometimes it seems like the projector’s breaking down.’
I reached to touch him, to comfort him.
‘They’re all I’ve got left,’ he said, ‘these . . . images. Sometimes they’re fuzzy and faint, but today they’re as sharp as a stake. I can feel the sun on my back, the sweat on my forehead.’
He looked at his hands.
‘They ache,’ he said, ‘like they’ve been lifting a bloody shovel.’
He curled his fingers, then relaxed.
‘Everyone noticed how good Townsville Jack was at making holes,’ he said, ‘so the officers asked him to dig another one, about ten yards from the parade ground. The rest of us swept paths and paraded without arms, while Townsville Jack made a trench that could’ve changed the course of history if he’d built it around Belgium in 1914.
‘I happened to be on a smoko when a captain came over to inspect it. Townsville Jack was resting on his shovel, looking into the ground.
‘“That’s quite a hole,” said the officer.
‘“It’s a bloody great hole,” said Townsville Jack.
‘“It’s bigger than I imagined,” he said.
‘“It ought to be on a map,” said Townsville Jack.
‘“Well, very good,” said the captain.
‘They looked at each other.
‘“What’s it for?” asked Townsville Jack.
‘“For storage,” said the captain. “Most probably.”
‘Townsville Jack wiped his big nose with his huge hand.
‘“Or drainage,” said the officer.
‘Townsville Jack knew there was something crook, because you don’t just tell a man to dig a hole when you don’t know what it’s for, unless it’s for nothing at all. But Townsville Jack liked his hole so much, he kept on digging anyway. The next day, another officer came around and told him to stop work on the hole.
‘“I need you to fill it in,” he said.
‘“What’s wrong with it?” asked Townsville Jack.
‘“It’s in the wrong place,” he said.
‘“Your arsehole’s in the wrong place,” said Townsville Jack.
‘“Fill it in, soldier,” he said.
‘“I’ll fill you in,” said Townsville Jack.
‘“I’ll put you on a charge,” said the officer.
‘“It’ll be the last thing you do,” said Townsville Jack.’
The carriage clock chimed, and Jimmy stopped talking.
‘He was a hard bloke, Townsville Jack,’ he said, eventually. ‘You’d think nothing could break him.’
‘What happened to him?’ I asked.
‘What happened?’ said Jimmy. ‘Something broke him.’
*
Jimmy drilled into the ground with the heel of his boot and left a shallow brow in the dry soil.
‘We’ll build it here,’ he said.
We went around the back of the house to the shed, where Jimmy stored balls of string and cable; towers of tobacco tins filled with nails; reels of shoelaces and bands; matchboxes stuffed with keys; two jars of hungry dentures, and thousands and thousands of bottle tops.
Mounted on the wall were drills and saws, pliers and hammers, set squares, T squares, axes, planes and files. A stack of waste wood rested in one corner, like a bonfire that had never been lit. Jimmy threw nothing away. He used to buy crates of oranges for his vitamins, and for my grandma to boil into bitter marmalade. When the crates were empty, he’d prise them apart, stack the timber and straighten out the nails.
Jimmy pushed aside the bones of fruit boxes and hunted through bales of chair legs until he found a broom handle. On his workbench vice he measured and marked it, clamped and cut it, and tossed the shorter end back into the pile.
He chiselled the broom handle to a point, as if he were sharpening a pencil, then handed me the stake and picked up his heavy wooden mallet.
‘Front yard,’ he said, and I followed him back there.
He planted the broom handle in the pit made by his boot, and I knelt and steadied it while Jimmy knocked it into the ground with the mallet. He lodged a second broom handle next to the first, and it looked as if we’d built a pair of very low goal-posts, or high, wide wickets.
‘Smoko,’ he said, and we took a tea break on the front step.
Barry Dick the frummer came over and asked what we were doing.
‘I’m planting wood,’ said Jimmy, ‘to cut out the middleman.’
‘I don’t follow you,’ said the frummer.
‘This way, you don’t have to bother with trees,’ said Jimmy. ‘You just drive the sticks into the ground and they take root themselves.’
‘It’s a miracle,’ said the frummer. ‘You should give thanks to Hashem.’
‘I will,’ said Jimmy, ‘if I see him.’
The frummer blessed us and left us.
I didn’t go to a Jewish day school, so I’d never had much to do with the frummers. Jimmy said they’d come from Russia or Poland, and fifty years later they still hadn’t noticed the difference in the weather. The frummers liked to speak Yiddish, even the ones who’d had to learn it when they were grown up because their parents hadn’t been frum enough.
It was hard to see what they did, apart from frummering. Mum said they were Jewish Mormons, except they: (1) had long hair and long sleeves instead of short hair and short sleeves; (2) drove old cars instead of riding new bicycles; and (3) tried to make Jews more Jewish instead of persuading everyone else to be more Mormon.
So they weren’t much like Mormons at all, except that most of them were American. Also, they were boring.
The frummers were waiting for the Messiah to come to earth. Many of them believed their rabbi, the Rebbe, was Moshiach, but he was on earth already and it hadn’t changed anything.
Dad said the frummers weren’t really even Jewish, they were a sort of fancy-dress cult, but at least they kept kashrut and wore hats, which was more than he did.
Nearly all the frummers in Sydney seemed to live around Bondi, which was a bit of a waste since they never went to the beach or even wore T-shirts, because God didn’t like their arms. Jimmy called them ‘the Barmy Army’, but that didn’t stop him from talking to them in the street.
Jimmy watched Barry Dick walk up to Bondi Road, then turned back to his poles. He gripped one stick in each hand and let them carry his weight.
‘I’ve seen a Chinaman’s head on a pole,’ he said to me. ‘All grey and bloody. His lips were blue. They’d bashed out his teeth.’
Jimmy brushed his fingers across his face, trailing his cheek-bones and the line of his chin.
‘I remember the rest of Singapore like I’m watching a film,’ said Jimmy, ‘but the heads’re a photograph, a picture on their own.’
He wrapped both his hands around a single pole.
‘But I was telling you about Townsville Jack, eh? That great big unmilitary digging fucking machine. Well, Ramsay came to our barracks, and Townsville Jack was on his palliasse, peeling the skin off his blisters. Ramsay sat at the end of Townsville Jack’s bunk, like a doctor.
‘“Do you understand,” asked Ramsay, “that you’re still in the army and obliged to obey orders?”
‘“Much obliged,” said Townsville Jack. “Can I ask you a question, Sergeant Major? Why was
I ordered to dig that bloody hole in the first place?”
‘“In the first location?” asked the sergeant major.
‘“In the first bloody instance,” said Townsville Jack, stripping a ribbon of film from his foot.
‘“It’s part of a program to boost the men’s morale,” said the sergeant major.
‘Townsville Jack nodded like he understood.
‘“By giving them holes to look at?” he asked.
‘“By giving them something to do,” said Ramsay.
‘“You mean you made me dig a hole for my morale?” asked Townsville Jack.
‘Ramsay tugged at his bushy moustache.
‘“You enjoyed it, didn’t you?” he asked.
‘“I enjoyed it because I thought I was doing something useful,” he said.
‘“Well, you were,” said Ramsay. “You were keeping occupied.”
‘Townsville Jack shook his big, heavy head.
‘“I don’t need to dig holes to keep occupied,” he said. “I could read a book.”
‘“Oh,” said Ramsay. “And what was the last book you read?”
‘“Lady Chatterley’s Lover,” said Townsville Jack.
‘“Bull,” said Ramsay. “That’s banned.”
‘“Not here, it isn’t,” said Townsville Jack, and he pulled out his copy from under his pillow.
‘Ramsay took the book and opened it near the middle.
‘“You could find some chap to read it to you,” said Townsville Jack. “It’d keep him occupied. Be good for his morale.”
‘Ramsay studied the book as if he hadn’t seen one before.
‘“Where did you find this?” he asked.
‘Townsville Jack showed him the flap on the first page that said it was the property of Singapore Library.
‘“Are you trying to tell me,” said Ramsay, “that while your mates were blueing and whoring, you went into town and joined the library?”
‘“The library came here,” said Townsville Jack. “The brass talked the Nips into letting us have the books. I’ve got this too,” he said, and passed Ramsay A Homage to Sappho by Jack Lindsay.