by Pete Ayrton
But now I am coming home… and I do not care.
I have pictured arriving at Charing Cross. Perhaps it would be raining, but it would be English rain and I would hold my face up to its drops. Father and Mother would meet me… drive me through familiar places – Piccadilly, Regent Street… as it grew dusk lights would reflect warmly on the wet, shiny pavements… London and then out through innumerable streets of toy villas towards home…
Home, home… and I do not care.
I do not care. I am flat. Old. I am twenty-one and as old as the hills. Emotion-dry. The war has drained me dry of feeling. Something has gone from me that will never return. I do not want to go home.
I am suddenly aware that I cannot bear Mother’s prattle-prattle of committees and recruiting-meetings and the war-baby of Jessie, the new maid; nor can I watch my gentle father gloating over the horrors I have seen, pumping me for good stories to retail at his club to-morrow. I cannot go home to watch a procession of maimed men in my dainty, rosewalled bedroom. It is no place for a company of broken men on parade…
I cannot go home. In the morning, perhaps, but not to-night.
What has happened to me?
I am in England and I do not care.
*
‘You’ve just come from France, haven’t you?’ I look up from the coffee I am drinking in the hotel lounge. He is a second-lieutenant, very spick and span in his new Sam Browne and well-cut uniform – ‘Rather a nut,’ The B. F. would label him. He is so immaculate I feel dirty immediately, despite my pre-dinner hot bath, my shampoo and hair-cut, my manicure and my newly-acquired powder-puff.
He smiles disarmingly. ‘Awful cheek my coming over, but I embark to-morrow. First time out. Frightful novice.’
First time out. I avoid his laughing blue eyes. He is indeed a frightful novice… that is why his eyes are still laughing.
‘Do let me talk to you,’ he begs. ‘I’m lonely and you seem lonely, too. I’ve been watching you all through dinner, wondering why you stayed in Folkestone instead of going straight through. Do talk to me. I’d love some tips first-hand from someone who’s been out there…’
I agree to talk to him… but not of the war.
Anything but the war. My voice hardens. He notices it and his eyes are suddenly grave… but I do not want them to be grave. Let them smile while they can still smile, they will be grave soon enough. I make a stupid joke… the blue eyes dance again. Blue eyes, dancing like the sea on a breezy summer’s day. There is a hop going in the ballroom… I hesitate, my uniform is almost in rags… he tells me it may be, but I look tophole, and my short hair is the sort of hair a fellow would like to rumple his fingers through if he dared… he clasps his hands together in mock penitence…
He is so gay, so audacious, this boy of my own age who is so young and brimming over with life. He invents a wild fandango, and shouts with laughter at an old lady in the corner who stares disapprovingly through lorgnettes. He is clean and young and straight and far removed from the shadow procession I watch night after night, the procession that came to me early this morning and wakened me shrieking in the presence of a compartmentful of shocked strangers. He is so gay, so full of life, this boy who is holding me closely in his arms… he could never join that ghostly parade…
Dance, dance, dance, go on dancing… press me against your breast… talk, talk, talk, go on talking… yes, daringly drop a kiss on top of my cropped head in full view of the shocked old lady with the lorgnettes… laugh, laugh, laugh, go on laughing… yes, I will drink more champagne with you, I will smile when you smile… I will press your hand when you press mine under the table… yes, I will dance with you again till I forget I have seen you at the end of the ghostly procession that has crossed the Channel with me.
He asks me to call him Robin. I tell him my name is Nell. I wish it were something more charming.
But it is charming, as charming as its owner. Oh, yes, yes, yes… if I shake my head again he’ll kiss me in the middle of the ballroom, and the disapproving old girl with the lorgnettes will pass out completely… he loves to see me smile… Not unhappy as I was at dinner now, am I?
The last dance comes. The last chord crashes. He pulls me to him so roughly that I am left breathless for a second. ‘The King’ is played. He stands rigidly to attention, his eyes clouded for a moment. ‘The King’ finishes. I make a quick joke about Paris leave; he throws his head back and laughs. Easily and swiftly he laughs, this Robin who is straight and clean and whole.
We walk into the lounge slowly… bed now, he supposes, with a side-glance at me… hardly worth while undressing, embarking at five… filthy, unearthly hour to get a fellow out of bed…
We get into the lift without speaking… our rooms are on the same floor…
At my door he kisses me, at first gently… ‘a good-night kiss’… then more ardently… how strong and beautiful he is, this Robin who has not been out to hell yet… Dear Nell… he kisses me again… Dear Robin…
Must he say good-night?… Can’t he come in and talk to me after I am in bed?… I don’t think him an awful rotter for suggesting it, do I?… How ingenuous he is, this Robin who kisses me so ardently, whose eyes are blue and sane… He’ll be good, honestly – well, just as good as I want him to be… he kisses me again… poor Robin, poor Robin…
The luminous hands of my watch say four o’clock. It is pitch dark. I switch the bed-lamp on. He is deep in the abyss of sleep… ‘Time to go, Robin.’
He awakens smiling and flushed, like a child. ‘Nell…’
Then, after a while, ‘You will write – promise?’ I promise.
‘I feel a cad, an absolute…’
No, no, no.
‘I’m your first lover, aren’t I? Why, Nell? Were you a bit in love with me, too?…’
I nod. A lie, but it will do. But it was not only because he was whole and strong-limbed, not only because his body was young and beautiful, not only because his laughing blue eyes reflected my image without the shadow of war rising to blot me out… but because I saw him between me and the dance orchestra ending a shadow procession of cruelly-maimed men…
Poor Robin, poor baby.
‘I shall always treasure this, Nell;… you’re the first girl I’ve loved, decently;… there have been others, but…’ he stammers boyishly, embarrassed… ‘When I come on leave we’ll dance again, won’t we?… We’ll have such fun, Nell…’
I kiss him despairingly, the hot tears choking me… We will not dance again, this Robin and I; it is so pitiful; he is twenty and I am twenty-one, but he is so young…
Poor Robin, poor baby, poor baby.
He closes the bedroom door softly behind him.
Evadne Price, who wrote mostly under the pseudonym Helen Zenna Smith, was born either in 1901 at sea off the coast of New South Wales or, as she claimed, in 1896 in Sussex in England. Not So Quiet: Stepdaughters of War, first published in 1930, was based on the diaries of Winifred Young, who served during the war as an ambulance driver. Critically acclaimed on publication, the book is a powerful attack on the hypocrisy of those at home who fan the flames of nationalism totally unaware of what is really happening on the front.
‘Out of the way quickly, Mother and Mrs. Evans-Mawnington – lift your silken skirts aside… Sorry this has happened. It isn’t pretty to see a hero spewing up his life’s blood in public, is it? Much more romantic to see him in the picture papers being awarded the V. C. even if he is minus a limb or two. A most unfortunate occurrence!
Avant-garde in style, many of the book’s descriptions are like an Otto Dix painting. Evadne Price went on to become a popular romantic novelist whose best-known titles include Society Girl!, Escape to Marriage and Air Hostess in Love. She died in Sydney in 1985 leaving behind an unfinished autobiography, Mother Painted Nude.
WILLIAM BAYLEBRIDGE
THE APOCALYPSE OF PAT MCCULLOUGH: THE SERGEANT’S TALE
from An Anzac Muster
THE COMPANY, NOT A WHIT LESS TICKLED than their
comrades had been on that delicate occasion, thought the jest a good one. Nor – like them, too – did they fail to laugh well at the discomfiture of that orderly. The result of the lad’s labour, someone ventured, must in truth have been an eye-opener to Flower, to catch his eye napping in that fashion. In two words, the Crow thought his tale a success.
‘Short it is,’ said the Colonel, ‘but’ – and he here gripped his nose – ‘not sweet. And as for your moral, to hunt the beast, we should need, in an atmosphere so overcharged, a respirator indeed gas-proof.’
The Squatter, who thought the tale at least a neat one, was a little curious about the author of that couplet, that had so smartly made its point.
‘What bard, then, was in action here?’ he questioned. But the name of that smitten poet was unknown; and this indeed mattered little, for, as the Colonel promptly whispered him, there were, among our troops, a thousand wags who, in a like circumstance, could have passed a couplet easier than an excrement.
It was now the Sergeant’s turn to give something. From his preoccupation, it might have been guessed that he meant to put forth, on this occasion, not the least of his powers. He sat silent; his lips were a little parted, his eyes fixed. The Colonel, after allowing him time to think out his matter, said:
‘If I have hit the mark, Sergeant, we shall find profit in you. Give what you have willingly,’ he continued, with a sly glance at the Crow. ‘When the crow shuts his bill to, doesn’t the next bird sound the better for it?’
‘If my yarn’s not too long, Colonel,’ the Sergeant, in a doubtful tone, answered, ‘I’ll tell it gladly.’
The Colonel, who, in spite of his sharp hint to the Crow, was not unwilling to give time to the more discreet tellers, requested him, if it was only good, to care nothing for its length; upon which the Sergeant, without further pressing, proceeded thus.
*
The Twenty Ninth Division, doing as much as blood could, had pushed well into the containing battle at Krithia; at Lone Pine the First Brigade of Australian Infantry had done much – where so much was yet to be done – in a labour that was to put it for ever past the reach of oblivion; superb and not to be conquered, the New Zealanders, the right covering column of the main attack, had charged and secured the almost impregnable Old Number Three Post, had stormed the Turks out of the tangled and precipitous ridge at Bauchop’s, and climbed to another victory on the Table Top; Damakjelik Bair was ours; the three Deres, won at a bitter price in blood and travail, were open to the two attacking columns which, even now, were advancing to the assault.
The Turks, threatened as they had hardly expected to be, shook to their marrow. They put forth their entire strength to cut us off from the crests that meant final victory. Their whole line, loud with battle, had need of them. But they had reserves; and these, in great numbers, they brought up hotly to meet this blow – a blow which, had the odds been anything but insuperable, must have meant death to all hope in them.
The men of our right attacking column, paying soon with their lives for every foot won on that implacable way, toiled up the Chailak and Sazli Beit Deres, formed a rough line up past the Table Top, and threw themselves into the confused struggle which at least led on – now towards Rhododendron Spur and the stubborn heights of Chunuk. Our remaining column, the Australians and their comrades on the left, laboured up the nerve-straining crags and across the chasms of the Aghyl Dere. They had set their great hearts on attaining the high and ultimate goal – up past Hill Q, that ruthless hill, lay Koja Chemen Tepe. This peak, dominating the whole peninsula and the waters that wash its gaunt sides, was the key to unlock the inexorable riddle: to achieve that was to make victory ours.
In this last column there was a man named McCullough; he was a Queenslander. Because he was much given to dreaming queer dreams, men called him the Prophet. But, though his fancy had run to many a new and strange thing, what one of them all had reached to the delirious dream, the nightmare of a madman, that this advance seemed?
With their blood up, with a will that looked more than human urging them on, these men struggled forward against obstacles that might surely have taken gods by the throat, and flung them aside. Stumbling, cursing, killing, now drowned in the billowing smoke and dust spread by exploding shells, or, later, advancing through a dark alive with singing lead, on, and always on, they pressed. Great masses of earth were torn away and entombed them. Men were spattered with the bowels and brains of comrades. The hungry wire raked at their flesh, and was left, if they got past it at all, dripping with their blood. Bombs and bayonets dispersed them on the shaking earth. Resolute heels ground the face of foe there and friend.
Through that bitter doing, redeemed from chaos by resolution, they still pressed on. Up the front of loose rocks, crumbling under their tense fingers, they scaled. Into unguessed chasms they were precipitated, and broken on the stones below. Unyielding thorn tore their clothes and skin off. Then came more killing, more taking and giving of pitiless steel, more blowing away of faces by rifles thrust into them from the pregnant dark.
In that high courage, that desperate devotion, did not men often embrace death with their hands empty of weapons, that they might make a way for comrades? Holding on, beating back the foe (when not tossed in pieces, like dissevered meat, to feed the rats of that hellish jungle), marking the lairs of the clustered snipers by their fire, throwing themselves prone, advancing again – through these and a thousand like experiences, onward, and always on, pressed that wonderful wave of hard-breathing and broken flesh. And ever, as they toiled forward thus, the hill in front became more steep, the pressure against them more terrible, and the power to meet it less able. But what obstacle could stay such men, who, if any throughout history have done so, in truth strove like gods?
When night had turned to the other agony of dawn, and day to night again, those for whom death was not yet still moved on – with the inviolable resolution of beings that could die but not falter. Yes, as they toiled on through those interminable agonies, it looked – in God’s name it looked – like the nightmare of some madman. Lucky indeed might many think those who had been left, shapes now without meaning, in the scrub below. Had they not done with all this?
And in the shambles down there – one of those countless uncommemorated souls who, whether breath remain to them or not, are consecrated in such endeavour – lay Pat McCullough. From one labour to the eternal next he had struggled on with that marvellous company, till at length, exhausted because of the life spilt from his wounds, and constrained by a necessity to which his will meant nothing, his sight had become confused, his senses had lost their reckoning, and he had dropped into a limp heap on that inexorable track – that track watered with the blood and sweat that shall give it significance, and in the supreme degree sanctify it, to Australians for ever.
When McCullough woke, he found himself in a small depression, rough with boulders, and shut in with scrub. He stretched himself, rubbed his eyes vacantly, yawned, and sat up. The air was clear, and almost without sound; it had in it some touch of freshness that told it was yet early day. A pair of doves – to whom, plainly, nothing looked amiss – sat preening each other on a fir; and up aloft an intent hawk, as if he had sighted business in this neighbourhood, cut lessening circles against the background of pale blue.
‘Strange!’thought McCullough. ‘How did I get here?’ He scrambled to his feet, took a few steps into the undergrowth, and discovered – for there was not much of it – that the ground about him was the summit of an insignificant hill.
In a flash all that he had been through came back to him – all that had happened before his last sleep and this awakening – that mad scramble to death or victory up the blood-sodden dere. But this? Pressing his hand to his forehead, as if to help memory, he gazed about in an effort to understand. The place looked, he thought, like the discarded pit some battery had used.
‘Strange!’ he repeated.
What struck him now was the weird stillness of the place.
What did this mean? The roar of our guns (a sound that leapt at the ears like something palpable and alive, and with a terrific impetus), the heavy rumbling of far-off howitzers, the bursting of shells, the vicious snap of rifles, rising ever and anon dying down, the shouting of men on the Beach, the human noise set up by men cursing, or singing at their work, or crunching along on hard roads – these, with the thousand other sounds that had once travelled those hills, might never have been, so quiet was it. And then, in another flash of perception, the reason came. Deaf! Of course, he was deaf. Had he not been partially deaf, nay, and much more than that, many times before? His hearing had gone now for good. But even as he asserted this he knew that he was not deaf. A fitful breeze, from which the sun had not yet taken the salt, was blowing in from the sea, and flapping the leaves of a shrub at hand. That, beyond question, he heard. Yes, and he heard, up in the silent air, a lark singing; and were not pigeons, in the scrub below, making an audible job of their wooing?
‘Surely,’ he thought, ‘this joke I am is still Pat McCullough, and this is Anzac; but, if that’s so, my wits are out somewhere.’There was plainly need for some tough thinking; and, selecting a spot for this, he sat down to do it.
He felt his limbs, gingerly, with trepidation, as one who puts a question to Fate – half fearing the answer. As solid, they were, as a rail – the scarred but substantial flesh and bone of a soldier – and none, thank God, missing! And then it struck him that he had no clothes on: he was as bare, a glance assured him, as the back of that hand of his. In the same breath he felt a queer tickling at his belly; and, marvellously enough, when he clawed at those flies, he found that a great bunch of hair had set up the titillation.
‘What’s this?’ he began. ‘Can it be?’And then, breaking off, he stroked his chin, and burst suddenly into a laugh that was not joyous.