Sunset Ridge

by Nicole Alexander

  ‘Not a peep,’ George said. ‘And now that I know about Grandfather’s compassion, I have to wonder why old Mrs Evans was so rude to me that day, even though her son said she never forgave Grandfather for what he did. I don’t think Grandfather did anything wrong, Maddy. Ross said his actions made people feel guilty. So, it sounds to me like he was trying to right a wrong.’

  ‘One that might have involved the Cummins family?’ Madeleine said thoughtfully.

  ‘And the Jacksons,’ Rachael added.

  George took a sip of the beer. ‘And Ross Evans’s mother.’

  ‘That sounds like some triangle,’ Madeleine agreed. ‘Do you know Horatio Cummins, George?’

  ‘Not well,’ George replied. ‘He lives on the outskirts of Banyan. There was a falling out in the family and the business was split in half. His son Douglas now runs Cummins Farms here at Banyan while Horatio has a large spread further east.’

  ‘Would it be worth approaching Douglas?’ Rachael asked.

  ‘What for?’ Madeleine asked, deflated. ‘With a negative response from Stepworth’s, I will have to start approaching other galleries and, quite frankly, based on the Stepworth response I don’t like our chances of success.’

  ‘Damn it.’

  ‘Yes,’ George agreed with his wife, ‘damn it all.’

  Her brother’s tone was terse and as Madeleine watched him place the cold beer to his brow she knew that there was more on his mind than the David Harrow retrospective.

  ‘Rachael,’ George said after he had drained his beer, ‘I’m sorry to add more bad news to our increasing pile, but we’re going to have to make some changes. Sonia will have to go.’

  ‘What? But –’

  George raised a hand for silence. ‘And the renovations will have to stop. We simply can’t afford to spend the money now the chances of an exhibition are unlikely.’

  Rachael gritted her teeth. ‘But you agreed to it.’

  George nodded. ‘Yes, and now I’m disagreeing.’

  ‘You can’t be serious,’ Rachael replied.

  ‘I most definitely am.’ George opened the fridge door. He reached for a beer but then changed his mind and selected the water jug and poured a glass. ‘And one more thing, Rachael: you will have to get a job. Please don’t look so stunned; this is our home and we have to work together to keep it going.’

  Madeleine decided against remaining for the rest of the conversation. As the voices in the kitchen rose, she walked back to her bedroom. There was nothing left to do but pack.

  Flanders, Belgium

  July 1917

  They marched in single file along the duckboard, passing troops returning from the front-line. These men, dirty and bloodied, trudged silently. The odd soldier raised a clenched fist in salute, but most looked steadfastly at the back of the man before him, eyes glassy. Dave marched on, his mind blank. They were returning to the front and the thought of what lay ahead deadened his soul. The brass talked of the success of the battle of Messines last month, yet Dave, thrust from a training camp immediately into battle, could scarcely comprehend his changed circumstances. Messines haunted him.

  Regardless of how he tried to forget what he had witnessed, his artist’s eye impregnated his mind with filaments and fragments, much like the bodies strewn about this damaged land. Dave recalled the deep underground mines exploding and the sky lighting up like a pillar of fire. There had been whispers of the noise being heard in England, such was the strength of the explosions. The tremendous blasts had been detonated after ten days of a sustained preliminary artillery bombardment. Guns and mortars had spun over their heads into the German lines while they sat in their trench, nerves fraying. When the order to attack had come they were supported by tanks and the new Livens projectors that were designed to throw gas-canisters into the enemy trenches. Dave had walked through no-man’s land with his brothers as a creeping artillery barrage maintained a curtain of fire just in front of them. At the time he thought his chest would explode from fear. Only his brothers’ presence stopped him from turning around and running back to their trench. Turtle had been blown to pieces in the first hour; a casualty of their own guns and his impatience. Timing was everything.

  Dave recalled long periods of terror contrasted with snatches of wonder. Death had been all around, yet the casual gallantry of the men he served with as they dragged the dead into shallow holes was as inspiring and as bittersweet as birdsong on a clear, crisp morning. One night he had lain fear-frozen under the body of a digger as Fritz stood about smoking and talking, kicking absently at the fallen. Expecting the worst, he had listened to the sweet strains of a nightingale and wondered at such impossible beauty amid so much decay. On the fourth day of the battle, when their battalion was due to pull out, Marty and Riley had simply vanished. There weren’t even body pieces left for identification.

  Their route to the reserve trenches this morning had bypassed the casualty stations and bulging graveyards as the whispers of staggeringly high casualty lists continued. They were running behind time, which meant that as a pre-dawn glow spread across the landscape they were still marching rather than being hunkered down safely. High in the shell-blackened air Dave spotted a German observation balloon. For a moment he considered waving at the idiot, signalling his re-entry into this lost world. Minutes later there was a cracking sound overhead and the balloon dropped slowly from the sky.

  ‘Six-shilling-a-day murderers, that’s what they’re calling us.’

  Dave stopped walking, throwing the column of men behind him into disarray.

  Thaddeus thumped him on the shoulder. ‘Dave, come on.’ Further back along the line men began to complain.

  ‘That voice. Didn’t you hear it? It sounded familiar.’

  A digger waiting behind Dave sniggered. ‘Maybe it was Mother.’

  ‘If you don’t keep walking,’ another soldier called out, ‘I’ll be turning back and heading home.’

  Dave didn’t budge. To his right another snaking road sheltered a group of men.

  ‘Bloody pacifists.’

  Dave headed to where the group of soldiers sat on the edge of a shell crater. Although it was still dark he knew it was Harold Lawrence. Huddled in the dirt amid soldiers, their old friend sported a week’s growth on his face. ‘Harold, it’s me, Dave.’

  Harold lifted his head. For a moment Dave thought the ironmonger’s son had lost his sight and he took a step closer until he was sure Harold could see him clearly. The man’s squint turned to a frown, which deepened the cut in the shape of a question mark around his right eye. The lines on his skin were caked with grime. By his side was a stubby butted Lewis gun and rounds of ammo. The diggers with Harold appeared old and wiry. A couple had their limbs bandaged and the chalky whiteness of the French soil coated their uniforms.

  ‘That one shouldn’t have been taken away from his mother,’ one commented, coughing up something slimy from the back of his throat.

  Dave felt Luther’s restraining arm across his chest. They had both seen that wild-man gaze before. One had to be careful that surprise didn’t lead to confrontation, especially with men coming straight out of battle. Not every digger shut down automatically after the fighting finished.

  ‘Good t-to see you, m-mate.’ Luther selected a pre-rolled cigarette from the band around his slouch hat and lit it. Thaddeus loitered a few feet away.

  The men sitting around Harold looked to him for direction. In the distance, howitzers and Lewis guns rang out across what was left of the French countryside. Rifle fire sounded periodically.

  Their old friend focused on them. There was a glimmer of recognition.

  ‘Get up, you l-lazy b-bastard,’ Luther encouraged with a grin. ‘Say g’day to your m-mates.’

  ‘Jeez, I didn’t recognise you; any of you.’ Harold shook hands with Dave and Luther. ‘It’s good to see you fellas, but you shouldn’t
have brought him.’

  ‘I brought myself,’ Dave replied. Despite his best efforts the cough that struggled up from his chest was noisy and thick. He had been told it was the effect of the gas and dendrite fumes and that a condition similar to bronchitis was the outcome, no doubt made worse by last year’s illness.

  ‘Fair enough,’ Harold replied. ‘You lot are late, you know.’

  Behind them the column of Australian soldiers moved onwards. In a brief break in artillery fire, squeaking leather was audible.

  ‘Give them what for, you chaps,’ a soldier called out from a retiring British battalion.

  Luther gave the soldier the thumbs-up sign. ‘We’ll do our b-best.’

  ‘Thaddeus,’ Harold said. ‘Last time I saw you, you were spitting blood.’

  ‘I wasn’t the one carted off to the Banyan gaol,’ Thaddeus retaliated.

  Dave had expected arm punches and grins between the two childhood friends, not this surly stand-off.

  ‘Well, since then I’ve been knocked over by a shell,’ Harold countered, ‘buried twice and spent twenty-eight hours in a crater with five dead Huns. Eventually me and me mate had to cut them into pieces and throw them out of the hole, they stunk that bad. So, I can’t say that bit of fisticuffs left much of a mark on me.’

  Thaddeus shrugged. ‘Welcome to France.’

  ‘Never took you for a fighter.’ Harold’s statement was directed back to Dave. ‘My folks wrote me and said that they’d reckoned all you lads took off from Sunset Ridge. I didn’t believe that you would have joined up though, Dave. Thought your parents would have had more sense than to let you go.’

  Thaddeus hitched his thumb through the leather strap on his rifle. ‘It’s a long story.’

  ‘Well, who knows if there will be time enough to tell it?’ Harold picked up the Lewis gun and shouldered it tiredly. ‘Looks like what’s left of our mob will be joining up with yours. We’re to support you lot in the reserve trenches until more reinforcements arrive. And apparently you’re down on guns, so here I am. One slightly buggered Lewis gunner, at your service.’ Harold displayed a row of busted teeth. The partially congealed wound near his eye began to bleed. Saying farewell to his wounded mates, Harold introduced his number two on the Lewis gun, Thorny, and two blond-headed blokes nicknamed Trip and Fall. The Harrow boys were understandably confused.

  ‘They’re brothers too,’ Harold explained as they all shook hands, ‘and their names are self-explanatory.’

  ‘Th-this should be interesting,’ Luther commented as they re-joined the stragglers at the rear of their column.

  ‘On the plus side,’ Trip said as he stumbled on the rutted track, ‘neither of us has been hit yet.’

  ‘Which is a positive, I reckon,’ the red-haired Thorny said drily.

  Harold’s expression turned sour. ‘You boys would’ve heard what they’re calling us back home. “Murderers.” Can you believe it?’

  ‘Harold’s plan,’ Fall revealed, ‘is to kill as many Germans as possible, end the war and then go home and kill the pacifists.’

  Luther grinned. ‘Works for m-me.’

  Adjusting his kit, Dave tagged along behind the others. Thaddeus walked ahead, leaving Luther and Harold to chat about bludgers and would-to-Goders, the politicians back home who enticed young men to volunteer while spouting forth that they too would enlist, would-to-God they were able.

  ‘You all mates then, eh?’ Thorny asked Dave. ‘You and Luther?’

  Dave nodded. ‘Thaddeus too. He and Harold were pretty tight back at home.’

  Thorny shifted the pouches of Lewis gun cartridges that hung from both shoulders into a more comfortable position. ‘Well, if they were they don’t look so friendly now. It must have been some fight they had, by the sounds of it.’

  Harold and Luther were laughing and joking while Thaddeus had merged with the column of men up ahead. ‘Yeah, it must have been,’ Dave reluctantly agreed.

  They halted in a section of the reserve trench directly behind the front-line. Decaying corpses protruded from the earthen walls as a work detail tried to rid the winding channel of the newly dead. The platoon stood aside to let the remaining troops they were relieving straggle past as dawn broke.

  ‘Nice of you to show up,’ a British soldier complained.

  Their platoon, now with only thirteen old faces of the original twenty-five men, began to tidy the area. Captain Egan, who had been with them from the beginning, waited patiently. Originally a farmer from near Newcastle in New South Wales and a qualified accountant, his short stature and ungainly waist hid an athlete’s quickness and a propensity to be at the front in the thick of battle.

  ‘Get to it, lads,’ he encouraged. ‘That dug-out needs to be reinforced as well.’

  ‘If Messines was an outright Allied victory,’ Fall said to no one in particular, throwing a wooden crate out of the trench, ‘why do we have to keep fighting?’

  ‘The front-line still needs to be held, soldier.’ Captain Egan kicked a shattered rifle to one side and watched as the dug-out entrance was cleared of debris.

  Luther righted sandbags atop the trench parapet. ‘Yeah, from B-Belgium t-to Switzerland.’

  ‘There are only minor skirmishes expected in this sector,’ Captain Egan revealed.

  ‘M-minor, m-my arse,’ Luther muttered. ‘If th-they were minor I’d still b-be sitting in th-that estaminet drinking plonk and t-taking those nice green dollars from th-the Americans in a game of two-up.’

  Thaddeus grunted. ‘And then this section of the line would be overrun by Fritz and we’d be back to square one.’

  ‘Listen to Thaddeus,’ Captain Egan encouraged as he entered the dug-out. ‘Now make yourselves useful, all of you, while we’ve got the chance.’

  Broken and useless equipment was tossed up and out onto the pitted ground above, and fallen sandbags were re-positioned. Dave peered over the top of the trench and saw the front-line thirty feet ahead. Seconds later, a whistle screamed.

  Shells and mortar bombs showered forth, each fresh wave increasing in duration so that the concussion made ears ring and minds blur. Dave searched for Luther and, diving for the spot by his side, crouched against the trench wall. ‘I thought Captain Egan said this section was relatively quiet.’

  ‘You’ll b-be right, Dave.’ Luther gripped his shoulder. ‘Stick with m-me.’ He pushed Dave’s helmet firmly down on his head and adjusted his own.

  Thaddeus, close by on Dave’s right, rested against the earthen trench wall and waited. Chunks of dry dirt sprayed their bodies. Dave’s heart began to pound savagely.

  ‘Got room for another at this party?’ Harold slammed into Thaddeus, the Lewis gun gripped tightly in his hands. Beside him the red-haired Thorny grinned, clamping an unlit cigarette between his lips. ‘They’re giving us a fair kick up the you-know-what today.’

  ‘We’ll k-kick ’em right b-back,’ Luther growled.

  The dug-out was hit in the first two minutes, collapsing the entrance and trapping its occupants. Amid the heavy barrage, Luther and Thaddeus pulled away dislodged sandbags before digging fiercely at the piled dirt. Fall and Trip joined them, digging with their bare hands as shell-fire grazed the tops of the trenches. Captain Egan was pulled free, and Thaddeus smacked him hard on the chest to get him breathing again.

  ‘I’ll live,’ the captain spluttered.

  When the barrage finally ceased five minutes later, Fritz attacked in earnest. The enemy was well entrenched and the crossfire from the machine guns kept the Allied trench subdued.

  ‘Waste of ammo,’ Luther snorted as he crouched against the trench wall. Bullets slammed into sandbags and whizzed over their heads. Amid the noise, two distinct bombs could be heard. ‘Grenades,’ Luther said loudly as a battle cry went up from in front.

  ‘Someone’s having a go!’ Thaddeus yelled.

  Cap
tain Egan took a quick look through his field glasses. ‘Two German machine-gun nests have been blown.’

  Dave watched as the Australian front-line charged across no-man’s land. His stomach tightened in anticipation as he gripped his rifle. Next to him Thaddeus and Luther were staring at Captain Egan, waiting for the order to attack.

  ‘We’ve got to give them a hand, sir,’ Thaddeus yelled.

  Captain Egan lifted his whistle and blew.

  Hopping the bags, they rushed towards the front-line trench as Germans swarmed the area. They shot, stabbed, punched and slashed at the oncoming invaders, only to be pushed backwards by a fresh wave of artillery fire and dead and wounded Australians. Harold, perched to one side rattling his Lewis gun, did his best to protect retreating Australians, Thorny replacing each empty magazine cartridge oblivious to his own safety. Finally the enemy retreated and the remaining Australians fell back into the trench.

  ‘It’s a grand war this one, Thorny.’ Harold spat dirt from his caked lips, and rested against the trench wall. ‘The side that wins will have the most dead.’

  Thorny looked at his cigarette. The tip of it had been shot off. ‘Light?’ he asked casually.

  Dave felt an insistent tugging at his body. There was something warm and wet on his skin.

  ‘Is he all right, d-do you th-think, Thaddeus?’ Luther asked.

  His brothers were patting him down, checking for wounds. Dave noticed that Luther’s tomahawk was slick with blood.

  ‘Had the wind knocked out of him, I reckon,’ Thaddeus replied. Picking up Dave’s helmet, he dropped it on his head. ‘You might try and keep that on,’ he admonished.

  All along the trench system the call for stretcher-bearers rang out. Slightly concussed, Dave examined the lifeless soldier by his side. It was not the first time he had been saved by fate. Over the last few weeks men had been blown to bits in front of him, effectively shielding him with their own flesh and blood. But this time it was different. Dave knew this particular digger well.