Burn, and Other Stories

by Peter Corris

  ‘Hah,’ I said. ‘Rough guessing your mark-up, Lawrie, but I’d say you’re about to become a very rich man.’

  He sucked gloomily on the Rothmans. ‘I thought so, too. Until I started getting trouble from someone who should be doing the same thing himself. Shit, there’s enough in this for everyone. Do you know how much those poor bastards … those brave boys, get paid?’

  I shook my head. Everything was more casual in those days, remember. You wrote fewer things down, took what money you could in cash, worried less about rules and regulations. Astrid was proving expensive and my salary was being stretched. ‘Get to the point, Lawrie.’

  ‘There’s a pub opposite my place called the Macquarie, maybe you know it?’

  ‘I’ve seen it.’

  ‘Bloke who’s taken it over is doing it up—new carpet, paint job, lights. That’d be okay, improve the tone, ’cept this bloke’s an army nut. He’s going to fit one of the bars out like an army mess—flags all over the fuckin’ place, ANZAC shit. Aussie servicemen’ll get drinks half-price on Friday and Saturday night. Now d’you see the point?’

  I did. Australian and American troops have never mixed well—something to do with different national images, the sociologists say. An American private saluting a colonel feels honoured, an Australian private doesn’t. He’ll look the other way if he can. That’s part of it, but there’re simpler things. Australians resent the Yanks’ equipment, diet and pay. The extra pay means extra alcohol and sex—put all those things together and you see the problem at the operational level. Two bars in close proximity, catering to similar needs on unequal terms, spelled trouble.

  ‘Could get lively,’ I said.

  ‘Could get fuckin’ murderous,’ Bean said. ‘I was in Brisbane in ’44 when we took them on. Jesus, it was nearly as bad as the real war, I’m telling you.’

  I nodded. I’d heard stories of the Brisbane street battles between Australian and American soldiers from one of my uncles. ‘I can see the problem, Lawrie. But what do you want me to do? I’m not the captain of a team of bouncers.’

  Lawrie’s next Rothmans was a stub between his dark-brown fingers. ‘I want you to talk to the guy at the Macquarie,’ he said. ‘I’m told he’s a mate of yours—Ken Barraclough.’

  Captain Ken Barraclough. Just hearing his name took me out of the flat straight back to Malaya where the light in the jungle played tricks so that shadows moved, and the only thing hotter and wetter than the air was your skin. Barraclough was first our instructor in camp, then our CO in the field. He drummed his motto—‘Kill and Survive’—into us with his fists, boots and shouts. That first week of training was torture—inching slowly through swamps, sprinting across clearings, climbing, crawling, scrambling—with booby traps showering stinking mud and stinging stones. He woke us up at 2.00 a.m. for refinements like flamethrower attacks, and browbeat and punished us until every man in the company could hold his breath under water for two minutes and climb a forty-foot rope with a full pack.

  We hated him worse than the enemy, feared him more, and so became death and survival machines like himself. His training saved my life a dozen times and won me a field commission. Then the politicians declared it was all over and we were going home. I got drunk and attempted to thank him. It was unthinkable to try it sober. He was drunk, too, we all were. He looked at me and his black moustache twitched and he said, ‘I never picked you for a poofter, Hardy.’

  I’d heard nothing of him since then. His name came up when I had a drink with army mates, but no one seemed to know what had become of him. Barraclough wasn’t the sort of man you kept in touch with.

  I rolled a smoke, remembering how quickly you had to do that in Malaya if you didn’t want it to get soggy. ‘What makes you think me and Barraclough are mates?’

  ‘He’s got this fuckin’ photo up in the pub. “A” Company piss-up. My mate, the bloke you helped out, recognised your ugly mug.’

  I didn’t recall a photograph being taken, but I could visualise the picture—all cockeyed smiles and glassy eyes. All except Barraclough, who could drink all night and not get a hair out of place. ‘I can’t imagine Ken Barraclough running a pub,’ I said. ‘He’s not exactly the sociable type.’

  ‘You’re telling me. I went to see him, friendly like, and asked him to tone down the Digger stuff. He’d have tossed me out on my ear if he could have.’

  I looked Bean over again. An unimpressive physical specimen to start with, he’d done further damage with tobacco and booze. The Ken Barraclough I knew could’ve thrown him from one side of Darlinghurst Road to the other. Bean saw me looking and read my mind.

  ‘Poor bugger’s got no fuckin’ legs,’ he said.

  I agreed to talk to Barraclough, although I was already suspecting that something strange was going on. I took some money from Lawrie and got rid of him before Astrid got home with her manuscripts that we laughed at and attempted one of her laughable meals that usually ended up in the kitchen tidy. Mostly we drank wine and ate bread and cheese and eggs. Great fun. The next day I went off to perform the chores I got paid for. The alarm system, installed in the house of a very nervous bookie in Double Bay, was adequate; the solicitor, who’d tried to pay his premiums with a bad cheque, was argumentative. I threatened him with cancellation and penalty fees and he became more reasonable. Which brought me to 6.30 p.m. in Homebush. The end of a long, warm day with my private work on the south side of the harbour still to do. I rang Astrid and told her I wouldn’t be back to eat.

  ‘Why not?’ she said.

  ‘I’ve got this job to do, at the Cross.’

  That produced a silence. You have to understand that this was 1967 and Astrid, for all her liberation, was still a North Shore girl. Kings Cross meant only one thing to her—commercial sex.

  ‘Oh?’

  I tried to explain something of it to her, but that only made things worse. The conversation ended coolly—upsetting when you’ve only been together a few weeks. I drove to Darlinghurst, ate something in an Italian restaurant and drank some red wine. About nine o’clock I wandered through the Cross and turned into the street that accommodated the Macquarie Hotel and the Rocky Mountain Bar. It was Friday night and the Cross was busy—girls on the street, pubs noisy and plenty of punters about. A few in uniform. Australia didn’t have a lot of hippies in those days, but what we had were mostly to be found in places like the Cross. The cops eyed the longhaired men and the bare-footed women in long skirts with more suspicion than the whores and bikies.

  The pub and the bar across the street were doing business, although both bore signs of renovation still going on. The neon Stars and Stripes outside the Rocky Mountain wasn’t lit, and the Macquarie’s Digger Bar featured a backlit, giant-sized rising sun badge that was flickering faintly. Some bugs still in the electrics. I went down a set of steps under the badge into a space that smelled of beer and tobacco. But the smells were fresh, warring with the odours of new carpet and fresh paint.

  The place was a cross between an army mess and a conventional Australian pub. There was a fair bit of military insignia scattered around—crossed .303s mounted over the bar, a big reproduction of Dyson’s portrait of Simpson and his donkey, regimental flags. Lots of photographs. There was a light fug in the bar and I had to squint to make out the details of the photo on the wall beside the Gents. The faces were all familiar—WO Ron Herbert, Frank Harper, Alby Abbott, the RSM. Ken Barraclough was in the middle of the group, scowling, glass in hand, looking as if he wished he were on parade. I was on his left, lighting a cigarette. I rolled one now as I gazed at a piece of my own history.

  A flame flared inches from my face. ‘Light, Hardy?’

  I looked down. Barraclough had run his wheelchair up silently, the way he used to move in the jungle. He held up the long flame of a gas lighter. I dipped the cigarette down and puffed.

  ‘Thanks, Ken.’

  A click and the lighter disappeared. ‘Tell me I’m looking well and I’ll run this thing over your foot
. It’s heavy. It’ll hurt.’

  I said nothing. In fact, he didn’t look good. He was pale and bloated in the face and flesh had built up on his torso. There was grey in his hair and moustache, and his eyes had sunk into puffy pouches. He wore an army shirt with no badges of rank. I couldn’t help it; my eyes dropped to where his legs should have been. There was nothing. He’d been lopped off somewhere around mid-thigh.

  ‘What happened, Ken?’ I said.

  He let out a short, barking sound that could have been a laugh, the way the twist of his mouth could have been a smile. ‘That’d be right,’ he said. ‘Direct. No bullshit, eh, Hardy?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  A man wearing an army shirt and trousers appeared with two schooners, handed one to Barraclough and one to me and disappeared into the crowd that was building up. Barraclough sank about half the schooner in a long gulp. ‘Vietnam,’ he said. ‘Chance of a lifetime.’

  I drank some of the beer. ‘Mine?’

  ‘Yeah. American mine.’

  And that was the heart of the problem, right there. Barraclough told me that he’d been leading a patrol which had entered an area the Americans had mined without properly informing the Australian command. ‘Bastards, lousy soldiers, gutless wonders. Could’ve done with you there, Hardy. But you’d had enough, right?’

  ‘Right,’ I said. I was leaning back against the wall, almost pinned there by the wheelchair. Barraclough’s eyes glittered in their deep, soft sockets and his hands twitched nervously. Those hands, which I’d seen moving faster than the eye could follow—loading, firing, signalling—now seemed to have a neurotic, uncoordinated life of their own. He clenched his glass, emptied it. Another appeared.

  ‘So what brings you here?’ Barraclough said. ‘Now that you’re a prosperous civilian.’

  ‘Lawrie Bean asked me to have a word with you.’

  ‘That little shit! Why would you be having anything to do with him?’

  ‘I’m an insurance investigator these days, Ken. But I also do a bit of this and that to make ends meet. I’m working for Bean, sort of.’

  The wheelchair spun away. ‘Then you can get the fuck out! Eddie!’

  I took two steps towards the retreating wheelchair before the man who’d been supplying Barraclough with beer stopped me. He grabbed my shoulder and his grip told me everything I needed to know about him. He was strong, balanced and ready for action. A professional. He was also big and on his own turf. I knew how to get out of a grip like that and I did it. I finished my beer and tossed the schooner to him. The gesture took him by surprise. He caught the glass and I feinted the punch that would’ve flattened him.

  I said, Thanks for the drink, Ken,’ stepped around Eddie and left the bar.

  Driving back to North Sydney, I discovered that I was in an evil mood. Barraclough had been an artist in his way, and what had happened to him was wrong. He should have survived intact, or gone out clean, instead of being so badly damaged in mind and body. I was convinced of the mind damage. The Digger Bar and the pseudo-uniforms were grotesque, a sick joke.

  I took it out on Astrid. I was morose and drank too much that night and was unresponsive in bed. I tried to make amends in the morning, but only partly succeeded. She asked me what was wrong and I told her a little about it, but she didn’t understand. I didn’t understand it myself, but somehow I didn’t want to see Barraclough running a bloodhouse masquerading as an army mess. It seemed a denial of everything he’d done in the past out of sense of duty and commitment. I rang Bean and told him I’d need a little time.

  ‘Did you talk to him?’

  ‘Yes. He’s a sick man.’

  ‘Thanks very much, Dr Casey. Did you make him see sense?’

  ‘We didn’t get that far. Look, it’s complicated. If you want me to work on it, I will. But it’s not just a matter of persuading Barraclough to take off the slouch hat.’

  ‘Shit. The Yanks’re due any day. All it’ll take is for a couple of drunk GIs to go across the road and talk to those fuckin’ ANZAC types Barraclough’s got over there, and it’ll be on! The cops’ll close us both down. Who wins then?’

  ‘Your thinking’s too simple, Lawrie. He blames the US for what happened to him. He wants a stoush, he needs it.’

  Bean swore a few times and then asked me what I had in mind. I told him I needed to find out some more about Barraclough and how he’d got into the state he was in. That got me a silence on the line.

  ‘Lawrie?’

  ‘Yeah? I didn’t think I was hiring a fuckin’ trick cyclist.’

  ‘You were calling me Ben Casey a minute ago. How come you can’t back off on this “all the way with LBJ” shit?’

  ‘There’s money in it.’

  ‘Come on. When the fleet’s in everyone makes money. You don’t need the neon stars ’n’ stripes to make a quid.’

  Another silence, then Bean said, ‘I’ve got an American backer. He’s keen on the whole thing.’

  ‘Without him you’re in trouble?’

  ‘I’m down the dunny.’

  ‘Well then, you can see how complicated it is, too. Give me a few days, Lawrie.’

  Bean agreed and I got busy. I hadn’t kept up a lot of army contacts, didn’t go to regimental dinners and such, but I knew a few people who knew a few more. After a morning spent mostly on the telephone, I finally got through to the doctor who’d treated Barraclough and sat on the committee that handled his discharge and disability settlement. He was Dr Stuart Henry, now a Reserves major.

  ‘Very sad case, Mr Hardy,’ the doctor said. ‘A brilliant officer, totally dedicated, who made two bad mistakes.’

  ‘What d’you mean, doctor?’ I asked.

  ‘He ignored or refused to believe an advice from US Command that a certain area was mined. That was mistake number one. It was an area he needed to pass through to accomplish his mission, no doubt about that. He could have got a key to the mine placement, but he didn’t. Mistake two. Give him credit, he was up front when they went in. And he paid the penalty.’

  I had to frame the next query carefully. There’s nothing the army likes less than to have its judgements questioned. ‘Doctor, you know Barraclough insists that he wasn’t advised of the mines.’

  ‘Absurd,’ Henry snapped. ‘The Americans’ paperwork was immaculate.’

  I could imagine the scene: Barraclough with mud on his boots and in his hair, sweat patches under his arms, anxious to take some position that would afford relief to his men and others. A paper blizzard blowing into his tent and the muddy boots stamping on it.

  ‘What would you say was his mental condition when he was discharged, doctor?’

  Henry sighed. ‘Mr Hardy, I’m only talking to you because people I trust tell me you’re discreet.’

  ‘That’s right,’ I said.

  Another sigh. ‘He was a grenade with the pin out—paranoid, depressive, deluded.’

  ‘Did he get a big payout—compensation, anything like that?’

  A snort of derision. ‘No. A standard wounded-in-action allowance, calculated according to rank and years of service.’

  I knew what that meant—medical bills taken care of for life, but life still to be lived on a tight budget as the cost of living went up. ‘Thank you, doctor,’ I said. ‘One last question—did Captain Barraclough come from a wealthy background?’

  ‘I thought you knew him.’

  ‘I did, but as a soldier. The soldier takes over the man. I didn’t know anything about him personally.’

  ‘Captain Barraclough’s father was a soldier settler who went broke and shot himself after his wife left him. He was raised in orphanages and educated in reform schools. He’s a self-made man, Mr Hardy.’

  Which left the question—where had Barraclough got the money to operate the pub? I did some ringing around about that, too, but got no answers. As a next step, I arranged to meet Grant Evans, my main police contact, for a drink that evening. As soon as I’d put the phone down I realised that this
meant another call to Astrid to explain another late arrival home. It didn’t go over too well.

  I met Grant in the Metropolitan and told him the story. We were drinking middies of old and smoking my Drum.

  ‘What do you want me to do?’ Grant said.

  ‘Find out if there’s someone dirty behind Barraclough. If there is, you can step in and prevent the bloodbath that’s bound to happen.’

  Grant looked at me oddly. We’d known each other since Police Boys’ Club days in Maroubra. I’d been best man at his wedding. We’d been in Malaya, too, although not in the same Company. He knew Barraclough only by reputation, not from personal experience. Still, what I was proposing sounded like a low blow to an old comrade.

  ‘I don’t know, Cliff. What if he’s on the up and up? What if he borrowed legitimate money to get the pub? You’d be shoving him over the edge.’

  ‘The man’s off his head. If he goes on with this thing there’s bound to be trouble. He could end up on a manslaughter charge or something like that. Closing the pub’d be the least of his worries.’

  ‘You’re exaggerating,’ Evans said.

  ‘I’ve got a bad feeling about this, Grant. Just poke around a bit, will you?’

  He said he would and we had a few more beers. Astrid’s reception, when I got back to North Sydney, somewhere around 9.30, amorous and contrite, was icy.

  For the next few days I did the routine things, got home in time for dinner and tried to mend the domestic fences. I was half-successful. Astrid accused me of being distracted and wanted to know what was going on. I tried to explain the ins and outs of the Barraclough case, but she didn’t understand.

  ‘This is 1967,’ she said, ‘not the 1940s. People are different. They’ve been to school longer. Those soldiers aren’t going to take bayonets to each other.’

  ‘They will,’ I said, ‘if the conditions are right. If they get fuelled up enough and egged on in the right way.’

  ‘Well, you’ve done the right thing. You’ve alerted the police. They’ll be on the lookout.’