Lunch with a Soldier

by Derek Hansen

  ‘He claimed you lied so you could take over his company.’

  ‘There was nothing left to take over! The company owed money everywhere. For heaven’s sake, Billy, you heard him. How long do you think he could afford to pay his barrister three thousand dollars a day? That was on top of what his solicitors were charging and they were milking him with both hands. Grant put every last cent into defending himself, his own money and the company’s. If I hadn’t grabbed the reins, the company would’ve gone into liquidation. There would’ve been nothing for him to come out to either way.’

  ‘Your retraction could’ve helped his appeal.’

  ‘My retraction would’ve exonerated him and landed me in court charged with perjury. I would’ve been the victim once again. Do you think that would’ve been justice?’

  Billy stared into the bottom of his mug. He couldn’t remember finishing his tea or even drinking it. He felt absolutely exhausted.

  ‘One last question. How did you feel when I told you Grant was dead?’

  ‘How did I feel? Jesus, Billy. What do you think? I felt devastated. That wasn’t how I expected things to end. That wasn’t how I wanted them to end. I’m stuck now with telling my daughter that her father is dead and trying to figure out how I can stop her from blaming me. She knows I lied in court, Billy, and why. I’ve never hidden anything from her. Up until now she’s accepted my reasons, maybe because with her father in gaol I was all she had. She never stopped loving him. She accepted that he’d done wrong but she still loved him. Why wouldn’t she? He never gave her any reason not to. He never lifted a finger against her or even scolded her. He was never anything but kind and loving to her and I think she always suspected it was somehow partly my fault that Grant hit me. I’m frightened, Billy, frightened that my lie will come home to haunt me. If I hadn’t lied, Grant wouldn’t have gone to gaol, wouldn’t have come out here looking for me, and I wouldn’t have to tell my daughter that he’s dead. What am I going to do if she blames me, Billy? You tell me.’ Linda began weeping silently.

  ‘I’m sorry, Linda.’

  ‘No. Don’t be.’ She lifted her head defiantly. Tears streaked her face. ‘I said you could ask me anything you wanted.’

  ‘I had to know. I had to be sure. It’s been a very confusing night.’

  ‘And are you satisfied?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then hug me, Billy Dwyer. Hug me now! Hug me till your arms ache.’

  Neil looked at his companions, inviting comment.

  ‘What is this?’ asked Milos. ‘A coffee break or the end?’

  ‘What do you want? A movie ending? Isn’t that what you criticised me for wanting? Life’s not like a movie, is it, Ramon? How many times have you told me that? Life is full of loose ends and unresolved issues. Right, Ramon?’

  ‘But you can’t just end there,’ said Lucio.

  ‘Why not?’

  Lucio glanced at Milos and Ramon. It was obvious that Neil was provoking them and he wasn’t sure how to respond. He decided to stall.

  ‘There are things we’re entitled to know, Neil.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘What happened to Rodney?’

  ‘Broken ribs and a punctured lung. Like I said in my story, he’s a tough little rooster. He was sore for a while but he went back to his diggings. By the way, I never mentioned that he was a hoarder. He might have sold a few opals from time to time but never any of his good ones. He said he didn’t want anyone to know that Jindalee Downs could produce quality opals and give them a reason to rob him. But the truth was, the opals were so hard won, neither he nor his father could bear to part with them.

  ‘When Billy visited him in hospital, Rodney asked him to take his opals into safekeeping. He told him where to find them, which room they were in and which floorboards to lift up. All the opals were in a shoebox. When Billy opened it, he found the same Smith Kendon sweets tin Rodney’s father had shown him the day he got hit in the face by the black harlequin. It still had the same opals in it. He discovered the black harlequin in a tin all of its own, and there was nothing else that even remotely compared with it. All up, he found over sixty opals, all different sizes and colours and all immaculately polished. It sounds like a lot until you remember that Rodney’s dad spent over thirty years digging and Rodney more than twenty after him. An opal a year isn’t much. Billy reckons the opals were their entertainment. He reckons Rodney and his dad were like Scrooge McDuck and his money. The patterns on the tins were almost worn away by all the handling.’

  Neil leaned back so Gancio could serve his coffee. ‘Gancio, old mate,’ he said. ‘When you’re done with the coffee we might have another bottle of that pinot grigio. And make sure it’s really cold.’

  ‘I don’t tell you how to tell stories,’ said Gancio sternly. ‘Don’t you tell me how to serve pinot grigio.’

  Ramon waited until Gancio had finished serving coffee before asking the question they all wanted answered.

  ‘Tell us what happened to Billy,’ said Ramon. ‘Isn’t that what your story is about?’

  ‘What do you want to know? Do you want the full movie ending or just the highlights?’

  ‘It’s your story, you tell it.’

  ‘He sold the farm, except for the few acres our parents’ house sat on, and moved to Sydney with Linda. They lived happily ever after.’

  ‘Neil, stop treating us as though we’re children,’ said Ramon. ‘It does you no credit. You told your story well and we appreciate it. But you haven’t finished. You know it and we know it. You keep ducking the issue and I can only assume you need time to organise your strategy. Perhaps I can help. You said at the start of the story that you took your brother’s life. You have continually maintained that the story will reflect badly on you and you’ve asked us not to judge you too harshly. What is there to judge, Neil? What did you do to Billy? Can I help you further? Early on in your story Linda invited Billy around for dinner. It turned out to be Billy’s birthday. I can’t recall the exact chronology but it would have been some time in October or early November. Right?’

  Neil nodded.

  ‘So tell us, Neil, when Grant was taunting Billy about Vietnam, why did Billy tell Grant his birthday was in May?’

  ‘Ah, Ramon,’ said Neil, ‘you never let me down. Your eyes may be buggered but there’s nothing wrong with your ears. What the hell? At least let me finish my coffee.’

  Chapter Thirty-one

  The year Neil went to university down in Sydney, the fates conspired to enhance the myth of his infallibility. First, the autumn rains stayed away and winter settled into one of the coldest in living memory. The bitter winds hardly let up and at night the chill factor regularly took temperatures down below minus two. Outback sheep are hardy beasts but the autumn shearing left them cruelly exposed. The pigs, wedge-tailed eagles, ravens and crows were the beneficiaries as they fed on a steady supply of animals that failed to survive. For the Dwyer family, with their newly leased ute and equipment, the stock losses were sufficient to put pressure on their budget.

  The cattle fared better, with minimal stock losses, and there was enough feed around for them to maintain good condition. Then the cold dry winter turned into a hot dry spring when the rains failed to appear. Even more worrying were the mobs of kangaroos moving in from further west and the sunsets tinged amber from dust storms and the smoke of distant scrub fires. The number of kangaroos on the property quadrupled, all of them competing with livestock for the available feed. They surrounded the watering troughs and invaded the paddocks Braden had set aside for fattening the yearling steers. For a while the dogs and Billy’s deadly shot managed to keep them at bay. But they continued to flood in from the desperate country further west until their population grew beyond control. With them came flocks of starving emus, many of which were too weak to clear the fences in their way and died hung up in the wires. Only the carrion feeders flourished. One day Billy saw three camels in the distance and couldn’t even begin to imagine how
bad things were further west to have driven them so far east. Over in Walgett the Kamilaroi elders pointed to rarely seen dry-country birds and the dearth of blossoms and seeds on trees. They knew and so did the graziers, growers and townsfolk. Everyone braced themselves for the worst.

  Braden didn’t panic. With the wool clip and the sale of the steers he figured they’d earn enough to meet their obligations so they could buy in some feed and still have enough to scratch along. But the collapse in wool prices that Neil had foreseen finally occurred and the value of the clip plummeted almost overnight by thirty per cent. Some traders blamed the Japanese, claiming they’d ganged together and were conspiring to force prices down. Others blamed a worldwide glut and the increased use of synthetics. It didn’t matter much to Braden what had caused the fall. He was more concerned with what he’d use to buy stock feed once he’d met his commitments. When the bottom dropped out of beef prices he knew trouble was just around the corner.

  What irked Billy was his father’s conviction that if Neil had still been around things would’ve been different. Winter would’ve been warmer, spring cooler, the rains would’ve come and wool and beef prices would’ve held up. When Billy challenged his father and pointed out that even if Neil had stayed on the farm they’d still be faced with the same problems, his father countered by claiming Neil would’ve managed things better so they’d be squared away financially. Billy worked hard around the property after school and at weekends and resented the implication that somehow he wasn’t doing enough or had failed to measure up.

  When he suggested they sell as many beasts as they could and use the income to buy feed to support the rest, his father ignored him. When Braden rang Neil in Sydney and got the same advice, he hailed Neil as a genius. His father’s blind faith in Neil bewildered and irritated Billy. His resentment grew.

  He’d stayed on the extra year at school to complete his HSC but many of his friends hadn’t. They’d left school and home for jobs wherever they could get them. Some went up to Brisbane, some to Sydney, and others made it all the way down to Melbourne. Kids who couldn’t saw a straight line to save themselves got apprenticeships as carpenters and builders. Others, who knew next to nothing about cars, got jobs selling them or as mechanics. Billy couldn’t escape the talk about what his old schoolmates were doing and what a great time they were having. Worse still, most of the good-looking girls he fancied had followed his sisters’ example and flown the coop. It seemed everyone was off doing something, making something of themselves and having a ball doing it. Everyone except him. Billy’s one hope was that Neil would come home for Christmas, but his brother had taken a summer job with a building development company to earn money so he could continue his studies.

  Things went from bad to worse. There was never any question of him following Neil to university, of going anywhere for that matter. The farm desperately needed him. His father had often claimed hardship was an opportunist just waiting to strike. The drought opened the door and, before they knew it, their property was under siege. He and Braden spent long hours hand-feeding and attacking the roly-poly, boxthorn and Hudson pear. The plants threatened to take over pastures grazed bare by stock and invading kangaroos. Blowflies, which were always a problem in summer, swept in early from the west in plague proportions. Hardy ewes succumbed to flystrike despite having been crotched and lambs fared even worse, even though they’d been mulesed and sprayed in January. They worked long hard days, up before the sun and in bed not long after it set. Billy’s life became as monotonous as the incessant droning of blowflies. He came in each evening to a home devoid of siblings and a social life that barely existed.

  Life throughout the northwest became a desperate struggle as the rains stubbornly stayed away. Barber’s pole larvae died on the barren soils; the pigweed, cat heads, wild tomatoes and other noxious weeds withered, but so did the last of the grasses. Roly-poly died and broke away, tumbling across the landscape and adding to the sense of desolation. With limited funds to buy cattle nuts or bales of feed, Billy and his father had nothing to look forward to except months of scrub-cutting and more hardship to keep their stock alive.

  For Billy, the only saving grace was the old Holden. It was his link to a life that sometimes seemed impossibly remote. His parents understood when he climbed into the old car and, without a word, took off to a football game and the booze-up that invariably followed, or drove all day to a woolshed party or a bachelor and spinster ball. These were times when he just had to get out, to escape, to mingle with people his own age and remember that he was still young, still a teenager. But these contacts also served to remind him that there was another world out there that was passing him by. There was always someone else who’d made the break, or someone who’d come home for a visit full of stories about big-city life, pay packets he could hardly comprehend, movies, beaches and girls who apparently knew no shame.

  In his despair, driving home to more isolation and thankless hard labour, he clung to Neil’s promise to send for him once he got on his feet. But deliverance bore no deadline and Billy could see little difference between waiting for Neil and waiting for rain. There was little hope of either in his foreseeable future. He realised that he had to take his destiny into his own hands, but loyalty, obligations and his promise to his brother held him back. In desperation he took his troubles over to Rodney but Rodney couldn’t help. His dad had him working fulltime digging for opals and Rodney had no problem with that. He’d always known he’d spend his life following in the steps of his father and, as far as he was concerned, that was what sons did. He couldn’t understand what Billy was so upset about.

  Winter brought relief from the heat but the winds settled into a pattern that everyone knew would not bring rain. Braden and Billy alternated between hand-feeding and cutting the guts out of scrub for livestock that grew thinner and weaker by the day. Braden extended his loan at the bank with no clear idea where the money was going to come from to support it. The shortage of cash got Billy thinking and brought a ray of hope. He got it into his head that everyone would be better off if he left the property, got a job down in Sydney and sent money home to help out. He refined his argument on the long days out cutting scrub, believing the family’s best interests lay in selling off as much livestock as they could and putting the proceeds into feed for the rest. The logic seemed irrefutable. With their stock halved, there’d be less scrub to cut and less feed to buy. Any shortfall in earnings would be partly offset by the money he sent home. The light at the end of the tunnel blossomed, along with his hopes, until it dazzled him. Billy became convinced by his argument and equally convinced that he’d spend Christmas in Sydney with Neil. It was all he thought about during the day, all he thought about when his head hit the pillow at night and all that got him up out of bed in the morning. Christmas with Neil became an objective, a destination and an ambition.

  When spring came around once more in a blaze of clear blue skies with little prospect of relief, Billy decided the time had come to raise the issue with his father. He thought his father would jump at it. He’d based his calculations on the wages he’d heard his old schoolmates were getting and figured that, if he stayed with Neil and counted his pennies, he’d be able to send back at least half of his take-home pay. Billy thought of the fuel and feed that could buy and saw himself as both selfless and the saviour of the property. It occurred to him that it was exactly the sort of proposition Neil would come up with and, in the full blush of youthful confidence, presented his case one night over dinner. His father slammed his fists on the table, cursed his lack of gratitude and told him to stop dreaming. Braden told him he was staying put and to get used to the idea.

  A rift developed between Billy and his father that night which neither made any attempt to heal. It was as though each had found a focus in the other for their anger and bitterness at the hand fate had dealt them. They hardly exchanged a word and then only if it was necessary in the course of their work. Billy’s despair and isolation grew. He cam
e to hate the property, to see it as a gaol and the livestock as his gaolers. He wondered what he’d done wrong to deserve a lifetime condemned to hard labour. All his hopes lay in Neil’s promise to rescue him. Then one night Neil rang to say he’d quit university.

  Billy had just turned eighteen and was beyond tears but the news devastated him. When it was his turn to speak to Neil he discovered his brother strangely upbeat about it. The property company were keen for him to join them. Said he had a talent for the business. Claimed a degree wouldn’t help him in his job. Maintained that leaving university meant he’d start earning good money sooner. His arguments sounded reasonable but they failed to conceal the truth. The reality was that without help from the family, Neil could no longer afford to study. Billy had a million things to say to him but they all amounted to a plea for help. In the end he said nothing. It was all too much for him. He couldn’t see how Neil could possibly earn enough to rescue him if he didn’t complete his degree. Without a degree, Billy was convinced Neil would wind up a builder, carpenter, mechanic, plumber or labourer, no better than the rest of their mates. If Neil couldn’t rescue him, what hope was left?

  Billy ran from the house and took off down the road in the old Holden without any destination in mind. Sometimes just the act of driving helped dissipate his anger and sense of helplessness. For a brief moment he considered driving until he ran out of petrol and then hitching the rest of the way to Sydney, but the tank barely had enough gas to get him to Walgett and he had no cash in his pockets to buy more. Without really thinking about it, he turned onto a neighbour’s property where a girl he knew from school lived. He’d dropped in on her on other occasions, more out of lack of alternative than any other reason. He didn’t particularly like her and she certainly wasn’t pretty or even bright. Her only attractions were her proximity and the similarity of her plight.

  Cheryl-Lynne was the only girl and eldest child in a family that included four younger brothers. Her mother had contracted an incurable degenerative disease that affected the nervous system and was confined to bed, unable to look after herself let alone anyone else in the family. At the age of sixteen Cheryl-Lynne had been forced to give up school and become nurse, housekeeper, cook and stand-in mother for her brothers. She was bound to her property by chains even thicker than Billy’s. It was to her that Billy turned in his distress. He picked her up and took her for a drive, so she could have a break, however fleeting, from her family and her chores. They didn’t have to drive far to find a spot where they could sit and talk before the inevitable climb into the rear seat for sex. Sometimes their coupling made them feel less lonely. They held each other tight and lied about the depth of their feelings for each other. But other times it merely highlighted the depth of their desperation. Cheryl-Lynne made him promise that if he ever got away he’d take her with him. She always made sure Billy wore a condom. At the age of nineteen, she’d done all the mothering she ever wanted to do. That was fine with Billy.