by Peter Kocan
“Don’t get angry.”
“I’m not angry.”
“Alright, you’re not angry.”
“Can I ask a question?”
“Of course.”
“Did the two of you discuss me?”
“He asked how you were getting on, and I answered as best I could, that’s all.”
“Well, would you please not discuss me anymore. Just leave me out of it.”
“There wasn’t any ‘discussion’ about you. He just wanted to know how you were, the same as he asked about your brother and about me. It was only a brief conversation.”
“You said it was a long one.”
“It was a medium one.”
“Was it the only time?”
“Well, no. We’ve talked a few times, actually.”
“The story changes each time you tell it.”
“We’ve spoken three times on the phone, and exchanged one letter each. Is that exact enough?”
“Did you discuss me the other times?”
“He was curious to know whether you’re alive or dead, so I told him. I’m sorry if that’s classified as a national secret!”
“I have to hang up now. Someone else is waiting to use the phone.”
“Look, don’t start acting like a brat! I won’t put up with it!”
“There’s someone waiting.”
“Let them wait. We need to talk about the future.”
“Why?”
“Because things are happening.”
“You mean getting all chummy with him again?”
“Not just that.”
“What else?”
“I’ve given my notice here. That means we need to work out what the next move is going to be for all of us.”
“The person is banging on the phone box. I have to hang up.”
“Is there really someone there?”
“Yes, really,” he lied. “Shall I put them on the line so you can ask their name?”
He heard the woman sigh.
“Well, hang up if you must. But phone again tomorrow night, reverse charges, so we can talk more. Will you promise to do that? Or will I phone you where you’re living?”
“No,” he said hurriedly. “Let me phone you.”
The last thing he wanted was to have her knowing where he lived. All he’d told her was the name of the street, and that he had a nice garage room. Thank God he hadn’t given her an exact address or the phone number. She might even have told Vladimir what it was, now that they were getting so pally again. The youth got a sudden chilling image of Vladimir coming along the driveway, a looming figure in the dark, heading for his door. In his mind’s ear he could almost hear the sudden loud knock. It gave him the awful stomach-churning, going-to-water feeling.
“By the way,” the woman said, “do you need any money?”
“Um, sort of,” he replied. “Why do you ask?”
“Vladimir has sent me some. Quite a lot, actually. To help us out, and to show his good faith. You have a right to some of it.”
The youth would have snapped back that he didn’t want anything that came from Vladimir, but the thought of being able to keep his rent paid at Delia’s, of being able to stay with her, was too much of a relief.
“Well, I do need to pay some rent shortly . . .”
“I’ll wire you a couple of hundred tomorrow, to the GPO,” she said quickly. “Is that convenient?” She sounded pleased. His accepting Vladimir’s money was obviously a promising first step. “Is that okay?” she repeated.
“Yes,” he said, knowing he’d given ground.
“Right then,” she said, her voice rising with confidence. “Talk to you tomorrow night, around this same time. I’ll have the old duck out of the way. And your brother will want to say hello, too.”
“Right.”
“Bye then.”
“Just one thing,” said the youth, “so I know what we’re really talking about.”
“Yes?”
“Do you want to go back to him?”
“More or less.”
“I see.”
“We need to start being a family again.”
“Is that what you call it?”
“He wants to change.”
“Does he?”
“He’s had a bad fright, us walking out like we did. And so have I, in a way. The world’s a hard place, and after you reach a certain point in life there aren’t a lot of options. There aren’t any fresh fields beckoning anymore. You have to make the best of what you’ve got.”
“Stand or fall where you are, you mean?”
“Yes, that’s a way of putting it, I suppose.”
There was a silence.
“Have you found fresh fields, these past few months?” she asked.
“I have to hang up.”
“Is the person still waiting for the phone?”
“Yes.”
“Till tomorrow then.”
The youth hung up the receiver, left the phone box, and went round past the front steps of the library and into the park. The statue of Henry Lawson loomed against the dark sky. He sat on a bench for a long while, thinking of what she’d said about not having options, and having to make the best of what you’ve got. It was the first time he’d understood that her life was poignant too, and that there was a bravery in what she had done and been through, and in her idea now of going back to stand or fall with Vladimir. It was like the lone Viking on the bridge. He must’ve wished he had other options, wished he didn’t have to make his stand that very day on that particular bridge. But he did have to. The youth looked up again at the dark shape of the statue and it made him think of young Harry Dale the Drover. Another case of having to do or die where fate had placed you. Harry Dale must’ve wished in his heart that he didn’t have to swim that particular river, with its deadly flood tide running. But that was the river that ran between him and his homestead and his people. He could’ve turned away and found another river that was safer to swim, but it would’ve been utterly beside the point. Fate had allotted him that river on that day.
Yes, he could see how going back to Vladimir, going back to being a “family” again, might be the allotted thing for her. But he knew it wasn’t meant for him. He had some other bridge, some other river.
The money came through to the GPO next day. The youth collected it and went to a cafe and had a slap-up meal of fried eggs and sausages and a big brimming milkshake. It was lovely to be sitting there, looking at the people, feeling well-fed, with money in your pocket, knowing you weren’t going to be homeless for a while yet. “This is happiness,” he said to himself, as though recognising it for the first time. He could pay another month’s rent now, and go on having Delia in his life.
11. BLUE BAG
He phoned the woman the next evening. She was back in her old brisk manner and her plans had firmed a lot in twenty-four hours. She and the boy would be leaving the northern town in three weeks, on their way back to Vladimir, and they’d be stopping for a day or so in the city to see the youth and find out what his intentions were. He knew this bit about finding out his “intentions” was a trick to pretend she understood how grown up he was. In fact she took it completely for granted he’d be going back south with them. This assumption on her part was the price he’d known he would have to pay for accepting Vladimir’s money. He had tamely taken the money, so of course he must be a tame creature all round. This was what had always hurt and enraged him, though he hadn’t put it properly into words until now—you never got credit for having any honour.
He began to protest about this on the phone, but then the woman really frightened him by saying that Vladimir was prepared to come from interstate, if necessary, so that all four of them could meet and talk it through. So already it was back to the old system: your life ruled by
fear of Vladimir. Maybe the woman had always been able to use that fear as a lever, just as she was using it now.
He decided not to argue the point. He would never go back to that system, never. Whether she knew it or not was her problem.
IN HIS daily wanderings in the city, the youth had found the offices of the Rural Times newspaper. It had occurred to him that he might need to get another job in the country one day, if things became desperate, and it’d be handy to know where the paper was located. It turned out to be a nice old building in a crooked street in the business area. He had been attracted along that street by a lit-up sign saying “McQuigan’s Military Models” and had found the Rural Times almost opposite. McQuigan’s was a quaint-looking shop with small green-painted windows. When you entered, though, you found a well-lit, air-conditioned space with counters and display cases and a number of large tables with model battlefields on them.
The first table the youth looked at showed the battle of Pharsalia. He had never heard of it and felt no interest, though there was a printed card giving the key information. Then he thought of something and felt his heart beating harder. Maybe there was a model of Hastings here. He approached the next table, almost holding his breath, and found that it showed Bosworth. He paused to read the card. King Richard III had been brave and resolute, but had lost the battle because of treachery when some of his nobles had changed sides at a crucial moment. The youth felt emotion well in him. Another hero who’d gone down. He gazed at the display. It was very detailed and complete and it made it seem as though you were looking down at the real thing from the sky. According to the card, it depicted that moment of the battle when King Richard led the main charge of his knights. There they were, strung out along the slope with their banners rippling and the manes and tails of their horses flying. They must’ve known, at that moment, about the treachery, and that the battle of Bosworth was already lost, and that most of them would die that day with the King.
Ah well, the youth thought to himself, his eyes hot with tears, ah well, never mind: they were winning the Battle of Honour instead.
The phrase had come unbidden into his mind and he felt a tremor through him and he gave a kind of sob. That was it! That was exactly it! He sighed deeply. How wonderful it was when you found the exact words to express a whole enormity of meaning! “The Battle of Honour” summed everything up, made everything clear, the whole of history and the whole of life. It was so simple, so obvious, that you might have thought of it years ago, except that these things come when they are meant to come, and that’s only when you are ready for them, and when they won’t be wasted on you like pearls before swine.
He turned from the Bosworth table and saw two young men behind a counter. They were looking at him with worried expressions. He wondered vaguely what was wrong with them. Then he glimpsed his own face in a section of mirror. For a moment he did not know who it was. The face was distorted with emotion, the eyes staring and the mouth pulled down in a grimace of misery or something, and tears were running down the cheeks. He ran his sleeve over his eyes and cheeks and took a couple of deep breaths and tried to straighten his mouth from its downward grimace. He looked back at the two shop assistants and they looked awkwardly away.
Walking towards the door, he knew the embarrassment didn’t matter. All that mattered was that he’d found the phrase, the meaning, the message of the world. The Battle of Honour. He stood outside McQuigan’s for a couple of minutes, breathing deeply and trying to contain his sense of having just been filled with a great truth. He felt like walking for miles, and it was nearly midnight when, tired out and calm in his mind, he tiptoed along Delia’s driveway to his room.
The youth never went into McQuigan’s Military Models again. It wasn’t because he felt embarrassed. He cared nothing about that. It was simply that there are places you never need to return to, because you’ve already gained the special thing that was there for you. Not returning was a kind of homage to the place, a salute to its significance.
He did go back along the street though, whenever he was nearby. On the side of the Rural Times building were glassed-in noticeboards with pages of the current edition of the paper displayed. He went to browse over the pages, to look at photos of prize bulls, advertisements for tractors, scenes of harvesting, reports about wool prices. He found that browsing there set off trains of thought.
How interesting, he reflected, that this paper goes out over the whole countryside, goes to every town and hamlet, into every general store and corner shop and service station. And it worked the other way as well. Every happening in every part of the country was taken notice of in this building. In this building they knew the cattle prices at Bindialla, and what the river level was at Connaweal, and how the wheat was looking in the Gungamai district.
And this paper had classified ads full of poignant details about human lives. You’d learn, for example, that out at Tullibar a “recently separated grazier with two children under eight” wanted a housekeeper, and you’d wonder what those people were like and what the whole story of it was. You’d think how there were thousands and thousands of stories going on every moment all over the country. At times it gave the youth a peculiar shock to remember that he had actually been in the bush and had first-hand knowledge of a few stories. It was startling because it reminded him that those people and places had been real, not just figments of his own thought.
The Rural Times noticeboards gave the youth the same feeling he used to get from listening to Country Calling on the radio at Clem and Gladys’s. He felt the romance of it, the grandeur, the sense of it going on over generations. A lot of it was tragic, of course, but tragedy was part of the tide of life, like with Romeo and Juliet. He had been determined to read that play ever since Meredith Blackett had talked about it. He’d sought it out at the State Library and, when he’d got used to the old-fashioned language, had become absorbed. He saw how the sadness of it was a proper part of its power and meaning. He saw that if the lovers had not had it in them to meet such drastic ends, they would not have been capable of powerful love in the first place. It was a kind of trade-off that lay at the centre of existence: you can only have the joy if you accept the misery as well.
It gave him a shudder to grasp that the whole country was packed with that intensity of life, from rabbits in burrows to eagles on cliffs, from insects teeming in the grass to farm families laughing or weeping in their kitchens. The shudder was of mingled pleasure and dismay that life was so vibrant, so insistent. A lot of the time it felt reassuring. If you spent your time being conscious of all that surging life across the generations it would sustain you. You would take some of the vibrancy into yourself just by the fact of your sympathy with it. There were moments when the youth yearned to work for the Rural Times, to come to this building each day and dwell on the eternal surge of life.
Of course he understood there was no chance of that, since he himself had only the bitter road of ruination to tread. But now he saw that the ruination did not cancel out the beauty, any more than Romeo and Juliet’s grief cancelled out their love. It was just the two sides of that trade-off. The point was to keep faith with the side of the equation you found yourself dealing with.
It was Bosworth and the idea of the Battle of Honour that had given him the key. It was to do with the difference between choosing and accepting. The traitors had made a choice at Bosworth, to be on the winning side, whereas the loyal hearts had simply accepted that their post was with the King, whatever the outcome. Honour was in acceptance rather than in choosing. If you start doing your own choosing you are on a slippery slope. It was not for the lone Viking to choose his bridge, or Harry Dale his river, or the Bushranger his town, any more than for the true knights at Bosworth to choose the winning side. It was for each of them to accept his given post, the site at which the Battle of Honour was his to wage.
What excited the youth about this idea of choosing or accepting was its implication: th
e Battle of Honour wasn’t only a matter of lonely roads and bitter ruin. It could equally apply to the happy side of life. It could be in accepting joy with as much courage as one would accept despair. Romeo and Juliet had to face both joy and despair in equal measure, but most lives aren’t set in such a balance. The profound element in most lives is usually more on one side than the other. Person A is called on to have a happy marriage and to raise a family, whereas Person B is called on to die of leukaemia at eighteen. Each of them is at their post, and each is engaged in the Battle of Honour. And somehow each of them is fulfilling something for the other.
He walked for hours through the city and suburbs, his head down, going over and over the same ideas, trying to phrase them in the exact way that would make them clear. If you could stumble on the right way to say a thing, the whole idea would click for you, as in that pure moment when the words “The Battle of Honour” had come unbidden. At the edge of his mind another insight floated. It was about human beings doing things or fulfilling things for each other, and about acceptance rather than choice being the basis of it.
It darted in as a thought about Romeo and Juliet. They had more passion and anguish than most people ever have. And therefore . . . they provide it for those people! Then he thought of Ronnie Robson. Why did it always make you feel better in yourself to recall that Ronnie was the world’s greatest, and always gave a hundred and ten per cent? Because most people can’t do what Ronnie does, and so he does it for them. And again, most human beings are not enchantingly beautiful, so Grace Kelly embodies that for them, and an element of that beauty is brought into all their lives. And hardly anyone is a doomed leader going down with his people in a saga of heroism, so King Harold is that on everyone’s behalf.
Things like passion and skill and beauty and heroism are granted to individual people, the youth reasoned, because the thing needs a person to embody it. In a much more important sense, though, those things belong to the entire human race. It was like someone being an excellent gardener and having gorgeous flowers in their yard. That the flowers are in their yard is just a kind of technicality, but that those flowers exist in the world is a splendour of nature and a joy of the human spirit.