by James Roy
‘Me and my dad.’
‘Truly? In Launceston?’
‘Yes.’
Her lips were tight. ‘What about?’ she asked. ‘Is this about Duncan?’
I wondered if I’d said something I shouldn’t have. ‘I think so,’ I answered vaguely. ‘I’m not really sure.’
‘I see. What’s he going to say to her?’
I shrugged. How did I know what he was going to say? He certainly hadn’t told me.
‘Well, I might see you there,’ she said. ‘We’re going up to Mum’s place for the break.’
At that moment one of the other kids made a smooching kind of noise. It might not have been meant for me, but I didn’t take the chance. ‘Well, merry Christmas, Mrs Grayson,’ I said quickly before returning to my desk.
‘Yes, you too, Billy,’ she answered, her voice distant.
The following Tuesday Dad and I headed off on our trip. We each packed a suitcase, and Ma made some pasties to take with us in the truck. Before we left, she held me close and said, ‘Be good now, Billy. Your dad’s got some important things to discuss with Mrs Tierney, so have a good time but don’t get in the way, you hear?’
‘Yes, Ma,’ I said.
‘When he tells you to do something, you do it.’
‘Yes, Ma.’
‘Good lad.’ She kissed me on the top of the head, which meant I was free to go.
‘Billy, the twins,’ she reminded me, as I opened the door of the truck. I had to chase them across the yard to give them each a kiss on the cheek, which they wiped off immediately.
The twins sorted out, I waved to Ma and climbed up next to Dad in the truck he crunched it into first gear, and we drove away. He didn’t say a word until we’d reached the end of the long driveway and had turned onto the main road. Then he looked across at me and smiled. ‘Adventure time,’ he said.
‘I’ve never been to Launceston,’ I said.
‘You’ll like it,’ he replied. ‘It’s a good town.’
The trip took several hours, and we stopped for lunch where a little bridge took the road over a creek. We scrambled down through the long grass to the bank and sat under a huge weeping willow. Cows watched us from the opposite bank. Dad took his boots off and dangled his feet in the fast, clear water. ‘Here,’ he said, taking one of the pasties from the paper bag and handing it to me.
‘Dad?’
‘Aye?’
‘You said you’d tell me about the medal.’
‘Did I?’
‘Yes, you did. You said you’d tell me how you won it.’
‘It wasn’t much, laddie. Just something that seemed right at the time.’
I shook my head. ‘Dad, I know it must have been big. They don’t hand out VCs for just anything. I’ve read about them. They only give them to people who’ve been real brave, like gone charging into a dangerous place, or gone on some secret mission —’
‘It wasn’t a secret mission,’ he said.
‘Then what was it? Please, Dad? I want to know.’
‘It was in Burma,’ he said, ‘just before we were captured. Our advance was very slow going, and we were dug into the jungle, and it was hot, and humid, so humid. Awful, it was, oppressively hot, like nothing you’ve ever experienced. Nor me — I’m from Scotland, for crying out loud! Plus it rained almost every night. You could have set your watch by it. So you can imagine, Billy-boy, there was mud everywhere, in everything, and insects to bite any bit of skin that wasn’t covered. We knew there was a decent-sized patrol of Japs lurking out there somewhere, because a couple of our forward scouts had been ambushed. So we didn’t sleep very well at night, wondering if we were going to be attacked.’
‘Didn’t you have people on guard?’ I asked.
‘Aye, of course, but that didn’t make it any easier to relax. We all knew how hard it was to stay awake at night, staring into the darkness. And because it’s so hard, when it comes your turn to sleep, you wonder if that lad sitting under the tree over there with his rifle in his lap is actually awake. So one night, I was lying there trying to stay dry under the ridiculous wee cape thing they gave us, and suddenly all hell broke loose. Grenades and machine-gun fire from every direction, and God knows what else. There was panic, absolute panic, and I’m screaming at the lads to sort themselves out.
‘I shouted at one chap — er, Craigie it was — to flank left, because I hadn’t seen any fire from over there, and I thought he might be able to get in behind at least one of the Japs and gain some advantage from that side. He walked straight into a Jap who was trying to un-jam his rifle, and that was it for Craigie. It was mayhem, and the noise! And to make things worse, we couldn’t see much except muzzle bursts from the dark so we had to fall back. There was only a wee gap we could go through, like a kind of gully.’
‘So what did you do?’ I asked. ‘You, I mean, not the whole group.’
‘It really wasn’t much,’ he said, digging in the dirt at his feet with a short piece of stick.
‘Dad, it must have been something.’
He looked up at me. ‘One of our submachine gunners, McKellar, had been shot, so I took his weapon and laid down covering fire while the lads tried to retreat through the gap. But they were pinned down, you see, and there were quite a few chaps still in there, some injured, some dead. I couldn’t leave them there, so I went in and got them.’
‘By yourself?’
Dad looked a bit embarrassed. ‘Aye,’ he admitted.
‘And you were a hero.’
He smiled. ‘Apparently.’
‘Well done, Captain McAuliffe!’ I said.
‘Aye, well … But like I told you, your mother made me promise not to do anything brave or stupid. And while this was probably more stupid than brave, we managed to save quite a few of the lads. Obviously the boys upstairs thought it was something, because they gave me the medal.’ He shrugged. ‘That’s the gist of it, Billy-boy.’
‘Well, I think you’re really brave, and not stupid at all,’ I said, suspecting that this was almost certainly the modest version of what had actually taken place.
‘Thanks, laddie,’ he said, taking a long drink from our water bottle.
‘And was Tierney with you then?’
He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘Aye, he was there too.’
‘What happened to him?’ I asked.
He jammed the stopper back into the neck of the water bottle. ‘You’ve had your story, laddie, and I’m only telling Tierney’s once this week. Tomorrow. And it won’t be to you.’
‘Okay,’ I replied. ‘Sorry.’
‘Nothing to be sorry for, Billy-boy,’ he said, as he pulled his socks and boots back on. ‘Just how it is, that’s all. Come on, let’s move out. Speedo.’
Chapter 18 Billy
In the middle of the afternoon we crested a hill, and there was the city laid out before us. ‘There you go, laddie, Launceston. A Pommie friend of mine says it should be pronounced Laun’ston, but I reckon he’s just being picky, the snobby tyke.’
I tried to take it all in, but there was too much. The river was so wide, there were so many houses, and clustered close together were the shops and factories that made up the main part of the city.
‘What river is that?’ I asked Dad.
He frowned as he tried to remember. ‘You know, I’ve completely forgotten,’ he said. ‘It’s the … the … I don’t know,’ he admitted at last.
‘The Laun’ston River?’ I asked, joking, but he just shook his head.
‘No, it’s not that.’
‘It’s a big town,’ I said.
‘Aye, Billy-boy, big enough for me. Now, to find this hotel …’
We drove by a corner carnival, with a merry-go-round and some bind of spinning thing. Through the window of our truck drifted the breathy sound of carousel music. In the sideshow alley, plastic clowns turned their heads back and forth, back and forth, their mouths wide. A coconut-shy stall stood silent, waiting for someone to knock down the c
ans and claim a prize. From the window of a ticket booth no bigger than a phone box, a small face peered.
‘Can we go there, Dad?’ I asked.
‘What? There? No, complete waste of money,’ he said, distracted by street signs and traffic.
‘It looks like fun.’
‘Aye, perhaps,’ he grunted. ‘Still a waste.’
We pulled over near a fruit market to ask for directions from a man selling hats at a roadside stall. ‘Hello there, friend,’ Dad called, and the man came over to my window. He was holding several hats, all stacked and balanced on one another.
‘Bowlers, boaters, derbies, fedoras, pork-pies, make an offer, sirs,’ he said. Then, in a practised way, he flashed us a quick and insincere grin.
‘I’m after directions,’ Dad said.
‘You’re after a new hat there, fella,’ the hat-seller said. ‘What’s your size, sir?’
‘I don’t need a new hat, thanks all the same,’ ’ Dad replied. ‘I just need to know —’
‘How about the young bloke then? Need a new hat, me boy? Bowlers, boaters, derbies, fedoras, pork-pies, make an offer.’
I looked at Dad hopefully, but he shook his head. ‘I just need directions,’ he repeated.
‘What’s your size there?’ Quick as anything the man had transferred the hats to one hand, whipped out a tape measure and went to loop it around my head.
Dad picked up my cap from the seat between us and held it up for the hat-seller to see. ‘He doesn’t need a new hat,’ he said. ‘He’s a boy, anyhow.’
‘Ah, it’s a cap you’d be wanting, then,’ the man replied, and in a flash he’d deposited his handful of hats on his table and returned with several caps. ‘Any of these take your eye, young fella?’ As he said this, he pulled a blue and red newsboy cap onto my head, the colours in wedges like a cricket cap. ‘There it is,’ he said, nodding approvingly. ‘Very jaunty, very stylish. These colours are very much the go at present, young sir.’
Dad swept the cap from my head and almost threw it through the window at the hat-seller. ‘I just want directions, not a hat,’ he said, and the man looked shocked as Dad ground into first gear and pulled away. ‘Fool,’ he muttered.
‘Just trying to make a living, fella,’ I heard the man shout after us.
We got our directions from someone who didn’t want to sell us anything, and shortly after that we were carrying our suitcases up the stairs into the foyer of the Grand Tasman Hotel.
In spite of its name, it was not at all grand. The carpet in the foyer was dull and stained, and the once-white ceiling, wallpaper and doorframes were the colour of old tobacco smoke. There was a man reading a newspaper and smoking in one of the worn leather wingback chairs, and as he looked up at us, he flicked some ash into the ashtray teetering on the arm of the chair. Dad nodded at the man, who returned to his newspaper without reaction.
The desk clerk came out from the back office and carefully balanced his own cigarette on the edge of an ashtray, which was resting on top of an untidy pile of papers. ‘Good afternoon, sir,’ he said.
‘McAuliffe and my son William,’ Dad said. ‘We’re checking in.’
‘Very well.’ The man leafed through a big book on the desk. ‘What was your name again?’
‘My name is McAuliffe. Fred McAuliffe.’
‘Oh yes, here it is,’ the man said, stabbing at the page with his finger. ‘Room for one, for two nights.’
Dad shook his head. ‘No, a room for two, for two nights. That’s tonight and tomorrow.’
The man glanced up, smiled quickly and nervously, then bent to the book again. ‘No, that’s not what we have here.’
‘What you should also have there is something saying that I sent a telegram asking for a second bed, for my son. I was quite specific, Mr …’
Sweat had begun to bead on the man’s forehead. He flattened his hair down with one hand and began to fumble through the papers on the desk. Then, glancing up, he laughed nervously. ‘Somewhere here,’ he said. ‘If a message came, it’ll be here —’
‘It came,’ my father said. ‘I sent it myself.’
‘Yes, I’m sure you’re right, of course,’ the man muttered, still rustling. ‘It’ll be here. Somewhere here …’ Really flustered now, he reached for his cigarette, but before he could take a puff, Dad had snatched it from his mouth and ground it out in the ashtray.
‘Not the time for that,’ Dad snapped. ‘Tell me, what was your name?’
‘Powell,’ the man said, looking jittery and even a bit ill. ‘Arnold Powell, co-proprietor with my wife, Audrey —’
‘Well, Powell, I’m not sure if you have a share room at present, but my son and I are going to go for a wee stroll in the park. When we come back, there’ll be a booking in there for Captain Fred McAuliffe and his son William, just as I asked for in my telegram. I clear?’
‘Of course, sir.’ I saw him glance at Dad’s eye patch, then look down quickly. ‘You should have said, sir. If I’d known you were an officer —’
‘It shouldn’t make a scrap of difference, Powell,’ Dad replied. ‘Now, is there somewhere back there where we can leave our luggage?’
We found a bench in the park and watched the pigeons pecking on the gravel path. Dad was quiet as he rolled a cigarette and smoked it, and I didn’t know what to say. I’d never seen him lose his temper like that. Not with a complete stranger, anyway.
‘It just makes me wild,’ he said suddenly. ‘Why is it so hard to organise something so simple?’
‘Maybe he never got the message,’ I suggested.
‘We’re in Australia, laddie, not in the jungle. Messages should get through. Simple wee messages, you see?’
‘Yes, Dad.’ I could almost see what he meant, although I still didn’t understand why it made him so angry.
‘These folks have no idea, Billy-boy. None.’
‘No,’ I agreed, but I wasn’t sure what it was they had no idea about.
We sat in the park for quite a time, the gasworks and flour-mills just visible above the grand old trees. We watched children running on the lawns, young couples strolling arm-in-arm or sitting on the grass laughing and chatting. Some of the men were wearing uniforms, and I caught Dad watching them walk by. An airman met Dad’s gaze, and they exchanged nods.
‘Come on, Billy-boy,’ Dad said at last. ‘Let’s go and see if our room’s ready.’
I think it was probably fortunate for Mr Powell that it was. ‘If you’d like to follow me, Captain McAuliffe, Master McAuliffe,’ he said as he headed for the narrow stairs. ‘I think you’ll find the room quite satisfactory.’
He swung open the door to the musty-smelling room and stepped back to allow us to enter. His hand went briefly to his face, as if he was going to try to salute. ‘Two beds, as requested, sir,’ he said. ‘The bathroom is just along the hall a bit. Dinner is served between six and nine, and breakfast from six.’
‘Thank you,’ Dad said, tugging the curtains open and struggling briefly with the window, which suddenly flew up with a creak and a groan and a loose-paned rattle.
‘I’ll get that seen to right away,’ Mr Powell said.
‘We’re only here for two nights, Powell — I think it can wait until we leave.’
‘Yes sir, of course. Well, if there’s anything you need …’ He closed the door without telling us what we should do if we did need anything.
Dad sat on the edge of one of the beds. ‘Aye, this will do,’ he said. ‘This will do nicely, laddie.’
We ate dinner at a pub a couple of blocks away. No one spoke to us except when they took our order, and we barely said anything to each other either. Here in the city, away from the chores that are a constant part of living on a farm, it seemed that we had nothing to talk about.
Dad ordered a steak. ‘Do you want a steak, Billy-boy?’ he asked me.
I hesitated. How could he afford it? ‘I don’t know,’ I said.
‘Well, either you do or you don’t, laddie.’
‘I was going to have the bangers and mash.’
He leaned closer to me. ‘Would you like a steak?’
‘Sure,’ I replied. This was good, better than I’d expected. A trip to the city and steak.
They ruined the meal by putting some kind of pale brown gravy all over it, and I could only eat a couple of mouthfuls. I tried to eat more so that Dad wouldn’t think I was being wasteful, but it was a taste I wasn’t used to, and after a few attempts I had to push the plate away. I don’t think Dad liked his either. ‘I thought I wanted this, and now I’m not so sure,’ he said, before excusing himself and heading for the toilets.
After dinner we went back to the Grand Tasman. ‘We get to lie in for a bit in the morning,’ Dad said brightly as he unlocked the door to our room. ‘No cows to milk here.’
When Dad opened his case to get his pyjamas out, I saw a small brown paper bag on top of his neatly folded clothes. ‘What’s that?’ I asked.
He closed the lid. ‘It’s nothing, Billy-boy. Now get ready to hit the hay.’
He sat on his bed and read a book while I lay under the covers and tried to sleep. But I wasn’t sleepy. There I was in the city for the first time, and it should have been exciting. But to tell the truth, I wasn’t enjoying it that much. So far Dad had been rude to a hat salesman, shouted at a hotel clerk, nodded to an airman in the park, and bought us an expensive but fairly average counter meal in an unfriendly pub. And all of this had been done without much conversation.
I did fall asleep eventually, but I was awoken in the middle of the night by groaning. I rolled over and looked across at Dad. In the dim light of the room I could see that he was shifting around a little beneath his covers, as if he was writhing in his sleep.
‘Dad, are you all right?’ I said softly.
He didn’t answer me. He just kept on moaning.
I slipped out of bed and went closer. ‘Dad, are you all right?’ I asked again. I placed one hand on his shoulder.
He jerked awake, his eye wide and staring blankly, and cowered away from me. ‘Uh!’ he grunted. The scar in place of his right eye was staring grotesquely at something in the shadows over my shoulder. It was the first time I’d seen it uncovered.