by Robert Gott
I stood, paralysed by sudden grief, and I was vaguely aware, too, that somewhere in amongst the maelstrom of my emotions lurked the dread of having to tell Mother where, and how, he’d died. I knew that she’d hold me responsible, and that from that moment I’d be subjected to a kind of emotional excommunication. I bowed my head and closed my eyes, and when I looked up I found myself staring into Brian’s open eyes. The relief I experienced at that moment is the closest I have ever come to ecstasy. With the power that comes with madness, I wrapped my arms around his waist and dragged him into the water. Perhaps if I’d been a bit more careful he wouldn’t have suffered quite such severe lacerations on his back. He was semi-conscious and confused, but I managed to manoeuvre him to the small, clear area where his horse still stood. It hadn’t wandered anywhere because there was nowhere to wander. We were hemmed in by thick, sharp shrubs — so thick as to appear impenetrable.
Brian sat with his head between his knees. The rain pounded his back, sending pink rivulets of blood into the mud where his buttocks rested. He finally raised his head and said, ‘Bloody hell.’
Having come close to death, and having been pulled from its jaws by his own brother, one might have hoped for something grander, or more edifying.
‘You’re all right,’ I said, and told him what had happened.
‘And you jumped in after me?’
‘You needn’t sound so surprised. Of course I jumped in after you.’
He nodded, and his eyes reddened.
‘Thanks,’ he said quietly.
I was suddenly embarrassed by what threatened to be an upwelling of emotion from him, and said, ‘I have no idea where we are, or how we’re going to find the others, and this rain is driving me mad.’
‘At least it keeps the flies and mozzies away.’
He was right about that. Without the rain it would have been impossible to prevent a blowfly strike at the site of the ulcer on my leg; and with blood oozing from various cuts and abrasions on his body, Brian would have been more fly than man.
‘How far do you reckon we are downstream?’
‘No idea,’ I said. ‘I think I was probably in the creek for fifteen minutes before I saw you. We must be at least a couple of miles from where we were. Maybe more.’
‘So if we follow the creek back, we’ll be right.’
I looked over his shoulder at the dense vegetation.
‘Easier said than done. We’ll be cut to pieces crawling through that stuff.’
Brian pointed to the horse, and reminded me that our costumes were in the packs on its back. He’d wear Glen’s suit, and I’d wear mine. It would be a black-tie crawl to safety. We had no choice, though. However absurd it might look to be wandering through this wilderness dressed as if we were on our way to an opening night, the alternative of walking through it naked was out of the question.
We knew the going wouldn’t be easy. What we didn’t know was that it would be almost impossible. The bushes didn’t part accommodatingly as we pushed into them. Their roots, trunks, branches, and mean little leaves resisted our advance. It was the necessity of bringing the horse with us that made us abandon a route close to the creek and to deviate away from it through scrub that allowed us to pass. We thought if we kept within earshot of the rushing creek we’d be right, but we’d barely gone any distance at all when what was rain and what was creek became uncertain and, finally, indistinguishable.
Wherever we came upon a clear passage we took it, relieved to be moving forward. We stopped after an hour’s trek, and I climbed a spindly trunk to get some idea of the lie of the land. The tree was only slightly taller than the undergrowth, and ahead, behind and side to side, all I could see was an endless vista of low-growing green, with here and there a protruding tree. There was no sign of the creek, and when I climbed down I realised with dismay that I could no longer be certain whether it was to our left or our right. I hoped Brian’s sense of direction was better than mine.
‘I can’t see a thing from up there. It’s all the same. Do you have any idea where the creek is?’
‘I’ve been following you. My head is killing me. I haven’t been concentrating.’
‘Well, here’s something that might focus the mind. We’re lost.’
‘They must be close,’ Brian said.
‘That depends on whether we’ve been walking towards them or away from them.’
‘Haven’t we been going in one direction?’
‘No, Brian, we haven’t, and that’s not my fault.’
‘All right, all right, keep your tuxedo on. I’m sure we’re vaguely heading towards them. Besides, surely someone will come looking for us.’
I had no confidence at all that this would happen. The Nackeroo’s assumption would be that, if either or both of us had survived, we’d find our own way back to the group. Our only hope would be if Fulton was prepared to risk the further splintering of his already depleted party by allowing Ngulmiri or Isaiah to search for us.
We were stuck on the horns of every lost person’s dilemma. Do we stay where we are or do we move on? We agreed that remaining in one place, particularly this place, would lead to the discovery some years hence of the two best-dressed skeletons in the Territory. Our only hope was to move.
‘I don’t suppose there’s any food in those packs?’ I asked.
Brian shook his head.
‘Our costumes, Glen’s props, odds and ends.’
‘If the horse isn’t carrying any food, it might have to become food.’
‘You know we look ridiculous, don’t you?’
‘I think we might be facing bigger problems than the incongruity of our appearance, ‘I replied. ‘We should keep moving.’
The rain intensified until I thought it might be possible to drown standing up, on land. We walked in the only direction open to us, and we’d both become so disoriented that the only direction we could safely eliminate as not being one in which we should be headed was up.
Time ceased to be measured in minutes or hours, and became instead manifest in the gathering strength of hunger pangs, and weakness in the limbs. Nightfall took us by surprise. The world went from grey to black with almost an audible thud. We were still hemmed in by scrub, so there didn’t seem any point in tethering the horse. We didn’t bother unpacking it, and allowed it to wander our narrow demesne searching for whatever grass it could find.
‘I don’t like this,’ Brian said. ‘This is the most hungry I’ve ever felt in my entire life.’
It wasn’t possible to light a fire, and we were obliged to lie as comfortably as we could in the mud. The distraction of conversation was denied us by the incessant drumming of the rain. Sleep was a remote likelihood, but I was so exhausted that it came upon me in spite of everything; as I slipped into a semi-conscious slumber, I marvelled at the body’s ability to adapt, however reluctantly, to the hostile demands of its immediate surroundings. Even through my intense discomfort I was grateful I wasn’t cold, and that the mosquitoes had been suppressed by the rain. If we’d been subjected to their harrowing attacks I think I might have lost my mind.
Brian and I awoke almost simultaneously to the ferocious droning of mosquitoes. It was dawn, and the rain had ceased. Instinctively we plastered mud on our faces, hair, and hands. The mozzies still swarmed noisily around our heads, but we were protected to some extent from their vicious little probes.
‘I’m starving,’ Brian said — a statement, as I told him, which could be added to the many redundant remarks he’d made in the course of his life.
‘Where’s the horse?’ he said suddenly.
Not wishing to trade further in the obvious, I confined myself to a straightforward expletive which sufficiently covered the fact that the horse was unequivocally gone. So we stood in our tuxedos, caked in mud, hungry and horseless — and then it started to ra
in again.
‘What day of the week is it, Brian?
‘Thursday, I think.’
‘Thursday, 5 November.’
‘Should that mean something?’
‘It’s the anniversary of our father’s death.’
‘Like I said, should that mean something?’
‘Why do you hate him?’
‘I don’t hate him. If I hated him, I’d celebrate his death. I barely remember him. I think what I feel is indifference, but even if I’d loved him, I’d swap all my memories for a piece of toast.’
It was Isaiah who found us. We’d been walking for a few hours, and the rain had eased, although the dark, ponderous clouds were a guarantee that more would fall. We’d come across some fruiting trees, but as we’d been warned in our training that some berries could kill or blind a careless forager, we resisted the temptation to ease our hunger. We filled our bellies with water, which gave us no energy but which went some way towards alleviating the nagging pain of an empty gut.
We were resting in an open patch of scrub, saying nothing to each other — only too aware that the situation was a desperate one — when Isaiah stepped from behind a bush and said, ‘Hey, boss.’ It was as if he’d materialised from the earth itself, and my first impulse was to crawl on my hands and knees and kiss his feet in gratitude. Not wishing to offend him, I settled for vigorously shaking his hand. Brian grabbed him by both shoulders and kissed him on each cheek — a continental gesture that took Isaiah entirely by surprise.
He’d brought bully beef, which we wolfed down without dignity or grace, and he told us that the horse had found the Nackeroos, and that he’d followed its tracks to where it had bolted, and then followed ours to where he’d found us. This seemed a miracle to me. I couldn’t see how any tracks could survive the conditions.
‘Easy one, boss,’ was all he said.
By late afternoon, we’d rejoined Fulton, Ashe, Farrell, Pyers, and Ngulmiri. They laughed immoderately at our appearance. However, I was relieved to see that they were all still alive, and that the murderer amongst them hadn’t seen fit to further reduce their number. Yet.
Three more nights and four more days of enervating, torturous walking brought us, on Sunday, 8 November to Flick’s Waterhole — One Platoon HQ. The fact that it carried the moniker ‘headquarters’ inevitably created in my imagination the notion of something substantial and well-equipped. When Fulton told us that we were only a couple of hours shy of it, I couldn’t refrain from picturing an oasis of comfort and civilisation.
My first impression was dispiriting, to say the least. We approached it through a veil of rain and along a track glutinous with mud. It was difficult to determine the extent of the camp. There were three quite large tents — rectangular and solid, in the American way — and there was a thick, healthy growth of trees that spoke of good, permanent water. I’d had just about enough of water by this stage so, while appreciating its influence on this corner of the Northern Territory, I longed for the evaporative fury of a fierce sun. Although the ulcer on my leg was responding well to my eccentric and repellent therapy, my feet had begun to feel soft and pulpy as if they were beginning to rot, and there was a painful gripping in my intestines that threatened to erupt into diarrhoea. This battery of discomforts dulled my ability to see at a glance that Flick’s Waterhole, while not a resort, offered considerably more amenity than the section camp we’d left at West Alligator River.
We reported to a Lieutenant Linden, the platoon commander, in his commodious tent. He’d already been apprised by radio of Andrew Battell’s death, and had had ten days to absorb it, which may explain his curt expression of condolence — perhaps he was merely pragmatic about the absence of anyone who might reasonably be expected to require condolences. He did his duty by acknowledging a fallen comrade, and moved quickly to the more pressing matter of informing us that we’d be required, after only a day’s rest, to return to A Company HQ at Roper Bar, some eighty miles north of Flick’s Waterhole. Road transport was out of the question: trucks couldn’t negotiate the track without sinking up to their axles. The thought of more walking made me want to weep, but any notion that the order was a capricious one was dispelled when Lieutenant Linden said that there was every expectation that Port Moresby would fall to the Japanese, and that military strategy suggested that the Nackeroos at Roper Bar would form the frontline of troops on Australian soil. Sixteen of the twenty Nackeroos at Flick’s would be returning with us.
Glen, despite his swollen fingers, immediately suggested that we put on a performance. Lieutenant Linden thought this was a splendid idea, and said that the rough sleeping-quarters, with its tarpaulin roof, would provide an ideal space. He asked us how much time we would need. Two hours, we thought, should be enough time to scrape the mould and mud off the weary tuxedos; and Brian, of course, had to shave many days’ growth off his face. A fully bearded femme was too grotesque to contemplate.
The Nackeroos who crowded into the bush-timber structure that constituted their dormitory were a ragged lot. Their clothes hung off them in tatters, and their faces were barricaded behind beards of varying extravagance. They pushed the bush bunks to one side and surrendered to the magic of Glen Pyers, illusionist, and his beautiful assistant. At such close quarters, and with limbs disfigured by bites, scratches, and sores, Brian sensibly decided to play his part for laughs, and so successful was he that laughter rolled up and down the half-mile length of the waterhole. The Aboriginal horse-tailers, of whom there must have been at least six, would have heard this laughter from their position away from the tents. They hadn’t been invited to attend the concert.
Glen’s fingers were troubling him, because he fumbled one trick — something I’d never seen him do. But he turned it to his advantage and created a comic bit out of it.
With such a well-primed and generous audience, I was sure it was safe to risk one of the more obscure but delightful speeches from Cymbeline. It became apparent, not long after I’d begun, that the people before me were leaning forward, not to ensure that not a syllable was lost, but in expectation that at any moment the joke would be delivered. When none came, the energy in the room — if this clumsy shelter could be called a room — drained away, and all they could lavish on me was desultory applause, and a collective regret that packing for tomorrow’s departure forbade a second soliloquy. The thuggish Nicholas Ashe had the gall to suggest that I should do my pieces first.
‘That way,’ he said, ‘Glen and Brian would be a reward for having to listen to you, rather than you being a punishment for having enjoyed them.’
I didn’t give him the satisfaction of a reply, but firmed him up as the chief suspect in the murder of Andrew Battell. You may imagine, therefore, my confusion and disappointment when, four days later, he was found at Roper Bar, seated under a tree, the back of his head blown out, his pistol in his hand. It was assumed he’d taken his own life — men had gone troppo up there before and almost killed themselves, or someone else, before being invalided out to Brisbane or Townsville — but I knew that Nicholas Ashe hadn’t taken his own life. In death, he held his gun in his right hand, and Ashe was left-handed. It seemed unlikely to me that his final act would be a demonstration of ambidextrousness.
part two
Chapter Seven
roper bar
THE ROPER RIVER COILS AND UNCOILS for more than two hundred and fifty miles from where it rises to where it spills into the Limmen Bight in the Gulf of Carpentaria. The Roper Bar is not a pub. It is a point some eighty-seven miles from the sea at which it is possible to cross the river from side to side and at which it is no longer possible for substantial boats to proceed up its length. At some time a police station had been built on the southern bank of the river, and this was large enough and sufficiently well-constructed to accommodate the cookhouse and several offices. Signal and troop quarters were purpose built, and the area was dotted with t
ents and shaggy huts draped in paperbark. When we arrived, three days after leaving Flick’s Waterhole, Roper Bar was a busy place. The fact that Roper River was the most obvious, and most convenient, point at which the Japanese might attempt an incursion into the Australian mainland leant the camp at Roper Bar an air of something like controlled panic. Well, not panic exactly, but an expectancy and permanent alertness that made men prone to being easily startled and to have the appearance of having been deprived of sleep.
We straggled into the encampment at three o’clock on Thursday, 12 November: a date seared into my mind with the permanence of a psychic tattoo. This was not just because it was the day before Nicholas Ashe died, but because it was the day on which I lost my faith in the power of Shakespeare’s verse to make strawberry jam out of pig shit.
A Company HQ at Roper Bar was under the charge of a man named Lieutenant Jenkinson, and as he had only recently taken up the position and was facing a degree of surly hostility from men who preferred the previous OC, he was most anxious that we take their minds off their troubles poste haste. A performance was scheduled for that very afternoon.
The audience was quite large — at least sixty men — and amongst the faces were a dozen dark, Aboriginal ones. Brian decided that he could put sufficient distance between himself and the front row to create his impressive illusion of femininity. His wig was beginning to look a little tired, having suffered the rigours of this extremely wet Wet season, but he thought it would do if he hid its ragged sections under a digger’s hat. Fully made up, with the hat pulled jauntily down on one side, the effect was more than adequate. It was almost beguiling. The audience certainly thought so. With a generous blindness to his undepilated forearms, they laughed and whistled their approval, and he and Glen performed their routine smoothly and with a precision of comic timing that would have set audiences on their ears in London or New York. Glen’s dexterity was unaffected this time by his swollen joints, and the whole performance was top hole.