‘Hey! What are you perving on?’ said Fluffy, pausing by the bunk. ‘Where’d you get the letter? Carrier pigeon service?’
‘No,’ said Deacon, folding it quickly but casually. ‘It’s an old one.’
‘One from the steady, eh?’ said Fluffy, grinning. ‘It’ll do you no good reading that sort of thing now, boy. It’ll give you bad dreams. You’ll be sleeping next to nothing warm or soft for the next year or so. Better forget her. Hank the Yank’s probably in, anyway.’ He grinned, and passed on down the alley.
Fluffy. A tough kid from Waterloo. A tough kid who talked tough, but mostly because he had seen too many films. He was a good lad. He was to die on the bank of a muddy river with machine-gun bullets stitched across his guts.
‘Tomorrow,’ thought Deacon, ‘we’ll land. We’ll be able to post mail.’ He dragged out his writing pad and scrawled his number, rank, name and unit across the top of the page. Then…‘Beloved Margaret,’ he wrote, with a little flourish.
He paused, chewing the top of his pencil. Down the alley he could hear Dick the Barber holding forth: ‘Well, I wonder how Killer Connell’s feeling tonight. He’s been sweating for action ever since he came to us, and now it looks like he’ll get it.’
Lieutenant-Colonel Connell, using only his right hand, levered the stopper out of the whisky bottle with his thumb and poured a stiff nobbler into his own and the Doctor’s glasses. Killer Connell they called him, but the title did not derive from his exploits on the field.
It was that day on the Tablelands when we were practising for the Divisional parade. The battalion ground was a naked brown field shimmering in the burning sun.
As the platoons and companies broke off from the square and marched in a long battalion column round the field and past the saluting base, Connell stood under the shade of the trees, screaming: ‘Swing your arms! Lengthen your step! Come on, “A” Company! Come on, Pioneers! Call yourselves soldiers—Jesus Christ, a mob of Palmer Street whores could march better than that!’
And the word was muttered round from mouth to mouth as they marched: ‘The old boy didn’t get home till five o’clock this morning—down on the nest with that nurse of his at Atherton.’
‘Maybe she knocked him back,’ someone suggested. ‘Maybe that’s what’s wrong with him—he didn’t get a bit last night.’
Two strays, shaggy friendly mongrels that had been straying round the camp for days, came running and yelping onto the parade ground in front of the column.
‘Battalion, halt!’ screamed Connell.
As the troops bunched up to the halt they could see him making his way across to the back of the parade ground and hear him yelling for the RPs.
‘Sergeant Hino! Sergeant Hino!’ he yelled. ‘Where the bloody hell are you when you’re bloody well called?’
‘A nice way he talks to men,’ muttered Janos satirically.
Hino, the fat little Regimental Provost, was coming at an agitated trot from where he had been stationed at the far corner of the field. Connell made towards him with long, angry strides. We couldn’t hear what was being said but we could see Connell gesturing angrily and Hino standing there trembling and stammering, ‘Yes, Sir! No, Sir!’ and nearly knocking out what little brains he had, he saluted so hard when Connell dismissed him.
The troops stood relaxed, resting their rifle butts in the red dust, while Hino and a couple of other RPs tried to catch the frisky, yelping excited dogs.
There were surreptitious grins and muttered comments and a burst of laughter as the little ginger dog eluded the fat and despairing Sergeant Hino by diving between his legs. Then some officer, with an eye on Connell, would snap over his shoulder in his best Duntroon voice: ‘Quiet, “A” Company! Stop that laughing!’
But Connell had walked back under the shade and was standing with his back to the parade. His hands clasped behind him, he stared with pale and unblinking eyes into the grey-green thickets of timber that stretched away to the left of the camp. His mouth was tight, his shoulders hunched, the fingers of his clasped right hand twitched and his breathing was ragged.
The RPs eventually caught the dogs and led them off. The Adjutant gave the order and the long column swung again into the march past. All the Company officers were rallying their men.
‘Come on! Come on now, Fourteen Platoon!’
‘Hansen, pick up that step!’
‘Knight, straighten that rifle!’
‘Johnson, swing that arm higher! Higher! Higher! Right up to the shoulders!’
Running up and down the flanks of their platoons: ‘Lef, ri! Lef, ri!’ Harrying them like sheepdogs—yapping like sheepdogs. But Connell still stood with his back to the parade, his hands clasped behind him, staring out through the trees.
They were halfway round for the second time when they heard the shots—two spaced reports echoing thinly from down the scrub—and heads twitched at the sound. ‘What was it?’ ‘Not a rifle…’ ‘Revolver, I think.’
Connell turned back to the parade and started screaming again. Now there was a sort of satisfaction in his voice: ‘Come on, march!’ he bellowed. ‘I’ll stay here all day if necessary. I’ll march you round and round and round this bloody square until you drop or do it right!’
Word filtered back through the grapevine of the marching men. ‘It was the dogs. He had the dogs shot, the bastard!’
They marched stubbornly. You could feel their bitter silence through the thud of their heavy boots and the beating of the brass band. Round and round they went. Then Connell stopped them and abused them, and harangued and threatened them. Then they marched again—and again, and again. They marched. They swung their arms and moved their feet, but with a stubborn mediocrity. It could not be attacked as a deliberate and insolent slovenliness, but it was still quite obvious.
The strange duel went on. A clash between a sullen and savage man with the immense mumbo power of discipline and rank behind him, and the vast, silent, stubborn and tangible anger of a thousand men who would have forgiven him many worse things, but could not forgive him shooting two dogs.
And in the end, Connell was beaten and dismissed them. When they broke from their parades there was a strange feeling of triumph and elation through the camp. The lines were filled with voices louder than usual and wild carolling ho-ho-hos and laughter rang through the trees. And the voices and the laughter fell on Connell like a black rain and burned him like acid.
So they called him Killer Connell.
Young Rocky Bennet was foolish enough to write the story of the shooting of the dogs in a letter home. The officer censoring the mail—old Suck’n See Seaton—took it to Connell, who gave Rocky twenty-eight days field punishment.
Lieutenant-Colonel Connell splashed a small quantity of soda into the glass and tossed off the whisky. He and Doc Maguire were sitting at the small table in Connell’s cabin—the whisky bottle was three-parts empty.
‘They hate me, Doc,’ said Connell. ‘That’s the way I want them to feel.’
He stared for a moment at the empty glass as he put it down on the table. There was a hard, thin, sensual line round his mouth and nostrils. His pale, harsh blue eyes were a trifle bloodshot and puffiness under the eyes and the nervous skin over the strong Gothic bone of his face showed dissipation and sleeplessness and nerves rubbed raw.
‘Men who are happy and contented and well fed don’t fight well, Doc,’ he said. ‘I want ’em lean and hungry and hating me and themselves and everyone else in the world. Then they’ll fight! And these boys of mine are going to fight, by Jesus!’
He poured himself another drink and the Doc, who tossed his tot off at one gulp when Connell reached for the bottle, pushed his own glass over for a refill. The Doc never talked much when he was drinking.
‘You know, Doc,’ said Connell, ‘I was bloody near a breakdown on the Tablelands. A man’s a fool the way he gets hold of some slut and wears himself out on her…’ He sneered at the memory. ‘Christ! It doesn’t make you feel good. It doe
sn’t make you feel happy or forget. Whoring and drinking. What’s the reason, Doc? Why does a man do it?’
‘I don’t know, Cliff,’ said the Doc. ‘I’m no psychologist.’
Connell looked at him and his mouth twisted: ‘No, you’re no psychologist. You’re not even much of a doctor—a whisky soak—a drunken quack—the pox doctor’s clerk.’
Doc Maguire looked at him steadily, a little blankly. The spirit was starting to work now and he felt the calmly sullen detachment of his drunkenness. He never got falling-down drunk, the Doc—his voice just got a bit slower and more considered and he would stare steadily. The tiny scarlet threads of veins in his cheeks grew brighter, and nothing mattered, nothing touched him.
‘How do you reckon you’ll go in action the first time, Doc?’ sneered Connell. ‘It’ll be a bit harder than you’re used to—harder than sitting in the mess all night soaking whisky and then getting up next morning to dish out a few cascara tablets and aspirin.’
Maguire contemplated Connell and licked his lips slowly. ‘You watch your own guts, Cliff,’ he said casually. ‘I’ll watch mine. I’ll be all right. I’ll be there when I’m wanted. You smash ’em up—I’ll patch ’em up.’
Connell’s face flushed and hardened: ‘You’ll address me by my rank, Captain Maguire,’ he snapped. ‘And remember that I’m your superior officer now.’
Maguire lumbered slowly to his feet, gathered himself half to attention and gave a casual imitation of a salute—looking all the time at Connell with an expression of blank derision. ‘Goodnight, Lieutenant-Colonel Connell, DSO and Bar,’ he said, and turned towards the door.
As he lifted the latch, Connell spoke. ‘Come here, Mag,’ he said gruffly.
With his hand still on the latch, Maguire turned slowly: ‘Yes, Lieutenant-Colonel?’
‘Come here, Mag, for Christ sake. Come and have a drink.’
Connell poured two healthy slugs into the glasses, concentrating his gaze on the measure as he did so. Maguire stayed still for a long moment, staring at Connell’s bent head. Then he shrugged his shoulders slightly, let the latch drop and walked back to the table.
The mob round Harry Drew was urging him on, laughing and whooping: ‘Rip it up her, boy! Bore it into her! Let her go!’
‘All right, all right!’ said Harry Drew. ‘You think I talk for the sake of talking. But these flabby, time-serving politicians are getting up back home and telling us what we’re thinking. Read the papers! The AIF thinks so-and-so. The AIF wants such-and-such. How the hell do they know what we want or think? They never ask us. According to these fat-arse opportunists we just love this war—we can’t get enough of it! You know these boys will fight to hell and back, if necessary, and everyone does want to get in and get it over with. But what they really want—the old blokes anyway that have seen it before—is to get back home and stay. No one with any sense breaks his neck to get into a blue. No one really likes killing.’
Harry Drew smoked a stinking pipe and loved an argument. He knew the names of all the Cabinet Ministers and remembered who had sent scrap iron to Japan.
Hell, he was arguing about politics that night we stood on the start line at Tobruk. Full as a boot on army rum, he was, and laying down the law like he had a stand on the Domain. And he was still arguing—and willing to fight about it—when we moved into the attack.
The card game was breaking up and they were on a couple of rounds of show to finish—one draw and show for two bob a hand to finish the game.
‘We’ll have another round, eh?’ invited Whispering John. He had insinuated himself back into the game—he never stayed out for long—and since he was winning a few shillings he played quickly, with suppressed eagerness and a small, cunning grin on his lips.
‘I’ll be in another round if you like,’ said young Griffo. ‘Another dozen if you like—I’m easy.’
‘One more round will do me,’ said Brogan. ‘I’m two quid behind now and I can’t see myself picking it up at this game.’
Sunny and Ocker grunted assent and old John flipped the cards round rapidly as they pushed their two bobs to the centre of the table.
‘Come on,’ he snickered confidentially. ‘Put your money in the centre and play like scholars and gentlemen.’ He was pleased with his catch-cry. ‘This is where you make the money—you come here in motor cars and go home with the arse out of your pants,’ he snickered.
‘Come on, John,’ said Brogan. ‘Turn me over two broads—and not too many aces. Finish her quick—we land tomorrow and I want to get some sleep tonight.’
‘Yes,’ said John as he flipped the cards over, ‘you need to sleep tonight—sleep as much as you can—you’ll lose a lot from here on.’
*
Regan stirred uneasily in the thick, smothering sleep of the hold. The massed tiers of bunks around him were filled now and thick with heavy breathing and occasional snores. Curly Thomas, in the next bunk, had come up after Regan was asleep and turned the nozzle of the air vent over onto his bunk.
So Curly slept in the comparative comfort of the cool stream of air sucked down from the deck, while Regan sweated and tossed with bad dreams.
Bishie was threading his way through the sleeping tangle of the hold to fill his water bottle at the one tap, located over near the latrines.
The Laird was lying back, half asleep, his hands clasped behind his head, half listening to Dick the Barber.
‘You know,’ Dick was saying, ‘a funny thing happened to a mate of mine once—a little bloke by the name of Spade Burns—you might know him if you worked out west any time.’
Deacon was falling—a slow, sickening fall into darkness—and there was a sudden shock as he threw himself back from the edge of the pit and jerked awake.
He was slouched over on his side and the pencil had fallen from his slackened fingers onto the pad. He looked at the sheet—his number, rank and name were on the top of the page, then: ‘Beloved Margaret’. The rest of the page was a blank.
‘Ah, hell,’ he yawned. ‘I’ll finish her tomorrow when we get in.’
He put the pad and pencil under his lifebelt pillow and turned over heavily and uncomfortably to sleep. He could hear Dick the Barber’s voice down the alley, and a grunted comment from the Laird.
Cairo Fleming put his toothbrush and paste back in the toilet holdall and slipped it back into his haversack. He kicked off his unlaced boots and climbed into the bunk.
‘Night, Cairo,’ said the Log drowsily from the next bunk.
Cairo closed his eyes. ‘Night, mate,’ he said.
Lieutenant-Colonel Connell poured the last of the whisky.
‘Sluts,’ he said. ‘They’re all sluts and she was as bad as any of them. I was glad to get away from her…’
Doc Maguire looked steadily at him with that same blank derision and made no comment.
Pez and Janos were bedded down in the shelter of a tarpaulin under the forward gun platform in the ship’s smell of pitch and hemp. The sharp edge of the wind flicked at them and when the ship rolled it buffeted their shelter, whip-cracking the loose ends of the tarpaulin.
But they were wrapped in a warm cocoon of blankets—their own and some they had borrowed from the sweating sleepers in the hold—and had draped their ground sheets so the water would drain off down through the ropes and not collect underneath them.
They lay silent, rocked in the vast plunge of the ship, and heard the wind howling through the rigging. There is no sound like it on earth—the wind howling on the vast bowstrings of the mast and stays.
‘We’re riding out of the rain,’ said Pez.
You could see the sky ahead was broken and a stormy moon was tossing in a streaming sky.
‘Port tomorrow,’ said Pez.
‘Yeah,’ said Janos: ‘If the old tub holds together that long.’
Captain Dyall Jones, Master of the City of Benong, patted the worn rail of the bridge as a rider pats the foaming neck of his horse after a hard run.
They were a pa
ir, he thought, the ship and he. But for the brutal grace of war, both of them lay in Wreckers’ Row.
Chicken farms in Surrey are a dream of the open sea, but when the fowls scratch under your window you dream of the sea again. Chicken farms and a war a-blowing?
He remembered getting out the good black suit and brushing it down—the smell of solid serge and mothballs. The trip to London—the polite disinterest of the Admiralty and the suggestion that this might be a younger man’s war. The days and weeks spent sitting on hard wooden benches outside snugly closed office doors. A quiet, solid, stubbornly persistent figure in brushed black, twisting the hard-brimmed hat in his stubborn, ship-wise fingers.
Finally they got tired of his persistence and, in despair, had given him the City of Benong—which itself was too old for a young ship’s war.
They had been somewhere off the bloody beach of Dunkirk; the stukas had missed them when they ran for Alexandria after Greece fell; and the Son of Heaven had lost them in the darkness out of Malaya.
Captain Dyall Jones eyed the broken sky ahead.
‘Keep her steady on that pattern, Mr Johnson. She’ll do.’
‘Aye, sir,’ said Mr Johnson; and thought privately, with immense pride, what monstrous maritime things a man would take to sea in times of war.
Captain Dyall Jones left the bridge and the City of Benong sailed out under a sky of streaming cloud and moon.
Pez lay trying to think of home.
He thought: ‘I should be calling up pictures of how the fire would be burning in the front room at home on a night like this. And how it would be—coming in out of the rain to the warmth of the fire.’
But the images were all manufactured in words first and then forced into the brain. There was no real picture—no emotional memory.
Even in the thought of Helen there was no warmth—though God knows there had been enough fire between them when they lay together; and a deep, friendly warmth of peace and home on those calm evenings when they sat opposite each other, quietly reading or talking.
The Long Green Shore Page 3