The Long Green Shore

by John Hepworth

  And then it was found that things were never quite the same after—Father’s Responsibility had not carried on beyond his death. The elms died and the House died…

  ‘That’s a sunset,’ said the Doc.

  ‘What?’ said Connell. ‘Oh, yes.’ The gravelled drive was gone and the white sand was heavy underfoot. The elms were dead and the jungle trees grew savagely.

  Still, influence and tradition were enough to get some scraps of preferment. Outposts of the empire—life in the islands—heat, boredom and sterile lives—the wide-verandahed house—the natives in white—keeping up appearances and squabbling privately about money. He remembered the day he had come back from Moresby—a day earlier than he had told Phyllis…

  ‘Where belongim missus?’ he asked his headboy.

  The boy, grinning, had held up the newborn kitten. ‘Picaninny belongim cat come up along kai kai time.’

  ‘To hell with the cat,’ snarled Connell. ‘Where belongim missus?’

  ‘Catchim lik lik walk longa Boss Rannerson.’

  Drinking—drinking alone and heavily—and then on the impulse striding out of the house—through the frangipanis and across the little board bridge across the creek and up towards the hill where Rannerson’s house stood. Standing in the shadows watching the darkened house and listening to the smothered laughter and breathless murmuring and small cries. Life is savagery and despair.

  ‘Look at that,’ said the Doc. He held a scarlet branch of coral, curiously smooth and shaped like a stag’s antler. Antlers, horns—the cuckold horns.

  ‘What?’ said Connell. ‘Oh, yes.’

  He could remember Rannerson coming to see him. Rannerson—big, brutally sensual and coarse with joviality.

  ‘Look here, Connell, you’re being a fool. What do you want to do: challenge me to a duel? Look, it’s your own damn fault, coming home a day early—never come back home unexpected up here. It’s the heat—they all get arse-end itchy—they go looking for it. On the other hand, you do the same thing—or wouldn’t you care for me to mention Mae Thompson? You see, I’m not a gentleman, Connell—I’m not public school, or officer-and-gentleman or anything like you—I don’t mind mentioning a woman’s name in the mess. Look, come off it—we’ve all got to do something to fill in time here. I’ve had her, you’ve had her—and very nice too. Only we three know about it. Forget about it. Have a drink.’

  Rannerson had called the boy himself and ordered the whisky. And Connell had drunk with him and hated himself. He and Phyllis had been together for a year after that, before the war separated them.

  Lots of people try to run—from the past, the present or the future. What is the future? Thought rusts the brain and it sheds flakes of despair.

  ‘As a matter of fact, I’ve got a flask of brandy,’ said the Doc as they went back up the jungle path from the beach to the RAP. ‘It’s supply—I’ll prescribe you a dose.’

  ‘I’ll take it, Mag,’ said Connell. ‘And after that—I will take a couple of your bloody pills, too.’

  Pez and Janos and the Laird were lounging beside the muddy road at the bay when the General’s jeep got bogged. She swung, roaring along the track, and came to rest belly-deep in mud. Pez and Janos and the Laird disappeared into the bushes instantly.

  They saw the brass hats get out and walk around the stranded vehicle pontifically.

  ‘Watch this,’ whispered Pez. ‘This’ll be good.’

  The General made a masterly military assessment of the problem. ‘I think we’ll have to dig it out,’ he pronounced.

  The Colonel pondered this gravely. ‘What we need is a shovel,’ he decided finally.

  The Captain went and got the shovel—and gave it to the driver and he started to dig.

  ‘That’s the way of it,’ rumbled the Laird. ‘Right through the goddam army—everyone else makes the decisions, the poor bloody private does the job.’

  Later, on their way back to the doover, they passed Connell on the track. He was looking particularly pleased with himself.

  ‘I know what that means,’ grunted the Laird. ‘We’ll be on the move again in a day or two. He’s only happy when he’s in a blue.’

  We got ourselves a new lieutenant before we set out. Minnie, his name was—Minnie the Mouse. He’d been a Q bloke mostly and we’d left him at our base camp down the shore. But we’d lost so many officers they dragged him out and shot him up to us.

  He was a funny little bloke—physically slight and extremely timid. He’d won his pips by passing brilliantly in theoretical work at an officers’ school—if they’d left him at a desk job somewhere around Victoria Barracks he’d probably have given good and valuable service during the war.

  It was his own fault, of course. He wanted to be a soldier—a fighting soldier—but he lacked all the equipment except that desire. It had got him as far as a commission in an infantry battalion and now it had finally got him a fighting platoon—but the job was not for him.

  Minnie was an only child and he had a fond mother and father. Pez met his old man in town one leave…

  He was strolling down Pitt Street and this old bloke in civvies pulled him up.

  ‘I saw your colour patch,’ he said. ‘My son’s in the same battalion as you—I thought you might know him—Sullivan’s the name—Lieutenant Sullivan.’

  Pez scratched his head—Sullivan—Sullivan—suddenly he remembered: ‘Oh, God yes! I remember but mostly we call him…Oh, you know, we’ve got nicknames for all the officers.’

  Near as dammit he’d said Minnie the Mouse. The old bloke probably wouldn’t have liked that—he seemed proud as hell of Minnie being a Loot. A nice old bloke he was, too, but with those kind of soft rabbity eyes, just like Minnie.

  The old bloke wanted to know what we called him and that had Pez worried for a bit.

  ‘Munga,’ he told him finally. ‘That’s what we call him—Munga—it’s an old one from the Middle East.’

  The old boy was pleased and proud.

  ‘Oh yes, he was there, too,’ he said. ‘He was in the Middle East.’

  Minnie had been a good son. He’d never whored around or got drunk and he’d lived all his life in timid frustration. He had paid court to a respectable young lady in a perfectly respectable fashion for years—the theatre on Thursdays, a dance on Saturdays, and a salad and cold meat dinner at her mother’s place every Sunday. Her mother thought he was a nice boy and it was generally understood that they would marry when his bank balance and clerkly salary reached the proportions thought respectable.

  The nearest Minnie got to respect as an officer was when the men said he ‘wasn’t a bad poor bastard’. The other skulls laughed at him behind his back—but managed to get him to do a good deal of their paperwork for them back in standing camp.

  So this was our new officer. First Slapsy and then Minnie—we could certainly draw the crow.

  They told us this might be the last show we would do before going home. We were to take over from the Second Battalion for a while—then they would come through us and finish the stretch.

  We were hearing rumours of another war, too. The second front had opened in Europe. We heard the news in whispers down the line—in occasional wireless news—in reports of men coming back from hospital.

  While we marched along the long green shore men died in the steel ring of Cherbourg—the earth was stained more red at Arnhem—the Russian guns thundered as they rolled in the East. Something was happening north of us in the Pacific—there was a place called Iwo Jima.

  So we went on—what was left of us. We struck good weather. The road was broad and hard. We were second platoon. The only Nips we saw were the dead ones that the sections in front left for us.

  One day we halted near the body of a young Nip lying by the side of the track. It was smoko. Janos walked over and flopped down next to the body: ‘Come on,’ he invited Pez. ‘It’s all right, he doesn’t stink. He’s fresh.’

  The Nip was only a lad—it’s hard to tell with them, bu
t he looked about eighteen. He had fallen forward on his face, his head was turned to the right and his legs sprawled. He had died swiftly, without struggle, and looked as though he had fallen in exhausted sleep. There were three bullet holes in his back, smudged black with blood around the edges—quite neat and seeming to bear no relationship to death. A trickle of blood had dried in the corner of his mouth. One hand was outflung and he still clutched a fresh bundle of plucked grasses—another bundle was tucked into his back pocket.

  ‘Wonder why he was picking grass?’ said Janos. ‘He doesn’t look as though he was hungry.’

  The grasses were thick and juicy looking.

  ‘I think it’s that koyu the natives use,’ said Pez. ‘They say it’s a good vegetable.’

  ‘A man should have green vegetables,’ said Janos. He took the grasses out of the hand of the dead man. He had to use force to bend the fingers back.

  ‘You’re not going to eat it, are you?’ asked the Laird.

  ‘Why not? If it won’t kill him, it won’t kill me.’

  Janos made the stew that night and stirred the grass into it. None of the others except Pez would eat it with him. Pez didn’t quite understand: ‘What is this? A sacrificial supper?’

  Janos just grinned.

  They had pitched their doover facing the beach and Janos had gone down to the fires to make the stew while Pez dug the weapon pit.

  The sun was slanting down when Janos got back. They sat on the edge of the weapon pit and ate the stew. It was good and hot, with flour stirred into it to thicken it. The dead Nip’s grass tasted something like spinach, but faintly bitter. Neither said anything more about it.

  It was stand to before they finished. First Janos crouched down in the pit and smoked, then Pez. They sat together, talking in low voices.

  It was a safe billet and time to get a good rest. We were camped in a little belt of trees on the edge of the white sands. In front of us was the sea—behind us a broad dirt road. Other platoons were camped across the road, ahead and behind us.

  Pez and Janos sat together on the edge of the weapon pit. The moon had risen before stand to ended and it was shining bright and silver on the sand and mottled on the road and left us in black shadows in the trees.

  ‘It’s been a long time, Pez,’ said Janos. ‘This is a hell of a business…’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Pez. ‘It’s been a long time—a lot of men…’

  ‘I don’t know what I go back to when it ends—if I’m left when it ends,’ said Janos. ‘Sometimes it bothers me.’

  ‘Don’t worry, boy,’ said Pez. ‘We’re near enough to the end now—you’re home and hosed—we’ll drink a gallon of beer in Ma Maloney’s yet.’

  ‘When we first went away, home was close,’ reflected Janos. ‘You could remember it, and what you would do when you got back was clear.

  ‘But it’s been a long time now and things have changed. When you go back on leave the children you left behind—the kids next door—are men and women and you walk like a stranger in the street. People say hullo to you in the street and drink with you in the pubs and ask you how it was—but you don’t really belong there—you’re a wanderer, a blow-in, a ghost. They treat you with politeness, but not too lavishly. They spread themselves the first time you went away—they seem to resent it a bit now every time you come home again—they sent you away like a hero—they seem to expect that you should have done the decent thing and died like one—then they could feel satisfied they’d done right by you.

  ‘If the war ended tomorrow, we’d be lost and lonely—we’re lost and lonely now, so where’s the beginning and the ending…?’

  Pez made no answer—there was none to make. But it’s a bad thing when a man starts talking about the future at times like this. In the rambling philosophy of a camp, that sort of thing is all right. But it’s not a good thing to start thinking on those lines when you’re on the track.

  The whisper to stand down came floating through the trees.

  ‘Come on, boy, let’s sleep,’ said Pez.

  They were comfortable bunks in the clean sand that night—you could still feel the warmth of the sun on the earth through the blanket. Pez and Janos lay silent side by side under their tent flaps for a while. Then Janos said goodnight and rolled over. He was asleep in a few moments.

  Pez lay awake and listened. There was a calm brooding silence on the beach. The hard, comforting feeling of his rifle lay beside him—the muzzle resting on the pack that made his pillow—a strange beloved to lie abed with. ‘But I have known women who could be less cold, yet not so comforting,’ he thought.

  ‘Oh no, it couldn’t be, Janos my brother—while we live we are not lost. All your courage and skill and wisdom cannot go for nothing. While we live we are not lost.’

  Pez found himself thinking, for no reason, of the Deacon. He remembered one morning they had come up the track and on top of a sharp rise there was the body of a Nip ludicrously dead. His body made an arch, resting on head and feet, his naked backside poking up in the air. We ran right into him as we topped the rise. The body was swollen and the skin had that tight, waxy look that they get. He was crawling.

  The Deacon had paused in mock surprise—stepped back, sweeping his hat off, and bowed low to that backside: ‘And good morning to you, sir,’ said Deacon. ‘The face is familiar but I’m afraid I can’t quite place where I’ve met you.’

  Why the hell should he remember Deacon…?

  While we live we are not lost…

  The Laird woke Pez for guard at two o’clock. He rolled out into the pit and sat there smoking a covered cigarette to wake himself properly.

  Just before he was due to wake Janos, there were shots up the beach and a man came running down the sand. In the bright moonlight you could see he was a Nip. Pez fired, but it seemed he missed. Then an Owen opened up from further down. You could see the spurts of sand running across the beach towards him and then his body shuddered as the bullets struck him.

  He started shrieking—a terrible, animal noise, and, turning, he rushed into the sea and was lost—though for long minutes afterwards you imagined you could hear the screams coming, pounded through the thunder of the surf.

  Janos was behind Pez in the pit by now.

  ‘Silly time for a bloke to go for a swim,’ he said.

  When we went forward that morning we ran into a Nip mountain gun. That was the finish of Minnie. It was the first time he had been under fire and he just ran around in circles. ‘Like a chook with no head,’ the Laird described it. He had no idea what to do. Whispering John and Harry Drew took charge. Minnie just crawled into a hole and stopped there.

  A couple of days after that they sent Minnie back down the coast to the base camp. He was sent back as a neurosis case—an officer is entitled to get neurosis a damn sight quicker than a private.

  It was that morning, too, that the Indians were shot. They’d escaped from the Nips and tried to get into our lines. They came down the track, waving bits of rag.

  Young ‘Squizzy’ Taylor from Charley Company shot them down as they came. He was a bit nervous and Connell’s orders were to take no prisoners. He didn’t realise until he’d done it that they were our own men.

  Two of them were dead when they got to them. The third they carried in and Doc Maguire worked over him all day—but he died.

  The next day we took our objective—this was to be the end of the trail for us, they assured us.

  We passed through a stretch of country that had been lived in once and was now overgrown. The roads were sunken but still definable. Everywhere was the ghostly smell and sign of the enemy—piles of rusting ammunition dumped along the side of the track—foxholes, weapon pits and dugouts burrowed in between the writhing octopus roots of the trees. For here, again, gnarled thick-limbed nightmare trees grew twisted into violent still life. Dozens of burned and rusting trucks were entangled in the jungle growth at the side of the roads—most of them had the skeleton of the driver underneath and the steel
cabins were punched full of holes where the planes had strafed them.

  At intervals were stacks of boxes with Japanese lettering burned on the sides. The boxes had rotted in the rain and burst with the weight of their contents—ammunition and equipment, but never food or clothing.

  Our objective was a clearing a little inland. There was nothing to it. We went carefully along the track and reached the clearing without any trouble. There was a native hut in the centre. We riddled it from the edge of the clearing and then ran up to it.

  Old Whispering John it was that kicked open the door. Janos and Pez and the Laird went on to clear the other side. Young Sunny covered old John. The rest of the platoon took ground.

  Old John told the story later. He leaned his chin affectionately on Janos’ shoulder and sniggered confidentially: ‘There’s this Nip there,’ he whispered. ‘He’s lying on the bed and when I kick the door in he staggers to his feet. So I let him have a burst in the guts.’ He sniggered. ‘He walks round the room for a while holding his guts—and then he goes and lies on the bed.’

  ‘Maybe he was tired!’ snarled Janos—twisting his head to avoid old John’s foul breath.

  The war in Europe ended.

  Young Sunny came running along the track: ‘They’ve tossed it in—the Huns have tossed it in!’ he yelled.

  ‘Take it easy,’ growled the Laird.

  No one danced on the long green shore because the war in Europe had ended. A big shoal of fish had come in near the beach that morning—in close enough for our grenades. We had fresh fish for breakfast and that was more important just for the moment.

  It was something to talk about, sure. But what the hell! Europe was a long way from us—our war was still going—it would take time to swing armies and air force men from Europe to the Pacific—our job was still to do, and time was the deadly factor.