by Bruce Scates
Another crisp march of high heels and the neon lights flickered into life again. Suited men applauded diligently.
The general rapped his knuckles firmly on the table. ‘By “further delays”, Mr Brawley, can we expect the unearthing of still more human remains?’
‘Not at all, General ... well, at least that seems very unlikely. Not Australian remains anyway.’ One qualification piled on another. Brawley was already flustered. ‘There were of course extensive Turkish trenches in this region but we are confident that any human remains have long since eroded down the slopes. Really they could be anywhere. It’s all...’ his voice lapsed into lamentation, ‘...all something of a mystery.’
The professor very nearly lost his temper. His face, normally the white of ancient parchment, flushed red with anger. ‘Not to the Turks it isn’t, Mr Brawley. Look here...’ He pushed a document across the table. ‘See here – Lt Fasih’s diary, carefully translated from the old Arabic script, confirms an olive grove somewhere in that vicinity. It’s clearly marked as you can see. And it served as a burial ground for Turkish officers.’
Brawley looked at the map and replied dismissively, even rudely.
‘Really, Professor, how many olive groves were there on Gallipoli in 1915? And who is to say the road runs anywhere near the one in question?’ He swept his finger over the map, summoning a highway from nowhere. ‘In any event, a cemetery reserved for officers was hardly likely to be very large. For the most part, I believe, the Turks disposed of their dead far less ceremoniously. Ordinary soldiers were buried willy-nilly. In short, the new road is hardly likely to interfere with a cemetery, say, of Lone Pine’s dimensions.’ He tapped decisively on a symbol signifying a Commonwealth War Graves Commission site, secretly relieved he’d found it.
‘The point is,’ Mark followed up on his old professor’s lead, ‘whether we should interfere with that landscape at all. We should consider the impact roadworks and traffic could have on that fragile landscape. There is yet to be a proper archaeological survey of the area and that...’
‘Yes, we are still waiting for such a survey and I expect we will wait many years longer.’ A challenge always brought out the fighter in Brawley. He flexed and strutted like a boxer amidst the ring binders. ‘The fact of the matter is, gentlemen, that this land is the responsibility of the Turks. They are obliged under the Treaty of Lausanne to provide access to the cemeteries. In fact, for their convenience as much as ours, they are keen to do so. There is really nothing fragile about a road, Dr Troy, not even a road the Turks build.’
A chuckle broke out in the corner of the room. Brawley knew how much his audience had tired of political correctness.
‘In any event, if we don’t do something to manage the problem, well, the Commonwealth can’t accept any liability for any breach of public health and safety.’
Those four words, Mark thought, harboured a multitude of sins in every sphere of government.
Again the general’s knuckles rapped against the table. ‘That’s enough, gentlemen. Please, order. Order!’ The clatter and chatter eventually subsided. The general drew a deep breath before speaking. ‘Professor Evatt, is there any new evidence you and Dr Troy wish to present to the committee?’
‘Well yes, Mr Chairman,’ the professor raised his pipe ever so slowly to his lips, ‘as a matter of fact there is...’
The ring of a mobile phone cut short the professor’s oration. The general looked down at the number. It was the Prime Minister’s office. ‘You’ll have to excuse me, gentlemen. I’ll need to take this.’
Mark Troy was not quite sure how he had found himself in a soft-top Lamborghini V10 speeding down the Federal Highway to Sydney. At the time, Vanessa’s offer seemed innocent enough. The committee had adjourned to consider all the new documents he and Professor Evatt had tabled, there was no need to spend the weekend in Canberra and on Monday both he and Vanessa were scheduled for briefings in Sydney. ‘Why don’t we go together?’ she’d suggested. She ‘had the use of a car’, it would ‘save the Department an airfare’, ‘and no one in their right mind would want to spend Saturday night in Canberra’. There was no denying that argument.
Mark ventured asking who the sports car belonged to. He’d noted the number plates as he sank down in the plush upholstery. REX4 suggested the vehicle wasn’t Vanessa’s. ‘Oh, just a friend,’ she’d replied before quickly changing the subject. ‘Don’t you love this road, Mark?’
Mark had to admit he did. Beside them the Lake George Range curled around the shores of its namesake, an ancient escarpment eroding out the ages. Occasionally, rocks gleaming golden with a million years of sunshine would tumble down to the roadside barrier, crumbling to pieces as they did so. To his right, Lake George stretched out flat and dry. Mark’s eyes ran across the line of bush that clutched to the hillside. He could barely remember when it last carried water. Even at 4.00pm the plain glowed with heat. As they sped across the landscape, Mark was in awe of its beauty and its grandeur. Once Lake George had rested on the floor of an ancient ocean. Aeons later it retained an oceanic splendour.
Vanessa loved the Federal Highway for quite a different reason. She set the cruise control fifteen kilometres over the speed limit, lifted her foot from the accelerator and leaned back to enjoy the ride. Mark noted her high-heeled shoes resting on the carousel, as black and chic and dangerous as the Lamborghini.
For several minutes they did little but watch the road. With some skill and more recklessness Vanessa weaved the car in and out of a broken stream of traffic. Soon they had left Canberra and its Friday exodus far behind them.
‘Is there any music? Have a look in the glove box will you, darling.’
Mark was taken aback by the endearment. Vanessa was a woman of constant surprises. He flicked through a pile of CDs calling out artists’ names in feigned indifference.
‘Neil Young, Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez.’
‘I can’t believe this. Seriously. The whole morbid crew!’ Vanessa overtook a red Ferrari, the only car on the road that could possibly match her speed or glamour. ‘Rex is a merchant banker, for fuck’s sake! The glove box must be where he keeps his social conscience. Isn’t there anything else?’
Mark drew a deep breath. Confessing personal musical taste is risky in any relationship.
‘I’ve got a mix of Red Hot Chilli Peppers ... you know, just for when you’re short of something.’
At first there was no response.
‘Well, that will have to do I suppose. Least you’re not into rap. I hate that.’ Mark made a mental note.
He rummaged in his bag. The Red Dwarf symbol on its flap caught Vanessa’s attention.
‘You don’t really watch that stuff, do you?’
‘It’s serious social satire, Vanessa.’
‘Sure.’
She slipped the disc into the player and flicked the volume dial louder than Rex could have imagined, and for a good fifteen minutes the Red Hot Chili Peppers blasted away to the heat of a dying day.
‘So, Mark, tell me about yourself.’ Vanessa turned down the volume. Her voice was quiet but compelling, as if inviting confidence.
‘Well, at the moment I’m working on...’
‘Oh not that, please, no work stuff. The drive can be boring enough, you know. Something personal would be interesting. Apart from this red fetish thing.’
‘My eyes are blue.’
She laughed, perhaps a little too self-consciously. ‘Yes, I’d noticed. And your hair is getting long enough for an Emo! Are you married? Children? Mortgage?’
‘No.’
‘Rich, single, gay guy then?’
‘Hell, no. Why did you think that?’
It was the standard indignant response of heterosexual men whenever they believed their manhood slighted.
‘Think what? That you might have a mortgage?’
‘You know what I mean.’
Mark wondered whether teasing men was a mandatory subject at whatever private schoo
l his driver had been sent to. The scholarship boy from Jeparit was well out of his depth. Again, Vanessa stretched and sighed in the seat beside him. Despite the air-conditioning he felt hot and uncomfortable.
‘What about you then?’ Mark bounded to the offensive. ‘Husband, children, mortgage?’
‘Oh God, no. Well, none but the latter. To tell you the truth...’
Vanessa paused long enough to resume the advantage. ‘I’ve gone right off men for the moment.’
‘I see.’
Vanessa didn’t bother answering. Her lips widened to a smile as she glanced at herself in the rear-vision mirror.
Four kilometres had swept by before Vanessa took up the conversation again. ‘The problem with you men, you know, is that you always want something from a girl. Wife, mother, cook,’ she sniggered, obviously recalling someone in particular, ‘personal trainer! Me, I’m all for independence. Speaking historically.’ Vanessa was prepared to remove that last bolthole from her quarry. ‘You must admit it’s an irony, Mark. Men are supposed to be the strong ones, breadwinners, providers, head of the family, all that sort of thing – but really you are all so very needy.’
Mark was alarmed by his companion’s bitter tone. She couldn’t be any older than he was. Late twenties at most, too young to speak with such jaded experience.
‘You see, Mark, we’re all alone in the end, however much it’s convenient to pretend otherwise.’
He nodded, acknowledging the companionship of singles the world over. Of course, Mark had had relationships, moments of tenderness, love and intimacy. But despite popular illusions to the contrary, the academic world was no place for romantics. His last relationship had ended when his lover moved interstate in the quest for tenure. There had been little job security in Australian universities for decades. Keeping a post, let alone securing promotion, required what HR liked to call a flexible outlook. It was management-speak for endless re-skilling, re-invention, re-location. It wasn’t that either of them wanted to part – by any human measure theirs was a happy relationship. But scholars’ lives are bound by other rules, a quasi-monastic calling jealous of any rival. Probably every book Mark had read was written on the rubble of a relationship.
The figure of a kestrel flashed into view. Its wings shone silver as it danced in the boundless space and light above them. For a few seconds, Mark watched it curl about the thermals, visible one instant, lost to long, blue oblivion the next. Then, as Vanessa flexed her grip on the steering wheel, the bird plummeted earthward. It slipped beyond sight as yet another insect collided with the windscreen.
‘Well, this isn’t much fun – broken hearts club. I know what I need,’ again she paused, just a little playfully, ‘...a cigarette!’ They both laughed, the purring of the engine now no longer audible.
‘Rex won’t let me smoke in the car, you know.’ There was possessiveness in that denial that rendered Mark just a little jealous, ‘But that, my dear, is the beauty of a convertible.’
She slowed the car far less than she needed and with a high pitched burr the canopy began to fold back. It closed in around itself like the wings of some strange insect. The car buffeted a moment, lurching with the sail unfurled. At the same time, hot, noisy air rushed all around them. It was as if they had burst from a cocoon. Vanessa’s sun frock lifted a moment, revealing more than even she had expected. Mark looked diligently away and studied the passing vegetation. He felt Vanessa’s hair fly against his face; his heart, like the car, was racing. Exposed to the elements, Mark became suddenly aware of the speed and the danger. Vanessa took it all a step further.
‘Hold the wheel, will you?’
‘What?’
‘You heard.’
Vanessa had already released her grip and reached for her handbag. As she rummaged for a cigarette, Mark held the wheel steady. He was pushed even closer to her than before as the car roared ahead. Mark watched the road intently, but most of all he wanted to look down, his eyes guiding that long shapely leg towards the brake pedal.
When Vanessa finished her cigarette, she resumed control of the car and summoned the canopy back over them. She swept hair from her eyes, moistened her lips, and took a sip from a bottle of water. The landscape seemed quieter and more distant than before: a blue barrelled sky and clumps of thinning trees reminded Mark of a Nolan or a Lambert.
‘I suppose you think that was a little irresponsible.’
‘Well, you could say that.’
‘And what would you say if I said you were the irresponsible one?’
‘Come again?’
‘It’s what you do, Mark. I didn’t put our lives at risk then, not really, not for an instant. But people like you change lives forever. You change the way lives are remembered...’
Mark realised the drift of the conversation. They had come back to history as surely as the road behind them curled back to Canberra.
‘I’m not sure I know what you mean, Vanessa.’
‘Oh, I think you do. The problem with historians,’ Mark recognised the tone again, ‘is that you’re so keen to have the last word, so keen to pass judgement. We’re just protecting the public good, you know. Trying to do the best for the electora...’ She thought better, ‘for the people of Australia. I mean, we all know the bodies are there somewhere but why actually go out and look for them? No one wants that Fromelles business again, it’s all so costly and unnecessary. Children are dying every day, aren’t they? Dying for lack of drinking water. Why waste money like that on the dead?’ Vanessa flexed in the driver’s seat. ‘But no, you historians have to judge. Think you can tell us what’s right and wrong.’
It was the first time Mark had heard that War Graves and Foreign Aid shared the same funding line. He would take this personally.
‘Well, that’s not really fair on me, is it? I didn’t ask to give evidence to your Inquiry. But we have to tell the truth, don’t we? We can’t just lie for the convenience of the government.’
‘Oh, you lie all the time. I think historians are habitual liars. Finding one file, not finding another. You’re so...’ Vanessa looked beyond the bitumen for just the right word, ‘...so selective.’
She changed lanes for no apparent reason. Mark felt the car shifting like a yacht on its keel. Now its driver had a momentum all of her own.
‘Take dates for instance. How many books have historians written on the landing, that one day in April 1915? But what about the stories you don’t tell us? What did 1915 mean to the Armenians, for instance? Wasn’t that the first great ethnic cleansing of the twentieth century? Isn’t that more important?’ She tightened her lips as if she had bitten into a lemon. ‘Don’t pretend you’re above politics, Mark, you’re not! The only difference is that your politics pretends – pretends it’s rational and disinterested. But it’s not, is it?’ She looked at Mark and ignored the road again. ‘Is it?’
Mark noticed that one of the long legs had found the accelerator.
‘That’s a bit outside my field.’ Even to Mark that sounded like a cop-out. He searched for safer ground. ‘But where’s this coming from, Vanessa? I didn’t think you liked the government’s line?’
‘That’s got nothing to do with it!’
Mark glanced again at the young woman’s face. There was a sheen in her skin as if wind and sun had scorched her make-up. Her eyes were red and moist. It looked like she’d been crying.
‘I just think this whole thing is getting out of hand.’ Mark wondered if the ambiguity was intended. ‘And I think I need another cigarette.’
Vanessa reached again for her handbag. This time she creased down the folds of her frock.
A speechless hour later, the Lamborghini jerked back one gear, then another as it pulled in towards Berrima.
Mark felt the world closing in around him.
‘Sorry, I woke you. I need a break.’
‘No, that’s OK.’ He tried to hide his surprise at her concern. ‘I wasn’t asleep.’
Vanessa raised her eyebrows. She kn
ew from experience when men were lying. She strained her eyes against the glare. Beyond the parched land a line of green elms slipped down into the valley.
‘It seems cooler now. Don’t you love the way they plant shady trees at the entrance here? So green and pretty.’
Mark sat up and nodded as he watched rusting plaques march by, each tilting at the base of a tree, each signalling a loss too terrible to imagine. But yes, it had a kind of beauty. Rest at the end of a long hot day, as quiet as the evening folding around them.
‘I’ll pull up over by that pillar.’
‘Memorial.’
‘Spooky. Well, it’s shady anyway.’ There was a glow in Vanessa’s face. Just the heat perhaps. Mark liked to think otherwise. The car slowed to a halt. Both waited an instant before clicking free their seatbelts.
Vanessa found a spot at the base of the memorial. She sat cross-legged, shoeless, the white of legs cooled by the whiter stone. She looked up at the pillar and mumbled something. Mark realised she was counting.
‘Eighty-four names. But maybe that’s wrong. Eight, maybe nine, names are repeated.’
‘No, brothers count, too.’
‘Of course.’ Vanessa feigned control but this time she seemed unsettled. ‘Eighty-four then. And how big do you think this town would have been? Back then, I mean.’
‘It’s the whole district really. Not that it would be have been much bigger. Less than a thousand anyway.’
The mathematics seem to startle her.
‘But I guess most of them returned. This is all the men who went away, surely.’
‘Count the crosses, Vanessa.’
She was surprised by the authority in the young man’s voice. Vanessa’s finger ran to the left of the line of names, sweeping the dust from the gold etched into the panel, feeling for the touch of each softly chiselled letter. Despite the warmth of the evening air, she shivered.
‘So many names, for so small a place. But only names, you’d think they’d want to say something.’