1915

by Roger McDonald

  “Yes, sir!” said Billy into the silence.

  “Would you be scared?” asked Walter.

  “Not me.”

  “Now wait a minute,” said Mr Gilchrist, denying his own intensity of thought, “we’re talking about a national event, not a jaunt for youngsters.” He made a show of hunting though the paper for farm news, struggling with himself over the thought that if Walter was to go off to war he would be glad. Six months or more had been enough to show that he and his son were strangers. To be honest, he disliked the boy — who was half the time locked in hostile broodiness, and the other half gushing with green ideas.

  “I’m sure I’d be scared,” Walter continued, “because of a dream I had about Blacky. When was it?”

  “Get on with the show,” said his father, rolling the paper tight and prodding Billy.

  “It was in the cadets — only it wasn’t. There we were marching through scrub. You too,” he said to Billy, who liked to figure in such phantom lives as other people’s dreams gave him. “On we went through wattle and saplings and suchlike. It was a sandy sort of place. We advanced in line with our rifles at the ready looking for something.”

  “Rabbits?” The suggestion came from his father.

  “We arrived at a ship’s gun. A barbiette.”

  “What’s that in English?” asked Billy.

  “I couldn’t see what was going on but something told me to watch out. Then I realized that the — blighters — wanted to put me in the gun and fire me through the barrel. I’ve never been so scared. Now this is the funny part. The bloke in charge was Blacky Reid.”

  “That’d be him all right.”

  Mr Gilchrist stood and stretched. “Blacky’s always had you bluffed. He’s all wind.”

  “Don’t be so sure,” said Billy, out of a mixture of friendship for Blacky and hard knowledge: “But it’d be him all right, he’d be there, telling all and sundry what to do.”

  “A windbag.”

  “I woke up then. I remember — it was last Christmas.”

  His father tapped his pipe on the edge of the fireplace: “I’m for bed.”

  From the kitchen they heard him talking in undertones to his wife, who after a minute came through to say goodnight.

  “I want no more hysterical war talk,” she ordered. Then footsteps knocked on the bare boards of the hall; they heard the click of a door, the whimper of a dog, and a mopoke calling across the cold ocean of trees.

  In front of the fire Walter and Billy shook hands and swore that “if the worst came” they would join up together.

  The pact surprised both of them, and decided Billy on a confession.

  “Are you and the Reilly girl still writing?”

  “I wrote once, but she never replied. Good riddance, eh?” He managed a grin, but thought: How does Billy know? If that Scott woman’s been fiddling with the mails —

  “I seen her. It was after Mum died,” said Billy, “when I was in Sydney. I bumped into her.” He told no lie. “We talked. She told me the two of you were corresponding.” Because of Walter’s uncomprehending look he added: “Writing letters to each other.”

  “She to me? You’ve been bloody quiet about it. When I met her at the railway at Christmas she asked me to write, so I put down the news and sent it off. But she never replied.”

  “To hear her talk you’d have thought the two of you were scratching away like mad. Women! Who can fathom ’em?”

  “You,” Walter spoke with sudden vehemence: “Why do you think she said she’d written when she hadn’t? Come on —” His tone swung between scorn and helpless submission. Clumsily he lifted the poker and jammed it among logs.

  Billy spoke calmly. “She was putting me off for one thing. She couldn’t spare the time of day. Anyone’d think I was a pig — fresh from the trough — the way she kept her distance.”

  It sounded wrong. What about Billy’s siding with the Reids at harvest time, the way he’d never talked straight about his trip away, especially concerning Wellington — now Sydney too —

  “Come off it!” Walter snapped, and the poker was in the air, its tip glowing cherry-white. He could have, he really wanted to, Billy ought to —

  Down came the poker with a smack on the sooty bricks.

  “That’s a dangerous instrument,” said Billy coolly.

  “So are you.” Either it was belt him with the poker, or do it with words.

  Billy reclined without speaking, and who could tell if it was cunning or innocence that held his tongue? Besides, the burst of anger had stripped Walter of hostility. And Billy’s silence, though it wasn’t forgiving — impregnable rather — somehow took a share of the blame.

  Billy played on this. Dumb guilt, he knew, lent him an air of integrity. In silence practically anything could be shammed.

  “She likes you, Wally. I used to say, didn’t I? that you’ve got a real chance there. She asked all about you.” Billy reclined on a cushion and nestled his head on his arms. “A hero! That’d be the way to win ’em over.” He rolled to his side and looked at Walter. “You could just march in and take her. No messing about. No knocking on the door. The direct approach. Nothing like it.”

  “It’s not me.”

  Billy spat into the heart of the fire. “If this war comes off we’ll be well out of that kind of trouble. What do you say?”

  At midnight Billy set off for home. At the start he rode slowly, smoking the tail end of a pipe, coat collar turned high, hat rammed low to keep the icy air from his ears. He held the reins in one hand and let the horse follow the track of her own accord. She was an ex-polo pony from Narromine called Novelty, for which he’d paid a fortune two months before; she had good Arab from somewhere, and a touch of draught as well.

  Soon after leaving the yards Billy muttered to himself: “Wally’s a mug.” A little later he shouted: “A mug!”

  Back at the house, standing at the far end of the veranda — taking a leak into the bushes — Walter heard the phrase but failed to identify it as human. It seemed one of those shifts of matter peculiar to the bush at night, as unfathomable to diurnal creatures as blackness itself.

  When Billy reached the crest of the ridge he looked back. A tiny yellow light swayed and went out. Then he and Novelty moved alone through the universe.

  He thought about galloping and they galloped. He thought about going faster, dangerously fast, and Novelty fairly devoured the track. Billy bellowed, and the horse answered by leaping forward into flight. And weren’t the stars also hissing and tumbling ahead? The night was a vast future into which they hurled, man and beast with bared teeth, bone and muscle flung against the passionless depth of things.

  When they came to the high clearing, which was now a disc of frosted grass, Billy dismounted. He set the horse free and squatted for a minute to catch his breath. His face burned. Then he lay full length on the ground and rolled over and over. Novelty tracked him, head down. Billy might have been happy, like a horse taking a dust bath, or in agony, like a man who has been poisoned but does not know it. Novelty’s reins, loose on the ground, rustled alongside.

  “A mug,” Billy said once more, but the judgment no longer mattered, for now, his mind fixed on war, his senses feasted on a host of new sensations.

  It was Tom Larsen the young schoolteacher who brought the news of the outbreak of war to Walter, pointedly playing it down. He wouldn’t be in it — not for quids.

  “Why not?” Excitement raised odd peaks in Walter’s voice.

  “Because I’m not bored,” the teacher consented to answer. By then Walter had collected Peapod and found himself fumbling wildly with buckles. He was mad to be off, but not sure where. Billy’s!

  The teacher had not kept his head: it only seemed that way. With school finished early he had grabbed his bike and pedalled furiously out of town to be alone, finding himself at the gate of “Whispering Pines” an hour or so before sunset.

  He mumbled something about the conflict between England and Germany havin
g to do with money — who was to get the upper hand in a market. Walter had no patience with such a viewpoint. It was too dry to express the quality of what was happening, too narrow for its magnitude. If Larsen’s beliefs were measured up to fit people, as he said they were, then how come he missed seeing the opportunity that the war’s adventure offered to the human frame?

  The teacher continued: Why shake yourself free of superstition only to attach yourself to a new set of delusions? Another thing — but Walter was in the saddle now, and Peapod, sensing a chase, had to be held hard. He circled excitedly while Tom withdrew a couple of yards, clutching the fragile frame of his bike.

  Right-oh, what was the other thing?

  In retreat, and cooled off from his ride, the mottled purple of Larsen’s face had sunk to its usual grey.

  “Forget it!” he shouted.

  They now saw Billy thundering down the track brandishing a kind of sword, a length of silvery sapling. The two boys on horseback circled the isolated teacher who despite his serious outlook was the same age. Only he wouldn’t join in, except to bellow, “On to death and glory!”

  There — the “other thing” was out.

  In return he brandished a sardonic fist to make his meaning plain, but Billy took up the cry and meant it. Then he drew alongside Walter and said, “Let’s tell the girls”, and with a careless whoop in the direction of the teacher they set off.

  Larsen watched their disappearing canter through the trees rocking and tilting through a series of frames in the late afternoon.

  At Bindogundra the cousins hadn’t heard.

  “It’s not so wonderful,” shrugged Ethel. But when Aunty Bea started hugging the boys she perked up, and thrust Walter against a veranda post to give him a kiss. Long-faced Uncle Len shook hands: “I’m too old.” At this Aunty Bea put an arm around his shoulders, and the moment hung in memory for that reason as much as any other.

  Then they were off again, working their horses into a steaming sweat along the Parkes road, finally arriving long after dark. On the way in they had stopped, solemnly shaken hands, and repeated the oath of the Sunday before.

  Nothing else seemed worth doing.

  While the outlying streets of the town were wide and empty as ever, those near its heart ran with a kind of fever. Figures dashed from door to door. Knots of talkers raised their hats and cried “Hurrah!” as the horses shifted past. The hotels — once they reached the asphalt clatter of the main street — streamed with light and excited voices and the drumming of boots on wooden floorboards. Four men marched down the centre of the road singing “Rule Britannia”, arms hooked around shoulders, stolid as working bullocks. A platoon of boys followed bearing sticks and pick handles; a Union Jack hung from the balcony of the Royal.

  New ways of behaviour had descended as if by revelation.

  Blacky and the rest would be there, but for once Walter didn’t mind. Tonight the clash of persons was dead. One nation stood, swayed, roared, shoulder to shoulder. In the bar, beers were passed head-high in chains of dozens. Pound notes were slapped to the wet counter and no-one seemed concerned about change.

  Sure enough, Blacky’s gang held a corner. As the latecomers surged towards them a splash of beer fell on Walter’s forehead and trickled down his face.

  “I’ve been baptized,” he said stupidly. A slopping glass from somewhere was thrust into his hand. There was Billy already gulping.

  “Drink up, boys!” shouted Blacky. “Here’s to the stoush!”

  “We’ll knock their heads together till their brains run out,” giggled Ned.

  “I ain’t going to wait,” crowed Eddie, “I’m off to Sydney tonight. I’m taking the car.”

  “Me too!” Ned squeaked.

  The whole room was drunk.

  Suddenly Blacky held a pistol — a lustreless cattle-killing Colt. In a second his arm jerked stiff in the air, two shots barked, and the hand dropped. Then Ned held the pistol and another shot rang into the cloud of descending dust and peppery plaster.

  Sergeant Gregory materialized with the publican, and Ned was marched off. The policeman entrusted Blacky with the pistol — he’d brazenly asked for it back — and a wag even proposed three cheers for King and Blacky Reid.

  “Ned’ll take his time now,” pronounced Blacky.

  Meanwhile Eddie, propped on the wall, seemed to have dropped out of things. During the excitement he’d hardly reacted. Now he swayed red-eyed, with hair pasted to his forehead. His lips appeared thicker than usual, as if he’d bitten them earlier in an agony of indecision. He turned to Walter and Billy.

  “What about you two?”

  “We’re going. Too right!”

  Walter’s first beers had elated him. Now with his third half-emptied he felt sober. This rush to join up, once he’d seen its force in the town, deadened the cold swill in his stomach and made it impossible to get drunk, though the excitement thundered on. A dog went wild among three hundred legs until it was kicked clear. Martha Bryant responded to the toast “Our Women” —

  “I like that,” murmured Blacky —

  But Walter had caught the same mood as Eddie. He took a fourth beer, a fifth, before the excitement was readmitted. A minute ago he’d fallen to saying, “I’ll have to see how things stand with Dad,” when his dad was part of the scheme, but now … Now! the whole world was ablaze. Tipping his head back for a final drink, surging out to the cold yard, he was at last on fire as he headed for home.

  Billy decided to stay.

  Alone without distractions Walter’s senses crackled through the past or raced forward in electric dashes. He tried to add himself up, to make something of his past self to thrust into the future whole and unbreakable. Because the idea of going to the war was a simple one, with its mix of abandonment and submission, of colour, noise, pride, he really did conclude, under a sky of almost deserted imponderables — once upon a time he could have named half a hundred stars — that the clash of history whose noise beckoned had done him a favour. He noted the smudged Magellanic clouds over to the south, and caught at his back three stars setting in the west — names out of reach, but without mystery now, because all cavities that once had tantalized, the gulfs of How Big? How Old? Where Does It Go? When Will It End? somehow presented themselves for answer in the span of his own actions. To go! His life pulsed forward in this active phrase, which would solve all, and was itself everything.

  His ears ached from the cold, his cheeks lacked feeling. He experimented with a word to Peapod, but through wooden lips it issued merely as a chunk of noise. Cold nights, train smells, warm horse smells, pain in August — his life was marked by the events of late winter and early spring. This was the time when wattles in bloom almost squatted under their own yellow weight, tree after tree aligned through the ranges. It was a year since he’d first clapped eyes on Frances — what if he hadn’t? No — even with his letter posted, and then the dwindling summer of no-reply, he felt more alive than he would have otherwise. Was it a trick of the season, to make something go wrong (his fall from Coalheap had started it), then have it fill his thoughts till he was grateful? The months after Christmas he’d felt thwarted and shamed. Well, the rules had changed. The world had changed.

  He would write again.

  His parents were still up, sitting close to the stove. The iron kettle hummed in waiting. There was no reproach for his wild exit. He described the unrestrained scenes in town, biting alternately a thickly buttered crust and a lump of cheese.

  “There’s time for thought,” said Mrs Gilchrist on hearing of the urge some felt to rush off immediately.

  “War,” said her husband. “It’s a fact.” He took a piece of red gum for the stove and turned it over in his lumpy hands.

  Walter rephrased all he’d read in the papers, talked on and on, and his parents hung on the words as if he’d coined them. He pictured himself as a far-flung son of the empire called to shield the heart of the mother country. His halting accents gave the platitudes rough force.r />
  “So,” he concluded, “I’ll be in it.”

  But his mother was unmoved. “We need you here, Wally. You’ve never mentioned the army in your life.”

  “We can manage,” said her husband.

  “Not so long ago we couldn’t.” She bunched a tea-cloth into a ball and abandoned it on the table, where it uncoiled hopelessly. “Alan, you were all for stopping Wally from going to the university — now he’s to be killed.”

  “Not a chance, Mum”

  “You’ll kill him!” she hurled at the father.

  “It’s up to Wally. I can’t say no. Douggie can come home early.”

  Why at this moment did Walter wish to condemn his father as irreclaimably weak?

  At last she appealed to him. “If only you could give me reasons. I don’t hate the Germans. None of us do. Why, Mrs Schuler is a German! I do not want my son to kill his fellow creatures.”

  “It won’t be like that!” But how did he know? Then to grant his mother something, not liking to see her so isolated, he said: “Tom Larsen claims it’s all cooked up.”

  “He’s a ratbag,” said his father.

  At the end Mrs Gilchrist’s voice lost all trace of supplication. She stated, “Nobody can tell me why,” and there the conversation finished.

  On Sunday the district poured into the three o’clock service to hear Mr Fox preach on “Germany’s policy, the Long Arm and the Mailed Fist”. The national anthem was sung afterwards, and at the door the minister held Walter by the shoulders — the pose almost threatened a kiss — and said, “Half your luck.”

  “It’s bound to be finished before I get away,” replied Walter deprecatingly. One minute he really hoped it would, the next he was mad to go. Eddie had already. Billy was to set off the following Friday. The Reid boys decided to put the Peppers on the farm forthwith and try their luck. Duncan Grieve and the unmarried Scott brothers rode to Forbes one day looking for work and never came back.