1915

by Roger McDonald

  Then up Walter climbed to his room under the roof, placing two feet on each step as a child climbs.

  Today was his twenty-first day in the army. Climbing the steps he counted them all, remembering each for its novelty, including the oath that had put an end to so much unfinished business, propelling him from one world to another: “… I will in all matters appertaining to my service discharge my duty according to the law. So help me God.”

  His room was narrow, with a single iron bed against the wall and just enough space for the door to open. Part of the ceiling was occupied by the underside of the continuing stair, a white-painted box that he could reach without stretching and creak with the palm of his hand. He liked the feeling of just this timbery stair leading to the sky, and his hand supporting it. A small casement window, chest high with stiff lace curtains, admitted chunks of last minute sunlight. He lay on the bed, boots on, and watched the magnified patterns of flowers move in and out of focus as the curtain shifted in a light breeze. Hairs of sunlit cotton threw shadows of microscopic life on the plastered wall. If he lay with his shoulder blades flat on the bed he could breathe deeply without feeling pain.

  Was that why Frank and Nugget had invited him to tag along on this, their first weekend leave? Because of the fight with Pig Nolan?

  Pig was a light horse recruit who had brought his nickname down from Gunnedah where his father owned a clothing store. He was Gunnedah’s Eddie Harkness, the son of a town dignitary, only neater, with sandy brushed hair, a mouth of expensively maintained teeth and well-kept nails brought up to the touch of twill and banknotes. Also he was sharper than Eddie, smart and knowing, quick with figures. In a trice he became the regimental bookie, and that was how the trouble between them started.

  Walter had put sixpence on Nugget Arthur the day of the horsebreaking. He stood a head taller than Pig and craned to see how the stake was recorded.

  “Eyes off.”

  “I was just looking.”

  “Pay more, see more.”

  They stood outside the mess hut. An orderly wiped his hands ready to clatter the iron triangle for breakfast. Men were draped everywhere in blue early morning shadows.

  When Walter innocently looked even closer Pig said, “Shit, I’m going to have to smack your little fingers,” all the while inscribing neat figures with a slim blue pencil.

  “It’s my money.”

  “It’s mine till settlement.” Then Pig added exasperatedly: “This must be baby’s first bet.”

  “What’d you say?”

  But Pig snapped the book shut and joined the others: Nugget Arthur squatting in grass at the base of a flagpole with knees bent up to his chin, his face after years of horsebreaking like a brown knobbly pear; Frank Barton with a shoulder propped on the same pole while his words uncoiled downwards; Bluey Clarke with elbows resting on the ledge of a tankstand (rump protruding) and with crossed feet swinging almost free of the ground; Boof Lucas also with an elbow on the tankstand, his face cupped in the palm of a hand so that his tallow-pale fleshy cheek bulged under his left eye. Frank Barton was the neatest person Walter had ever met. He searched continually for balls of fluff and flecks of cotton, finding snagged seeds on his trousers, and now, without distaste, diverting a wee white grub in mid-hoop from its journey towards a shirt pocket. With his head bent down it was difficult, always, to hear what he said.

  He started to speak to Walter. Then the breakfast gong rang anyway, and they moved in. Bluey Clarke landed at a walk. Boof unstuck his hand but the bulge persisted, a farcical feature. Nugget Arthur limped for a couple of paces before his circulation got moving again. And on his toes Frank Barton climbed the steps of the mess hut with the smooth motion of a kangaroo dog. Somewhere among the others Pig Nolan had slithered inside unnoticed.

  Mustered from the resting paddocks after breakfast the horses moved in tight, frantic circles, heads held high in panic and manes flying as gates were opened and mounts selected one by one for breaking; “Warrigals” from Narromine, but soon to be tamed and their sturdy Waler temperaments exploited. It was a long day. At noon Billy had turned up, flash in full dress uniform having ridden across from the other camp in a headquarters detachment. They talked in the privileged shade of a marquee, then following lunch Walter perched on the rails with a hundred others, a raucous spectator among many.

  Afterwards he found Pig sitting cross-legged in the mouth of his tent counting money.

  “I understand you owe me two bob.”

  “‘Understand’? Either I owe it or I don’t.”

  “Sixpence at four to one. Nugget Arthur.”

  Nolan made a pained show of consulting his book, dotting this, crossing that, licking a finger in feigned self-absorption.

  “Well?”

  A florin butterflied through the late afternoon light. “Now be a good boy and keep half for your mum and don’t get drunk on the change.”

  After locating the coin Walter hauled on a guy rope to straighten himself.

  “Sorry?”

  “Sorry?” returned Pig in the same tone.

  “What are you getting at?”

  “Always seeing things that aren’t there.” Nolan clicked his tongue mock-parentally as he slithered the remaining coins into a small canvas bag and buttoned the notes into a shirt pocket. “I’m blessed if you’re not.”

  Walter found himself blocking the entrance.

  “Out of my way, boy.” Pig used two fingers reversed in the up-you position insolently to stroke rather than push his way past. Walter replied by ramming the shorter man palm-flat on the sternum. Pig surprisingly fell backwards and landed unbalanced in a percussive heap.

  “Struth —”

  Perhaps a second or two passed while he pawed his way up from the boards, perhaps no time at all. For Pig flew, plummetting horizontally at stomach height to butt Walter in the solar plexus with his deft hard head.

  A toppling Walter asked, “Hook? Hook?” wheezing the throat-high word a body makes when it requires air. He doubled over and nature co-operated by allowing a mouthful. But not Pig. Down came a rabbit punch.

  Walter tried to point out, as if to a jury, “Dirty fighter.” It was an impotent appeal. A black curtain dropped and as suddenly climbed clear. Now he was lying on the ground and could see the toes of Nolan’s boots a couple of feet away. But how unfair: one boot flew towards his chest and winded him once more with an oddly painless blow (here it was to hurt most later). The other lifted from the turf, dithered experimentally until it swung opposite his mouth, then hard leather deposited an exact and painful kiss on his upper lip.

  Two feet took pity and left. Two feet unaccountably hostile picked their way across the patchy grass and disappeared. It seemed appropriate that a sharp-edged stone should materialize in the salty red stream which poured from Walter’s mouth. But when he spat the object clear it turned into a tooth. Who was the kneeling stranger asking, “Mate?”

  And this other who came running down the tent lines to stop with hands on hips: “Well, I’ll be buggered. The quietest fight I’ve ever heard.”

  Go away. I’m ashamed.

  A bugle call climbed into the air above the camp and curled there, hanging like a question mark.

  His mind struggled to ask why. Why the fight? Groggily it seemed to have been over sixpence. Later he tried to explain things to Ollie Melrose who said, “Get back at him. But wait your chance and make it stick.”

  Pig lacked charm, his power was charm’s opposite, but the end result was the same. Everyone deferred to him. When Walter saw Pig surrounded by a bunch of cronies he felt like the lone enemy of evil. Some of those cronies were also Walter’s new friends.

  Even Frank and Nugget, these two wet heads of slicked down hair crossing the street to the Regal Café because the hotel did not serve an evening meal. Walter had dozed: now he hung from the window and watched the free show forty feet beneath, where the two known heads glistened, conferred, and bumped through swing doors. From high up the street revea
led its hidden purposes. No movement appeared random, as it would from ground level. It was easy for Walter to envisage for himself a serene track of fate leading from upper Pitt Street to the Quay, and across the harbour to Cremorne.

  He was too excited to feel hungry.

  Too happy.

  Five days ago a note had arrived from Frances saying Come next Saturday. We’ll be keeping watch on all ferries (the last phrase twice underlined, so that it flew from the surface of the blue notepaper). And she had finished How Exciting! in a burst of rocketry that glowed even now.

  Certainly throwing Pig Nolan into a heap of shadows.

  Walter had been given light duties in the officers’ stables when who should poke his nose through the railings but Pig. It was the day of the letter, though: nothing could touch the idiotically smiling trooper with his bucket, shovel, broom, and inclination to whistle (except it hurt).

  “Look who’s drawn the easy life.”

  Wait, warned an inner voice. Another side of him wanted to rush the gap, rattle the bucket, and childishly snarl. A third party was busy groping for a smart crack. A fourth fumed wordless.

  By good luck Captain Ashworth’s “Daisy” (hindquarters square-on to Pig) lifted her tail. The perfect oval that formed when muscles drew back filled with a half sphere of shit which enlarged, swelled like a green eye, rolled clear and slapped to the floor. It was followed by several more, a sequence of rapid dissolving drumbeats. Walter clownishly shrugged:

  What can I add?

  Pig slung an economical pellet of spit at the slithering mound, and departed.

  He could wait. Happiness had that effect: everything, it seemed, could wait. Paying back Pig, food, sleep, even the journey to Cremorne could be infinitely delayed. Happiness took care of time with a golden promise: now and forever …

  The room had turned almost completely dark. Walter stared at the ceiling and thought about home. Suddenly he was back on the place, swishing a stick through grass behind the house, eating dinner from a white plate rimmed with silver (a hated combination), listening to Douggie’s chatter while thinking of something else. But this Walter-at-home experienced an elating effect of fulfilment: he was able to view himself in the future. It was like looking into the facing mirrors of a barber’s shop and seeing not only the identical reflected images demanded by the laws of light but also varying images of himself as he must appear to others. The Walter who after his fight with Pig had angrily demanded a splash of water from a nearby firebucket and could not understand why his helpers refused (the bucket had been filled with sand) was, it had to be admitted, a bit of a prig. Introspective youth is always priggish —

  Don’t look. I’m ashamed. Ashamed of my blood, ashamed of my tooth lying in the grass (here come the ants). Ashamed of this humiliated body.

  Why?

  Because I love it. I love its name. I love my self and my self is broken (broken in the mirror). The prig in the mirror preceded by his physical template — about eighth down, sharp-outlined but one dimensional, not yet misty pale in the cube of glass. The army’s purchase: Weight, ten stone eight. Height, five feet ten. Chest thirty-seven, expanded, forty-one. Age, twenty. Moles and identification marks, one under left nipple. Eyes, blue. Hair, brown. Religion, Presbyterian.

  Pig had seen deeper than this.

  And deeper too than —

  Name?

  Walter Edward Gilchrist.

  Age?

  Twenty.

  Give date of birth.

  Third of April, 1894.

  Occupation?

  I help my father.

  Father’s occupation? (tap of pencil)

  Farmer.

  That makes you Farmer.

  (A pause)

  Next of kin?

  My mum or my dad?

  Father.

  Alan Gilchrist, “Whispering Pines”, Mt Cookapoi, via Parkes, New South Wales —

  Pig had brushed aside the outline fitted by these labels, impatiently thrust past any explanation, and socked the prig they sheltered, socked him hard and fair.

  Fair? Here was an odd number in the line of barber’s shop selves deferring to Pig’s judgment as readily as the next man, accepting not just the punishment he dealt, but his right to hand it out. What nonsense. I am the calm bloke of good fortune, the calm good bloke of fortune, the fortunate good of calm bloke …. Frank? Nugget? Ollie? They all appeared as witnesses, and when the barber in a judge’s wig asked if such was the case they replied:

  “Yeah, it’s like he says.”

  The many selves settled to one, the mirror faded, and he woke: the room had sailed some way into the night; the ceiling was grey and low-hung like a cloud. Then out of the cloud came the sound of an unoiled hinge being slowly opened. No, the creak of wood. The roof. Someone was creeping up the stairway to the roof. A female giggle came wrapped in a deep-voiced murmur. Walter crossed to the window feeling ill from waking too early, from falling asleep in his clothes. From below came the clap-clep-clup of a slowing carthorse, and the grate of iron-rimmed wheels.

  “Don’t,” said the female voice over Walter’s head. But the protest was followed by an unrestrained version of the stairbound giggle. Then again the male murmur, still muffled. Walter perched on the windowledge and leaned out till he saw the underside of curved rails, and just visible through the iron an army trouser lapped in folds of dark skirt.

  Now the man’s voice came through clearly. “You’re hard, Marge.” It was Frank Barton.

  The woman spoke at length, but now it was her turn to bury the words in cloth, or have them sucked away by the drop, or whatever it was that took them out of understanding: possibly just lack of context on Walter’s part, because clusters of enigmatic phrasing remained (had he heard everything, but none of it sense?):

  “… walk instead of dancing …”

  “… That’s what I think. After that — a comrade …”

  “… My kind of promise …”

  Voices you might hear when passing a theatre on a hot summer’s night …

  “Bill.”

  Then thunder on the narrow stairs (Frank) followed by a buffeting descent of wind (her): confusion that swirled on the landing outside Walter’s door. Unhesitatingly he knelt at the keyhole. Skirt, waist, back and dark head descended in hurried steps, but then side-on sped back. Yanked upwards? For a second the woman’s midriff filled the view, a blue woollen jacket with a thick belt of the same material, and in place of the buckle a large button. Lit from below in the stairwell’s pale electric light, the button stared at Walter like a large eye containing a single yellow spiricle.

  Then she sank, and although the standing form of Frank momentarily intruded, Walter found himself staring directly into her face. She was actually embracing Frank’s legs after an apparent drop to her knees, and guiltily Walter whipped his head aside. But she was oblivious to his spying. Young, with full lips and a broad chin, her repose might have been submissive, but no. It was both determined and surrendering, revealing the feminine gift of control in the midst of a sensual crisis. On her head sat a round black dish of hat with a rim as stiff as metal. When she intensified the embrace by hugging Frank’s knees the rim carelessly dented.

  With uncharacteristic force Frank said: “My room. Now.” Her eyes, such smoky glass, closed, rested, and she stood.

  They left, but Walter stayed on his knees, wondering. A minute later doors rattled in the still corridor below and with short steps and stocky Nugget Arthur climbed the stairs to the roof.

  In semi-darkness Walter poured water from the jug on the bedside table and splashed his face. He damped a corner of the towel and wiped chest and underarms. Then he undressed and climbed into bed. He lay between cool sheets and shifted his hands (wincing) behind his head. Should he feel cheap for spying? He realized now why the powdered dame at the downstairs desk had engaged in mysterious eye-play with Frank, and why the youthful companion had been consigned to an attic. The hotel obviously was a place for assignations.r />
  But he admired Frank and the woman. Suddenly Frank’s whole life spread out for inspection, not in its details but in character. Occupation, drover; age, thirty-two; place of abode, Moree. Walter knew no more facts than these, yet a sense of dignity and drama, of adult passion, now attached to the couple. And Nugget aloft, smoking his pipe as the night slipped away, he too attained stature in the world of men and women.

  Although the hotel served no evening meal its tiny dining room managed breakfast. Frank and Nugget arrived together, and lo! the manageress ushered in the smokey-eyed woman (no disapproval there). Frank leaned across:

  “Wally, I’d like you to meet my fiancée, Marjorie Hicks.”

  The breakfast passed like a convivial family gathering, with no hint of the night’s secrets.

  By eight thirty Walter had navigated Pitt Street as far as Martin Place. Along the way old men had shaken his hand, a greengrocer had given him an apple, and a woman in a doorway had winked invitingly: the world loved his uniform. In Martin Place a newspaper seller ran across and waved a Herald under his nose, and he stumbled to the Quay immersed in war news.

  “Hey soldier!” — another apple, which he noisily munched.

  France — that’s where they’d be in no time flat. He rolled the paper into a tight scroll and slapped it against the seam of his trousers. France: the satanic face of Robespierre, the fierce Sans Culottes and months with names like exotic fruit. Liberty, equality, fraternity … vaguely he glued together old injustices and this war, where the British forces were on the side of progress. He supposed the Germans were an Ancien Regime that must be struck down: only more vicious, more determined, rotten but not rotted. Not yet! Ha!

  He reached the Quay in a fighting mood. The ferry was not due for another twenty minutes so he promenaded, using the Herald as a swagger stick.

  “Who reaps the profit? I’ll tell you.”

  A man on a fruit box had gathered a crowd of a dozen or so where a street ran down from the Rocks.