“Nobody,” came a lame interjection from an onlooker in a canvas apron.
“Nobody? Do you believe that? Do you believe that?” cried the speaker in what seemed genuine alarm. Short, prominent-jawed, wearing thick spectacles and speaking in lisping but resonant accents, middle aged, a foreigner, he stepped down from the box which skidded and crashed behind him. “I’ll tell you. It’s the bosses who reap the profit. They build the guns, they make the ships, they fill brass shells with powder and put lead noses on them, but they aren’t the one to stand up and shoot them off. Oh no. It’s —” here he pointed to Walter, “it’s mother’s sons like this lad.”
The man in the canvas apron clapped mockingly with cupped hands.
The speaker stepped down and threaded left and right to confront Walter while the spectators formed a ring.
“Who do you think you’re fighting for?”
“It’s what, not who.” The words came easily: the argument had been rehearsed with Tom Larsen. Walter struck a pose with hands on hips, towering above the speaker. “Liberty,” he extemporized, “equality, and fraternity. All that stuff.” The crowd laughed: he laughed with them.
“Look at the wealthy classes, the munitions makers, the clothing manufacturers, the food companies, even the boot polish and brass polish makers. How many of them are serving in your company?”
“Never counted ’em.” The crowd was his. “Wait a sec — we’ve got Arnotts’ Biscuits. Colonel Arnott,” he informed the watchers.
“The boy’s got bite.”
“What does it matter?” The speaker turned on them, the clowns: “I’ll support this war,” he struck his own chest with an audible knock, “when all the people who own Australia are prepared to fight for Australia. Then I’ll don the khaki.”
“They wouldn’t have you, you’re undersized.”
Three wheezing breaths and the man was off again. “The wealthiest should be put in the front ranks, the middle class next, and then the politicians, lawyers, sky pilots, and judges in that order. When that happens I’ll be with you, brother.”
“Good on you,” said Walter. He had intended the comment to sound derisive, but it came out differently, as if he believed the man had said something worthwhile. Damn. It was the wrong time to be serious, the wrong place, here by the water where the salt tang came loaded with fish smells, and on nearby ships flapped the toy flags of half a dozen nations.
As they talked the warm sun brightly intruded, and Walter found himself edged around until it struck him in the eyes. The crowd lost interest and sauntered off. Then Walter heard the man say: “Don’t go to hell.”
They were alone: the moon-faced orator and the uniformed youth. And a strange thing happened.
It was exactly as if one of his childhood “staring attacks” had recurred, not engulfing him this time in a blank absence but creating two worlds, one of the street where brick and wood and water shone bright as crockery, the other of metaphor rushing vividly into reality. For it was all as if: as if he stood at the end of a chute down which four heavy weights, tombstones? yet also just the four words of the man trundled towards him, though so little time had passed that the two stood eye to eye: the fellow’s finger still upraised, the rasping hell yet flying from his throat. As the weights waddled closer the sunlit morning darkened, the life of the city never paused but certainly it slowed … as it slows for a drunk man and enables his body to weave through complication. And it was with a drunk’s happiness that Walter witnessed the deadly weights rumble harmlessly by, as he knew they would.
Nothing could touch him. He was charmed and blessed. His eye caught a placard where a fat John Bull’s braces flew off as he carved a turkey called Labour. In the midst of foolish joy Walter grabbed the man by the shoulder, a padded hand-grip to retain his balance, and giggled. The speaker’s flow had barely been interrupted, but in puzzlement he slowed, losing his shrill conviction as the rehearsed words slid to a halt:
“Because if you go to hell you’ll have gone there to give piratical, plutocratic parasites a bigger slice of heaven.” Then he said, “Oh dear,” and guided Walter to a seat on the upset fruit box. “Did I bother you?”
“Sorry, I wasn’t listening.” The same words serving now as years before they had served as apology to the kindly Mr Dougherty at Mt Cookapoi school, when time and again the teacher had guided him back to the world of globes and atlases after a “little absence”.
“Take this,” the sweating man said. It seemed to be a biscuit or wafer (it was a business card). “I’ve a son in the army,” he sorrowfully admitted. There were crumbs on his sleeve. He munched a biscuit produced from the same pocket. “Keep an eye out for him. Pliz?” The thick yellow card read: “Miles Milojevic, teacher of languages”, and gave a Paddington address. “In the midst of difference,” lisped the foreigner, “we find affinity. I love my son and he loves me. We share the same ideals. He’s not young, nor active. Why did he go?” Walter drew himself to his feet with the old man shaking his hand and clinging to his elbow. “I’m a Serbian, but all my life I’ve been against national frontiers. The whole muddle started with my country.” He seemed curiously proud of the fact. Then he brushed the front of Walter’s tunic where crumbs could not possibly have flown. “Good luck, and trust to God for your safety.” He gave a sigh and began to gather his gear, ignoring Walter completely as if the particular case had no contribution to make to the general task resumed, nor ever had.
Walter wanted to grab the man and say, What does it matter? What does any of it matter, all this to and fro when I’m about to dance across the water? But he only mumbled, “Oh, well …”, straightened his hat and set off.
On the ferry he stood near the bows where nobody else came, for balance holding the chugging craft’s forward flagpole. He wondered when Frances would see him (or if), and whether the statue’s pose he struck was what she might want of him, or whether he ought to loll in the shade, one leg nonchalantly on the rail prior to leaping ashore (forgetfully) at the last minute. Or else hide himself inside where the ladies sat, and disembark as a surprise. The tiled roofs of houses slid closer, dabs of smouldering paint on a hazy blue canvas. He concentrated his gaze on the bushy heights, not once consulting the wharf. He determined to find something of all-consuming interest up there, just an inch short of the skyline. His attention stayed aloft while the engine slowed, the boat bumped the piles, and the gangplank slapped palm-down demanding his springboard leap.
Even as he sped clear of the shed and slowed to a saunter he refused to be diverted from the long-distance objective. He would not turn, he told himself, before that waving fleck of blue off to the left actually spoke (sprinting closer, sweeps of white gesticulating). He mounted steps to a park and their paths intersected.
“Hey you!” — so different from the ladylike coo he expected that he dropped his guard as she landed at his side puffing, “Gosh didn’t you see me?”
In the midst of his muttered hellos she pronounced: “You are the handsomest man in uniform I’ve seen,” and without hesitation took his arm … took the uniform’s arm. But a living limb was inside it, flexing, steadying, hard from work, driving itself to make her feel his strength, even though as they set off she was the one in charge. His tongue felt dry and wooden, drilled through the base and glued, like a toy cockatoo’s.
“You’re so much older,” she observed, and for fifty yards did all the talking.
“See the cat there under the oleanders …
“Guess which place is ours?” She slowed, hung back, and pointed so that her sleeve fell clear to leave an arm bare for his eye to align itself along. The pure fogged crystal of a fingernail wavered across three of four identical double-storied facades until, engrossed in an encounter of cheek against forearm Walter happened to make a movement something like a nod, and the arm fell away.
“Kitty kitty kitty?” Frances half-knelt to attract the cat but still with four fingers retained a hold on his arm. She had changed too, though he d
ared not say so. Her hair released from its schoolgirl’s pigtail swayed across her back, and when she craned forward to softly snick her fingers the dark stream rushed over her shoulders parting left and right, leaving a glimpse of white neck.
“Pussy puss. Ah, you sweet careless darling. You don’t like your mummy do you. You don’t —” The cat arched its neck against a calf swathed in blue folds of dress. Tiny white flowers circled the hem, diving in and out. The nonsense she talked at first offended Walter because it seemed to exclude him. Then it thrilled him, because the pressure of her fingers remained to show she had not, as it seemed, gone drifting away at the first sight of a ginger tom. Therefore the stock phrases of endearment, new to ears from a male-dominated household, quickly took on an edge of intimacy.
She was staring up at him: dark concerned eyes.
“Well?”
“Well what?”
“Aren’t you going to give him a pat?”
The cat snaked between his legs, doubled back, arched greedily against his knee and purred in a long series of serrated burps.
“Walter, he loves you.”
He scooped the cat into a crook of his left arm while Frances reached across stroking the striped tail. Thus they spent the next twenty-five yards, a lifetime of near-embrace which ended abruptly when the cat clawed its way clear at sight of a bird. “Stupid cat!” said Frances with excessive vehemence, and released his arm.
“You hoo!” called a voice from an upper window.
“Hurry on down!” Frances yelled back. Did she need something or someone else, now that the cat had gone, to occupy the space between them?
A flushed, slightly overweight, intensely round-eyed girl appeared at the door to greet them.
“This is Walter Gilchrist at last. Meet my best friend Diana Benedetto. Please shake hands.”
They obeyed, Diana bursting out with: “Are you the only one so far?”
“Only one?”
Then they told him about the party. Someone called Harry Crowell was coming (unavoidably), and did he know Robert Gillen from away out the other side of Condobolin? Also such a wonderfully good friend, an actress named Sharon Keeley. And surely he’d heard from Billy — because as well Billy Mackenzie was due any minute.
Glumly Walter said no. But in the dark hall he gripped Frances fiercely by the elbow (brazen it out!) and swung her to face him: “I was hoping to have you all to myself”, approximately the fourth sentence he had dared since the ferry.
“Oh, you shall,” she caught a breath, giving him a grateful look. “I promise.” And again she took his arm, this time with a fervour, he swore, equal to his own.
11
Secrets
Billy loved his uniform, but in certain situations would dirty it without thinking. Thus before a full dress parade on the Wednesday after a stray dog had gone wild in the horse lines he chased the colonel’s saddled but riderless hunter through saplings and brought the mare safely back to camp the long way round, down through the swirling creek and up. Scratched and grinning he breasted the mockery of the headquarters detachment (his mates) and threw a mud-splattered salute at the chief:
“She’s calm as a baby … They shot the dog.”
Billy loved the light horse and its business with animals; the leather and brass, the confectionary odour of saddle soap, and the unfamiliar tasks of grooming — no longer after a hard ride was a horse given merely a quick wipe down and a feed of oats before being turned out into a paddock. But also he loved the strictly military side: the sweet Armourine oil which seemed pure enough to heal the sick, the glimmery but dull-drying Bisley Dead Black the crack shots used to blacken their rifle sights, and the ammunition in its heavy boxes, the cartridges themselves, the way each was identical with the next, and their seeming endlessness. He found himself whistling for hours on end as he groomed Novelty up to the shine of the equestrian painting that had been hastily hung in the otherwise rough and open-sided mess hut. And although it was no part of the light horse’s function (being mounted infantry) he and the riproaring Tip Markworthy had secretly practised firing from the saddle like Frontier tribesmen.
The army loved Billy in return. He was selected for a special demonstration in the Domain, where before embarkation they were to mount a tournament involving tent-pegging, tilting at the ring, lemon cutting — the display to be brought to an end with an exhibition of wrestling on horseback, a Balaclava Melee, and a massed charge towards the crowd.
He intended inviting the Reillys to come and see him. By God he did, right off.
But his uniform had been dirtied on the ferry. In getting it clean before showing himself he ended up lurking out of sight down near the water, fumbling about, furious, like a man with something to hide, or to discover — climbing back peeping through parted shrubs, peering over the crowns of bald rocks and now from the shaded side of a thick-boled gum: approaching clumsily from the rear of the house which he now realized was not the rear at all, but the proper front, showing a grand facade of triangled timber and pillowed stone to the bush-clad shore of Mosman Bay, an aspect which most arrivals never saw because it was the wrong way round from the ferry path.
To his amazement a cowboy emerged from the back door and with a wild cry leapt onto the grass. A stream of other figures followed, some of whom Billy recognized: Frances, her mother, then a plump giggling dark-haired girl pursued by a thin blonde one followed by Helen the maid wiping her eyes, and last an aloof character in a striped blazer — it was the Harrysomeone Billy knew by sight.
He calculated the range: fifty yards, no allowance needed for wind — bag first “whomsoever occupies the centre of attention whatever his badges of rank or lack of them”. Pot the fair-headed cowboy! who in his South American costume now whistled, summoning a fox terrier that hurtled down the side path. In a flash three balls on a length of cord blurred through the air, and the little dog whined as it tumbled.
The onlookers clapped.
Harry Crow (Crowell!) alone took an interest in the outside world. For a second his gaze glided towards the point where Billy stood, then jerkily took up the flight of a seagull and flapped away. Billy supposed he had better make himself public, but still hestitated. The letter had said twelve, it was now one. He would not have been in this muddle except for a conversation with a deckhand on the ferry that had led to a dirty belowdecks meeting with the Scottish engineer. A trip through the engineroom was followed by steam-heated tea that burnt his lips, and an interminable shouted conversation about the size, weight, coaling capacity, number of rivets, name of captain (och! he’d missed his stop), age of youngest boy sailor, ports of call, ports not called — of a dreadnought, H.M.S. Dreadnought herself, in the bowels of which this Glaswegian had once served. Billy would have gladly put his feet up and talked horses and rifles for the two rounds of the harbour he spent out of sight before disembarking: but he had not been able to get a word in. The man carried a pellet of lint in his left nostril, lodged there from blowing his nose on a fistful of cotton waste. When he drew breath preparatory to laughing the fluffy pod disappeared, then peeped out again to signal more talk, more tea, more wasted time that Billy out of perplexity and politeness could not bring to a stop. Perplexed because he had elected himself to the world’s centre: polished leggings, supple straps, gleaming emu feathers in his hat — what was he doing tongue-tied in a thumping hell? When at last he climbed from the oily heat and leapt ashore the deckhand called after him that there had been another light horseman on deck the previous time round — he’d looked in to tell him, but (swift glance over his shoulder) Haggis Head did not appreciate interruptions.
So there was Walter standing off to one side of Frances making cow eyes, and it was clear the mother disapproved. Did he think no-one could see? Mrs Reilly steered her daughter closer to the figure in fancy-dress who now uncoiled a long leather whip — the lash broad as the tail of a banner — and sent the thing hovering kite-fashion over their heads. Walter jumped out of the way when Frances alm
ost collided providentially into his arms. Like most overanxious men he needed a lesson in what a woman meant by the word “gallantry”. But did it matter? Although a hook was firmly in his mouth it was a million to one she would want to reel him in. How confoundedly ill-equipped he looked, having chosen himself a uniform (no-one else could have picked it) just a fraction too short in the legs, ditto at the sleeves, and tight across the shoulders. Or had he grown in the weeks since enlistment? It was not out of the question. His bray of laughter carried across the grass as awkwardly he leapt for the fluttering thong to bring it down, missed, and toppled over.
Billy had no such trouble with the world’s diversions. These days he donned his rough grace as easily as his uniform, knowing what he wanted from his fellow creatures by way of consolation and reward, how to reach for it, how to take. It was his polish that men envied and women admired: and under it his cheek. He was about to choose this moment to reveal himself, but the group went into a thong-fingering huddle, and he stepped back, an excluded soul in shadow.
Here lay a problem. While Billy’s grace made Walter feel raw, there was another kind of grace that Billy felt had been withheld from him. Why had he been first to swing a leg over the already-sprinting Novelty and daringly, dangerously pelt after the colonel’s maddened mare? It had nothing to do with winning the approval of the man. The truth was that Billy’s entire person made a demand of something beyond the world, but the world (as this something’s mouthpiece) sent back no answer. Was it God he still wanted to talk to? Although it looked otherwise, the world for Billy was a prison from within whose walls others could be seen enjoying free and unmerited favour from … somewhere. It wasn’t worldly grace, so it must have been the other.
Bugger him — there was Walter, ungainly, unworldly, now trailing indoors with the rest, enjoying a last glance round at the green and sunlit world that for him was no prison at all — more like a chapel, where he blundered, knelt, and was given — given what?
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