Bill the Bastard

by Roland Perry

  18

  GETTING BACK ON

  THE HORSE

  ‘I need a chair,’ Shanahan said to Paterson.

  ‘Sure, we can all sit outside the tent,’ he said, smiling at Phelan.

  ‘Not to sit on,’ Shanahan said. ‘I want to stand on it.’

  Paterson looked confused.

  ‘I am going to mount him.’

  ‘No, Major, I can’t allow that.’

  Phelan touched Paterson’s arm. ‘Please let him, Banjo.’

  Paterson blinked and smiled resignedly. ‘Let’s see how the Bastard reacts,’ he said, trying to maintain his authority while keeping Phelan happy. ‘He has been more bad tempered than ever since your separation. We couldn’t feed him a couple of times and he went on a sort of water strike for a few days. He kicked Sergeant Sutherland, which he never did before.’

  ‘Aye, it was more than a friendly tap,’ Sutherland confirmed with a rueful look.

  A trainer began to lead Bill out of the corral area. He reared up and refused to go through a gate. Three other assistants hustled to assist. He was unruly and uncooperative as the four trainers approached with him. They held on to him. He whinnied in protest, then went quiet. His nostrils twitched.

  Shanahan, aided by two sticks he had fashioned himself, moved a few paces towards him. The horse took a few hesitant steps his way. Then he trotted to him, head down. It wasn’t in supplication or a charge. Perhaps it was curiosity as his instinct and memory clicked together. He stopped a pace from Shanahan. Bill’s head stayed down, allowing Shanahan to stroke his neck.

  ‘You okay, cobber?’ Shanahan said. ‘You look in good nick.’

  Bill pushed his head towards Shanahan’s trouser pocket, looking for sweets. He was a little too boisterous. Shanahan lost his balance and fell over. Phelan and Paterson moved to pick him up but he wouldn’t let them. Instead Shanahan used his right leg and sticks to stand. He climbed onto the chair and stood balancing on the seat. He motioned for the four trainers to bring Bill close.

  ‘Wouldn’t it be best to ease him round a bit?’ Paterson asked.

  ‘Got to do it now,’ Shanahan said. He slipped his right boot into the stirrup and mounted Bill. The trainers backed away. Bill was frisky. He pranced a few metres. Shanahan fought the reins, trying to keep his balance in the saddle by leaning his body in the direction of his amputated leg. He felt as if his left foot was struggling to slip into the stirrup. He glanced down twice. At this moment more than any other, he felt as if the foot was still there, but it was more memory than tingling pain. He had been on a horse almost every day since he was a child, apart from the past six weeks. He was six when he first managed to ease his feet into short stirrups while riding a pony. Forty years on, the sensation of those 14,000 riding days would not leave him. Perhaps they never would. That phantom foot missed the stirrup too.

  Shanahan kept chatting softly to Bill, leaning his head close to the horse’s left ear. Bill jerked his way round the yard, forcing the others to jump clear. Shanahan used all his skills to keep control without responding to the horse’s testing of him. Bill broke into a canter. Shanahan attempted to pull him back a fraction. Bill reared up, though not really in anger or irritation. Shanahan’s centre of gravity was all over the place without the left leg. He slid down the saddle onto the horse’s rump and then slowly off, landing on his right leg. He fought to stay upright with a couple of hops along the ground before falling. Bill stepped away, apparently not sure if he should bolt or stay.

  Shanahan asked a trainer to bring his chair and sticks to him. He stood on the chair again. The four trainers manoeuvred Bill over to him as though they were trying to put him in an imaginary stall at a race meeting. The horse resisted a little, almost as if he was enjoying this new mounting ‘game’. Shanahan got astride of him a second time. Bill did not move. Shanahan’s right stirrup heel caressed Bill as it had every day, three times a day, for their short but intense four-month partnership. In that time they’d had more than 300 rides. They had been constant companions through hot days and freezing nights. Now Bill trotted around the corral in complete contrast to his behaviour minutes earlier.

  Shanahan wanted to take him into the desert. Phelan demanded that she ride also. Paterson had Bill’s partner, the gentle mare Penny, saddled while Shanahan put Bill through some paces. It was all coming back to both of them.

  ‘Reminds me of the Portuguese bullfighters mounted in the ring,’ Paterson observed. ‘I’m told by Sergeant Mulherin that’s how they fought together—total control, man and beast in symbiosis. No matter who came at them and with what, they darted about as one.’ He sighed regretfully. ‘It took a bullet to finish it.’

  ‘That wee neddie is totally wi’out fear,’ Sutherland said. ‘Just like his pal on him.’

  ‘I can feel a ballad coming on,’ Paterson said.

  ‘Really, Banjo?’ Sutherland asked hopefully.

  ‘They are poetry worthy,’ Paterson said with a tilt of his head, ‘but sadly the muse left me about twenty years ago.’

  ‘Maybe this sort of moment brings it back, hey, Banjo?’

  ‘It should, Sergeant, it should. But verse other than dogged doggerel is an emotive thing. To me, it’s the purest form of writing.’

  ‘Perhaps one day when you reflect on it, it’ll come.’

  Paterson grunted a laugh. Sutherland knew from long experience that it signalled a cynical comment.

  ‘Trouble is,’ Paterson said, ‘not much you can rhyme with “Bastard”. At a stretch—mustard, custard, rusted, busted and dusted. Oh, and lusted. We mustn’t forget lust, ever.’

  They watched as Phelan and Shanahan cantered out of the depot, heading for an oasis about two kilometres east.

  ‘I envy the bastard,’ Paterson mumbled.

  ‘Yeah, me too.’

  ‘I don’t mean Bill,’ Paterson said, turning to enter his tent office.

  ‘Like it here?’ Phelan asked as she held her cocktail up to Shanahan in salute.

  They sat at a wicker table under an awning on the veranda at the front of the ancient, four-level Shepheard Hotel in Cairo. It was 9 pm. Shanahan had been away from the hospital for ten hours.

  ‘Heard about it,’ he said, swirling his spiced tomato juice, ‘lots of history.’

  ‘I love it!’ she said. ‘You can watch the passing parade of Egyptians. You can see the VIP guest coming up the stairs. I could sit here sipping these concoctions all night.’

  ‘I believe you,’ Shanahan said.

  ‘Bob introduced me to Winston Churchill here last week.’

  ‘Winston who?’

  ‘Don’t be funny.’

  ‘After Gallipoli he’s no mate of any Australian’s,’ Shanahan remarked.

  ‘He paid the price: lost his job over it.’

  ‘I lost plenty of cobbers over it. They paid a bigger price.’

  ‘He was with a funny little Englishman dressed in Arab clothes. Somebody Lawrence. Bob says he is a spy in the Arab Bureau, trying to whip the Arabs into action against their Turkish masters. This fellow says an uprising may end Turkish control in the region.’

  ‘You can tell Bob from me to tell his little mate Winston that only a force like our Light Horse will smash the Turks and drive them out of Palestine and Syria,’ Shanahan said. ‘You have to hit them head-on and beat them. The Arabs don’t fight that way. They do it by “hit and hide” methods. That won’t work. The Turks have had them bluffed and under their control, more or less, for several centuries.’

  Phelan seemed to sense a certain vehemence in him. Was he bitter and frustrated over not being part of the Light Horse push? She was about to change the subject when a dapper little general stepped lightly up the hotel steps.

  ‘Is that . . .?’ she began.

  ‘Yes, General Chauvel.’

  He spotted Shanahan. Instead of entering the hotel, Chauvel walked to him as he struggled to stand.

  ‘No, Major,’ Chauvel said, ‘don’t stand.’


  Shanahan introduced Phelan.

  ‘I won’t interrupt,’ Chauvel said, ‘just want to tell you that you will receive the Distinguished Service Order, for your performance on 4 August at Romani.’ He shook Shanahan’s hand. ‘Congratulations. Very well deserved. It will be gazetted early in the New Year.’

  Shanahan saluted his commander-in-chief. Chauvel nodded to Phelan, turned on his heel and entered the hotel.

  Phelan kissed Shanahan and congratulated him. ‘DSO, a big honour!’ she said. ‘It’s just short of a VC, isn’t it? He clearly appreciates you.’

  ‘It’s mutual. If the British commanders were half as good we’d finish this war inside a year.’

  ‘I wanted to tell you something,’ she said. She sipped her cocktail, building courage. ‘I’m getting married.’

  Shanahan looked surprised but hid any disappointment. If he had been ambivalent about taking the relationship with her further, he wasn’t now. He was attracted to her beauty, vivacity and probably her compassion where he was concerned. But he would have had worries about aspects of her behaviour, especially her excessive drinking.

  He raised his glass: ‘My turn to congratulate you!’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Who is the lucky bloke? Banjo?’

  ‘Huh!’

  ‘You never did tell me about your date with him.’

  ‘Nothing to tell.’ She paused. ‘He likes a drink.’ She smiled approvingly. ‘He did recite a ballad when he’d had a fair bit of champagne.’

  ‘Called?’

  ‘“The Bastard from the Bush”.’ She lit a mini-cigar and spent a moment fitting it into the holder. ‘He has an unusual mind, hasn’t he?’

  ‘That ballad was by Henry Lawson, not Banjo.’

  ‘Okay, so I’m not up on my Aussie limericks,’ Phelan said. ‘He still has a risqué mind to repeat it to me.’

  ‘Bush literature is full of it. You just never read it in The Bulletin.’

  Phelan sniggered. ‘One verse did tickle me,’ she said. ‘I can recall a couple of lines . . . “The stranger made this answer to the captain of the Push, Why fuck me dead, I’m Foreskin Fred, the bastard from the bush.” That’s all I can remember.’

  Shanahan’s expression brightened. He finished the verse: “I’ve been to every two-up school from Darwin to the ’Loo, I’ve ridden colts and black gins, what more can a bastard do?” ’

  She sat back and sucked gently on her cigar. They watched the street. A man with a monkey was making the animal do smoking tricks with cigarettes. A hotel flunky moved them on.

  ‘I thought you were on the permanent engagement list,’ Shanahan said.

  ‘I was, but . . .’ She patted her stomach.

  ‘Oh, I see. How far gone?’

  ‘Didn’t you notice I was bigger?’

  ‘No . . . I just thought it was a bit of healthy condition.’

  ‘Well my “condition” is five months pregnant.’ She looked away, pretending to watch people walking up the steps.

  ‘Do you know whose it is?’

  ‘It’s Bob’s,’ she said indignantly, making lingering eye contact.

  He sipped his drink. ‘We last “met” in April,’ he said slowly. ‘That’s five months.’

  ‘I know. But it’s not yours.’

  ‘You certain?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Hmm,’ he murmured as he stared at her. ‘Well, they say a woman knows.’

  ‘Bob has work in Paris. I’m going with him.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Next week.’

  ‘That’s when they’re sending me to hospital in London. They call it “recovery”.’

  ‘Will you keep in touch?’

  ‘Sure.’

  Phelan reached across and kissed him warmly. ‘I’d like that,’ she said.

  Phelan glanced at her watch. ‘Bugger!’ she said. ‘We better get you back. Your nurse girlfriend will be annoyed with me.’ She drained her glass. ‘Just one other thing. You were “The Bloke”, weren’t you?’

  Shanahan chortled but remained enigmatic.

  ‘Why won’t you say?’ Phelan said. ‘It’s twenty years ago!’

  Shanahan reached for his sticks. ‘Nothing to tell,’ he said, hoisting himself up.

  ‘It’s why you were so popular. Why the poorer end of town wanted you to be Roma’s mayor.’

  Shanahan smiled. ‘I think you are going to tell it the way you want to,’ he said, ‘whatever I say.’

  Later, when Phelan was driving away from Abbassia, she happened to look at the back seat where her dolls, the doll’s house and the shawl were sitting. Placed in the middle of them was the wooden replica of Bill with an envelope tucked under its feet. Phelan stopped the car by the side of the road, opened the envelope and read the note from Shanahan:

  Thought you might want little Bill. I really appreciate what you did in getting me and big Bill together. But we don’t have much use for each other anymore, so I thought you might like him, as a thank you.

  A kiss for the other one that got away . . .

  Michael.

  Phelan rested her head on the steering wheel and cried.

  19

  THE MOODY BULL

  ‘I hear you have a rather special stallion at the depot,’ General Sir Edmund Allenby said to Paterson. The great, lonely figure of a man, as Paterson described him, relaxed a little in front of this old acquaintance. The ruddy-faced, moustachioed, 193-centimetre Allenby had been fired from the Western Front and been given the Eastern Front—Egypt and Palestine—as a consolation, replacing the ineffectual General Murray. The balding, 56-year-old Allenby had been storming about Cairo since his recent arrival, putting fear into every officer and soldier. Even at Moascar he had bawled out trainers and cooks and anyone else who displeased him.

  ‘Stallion?’ Paterson said, feigning ignorance.

  ‘Some monstrous Waler that no one can mount,’ Allenby said, tapping his boot with a riding whip. ‘A real hero at Romani, I’m told.’

  ‘Bad luck, General. He’s out on manoeuvres.’

  ‘Oh is he, Paterson? Pity. Let me know the second he returns. Want to get a good look at him. May even ride him meself.’ He pulled at the brim of his cap, which was jammed on his forehead, adding to his formidable appearance. ‘Or at least get a cavalryman to have a go.’

  ‘Of course, General.’

  They walked away clear of Allenby’s cowering staff of ten and chatted about the Boer War, where they had first met.

  ‘How are you, General?’

  Allenby glanced over his shoulder, making sure none of his people could hear him.

  ‘’Fraid I’m becoming very hard to get on with. I want to get this war over with.’ He slapped his boot with the whip and jerked his head to indicate his staff. ‘If anything goes wrong I lose my temper and cut loose on them.’

  They wandered to the horse corral.

  ‘Don’t go for your Walers much,’ he said, squinting around the paddock. ‘They’re a common, hairy lot compared to the horses your lancers brought to South Africa.’

  ‘To be fair, General,’ Paterson said, ‘those horses were a select group of police mounts in superb condition.’

  ‘Have you brought any over?’

  ‘A few. But we couldn’t get enough of them to make a difference in this war.’

  ‘But this motley lot,’ Allenby said, waving his hand at a field containing hundreds of Walers, ‘they’re not going to win a bloody war either!’

  ‘They were a big factor in belting the Turks six times in the Sinai.’ Paterson began to number them on his fingers. ‘Romani, Katia.’

  ‘Oh, yes, yes,’ Allenby said, cutting him off impatiently, ‘but what about Gaza 1 and 2? They didn’t do so well there!’

  Paterson didn’t know if the general was baiting him or not. ‘Are you serious, General?’

  ‘Of course I’m serious, man!’ he said, his complexion flaring up. ‘I don’t joke about war!’

  ‘As I under
stand it, General,’ Paterson said carefully, ‘the Light Horse and cavalry were sidelined for those battles. It was more an infantry encounter.’

  Allenby’s nose twitched. He was not used to being corrected or contradicted. Everyone, even prime ministers and other generals, tiptoed around him. Paterson was allowed some slack. He was an old friend. Allenby respected him as a poet, and Allenby loved poetry.

  ‘They were in it,’ he said archly, ‘they should take the blame too.’

  ‘With respect, General, you are replacing a commander-in-chief who was not up to it. That’s where the real problem with Gaza lies. Not the infantry and certainly not the troopers and my Walers. The infantry had it won. Murray and Lawrence, sitting in Cairo, panicked. They believed the Turks were sending reinforcements. They were not. The Light Horse was about to ride into Gaza for the coup de grâce when they, and the infantry, were pulled out. It was a classic case of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.’

  Allenby drew himself up to his full height, towering over Paterson. ‘That’s what you think, is it?’ he asked.

  ‘Everyone in the army knows this,’ Paterson said quietly, surprised that he had not already received a rebuke. Instead, Allenby swivelled on his feet and tapped his boot with his whip once more. His face was still dangerously red, as if he might explode. Paterson braced himself.

  ‘I like the way you say “my Walers”, Paterson,’ Allenby said, calming himself, ‘but I wouldn’t be so proud of ’em. Good God, I’ve seen better nags pulling milk-carts in London! They have poor breeding and it shows. Crossbreeds all! Draughthorses and Timor ponies in there too! Terrible! Thoroughbreds perform better. Breeding is everything!’

  ‘With respect, General, we are not trying to win the Derby here. We want stayers in really trying conditions. Horses with guts. Breeding is one thing, character is another.’

  Allenby looked back towards his staff. He had given Paterson enough of his precious time.

  ‘You may not have had time to study the record in the Sinai,’ Paterson persisted bravely. ‘When you do, you will see three things. First, the Light Horse were magnificent against massive odds in battle. Second, you have the best general on the front in your command.’