Stone Country

by Nicole Alexander

  ‘We won’t make the money we have out of hides next season,’ said Ross. ‘Turkey’s been the main buyer over the last couple of years, but if this war is anything like the last one that will change.’

  ‘You know I have to sign up,’ interrupted Hugh. ‘Don’t you agree with the Prime Minister that if Britain’s defeated, then Australia could be as well? We have to help them because we might need their support one day.’

  ‘Beef will rise in price. It’s a pity we don’t still own Gleneagle. Wool and meat, that’s what armies march in and on.’ Ross averted his son’s gaze. The boy hadn’t left since Darcey’s passing and Ross didn’t want anything to change.

  ‘Dad?’ Hugh screwed up a page from an old newspaper and tossed it at Ross to get his attention. ‘The government will call for volunteers. The papers have been talking about what might happen for weeks.’

  Ross shut the ledger. ‘This is war, not some jaunt overseas. What happens if you don’t come back?’

  ‘I’ll come back, Dad.’ Hugh sat on the chair opposite his father.

  If only it were that simple. That a young man could do his duty and return justifiably proud of the contribution made to a family eager to embrace him. ‘It took a lot of winning, the last war. Visit the Anzac Memorial when you’re next in Darwin.’

  ‘I have,’ replied the boy.

  ‘Hugh, plenty can happen in a time of war. Let someone else go in your place. We’ll wait and see what happens. If things get worse then consider enlisting, but don’t rush in. You’re my eldest son. If you don’t come back, what happens then? To Waybell and everything else we own. It’s taken generations to amass it all.’

  ‘To not go would be wrong,’ argued Hugh. ‘It should be my decision.’

  With the twins still so young, Hugh was all he had. A single person who he felt he could truly rely on, who was not just his son, but also a friend. A word he could never have used in association with his own father. Somehow, every wrong turn in his life had merged to form this young man and bring him to the place he now occupied by Ross’s side. How was it then that, for a second time in his life, a dictator’s decision on the far side of the world in an unknown country had the potential to wreck their lives? Ross felt Hugh slipping away, receding like a mirage until the day of departure came and they locked hands one last time.

  ‘Dad?’ questioned Hugh.

  He marvelled at Morgan Grant’s fateful determination to send Alastair to war, while keeping him at home. How could a father do that? Make a decision that could result in the loss of a son, while allowing the other to live with the consequences of not serving, as if his two boys were toy ships at sea and he was the errant wind that filled their fragile sails.

  Ross wasn’t like his father. He wasn’t going to assume he knew better and make decisions on his grown son’s behalf. However by not overruling Hugh, every wound he carried would be torn open. And if the boy didn’t return, Ross understood he would truly be lost.

  Hugh waited for an answer, his face a mixture of excitement and concern. And Ross saw that it was not the worry of having to obey a father that made the boy uneasy but that of a son determined to do what he wanted. Ross saw the difference, recognising the strength of character and the sharp aspect of defiance. He’d lived with the consequences of having the terms of his life dictated and he knew the ache of ostracism. He’d felt like an outcast most of his life. Men could be cruel. A father needn’t be.

  ‘When do you want to leave?’ said Ross, the saliva in his mouth drying up.

  ‘Soon,’ answered Hugh with relief. ‘I’ll start off with the cattle and then go on from there.’

  ‘You can go via Adelaide,’ suggested Ross. ‘Make yourself known to the solicitor and check on the old family home.’

  ‘Sure,’ answered Hugh. ‘You know, I reckon Edward will volunteer as well. He’s under forty years of age. The cut-off point for volunteers.’ Hugh inclined his head to one side. In the light he resembled his mother. ‘I thought you’d like to know.’

  ‘What Edward Carment does is of no interest to me, Hugh,’ said Ross.

  ‘I know that. I know you hate him.’

  ‘I don’t like or dislike him. I don’t know the man. If anything, I should probably thank him for raising you,’ conceded Ross.

  ‘We never did get on very well, especially after he found out about you. Not that it matters now.’ His face brightened. ‘I thought that if Edward did enlist I might tell Mum that if anything happened, you know while he and I were away, you’d help her. Can I tell her that?’

  ‘Of course. You tell your mother to contact me if she needs anything.’

  ‘Thanks. It’s just in case.’

  ‘Sure,’ said Ross. He doubted Maria would make contact even if the need arose. They were strangers, connected only through their son. The slender memories of what might have been long bested by Darcey.

  ‘I might go and see Eustace and Parker.’ Hugh nodded in the direction of the camp, getting up to leave. ‘They’ve got a concoction they’ve been brewing.’

  ‘Have one for me,’ said Ross. War. He hated wars. If he was abroad right now, he’d walk straight up to Hitler and shoot the man in the head. ‘Hugh, can I ask one thing?’

  ‘What, Dad?’

  ‘Come back to me.’

  Hugh lingered in the doorway, framed by dwindling light. For Ross, it was a moment he knew he would recall forever.

  ‘I will. I’m not your brother, Dad.’

  Ross nodded. There were things he wanted to say but the words wouldn’t form. He closed the ledger, resting the magnifying glass on top. ‘I’m proud of you, Hugh.’

  His boy smiled. Then he was gone.

  Epilogue

  1940

  In the middle of the night, when he often woke, Ross thought of God and the Being’s expectations and the missionary’s cross on that shabby hill. And, spreading out from that lonely place, he imagined people praying as if by pressing palms and dirtying knees answers might be given. He wasn’t one of those folk who scrabbled for reasons. He knew the truth. That it was up to men to help themselves. Ross reckoned that although he’d made a mess of things, maybe that was the way his life was supposed to be, for in the end he’d come out of it all right.

  Wrestling his body out of the chair, he leant on the cane for support. The aches and pains rarely varied, but today a general feeling of unwellness struck him to the point of exhaustion where even breath became a difficulty. It was as if the mechanism of living was coming undone. Ross had never been afraid of death but he wished for a good day tomorrow so that he might write Hugh one more letter and tell him again that he was proud.

  In the kitchen he levered open one of the storage tins with a screwdriver, rummaging around for the bottle of brandy the cook used for cakes on special occasions. He’d not drunk since his accident, and Ross wasn’t sure why, after so much time and so many years of pitying desperation, he was finally close to succumbing, except that with Darcey’s passing and Hugh’s leaving, the prospect of the coming years seemed limited. And as a father he wanted to toast his son to battle. The 6th Division had been formed during October and November in 1939 and had embarked for the Middle East earlier this year to complete their training. Hugh was already abroad serving his country as his uncle once had, as Ross would have liked to. Had the boy waited a little longer to enlist he might not have been accepted, for in early 1940 each of the armed services had introduced regulations that banned the enlistment of people not ‘substantially of European origin’. It was a sore point for Ross that, if not for Hugh’s hastiness and determination, he’d still be home, and safe.

  Ross held the bottle to the light and looked past the dark fluid to the distant cliff. It hung as always, starkly impenetrable, dwarfing the homestead and the happenings around it. He dropped his gaze to the grassy plain and caught sight of the twins playing under a tree with Jo. He chuckled at their antics and then, uncorking the flask, he sniffed at the alcohol. The scent of it was pure and
sweet, tart and enticing. He raised the brandy a little higher in salute to his son and in respect of that other war long ago, when life was still vague in terms of destination and he’d laid on the lawn in Adelaide, smoking and drinking whisky with his brother, outwardly smiling and laughing, inwardly desperate to be going too. To have the chance to prove that he too was a man.

  ‘Ross?’

  Ross set the untouched bottle down and pivoted on the cane. The man before him was grey-haired and tall. Dark-eyed and tanned. And he was big. Not fat but solid. Well fed. The sleeves of his white shirt were rolled to his elbows and a waistcoat fitted neatly across a trim stomach. Ross squinted at the visitor, trying to place him, cursing at his fading eyesight.

  ‘It’s me. Alastair.’

  Ross took a stumbling step forward.

  ‘How are you?’ The stranger’s faced was lightly creased with worry.

  Ross took another step.

  ‘Don’t you remember, Ross? It’s me, your brother.’

  He walked closer and Ross saw with a start that it was his brother. Older and fitter and still handsome. The cane wobbled under his grasp. The wonder of seeing Alastair struck him speechless. How was it, after all this time, he was alive and standing before him barely altered by the years? Ross wanted to hug him and shout. To reach out and touch this person from another age, part childhood fable, part ghost; a dream. When he blinked Alastair still stood in front of him in the kitchen doorway, smiling broadly as if everything was unchanged.

  ‘How are you, Ross?’ Alastair asked again.

  Ross took a step closer and, lifting his fist, punched Alastair in the face.

  ‘Fine. How are you?’

  ‘You’ve broken my nose,’ complained Alastair, stemming the blood with a tea towel. He walked outside and Ross trailed him, noticing the slight limp. ‘I travel all this way and this is the welcome I get?’ A flock of geese flew overhead, honking loudly.

  ‘Where the hell have you been? What happened?’ Ross thrust the cane in Alastair’s direction.

  ‘Connor said you’d be riled but I didn’t expect this.’ Alastair reached for a pocket-flask, took a sip and then offered the flagon to Ross. He refused. ‘Have some. It’ll help settle your nerves. Anyone would think you were the one who went to war. Cripes. Connor said you were crook, but really, Ross, you look like you’ve been run over by a Cobb & Co. coach, not by one mangy gelding in the middle of nowhere.’

  Ross reached out with the cane and whacked Alastair in the side of the knee.

  ‘Steady on, Ross,’ said Alastair.

  ‘You’ve seen Connor?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes. When I reached Adelaide I contacted the family solicitors, who told me everything, and then I tracked down Connor on reaching Darwin. It was him that brought me here. I’m sorry, Ross. For all of it.’

  ‘Are you? You know Darcey’s dead?’ said Ross.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘The rest of the family are as well.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘What the hell happened? We were told you were wounded and that you’d deserted.’

  Alastair examined the tea towel before balling up the material and dropping it on the ground. ‘I’d had enough. They wanted to cut my leg off, so I pulled my boot on and left.’

  ‘What do you mean you left?’ asked Ross.

  ‘I’d been caught up in a bombardment. We went over the top one stinking night and Fritz gave us an absolute pounding. I ended up buried during the shelling. I figured I was dead, but a bloke saw an arm or leg sticking out and decided to pull on it to see if anything was left on the end of it. I don’t remember much else. Just the noise of the attack and this solid weight taking the last of my breath. I woke up in a field hospital with this pommy doctor telling me that if the wound didn’t heal properly I might well get an infection, and I looked across the ward and there was this soldier getting his leg sawn off.’ Alastair lit a cigarette and inhaled. ‘They had a bucket in a corner that they were dropping the amputated limbs into and it was then that I decided I wasn’t going back to the front. So I waited until I was stronger and I got out of there. I stole a French ambulance-driver’s uniform from a soldier who didn’t need it anymore, and with the help of my schoolboy French pretended to have amnesia. Eventually I was taken to another field hospital. I moved hospitals a few times, until one day I was fit enough to leave. I left during the night and kept on walking away from the front. France was in a mess. People continually queried who I was but usually they were kind. They’d feed me and put me up for a few nights. Eventually I met up with some Catalans in the south of the country and made it into Spain with their help.’

  ‘And what about us?’ asked Ross. ‘Your family? Why didn’t you come home?’

  Alastair pinched the bridge of his nose. ‘I think you broke it.’

  ‘Why didn’t you return or at least let us know that you were alive?’

  ‘Return to Australia to be court-marshalled? To have Father tell me how disappointed he was? How I’d let down the whole family? I couldn’t do it. I didn’t want to do it,’ he stated bluntly.

  ‘But Darcey?’ argued Ross.

  ‘Yes. Darcey. Out of all the people who were hurt, it was her I thought of the most.’

  It was as if Ross had been physically struck. He found himself thinking of mighty Achilles dragging the slaughtered Hector by the neck, in one final insult. Ross stared at his brother, recalling the years that he’d mourned him. Over half his lifetime. It was all for nothing. Alastair had never really cared about him.

  ‘You’re a coward,’ said Ross, his voice shaky. ‘A snivelling coward.’

  Alastair shrugged. ‘You might see it that way,’ he said. ‘But I’m alive. Which is more than can be said for the thousands of young men who died in the mud of France. You didn’t go, so you’ll never understand what it was like over there. The days of monotony and then the sheer carnage. Men charging into machine-gunfire and barbed wire at the blow of a whistle. Hundreds of men dead in the time it takes to drink a beer. That’s not war. It’s murder.’

  ‘You have no honour!’ yelled Ross. It was impossible to bring together this man standing before him and the brother he remembered.

  ‘There are many kinds of courage, Ross. Maybe I had more of some and less of others. What I didn’t have is what it takes to be a slaughterer of men. Some of the boys enjoyed it, or appeared to. Your mate Drummond behaved as if he were at a duck shoot. I refused to. They’re the same as us, those boys we fought, and yet someone in power states we’re enemies and we blow each other up. There’s a different law that comes into being when you’re given a rifle and told it’s all right to kill another man, and it’s wrong. Some take to it. I didn’t choose to.’

  ‘I never would have done what you did. Abandon your regiment. Disgrace the family,’ replied Ross.

  ‘We’ll never know, will we?’ countered Alastair.

  His older brother looked so well, completely unbroken by events. ‘Why did you come back after all this time?’ asked Ross finally.

  Alastair took a last puff of the cigarette, casually flicking it aside. ‘This new war, of course. We knew Hitler was causing chaos, most likely long before you people learnt the extent of it, and I wasn’t going to wait around to be seconded by the Allies to assist in some manner and be caught up in one of their bunfights. I figured after all this time I’d be forgiven for my misdeeds. At least by the family.’

  ‘And you never gave thought to any of us?’ asked Ross.

  ‘Yes, but you were here, Ross, and you always were more interested in Father’s rural properties than I was. Not that, as it turns out, you could be relied upon to pick up the pieces in my absence. From what the solicitor told me in Adelaide, you don’t really have the right to comment on my life. You disappeared just like me and you also abandoned Darcey.’

  ‘You and I are nothing alike, Alastair. Besides, Darcey and I had reconciled.’

  ‘So I hear,’ replied Alastair coolly. ‘Remember when we talked
about coming up here to Waybell? You were so keen. Well, here we are. I must say, it’s not much, is it? Hardly the great adventure that you dreamt of, and yet you stayed.’ Alastair glanced at the cliff. He gave only the slightest indication of unease but Ross could tell his brother was uncomfortable in this environment. ‘I should have written, I suppose. At least to you. The longer I stayed away, the more difficult it became to make contact. Time gets away. You know how it is.’

  ‘No, I don’t.’

  ‘It was a shame having to leave Cairo. I managed to wrangle a position as an assistant to a British archaeologist and we’d just returned from eight months in what was southern Mesopotamia. George was investigating the Babylonians, who developed a new approach to astronomy, which the Greeks continued with. The Tigris River, Ross, you should have seen it.’

  Even if he’d had the strength, he was beyond the task of punishing Alastair for his selfishness. It was impossible to hurt the man he’d idolised from childhood, but the profound disappointment he felt as his brother talked on about his adventures had the same rank taste of blood and despair that came with being on the losing side of a severe clobbering. He realised that grieving for Alastair these many years in the hope of keeping his brother close had done them both an injustice. His brother wasn’t worthy of his devotion.