Where the Line Breaks

by Michael Burrows

  I have had a dream recently, recurring, where I arrive home, and step off the boat in Fremantle to your waiting arms, the war a distant memory. I hope it proves foretelling, I don’t believe the Jackos can withstand us much longer.

  On Wednesday, we had a whole Brigade sports day in a small market town nearby. I can proudly state that the 10th outdid themselves in skill and panache, and were considered the eventual winners by all I spoke to afterward. Nugget performed valiantly, helping himself to a tidy share of winnings throughout. His finest moment may have come toward the end of the day, when he fell from his horse in a bout of horseback wrestling, and managed to break his fall in a large pile of fresh manure. A most splendid day was had by all.

  I feel I am babbling, and would hardly be upset if you failed to make it this far. I have forgotten how to speak. Three pages of writing, you will despair, and not a word of it legible. Tomorrow we return to the line.

  Yours, obediently.

  They arrive back at camp late in the evening. The horses are tired and the men have lost all sense of decorum or propriety. It is like herding sheep, ordering one group of men to tend to the horses, another to fetch water, a third to start a fire. It’s like graduation day at university, or the changing room before a grand final; the nervous excitement of children waiting expectantly for affirmation. He collapses into his bedroll long after night falls, and barely has time to dream before the bugle calls reveille and his tired eyes spring open once more.

  They are to ride out at 0700 hours, after bathing in the river and forcing down a breakfast of Nugget’s burnt porridge. As they are about to leave, a mail transport arrives from the depot, and he decides to let the men read before they ride off to their new coordinates.

  There are two letters for him, one from Rose, and one in a cool, cream envelope in a scrawled hand he doesn’t recognise. He holds the paper for a long time before he reads it, sensing her presence, imagining her sitting down to write it, between shifts, with the sun setting over the island out the dormitory window. She has been thinking of him. He has the proof in his hands.

  Lieutenant Lewis, she writes. I should have written you sooner.

  He can see the sun in her writing, the olive branches in the loops of her letters, the Greek heroes frolicking in the shallows of the blotted ink. He is in love with her handwriting, her thoughts, the image of her hands folding the paper and sliding it into the envelope, running her pink tongue over the seal, his name repeating in her head as she writes. He doesn’t want to read any further, he doesn’t need to.

  I should have written when I first found out, but I was angry at you. I didn’t want you to know. I am back in England, and against my better judgement, Father has persuaded me to write. You have an obligation, now. You have a reason to survive.

  Her writing gets messier the further he reads, rattier, distracted. Like she can’t bring herself to write what she’s writing.

  She writes, in a scrawl at the bottom of the page, Her name is Harriet. She has your curls. She is your daughter.

  She signs off without warning, a bomb going off in the bottom right-hand corner, Nancy, and he closes the letter. When he stands to gather the men, his legs give out. He jumps in the saddle before his body can fall apart, and they ride further than they would normally. He doesn’t want to stop. He doesn’t want time to think.

  The games have slowed down as they return to the river, though the competition between regiments turns fierce as the evening wears on. Rule-keeping grows notably lax. At one point, he is forced to break up a fight between two close friends, barracking for different men in the final of the horseback wrestling. As the horses wheel in the dirt, the crowd blurs, messy around the edges – breaking off into small groups of friends, troopers napping in the sun, bottles of wine passed around right under his nose, knowing Lieutenant Lewis won’t say a thing.

  In one corner of the field a large group of men stand in a rough circle, distracted by something on the ground. He saunters over, and pushes through the fringe to discover the entertainment. A small, round arena has been constructed, dug into the ground, walls made from shirts, bridles, whatever is hanging around. Two wicker baskets are overturned on opposite sides of the shallow pit.

  ‘Alright, sir, is there a problem?’ A trooper he doesn’t know stands in the circle, holds his slouch hat in his hands, full of ripped and faded notes.

  ‘No problem. Just curious.’

  ‘Yes, sir. Thanks.’

  The man nods and passes the hat around the crowd, and when all bets have been placed, steps out of the ring. The men hush in anticipation. He hasn’t moved. The men beside him hold their breath as one as the trooper places a hand over each basket.

  Nugget is at his right shoulder. He doesn’t know how long he’s been standing there, or if he’s been talking, if he’s expected to respond. Nugget’s got a queer look about him, eyeing him up.

  ‘Didn’t think this’d be up your alley, Al.’

  ‘What is it?’

  A smile floods Nugget’s face.

  ‘Legs or Tails?’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  The trooper lifts the baskets simultaneously. A large desert scorpion twitches where the right basket had been. From the left basket scurries forth the largest spider he’s ever seen.

  ‘Tarantula,’ whispers Nugget, ‘as dead cert as you can get.’

  He looks at the two animals. The tarantula is larger, but covered in a soft fuzz. The scorpion has huge pincers and a deadly looking spiked tail. Its body is ridged and armoured, metallic looking. It is three times the size of the scorpions back home.

  ‘No way. The scorpion has to win, surely.’

  Nugget looks across at him, a smile spreading across his face.

  ‘Care to make it interesting?’

  He looks back at the animals. The tarantula attempts to climb over a shirt to safety, but one of the troopers pokes it back with a long stick. The scorpion scuttles forward.

  ‘Sure.’ He never bets, hasn’t his whole life. Never joined in on the long card games aboard the Mashobra, never throws away his pay in the local towns. Lieutenant Lewis sits and watches. Stays silent. You’re gambling with your life, Rose had said when he told her he’d signed up, but it hadn’t seemed like a wager then. It was justified. Nancy had loved to stalk the ward throwing out cigarette boxes, telling them they were more likely to be killed by rotting teeth and disease than the bombs and bullets of the Turks. Easy for her to say, from the safety of the hospital. She’s not putting her life in any danger. He’s never gambled. Not with money, at least. But then he’s never been offered such a guaranteed result. He can picture the scorpion stinging the spider repeatedly between the eyes from a safe distance, emerging unscathed. ‘One month’s wages, and loser tends both horses.’

  Nugget breathes out.

  ‘Too much?’ Alan teases.

  ‘Ah, fuck it. Bring it on.’ Nugget spits into his hand and they shake.

  The animals are circling each other in the makeshift pit, sizing each other up. Lightning fast, the scorpion shoots forward, crushing one of the tarantula’s legs in a pincer, tearing the furry limb off with an audible crunch, and then retreating. The spider staggers for a second or two, then regains balance. The scorpion discards the leg.

  He glances across at Nugget and smiles. There’s a dark patch of sweat blooming on the back of Nugget’s shirt.

  The scorpion shoots forward again, and grabs another of the furry legs in a jagged pincer. The spider wriggles, threatening to throw the scorpion onto its back through sheer size. The hooked tail extends back, and once, twice, three times, the venomous barb stabs into the gleaming black eyes.

  It’s all over. He whoops with joy into the night sky, surprising himself with his enthusiasm. He doesn’t know if he’s happier to be right, or for Nugget to be wrong.

  He’s expecting the tarantula to topple over, curl up with its legs in the air, but it doesn’t. Quicker than he can catch, the spider is hovering over the sco
rpion’s armoured abdomen, bobbing up and down multiple times, long fangs dripping. Then silence, both animals unmoving.

  The spider limps away. Injured, but alive. Which is more than he can say for the scorpion. The spider’s fangs have made short work of the hard armour on its back, ripping through the thick body, revealing a dark, greyish ooze. The tail continues to twitch for another thirty seconds.

  ‘No rush on those winnings, mate,’ says Nugget as he pushes in for a closer look at the carnage, ‘but my horse likes carrots. And he can be a right impatient lout.’

  Alan hadn’t realised he was holding his breath. The air tastes old.

  They release the tarantula back into the scrub before returning to camp.

  81 See Jennifer Hayden, Unearthing the Unknown Digger. For arguments supporting the idea of a transfer to the Western Front see Max Whitlock, Australia’s Unknown Digger, Fremantle Press, Fremantle, 2000, and Kathryn Hounslow, ‘The Unknown Digger Revealed’ in The Australian Literary Review, Issue 3, Volume 12, April 2003. For a convincing argument for a death in the Middle East, as early as the defence of the Suez Canal, see Susan Freedland, The Mystery of the Unknown Digger, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2004.

  82 ‘The Morning of the Attack’ has always been one of my favourites – I wrote a long essay in my last year of high school arguing that the attack at The Nek, and the similar action at Lone Pine, so clearly referenced in this poem, was a sort of proto-origin story for the Australian spirit, a creation myth along the lines of Peter Parker’s spider bite or the death of Bruce Wayne’s parents. I lie in bed and imagine retelling the story of how Em and I met (minus the public nudity and cheating) on make-believe talk shows, chuckling to myself at the foolishness of young love. Maybe I’ll tell them how we rescued Artie from the desperate clutches of the smoking lady, chased from that godforsaken rural town by a mob of trident-bearing country bumpkins. Hold for the rapturous applause of the appreciative audience. Tell self-deprecating joke. Laugh. Repeat. Live happily ever after.

  83 Whitlock, Australia’s Unknown Digger, p. 114. Jennifer Hayden responded to, and eviscerated, Whitlock’s claims in a forty-page article titled ‘On the Repressed Sexualities of the Unknown Digger’, published in The Journal of Australian Literary Criticism, Issue 4, Volume 25, Sydney, 2001.

  84 I emailed Jennifer recently to clarify a quote from her third Unknown Digger book, and to ask her if she’d had a chance to review the first three chapters I sent her last week. She emailed me back last night. Jennifer.Hayden@bloomsbury.com to mdenton@ucl.edu.uk: Hey Matt, sorry I haven’t had a moment to read your chapters yet, but the next AAC Conference has pulled away a lot of my time. Rest assured, I’m very excited to read some well-researched, eye-opening new ideas. Keep writing, keep fighting. J.

  I showed Em and she smirked and said, You gonna buy her a dog too?

  Keep fighting, Jennifer says (from the final lines of ‘To the Poet’) – and I intend to.

  85 See unknowndigger.com.au.

  86 Howard Greene, Six Essays on the Australian Spirit. Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 2010. For further analysis of the proposed timeline of events, see Chapter 5.

  Found myself alone with the Prof in his office for the first time since the party, and had to bite my lip to stop myself from saying something. Should’ve seen him: ‘dark salmon’ shirt, red chinos, yellowing cardigan, hair falling in droopy curls from his forehead – he’s a caricature of British professors, a walking joke. If anything, I feel sorry for him.

  87 Freedland, The Mystery of the Unknown Digger, p. 52. We’ve fallen into a nice routine recently – I finish work earlier than Em, so I catch the tube back to hers and take Artie for a long walk, then curl up and watch TV or write with him on my lap, and when she gets home we have dinner. Then we both fall asleep on the couch in front of a movie, until Artie wakes us needing a late-night pee, and I catch the bus back to mine. Last night the Prof asked Em to work late, so I ate dinner by myself, then fell asleep with Artie in my arms, and only woke up when Em crashed her handbag down on the table.

  Good day? I asked, wiping drool from my face, cleaning up my dinner mess, making sure Artie hadn’t peed on me in his sleep. Em slumped onto the floor, pulled Artie into her lap and mushed his curls against her chest, riling him up with tickles until he was barking.

  The neighbours, I reminded her. It’s half-eleven.

  He missed me, she says, I can’t help it.

  And she’s right – I did get to spend all evening with him, and she had to work late. And the neighbours think we make too much noise anyway. So I get down on the floor and we roll around like we’re in a commercial. Then Em gets weird. Makes a big song and dance of looking at the clock and yawning, because she can’t straight out ask me to leave, apparently, but I can’t stay, because she’s not ready to share her bed, yet. I get up and gather my bits, pull Em to her feet and kiss her, but as I’m about to leave, she grabs my hand and leads me to into the bedroom. I’m not complaining, mind. She sits down on the edge of the bed, undoes my belt, and pulls my jeans down to my knees.

  Are you kicking me out, or what?

  She smiles up at me.

  We kiss, jeans around my ankles, and I pull her top off and fling it across the room. I lean over and kiss the soft skin of her neck.

  Wait, she says, not yet.

  I lie down behind her, and she folds my arms around her chest. Artie jumps up into the gap between our legs, and burrows down into the doona. We lie that way for a while, until the sky outside is deep purple and the foxes are screaming in the street.

  Can I stay? I whisper in the general direction of her ear.

  Don’t you have the early tute tomorrow?

  In the dark she sounds like a femme fatale from a black-and-white noir, all throaty and hoarse. I do, I did. I didn’t care. I wanted the fresh laundry smell of Em’s sheets. I didn’t want her to be alone.

  Can I stay anyway?

  But she was already asleep. I rolled out of bed and locked the back door, put the leftovers in the fridge, blew out the candles. We slept naked. She fits perfectly into my warmth, her hair flying away over the pillows. She snuffles sometimes, in her sleep (she’d hate me writing that, and she’d deny it, but she does), little contented puppy sounds. So does Artie. I stuck one leg out of the covers to cool down, and folded the other knee into her curves.

  She woke late this morning, snuggling into me and getting both of us hot and bothered, then blamed me for making her late, did her make-up on the tube and didn’t have enough time to eat a proper breakfast. She says tonight will be more of the same. These late nights are killing her. Artie cried when we left the house.

  She kissed me when we went our separate ways, and said, Thank you for last night, like what I had done was special.

  88 See Chapters 4 and 5 in From Busso to the Holy Land (despite Curtin-Kneeling’s less than heartwarming feedback, I still turn to his work for the most accurate overview of Alan’s life), which contains a detailed overview of Lewis’s time on the island. I told Em she needed a holiday. We needed a holiday. She was sitting outside smoking, Artie sniffing the rapidly dying flowers in the flowerbed at the back of the garden. The sun had dropped behind the chimneys of the houses opposite, and it was getting chilly.

  I’m not sure I could take the time off work, she said, flicking the cigarette butt into the pile of mouldering leaves I’d raked up two weeks earlier and never removed.

  Sandy beaches? Nothing to do all day but read?

  Somewhere in mind? Artie came back, paws tiny and muddied, and she stopped him from jumping up on her. No, Artie, you’re filthy!

  Guess. I smiled. Greek salad and calamari?

  She stopped scratching Artie’s ears and gave me The Look. Lemnos? Seriously?

  I shrugged.

  That’s not a holiday, that’s a research trip.

  Forget it then, I said, heading back inside. She stayed out with Artie for a few more minutes before coming back in.

  Now, I
’d be up for Mykonos. Or Corfu?

  I dropped the subject. I might be able to get a grant for Lemnos, but Corfu would be taking the piss.

  89 Hounslow, ‘The Unknown Digger Revealed’, pp. 21–22.

  90 Whitlock, Australia’s Unknown Digger, p. 168. Whitlock uses this guess as the basis for his assertion that the Unknown Digger was transferred to the Western Front, crucially forgetting that Sassoon was nowhere near as well known as Brooke at the time. A little Wikipedia-ing could’ve told him that – sometimes it feels like I’m the only one willing to do the research. Last night Em and I were lying on the couch watching an old black-and-white movie when Em got a call – maybe nine o’clock, so not early. She paused the movie and answered in her work voice. I started shaking my head. She held out a hand like she would to Artie: No. Sit. Roll over. Play dead. Who’s a good boy?

  Uh huh, well, sometimes it doesn’t have instructions, she said, glancing outside and miming a cigarette. Nope, no, of course not. A smile for me and she headed outside, Artie following by her feet. Boil the kettle. Yep. And then add a dash of salt. No, like a sprinkle. Do however much you want. Do more and you can have it for lunch. Oh yeah, is that tomorrow? She blew a smoke ring out into the night sky. So, you’ll be gone afterward, too? Yep, until it’s soft enough to eat. About ten minutes.

  She crushed the half-smoked cigarette into the ashtray and came back inside. I tried to calm my breathing, but my heart was pounding in my chest. I picked Artie up and held him in my lap, ruffling his ears and getting him to nip at my fingers. I knew she was looking at me, ready to mouth an apology, but I didn’t want to give her the satisfaction. I kept my head down.

  Right. You’re all set then. Just mix the sauce in when it’s ready. When it tastes ready. She sighed. Take one out and try it! Artie jumped out of my lap and into Em’s, looking back at me like a petulant child. Sure thing. No, it’s no problem. I’m not busy.