I picked up the remote and pressed play, and the characters on screen laughed at a joke. Em swung her head toward the window, trying to muffle the sound with her hand.
Uhuh. See you then. She hung up. I stared straight ahead. Slowly, she reached across me for the remote, and hit pause. Artie snuffled around on the couch, his tiny nails scratching on the fake leather.
What was that? She sounded angry.
I couldn’t be bothered feigning surprise. Why are you answering his calls? I tried to keep my voice level, but I was sure the croak on certain words would give me away. I was sitting on the precipice of crying.
He’s my boss.
He calls you at nine o’clock? Doesn’t he have friends?
He is my friend.
My heart bubbled in my chest, and I took a second to try and steady myself. What did he want?
He wasn’t sure how long to cook his pasta.
I turned my head aggressively to the right, aware of the melodrama, not caring. He doesn’t know how? He’s like fifty!
He’s a busy guy. He doesn’t normally cook for himself.
He can’t read the packet? Like a normal person?
He knows I like to cook, so he wanted to check how I do it. What’s your problem?
He’s a cunt who can’t cook pasta.
91 Pyke, The Annotated Letters, pp. 44, 221, and Curtin-Kneeling, From Busso to the Holy Land, p. 156.
92 Gordon Biggins, A Short History of the University of Western Australia: From Irwin Street to Matilda Bay – Western Australia’s Premier University and Its Famous Graduates. Volume 1 of 6. Self-published, Perth, 1999, p. 446.
93 Curtin-Kneeling, From Busso to the Holy Land, p. 134.
94 Pyke, The Annotated Letters, p. 245. Ever the hopeless romantic. Yet another trait Alan and I have in common, these huge romantic gestures and sacrifices made for love. I pass by this little jewellery shop on my way to the tube, windows filled with diamonds and rubies. The price tags alone are enough to cause cardiac arrest. But I always stop to look at the engagement rings. There’s one with a diamond, surrounded by blue sapphires, that I keep coming back to – blue like the sky back home, blue like the sea in Cape Town the way Em describes it, blue like I imagine the sea is on Lemnos. Perfect. Only need to keep putting away my university savings each month for another sixteen years and I might be able to afford it …
95 Curtin-Kneeling, From Busso to the Holy Land, p. 155.
96 Pyke, The Annotated Letters, pp. 44, 221; and Curtin-Kneeling, From Busso to the Holy Land, p. 156.
97 Max Whitlock actually emailed me out of the blue one day a few weeks after the very first general ideas of this thesis were published in the article ‘Comparing Language Choices in Diametric Data Packets’ in The Magazine of Australian Literature. At that point I wasn’t even sure who he was. His email consisted of ten words: To the Poet = UD [Unknown Digger] on Western Front = can’t be Lewis. I got the feeling he was one of those older academics who isn’t completely comfortable with email. And the Unknown Digger wasn’t on the Western Front, and Lewis read Homer at university, and Max Whitlock hasn’t published anything since Jennifer Hayden’s ‘On the Repressed Sexualities of the Unknown Digger’, and Em and I are in love, so QED, motherfucker.
98 Hounslow, ‘The Unknown Digger Revealed’, pp. 101–140.
99 Howard Greene, ‘Arguments Against “The Unknown Digger Revealed”’ in Australian Literary Journal, December 2003, Issue 32, Volume 5, pp. 45–77. The weather has been so incredible recently – thanks global warming and the inevitable end of the world – but embracing the popular forms of the day, or whatever, we had a ‘BBQ’. In a crowded Highbury Fields, after work, last night. What could possibly go wrong?
100 Splashed out on a bottle of warmish semi-sav, beef skewers, cheese and crackers, salad bits, and nibbles from the M&S Summer Selection. Found a spot, far away enough from the road to pretend we were in the English countryside, crammed in between the after-hours office workers and the girls sunbathing in their bras, tins of G&T perspiring by the magazines layered over their faces. I lit my foil barbie and poured myself a glass of wine. All around the field, like acne spots, were hundreds more of the same: everybody lighting their disposable barbecues.
101 What in sweet baby Jesus are those tiny foil fuckers? A foil baking tray full of charcoal is not a barbecue, it is an insult to my people. Almost a hate crime. Every supermarket I walk into, the aisles are full to the rafters with them – no wonder they can’t play cricket and their soccer players fall over at the drop of a hat – they think a barbecue is disposable! An Aussie barbecue, a proper glorious wooden barbie, big as your car and covered in redback spiders, is a lifetime commitment, like a tattoo, or getting married, or having kids. Cheap, rainy-day, crumpet-scoffing, Queen-kissing bastards.
102 ‘Duckboard-harrier’ was the trench name given to runners and messengers, after the long-distance runners of cross-country races, originally named after hares. Like Artie, I imagine, darting up to the sunbathers and barbecuing families, being shooed away by drunken shirtless louts, Em calling him back from halfway across the park. She was wearing an amazing rainbow-coloured sundress that swished around her knees in the grass. The skin on her chest was slick with sweat and Argon oil – she swears by the stuff. Artie jumped into my lap and licked my chin.
Well, isn’t this a treat? She smiled as she sat down, as relaxed as I’ve seen her since the party. Amazing what a little sun can do for the spirit – why do we choose to live on this godforsaken wet puddle of an island?
103 Howard Greene, Six Essays on the Australian Spirit, p. 94. According to the ‘instructions’, once the ‘barbecue’ was fully ablaze, I should ‘blow out the flames’ and then proceed to cook the meat on the ‘glowing coals’. I blew out the flames and thick sooty smoke enveloped us, like commandoes signalling for helicopter extraction. Artie started barking. I had sweat running down my back and dripping into my crack. Em fanned herself with one of those free magazines they hand out at tube stations. So hot.
104 Not hot-hot though, I said, thinking of home.
No, but you know. London hot.
London hot?
London thirty is hotter than Cape Town forty, swear to God.
How was work? I tried to fan the smoke away from us with my towel, Artie nipping at my heels, and succeeded in showering the dip with grass clippings. Em piled up a cracker with cheese and chutney and pretended not to notice.
It was fine. You know how hot it gets.
The Prof’s office has air-conditioning and windows. The rest of us are housed in the Victorian-era basement, stuffed in like sardines with no windows, and, needless to say, no air-conditioning. Yeah, I knew.
105 L.L. Goodberry, ‘The Christlike in the Unknown Digger’, in The Poetry and Literature Digest, November 2007, Issue 45, Volume 34, pp. 46–58. Don’t. Just don’t.
106 I placed the skewers onto the ‘glowing coals’ – grey and cracked, lumps of dried dog shit – and cut myself a wedge of brie. Em smiled at me across her plastic tumbler of wine.
Nice wine. She sounded tired. I noticed the smudged black outline of a FRAGILE stamp on her arm as she took another sip, the kind you’d stamp haphazardly on a box of wine glasses, or the male ego, or the concept of a British summer. Artie needed to pee, but we thought it best he didn’t do it on the pale form of the heavily pregnant sunbather lying next to us, so Em took him for a lap of the park, while I kept an eye on the ‘disposable BBQ’ (I use the term oxymoronically, like the aforementioned ‘British summer’).
107 Greene, Six Essays on the Australian Spirit, p. 94. The skewers were burnt on one side, seared to the little metal grate with black tar and, trying to turn them, I accidentally touched the lava-like heat of the metal lining. My swearing woke the pregnant tanner, who gave me a dirty look, before taking a long swig from her third can of Pimm’s and belching loudly.
108 Artie almost knocked me into the nuclear reactor as he bound back across the park and into my arms. I
tried to protect him from touching the molten metal, and succeeded in knocking the open bottle of wine into the bowl of chips. Em lunged forward and saved the bottle before we lost too much, while Artie licked my ear. Fuck, sorry, I said. The heavily sunburnt pregnant lady tutted loudly. Em gave her The Look and the lady quickly turned away.
It’s fine, she said, chips and wine – what’s not to like?
‘Crisps’ over here, I said, gazing sadly at the blackened remains of the beef skewers. But we call them chips in Oz too. Two types: hot chips, or chips – that’s all you need, right?
We smiled across the rug at each other, and the foolishness of the Brits.
She piled another cracker high with brie and chutney.
How’re the skewers? she said.
One had caught fire, filling the air with the acrid smell of burnt peppers as I tried to blow out the flame. Artie started barking in Em’s lap, and wouldn’t shut up until Em gave him a treat from her purse. Alistair’s reading at this big conference next week – I nodded as she spoke, trying not to touch the sizzling, charred end of the skewer – in Paris.
That’ll be nice, I said, the sad remains of what had once been a red onion disintegrating into ashes in the breeze as I tried to keep turning the skewers. Having the office to yourself for a couple of days.
Em didn’t say anything for a while, and then when she did, her voice was slow and deliberate, like footsteps through broken glass: The Paris conference is a Really Big Deal.
I must have kept the bag of salad too close to the blistering heat of the barbie, because the salad leaves were starting to brown, and the fresh tomatoes were doing a passable impression of being sundried. Em took my hand and gave it a squeeze.
I carefully pulled the wooden sticks off the heat, suffering only minor third-degree burns in the process, and arranged them on our plates, alongside the wilted salad. We ate in silence for a minute.
I’m going to Paris, Em said, as I took a swig of wine.
Paris, France?
Matt, don’t be like that.
I blinked. Something in my left eye twitched, sand under the eyelid, smoke from the barbecue. She wasn’t smiling. I didn’t think she was joking, but with South Africans you can never be sure. You’re going to Paris?
Next week.
The skewers were inedible – bloody pink in the middle, gritty and black on the outside. Em gave some of hers to Artie, but he turned his nose up at it. Someone behind us was playing shitty rap music through the tinny speakers of their phone.
I bought another packet of crisps, I said, too quickly. Salt and vinegar. In the bag.
Em didn’t move. I’m going to Paris, with Alistair.
I held back vomit in my mouth and forced myself to swallow bile. You can’t go.
Excuse me?
You can’t go.
Who the fuck are you to tell me what I can and can’t do?
I pulled out the crisps, and in my haste to open them and get back to a semblance of normality, I ripped a long slit down the bag.
Are you crying? Em asked.
It’s the smoke. The fucking barbecue.
I should go. Artie jumped up from where he’d been lying and growled at the smell coming from the burnt meat.
To Paris?
Now, she said, and stood up. But also to Paris.
Artie jumped up at her legs, his long nails leaving scratches on her skin.
Wait, don’t leave. I’m sorry.
Small scatterings of cloud were beginning to pass in front of the sun, darkening the sky. The air chilled.
I messed up.
She didn’t move. Artie whined by her feet. The shitty rap song finished and a shittier techno track started.
Please, I said, I bought marshmallows, and chocolate. I felt the grass under my calves reaching up and tickling tiny nails on my skin and wanted more than anything to scratch the skin until I drew blood. We can make s’mores.
Artie looked up at Em from the picnic rug with his huge wet eyes.
Artie says ok, we’ll stay, she said, and sat back down.
Was it the s’mores?
More like the wine.
I smiled at her, and ruffled Artie’s ears while he nipped at my burnt hand. I am sorry.
Don’t ever tell me what I can and can’t do, she said. My dad has been doing that since forever, and every ex-boyfriend I’ve ever had has tried. I will not be anyone’s plaything.
Well, I said, not until tonight.
Oh hush, she said, and threw a soggy chip at my head. Artie was licking spilled wine off the picnic rug. Around us, people were gathering their bits and leaving. Em looked up at the clouds and shivered. I should have brought a jumper.
Come sit by the fire, I said, pulling the tray towards us. Fuckbastard McCunt! I pulled my hand back from the scorching tin. That’s still hot, in case you were wondering.
The pregnant lady scoffed again and said, Really!, loud enough for us to hear. Em mock-laughed and asked if she could bum a cigarette. The look on the lady’s face was priceless.
The first drops felt like spittle, and then we both looked up at the clouds and laughed, because of course, why wouldn’t it rain tonight? Artie barked as the pregnant lady picked up her empty cans and ran across the park. The raindrops fell hot and heavy on our faces. We looked at each other and smiled, and I pulled another bottle of wine from the plastic bag. My place or yours? I said, as the rain fell harder, plastering my hair to my forehead, sizzling on the barbecue.
Mine, Em said, I’ve got a bathtub. She stood up and attempted to get Artie into his harness.
I kicked the foil tray into the plastic bag, which duly melted, hot coals tumbling out onto the grass. We both started laughing; silly, can’t-stop-yourself laughing, at the stupidity of it.
That’s what we get for trying to have a barbie in London, I said.
A braai, she said, in her gorgeous South African twang.
Please tell me you don’t use disposable barbecues in Cape Town, too?
She gave me The Look, and we laughed some more, running across the park towards the tube station, Artie nipping at our heels.
Where the barbecue had been sitting was a perfect black rectangle of charred grass.
What a joke.
CHAPTER 5: Further original evidence from the campaign in the Middle East demonstrating an Alan Lewis authorship of the Unknown Digger poems: The Lost Years as a source for contiguous postulation.
Past studies of the Unknown Digger’s poetry have assumed his death came relatively early in the timeline of the war, either on the fields of the Western Front, or during the campaign in the Middle East (some arguing for a moment during the defence of the Suez Canal in 1916, and others arguing for a later date, around the first unsuccessful attack on Gaza in March 1917).109 Certainly, no previous academic has argued, as I am about to do, that the Unknown Digger survived as long as Alan Lewis, who died in September 1918, a full year after even the most far-fetched theories.110 How can we consider Alan Lewis the rightful author of the poems, if his death comes so much later than previous academics have theorised? To understand how Lewis’s death works as yet another factor in proving his authorship, we must first examine the existing theories.111
In her otherwise excellent The Mystery of the Unknown Digger, Susan Freedland works her way through the poems with a fine-tooth comb, searching for clues as to their authorship, context, themes, allusions and wider meaning.112 According to Freedland, the final poem written by the Unknown Digger contains obvious references to the Suez conflict, and, she writes, ‘since there are no more poems written after this one, it seems probable the Unknown Digger was killed in the skirmishes surrounding the defence of Suez’.113 Hers is an intensive, judiciously observed argument, reinforced by readily discernible substantiation. She is, regrettably, wrong.
Freedland argues that the singularly identifiable contextual clues in the final Unknown Digger poem ‘Bully Beef’, the humorous ode to the basic ration that fed most of the men fightin
g on the frontline throughout the war, point to the author being stationed in or around the Suez area at the time of his death. The pivotal lines, for her, occur during the fourth stanza:
Float me down the sea toward the sun –
Put a fork in me, cobber. I’m done.114
Freedland argues that ‘float me down the sea’ must ‘refer to the Suez Canal, where the Light Horse regiments were fighting at the time. As the Unknown Digger’s final poem, it follows that the man died in the defence’.115 One can hardly deny that this theory plays into my hypothesis: Lewis returned to his regiment at Suez, and was certainly, as his letters home show – after several years away from family and loved ones – extremely tired of the whole ordeal and ready to return to Australia. However, as is common knowledge, Lewis lived for almost two more years. Freedland must be incorrect somewhere in her assumption.116
Howard Greene believes that ‘the evidence suggests’ that there were several poems written after the defence of Suez, and after ‘Bully Beef’, which would prove that the Unknown Digger was alive longer than Freedland’s stated date.117 Greene identifies the final poem written by the Unknown Digger as ‘Percute Velociter’.118 Hayden hypothesised that ‘Percute Velociter’ was written around the end of 1915, while the Unknown Digger was stationed in Gallipoli, because of its placement within the manuscript, surrounded by other poems more implicitly referencing the actions of the Gallipoli campaign.119
Greene argues, however, that ‘it was actually written around the beginning of 1917, after the Anzac charge at Rafa, two weeks after the final decisive victory in the defence of the Suez Canal’.120
‘Percute Velociter’ is a fairly simple – by the Unknown Digger’s standards – sonnet, calling on soldiers and ‘all men in love’s trenches’ to pursue love without delay, quite literally, to strike, and strike swiftly.121 Greene argues that ‘Percute Velociter’ was written toward the end of 1916, while the Light Horse rode across the biblical sands of the Sinai, following the disastrous retreat at Gallipoli and the battles of the Suez Defence. Greene’s evidence for the later writing of ‘Percute Velociter’ amounts to two vital lines: in the fifth line of the sonnet, ‘farewell, our valiant lies’, which Greene argues must be a reflection on the events of Gallipoli, rather than a contemporaneous exclamation, and in the seventh line of the poem, which ends: ‘bring them back to us, the harbour cries’ which Greene argues – rather effectively, it must be said – is a reference to the Egyptian harbour of Port Said, an important battleground in the defence of the Suez Canal.122 The cunning wordplay in the poem equates the anthropomorphised ‘harbour cries’ into the historical location of Port Said.
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