Where the Line Breaks

by Michael Burrows

  In the bars, he heard talk of diggers taking their closest mates for one final ride in the desert, and returning with saddle and bridle. Tall tales of broken legs and rocky ground. The Light Horse had returned to Australia tens of thousands short, the final cost felt more keenly than the casualties at The Nek, at Suez, at the failed Gaza attack.

  But by that time he was long dead and immortalised as Lieutenant Alan Lewis, VC, a stranger he had never met, a thousand times removed from the murderer he had turned out to be. Once word of his commission came around he knew his old life was over and he could never return. It was easier then. Getting away had been the easy part. Running away he could handle. A tactical retreat, they had once called it. From life.

  He had thought that killing himself would solve his problems, and in a funny way, it had. But sitting in that room, surrounded by bodies, reliving every mistake he’d ever made, the fuse disappearing before his eyes, he had come to accept what he’d always known. He didn’t have the courage to kill himself.

  He wasn’t brave enough to die.

  He jumped out the window before the explosion tore the building in two, and disguised himself in strips of long black cloth fluttering in the breeze, wrapping the material around his body until his eyes were all that could be seen, like he’d seen the women do before. When the crowd gathered to watch, emerging from the surrounding desert like wildflowers in spring, he mixed with the other women and vanished into their midst, like a drop of blood into the ocean. The diggers shouted, their rifles pointed at the crowd, until they dispersed.

  Part of him never left Har Megiddo. Part of him died there. In every flash of fear he catches in a stranger’s eye, he recognises the faces of the women. The bearded men crumpling beneath his bullets haunt his sleep. Around every corner, scampering children fall silent until he passes, like they can smell it on him, like he is the evil their parents warned them about. Maybe he is.

  On the road that curves around the park, he walks past an older man, who is missing an arm, his moustache trimmed, akubra shading his face from the sun.

  ‘Where is everyone?’ he asks.

  The man smiles and points back through town. ‘Probably at the cricket. New around here?’

  He nods, and then shakes his head.

  The man removes his hat, and holds it with the stump of his arm and the fingers of his remaining hand. ‘It’s a special Anzac Day match.’ The remaining fabric in the sleeve has been sewn back up under the stump, where it wobbles back and forth each time the man moves. ‘Bit of two-up afterward if you’re keen.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Alan says, then surprises himself by adding, ‘I might be.’

  ‘No worries.’

  The cricket oval, and the pavilion, lie over the hill, on the other side of town. He could walk it with his eyes closed.

  Half the town must be watching, the seats in the pavilion crammed full of suited men, women in their lace fanning themselves, children running riot on the grass banks. He tries to slow his breathing. He’s not a fan of large crowds.

  He knocks at the door of the groundskeeper’s shed, away from the eyes of the crowd. When he pushes inside, the mowers and the heavy rollers look used, but he finds cobwebs growing in the corners. Decent spot to spend the night, once the crowds have departed. He throws his bag down on the rickety table. He doesn’t own a lot. A few bits of clothing, half a pencil, a blanket for when it gets cold.

  He leaves his bag inside a rusting toolbox. Carrying it makes him look like an outsider. The years of practice have taught him well. They don’t glance twice at you if you’re a local. But if you want to keep it, carry it on you. Never hide what you can’t leave behind. In most places, they’ll run him out of town soon enough. Most places, he’s passing through.

  Marybrook High are batting. Three for ninety-two. He finds a spot on the grass and lies back, watches a few overs. The young bowler has a good action, the ball coming close to the outside edge each time he sprints in. Beside him on the grass the children scream and laugh, playing their own game around the bearded stranger in their midst, cheering each time the definitive tok of bat on ball heralds a boundary.

  Half an hour later, the next bowler makes the breakthrough – the ball catches a thin edge and the wicketkeeper jumps up in a loud appeal as soon as the ball is in his gloves. The umpire holds up his left hand to signal the wicket. His hand is warped and scarred, missing fingers. Drinks are called, and he watches the umpire limp over to his mate and chat, a wide white hat shading his face. From the crowd by the pavilion a small woman strides into the middle of the ground carrying two glasses of liquid. From his spot on the grass he recognises the gentle roll of her hips, the gold sheen of her hair. She stops by the umpires and offers them each a drink, waiting as they drain the glasses. Before she leaves, she stands on tiptoe and kisses the taller umpire, the gangly one with the mangled finger and the limp. She smiles as she walks off the ground.

  Play resumes. He slumbers in the sun. He could camp on the beach and work odd jobs and make a bit of money, or head north and work the cattle drives, lose himself in the dust. In time, he might feel welcome. His stomach grumbles.

  After a few years attempting to lose his past in the steamy cities of the East, he made his way to England, and tried his hand at odd jobs. He caught the steam trains up and down the length of the country, searching. He wasn’t sure what he was looking for. He slept under bridges with the other searchers, in barns, in open fields under the stars. They slept in groups, the wanderers, like they were back in the camps, huddled for warmth. He painted fences and built houses, rounded up sheep and shovelled coal. For a year he led a normal life in a small village, running the post office, drinking late into the night in the pub with Roland who’d survived the Somme and kept pace with his warm ales. One night he woke screaming at the darkness, the Thompsons from next door banging on his front door to check that he was alright, and he knew it was time to leave.

  He was skirting them, unconsciously at first, but then methodically – circling the town where they lived, dropping closer and closer with every visit, like the big bombers circled the munitions dumps – spurred on by a demand for closure. It wasn’t that he was avoiding them, or was scared of what seeing them might do to him, it was that he was scared of what he might do to them.

  Winter came, and snow, and the work dried up, and he caught a cold from sitting in the rain. He snivelled and sneezed and made his way into their little town. He slept in the church shed, the snow piled up around the door, until the vicar found him, feverish and frozen. The vicar tried to take him straight to the local hospital, but he imagined her pulling back the curtains and refused. He said he’d prefer to die than spend another night in one of those death factories. The vicar prayed for him, like that would help.

  Once he was back on his feet, he offered the local publican his services for the winter. She already had a man for odd jobs, she said, but they did need someone new in the kitchens, if he was up to it, if he kept himself clean and didn’t drink, like the last fellow. No bully beef, no biscuits, he said, and took the job. The kitchen was warm. He slept in front of the stove like a big, hairy dog.

  And then one day, as he stood outside the pub in the snow smoking his last cigarette, he saw them. They walked across the road toward him, holding hands, approaching the church and the station. She looked the same – a bit rounder maybe, and pinker. Or sharper maybe, pointier. Her nose held high and her heels clipping through the snow and the angles of her face a millimetre off. He ducked his head but she didn’t look his way, her attention on the girl.

  The girl’s shoes barely left a trace on the snow, and two thick coats trebled her size. A scarf wound up tight around her head so all he could see was a pink nose. Like she was being protected from more than the cold. Nothing changed in him – no sense of ownership, no paternal urge. After all, it was only her word that the girl was his.

  And he was surprised to find he wasn’t angry at them either. They were strangers to him, and nothi
ng more. As they walked up the road, a man came walking down it. Older than him, ruddy-cheeked and barrel-chested. The girl ran forward to meet him, and he picked her up and spun her into his arms.

  He could hear her giggles over the noise of the pub. The three of them disappeared up the hill. He threw his cigarette into the imprint of the child’s shoe in the snow, and left town without a word, melting into the white.

  In the heat of the midday sun, he walks down to the beach, to the empty sand and the gentle lapping waves and the endless blue of sea and sky. He strips off and the water burns, cold and cleansing. The scars on his back sting. He takes the time to wash his socks, leaving them to dry on the hot sand. His feet are white and bony.

  He ducks under the waves and holds his breath until he has no choice but to kick up. Tiny air bubbles stick in his beard. His ribs jut from his chest like a scrawny dingo. His hair sticks up on the back of his head as it dries. His nose runs clean with salty water.

  Out the back, beyond the small crests of white foam, he convinces himself he can make out the telltale grey triangle of fin. He swims back into shore, lifting his arms with long, heavy strokes, slow kicks, deep breathing. When he can stand, he pushes back up the beach with his fingertips trailing the water by his side.

  He puts his thin shirt back on wet, the material clinging to his bones. His face dries tight with salt in the midday sun.

  A young family passes him as he leaves, small children squealing in delight. A teenage girl, who must be about her age now, chats with excitement to her father.

  He nods as they pass, and the father returns his gaze.

  The family heads past him toward the beach.

  ‘Be careful, think I saw a fin,’ he turns and calls, but they’re already halfway down the beach.

  After the second war, when they’d killed off another generation of young men and destroyed another set of dreams, he left Europe. He paid for his fare and caught the boat back home, alongside families heading off to new lives, other survivors. No more running away, he lied to himself.

  Perth was greyer, muted and concrete. The sand on the beach wasn’t as white as he remembered. He slept by the river, watching the rowing boats skim past at dawn. The makeshift huts from his years of study, a lifetime before, had been transformed into an office block. He made his way to the university, a huge expanse of beautiful new limestone buildings swarming the bay he had cycled around as a different man. He watched the ducks swim across the pond, the peacocks amble across the lawn. He was walking through someone else’s memories.

  Inside the library, he made his way down to the deserted bottom floor, the shelves bulging under the weight of old books and forgotten manuscripts. In a corner stack he searched the names until he reached the M’s. From inside his battered bag he pulled the small bundle of papers Nugget had left him. The leather strap was worn, the outer pages ripped and yellowed. He’d lost half a dozen pages in a freak downpour one summer in England. But the rest he’d kept safe throughout the years. He’d never had the strength to read it.

  But he’d never left it behind. It was all he had left to do. Something he could do for Nugget, finally. It wouldn’t change anything, but it might bring him a little peace. He was getting better at finding peace.

  He reached up to the higher shelves, and wedged the bundle behind a weighty set of leather dictionaries. His fingers left long lines in the dust.

  ‘There you go, mate,’ he said in a whisper, ‘you made it.’

  As he’s walking back into town, sand in his socks, his shirt already dry, he notices a young police constable marching down the main street. The officer crosses the road and walks right up to where Alan waits in the shade of the trees on the edge of the park.

  ‘G’day, old-timer. Mind if I ask you a few questions?’ Frowning at Alan as he looks him up and down. That didn’t take long.

  ‘Do you have somewhere to be tonight?’ the officer says. ‘Somewhere to sleep?’

  Alan shakes his head.

  ‘Friends, you’re staying with?’

  He shakes his head again.

  ‘Any reason to be here?’

  ‘I’m only passing through,’ he says. ‘I won’t be any trouble.’

  ‘Where are you headed, then?’

  ‘Home.’

  ‘Where’s that then?’

  He pauses before answering, weighing up his options, glancing back the way he’s come, the sand and the chatter of the gulls and the pull of the dark waves.

  ‘Long way from here.’

  The constable nods, considering this, and then, with a grunt, walks away. As he crosses the street, he turns back, giving Alan one final glare, as if to say ‘I’ll be watching’.

  As Alan looks around the park, he notices the monument they’ve erected in the corner, like a miniature Gothic church made from rough granite, rising to a triangular point in the cloudless sky. He walks over for a closer look. Someone’s left a wreath of red poppies by the base of the memorial, but the sun has bleached the flowers pink, and spiders have made webs among the folds.

  The inscription carved on marble inserts: In Honour of the Men and Women of This District Who Volunteered for Service. On the other side a long list of names, In Memoriam.

  The Heroic Dead, it says, above his old name.

  Lewis A., VC.

  No-one could possibly live up to that name, to those stories.

  To those lies.

  He spends a long time standing in front of the stone, unable to move his leaden feet. Staring up at the legacy some other version of himself has left behind. Over the hill he can hear the cricket game, the hubbub of voices, the occasional cheer or groan as the batsman dispatches the ball with a crisp tok all around the field.

  The names of the real heroes, long dead, tower above him. The spiked point of granite pierces the brilliant blue.

  Each time the batsman hits the ball the sound carries over the yellowing grass, like the thud of his heart in his chest.

  Tok.

  Tok.

  Tok.

  136 Fuck Brighton.

  Fuck the half-arsed pebble beach and the dirty bogan jetty. Fuck the too-bright sun and cheap plastic sunnies. Fuck the midget waves and the piss-weak summer breeze blowing in off the freezing water. Fuck the fat dickheads pouring penny after penny into those crappy Royal-Show coin games and fuck their sugar-addicted crackhead offspring running past your knees, wiping snot and fairy floss on your jeans, laughing like hyenas. Fuck the stodgy fried fish and the too-thick chips. Fuck mushy peas. Fuck the row after row of knock-off leather coats and hippy-dippy bric-a-brac-crap blocking the way down lanes of namby-pamby vegan cafes, rammed with more fat motherfucking London couples walking fucking-hand-in-obese-hand, buying shitty gardening gloves embroidered with disease-ridden foxes, pushing their cackling little demon spawn in their ridiculous four-wheel-drive prams. Fuck the maze of jewellery stores and tattoo parlours that lead to nowhere. Fuck the Taj Mahal–looking Lego castle they call the Pavilion. Fuck the jokes and the buskers and the groups of teenagers sniggering to themselves, lying with their tits out on the grass, drinking cheap cans of ethanolic cider. Fuck their laughter, fuck their smiles, fuck their youthful skin and their tight young-people arses. Fuck their happiness. Fuck their goddamn self-righteous optimism, and fuck fucking Brighton.

  137 I wanted to stand on a wet pier in the rain while waves, twenty-foot tall, pounded the concrete, spraying saltwater over my windswept hair. I wanted dark clouds, ripe with rain, to cover every inch of visible sky, and thunder to break like guns in battle. I wanted dogs whimpering under couches and children crying for their parents. I wanted rain running down my face and mixing with my tears. I wanted to taste the saltwater of home with my collar turned up against the wind, artfully displaying my tormented soul to the world.

  The guy at the front desk when I checked in said, Australian, huh? You must have brought the weather with you!

  Fuck him too.

  138 I made my way down to what they call the
beach here, and then walked further along the coast away from the screaming of the crowds and the smell of waffle cones, until I was alone. The water was a dark concrete grey, crashing in heavy waves onto the slippery pebbles. Out on the horizon stood the skeletal husk of the old burnt pier – a warning, maybe, to anyone hoping to escape from London to the wilds of Brighton, that inevitably, we all must die, and that even when your girlfriend says she loves you and you talk about marriage like it will definitely happen in the future, she’s probably banging your boss on a work trip to Paris.

  I’m so angry, at everything.

  I’m so tired of being angry.

  139 The beach back home is wide open and inviting, stretching up the coast to the white tower of Scarborough and down past the dinosaur shapes of Fremantle’s cranes. I know the beach back home, know the best place to throw my towel, the parking spots that will always be free, the areas where the reef hides beneath the sand but you’ll still stub your toes. I know on the overcast days, what we call shark weather, you’ll only see the diehard surfers, the retirees doing their daily swim and tourists in the water. I know on sunny days the sand will be too hot to stand on, and only digging your feet into the coolness of the sand a few centimetres down will save you from doing an awkward dash across the beach. I know the searing pain of diving headfirst into a stinger. I know the hangover-curing cold of a morning-after swim. I know once you dive under that first wave and into an underwater world that nothing, not girlfriends or rival academics or long-dead soldiers, can disturb the pure, clear, cleansing wash of a good swim.

  I sat down on the pebbles and pulled off my shoes and socks. I wasn’t wearing boardies, or anything resembling bathers, and taking off my T-shirt the wind whipped across my skin like knives, and I began to doubt the wisdom of my plan, but by that point I’d taken off my jeans, and I figured there was no turning back.