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Eric was a man of short stature. His head sat on a short ‘second rower’s’ neck and tight muscular body. His face was rugged and weather beaten with lines of anguish and glee intermixed in a strange residual mosaic representing a history of bitter experiences and hopeful ambitions.
There were many superficial scars from past work injuries across his arms and his legs. On a good day he looked as if he had just stepped out of the ring after a ten round bout with a showground champ. On a bad day nobody saw him as he failed to come out into the sun. His grey, unkempt beard was permanently stained with traces of nicotine and food. At any time he was not a pretty sight.
He was distrustful, to the point of a debilitating social paranoia of police, authorities, banks and their ilk. The distrust was based on his bitter experiences at the Somme as a stretcher-bearer. ‘A fateful exercise for debased beings fighting in a bloody bedlam to plans conceived by lunatics.’
He lived with his ageing mother on a small sheep farm on the eastern shoreline of a dry lakebed north of Canberra. There had been a woman and a child. They were there but gone from his contact.
Eric found it difficult to interact with people. He kept his thoughts and emotions to himself. It was as if his mother and he co-existed in different spatial environments. Neither sought any unnecessary involvement with each other or outsiders. They were comfortable within their exclusive lives. It was not that they consciously avoided each other; they couldn’t in the small four-room shack that was their home.
Meals were shared but generally in silence.
A shared, tragic incident, not long after Mary arrived, created a chasm of silence that grew from the indifference between them. It was a queer mix of anger, fear and disbelief in their complicity. The depth of the estrangement grew. Any display or communication of common feelings or simple emotions in their demeanours eroded.
Every clear night Eric would leave the dinner table, and amble down to the dry shoreline of the lake. A log of an old eucalypt marked the high watermark of the past. It had been there for many years. The bark was split and in places decaying with the effects of weather and in past times the lapping of the water in the lake. It made a convenient seat.
Eric sat looking out across the dust of the lake and puzzled when there might be water again. He knew why he was drawn here and often queried the reasons why it had become a ritual. Perhaps it paid back a recent obligation not easily defined or explained. It also jarred his long memories of the harrowing scenes of no man’s land at the Somme.
It made sense to him to be there at night. The circumstances and reasons of his vigil plagued his mind. He knew, even if he had the opportunity, it would be difficult to discuss his thoughts and motives with anyone. He was painfully apprehensive of the response even from a sympathetic ear, if one could be found.
Eric was always fearful of not being able to anticipate the end result following the unravelling of circumstances where people in authority were involved. He would not trust anyone in authority with his burden.
What they had done was not wrong. It was logical. This was the explanation he had mentally rehearsed every day at the shoreline looking out toward a specific point about 400 metres toward the centre of the dry lake.
The spot would be indistinguishable to anyone else but it was etched in his mind. In the early part of this emotional struggle the blinding, sweaty nightmares of the torch beam strafing the dirt while he worked with the mattock and spade prompted a nervous nagging of his stomach and recall of the madness of that no man’s land.
He was not sure what would become of this ritual when water again returned to refresh the lake and his point of attention would disappear under the grey murky water.
‘Why did we do it – different?’ His loud voice of despair carried across the dry lakebed. The question had plagued him for a long time. Maybe his mother could provide insight and clarity, although that was not a certainty. It was not possible for them to talk about simple aspects of their life together let alone the events that had caused the hiatus of communication between them.
narratorAUSTRALIA Volume Two Page 15