Datsunland Page 5

  ‘He was scared,’ Barbara whispered, looking at her husband. ‘Sam?’

  ‘They were all scared. Go on, Neil.’

  ‘He went off his food.’

  Barb dropped her head, stared at the ground and started rocking.

  ‘He was nervous, jittery, all the time,’ Neil continued. ‘Should I go on, Mr Lancaster?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Neil took his time, watching Barb, choosing his words carefully. ‘Then when we went to the front …’

  Barb looked up. ‘What?’

  ‘We knew it was heavy fighting. We’d heard the stories, and seen the casualties.’

  ‘How was he?’

  ‘Vague. You’d talk to him and he wouldn’t answer. He’d be staring into the distance, and mumbling to himself.’

  Barb looked at her husband again. ‘See, I knew. He was sick.’

  ‘Was anyone else like this?’ Sam asked.

  ‘A few, but they’d come around. But Tom …’

  ‘Didn’t someone notice?’

  ‘Yeah, the NCOs, but they just told him to grow up. They shouted at him. Extra drill. Then at night, you’d hear him crying.’ He looked Sam directly in the eyes. ‘I hate to tell you this, Mr Lancaster, but it’s true. You’d hear him crying, and he’d curl up in a ball, like a baby. Me and a few other fellas, we’d have to drag him out of bed in the morning.’

  Barb was still watching her husband. ‘We need to tell someone.’

  But Sam was busy with Neil. ‘That’s it?’

  ‘We went into battle. It was late afternoon. He could barely hold his rifle. The whistle blew and he … fell down.’

  ‘Shot?’ Barbara asked.

  ‘No, he just collapsed. He was screaming, louder than the shelling. I tried to help him up but I couldn’t. I had to move forward.’

  Barb was sobbing. She said her son’s name over and over. Sam was thinking. After a few moments he said to Neil, ‘That doesn’t make him a coward.’

  ‘I agree. He was ill, Mr Lancaster. They should’ve helped him. But it wasn’t like that. You just had to get on.’

  ‘And that was the last time you saw him?’

  ‘Yes. Although there was a rumour … Some fella said he saw him running away. Over a fence and into a paddock.’

  ‘That still doesn’t make him a coward.’

  ‘True. Shell shock, Mr Lancaster.’

  ‘Someone should’ve helped him,’ Barbara whispered.

  ‘There were fellas put bullets in their feet cos they couldn’t face it. Or stabbed themselves. But they’d just fix ’em up twice as quick.’

  ‘You didn’t see him run?’ Sam asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘So it mightn’t a been him?’

  ‘It could’ve been some other fella. I bet you it was, Barb.’

  It was dark, and the stranger looked tired. So Sam said to his wife, ‘Fix him a bed, in the shed.’

  Half an hour later Neil was sitting on the edge of his camp stretcher. He had fresh sheets that smelt of lemon and camphor laurel. Barb had given him a pair of Tom’s pyjamas, and the legs dragged in the dust. He stood, approached the trophy shelf and spent a few minutes reading. Then said, ‘Sorry, old fella,’ and went and lay on the stretcher.

  Barb knocked and came in with more of Tom’s clothes. ‘I’ve just ironed these. I’ll turn up the legs and sleeves if you like.’

  ‘That’s all right.’ Taking the clothes. ‘He’ll want them back, won’t he, Mrs Lancaster?’

  ‘Barb.’

  She noticed his top was undone. He had no hair on his chest and his skin was tanned. She looked up and he met her eyes. ‘How are you?’ he asked.

  ‘It hasn’t been easy, Neil. Terrible years.’

  ‘For everyone.’

  ‘Yes, you must have been through hell?’

  ‘I was lucky.’

  She was still holding the clothes, and he squeezed her hand. ‘He was a good mate,’ he said.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘And funny.’

  She smiled. ‘He could have me in stitches.’

  ‘So, you probably didn’t want to hear what I had to say?’

  ‘No, Neil … it’s best.’

  ‘His sister would probably want to know.’

  Barb took a moment, unsure. ‘His sister?’

  ‘I thought he said he had a sister.’

  ‘No … he said that?’

  ‘I’m getting him mixed up with someone else.’

  She noticed his arms: solid, brown, lined with veins. ‘You’ve worked with sheep?’

  ‘For years.’

  ‘Good. Sam could do with a hand, even though he’d never admit it.’

  Neil stayed and worked and was rewarded with lamb shanks, mutton, week-old pork and sherry that Sam had been storing under the house. Every night they’d settle around the table and he’d tell them something new about their son. About the way he could never stay in step, his taste for duck (stolen from a nearby farm), his impressions of their CO, his love of Dickens (yes, I knew he liked Dickens, Barb concurred, but I didn’t know he’d taken a book), his dry sense of humour, his sarcasm and how he could throw a grenade further than anyone in the battalion.

  ‘You’ve seen his trophies?’ Sam asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So, it did come in handy.’

  On the morning of his eighth day at Yanda, Neil emerged from his hot shed wearing a white shirt, suit jacket with its arms turned up, grey canvas pants and old boots. He saw Barb in the chicken pen and approached her. ‘Need a hand?’

  She held up a knife. ‘Sam usually does it for me.’

  He came into the yard, picked up the fattest animal he could find and said, ‘What about this one?’

  ‘She’ll do.’

  Barb turned away as Neil knelt, put the chicken across his knee and removed its head with three or four passes of the blade. Stood up, returned the knife and said, ‘Finished.’ Finally, held up the twitching hen and smiled proudly.

  She took it by the legs. ‘Thanks.’

  Neil picked up the chicken’s head and threw it out of the yard. Then he wiped his hands on his pants, picked up the bowl of scraps and started scattering them about.

  ‘You just pretend it’s a German?’ Barb asked, but he wouldn’t be drawn. Then she said, ‘Can I ask a favour?’

  The chicken stopped twitching. Dripped blood onto her shoe. She put it on a nearby bench and said, ‘Could I ask you to talk to Sam?’

  Neil looked surprised. ‘About … Tom?’

  ‘Yes.’ She looked at the chicken, then back at his broad hands. ‘I mean, we talk, But it’s not the same coming from your wife, is it?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘It’s not. But maybe from someone he can talk to. He can talk to me, but the thing is, all of this business has hit him hard. Tom was his boy. He meant everything to him.’

  ‘I could imagine.’

  ‘He was gonna have the farm. You know, they were mates, best mates, and these last three years … Sam’s been lost.’

  Neil had seen it—the pictures on the wall, the way they’d left his room, full of old bears and zebras, tin soldiers and a golliwog she’d made. The way they talked about him like he was due home any time, and how Barb always cooked an extra portion. He’d heard it in the stories—how Sam and Tom had built a raft out of old timber and a couple of 44-gallon drums. How Sam had bought a pirate’s flag from a shop in town, and how they’d flown it above the raft. Stripped down to their underpants. Sailing on the bit of water in their dam.

  And how the turkey nest dried up every September.

  Neil had seen their raft, rusted and broken up, overgrown with weeds, and time.

  The stranger emptied the last of the scraps. ‘I can talk to him, but what do you want me to say?’

  She moved closer. ‘I want you to tell him it’s not worth it.’

  Neil wasn’t sure. ‘You can tell me, Barb.’

  ‘He was gonna kill himself.’

>   ‘Jesus.’

  ‘I think. And when they published the cowards’ list … Tom was no coward, Neil.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘But Sam’s taken it to heart.’

  Neil took her arm and said, ‘What was he gonna do?’

  ‘He has a rope, in the shed. I’m scared, Neil.’

  ‘What makes you think …?’

  She explained: the knot she’d seen in the rope, the day after the list was published; Sam’s changing moods, sentences becoming words, grunts, then nothing; his talk about selling the farm. ‘A few years ago he had all these ideas—fertilisers, machinery, new types of wheat. He was determined to improve things. But now he’s let go. You’ve seen the weeds? Last year there was no crop, and he said he doesn’t care about this year. And look at those sheep, half of them are flyblown.’

  ‘Maybe we should both talk to him?’

  ‘No, you … please.’

  They were startled by Sam’s voice. ‘Neil.’ And he stood looking at them.

  ‘G’day, Sam.’

  ‘You got half an hour?’

  The men went inside. Sam made Neil a cup of tea and sat him down at the table. Found some writing paper, and a pen, and placed them in front of him. ‘From the heart, eh?’

  ‘Sam?’

  ‘We’ll go right to the top: Monash. Leave the address, we’ll find that out later. Start by saying how you’re writing on behalf of me and Barb, and how you fought with Private Tom Lancaster. His number is 2419387. Write that down.’

  Sam watched as Neil started scribbling.

  ‘Then tell him what you saw; about Tom’s mental condition. His shaking and crying and screaming. Go on.’

  Neil wrote. ‘Slow down.’

  ‘And say, what we want is an inquiry. With doctors, psychologists, experts. Tell him how we want Tom’s name cleared.’

  Neil looked up. ‘Sam, I’ll write your letter, but I’ll need time. To set it out properly. Make sense.’

  Sam stared at him. ‘If you do it tonight, I’ll take it to town tomorrow.’

  ‘Good. I’ll try.’

  ‘I appreciate this, Neil.’

  The next morning Sam was up early. He washed his face and dressed in his best suit. Ate breakfast as Barbara slept. Just before sunrise he went out to the shed and knocked on the door. ‘Neil?’

  No reply.

  ‘Neil?’

  He went in, but Neil was gone. Clothes. Wheatbag. Gone. The bed hadn’t been slept in. The paper and pen he’d given him were sitting on the toolbox. He picked up what he thought was his letter and read it.

  I’m sorry, but I’ve never been to no war. They said in town about Tom. I needed work. Seeing how your farm was so big. I been stupid, I know. I wish you all the best with Tom. Your good people. My name’s not Neil, so I hope you can forgive me.

  Sam sat on the bed for a few minutes. Noticed a box of old books the stranger had been looking through: a coverless Donne from Barb’s school days, a mouse-eaten Bible, a manual for his stripper. There was a recipe book, magazines, stock journals and a copy of Oliver Twist with Barb’s handwriting in the front: ‘Happy 12th Birthday Our Artful Dodger’. And on top of all this, three and four year-old newspapers, with references to the 32nd Battalion underlined.

  Sam let the note fall to the ground and it settled on the almond shells.

  The first light of morning was coming through the cracked window. He could hear his sheep, and distant thunder. He could smell rain, but didn’t care anymore. He stood and looked at his son’s trophies. It was like he’d never grown up, shaved, left home, worn a uniform. Like he’d never left his side (as they sat, busy with the alligator). There was a bowl, where they’d soak the almonds, get them out of the skins. It’d dried, and rust from the roof had crumbled into it. He could ask him to rinse it, so they could get started.

  Then he slipped the shot-put in his pocket.

  The One-Eyed Merchant

  1936

  THE IRON DUKE stood proud and defiant in the ship breakers’ yard. At 9823 tons deadweight she was all muscle and bone, her salt-eaten skin flaking in the last gasp of a north England summer. She’d ferried tourists to the Continent before the army had claimed her for troop transport in 1916. After the war she was sold to the Adelaide Cruise Company and, on a cold December morning in 1919, steamed south to warmer waters.

  She was still an impressive vessel (propped up by a frame, wallowing in a swamp). Two funnels, held up by cables, which were being cut. Her cabins were all wood—floorboards, walls and ceilings. Men brought up armfuls of spruce and oak and dropped them overboard. Boys gathered the remains and threw them onto flat-top trucks.

  The Duke had steamed the coastal run off South Australia—Adelaide to Ports Lincoln, Pirie and Augusta, meandering on to Whyalla and Port Hughes on its famous Gulf Trip. For £6 you could get seven days of quoits and cardboard horse racing, fancy-dress parties and visits to barley-smelling towns.

  But now the Iron Duke had returned home. Settled in a dry dock, dropped any pretence of dignity, exfoliated, cast off her husk and shown the world her skeleton: rows of ribs from the world’s best welders. Bulkheads that would yield, to the river, the scrap merchants. An autopsy carried out by teams of little navvies stripping wire from the bridge and cabins; sinks and marble benches from the kitchens; shower heads and taps from the bathrooms; and half-inch-thick iron plates from the hull.

  The Duke had a double hull, so there were men inside the ship, removing more iron plates, forcing them through gaps to fall again, closer to workers who lifted them into small carriages, pulled by a tank engine that took these materials back to the main yard. A scaffold had been erected above the waterline and teams worked their way along—cutting, hammering, prying away the plates until they fell into the mud. There were two men, high up, laughing to themselves, working slowly as they complained about the weather, the price of meat and the fact that they were never given asbestos gloves anymore. The taller of these two men finished cutting a plate, peeled it back and loosened it with a kick from his steel-capped boot. It fell and landed sideways in the silt that was rinsed twice a day by a weary river.

  His friend, a shorter, grey-haired, possum-like man, saw it first. He gazed into the shadows of the freshly opened hull and said, ‘Christ!’

  The taller man looked and agreed. ‘Jesus …’

  They stood staring. The foreman called up to them but they ignored him.

  Then the taller man stepped forward, knelt down and removed a small piece of cloth from inside the hull. It was an old yellow handkerchief, gathered and tied in a knot to hold something. He undid the knot and removed two fresh pennies from the bundle. Studied them and noticed the dates: 1898, 1900. Then stood and looked back into the hull.

  The bell sounded for lunch, but neither of them moved.

  1901

  George Barham lived above a dress shop in Chart Street, Draper. He was nine years old, but small for his age. He’d finished with school—or more correctly, it had finished with him. But even before he’d left, once he’d turned eight, he was still the smallest boy in his class. Once, his teacher had met his mother at the front gate and asked, ‘Do you feed him meat?’

  ‘When I can afford it.’

  ‘Fruit? Vegetables?’

  She’d just glared at him. ‘His father was a small man.’

  The teacher’s eyes had narrowed. ‘His father has passed?’

  ‘Dead. Trying to stop a fight. He was a policeman.’

  There was a big photo of him, young and happy, clutching a cricket bat, hanging in what passed as their lounge room. George had some of his things—a hairbrush, a button from his tunic, a letter he’d written him, yellow, cracked along the folds.

  His mother shook his shoulders and he woke. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘You’ll be late again.’

  He rolled over, pulled the rug up under his chin, but then sat up. ‘What day is it?’

  ‘The day after yesterday.’

  ‘Is it Friday ye
t?’

  ‘Yes it is.’ She pinched his cheek.

  He dressed in a pair of old calico pants that came up past his ankles; pulled on his boots, without socks; a shirt; and a loose jacket that allowed him to crawl easily inside the big ship’s double hull. Then he sat at an old table in what passed as their dining room, the same room as their lounge room, bedroom and kitchen; all contained in what passed as their flat, their building (with its chunks of old stone falling off, hitting the hopscotch girls on the head) and finally, what passed as a suburb, a community of uncollected rubbish and wild dogs running loose.

  Although they only had a single room, if you tried, you could imagine it as some sort of palace. The bed he shared with his mother, and some nights, one of her friends—before he crawled out and slept in the hallway. A long bench that passed as a kitchen (he’d told her about the Duke’s marble benches). A pot that she squatted over during the night.

  ‘Eat up,’ she said, placing a bowl of watery oats in front of him.

  He decided not to complain. He ate half and said, ‘You have the rest.’

  ‘Eat!’

  ‘What’s for lunch?’

  ‘Corned beef.’ Wrapping his sandwich in wax paper and slipping it into his dad’s old satchel.

  ‘I’ve had beef all week.’

  ‘Think yourself lucky.’

  ‘The men have stew.’

  ‘So?’

  And again, he stopped, choosing old meat over what his dad called ‘your mother’s dramaticals’.

  He studied his mother as she washed dishes. Her hands, still soft and white, her arms, thin and tapering, as if they could be snapped with a gentle twist. A small curl that hung down beside her left ear. Her neck, long, whiter still.

  Returning to his bed, he sat down on his old sheets, took out a book from under his pillow and opened it to its mark. Read a line or two about Mr Jeremiah Cruncher before his mother said, ‘What are you doing?’

  He looked up. ‘It’s not time.’

  ‘I want you to go early, and stop at Mr Gordon’s. I need plain flour, quarter of a pound. Can you remember that?’

  He continued reading.

  ‘George!’

  Looked up. ‘Plain flour, quarter of a pound.’

  ‘Well, get going.’ She threw his satchel onto the bed.

  ‘Can I finish this page?’