by Gregory Day
I will love you with the power of two men, one for who you are, the other for what you’ll become.
It was most untimely. Perhaps it was all the writing I’d been doing but, either way, as Brian and I met up with Rose Robinson, who’d come to the pavilion house before with her sister Annie to lay out the sponges and the flowers and vases, and as I was introduced to Annie, a small fat woman with an earnest Presbyterian manner, and also to Ray Sykes of the race committee, I was almost blinded by the phrase.
I squeezed hands with Annie and Sykes and then blurted rather brusquely, given the ladies present and the concentrated formalities of the Cup Day pavilion in this the endless ephemerality of Bass Strait, that I was ‘busting for a piddle’. I shot off without waiting for reactions, nor for the inevitable humour of Brian’s admonishment. I scooted away, taut and upright in my suit, my head swimming as if from a close-run thing, before the first race had even begun.
I ended up, just for the distance I needed to put between the privacy of the phrase and the public occasion, way out beyond the saddling paddock and the other clearings, down behind the turn into the home straight and the clumps of trees which huddled right up to the rail as if for a better view. I pissed in the shadows and when I finished something inside me began to resemble unity. I was excited, even gasping a little. The power of two men, two hearts of love, came rushing into me. One born a loyal plodder, the other, the younger one, exaltedly riding out on the sheer green slopes of his home volcano.
Then, as I emerged from the darkness of the paperbark stand, out into the brightness of the event, the truth and power of the phrase dissolved into a million or more infinitesimal granules coursing through my bloodstream. I shuddered and shivered. I looked back at the gleaming green of the scythed and well-tamped track and a banjo began to play from the podium somewhere between the pavilion and the finishing post. I had no armour. I felt too intense for a day of sociability such as this, too bound up in a new becoming, and had to remind myself, ironically enough, of my purpose in being there at all.
I had to re-emerge all over again. For the first time ever, I am sad to say, and in a great show of sanity on my behalf, I reflected how all those small figures around the pavilion, those people of the island growing larger as I moved towards them, how all of them would at one stage, if not already, be struck down by a tragic beauty such as this. And I thought too, once again for the first time as I rounded the stabling paddock where the cloudy summer light was beginning to bronze on the flanks and rumps and sieve itself through the manes that would soon bolt along in the maiden handicap, how such an awakening was not exclusive to the tragedy of war. And, so it followed, it was not exclusive to me.
These are the reflections that a rewriting of the material allows. The luck that those self-obsessive pages, the words that poured like roaring forties rain and likewise knotted in personal tempest, thankfully burnt in the sympathy of flames. So that now I can see myself quite clearly on the early edge of that race day, emerging in my suit from the paperbarks, reapproaching the track and allowing the stately foreignness of a banjo’s pluck, as it played the ‘Londonderry Air’ on the bandstand by the rails of the straight, to gather me in.
As it turned out the sad tune was just a loosener, for it wound up as I came walking over and then recommenced as I drew into the circle, this time with the help of accordion and tuba. A jaunty ‘When The Saints Go Marching In’ went this way and that on the late morning breezes.
The bookmakers had set up in a row under awnings beside the small bandstand. I searched the crowd for Leonie or the Robinsons until my name was called from the naturally tiered seats on the old clubhouse hill and Brian was beckoning me over.
On that slight elevation then I sat down beside my friend, his wife and sister-in-law, surveying the view and admitting that, yes, I felt better for the stroll. On the green of the track near the finishing post a swan was rummaging amongst the grass blades. Along with the band, the sound of the crowd was rising. Brian had warned me that Cup Day was always a boozy affair and everyone seemed to have a glass or bottle or flask in hand. That was natural. The humour on the faces seemed natural too, even if, due to the higher stakes and the rumours of the powers of certain Victorian horses, there was also an added layer of studied connoisseurship in the air. Brian nudged me, stubbing his solid index finger into the program. Bonny Cologne was the horse he was bringing to my attention and, as he began to list his reasons, I caught Lascelles out of the corner of my eye, dressed not just in his usual slouch hat but in full infantry uniform, talking happily to a cluster of punters making their way around the band to the bookmakers. In his hand was a black half-bucket and, as the cheery punters threw in some coins and a note, I screwed up my face with distaste.
‘What? You know better do you, Wes?’
I had to laugh at the mix-up. A clearing laugh. Brian had taken my sneer at Lascelles to be my opinion of his Bonny Cologne. I played along, suggesting I couldn’t judge before seeing the horseflesh itself and that nor could he.
‘Yair, but it’s a bit of fun and it’s over from Cranbourne,’ he said. ‘Didn’t mind the boat, they say. Placid as a lamb she is but swift as, well, a swift. Been stabled here too, near the track. That’s gotta help.’
‘Not necessarily,’ I replied.
‘No?’
‘No, well some mares like to be floated to a race. Gives them a sense of occasion.’
‘Did ya hear that, Annie,’ said Rose Robinson. ‘Have a listen to Wesley.’
‘Aw barley!’ hooted Brian. ‘Wes here knows bugger all about it. I’ve had the tip from Sykes, he’s the one who brought her over. That’ll do me.’
‘Yair, but he’s involved, Brian,’ I said, playing the worldly mainlander. ‘He’s spent money and wants it to win. Hardly in a position to be handing out advice I wouldn’t reckon.’
Brian’s eyes began to sparkle at my conversation. But then a mottled hand was thrust between us, a shadow loomed in, and I was being introduced to Clem O’Connor, Syke’s offsider on the committee.
‘Yes, meet Wes Cress, Clem. He’s bought my land above Naracoopa. Wait-a-While.’
Clem O’Connor shook my hand. ‘Clementine, glad to meet you, Wes. Where did you serve?’
He was a tall man and, standing right in front of us, was blocking the view out onto the course. I peered up at him and decided to do no more than simply repeat my name, ‘Wesley Cress.’ My voice was dead, in order that his big looming shadow would move, and let the rest of the island back in. Without missing a beat he returned his focus to Brian.
They discussed details of the day, the breaking cloud, the turn-out, and O’Connor agreed with what I’d said about Bonny Cologne. Though Brian was sensitive enough not to draw me into it.
Soon the horses began appearing for the first race, making their way back up the straight towards the clump of paperbarks on the turn. The day was shining, the cumulus in the sky finally beginning to fleece apart as things were about to get underway.
There was no way we could miss each other, if she was there. I volunteered to do the honours with the bookie, took the Robinsons’ money and stepped down from the portable seats on the hill into the milling throng of bodies and keen voices on the flat trackside.
Faces both familiar and unfamiliar touched the brims of hats and ladies smiled as I made my way to the fat man with red mutton-chops, a bookie’s bag and the pensive conga line in front of him. DAWSON. I took my place in the queue, the Robinsons’ money resting quietly between the printed pages of my programme. I had a look around.
All the men were brilliantined and in suits, though some I noticed had muddy boots below. It seemed odd that everyone on this salty crumb in the ocean was so suddenly togged up, comical even, a fact that didn’t escape the racegoers themselves. Like children playing dress-ups they were relishing not only the event but its ludicrous formality.
There was a small g
reen tent with a white roof between the hill and where I stood in Dawson’s queue. It occurred to me, from the things people were bringing out of it: sandwiches, ginger beer, pies, lamingtons, bowls of peanuts, apples and pears, that it was the race-day annexe of the co-op where Leonie worked. I watched closely as people lifted the flap, going in and out. I imagined she was in there, serving. Which would explain why I hadn’t spied her so far. That was why the whole track, despite the happiness and the relish in the air, the colour of the bunting and the wind-rippled laurels of banksias and roses, lilies and gum flowers around the finishing post, had been a puzzle to me. A gauntlet, yes, with the gaze of humble multitudes on Wesley Cress, the spindrift who resents civic charity and wraps himself away like the war’s own enigma, a gauntlet to be run, but a puzzle to be solved just the same.
But now I thought I had it, she was in the co-op tent, working. And so, while the others in the queue talked of who had come and who was still to arrive or they spoke of serious bets they hardly ever got the chance to make – wagers that had displaced for a day the usual ones on the milk or the catch or the laying chooks, or even the private augural bets they made with themselves in pastured solitude, on the flight of gannets or sea eagles – and while they narrowed their own brows amongst this chat to focus like birds themselves on the form in print on the programme in the queue, the words came like a pigeon with a message, from over the sea of occasion, back into my mind.
I will love you with the power of two men, one for who you are, the other for what you’ll become.
As it was, I was happy to stand in that stalling queue, for once relaxed in my own shoes amongst other people. I didn’t wonder that something was supplanting the war in me, a love coming like a laurel wreath to bury the screaming death throes of the black Stukas. But I did reflect, as always, on the progress of Vern. Adrift in those waters still, his soul most typically was flat and dark with the water wings of a ray, but right there in the hopeful moment it became more a skate-shaped pocket of light, a glow from the inside, currenting through buckling depths and each time a fish, or thought or idea, or a tear, passed through that pocket of light it could be seen. Glimpsed. Travelling through my brother’s soul.
The phrase had come, as if lit by that pocket of briny light, as I stood in my suit in the formal dryness of the queue. Until, like some unwitting yet genial blot, Lascelles was helloing me from the grass near the bandstand, and coming over, to once again block the view.
‘Wesley, hello, it’s terrific to see you here.’ He emphasised the you, that was fair enough, I suppose. I thrust out my hand for him to shake.
He launched straight into it, the reason for the black half-bucket in his other hand, and, as if he had just shot a brace of plump chestnut teal, announced what it had to do with me.
‘We’re raising money, Wes, for an island memorial.’
Something in my face must have fallen. There was also progress in the bookie’s queue.
‘Look, before you turn away, let me explain my notion.’
‘Nice uniform,’ I said, caustically. ‘You a tram conductor?’
‘Look, Wes . . .’
I just stared at him. Cold and cruel. Lascelles should’ve known better if he’d read my packages.
Yet it seemed Brian Robinson was right after all. He hadn’t read them.
‘Leonie mentioned to me how you’ve been writing down some recollections of the war,’ he began. ‘And well, I know myself how many packages there’s been. I don’t know what you’ve been putting down on paper, and I don’t presume to know anything about what you’ve been through, other than that it’s given you a sore tooth . . .’
He smiled, as if he’d surprised even himself with the joke. ‘But anyway, I have an idea that what you’ve been up to could be in step with my notion of a memorial with a difference. And, more to the point, with a practical purpose.’
‘Is that right?’ I said, with a merciful tad of drollery, relieved to confirm that he hadn’t been reading the packages. Even so, I was a little preoccupied with the fact that Leonie had mentioned anything at all to him about the contents of what I’d sent. Perhaps, I was thinking, she’d done it to get him off my back. It hadn’t worked.
‘Rather than raising funds to erect a plinth with a plaque, I thought we should construct a small library and reading room instead.’
He looked at me, his eager eyes, the buttons of his perfect uniform shining gently in the pewter sun.
It seemed a nonsensical idea.
‘For solace and reflection in writing and reading,’ he explained. ‘A quiet place to help improve the recovering world.’
You had to hand it to him. ‘Improve the recovering world.’ Was I hearing right? He needed his head read, by some well-trained professional given that his friend Dr Freud had cleverly died in the very month the war began. Well, if nothing else, that at least remained a mark of the good doctor’s intelligence!
Just as I was about to sarcastically suggest, prompted by the atmosphere in which we stood, that a government ration of horse anaesthetic might work just as well in terms of solace and improvement as a library and reading room, I came face to face with the open bag of Dawson the mutton-chopped bookie, who I might add was years later jailed in Melbourne for medium-scale extortion. It was my turn to place a bet.
I slipped the Robinsons’ pound note out from the pages of my programme and rooted round in my own pocket for some coin. There was a moment, as I looked down at the shillings and guineas in my palm and then back up at Lascelles, when I wondered if he expected me to toss something into his black half-bucket. I frowned, simply at the complexity of that, and then with a simple nod down at the list of maiden handicap horses in my programme, excused myself from further discussion. Lascelles looked disappointed, even a smidgen annoyed, but what was I to do? I had someone else’s pound note in my claw, their tips were marked in pencil on the page, and burly Dawson was breathing down my neck to get on with it. The race wasn’t far off starting. Soon the starter’s gun would rap the air. Lascelles would have to bloody well wait.
Of course, the timing was convenient and I was able to fold a hint of farewell into my nod towards the programme in my hand. I turned to face Dawson as Lascelles walked away in his halting gait. I held out the Robinson pound to the bookie. ‘Bonny Cologne,’ I said, with some relish for the task. ‘On the nose.’
*
After the bet I lingered near the co-op tent, from which the steady stream of pies and fruit, cream horns, double-decker lamingtons and sponges on paper plates still emerged. Looking across the track, the jockeys’ silks were beginning to organise themselves in a ragged line at the three-furlong mark. I breathed deeply through my nose and turned.
As yet another group of people emerged from the tent flap with an urgency for the race, I peered into the gap towards the industry within. I saw a trestle-table piled with produce, a man and a woman choosing cakes, another man and woman leaning over and serving behind the trestle. I only had a moment, just the time it took for the group to emerge and the flap to swing back down, but there was no Leonie. It was only a little tent and despite the gauzy green-tinged light inside the canvas walls, the air, and the situation, was clear in that one respect. There was no Leonie.
I made my way back towards the hill. Suddenly with the race about to start, everything seemed urgent. I will love you with the power of two . . . After so long in coming the words seemed already native to me now, like muttonbirds from the Aleutians, as if I was their burrow. I hurried up the slope of the hill, loosening my tie, convincing myself it was still early in the day, wondering if she’d been held up by duties to her father, wondering also then, though not for the first time, but unexpectedly as I approached the Robinsons in their seats, their field glasses trained on the silks in the distance, whether Nat would really have given her that black eye; and as I turned to sit down beside Brian, nodding that, yes, I’d made it to
Dawson in time, the full quid being officially on Bonny Cologne, and saying that no, I myself had abstained this time, commenting that I wanted to see the tread of the track before I took the plunge, the rifle shot went off in the distance. For a moment I saw nothing but the blue smoke of spent mortars drifting through the air above the slope beside Tassos’ courtyard. I was oblivious to the rhythm of the race, instead trying to negotiate through the labyrinthine scenes; a phrase like a muttonbird somewhere within me shivering, without a mate, my own memorial perhaps, the only one I could capably build.
By the time Bonny Cologne had come in third I was drawn by local crescendos back through the ledgers of memory and hope, with my astute approach to the turf being acclaimed on all sides. Half in jest of course, though Rose Robinson was adamant. She said from now on she would pick my brain. God help her with what she found, I thought, and by the farcical humour of that joined my hosts with a smile on my lips. Closely followed by a cigarette, to calm my nerves.
The next race was worth a few quid and, during the wait, expected cloud, arranged in serried clumps from out west, began to canopy the meet. Now the light took on a shining silver and, as I munched on one of Annie’s scones, I watched Lascelles continue to solicit the punters. ‘A library and reading room,’ he explained time and again, waving his bucket around, enthusing, convincing, ‘a place for reflection’, sweating as a slight humidity came onto the track with the cloud. There were a couple of other blokes in remnants of their uniforms too, no doubt SS taking up the chance, and I watched Lascelles approach these two as they stood talking by the bandstand – one of them seemed friendly with the banjo player. The pair of settlers seemed to give Lascelles a fair enough hearing and one even threw a coin into the black half-bucket. Grateful as they no doubt were to have been given their sedgy blocks amongst these farms in the middle of the sea. What had they seen? I wondered. What do they see now, through the veils of charity? A missus and kids? Or perhaps just the next race, a punt and a beer, a smoke and the recognition, which has never ceased to visit me, of the helplessness of men. Ordinary men. As opposed to commanders and captains, generals and kings. As opposed to Tiny Freyberg or Peter Pan. Or John Pendlebury, whose last words as he faced the German firing squad, according to Uncle Tassos, were ‘Fuck You!’ Once again I smiled blackly and through the brighter happenstance of misinterpretation was engaged by Rose in a discussion of the merits of Running to Paradise, the favourite of the next race.
