Poor Fellow My Country

by Xavier Herbert

  Sims wiped blood from his mouth, gasped, ‘He started it. I said I didn’t want to . . .’

  ‘The fool’s drunk!’ panted the priest.

  ‘Drinkin’, drinkin’ . . . I knew it’d come to the loike o’ this!’

  Glascock raised his voice at her: ‘Madam!’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Will you . . . kindly . . . remove yourself?’ He swung on the other women. ‘And you, too, ladies!’

  The Reverend Mother snapped, ‘Not till I see this thing settled . . . whatever ’tis.’

  Sims, now dabbing his mouth with a khaki handkerchief and evidently much sobered, said breathlessly, ‘Settled far as I’m concerned. I’m off.’ He turned away, to head down the verandah, looking back to snap, ‘And you can all go to bloody hell!’ He went into his room.

  Priest and Reverend Mother eyed each other sharply. Glascock faltered first, glanced at the other women, then turned away, to proceed to put the disarray of things to rights. The Reverend Mother turned to the two young women, waved them away. They withdrew. The old woman herself, with withered face buttoned tightly, stood by watching. Prindy replaced the lamp, helped the priest pick up the broken glass.

  Perhaps ten minutes. Then there was Sigs Sims, pack on his shoulder, tool-kit in hand, stepping off the verandah. He paid no heed to those who watched him, but made for the road, and northward, evidently heading out to the airfield. As he disappeared, the Reverend Mother said, ‘I’ll be layvin’ you now, Reverent Father . . . to go to Bloody Hell on your own . . . wid your bahttle!’

  Glascock ignored her. She went scuffling away in slippers.

  Finished the clearing up, the priest asked Prindy, who was watching him, ‘You all right, sonny?’

  ‘Yas, Father.’

  ‘You’ll be able to get to sleep?’

  ‘Yas, Father.’

  ‘Well, you’d better get off. If you can’t sleep, we’ll make a cup of cocoa.’

  It was Glascock needed the cocoa. He sat a long while over his book a History of Jewry, now without drinking. Then he dowsed the light. He looked across the road. The mean little shack, the Synagogue, under the spell of the Old One, almost directly overhead now, looked like a bower of ivory. A Willy wagtail was singing of love in the casuarinas quite close by. He sighed, went to his room, changed to pyjamas, knelt in prayer at his prie-dieu, got into bed. But he tossed for an hour. Then it was he rose and made more cocoa. He took it round to his place on the verandah, sat in a deck-chair to drink it and stare at the ivory bower, in which slept a princess with copper hair, perhaps only needing to be kissed awake to that love the wagtail was still singing of so sweetly: Kirri-kirri-kirriki-kirriki-jirritee!

  Kirie eleison . . . Lord, have Mercy!

  He rose quickly, went rushing to his room, to drop at the prie-dieu again, striking his breast — Kirie eleison . . . Kirriki-kirriki-jittit . . . what a night for love . . . Lord, have mercy upon me, a miserable sinner!

  A small golden head was peeping from the door.

  Out at the airfield another Kirrikijirrit was singing of love, while Sigs Sarge Sims sat huddled in a strip of shadow beside the fuel-shed, with tears mingling with the blood of his broken mouth, as was plain to see in the glare flung back by Igulgul straining to see, to smirk at the power of his Wrong side Bijnitch.

  V

  When in mid-morning Fergus arrived, coming straight in from the sea to do a low turn over the settlement, everybody turned out to wave, but none moved to go to meet him. He came out of the dust of his landing to stare from his cockpit at the solitary Sigs Sarge Sims lined up with kit at feet, one hand behind in the at-ease position, the other involuntarily breaking good order and military discipline to wave the flies away from his black eye and swollen mouth. When he alighted, he asked, ‘What happened?’

  ‘Bit of a blue.’

  ‘Can see that . . . but who with?’

  ‘The bloody priest.’

  ‘Jesus! What for?’

  ‘That bloody Jewess!’ As Fergus gaped, Sims poured it all out as he saw it, concluding: ‘Never dawned on me that he was on with her . . . although it sticks out a mile when you see it. They never speak in anybody else’s company . . . avoid one another. Yet he’s always watching her joint. She warned me about it, when I tried to put in a bit of a plod with her. Then when I let him have it straight, he didn’t deny it . . . just went bloody mad. Priest or no priest . . . I had to defend myself.’

  Staring at him hard, Fergus asked rather coldly, ‘Sure you haven’t got it all wrong?’

  Sigs spat out blood. ‘Never so sure of anything in my life, dig. I’ve been played for the biggest mug this side o’ the Black Stump.’

  Fergus drew a deep breath. ‘Well, not much use my looking ’em up, I suppose. Here, put your gear in the locker . . . and get aboard, while I take a look around the under-cart.’

  Returned from his inspection, Fergus found Sigs standing waiting for him in the cabin. ‘Better sit well aft,’ he said. ‘She’s a bit nose-heavy flying light.’

  ‘Couldn’t I come up the front with you? I’ve never flown with a pilot before. Matter of fact, flying up from the South was my first time in an aeroplane.’

  Fergus, looking tight-lipped, stared at him for a moment, looked like refusing bluntly, but then said, ‘Okay . . . but you might find it a bit rough. I always beat the place up a bit to amuse the kids.’

  ‘Suits me,’ said Sigs cheerfully.

  It was rough. Fergus bunged on just about every manoeuvre the aircraft would stand, to conclude by flying out across the sea upside down. Back into normal straight-and-level, he turned his split grin on Sigs, whose complexion was pea-green, asking, ‘Well, how was that?’

  Sigs only swallowed for answer. Then Fergus’s grin was wiped off. He sniffed. He leaned towards Sigs sniffing. He drew back with a grimace of disgust, exclaiming, ‘You’ve shit yourself!’

  Sigs drooped in utter misery.

  Fergus leaned over again, slipped the buckle of Sigs’s harness, and drawing back, cried, ‘Jesus wept! What a job you’re going to do in the face of the enemy. Get out of that seat and right down aft . . . oh, pooh . . . get moving!’

  Stiffly poor Sigs rose, went stumbling out of the cockpit, while Fergus, tight-faced, tore open his side window.

  22

  I

  Except for those people who, as individuals, ethnic or political groups, nations, had been obliterated by the rush of events of 1939, for all the human uproar that had been accompaniment to its passage, the year ended on a note of anticlimax. The War that so many Dismal Jimmies had predicted as certain to be the worst in history if those spoiling for it were not put down, had become an international joke. From being called the Twilight War, as in the halcyon calm following the initial carnage and conquest, it was now being called the Phoney War. The word Phoney in itself was in the nature of a joke, being a take-off of the pronunciation of Funny by refugees from the earlier frightfulness. The Reffoes naturally did not mean that they found it amusing, but the casual attitude to it by those amongst whom they took refuge bewildering and dubious in the extreme, in view of their declared hostility to those who had caused it all.

  At Beatrice River, they still had the armed guard on the bridge, and on the Railway Station that notice telling you to keep your mouth shut because of the long-eared enemy. However, the guards were now more concerned with the fish in the river than with likely lurking saboteurs, the gossips back on the old familiar themes. Still, the War was not completely dropped from gossip. There was news from the doings of Our Boys, still in their training camps Down South and getting rather fed up with the mere marching-up-and-down-again, some more than others. For instance, Brumby Toohey had gone more or less permanently Ack-willie, and had the Provosts after him now, instead of the Johns as of old; and Pat Hannaford was in the brig for striking an officer — guess who? — well, naturally Lieutenant Clancy Delacy.

  Speaking of the Delacys (between you and me and the verandah post as old Shame-on-us
said) what was this about the Scrub Bull’s being mixed up with Military Intelligence? Imagine it — when he had been so anti-war that he’d stuck that stuffed french letter on the concrete Warrior atop the Anzac Memorial in Town! Yet how account for that high-powered radio installed at Lily Lagoons by military experts and his dashing about the country by air along with General Esk, and his fancy Jew-girl’s being installed at a Catholic mission, showing propaganda pictures to the boongs and learning their lingo? There had been a whisper a year or two back of the Pommy General’s being interested in the recruitment of the Black Bastards in the event of war. If that was the game, arming the Bush Boongs, then for chrissake, that was the stone end of everything!

  That chieftain of the gossip clan, the Finnucane of the Finnucanes, tried to get a clue to the mystery by having the Scrub Bull in for a private drop of the Tullamore Dew to toast the New Year. Afterwards he had to confess himself even more baffled, telling his cronies, ‘When I fished for a hint of what’s goin’ on he took the bait too aysily. Yes . . . a Secret Service Man he’d have us belave he is . . . which means, o’ course, that he isn’t. T’in what the divil is he? And so amiable! Sure, ayven his ould Da wasn’t half as amiable as he these days . . . and I’ll tell ye, Ould Pat was the most amiable man in the wurruld . . . when it suited him.’

  Probably, of all the people in the district who knew what was going on, or thought they did, Jeremy was the least concerned. Tom Toohey tried pumping him privily, telling him what was being noised abroad. Normally, perhaps, he would have confided in Tom. However, Tom was much changed since Brumby’s enlistment, first filled with pride in his Soldier-boy and tending to run with the mob in his feeling about the War, and now utterly ashamed of the boy’s dereliction and hardly likely to be anything but embarrassed in the presence of one he knew for a high-ranking officer. Jeremy put him off, saying simply, ‘I told you the General wants me to take command of the area. It might be necessary someday. It certainly doesn’t look like it at the moment. It’s my bet that the business in Europe will peter out with the onset of the Northern winter. As for the Japs . . . they’ve shown how they feel about Germany and Russia getting together. With things like that, they’re going to have their hands full in China for a long long while.’

  Actually, Jeremy’s Secret Service amounted to the daily receipt of a coded signal from GHQ formally requesting a report on the military situation in the area and the routine reply to it: Situation normal.

  It was a couple of weeks after that attempt of old Shame-on-us’s to elucidate matters for the public benefit that Jeremy, just home again from meeting the mail train, perhaps for the last time by motor vehicle for the season by the look of the weather, took a look at the tape hanging out of the relay that printed the signals coming through the radio, and saw that the latest communication was obviously different from the routine one. He got his code-book. The message decyphered: Request your attendance GHQ earliest possible date repeat earliest kind regards signed Mark. Although the ending was not at all in keeping with military procedure, as might be expected in the circumstances, the repetition was hint enough that the message was an order to be obeyed.

  Speaking to Nan about it, when he asked her to get out some Southern clothes for him against his catching Friday’s train to Town, suggesting that he would want only one suit, he said ruefully, ‘Looks like I was wrong saying I couldn’t see myself ever wearing a uniform again.’

  Catching the train on Friday, he told the sticky-beaks that he was only running up on business. It was a fact that in Town on the Saturday he attended only to matters concerned with Lily Lagoons, except that of booking a seat on Monday’s mail plane, which he was able to do with a clerk from the South who did not know him.

  Judge Bickering met him at the hotel, and failing to get him home that first day, was not to be gainsaid the next. Jeremy went round to lunch with him. No doubt but that the Judge had it on good authority, probably from Lieutenant-Colonel Chivvy, that Jeremy was somehow involved in military matters.

  However, Jeremy dodged the leading questions, quite without offending the Judge, who only winked that eye and said finally, ‘Well, after all, a soldier isn’t supposed to talk.’ The Judge was more interested in talking about war, in a philosophical fashion. He said, ‘I was too cowardly for the First . . . or, at any rate, I thought more of getting an honours degree in law than a medal or a glorious death . . . and now I’m too old. Still, I’d like the experience . . . immoral as the act may be. Rather like an old chap in his dotage, too scared or scrupulous to go to a brothel, eh?’

  II

  So up into the milky blue of the dawn sky, with day already blazing golden in the valleys of the cloud mountains of the North — to swing away from these and set course for the crystal violet of the South. Almost before the big mail plane had reached flight-level the silver northern sea had vanished — while Terra Australis bared her vast neuter-coloured bosom.

  In an hour there was the Beatrice River, only a whip-snake from away up here. Beatrice Township was only a couple of white dots. A single white dot, seemingly next door, was Lily Lagoons homestead. Away northeastward the neutral emptiness fading into the hazy nothingness of the horizon was the Sandstone Plateau, so full of secret places, alive with secret life, sacred to the memory of so many things; but as such only to this passenger, who stared at it with intense grey eyes. By the way he half-frowned, perhaps Jeremy was wondering whether modern means of getting about his environment would so demean it to Man that he would not scruple to destroy it. If eventually our kind come to be born of synthetic wombs it will mean nothing to us to see the cradles of our existence disposed of as waste when they’ve served their purpose. Yet is destruction of one’s true mother’s womb even thinkable? And is not one’s country one’s mother, too, since one takes one’s first substance from it? Are not its features as much to be beloved? So might Jeremy have been thinking, being the man he was, and that the reason he raised his hand to what he knew so well as if in farewell to it, as it passed from view with his being rushed by unnatural means towards the source of the unnaturalness that to the like of him must seem like a blight fallen upon fairness.

  In the evening, they broke through bloody weeping rain to land at Brisbane. There was the synthetic Womb of Environment opening. It glittered with artificial light. It teamed with artificial children jostling for space. Jeremy, the bushie, used to natural darkness and leisurely movement, blinked and blundered his way in. He hired a habitat for the night. Even the blinds and shut window could not keep out the incessant glare and shackled restlessness of this, by comparison with others, small city.

  Next morning he betook himself to the Interstate Railway Station, to book the rest of his passage by rail. The city was gay with War. Flags flew on most buildings — mostly Union Jacks, as was seemly, seeing that it was an English War. There were bright posters about warlike things — how to invest your money in War Bonds and do your bit while making a bit — how to invest your life so as to Be A Man, like the three young heroes in Army, Navy, and Air Force uniforms depicted beckoning to you to join them. There were hundreds of these heroic laddies in the flesh, temporarily a lot of them, crowding the pavements, mostly outside the pubs, few if any as handsome as those in the posters, but no less cheerful about the investment, except a couple puking in the gutter. People smiled and nodded at them, however they were behaving. Why not — when they were Our Boys, keeping up our pride as the People of Anzac. Without such as they there would be no Anzac Day. Without Anzac Day, what would we do? Like Old Soldiers, we’d Simply Fade Away. Such might have been Jeremy’s thoughts, as with a glint of mockery in his eye as compared with that troubled look of former times, he made his way through the plastic thoroughfares imported from Trinidad.

  At the Interstate Station Jeremy learnt that he hadn’t a hope of getting anything but sitting-up accommodation aboard an Interstate train within a week of booking. The booking-clerk said, ‘There’s a war on, mate, you know. Priorities go to the Se
rvices.’

  Near the general booking-office was another, a temporary frame structure, with the inscription: Railway Transport Officer. All Travelling Service Personnel Report Here. Jeremy went to it. In the outer section a couple of young soldiers were lounging at a desk behind the counter. They merely glanced at Jeremy, went on yarning. Jeremy had to call their attention again: ‘Excuse me.’

  One of the soldiers, a corporal, half-yawned, ‘Yeah?’

  ‘I’d like to see the Railway Transport Officer.’

  ‘Yo’ can’t.’

  ‘Why not? I’m service personnel.’ Jeremy’s face had reddened slightly. Still, his voice was even.

  ‘Why ain’t you in uniform?’

  ‘I have my reasons.’

  ‘What’s yo’ rank?’

  Jeremy took out his military wallet. The corporal made an effort to get to his feet and come. He glanced at the wallet laid open for him to see, started, gasped, ‘Yessir!’ wheeled about and went marching through to another section. The other man at the desk dropped his head and hands to work.

  In a moment the corporal was back, at the double, to lift the flap of the counter and say breathlessly, ‘RTO see you at once, Sir.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Jeremy, and strolled in.

  The RTO was a captain, a thin foxy-faced man of middle age, with a slick of long lank hairs over ivory baldness. He was standing at attention behind his desk. The waste-basket beside him bulged with a newspaper still expanding from having been crushed into it. ‘Good morning,’ said Jeremy. ‘I’d like a rail-warrant . . . if that’s what you still call ’em. I’m on my way to GHQ.’ He handed the wallet to the captain, who only glanced, then, handing it back, leapt to get a chair, stood behind it like a flunkey while Jeremy seated himself, then back to the table, to get out forms with bungling haste.