Major Maltravers and Captain Dickey were in attendance when Jeremy was called down to the waiting staff-car. They greeted him with military stiffness now, despite his easiness as of old with them. Denzil sat in front with the driver, Malters in the rear, where the place of honour, in the middle, was given to Jeremy, perhaps because he was in civvies. Then away to GHQ.
Properly that institution was called Victoria Barracks. Such a citadel, similarly named, stood in every State Capital, relic of the day when the States were separate Colonies, each with its British Garrison — if that day really could be said to be past, when each State still had its Governor, appointed by the British Crown, living in regal isolation under the Union Jack and possessing all the privileges and prerogatives of the Sovereign, even to taking over Government if need be, and the vision of most citizens was confined to their State Borders.
It was a massive place, built of local granite, but looking as if each block had been cut in English prisons and imported as ship’s ballast along with the first chained immigrants. Indeed, it looked rather like an English prison — or an Australian prison, for that matter, since the main ones were built on the good old English plan. Originally, no doubt, it had had its prison-like equipment: the flogging-triangle, gauntlet-running alley, cells, and gallows, for dealing with those who breached the Honour of the Regiment.
Ancient cannon squatted each side of the wide stairway, grinning like a pair of British Bulldogs. Above the doorway was the Royal Coat of Arms, with the Alien Beasts and the Royal Boast, God and my right. In the doorway stood a sergeant with gold stripes, whose job it was, apparently, to do what now he did as General Sir Mark Esk and his party came up the stairs, scream for all the world round here to hear — Stand fast!
In a corner of the panelled and polished hall stood a marble bust of the Good Queen who had originally owned the place and whose expression still said: Flog ’em! Seemingly wooden soldiers of varying rank stood staring at nothing as the procession passed. They climbed a wide wooden stairway and entered a corridor, passing more graven images in khaki. Thus to the front of the building and into a spacious office. Wide windows overlooked a wide road of several traffic lanes divided by bright flower-beds and park beyond, so that the view was again rather like that of a botanic gardens. A couple of wooden soldiers were there. The General dismissed them with a casual wave. They dismissed themselves with proper ceremony.
Esk seated Jeremy in a wide leather chair, then himself behind the great desk, with his aides on either side. At once he got onto the matter of conditions in Malaya, and had Malters produce his report and read it, item by item, while Esk discussed each with Jeremy; and Denzil, tapping buck teeth with a pen, gazed out upon the flower-beds as if in fancy plucking them to make a nosegay. Thus till Esk suggested tea. Then Captain Dickey flew into action, seized the telephone, soon captained a squad of flunkeys in white coats and red-striped pants marching in with laden trays. He commanded another detachment later bearing a huge map of Malaya and trestles on which to set it up. These were the only breaks they had from the task in hand. Jeremy looked interested enough, asked questions, made notes. He even showed some interest in drill proceeding on a parade ground to be seen from side windows, remarking on the difference from the mode of his day: ‘Good to see they’ve got rid of that idiotic Forming Fours.’
At noon a bugle rang from the parade ground:
Come to the cook-house door, boys, come to the cook-house door,
Pig-swill’s ready, pig-swill’s ready,
Come to the cook-house door.
An hour later the bugle rang again, a different call:
Officers’ wives have puddings and pies,
And Sergeants’ wives have jelly,
But Privates’ wives get nothing at all,
But a stiff prick in the belly.
At that General Esk said, ‘Righty-ho . . . we mustn’t keep ’em waitin’. It’s their Mess . . . but they won’t even enter till I have . . . these Democrats of yours, Jeremy, old boy!’
The Staff Corps Mess occupied almost an entire rear quarter corner of the great building. Its spaciousness was now divided with movable partitions, which evidently would be removed on special occasions. The polish of its floor and hangings hinted at Regimental Balls. Glimpses through the partitions could be had of dining-section, reading-room, bar. Inside, over the wide door, flanked by folded Union Jacks, was a portrait of the Present Owner, whose slack mouth and vacant eyes made him look as dim-witted as his great-grand-dam looked grim.
There was no one in the bar but the barmen, in white monkey-jackets and striped pants, and another, similarly attired, but wearing three gold stripes, who stood at the entrance, for the same reason as the gold-striped sergeant was stationed at the main entrance — Stand fast! The crew became wooden. Esk nodded to the sergeant, who screamed, ‘At ease!’ Normal business of setting up bottles and glasses on the counter was resumed.
The second scream, apparently, was also signal for a rush of natty khaki figures from the outer door — rush, that is, in respect of haste, since the movement must have been in strict accordance with precedence of rank, when those who first entered the bar wore the insignia of British Generals of varying degrees of generalship (no such thing as Australian insignias, of course). The first was a tubby chubby figure, with bristly white hair and moustache and ruddy chubby countenance and shrewd blue eyes. Despite his gleaming sam browne and scrambled-eggs-and-tomato mass of campaign ribbons, he looked rather like an undersized butcher. Those at his heels looked like grocers or schoolteachers or accountants. Not a warrior-type among them, and most undersized, as if that were in itself a primary in qualification for generalship since established by that General of Generals, Napoleon Bonaparte.
The fat little leader came up to Esk grinning, saying with what was obviously false heartiness, ‘Ah, General!’
Esk bowed slightly, smiling, answering, ‘General!’ Then he said, ‘I’ve taken the liberty of bringing a guest, General. May I present Brigadier Delacy?’
‘Ah!’ exclaimed Tubby, extending a small plump butcher’s hand, but flicking his shrewd little eyes over the civilian-clad figure as if subtly discounting the asserted rank thereby, before meeting the grey eyes as Jeremy took the hand. ‘Welcome, Brigadier . . . heard a lot about you.’ It was a quick clipped voice.
Jeremy bowed slightly, murmuring, ‘Thank you, Sir.’
‘What’ll you have?’ asked the tubby one.
‘Something with a touch of brandy.’
A deep chuckle, while the keen eyes quizzed: ‘Here’s to the good old brandy, eh?’ He turned to snap an order at a barman who was waiting as if expecting to be tossed the Golden Fleece.
While the drinks were being prepared, General Tub introduced his retinue. There was the Mil. Gen. Sec, the GDMI, the AG, the QMG. All were interested, amiable. Meanwhile the place was crowding, although decoriously, so as to leave the Top Brass ample room. All soon had drinks. But no one drank. Herein lay a great formality. It began with a sharp tap from somewhere. Silence on the dot. Then General Tub raised his glass, snapping in his precise schoolteacher’s voice, ‘Gentlemen . . . “The King”!’
They swung in a body towards Silly Billy enthroned between his flags above the door, and as solemnly as a congregation in Amen, intoned: ‘The King!’
It was over. Down the hatch!
In the midst of the clinking, glugging, and clap-trapping, one of the little Generals, a slight accountant-type thin, wiry, sharp-featured, sharp-eyed as an auditor, staring at Jeremy, remarked, ‘Delacy . . . wouldn’t happen to be related to a Flash Jack Delacy?’
Jeremy, who till now had looked withdrawn, showed sudden sharp interest. ‘Yes . . . my brother.’
The little general smiled, in a tight way, as if not used to doing so. ‘Well, well! I hadn’t thought of Flash Jack for years, until the name . . . yes, and the face . . . brought him back to me.’
Jeremy swallowed. ‘He . . . he isn’t alive, you know.’
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p; The small squarish grey head nodded. ‘Yes . . . I know . . . I saw him die.’
Jeremy’s eyes widened. ‘You did? You served with him?’
‘He served under me. As gallant a soldier as ever was.’
Jeremy blinked. ‘Served under you?’
‘On Gallipoli. Landed with me . . . with the first. Pity he wasn’t able to come off with us who had the luck in the end . . . and to have shared the glory ever since.’ The General heaved a gusty sigh, shook his head sadly.
Jeremy looked at the grey hair of the head searchingly, after a moment asked, ‘Would you have been red-haired younger?’
The General looked surprised. ‘Yes.’
Jeremy suddenly was heaving for breath. He almost gasped, ‘Would . . . would you have been called Bluey . . . by your men?’
Again the thin smile. ‘I believe they did call me that . . . behind my back. Why do you ask?’
Jeremy got control of his breathing. He swallowed again, hard. He said, in voice of which the vibrance caught even further interest than that already roused, ‘My brother wrote about you . . . in the last letter I got from him.’
‘Indeed, now! That’s interesting. Written from the Peninsula?’
Jeremy’s voice shook: ‘Where else . . . except from Hell?’
The General’s face changed. He was a man who knew danger, and saw it in the quivering face, the staring grey eyes. His own face tightened, eyes narrowed.
Jeremy laboured again for breath. ‘I came several contingents behind my brother . . . landed El Kantara. That’s where . . . I heard of his death . . . and got the letter.’
The General swallowed, made a sympathetic bunch of thin lips, opened it to say, but warily, ‘I say eh! Nasty shock!’
Jeremy got control of his breathing with an effort that turned his face crimson and brought the sweat beading on his brow. He said hoarsely, ‘He told me he was about to die . . . and asked me to look after a halfcaste girl he’d left behind with a child. He . . .’ His voice now whistled like a flying stockwhip, to crack, ‘. . . he told me he was serving under a homicidal maniac called Bluey . . . who had a charmed life himself . . . and was proving it, by forcing every possible hazard . . . in the process wiping out all the poor luckless bastards that had to follow him!’
The lean brown face of the little General had turned grey as the hair above it. But the eyes held boldly. The jaw was out-thrust.
Jeremy drew a deep breath to conclude: ‘Would you be the homicidal maniac called Bluey . . . Sir?’
A gasp from all round.
Now it was the little General who strove for breath. Getting it, he answered through clenched false teeth, curling thin lips back, ‘Your . . . brother . . . was the most gallant officer . . . in my unit. I . . . I tried to get him a posthumous VC.’
Rage blazed in Jeremy’s eyes now, was thick in his voice: ‘Just as well you didn’t . . . Sir!’
Colour was coming back into the grey face. There was anger in the snapping voice: ‘Why do you say that?’
‘Because I was his next of kin . . . because, in effect, his murder murdered the rest of our family . . . and so you would have had to give it to me . . . Sir!’ Spittle flew from Jeremy’s lips as he thrust his face close to the other grown grey again to roar, ‘And I would have shoved it up your bloody arse . . . you military murderer!’
Everybody seemed to be in a trance. The tubby General was the first to snap out of it. He touched Jeremy’s elbow, saying sharply, ‘That’s enough!’
Jeremy swung on him. ‘Enough, is it? Nothing’s enough for you bastards. I know you. You tried to send me to Ireland to kill my kinsfolk. You tried to smother me in the mud and blood of France, as you did scores of thousands of your own countrymen . . . while you sat in the War Office, in London, suck-holing the British Brass . . . you filthy fat little runt! What did you get those campaign ribbons for? Sitting at that Staff Corps desk . . . or rooting in a brothel?’
The blue eyes popped. The purple face split with a bellow, ‘How dare you!’
Esk had a grip on Jeremy’s arm before Jeremy could take it further. Jeremy took one look at the haggard imploring face, then, shaking off the hand, turned towards the entrance. The crowd fell back before him as if he were a monster. He seemed to see no one, not even the imbecilic inbred face of the Symbolic Superman above the outer door.
Hatless, he made straight for the stairs, went down, was challenged at the entrance by the gilded sergeant: ‘Your pass, Sir.’ Jeremy stared at the wooden-faced man for a moment, then thrust his hand into an inner pocket, drew out his military wallet, handed it over, went bounding down the granite steps, past the guns of the bulldog breed. He was at the great front gate when the sergeant shouted to him. He didn’t look back, went out, turned into the street, went striding the slate-slabbed footpath towards the city.
A squad of old soldiers, marching in old-style column-of-fours, some in natty business suits, others in the poor rumpled best of workingmen, with their regimental flags and wreaths of poppies, were heading down the road towards the Anzac Memorial, no doubt in annual commemoration of some battle ordered by a Brass Hat with his feet on a Staff-Office table, which had reduced them from a battalion to this boy scout’s squad. In memory of those for whom they would lay the wreaths they would quote what was graven on the plinth of the Memorial: They Shall Not Grow Old as We That Are Left Grow Old. Jeremy’s face quivered at the pathetic sight of them. Other passers by doffed their hats.
On the bridge over the dirty river, ensconsed in the little alcoves designed for those with leisure to view the passing rubbish from the factories upstream, were guffawing soldiers taking scarcely concealed liberties with giggling girls. A great banner stretched across it between lamp-posts: AUSTRALIA WILL BE THERE — ARE YOU GOING TO BE THE ODD MAN OUT?
Poor fellow my Country!
Jeremy returned to the hotel, to his suite, began at once to pack. He was almost finished — when a knock at the door. He called entry. It was Mark Esk — not General Sir Marcus Esk, Bt, DSO, etc. — because no military nobleman could look so haggard, so near to tears. Jeremy’s set face did not change, except for a tiny furrow as of pain between his eyes. After staring at the beaten man for a moment, he said shortly, ‘I’m sorry, Mark . . . but no postmortem, if you please.’
Esk replied in a flat voice, ‘I’m glad you realise that a death’s concerned.’
‘Death of your scheming for your Commonwealth?’
‘If I’ve been doing what can be classed as scheming, it has been in all honesty for what I’ve deemed the greatest hope for the progress of mankind. It’s that hope that’s just died, Jeremy . . . at your hands.’
Returning to his packing, Jeremy remarked, ‘The last thing I expected of you was melodrama.’
Esk took a moment to answer, husky now, ‘Is it melodrama to mourn the destruction of what you’ve given your life to?’
Jeremy snipped the locks, clinched the buckles. As he took up the suitcase and turned again to Esk, the latter said, again in that flat tone, ‘You gave them exactly what they’ve wanted the whole time I’ve been here . . . a chance to discredit me so as to get rid of me.’
Standing with the case, Jeremy said, ‘You only have to disown me to get your credit back.’
‘The Australian way. Yes . . . but disowning you, to me means disowning the “one just man in Sodom”.’
‘Another thing I didn’t expect of you, Mark, is casuistic clap-trap.’
‘I myself didn’t expect that I’d ever have to explain myself to you. What I meant was that without you I can’t defend Australia . . . and without Australia defended by its own people and their kindred, our Commonwealth goes down.’
‘You know I don’t give a damn for your Commonwealth. Nor do the mob back there . . . nor even legally belong to it, in fact, nor want to. The old bullying Empire . . . God Save the King and Bless the Lee-Endfield Rifle will do them.’
‘You also evidently don’t give a damn for your own country.’ Jeremy’
s eyes became hard again. Esk went on: ‘You know that they don’t . . . that they’ll make no effort to defend it. Hence, either it will be overrun by the Japanese eventually, or someone you’ll have to yell for help to . . . the Yankees, who never do anything for nothing. Your alternative is to become part of the Japanese Empire or the USA . . . or perhaps the USSR.’
‘My alternative, Mark, is to die fighting any bastard who tries to intrude on the bit of country I now consider I belong to, even if I can’t claim it belongs to me.’
Poor Whiskers drooped. Jeremy, advancing towards him, said more gently, ‘I’m truly sorry to disappoint you, Mark . . . but I would have had to eventually. I’ve felt all the while lately that you’ve had me trapped. Better now than later . . .’
‘If it’d only been later . . . I might have got enough done to have carried on . . . have recruited enough of the other Jeremy Delacys there must be about. We haven’t been nearly strong enough for the Larrikin Gang, just the two of us.’
‘You never would have been strong enough, Mark. Don’t forget this is a convict community . . . and its symbol of authority the Cat-o’-nine-tails. As you can’t flog ’em, you can’t beat ’em . . . and, as the old saying has it: If you can’t lick ’em, join ’em. They’re really so dumb, for all their con-man shrewdness, that you could feasibly outwit them in the end.’
Esk sighed: ‘No . . . having lost you, I’ve lost the battle. There’s nothing for it but for me to resign as C-in-C and go home to become a Little Englander. That’s what’s wanted, of course. I left them gloating over the victory.’
‘Have you resigned?’
‘Not officially. I’ll do that on a plea of ill health or something . . . to satisfy the High Command and the political hypocrites here. But in effect I’ve done so . . . in defending you.’
‘There’s no defending my action. Militarily it’s indefensible . . .’
‘Of course. But it wasn’t your action I defended . . . it was you.’
‘What d’you mean?’
Poor Fellow My Country Page 201
