Black Diamonds

by Kim Kelly

  Can’t read, can’t sleep, can’t count apples now, though; convinced that the trains won’t be running, so I arrive at the station an hour early, to check with the stationmaster. Yes, it’s coming, barring a blizzard or a bushfire; as if anything short of Armageddon would stop the coal trains steaming up and back. Wait, wait, wait. Avoid pacing, stop jiggling. But have I got the right day? I didn’t bring his note with me to check. It said the fifth, didn’t it; or could it have been the sixth? His handwriting is so scrawly, maybe I have got it wrong. Oh stop it, Francy! What am I going to be like when he goes away away? When we’ll have only notes. Not even the stupid telephone: a couple of weeks ago we said a few words to each other down the line at the post office after Mr Symes sent a boy around to tell me Daniel had booked a call. Daniel said, ‘Hello’; I said, ‘Hello’; he said, ‘I just wanted to hear your voice.’; I said, ‘What did you say?’; he said, ‘Can you hear me?’; yes I could, but it didn’t even sound like him, and then the line went off, or whatever it does when it stops connecting. Everyone who’s anyone is getting a telephone installed these days. Not me. I want Daniel. Here.

  Oh heavens, I can hear the train coming now. Here it is. And I run along the platform when I see him, he’s not hard to spot, I run with everything. And I kiss him all over his face, and I don’t care if that’s indecorous. I can’t say anything, I just kiss him.

  We don’t even make it home, only so far as Calypso’s window on the rise along the track. The fresh dusting of snow crunches against the heels of my boots as we melt together.

  When we’ve fallen back into the ferns on the embankment, he says: ‘Hello.’

  I’m just so terrified, even through this pulsing delirium, with him, within me.

  I look at him properly now. His hat chucked back in the trap, my hands on the shoulders of the wool of his tunic, his eyes greener for its dry gum-leaf hue. He’s cut his hair so short round the back and sides it’s like sandpaper under my fingers. He says it’s just too hot against the collar; it’ll grow back. Collar: pinned with two spiky brass rising suns containing tiny crowns and even tinier Australias.

  I want to weep, but there’s no way in the world I’m going to.

  ‘And I still can’t shoot straight,’ he says. ‘The only thing of sense I have learned so far is that I’m six feet six and a half inches tall and that’s just shy of two metres metric — which means my feet overshoot an army issue cot by about twenty centimetres. Which is roughly ten per cent of fifteen stone not accounted for, which is nearly ten kilograms if you’re a Frenchman.’

  ‘You overshoot this bed too,’ I say, looking at his feet. We’ve just made love again, barely in the front door and I didn’t think we’d even make it to the bedroom.

  ‘True.’ He wriggles his toes. ‘But this bed isn’t nearly so comfortable.’

  And it is funny after every shambles he’s described about the barracks and the camp on the sportsground and the training drills. The lot he’s with are not really much chop as soldiers, he says. But that’s what they are and I want him to shoot straight. I want him to hew coal instead. No I don’t. I just want the angel to come to still the lions’ mouths.

  Sarah’s back in Bathurst again, so we don’t stop by her house, but we do have to go and have some photographs taken in town. We don’t even have a wedding picture, but it seems we need something now. Daniel says he’ll be back on proper leave sometime before their ship departs. Whack. So I can give him his photograph of me then.

  I don’t make a show, of anything, on the platform as I wave goodbye to Sapper Ackerman. Who’ll be going off to war to dig holes somewhere, sometime. Who can clean a rifle in his sleep but can’t use it with any confidence. Who’s so fit he’s dangerous. Who has difficulty with the word ‘sir’ but whose captain is trying to help him with his attitude by the judicious application of full pack drill and a lap or several around Moore Park. I still have difficulty believing all this, but it’s real. All around me, as Lithgow gives up its rocks, and metals, and rifles from the factory across town, its acres of khaki wool and Daniel.

  Who has no idea at all where his ship will take him.

  DANIEL

  Rule number two: most men are disgusting. Working together is one thing, but living together … should be banned. There are some things you don’t want to know about another bloke. And most men talk rubbish, just for the sake of filling the spaces between each other. Strangely enough I’m called Noisy here; after it became apparent that I don’t answer to Lanky, Shorty, Stretch or the like. I’m so used to my own ways, I suppose; don’t have to wonder where I get that from, but it does set me apart a bit, as usual, except with the hardline Methodists, and I haven’t met any of them here. I don’t drink, smoke, gamble or whore, and I don’t fart or belch or brawl unless there is a need to, and I clean my bloody teeth. Women should have a secret viewing window so they can see what their dearest are really like; I know Francine would be morbidly fascinated.

  Most fascinating, though, is church parade on Sundays: half of those who feel the need to attend wouldn’t know God if He spat on them. Neither would I, but at least I have an excuse: I’m hidden from His Sight. Even if it now says I’m RC on the embarkation roll, because I was told I had to put something on the form. You can’t put N/A, the clerk said, and he was getting upset about the blank space. Mum and Dad must have had some religion back there somewhere; suppose it might have been Lutheran and I couldn’t put that there, could I. Thought I might put down Jew for a second, because I’d overheard some bloke talking about the lack of a rabbi chaplain for him and his like, before I realised I’ve got no idea what they believe in, apart from circumcision, which could be very embarrassing in the event of being caught out. So I put Catholic, a quiet one for France and a laugh for Dad maybe, and for convenience: no one looks sideways at a Mick who doesn’t attend Mass; it’s practically standard issue: you get the impression that the majority of Catholics here joined up to avoid it.

  Micks or otherwise, not all of them are disgusting, obviously. In fact, most of the Engineers I’m with are respectable neat-and-tidies-church-on-Sundays from Sydney: carpenters, builders, masons, plumbers, even a mathematics teacher from some private school. I’m the youngest of this lot, and mostly we’re apart from the rest, tented out the back of the barracks so we’re handy for spot examinations to test that we really do know what a right angle is and which way is north. It’s the infantry recruits at Kensington sportsground that are the worst offenders with filthy behaviour, and have an average age of eighteen and a mental age of twelve; no, that’s not quite true: we had to go out to Casula last week, on foot, for entrenching exercises with a pack of light horse, and one had trained his intelligent friend to backfill on command: ten points for hitting sapper in the face with a good hoof-load of dirt, a hundred with manure. Strange for me: a man with a pony is a peg down from a man with a shovel where I come from, and I wouldn’t hit anyone with a shovel, least of all a man with a pony, no matter how much you might want to if he’s a smart-arse. But then, part of all that’s the boredom of not really doing anything, isn’t it, and the other part would be letting off steam. Turkey’s dragging on and on and no one says anything outright, but it doesn’t look too good. Laughs are harder, but the fun’s worn off, and the desire to kick heads has kicked in — each other’s as much as the enemy’s, whoever that’ll be. We’ve been training to reinforce the 1st Division’s failing effort. Can’t say I’m thrilled to be here, but it still does seem the right thing to do, most of the time.

  Even when Duncan’s pulling me up for every little thing in barracks — pays me that much bloody attention I’ve wondered a few times if he might be a bit queer. Drill sergeant’s had it with me for shooting like a girl, but Duncan’s telling me later: ‘Pity you’ve not got a better sense of discipline and respect, Ackerman. I’d like to be able to rely on you to take a bit of charge if necessary when we get to where we’re going.’ By discipline and respect he means this yes-sir no-sir saluting busine
ss, I think, since I am disciplined and respectful, ten miles more than most, but I still get stuck on the ‘sir’, not just because it’s against my religion, but how can you call a man with feet that small ‘sir’? I’m too busy trying not to crack. Anyway, I don’t think it makes a blind bit of difference what you call someone, it’s what you know and how you act that makes you in charge, and properly in charge should be obvious to everybody at the time, not forced. If necessary, I can’t see I’d have a problem with the neat-and-tidies, if not the rabble, who wouldn’t salute to save themselves; I already know the importance of being certain everyone knows what it is they’re supposed to be doing: I started in that particular school quite a while ago. The neat-and-tidies do as they’re told anyway. They’re all right; bunch of pleasant chaps I think you’d call this unit of sappers, not many stand-outs, but I suppose we’ll see about that when we get to where we’re going.

  Which Captain Duncan, sir, tells us now, at long last, is Egypt.

  To do what?

  Don’t know.

  We will be told.

  To go where afterwards?

  We will be told.

  Glad we got that sorted out.

  Can’t sleep tonight and that’s not just because Anderson, the pleasant plumber next to me, is snoring to prove he can. I’m thinking about France. And for the first time in weeks I’m having second thoughts. Very big second thoughts. Too late to do anything about that now. And how much of an arse would I feel if I choked and went home at this point? Crawl back to the Wattle? I’ll have been replaced by now, and whoever he is, I hope he’s not a prick. Not that I could do anything about it if he is, and even if I wanted to. I can’t go back, unless I want to sit out this duration in His Majesty’s prison. I try to imagine where I’ll be and what I’ll see, but I can’t; so far my world-travelling experience ranges not much beyond Wollongong through to Bathurst and this spell in Sydney. The other blokes, mainly the rabble, were getting excited today, ready to be off on their big head-kicking adventure, but this doesn’t feel like an adventure to me right now, and it never did: I’m here for only one reason and that is I couldn’t not go. And it feels like betrayal, in so many ways. So I have to focus on her face, her blinking eyes, till I finally pass out.

  FRANCINE

  Will it be Gallipoli or the Western Front, I wonder when he tells me it’s destination Egypt, otherwise unknown. There’s talk that Britain will pull out of Turkey altogether because the peninsular is unwinnable, but Europe doesn’t sound as though it’s any more winnable. A victory there seems to entail the loss of a thousand men for every yard’s advance upon Fritz, followed by two thousand lost for every yard backwards, to quote a Socialist Party pamphlet I picked up the other day outside the Cosmopolitan Hotel where one of the union leaders was thumping the balcony with fervour while I popped into the butchers. Can’t say anything like that, can I. Besides, it’s his birthday today. Twenty-one today. Eligible for everything now except clear directions. Be chipper now, Francy. Give him your photograph.

  I can’t look at his. It’s too perfectly him. When I brought the prints home I put his in the bottom drawer of the wardrobe. Then had to take it out again when I realised that’s where the picture of my mother lives, has done since, at the age of twelve, I decided that Father might not miss her so much if I hid it there. Didn’t work, did it; but there she has stayed, face down over my Certificates of Baptism, Holy Communion and Confirmation, and under the box containing her amethyst rosary beads: wedged between the evidence of my blessedness and hers. I’m too superstitious for my own good. Damn persistent Mick that I am. Daniel couldn’t live in my forgetting place, not ever. So he sits on my dressing table, with Kookaburra; they look at me, but I don’t look at them.

  The flesh of him is sprawled across the sofa at present. Very easy to look at. He’s wearing a laundered-soft white vest, and every stitch in it is mine, and a pair of old trousers. He’s just had a wash and he’s half asleep, looking at me. We only got out of bed an hour ago, and already I want him again. Maybe I could make him unfit for service myself with my passion. I’ve got three days.

  And that’s fairly much all we do. But it doesn’t work. He’s fitter than dangerous and has to go. I give him the stupid photo at dawn: it doesn’t even look like me. He loves it, though, in its little red leather frame with a cover to keep it safe. Puts it in the top pocket of his tunic. We drive to the station in the trap. One last kiss. No, just one more. Nuther quick one. Tooot tooot. He’s gone.

  And then, as Daniel might say, I lose it like a girl. All the way home. For the rest of the day.

  I won’t be going to Sydney to wave at the ship. He didn’t ask and I didn’t offer. I’m sure there’ll be bands and streamers and such and I just would not cope. Sarah certainly won’t be going. She barely said two words to him yesterday when we walked round for lunch. I didn’t dare ask, either of them. But when she hugged him goodbye I could see the devastation on her face, only a glimpse before she pulled away from it and said: ‘Have a good war then.’ She speaks so evenly and beautifully it’s always a jolt to hear that wryness. I’ll have lots of time to get to know her better now, when she’s here. She spends so much time in Bathurst, though, or going up to Newcastle since Peter’s wife’s just had her first baby. Where’s my baby? Peter’s not going to war: he has a well-paying job doing something on the wharves, and a wife and a child. Why is Daniel going? Wasn’t I enough to stay at home for? I know that’s not true, but my loneliness is shrinking me already. No one to have to be chipper with here on my bed alone, so I’ll let it go and be misery itself. And the Leprechaun can watch me from wherever he’s hiding and tell me what there is to laugh about here.

  THREE

  OCTOBER 1915–AUGUST 1916

  DANIEL

  Can’t say too much about the voyage, spent most of the time chucking my guts up, to the amusement of all and sundry. Noisy takes on another meaning. All the way from Sydney to the Suez Canal. Well, not really, but just about up to the Red Sea, kept me busy, enough that on one alert I would have asked to be the first to be drowned had it come to anything. And I’d like to meet the bloke who invented the hammock and tell him what a shithouse idea that was. Still, for the last thirty-three days it’s provided for a decent share of natter over whether Noisy’s a champion malingerer or so patriotic he wants his face to match his uniform. Either way, I’m almost looking thin by the time we set foot on land again. Who’d be a sailor anyway; there’s nothing to look at out there on the ocean. The emptiness, the grinding on of the engines, only shows how far into nowhere and away from home I am, and the constant smell of coal is not a comfort. I didn’t say hooroo to anyone except France and Mum; that was bad enough. Didn’t have time to say goodbye to Mim and the kids; sent her note: See you when I’m looking at you. I’ll say hello to Evan and the rest when I come home. I’m not being an idiot about it, but denial has its purpose.

  We’re not stopping at Port Suez for long, just to stretch legs, trying not to fall over, among the camels and the locals who are small, brown and scrappy and make us feel ten feet tall, until I notice how the Brits lay into the Gippos they have working for them round the docks: I knew this land had slaves, but I thought that was a few thousand years ago. Don’t think about it; find a postcard for France instead. I buy one with a picture of camels on the front and scribble a few lines about unseaworthiness. Then it’s back in the tin can again. We stop at Port Said in the middle of the night, where I’m fairly ropeable at not being allowed to get off, and almost follow the few absconders prepared to risk it. Should have; they got away with it. Then we finally arrive in Alexandria, unload everything and take off as much uniform as possible as we go, it’s that hot, pile it all onto the train, cram in shoulder to shoulder and it’s welcome to Egypt all the way to Cairo, and on to a huge camp at a place called Mena. Where we wait. And wait. We’re not where we’re going yet. The top brass, our General Birdwood and Blighty’s General Haig, don’t know what to do with us. And there are
an awful lot of us and we keep coming. About fifty thousand here and in another camp at Tel el Kabir, and that’s not including those coming back from Turkey. They reckon there’ll be a hundred thousand of us by the time everyone’s here. That’s something to think about. Who’s left at home?

  There’s that many faces, you couldn’t count them, and I have to wonder how many good old Aussie Germans there are among us, but we’re not likely to put up our hands, are we. Best not to advertise it, eh? One bloke by the name of Zwiebelkopf copping a ragging the other day for being a Kraut, says his parents are Belgian. Sure. Zwiebelkopf means ‘onion head’ in German; but maybe that’s embarrassing enough to want to keep it on the shush. Doesn’t matter anyway, when we’re all having such a marvellous time.

  You go and look around the pyramids and say that’s impressive, and then you go back to drills and drills and drills, and some more drills, and play endless bloody games of cricket, a sport that’s so dead boring I’d rather have a lie-down or put my hand up for latrines fatigue. You can get a pass to go into Cairo, but I don’t that often, because the things that go on there are making me begin to question the issue of my nationality, especially when the blokes from Gallipoli start turning up in numbers. They’re all fifty years older than me, and more than a bit relieved or badly wanting to be relieved; rough as. Things get a bit silly and for obvious reasons disciplinary measures are not as liberally applied as lectures and inspections for venereal diseases. Anyway, I reckon if I stay put in camp I’ve less chance of running into anyone I know. The longer this waiting goes on, the more I reckon I prefer it that way; I don’t want to meet anyone I’m going to need to have to say hooroo to when we begin our European tour, which seems the only place we can be going, once they’ve sorted us out: we’ve not been issued with short pants. And I don’t want to know what any of my old mates are like now, or Mim’s Roy, or anyone I might recognise, who’s been through the mill, or who hasn’t come out the other side. That sounds a bit rough, but a dose of reality has its purpose too: we’re not going to sit here in the desert forever, are we? Thanks for coming, you can all go home.