There was a topsy-turvy quality about it, too, of Europe’s day being our night, for we usually worked through from dusk until dawn, and would sleep when we could with blinds drawn against the sunlight and the bakers’ carts delivering along the suburban streets. During this hectic, exhilarating, unbalanced time I saw very little of Helen, and the house in Beverley Grove was no more than a place in which to sleep. This was a great relief to me. It removed my despair, it eased the surface tensions that existed between Helen and me, it staved off any need to make, or to evade, a decision. The long remove, the voices heard through the night-crackle of static, the happenings of far away, once more seemed to offer me an avenue of escape, or of postponement, where before there had been only a cul-de-sac.
In the end Jack did volunteer for the Army on the first day that recruiting finally was opened, and was accepted, and although he was not, after all, the first to get there he was among the first fifty, and perhaps he would have been even higher up the list had he not stopped on the way to telephone me.
‘You coming along, nipper?’ he said briskly. ‘To join up, I mean.’
‘Not a chance,’ I told him. ‘I’ve got an article I have to finish. Besides, why all the rush?’
‘Rush? Oh, don’t come that! Jesus! how long is it now we’ve been just sitting on our backsides, chewing our fingernails, waiting?’
‘Why be impetuous? There’ll be plenty of time. The way the Germans are going there’ll be years and years to get into it. Anyway, didn’t the announcement say single men would be preferred? You’ve got a wife and three kids, remember.’
‘What odds? That’ll only bump up my pay. Christ, Davy, I wouldn’t miss out on this if I had fifty bloody kids. Listen, I can’t waste time. I’ve got to scoot. If you can’t come, you can’t. I’ll keep you a place, though.’
They took the first of the recruits out to the showgrounds and issued them with giggle-suits and kit and palliasses and Jack was among those quartered in the Pig Pavilion, in a pen marked LARGE WHITES, and later they were all moved to the big training camp at Puckapunyal, sixty miles or so north of Melbourne, and it was some weeks after this that Mr Brewster sent me up there to do some articles on the training of this first brigade.
I saw Jack the following morning. He was with a battalion on a route march along the old Seymour road, and they were marching at ease in the new columns of three with their rifles slung, slogging along through the hot dry yellow dust underneath big, scraggy, olive-drab gum-trees, and although he didn’t see me because I was in a staff car with the brigade-major, it gave me a queer feeling to see him there because the column was just passing the old Seymour camp where the soldiers of the First World War had trained, and I realized that Dad and Bert must have slogged along this very same road on route marches, too, through the same dun dust under the same trees, and although this new generation of Diggers wore khaki shorts and white gaiters over their socks and not the old baggy trousers and puttees, and they were singing ‘Waltzing Matilda’ instead of ‘Tipperary’, the same rifles were on their shoulders and the faces must have looked pretty much the same under the same broad hats tipped up at one side with the rising-sun badges glinting there against the pleated white of the puggarees.
I spoke to Jack that evening in the camp canteen in a roaring crowded atmosphere of tobacco smoke and beer fumes and singing and raucous horseplay, and they were talking a new slang and the bawdy jokes had the flavour of a novel topicality, and I could tell right away that Jack was a very popular figure with his own particular group, especially when he had his mouth-organ out, but after a time he took me aside to one end of the long, makeshift bar, and we just drank beer and talked together.
I was intrigued, and impressed, at the change in him. He was so darkly sunburnt that his hair seemed almost white, and he looked tough, hard, and very fit. I could not decide whether he looked older or younger, but certainly he looked different. In the open-neck shirt and the shorts and the white gaiters and the white webbing belt, there was a look of absolute rightness about him – I had forgotten his strong, graceful boxer’s legs, a deep brown now and dusted with a thick gold down of hair. What had changed about him, I began to realize, was both subtle and profound: it was almost as if he had been fined down to the ‘essential Jack’, as if this was what my brother really should look like, as if all his growing and maturing had been working towards the presentation of this man in this exact appearance at this precise time. Even more than this, for I saw that this was not only that he looked as Jack should look, but he looked as a proper man should look. As he talked to me – and his talk was the talk of the old Jack I had always known – I began to sense something that was in him that had not been there before, the quiet authority of an absolute conviction … something like that … there was an impalpable feeling about him, almost an emanation, that here was a man totally sure of the rightness of what he was doing. I felt good for him, and yet it disturbed me strangely …
‘Listen, Davy, what’s been holding you back?’ he said. ‘You know, each day I’ve been expecting you to jump out of one of them trucks with your kitbag and all that. Although you’ve been doing all those write-ups, haven’t you, about the war?’
‘Yes, they’ve been keeping me pretty busy,’ I said.
‘Well, you don’t have to worry about it, you know. There’s a new lurk. I got the drum about it from one of the officers. I mean, when you do join up, don’t you worry at all about what unit they shove you in. I’ll tell you why. I found out. An elder brother’s got the right to claim a younger brother, did you know that? Get him into the same unit, like. You know, so he can look after him, sort of. Well, I mean, don’t go and join the Air Force or the Navy or anything like that! It’s got to be the Army. Then it’s simple as shellin’ peas. All you do is let me know what unit they’ve put you in and your VX number and that, and I do the rest. I just go to my CO and claim you, and he makes out the form, and they transfer you right off to my unit. Fair enough, eh?’
They were in full cry behind us, around a tinny upright piano, singing, ‘Roll Out The Barrel’. He took it absolutely for granted that I would be volunteering. I said, ‘Do you really like it here?’
‘My oath! It’s all right by me, this life! Oh, we all grizzle, you know, I do it myself, but this’ll do me. Tucker’s pretty fair, and plenty of it. They look after you. And it’s not a bad mob of blokes, taken all round. You know, they yell, “You’ll be sorry!” and all that, but nobody takes much notice of the bullshit. Well, you look at it this way, Davy, I reckon half the bastards here, this is the first regular job they’ve had in their whole bloody lives. I mean, blokes who came out of school smack into the Depression and never knew where their next flamin’ meal was coming from … well, this is just a real bloody picnic for them, isn’t it?’
‘I suppose it is.’
He laughed. ‘Tell you something funny,’ he chuckled. ‘You remember when we were kids those larrikin gangs, the Grey Caps and the Bludgers? You know, and how they always wanted me to join ’em? Well – this’ll root you! – I bloody have, sport. Half the bastards are here, marching around with .303s on their shoulders instead of those fence-pickets and chunks of road-metal they used to throw around! You wouldn’t read about it, would you?’
‘You mean ones we knew?’
‘Bloody dozens of ’em. All those Susso-workers from the council drays. That little bastard Dud Bennett, remember him? … he’s in my platoon! Oh yeah, and you’d remember that big prick I had the fight with at school – you know, when Mum laid around with the umbrella! – Snowy Bretherton, well apparently he had a Chocko commission, and he’s a flamin’ captain! They don’t go for him, mind you … he tries to chuck his weight around, and he’s always buggerising about with that goon-stick he carries … and the blokes in his company they all reckon he’ll go. They’ll dump him over the side of the troopship on the way over. When he’s taking parade, you know, there’s always this whisper that follows him along the ranks, “Shar
k-bait. Shark-bait!” Yeah, they reckon he’ll go all right.’
He smiled at this, but almost immediately his face was anxious and serious. ‘Davy,’ he said, lowering his voice, ‘do you get any buzz about anything down there at the Barracks? Where they’re going to send us, I mean. Up here, you go barmy trying to sort out the furphies that go around. One day it’s France and the next day it’s Palestine, and it’s England and Egypt, and then it’s South Africa. South bloody Africa! What the hell would we do there? Have a go at the Kaffirs again? Don’t you hear anything from down there at the Barracks?’
‘The same sort of rumours, that’s all. My own guess is it would be England, most likely, then over to France. That’s where they’re building up.’
‘Well, they’ll let us know in time to catch the ship, I suppose. Tell me about things at home. Sheil’ writes every day, of course. She tells me the Old Girl’s up to her eyes in it.’
‘Mum? Yes.’ I laughed with him. ‘She’s always knitting those damned balaclavas. Did you know she’s organized her own Red Cross auxiliary! Some of the old women from around the neighbourhood and the wives of a couple of chaps in the lodge … they meet in the front room each day, about a dozen of them, for Mum’s sewing-bees and knitting-bees.’
‘Don’t tell me!’ he snorted. ‘I get about three bloomin’ parcels a week from her. Half my platoon’s wearing Mum’s socks and Mum’s pullovers. That reminds me, when you see the old chook you might tell her – do it gently, for Christ’s sake, because all the blokes reckon she makes a bloody superior type of sock, you know … and that issue stuff is murder, you get blisters like bloody soup plates! – but just tell her, tactful like, it’s been a hundred-and-bloody-three in the shade here, and there’s not all that much call for mittens or balaclavas!’
When I left he said, ‘Drop in and see Sheil’ and the kids if you get a chance, Davy. Tell Sheil’ I’m very appreciative of the cakes and things and tell her I’m fit as a fiddle and having a bloody wonderful time.’
I heard a little more about Jack in the officers’ mess the following day just before I left to go back to the city. Jack’s company commander was there, a young captain who’d been a farmer at Porepunkah, and the brigade-major, who in civilian life had owned his own electrical business in Essendon.
‘That’s a jolly good type, that brother of yours, Mr Meredith,’ the captain said, topping up my glass of beer. ‘You couldn’t persuade him to try for promotion, I suppose? He’s good NCO material, you know.’
‘We tried to put it to him that he should have a stab at NCO’s school,’ said the brigade-major. ‘Wouldn’t have a bar of it. Said he’d rather stay with the boys.’
‘Well, that’s Jack, I’m afraid,’ I said.
‘Pity in a way,’ said the captain. ‘You know, he’s got the real good solid Digger look about him. He seems a straight sort of a chap … I mean, I like the way he meets your eyes, square on. Right from the jump I’ve felt he’d be a handy sort of a bloke to have around you in a fight.’
‘He’s always been able to take care of himself, I know that,’ I said.
‘Well, Captain Jackson here can keep an eye on him,’ said the brigade-major. ‘We’ve got a lot of training time ahead of us yet. We’ll have another shot at him. I think he’d make a first-rate WO. Possibly even get a commission in the long run. I mean, it’s always on the cards with that sort of chap, and this is a crazy democratic army we’ve got. In 2nd/6th Battalion C Company, Mr Meredith, there’s a grazier worth half a million quid if he’s worth nine bob a day. Geelong Grammar, University degree, and he’s still a private and flatly refuses to be anything else, and his own station rouseabout is his platoon commander! Would you believe that? In your brother’s company there’s a bank manager who gets kitchen fatigues from one of his own clerks, who happens to be a lieut. It’s a bloody funny way to go to war.’
Going back in the train from Seymour I had much to think about, and mostly it was about Jack. His well-being, both physical and spiritual, had impressed me in a way which I found strangely disconcerting. He had unsettled me, that was the plain truth of it. I saw him suddenly as a kind of sunburnt Icarus, a free man, buoyant and soaring in his own air, in the clear and boundless space of an element familiar and yet new. It was not only as if he had been born for this realization of his true self: it was almost as if the whole baffling pattern of world events had been in conspiracy to fulfil it. I envied the profound certainty there was about him, when I was so uncertain.
The train clattered to the southward through the brown burnt rushing world, the wheels nickerty-nattered on the rails, the water sloshed in the carafe below the luggage-rack. From the corner of my eye I was aware of the leap, sag, flow, and kick of the telegraph lines. I saw sheep like scattered knuckle-bones in the purple pools of tree-shadow, a herd of Herefords slow on a brown hill, the red-painted iron roofs and the faded weatherboards of towns. And I thought uneasily of Beverley Grove and of my wife Helen.
Even Beverley Grove had grown disconcerting, I realized, looking back on it. The war had not been two weeks old when Phyland from next door had appeared in uniform, and with three pips on each shoulder and a Sam Browne belt – mobilized for some headquarters administrative job on a reserve commission which I had never known he had – and with the same familiar brief-case under his arm had vanished into Victoria Barracks. And not more than a few days after this Wally Solomons had been mobilized, Major Solomons, to organize some base transport section. Oh yes, that had been disconcerting, too! And Helen? While the train rushed south I thought of Helen … of a way of escape … of the free and buoyant air … Tempting thoughts.
I saw Mr Brewster in his office that night. He was sympathetic and understanding, and quite firm.
‘Don’t think I don’t realize how difficult it must be for you, David,’ he said. He had grown rather fatter, but otherwise had changed little from the time, more than eleven years before, when I had first met him. He no longer sat at his desk in shirtsleeves and thin coloured braces, but his heavy, dewlapped face was as ruddy as ever, his mane of hair as white and silky. His neat chubby fingers still fidgeted with things, the edge of the blotter, his calendar pad, a pencil, a spike of proofs: he still had that trick of looking down at his thighs or up at the ceiling, and meeting your eyes only at moments of emphasis, as if vision was an exclamation-mark. ‘With your brother in, yes, it’s hard for you,’ he said. ‘And I know your mother and your father were both in the first show. As I was, you know. Don’t forget that. Don’t think I don’t understand. But it is a question of value, you see, David. There is always a good sound truth buried in every cliché, you know, and what you have to realize is that the pen is mightier than the sword. In your case, that is. For the time being, at any rate.’ He folded his hands across the dome of grey worsted that hid his paunch and gloomily examined the ceiling. ‘You and Turley are doing a most vital and important job. War is a very complex and confusing thing. It has to be interpreted, explained. There must be instruction, elucidation, a channel for the spread of informed and accurate information. You two chaps form a critical link between our war effort out here, the military situation as a whole, and the general public. It is the fundamental duty of a newspaper to serve the general public. The people have every right to know what is going on. As the situation stands now each of you is worth a whole battalion of troops. I am not exaggerating, you know. Always remember, David, that propaganda is one of the most powerful weapons of war.’
‘Yet, I still have this feeling that I should be in it,’ I said, but rather half-heartedly.
‘You are in it, boy. You’re up to your neck in it. You are doing an excellent and an invaluable job for the war effort. In any case, you know perfectly well that the War Cabinet has classified certain reserved occupations. If you did enlist we should simply apply for your withdrawal. They would have to release you. They would want to release you. Your stocks are very high down at the Barracks, you know, for the job you’re doing. It is as much i
n their interests as in ours that you should continue to do precisely what you are doing. You are pulling a good stout oar in this war effort, David. Don’t have a conscience about it, boy.’
I accepted his ruling almost with relief. Again the decision had been taken out of my hands and again I could go back to my work as if nothing had happened. Although one could not but be aware that something had happened. The office, especially the reporters’ room, was beginning to be very strange. Curtis Condon had long since gone to some censorship job at the Barracks. Familiar faces were missing from many of the desks and scarcely a day seemed to pass without one of the copy-boys coming round with the ‘whip-round’ list of names, asking for subscriptions towards someone’s going-away presentation. There were quite a few women and girls in the reporters’ room now, brought down from the social staff to replace the men.
Even so, Mr Brewster’s talk had effectively stilled any conscience I might have had, and I gave the problem no further thought until about a month later, when I walked into the subs’ room and there was a group of sub-editors and reporters surrounding Gavin Turley, and Gavin was wearing a khaki uniform with grey-bordered colour-patches at his shoulders. He cut the most ludicrous figure. The uniform was sloppy and still creased and rumpled from the quarter-master’s issue-store, the sleeves were too short by four inches for his long spidery arms, the trousers were half-mast, and one bootlace was untied. His neck, pink and bulging at the Adam’s apple, seemed to extend endlessly from the high coarse collar with the rising-sun badges like a long fleshy worm wriggling from a clod of dry earth, his mop of long black hair had been cut off and was now slicked down and parted at one side. With his immense skinny height, his awkward look, and this shoddy, ill-fitting uniform, he was a memorably lamentable figure of a soldier.
My Brother Jack Page 34
