I watched the girl and I watched the lieutenant watching the girl with his lugubrious yellow eyes, and thought how transparent the poor bugger was, and he said, ‘Did you get him, Gunner Morley?’ – speaking almost in spite of himself, as it were – and she said, ‘ In flames !’ and added, ‘Sir,’ as if it were an afterthought, and there was still this incredible sense of excitement about her, like a child playing at soldiers, and I found myself thinking that she might break into a jig at any moment, and only then did it occur to me that she was showing off a little, and for my benefit, and I realized that she was eyeing me obliquely and that there was a speculative smile touching her wide silky mouth and that she was the youngest thing I had ever seen in my life.
‘Well,’ I said, taking advantage of my VIP standing, ‘that was a very efficient show, Gunner —?’
‘Morley, sir!’ she returned briskly. ‘Instrument specialist.’
‘And does Gunner Morley, instrument specialist, also happen to have a first name?’ I said, deliberately teasing her.
‘Yes, sir,’ she said, and her eyes were as cool and deep and clear as the reef seas and her mouth lifted its wide ripply corners, almost tremulously, as if she might really burst into laughter from sheer happiness. ‘Cressida, sir,’ she said …
Cressida Morley, there in a gun-pit on that same scraggy little hill where I had come as a child looking for adventure … another of life’s strange tangents. I have a snapshot that must have been taken of her at about that time, for in it she is still a gunner and the instrument specialist’s badge is there on her sleeve, but I hardly need it to remember that first meeting, although it does confirm the thought I did have then, that all her features were too big for her, as if she had not really grown into them yet. (She was only a couple of months past eighteen at that time, and in fact she did not realize her full beauty until she was almost thirty.) Her broad, sun-freckled brow looked too wide, her cheekbones too heroic, and she wore her extraordinary mouth and eyes like finery she was not quite sure of and was trying to be nonchalant about. Nor, in those days, was anything quite under control, neither eyes nor mouth, nor the contralto voice that was also too big and with a husky lilt to it, nor the body in that ridiculous stained battle-dress, still with a child’s gawkiness about it … she seemed to have no breasts at all, but her shoulders were broad and her hips lean, and with the gawkiness she had a certain quick, boyish grace. Boy’s hands, too, square and brown and muscular and grubby. And even if nothing of all this was under control then, there was a sense of vital power about her, as if she were practising with everything all at once and on any person available. The sheep-faced lieutenant, for instance. And certainly me!
Perhaps he sensed this, because he dismissed her rather peevishly, and I said to myself, ‘You poor devil, she’s going to make mincemeat out of you!’ and at once the thought was followed by an absurd little twinge, almost of jealousy, as if that might be a fate unique, and even enviable.
She saluted with an exaggeration of smartness and gave me one great green luminous glance and turned smartly and marched off, and her bottom wiggled impudently, and for a moment I honestly expected her to turn and put her fingers to her nose and then run for her life.
‘Well, that certainly is a pert, efficient young lady …’ I began tentatively, but the lieutenant had grown morose and wouldn’t rise, and he just grunted and led me off and we had a drink in his quarters before the staff-car came to take me away. Outside a team of men was playing basketball against a team of girls. She had taken her battle-dress off and was leaping and running, quick and skilful, in a khaki shirt and shorts. She did have breasts after all, like little muscles high on her broad boy’s chest …
Colonel Brindsmead, the headquarters medical officer, was waiting for me in his office when I called next morning, tall and brown-skinned, with a clipped grey moustache, and blue overseas service chevrons on his sleeve and the 8th Army clip on the ribbon of his Africa Star, and he shook hands cordially and came directly to the point.
‘Sit down, Mr Meredith,’ he said. ‘I sent for his files after you phoned me, and I have gone through them, and we shouldn’t have to waste much of your time.’ He put his fingertips together and looked at me across them from steady steely eyes. ‘In a word,’ he said, ‘it’s hopeless.’
I stared down at my own hands, not quite knowing what to say, and he waited a moment or two before he spoke again. He opened the pink folder on his desk first, and moved his fingers through some papers.
‘This VX number he has, can that be right?’ he said.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘He enlisted on the first day.’
‘Hmmm! It is very basic, I must say. Which makes it all the more bloody for him, I suppose. Unfortunately, it’s perfectly obvious from these histories that not only is overseas service quite out of the question for your brother, but that strictly speaking he should be out of the Army altogether.’
‘But he’s been trying to get away since 1939 and —’
‘He can’t get away, my dear chap! He’s not fit. We only give the privilege of dying to the physically fit, Mr Meredith.’
‘It’s not a question of dying, Colonel. There are safe places in operational areas, ordnance bases, stores, L. of C. units, all —’
‘Mr Meredith,’ he said patiently, ‘you telephoned to ask me to find out whether I could help this brother of yours. I have gone into the matter thoroughly. And sympathetically, Mr Meredith, I assure you of that, because I was away with the Sixth Divvy and I believe I know exactly how he feels. And there is nothing that can be done. Simply nothing. I am very sorry, but there it is.’
‘Going through those records of his, was there any point where he might have got away?’ I asked.
‘In fact there was, yes. I made some jottings.’ He took up a small scribbling-block. ‘He could have got away right back there in ‘40,’ he said. ‘After his first discharge from hospital.’
‘Then why was he kept here?’
The colonel shrugged. ‘There could have been many reasons. Drafts may have been filled. He was in a reinforcement depot, not on a divisional strength. Just overlooked, perhaps. And don’t forget there’s always an invisible question-mark over a chap just out of hospital, however clean his papers.’ He consulted the pad again. ‘Remember, also, that during this time we embarked three other infantry divisions, and corps troops, within the space of only a few months. Easy enough in that confusion for one solitary private to be mislaid. Incidentally, he could be jolly thankful he didn’t get away, you know. On the dates and figures he would almost certainly have gone with the Eighth Div. And nobody knows what’s happened to those poor devils, what? We hear these frightful stories from Malaya and the atrocities along this Burma–Siam rail-road. Probably never see any of those poor bloody wretches again. I take it, Mr Meredith, you would hardly wish that sort of fate on your brother.’
I shook my head. ‘Was there any other chance for him? …. I mean, I thought you implied —’
‘Yes, there was. His best chance oddly enough. I say that because this was when his medical classification was definitely below par … that would have been any time, say, between latish ’41 to the middle of ’42, at the time of his last retransfer from hospital back to ordnance. Well, the Japs were pressing us, we were desperately short of trained manpower, a chap didn’t have to be a hundred per cent then to be thrown in to hold the fort. It was a very sticky time, and one was obliged to wink a blind eye at certain breaches of conventional procedure.’
‘Well, in this case, couldn’t that be done again?’
‘It would be more than my job was worth to even suggest that your brother was fit for active service, Mr Meredith, let alone to recommend it. Because this is not a matter merely of now, you see … the future is involved, pension claims, repatriation, all manner of things that are quite outside my province. I am terribly sorry about this, but absolutely nothing can be done.’
‘Are you the final arbiter on this, Colonel Brindsme
ad?’ I asked.
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean, supposing I were to go to … well, to a higher echelon, let us say, and —’
‘And what, Mr Meredith?’
‘And get an order that said Sergeant Jack Meredith, AIF, was to be posted to an operational area regardless of all other considerations,’ I said. I was really an urger now.
He looked at me for a long time with no expression on his face. In the end he said, ‘I could oppose the order. Or being a soldier, I could obey it, coming from a superior officer. But I’ll tell you this – I should make perfectly sure that I had several copies made of that directive, and I should very carefully file them away against any possible future contingency.’
I did go to my higher echelon – some articles of mine had helped him very much during a certain earlier crisis in military politics – and before I left the Barracks I rang Jack and suggested that he meet me at the Saracen’s Head, in Bourke Street.
He was already there by the time I got to the bar, in a blue haze of cigarette smoke, with the two pots of beer already lined up on the counter.
‘Hallo, nipper,’ he said, trying to sound casual. ‘How did you go?’
‘I wangled something,’ I said, ‘but I don’t know how you’ll like it.’
‘Yeah?’ he said, almost as if his lips could hardly move in the stiff face watching through the blue haze of smoke.
‘It’s not what I wanted,’ I said defensively. ‘I pushed all I could for New Guinea, but they just won’t come at it.’ I lowered my head, fingering the froth off my beer, because I could not look at him, knowing that he could have been in New Guinea had I tried for him when he had first wanted me to. ‘You know, your medical record is really pretty bloody wobbly. So New Guinea’s out.’
‘Well, thanks for trying.’ His words were toneless, like a man speaking from a trance, his face was set and waiting and coiled around with smoke.
‘Anyway, you wanted me to pull strings, and I did,’ I said, almost aggressively. ‘I went right up top. To the Deputy CGS, if you want to know. I’m well in with him. So. Well … the upshot is you’re to be posted to Northern Territory. Darwin. It’s a job of salvaging army vehicles that have been left behind, getting them into a central transport pool and all that.’ I was talking quickly, talking down at the pot of beer, afraid to look up and face the disappointment in his face. ‘I know it’s not an operational theatre any longer, but it’s a wonderful bloody place, Jack, and you’ll love it up there, I know you will. And you’ll be up and down the North-South Road … you’ll see Alice Springs and Barrow Creek and Bonney’s Well and the Devil’s Marbles and Tennant and —’
I had to turn and meet his eyes then. They were shining.
‘And north from Birdum, that’s marvellous country, Jack!’ I hurried on in a sudden welling of relief and enthusiasm. ‘You’ll get to the big cattle stations, and there’s Adelaide River and the Katherine and along the Roper … and Darwin itself, of course … that’s a fascinating place.’
‘Oh, I know! Darwin, yeah … well, they were pretty badly bombed up there … I mean, they were in it, weren’t they?’ He was all smiles, radiant in his mist of smoke, and his air of desperation had vanished and his eyes were the eyes of that younger Jack, the eyes that had always met things square on. ‘Jesus, I’m grateful to you, Davy,’ he said. ‘You know, you doing this for me …’
‘Well, I would have preferred it to be New Guinea, of course, but —’
‘Oh, balls to that! Christ, you don’t have to worry about that, nipper. I mean, once I’m up there, well that’s more than half the battle, isn’t it? I mean, it’s a jumping-off place … well, you’re practically there. There’ll be lurks, you’ll see … I mean it’s only a hop-step-and-a-jump from there to New Guinea, anyway, and I’m a pretty good sort of a lurk-merchant, you know! Christ, if I can’t find some strings to pull once I’m that bloody close well my name’s not Jack Meredith! Davy, I can’t tell you how bloody grateful I am …’
And suddenly he was shuffling around me, shaping up, sparring, in that crazy little parody of a boxing bout, feinting and jabbing, just as he had on my wedding day – only a shade more stiffly now, I thought – and then he stopped suddenly and slapped me on the shoulder and burst into laughter, and said, ‘Those army quacks ought to have a talk to Sheil’. I mean, she’s up the duff again, you know. Why don’t they go and ask her what’s wrong with that pelvis of mine!’
And then he was away again, moving back on those quick nimble feet of his, feinting a right, tilting his head to dodge an imagined left hook, then coming in at me with a tattoo of short-arm jabs.
I had gone from Melbourne within twenty-four hours, and it was to be more than two years before I saw Jack or any of them again.
Mr Brewster insisted on taking me to lunch at the Savage Club for my final briefing, and it was funny to be walking up with him past the old factory of Klebendorf and Hardt’s. One frontage was boarded up and it was in process of demolition, and there was a big sign on one wall that said whelan the wrecker is here. There were only some iron girders where the old studio had been but one of the retaining walls was still standing, and where the wallboard hadn’t torn away the old posters were still there, York Minster and the Brangwyn bridges and even a part of Jane Avril’s leg …
I was to go first to the United States, because Mr Brewster had arranged for me to get a general accreditation to all theatres of war, and this had to be picked up in Washington, and he said, ‘We want you on the move, David, watching events, meeting people, absorbing background. Getting around, David, that’s it. Getting around! Don’t hurry out of the States, mind you: that’s more and more becoming the vital nerve-centre of the whole global picture. Make contacts. Yes, contacts, they’ll be priceless later. You’ll be getting directives from us from time to time, of course, but very often you will have to be your own judge of where to go, what to cover, who to see. We want the war, of course – those vivid descriptive pieces of yours, that human interest stuff you do so brilliantly, but now your canvas, David, is to be the whole world at war. Not just New Guinea, but the whole world. I told you this long ago. And I have not let you down, have I? I said there were big things in the wind for you. And now to my final point – and this, in many respects, is the most important aspect of all – you must always bear in mind that we are far less interested in your day-to-day reporting than in the background which you will bring back for later. After the war is over we want you back here, David, as our firsthand reference – on places, on people, on events, on political situations … our chart, you might say, for the historic currents of our times. We are putting a good deal of our future into you, young Meredith.’
I carried out his mandate. I flew across the Pacific to San Francisco, and then on to New York and to Washington, and I followed his advice and I didn’t hurry out of America, because I found it a pleasant war there, and I had two or three affairs with attractive and accommodating women, and I was able to get a book finished and published successfully enough for another to be commissioned, and even when I finally did pull myself away my luck stood by me.
I left Norfolk Roads in a convoy which was supposed to take me across the North Atlantic to the Oran landings, but a hurricane caught us the second day out, ships and escorts were scattered, two vessels foundered in the storm, and the freighter I was in was damaged and we had to put into Guantanamo Bay, in Cuba, and after this a Dutch corvette from Curaçao took me down to Panama, and in a bar in Cristobal one night a genial American tanker captain who was taking his ship to Venezuela suggested that I come along so I went to Caracas just for the fun of it. It was all more colourful and exciting – and safer, of course – than the North African landings turned out to be, although in this case that hurricane had been to blame and the evasion was not deliberate on my part. The interlude enabled me to get the second book finished, and when it was published later it was quite a success.
I did travel widely once this first ad
venture was over, both to the obvious places and to the not-so-obvious places, because by this time it was pretty much a whole world at war, and if colourful copy was wanted and Mr Brewster’s ‘background’ for later, then there was almost nowhere that you could not go. So I was in the obvious places, like London and Rome and Athens and Cairo, and all over the Near East, and Iran and India and Burma and Ceylon and China, but I fitted curious illogical things in too, like being in Kathmandu and looking at the Rhododendron forests, or watching the camel caravans from Bokhara and Samarkand on the Old Silk Road coming through the Gobi Desert with sacking bales ridiculously stamped use no hooks, or riding in a jeep out beyond the Khyber Pass on the road into Afghanistan, or talking to old Amami the ivory-planter in a splashing courtyard in Isfahan, or watching the Russians occupying an airfield in Rumania, or riding in a junk through the Yangtze gorges. And when I could I fulfilled little secret private missions, too, and I went up the Nile just to see that great temple of Queen Hatshepsut, the inscriptions from which I had once traced so meticulously on the cover of a sketch-block, and I marvelled at the mysterious beauty of it against those huge fissured sandstone cliffs, although it saddened me a little that I could no longer read the hieroglyphics.
There were battles that I saw, too – the ‘Box’ at Imphal, and the crossing of the Chindwin with the Indians and the British, the assault beyond the Salween with the Chinese, the fighting for the Ledo Road in North Burma with the Americans, and with the Americans again and the New Zealanders in the struggle for Florence, and with the Gurkhas at Mandalay, and as I set it down it all sounds that much more intrepid than it really was, for these were my skirmishes too, and there was more of the ‘getting around’ that Mr Brewster wanted than there was of shot and shell, and more luxury hotels or comfortable officers’ transient quarters than camps and bivouacs, and far more bars than battles.
My Brother Jack Page 38
