He looks again at the letter. It’s got so late he can barely make out the letters, though it’s clear enough how few of them there are on the page. He remembers what Mother always says, Least said, soonest mended, and he sticks down the envelope and attaches the stamp and goes out into the darkness and lights a smoke.
23
They were leaving. Blackball, home, Pansy — it was all distant and small with everything around and ahead of him so much bigger. There were whole oceans to be crossed before they got to England and it’d be dangerous with the gunboats and torpedoes along the way.
Under the wide and starry sky. Well, it was a wide sky, blue-black and dizzy with stars. What was going to happen to him under all those stars? Would they even look the same on the other side of the world?
Dad’s boots by the door and him there at the table in his shirt sleeves and braces, the Argus spread in front of him and Mother stirring the stew bubbling on the range, the place filled with heat from it and his sisters giggling in their bedroom. Walking to the mine with his cobbers in the early morning with the birdcalls coming out of the bush. The way the girls looked at the dances with their hair pinned up and their lips and cheeks pink.
All the thoughts of wanting to stay away, well, he was ashamed of them now he was leaving home, his own country and everything it’d meant to him. Though it was well past two in the morning he and Tam and Albie and Joe and Charlie and Sly and most of the rest of the troops were up on deck as they slid out past the harbour entrance.
It was a soft, warm night, the sea calm, and as he looked back the lights of the wharf and the city turned into little yellow pinpoints. He leaned over the rail, all those depths of water, dark and oily and rippling beneath him. He’d brought his trumpet up on deck for the occasion and he picked it up and ripped out a few tunes, ‘Pack Up Your Troubles’ and ‘It’s a Long Way to Tipperary’, and then he took a few breaths and played ‘Po Atarau’. He’d bought the sheet music for it the same time as he’d bought his trumpet. He’d been practising and the notes surged out bright and sweet and pining.
That was their first night and he’s found, since then, he’s not a bad sailor. Fairly early on he got used to the way a ship wails and creaks and moans and now he sleeps like a baby in his bunk despite the shifting around and the snoring from the men close in around him. It’s like being rocked, and he likes that feeling, and he likes the smell of salt and all, and being up on deck with the sea, smooth and silvery some days then others rolling and tossing about, and the colour of it so dark it’s almost black. While a fair number of the troops were down below, not able to leave their bunks let alone keep anything in their stomachs, he’s been well able to help himself to the tucker right through the whole journey. Everything’s well cooked and there’s plenty of it.
He’s been in on a few larks as well. Captain Clifford likes to keep a good, tight ship with an abundance of food so he’d brought hens with him to provide fresh eggs. Well, he’d held an over-confident view of their laying ability and when they saw the disappointment on his face every day when he came on his daily inspection for eggs it’d been Clem that had come up with the idea of slipping in some hard-boiled ones to cheer him up.
It’s been a long haul, thirty-seven days of it, but mostly they’ve kept up their spirits; the practical jokers on board have kept them laughing and there’s been a steady round of concerts. Denny Bracefield brought his fiddle with him — to catch the eye of the French mamselles, he says. But he doesn’t mind giving them a tune as well and Sly is a good hand on the piano and if he’s not there, there’s always someone able to roll something out and Clem is fairly handy now with his trumpet. So there’s the concerts and the boxing and wrestling matches and the officers have not let up with the drills so they’ve been occupied most of their time here.
They’ve had their disappointments: there were the four hundred of them all packed tight on the ship thinking they were to get off at Montevideo to see the sights, but it was neutral territory and, in the end, they weren’t allowed to land. They lined up on deck, all of them, watching from the three-mile limit they had to stay outside while they took on coal. There wasn’t even much to see, only the harbour and the edge of land and buildings jutting into the sky. But it was land and, by God, a man gets so he wants to plant his feet on it after weeks of nothing but the sea.
‘Daft buggers,’ someone said. ‘We didn’t start the bloody war.’
Christmas was another one, though not so much a disappoint-ment as being on a ship lining up for your tucker with your mess kits in your hands seemed a rum kind of a way to spend it. Nobody talked much that day. The men who had left wives and children behind were especially quiet and though a few got started on what Christmas was like back home with roasted meat and a pudding they soon fell silent. They had a sing-song at the end of it, though, carols, mostly, and Clem and Sly played on into the night. But if any night was queer it was that one, out in the midst of the ocean as they were, with not an inch of land in sight and the ship taking them further and further away from home and everyone they knew.
Their spirits got a lift when they were given the nod to land in Dakar and given permission to march through town. It was hot and the smell in the air was heavy and sweet and pungent, different from anything he’d ever experienced and it was hard to keep your eyes straight ahead, as a soldier should, marching through that place with those strange trees with the skinny bare trunks and the huge leaves at the top soaring above your head and all of the grand buildings and the houses and the shops.
The people took little notice of them. Since Dakar was under French rule, some bright spark had started whistling the Marseillaise and they’d all joined in. He caught a glimpse of a woman, tall and very slim, dressed in a pale grey suit with a veil covering her pale hair, and she lifted her hands in the fine, pale gloves she wore and brought them together noiselessly in a kind of clapping motion. It stayed with him, the veil covering her eyes and that clapping.
And then it was the native quarters with the houses no more than shacks made from some kind of rush and everywhere noise and colour and spicy smells. The children ran out to see them and cheer them on and there they were following along behind, marching in time with them, clapping and chanting. There were dogs and hens and pigs running along the road and markets set all down it selling chickens in cages and ducks and fruit in vivid red and yellow and orange, purple even, and swollen into such sizes he’d never have believed it. He saw a girl, black as night, with bright beads threaded through her hair.
The wharf was crowded when they went back to re-embark. Even the white townspeople who’d ignored them were there to see them on their way. The Marseillaise hadn’t got them more than the odd whistle, but then one of them from up north started it off. Ka mate, Ka mate.
Clem thought he wasn’t up to it. He was a West Coast lad from the South Island and he didn’t know the words or the actions but Tam was beside him digging his elbow in, just follow what I do and there he was alongside everyone else, thrusting out his chest and stamping, slapping his thighs, his hand whacking against his elbow.
‘Ka mate! Ka mate! Ka ora! Ka ora!
‘Ka mate! Ka mate! Ka ora! Ka ora!’
Four hundred of them chanting and slapping, making that final leap, high up as they could make it and the last words bellowed out, ‘Whiti te ra!’
The wharf was silent for a moment, the faces looking up at them full of amazement and then they were cheering and clapping and whistling and the young ladies waving their handkerchiefs. ‘That’ll give them something to remember us by,’ Tam said.
Getting off the ship, even only for a few hours, then having the town seeing them off like that, well, it was the lift they needed because after Dakar there was a 120mm cannon mounted up on deck. They were in the war zone, right enough, and though it wasn’t much talked of, there were enough troopships that had gone down in the past months to make them uneasy. And y
et, though they found out later the Appam had been taken only a few miles from where they were, they ambled up the Atlantic, no harm seen or done. Now, with everything going right, by tomorrow night they should be sailing into Plymouth Harbour.
‘Looks like we’re lucky,’ Tam says as they stand up on the deck smoking. ‘I’ve heard there’ve been troopships sent out without enough tucker and so packed up a man barely has the space to take a breath.’
‘Is that right?’
‘Yeah, and passages so rough that men have been left lying in their own spew and shit, too weak to clean themselves up. Some of the boats have been hit with sickness and had men dying along the way. We’ve had none of that and here we are almost over the North Atlantic and not so much as a peep out of Fritz.’
‘Don’t know if I believe in luck,’ Clem says.
Tam shoots the end of his cigarette over the boat and they both watch the glint of light floating downwards. ‘You better believe in it,’ he says.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Think about it. I reckon by the time this war is over there’ll be a few million dead. I’ll do my best not to be one of them but I’m going to need a bit of luck on my side.’
‘Is it luck keeps a man alive?’
‘What else could it be? If you think it’s God, well then, you must have a pretty poor opinion of him. It’s hardly fair him looking out for one man and letting some other poor sod cop it.’
Clem is silent for a bit, thinking about that. ‘What if that one man had some special mission ahead of him?’
‘Ah, mate, every young bloke alive thinks he has some special mission ahead of him. It might just come down to making something of himself with a good job and a home and a family and why should that be less important than what some other man sets out to do? It’s not right thinking one man has a better reason to live than another.’
Clem stares into the darkness. ‘I don’t know if it’s right to be talking of living and dying with what’s ahead of us.’
‘Think it’s unlucky?’ Clem sees Tam grin in the flare of light as he lights another smoke.
‘It’s not that. You say you reckon millions?’
‘I reckon millions, but what do I know? It could all be over by the time we get there and then we can have ourselves a fine old time in the English pubs and chasing the English girls. What do you say?’ He nods. ‘And if it’s not over we’ll be having ourselves a fine old time in some French town and when we’re not, we’ll be under the ground and well away from the bullets. In a few months we’ll be back here on the good old Ruapehu on the way home. We’ll have our adventures under our belts and everyone at home will think we’re heroes. You’ll have the pick of the girls and I’ll be ready to settle down, eh my lad?’
Millions. He remembers Mr Kennedy telling them that the population of New Zealand was just over one million. That’d be everyone in New Zealand gone, for a start. But that’s only one million. What if it turned out to be four million or even five? Australia was their closest neighbour. Would that be everyone in New Zealand and Australia as well? Two whole countries with everyone in them dead?
He’d wanted to get away and have a bit of an adventure into the bargain but this wasn’t a game and it looked as if he’d be lucky not to have his head blown off. That or worse. He’d heard talk of basket cases, men who had to be carried off the battlefield in a kind of sling because they’d lost their legs and arms. Think of that. Think of a man living on like that. He was a fool for coming and being part of this and of thinking he’d come out of it scot-free.
He lights a smoke, draws in hard. But isn’t he a bit of a fool, letting himself be thrown off in this way over something he doesn’t properly understand? Others are in charge of this, other men who understand this business much better than he ever could. It will be all right. He’ll do his bit. It was Fritz started it in the first place, then playing his dirty tricks, burrowing under the earth like a coward, laying explosives. Not even fighting it out like a man.
Like Otto. He’d trusted him and if he’d been asked he would have said Otto was his best mate. After the time they’d had in Greymouth, Otto’d had his own name for him, old son, he’d call him, running up behind him on the way to school, clapping his hand against Clem’s back, there you are old son. He’d gone off to his flash school but when he came back for good, even though he’d been keen on being with the older men and all their union talk, there’d still been the times he’d come up after Clem on his way back from the mine and thrown his arm around his shoulders and walked the rest of the way with him, talking. Otto’d always been filled up with his ideas and Clem had felt grateful for his company, flattered that Otto wanted to tell him about them.
But all the time he was going after Pansy, sly and underhand, cruel as well, the way he’d taken up with her then left her to carry on with what he’d done. This was the way Germans were. Now Otto was on Somes Island with the other Germans nobody could trust, and still spouting his ideas most likely. And it was him, Clem, who was doing something about what Otto was always yabbering about, equality and freedom.
While he sees he’s been wrong to think of this as a means of escape and an adventure, he’s not been wrong in coming. There’s a job in front of him and he’ll be man enough for it. He turns to Tam who’s looking at him, curiosity in his eyes.
‘Come on, man. What’s going on in that head of yours? Spit quick or die.’
Tam has a load of these sayings and he’ll slip them in, quick and crafty, his face without so much as a flicker of a grin. Fell arse over tin cup. Doesn’t know whether to shit or wind his watch.
‘We’ll have had our adventures, all right,’ he says.
They’ll be lucky, the two of them, he knows it. And he knows as well Tam’s a good mate and he can trust him. This ship’s been good for the pair of them, they’ve stood on deck and seen things they’d never thought of seeing: whales spouting and porpoises leaping up and spinning and islands and coasts way off and they’ve both got the cards signed by good King Neptune to prove they’ve crossed the line. Clem has seen in Tam’s face the clench of fear he was feeling himself when they looked out at smoke rising from other steamships and thought them German warships.
He’s ready, now, to leave the Ruapehu alongside Tam and to stand on land that doesn’t buck and rock. He’s keen as mustard to see where he’s come to.
They’ll be lucky. The two of them will. He knows it.
24
He wakes in the early morning. The other lads are still sleeping around him, but he wants to see where he is. His clothes are still so wet and cold he flinches as he pulls them on. He steps outside, lights a smoke and looks around. Colder than a well-digger’s arse. He got that one from Tam.
They left New Zealand in summer but over here it’s winter. He has to get used to that, everything being topsy-turvy. He’s standing outside the hut and it’s light enough for him to see they’re situated near the top of a hill. The ground below is difficult to make out in the mist. Above him there’s a barricade of stone and beyond that, well, by God, it’s a castle rising up above him. A bloody castle.
And, by God, he’s in England. He’s had the stories of it all his life. It’s where Nanny Clement came out from, accompanying her sister Clarissa who’d waited two years to marry her sweetheart, Walter, who’d left for the gold mining. Their father had made him promise on his honour he wouldn’t send for her till he’d saved enough to provide a decent place for his daughter to live in. Us down the bottom of the ship all crowded in and most sick, there were little ones with their mothers, one of the poor wee things would start crying and set off the others. But we were that excited, Clarissa and me. We were that excited.
And when they finally berthed at Port Chalmers, there was no Walter to meet them and there were the two of them dripping wet and miserable in the rain wondering where on earth they’d fetched up, this place with the mu
ddy streets and the houses and shops so small and ugly. Clarissa was carrying all she owned in the world and Granny had most of her own, since she was going to stop with Clarissa a while and see her settled. They watched for him up and down the streets and still he didn’t come. They stopped by one of the hotels and thought to take a room there but a woman came past and heard them and said it was no place for young ladies.
So they’d taken the offer of a ride in a horse and cart going to Dunedin and there they were in the open cart among their own trunks and the parcels and boxes the driver had off the boat to deliver in the city, when along the other side of the road came a young man driving a horse and buggy and he saw the girls and called out to their driver to stop. It wasn’t Walter — he’d broken his arm the night before, taking down a tree — but it was his best friend and his name was Laurie and the next thing they were clipping along in the buggy taking in the sights, the houses didn’t look quite so rough any more and they were thinking things weren’t near so bad as they’d seemed. And Laurie became your grand-daddy and I never went back.
Granny Clement’s voice still has the soft burr and lift in it. He has a list of family he can look up, Dad’s side from County Durham and Mother’s in the Tees Valley, not that he has any idea as to where either of them are. Mother handed him the envelope with the names and addresses all carefully written out inside as he left. There’s Aunty Edna and Uncle Bill, they’re the Clements, and there’s Uncle Jack Bright and Uncle Billy and Aunty Elsie Bright as well. Your nan and granny are writing to say you’re coming. They’re family and it makes me feel better knowing they’re there and you can go to them if you need.
Yesterday they steamed into Plymouth Harbour where it was all a great buzz of sound and movement. They were alongside battleships on their way in, battleships and battle-cruisers, then there were the smaller lot, the torpedo boats that reminded him of dragonflies the way they dashed about and hovered. They passed by a submarine just before they reached the harbour and were mightily relieved to see it was British.
Through the Lonesome Dark Page 19
