Through the Lonesome Dark

by Richardson, Paddy

  The first day was a success. After, with no fresh troops coming to relieve them, the men fought on through the next week, night and day in the mud and the snow. They gained another three miles in the next week. Seven miles closer to Germany they were.

  If the offensive worked the way it should, the war would be over in forty-eight hours. Well, there was another six weeks of it and it still wasn’t over and a hundred and sixty thousand of their own men were dead as well as the hundred and twenty-five thousand Germans.

  The company was out of it by then. He and Tam were out on the Arras–Cambrai road clearing and building it up. Out in the cold and snow and, by God, it was bitter. But by the start of May the weather was easing: it was spring and there was a bit of warmth in the sun. Tam still had the bike and he was off on it on his own once a shift was over. This day, though, they finished in the late afternoon and Tam had his cheeky grin and the glint in his eye. ‘Come on.’

  He’d climbed on the back of the bike and gone with him.

  He manoeuvres his stump back into the cup, tightens the straps and pushes himself up so he’s standing again. He moves around the cemetery, pausing beside the gravestones that’ve sprung up since he left, all the beloveds and the deeply mourneds. Well, there’s George Bardley, Dad’s partner from down the mines. Mother had written that he’d gone. His lungs, she’d said.

  There’s Gracie Allen, used to work in Currans, dearly loved daughter of.

  Wonder what happened there, she wasn’t that old and, by God, there’s Don Beardsley, Donald Pritchard Beardsley, beloved husband of Mary Frances, father of. But oh for the touch of a vanished hand/And the sound of a voice that is still.

  Beside the newer stones there’s a little huddle of graves with only wooden crosses as markers. Seems there’s been a few deaths in the past months. Could be this Spanish flu that’s got everyone afraid: half of Christchurch was closed down because of it when he went through. He hadn’t thought about it being here, though there’s no good reason to think it wouldn’t be in Blackball as well as everywhere else. They’re saying the soldiers coming home have spread it. Well, he’s seen so much dying it doesn’t affect him the way it once did. If you get your three score and ten you’re luckier than the millions that never will.

  He should get on. Get down the road and make the best of what there is left to him, whatever it is. The sun is brighter now and he squints at the wooden cross in front of him with the single name on it, no beloved this or mourned that. The name is barely decipherable on the plain, bleached pine: Daniel Williams 1875–1915.

  And it hits him that he’s been in France all those years, and in all that time he never killed a man. He never once used his rifle, never even fought another man. The only man he’s ever killed is right here in the ground in front of him in Blackball.

  He stood in the cover of the bush and watched as Dan Williams lit the fuse. Then he came at him from behind and shoved him into the river with all the black rage he’d felt for the man who’d wrecked Pansy’s life and his own as well. Whether it was the gunpowder or drowning that got him he’ll never know, but he killed him right enough. The evidence is right there in front of him.

  He doesn’t regret it. All those lads in France and Belgium and the rest of the countries they were sent to, well, they never deserved to die. Dan Williams deserved what he got.

  He looks down the road. A few children out playing. The school bell would have let them go an hour or so ago. It’s time he was on his way but he sits on one of the graves and lights up. Josette would have had Tam’s kid by now. That’s if it was his. That’s if she ever was pregnant in the first place.

  He went to Waihi. The ship docked in Auckland and he stayed on a few days and walked around the buildings he’d thought so big and grand before he’d left. Well, he saw now they were nowhere near as splendid as those in France or England but still, the stone sat solidly on the ground, the blocks were cut well and fluted at the edges and the colour in the basalt was fine, the pale grey close to white merging into a darker tone like ash. He found a place with a sign out, Northern Stonemasonry, and he went in, had a bit of a chat to the lady at the front of the shop, told her where he’d been and how he’d been working in chalk stone and she sent him out back into the workshop to talk to her husband. Tom loves a good yarn.

  Well, he loved to yarn, all right, and the gist of it after all the talk of France and England and the war was that it took a fair time to learn the trade when it came to stonemasonry; it took years to get it right and even then you were still learning. You had to be keen, had to love the work. But there was plenty of work with towns and cities growing as they were.

  He walked around the city, went to the railway station. There was a train leaving for Waihi and he got on it. He bunked down for the night in a hotel, had a few beers in the bar and one of the blokes he got talking to said he’d drop him out to the Musgraves’ place in the morning: he was going past there on his way to one of the farms.

  There was the long driveway lined with trees with great, wide trunks and the homestead at the end of it. He didn’t know whether he should go up onto the veranda that ran all the way along the front to knock on the door or go around the back. He thought that when Mr Musgrave saw him in his soldier’s uniform he might run him off the place seeing the way Tam had treated his daughter.

  Why had he come here? His idea that he wanted to pay his respects and tell Ellen, if she asked, that Tam had thought highly of her and it was the war that changed things didn’t seem such a sound one any more. It might only upset her, bringing things back. He didn’t want to tell her how the war coarsened men, made things they knew were wrong look right and how a man was likely to grab on to anyone or anything that would make him feel better, seeing as he was likely to be gone at any time. He only wanted to tell her that Tam had cared for her and that he hadn’t been thinking straight with the strain of everything.

  Well, he was here now, so he hauled himself up the steps and knocked on the door. A girl answered and he told her his name and asked for Ellen and she said to come in. He took off his cap and followed her down the hallway.

  She came into the room where he was waiting and it was her, all right, the girl from the picture. She took his hand. ‘You’re Clem. Walter wrote to me about you. Can you stay for tea?’

  Walter? He couldn’t make sense of that at first but then he remembered Tam’s name Walter McAtaminey. There was a piece of fancywork on the low table beside where she sat facing him and he remembered Tam talking about the tray cloths and the bits that she made and how he’d seemed proud of it in the first place and then turned scornful.

  He saw how white her hands were. He saw the little sparkler on her left-hand finger. Well, perhaps she’d met somebody else; it’d been years since Tam left and he’d broken with her, after all. She was prettier than her picture, her hair glossy and thick, curling around her face, and her eyes were a nice blue. She asked about Tam, all she wanted to hear about was Tam, and she didn’t seem put out with him at all, only wanted to know about him; it seemed she thought him a right hero.

  He went along with it, answering all her questions. Then she went quiet, clasping her hands together and looking down at them. ‘You were with Walter when he died, weren’t you?’

  So he told her about how they’d been working on the road and after the shift they’d been on the bike together when they’d heard the plane and how they’d headed straight for the ditch but the pilot was low enough to spot them.

  There were tears on her cheeks. ‘He didn’t suffer, did he? I couldn’t bear it if I knew that he’d suffered.’

  He’d said no and he told her what was always said, what they always wanted to hear, about it being instant. He said he was with him at the end and that was true.

  He’s in front pedalling and they’re laughing wobbling all over the road as they are, juddering through the potholes past the wreckage of tanks left
behind and wrecked planes, there’s a horse dead at the side, flies all over it. Tam has a swig out of the rum bottle and passes it forward. They’re singing at the top of their voices.

  Three German officers crossed the Rhine, Parley-voo

  Three German officers crossed the Rhine, Parley-voo

  Three German officers crossed the Rhine

  To fuck the women and drink the wine

  Hinky, dinky, parley-voo

  Shouting out the words. Wobbling all about the road.

  ‘Oh, landlord, have you a daughter fair?’ Parley-voo

  ‘Oh, landlord, have you a daughter fair?’ Parley-voo

  ‘Oh, landlord, have you a daughter fair?

  ‘With lily white tits and golden hair?’

  ‘Hinky, dinky, parley-voo.’

  Shouting out the words, wobbling around the road, nearly pissing themselves they’re laughing that much. Laughing that much.

  ‘My daughter, sir, is much too young,’ Parley-voo

  ‘My daughter, sir, is much too young,’ Parley-voo

  ‘My daughter, sir, is much too young,

  ‘To be fucked about by a bastard Hun.’

  They shout it out. ‘Fucked about by a bastard Hun.’ Tam raises the bottle up like he’s making a toast.

  The bastard Hun.

  The bastard Hun.

  They hear it before they see anything and it sounds as though it’s a way off but then it comes out of the clouds and Tam says fuck me and Clem pedals hard for the ditch by the side of the road and he goes over the handlebars and the bike lands on top of him and Tam on top of that.

  When they are hit.

  Right above them dipping downwards hovering he can see the curve of wings the glint of the machine gun in the cockpit di-di-didididididi bullets drumming on metal the soft splosh of flesh breaking open turning now the wings sinking then rising. Pushing the mess of bike off taking hold of Tam, Jesus Christ ah Jesus hold on mate we’ll get you help come on Tam come on Tam hold on ah Christ fuck fuck ah Tam.

  He hauls off his shirt bunches it up to stop up the cavity in Tam’s belly blood blood blood blood gushing out his mouth tries to hold him up so he won’t choke. Tam’s eyes are on him for the minutes he lives on and Clem holds him.

  ‘He died a hero,’ she said softly.

  He nodded.

  ‘We were going to be married as soon as he got back,’ she said. ‘Mother wanted us to wait until when the garden was at its best but we wouldn’t have.’ She held out her hand. ‘He was sending money to his mother for the ring so she bought what she thought he would have liked and sent it to me.’ She blotted her face with the handkerchief she’d taken from her sleeve. ‘“You’re the only girl for me.” That’s what he always said before he left and it’s what he wrote in every letter.’

  He nodded again and took another piece of cake when she offered it and put it on his plate. Fine, thin china, it was, with pink flowers at the edges. He agreed to another cup of tea and then he left.

  She’d picked up her sewing I want you to meet Mother and Daddy but this is town day. You will come back, won’t you? He walked back down the drive and waited in the spot the man had said he’d pick him up.

  The only girl for me.

  He thinks of Josette holding up her hand, the light from the candles in the estaminet picking up the gleam on her finger. He wondered, as he waited, if Tam had meant to tell Ellen in the end or if he’d thought he’d leave her thinking he was dead. Perhaps he’d thought the chances of making it back were slim so he’d work things out if that happened.

  And maybe it was better that way, her not knowing so she could carry on believing in what she believed men were: staunch and true, loving the same girl into eternity.

  Suffering wouldn’t fit right in that room of dainty tables and rose-covered sofas; you can’t polish it up or cover it over with flowers. He sees now that Tam was right in thinking he couldn’t fit into the life he’d once thought was before him. To think of him, perched at the edge of that sofa, a cup and saucer in one hand and balancing the plate on his knee, well, towards the end Tam’s hands used to shake that much the only way to keep them still was for him to sit on them.

  Tam was right. He sees that so clearly now. The only chance he had to make anything out of what was left of his life was with a woman who understood how things had been and how they really were.

  I love her, mate.

  It should have been Josette he’d gone to see. He should have got himself over to France to see she was all right. He’d owed that to Tam and he’d failed him in that, as well. All he’d wanted to do when he left the hospital, though, was to get home. It was clear from those around him, everyone had had it up to there with the war.

  They see the uniform, see the stick, see the way you limp. The younger ladies look away and though the older ones smile there’s pity in their faces. Young blokes walk past quick as they can. They’ve had their share of white feathers but they’re fit and they’re alive even so.

  A peg leg and a stick was nothing, though. That was only a small part of the scenery of missing limbs and tin masks hiding faces torn off or burned away. Well, the masks made the streets nice enough for the ladies and the children to walk in.

  Wave after wave after wave of them.

  He gets up. It’s time to face up to what’s left.

  40

  She’s dainty-looking and perfect. She has Pansy’s darkness and she has Otto’s eyes, the same greyish-blue and the same narrow, long shape. The same look of devilment in them and all. She comes straight up and looks him over. ‘Are you the papa I’ve never seen?’

  She’s little enough but she has a voice on her, loud and clear as a bell and not so much as a falter. He smiles at the smallness of her measured up against the voice. He doesn’t know the answer to that one so he turns it back to her. ‘Well, and you must be the little girl I’ve never seen.’

  She’s looking him up and down. ‘You’re a soldier, aren’t you? Don’t you have a gun?’

  ‘I’m not expecting to come across enemies in Blackball.’

  ‘Did you shoot anybody?’

  ‘I didn’t.’

  ‘What did you do, then?’

  ‘I dug tunnels.’

  ‘Did you dig for coal?’ She looks disappointed but then she brightens up. ‘Or was it diamonds? Mummy says diamonds come from down inside the earth same as coal.’

  He sits down — the chesterfield sofa from Uddstrom’s in Mackay Street, Greymouth, covered in mid-brown moquette, brought through on the train — and she hops up on it and sits beside him.

  ‘We dug tunnels to hide our own soldiers,’ he says. ‘We made caves with lights in them and kitchens and beds. It was like a whole little town underneath the ground and the soldiers could stay down there until they were wanted.’

  ‘A whole little town.’ She’s thinking about that. She’s quick and sharp but there’s a quiet about her, a way of mulling things over that’s Pansy all over. ‘Why were the soldiers hiding? Were they afraid?’

  ‘They weren’t afraid. It was more they were waiting than hiding. They didn’t want the enemy to see them before they were ready to fight, see. The idea was to give the enemy a surprise when they came out from under the ground.’

  ‘The Germans were the enemies, weren’t they? Did you see any?’

  ‘I saw a fair few.’

  ‘Did they look fiendish? Like this?’ She has her face screwed up and her hands held out in front of her like claws. Well, she’s her mother all over again, right enough. He looks across at Pansy who’s sitting across from them, quiet and watching.

  ‘Not nearly so fiendish as that.’

  ‘Mummy said when she was a little girl like me, you and her and another friend used to hide up in the hills. She said you wanted to live in the caves together and never grow up.’
<
br />   ‘We did and all.’

  ‘Why do you have a stick? Is your leg broken?’

  ‘You could say that.’

  ‘Can I see your leg?’

  ‘I don’t know that a little girl should see it.’

  ‘Mummy says I should say “Please may I?” when I want something, so please may I see your leg?’

  The next moment he has his trouser leg rolled up and she has her eyes right up close, looking at the peg and the cup it fits into and the straps holding it on. She closes her fingers into a fist and raps on the wood. ‘Can you feel that?’ she asks.

  ‘I can’t say I do.’

  ‘Somebody could kick you in the leg,’ she says, ‘and it wouldn’t even hurt.’

  ‘I could give them a right good kick back with this and all.’

  ‘What if you were shot in the leg?’ she says. ‘You wouldn’t feel that either, would you.’

  ‘I wouldn’t feel it,’ he says. ‘I’d have to get myself a new one, though. But I’m not expecting to get shot at.’

  ‘Not in Blackball,’ she says.

  ‘Not in Blackball.’

  Not in Blackball except he had the kind of stares on his way through town that made him feel that a shot up his arse was all he deserved. He’s a traitor around here, no other word for it, taking himself off to a war no self-respecting comrade would make himself a part of, and leaving his pregnant wife to boot.

  He went around the back, took his cap off, and stopped there a moment. Home. By God, he was home and he was shaking, getting the shakes again, waves of it coming and there was something like crying pushing its way up from way down in his gut. He held his hand against the door to steady himself.