1915

by Roger McDonald

  Everything Walter looked at now was sharp-outlined. Tin roofs seemed sliced from crystal, while sprouts of spring grass on the damp creekbanks were brilliant yet sombre, like green velvet. When low clouds parted to let through the sun, patches of the countryside would suddenly illuminate. It was a post-quaternary landscape, the soft heaven of a new epoch. The usual agents of change, erosion and weathering, were replaced by light and emotion. From here Walter was to step he knew not where — except that if he once gave up, and said, as he was still able to, no, then this pastel erasure of the ordinary past would cease, never again to tip forward into a million new colours, nor soften — ever — the infinity of hard rocks, stubborn hills, and motionless plains that threatened to hold him.

  Mr Gilchrist purchased “seat of war” maps which were stuck to the dining room wall. He placed a red tag in the North Sea, where, it was said, guns had been heard.

  Off they went to the big open air patriotic meeting held the night before Billy’s departure: Walter and Billy with their fathers — though Mr Mackenzie was sour about Billy’s plans.

  “He’ll do what he wants. He’s done it before.”

  “You can rely on me for a hand,” said Alan Gilchrist, whacking his unsteady neighbour on the back.

  “I’ve got a big club handy for the next man who greets me with, ‘anything fresh about the war?’” complained Billy. But in the next breath he added: “What’s the news?” and was as anxious as anyone to taste the meeting’s excitement.

  The theme, announced by the mayor, was that every man who owned stock or had the right of citizenship should help to protect those rights. Though his face formed the hub for spokes of the British flag hung at his back, he said they were not assembled in any spirit of jingoism, but to deal with the most serious question in the history of Europe since the days of the Spanish Armada.

  Tom Larsen arrived at Walter’s elbow. “Jingoism,” he stated, pointing to the platform as if at a blackboard.

  “Didn’t you hear him say it wasn’t?”

  The mayor now roused the crowd with his auctioneer’s voice, asking for donations in cash and kind for the comfort of those who went to the front, and to make sure that the wants of their dependents were provided for.

  “That’s the stuff,” said Mr Gilchrist.

  First Mr Smallcombe sprinted up. Right away he and his brother were donating a rail truck of fat sheep. The chief thing was to feed the men.

  “I’ll send a truckload of scholars,” muttered Tom, though only Walter heard.

  Skinny Jones then danced aloft. He said the occasion was one for special efforts. They had one of the finest countries in the world. There was no place where a man could get better returns for his investments. Jones Brothers would donate half a truck of sheep.

  “He’s my man,” said Tom, elbowing Walter and releasing a grim hee-haw. “You see? Money’s at the core.”

  A drunk arrived on the stairs of the podium, balanced like a jelly as he tried to speak, but was captured by Constable Arkwright to cries of: “Put him in the army!”

  One farmer shouted, “I’ll give twenty-five.” Others: “Put me down for ten … fifteen … a draught mare … oats.” Promises flowed forward in a wild flooding of property into battle: if weapons had been to hand, and an enemy sighted, even the stiffest among them would have given chase. With a voice like a drum and perspiration sprouting from forehead and cheeks, Alan Gilchrist promised the proceeds from his next thirty ewes, and Mr J. Westcott donated a sulky to be disposed of as the committee thought fit.

  Too loud this time, Tom said: “I’ll drive it to England.”

  “Shut up,” said Billy.

  “When’s the ‘chalky’ going?” asked a voice two rows back. Another voice ferociously struck: “We oughter help him.” After that Tom held his tongue. The gas lamps run up for the occasion barely reached this far — when Walter turned to identify the callers he saw only a log jam of brown hat brims.

  The band struck up and the crowd milled round, unwilling to be prised from its discovered one voice. “Rule Britannia”, “La Marseillaise”, the Russian national anthem, and “God Save the King” were played before the meeting broke up.

  “Don’t that music stir you?” asked Billy as they parted. “Whoompf!” he gestured, curving an imaginary bayonet upwards.

  Then, as simply as stepping through a doorway, Billy caught the next day’s train to Sydney. A week later a letter arrived from Trooper Mackenzie, Australian Light Horse, enclosing money for Novelty to be railed to Liverpool.

  At the Agricultural Bureau picnic, held two days before Walter left, four hundred picnickers gave three explosive cheers for Walter and the other six who were soon to go, and sang “Auld Lang Syne”. After the formalities Ethel asked if he’d walk down to the creek with her. She wore a loose calico tunic for the sports. Whenever a fold of the material swayed against him he felt the weight of a friendly limb, or hip, and once, he was certain, a breast.

  Under a canopy of wattle she suddenly said: “You can kiss me if you like.”

  “But we’re not going together.”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “You’d expect me to write — I couldn’t.”

  He listened to the frogs in the bristly reeds. She removed her sandshoes and he saw an X-ray picture of toes in dirt-stained socks.

  “Don’t be a dill. Haven’t you kissed a girl before?”

  “Too right I have.”

  At first she was all bone, and smelt in patches of sawdust from the Ladies’ Nail Drive, which she’d won. And of sweat. Then her lips seemed all consideration. He discovered himself flat on his back in the shade, almost a baby, while Ethel manipulated his adult responses from heaven. She took his hand and guided it to the now-taut fabric at her chest. “Move it,” she mumbled. Here he discovered a cushioned, un-Ethel-like part, as wonderfully boneless as her lips. Experimentally he shifted to his side and embraced her. She said, “Oh, yes, hug me,” and guided his shy hand through an armhole where under her singlet it encountered, like a soft toy, the small handful of her breast and its button of nipple. Then he felt her hand fumbling at his fly, which by then was so upraised that part of his concentration had been spent on wondering if she’d noticed. Broad daylight or not, he and Ethel were personally linked — he’d never felt so closely in contact with anyone. His hand plied ceaselessly from one loose-hanging breast to the other, while she did the same between his legs, making him gasp when she released two buttons and slipped cool fingers inside.

  Then it ended.

  Ethel was on her feet screeching at two shapes lurking in the paperbarks, barely ten yards away. “You stinking Spicers, you bloody little spies!” She grabbed a stick and advanced on the now-standing boy and girl. The moment they blew raspberries and ran, Walter remembered his buttons, fixed them, and was on his feet by the time Ethel turned around.

  As they walked back to the picnic she said, “You can’t say you’ve never been kissed.”

  He was about to object, but said: “Thanks.”

  “I’ll still be here after the war,” she went on matter-of-factly, “Why not visit me then?”

  “I will, definitely.” Looking at her side-on he discerned a different profile from before. Not sharp and hungry at all, but soft and sad. He ought to have been shocked by what had just happened, but wasn’t. He had no curiosity about her — just a liking.

  “Those things we did back there. I liked them.”

  “Of course you did.”

  Above the bank they could see the hats of the long jump judges. A balloon drifted past then burst on a thorn bush leaving scrappy green rags. They circumnavigated the sportsfield staying clear of the crowd.

  “When a girl says ‘come and visit’, does she always mean it?”

  “Anyone’s welcome who’s nice.”

  “Would you say it just out of politeness?”

  “Not me!”

  “Would someone else?”

  “Someone?”

  S
he gave him a look which showed she understood. Billy was certain to have mugged her up on Frances — though in probing, Walter hadn’t meant her to realize. He said, “I didn’t mean a special person,” intending to say “no-one in particular.” But it was too late.

  “Oh, sure. She would have meant it.”

  The sharp profile returned. A peculiar white knuckle showed on the tip of her nose. Could she possibly be jealous? But it didn’t last.

  “Here’s why,” she said, good humouredly stiffening her right index finger on the palm of her left hand. “One: the Gilchrist money.”

  “That’s a myth.” But as the district could see, Alan Gilchrist sailed through the bad seasons — this year had been bad so far — and still sent his sons away to school.

  “Two: you tickle a girl’s interest.” She laughed, he blushed.

  “Three: you’re leaving.”

  “Just that?”

  “A girl hates to lose things.”

  “But I wasn’t leaving when the invitation was issued.”

  “Was she?”

  They had almost reached their families.

  “Does a girl hate to lose even those things she hasn’t got?”

  “Some do. Especially what they haven’t got.”

  “What’s number four?”

  “There isn’t one.”

  “I saw — you were about to count off another.”

  He bumped her shoulder accidently and she glanced at him unguardedly, taking the contact as a gesture of affection.

  “I can’t answer.”

  “Come on. We’re not playing riddles!”

  But she galloped off, asking who won tilting-the-ring and the Old Buffers’ race. When her name came up for a prize she ran backwards past Walter and called, “Honest, I can’t say.”

  The bump, a mere chance intimacy, in the meantime must have made her wonder. For when the picnic boiled itself out, and the sun sank low and cold, and a string of sulkies and drays set off for the road junction with knots of walkers following, she very cosily took his arm.

  “I know all about the girl in Sydney. Billy told me.”

  “She’s just someone I met. We’ve hardly ever spoken.” He wanted her to see how little there was to it. And there really wasn’t. Who was Frances now? A hum thinning out along dark rails.

  She sought his hand and held it among the folds of her tunic where no-one could see.

  “I wish we’d — got to be friends — before,” Walter managed. He felt a kind of drunkenness with this angular girl beside him. Across the paddocks, under cut-out hills, a mist had developed. Above, the first star glared through a pinprick in the stretched blue. In a hollow they entered a band of cold air, then rose out of it into an atmosphere of dust and pollen stirred by the passing crowd. Ethel sneezed. Walter said: “Everyone’s suddenly taken to me because I’m going. You’d hardly believe the change in my father — all year he’s been rotten, but when the war business got going he did a double somersault.”

  “I suppose he knows what he’s missing.”

  “No — he hates me.”

  “When you and Billy came with the news I felt awful. Sometimes I get feelings about things. F’rinstance I knew Aunt Elsie Mackenzie was going to die.”

  “So did we all.”

  “I knew before anyone. I watched her once in church: she seemed to disappear. Uncle Hugh put his arm right through her when he reached for his hymn book.”

  Ethel’s practical sports-shoes trudged on beside Walter’s boots.

  “She might have just ducked outside for a tick.”

  “You think I’m mad. Do you want to hear something else?”

  “It depends.”

  “After the war you and Billy will be safe. I had a dream where the two of you lived in houses with wives and babies.”

  “Is that a promise? I think I’d rather die.”

  “You mustn’t joke. Your wife was awfully pretty.”

  She released his hand, and leaned on his elbow for support while fishing for a pebble. The last picnickers had long since passed them and gathered fifty yards farther on, where the T-junction sent its arms north and south.

  “Any more dreams?”

  “The both of you were unhappy. Billy just stared at me. I know this war’s going to change people.”

  “It’ll be a lark.”

  But Ethel’s dream unsettled him. The fate she pictured — that of the unhappy returnee — tossed him far ahead of anything he’d thought up for himself. War was a game involving picketed horses grazing under a bank while their riders in bush jackets and bandoliers crawled through rocks and grass on elbows and stomachs and popped their rifles at other distant figures, shabbily clad. The trouble with Ethel’s scalp-creeping predictions was the way they planted him right here, at home, the very spurning of which was an act the war itself enabled.

  “What about the final thing you wouldn’t tell me. Was it good news or bad?”

  “I’ll have to think.”

  “Was it about Frances Reilly?”

  “Who?” She scuffed the gravel angrily. He’d broken a rule by mentioning her name.

  While he waited for an answer he discovered he understood a secret about the war. About his going.

  It was this: every place, every person, had come to him bearing love. That was the reason why the country glowed specially yellow and green; why his mother had cried the other day when Douggie, home for the holidays, played drums on the pudding plates while their father watched cheerily; why flags draped every poor settlement hall; why Ethel had kissed him at the sports, why now she once more took his arm and steered him towards the junction. Love, love — only it didn’t mean charity or comfort, nor even kindness. It was a torch of passion hurled from the darkness of a million small lives, which Walter was expected to catch and keep alight for others. Out of these thoughts he blurted:

  “What if I didn’t go?”

  But Ethel passed no comment. She smiled a farewell and said, “You’re right — it was about her. I’m sure she’s —”

  “Well?”

  “I’m sure she’s not like me — soft hearted. Oh, that doesn’t mean bad luck for you. She’ll take what she wants, and keep it. But do you think I’ll ever amount to anything? The district’s got me, and I’m stuck fast. Imagine, I’ve never been more than thirty miles from home. I can’t see my life changing.”

  “You’ll marry.”

  But Walter was dull when it came to predictions. And so dull in relation to Ethel that he couldn’t picture her beyond the moment of their parting. Not one ounce of her.

  “Marry? Even Duncan’s done a bunk.”

  She pecked him on the cheek in front of everyone. “Come back,” she whispered, and he knew that she meant to her, to their tangle by the creek, and not just “alive”. The spirit of this command cancelled the gloom of their parting exchanges, and for the first time Walter grasped her prediction of his survival as a formula for breezing through the months ahead.

  “I’d be a mug not to,” he whispered in reply. With a sharp finger she poked him in the stomach.

  The next day, an hour before the evening meal, Walter sat at the desk in the room called The Office. It was really a long bench, with invoices, letters, account books and catalogues stacked by his meticulous father in neat piles under the window. The chair was swivel-based, with fat leather padding on the seat. He took a clean sheet of paper, uncapped the inkwell, dipped the pen, let the blue liquid drain down, wiped the nib on the inkwell’s glass lip, examined it, rattled the bone shaft of the pen on his teeth, and stared out the window.

  What should he say?

  His view extended down the home valley, a mere depression, to the blobs of trees on the low basking hills at the far side of the road. The last sunlight searching at ground level illuminated humped tree-roots and caused the grass to shine.

  He stared, chewing the pen.

  His mind leapt to impossible conclusions — there he was after the war with Frances, only she wa
sn’t “awfully pretty”. When he saw a lump of child on her knee the scene went blank. All he wanted was a word with her. Then she squirmed in his arms under the wattle at the sports; ah — he travelled on the train again, this time without Mrs Stinson, and when the lights went out he chased her for a kiss, but free of a tunnel she sat staring enigmatically out the window … But he too sat staring out a window, attached to this moment, these circumstances, this ignorance, lack of will, habit. One second ago the sun had been everywhere, lying in the grass gullies, unfocused at the edges but strong as gold at the centre. The next second it had gone, and the green undulations turned grey as cardboard. And in the room he was aware of hearing the last tick, but one, of the clock.

  Again he dipped the nib and this time wrote the letter. He wrote slowly. He said he was glad at last to hear news of her from Billy. The war had caused a lot of excitement in Parkes. How were they taking it in the city? Quite a number had left already including Billy and others not known to her. He supposed many she knew must be going from Forbes. He was leaving soon himself. Time permitting, he would like to call on her in Sydney …

  The light almost gone, Walter found himself leaning low over the paper as he wrote. When he reached the bottom of the page his face almost touched it. So in the near-darkness he bent a half-inch lower and deposited a kiss, feeling nothing at all like the way he’d felt with Ethel. His fresh-shaven face rustled across the dry surface. Then he signed his name, addressed and sealed an envelope, and sat awaiting the call to dinner.

  10

  The World of Men and Women

  “You’d better come with us,” offered Frank Barton after they left the train at Central.

  They made their way up Pitt Street, soon entering a narrow-fronted hotel where Frank and Nugget Arthur were known, and where the woman in charge, fishing in a drawer for keys, did what Frank asked when he said: “Best give the young chap a room to his self.”

  The two older soldiers left Walter at the first floor landing. A red-carpeted corridor ended at small windows in far distant walls. It was as if the narrow hotel had widened behind the facade, becoming greater than it seemed. Cane chairs and lounges relaxed in the gloom.