Gallipoli Street

by Mary-Anne O'Connor

  ‘Careful now.’

  ‘I’m arright. Come on, Igs! Whatcha waiting for?’

  Iggy played and Jack lost the words, telling him to start again, and Veronica knew she had to step in. She picked up their coats and smiled at them all, forcing a laugh as she approached him.

  ‘Yes, I know, dear, it’s been a while since we sang that one. Come on, let’s have a nightcap at home. I think it’s getting a bit late…’

  ‘Nonsense! S’fine! Iggy, play summin’ else. Play “Danny Boy”,’ he slurred, pushing away from her, causing her to collide with a chair. Pete rose, his thirteen-year-old fists clenching.

  ‘I think I need a breather,’ Iggy announced, sliding his stool back and moving his leg to stand. ‘Come for a smoke, Jack?’ He clapped him on the shoulder and Jack relented, stumbling with him outside. Mick took Pete discreetly out the other door to ‘show him the new car’ and calm him down and everyone busied themselves about the room, making small talk. They were trying not to embarrass her but Veronica just wished she could run away from their sympathy and concern; she was too ashamed even to look at them. Instead she sat back down, putting the coats aside, and waited.

  ‘How about a tune from you, Simon?’ Pattie said brightly.

  He shook his head.

  ‘Come on! Surely you know something I could sing. What have you been learning?’ He bit his lip nervously then, with an encouraging pull from Katie, he rose from his chair and sat at the keys.

  ‘Well I do know this one,’ he said, playing the introduction. Pattie perched herself on the piano, her long legs crossed, and swung her hair over one shoulder in a dramatic pose causing Katie and May to giggle and Mick to whistle and applaud as he and Pete returned to the room. Then she began to sing and the words washed over them as Pattie’s sweet voice caressed the tune, enriched by a note of yearning as she forgot to make fun and the words touched her heart.

  ‘Oh how I need someone to watch over me,’ she sang as her eyes found Mick’s. His earlier smile was absent, replaced by something else. Veronica realised to her amazement it was longing.

  Mick reached up and held her waist as she slipped off the piano, never taking his eyes from hers until Katie giggled once more and the spell was broken.

  ‘Cake, anyone?’ Catherine said smoothly, leading the children out, the adults following, all except Pattie and Mick.

  Veronica cast a quick glance their way and felt a pang of memory: the two of them seemed oblivious to everyone else, obviously just waiting for the chance to be alone. She remembered those feelings, long ago, before the war took its hold on her Jack. Closing the door quietly she decided she was not feeling up to facing her family, so she slipped through the side door and went out to the back through the kitchen. She walked along the fence to the nursery paddock as she’d done over thirteen years earlier, on the day of the mass, when she’d stood there with Pattie.

  The day Pete was born.

  She thought about Pattie’s grief and her new happiness and felt a deep sense of gratitude that she could find a second chance at love. And her dear, dear brother. If anyone deserved Pattie it was Mick. Instead of giving in to his own despair he’d dedicated his life to the veterans, bringing hope to everyone else as they watched a fellow cripple defy the tag and its implications. But the laughter had been missing. Veronica could see that Pattie was bringing it back, helping to fill the enormous hole left in Mick after Tom’s death. Mick likewise was filling some of the emptiness left in Pattie’s heart when Clarkson died. Much like his cousin he was capable, dashing, larger than life, and she realised that Pattie positively glowed under his adoring gaze.

  She wondered how long Mick had been in love with her and, looking back, realised he’d written to Pattie more than anyone else in the past few months and, come to think on it, hadn’t taken his eyes off her all afternoon. As for Pattie, Veronica mused, it was anyone’s guess, although she had been very excited about this party, constantly chatting about it and wearing her new red dress for the occasion. Veronica had just thought she was finally getting sick of greys and blacks after all these years, never guessing there was another reason for it. Especially not a male reason.

  She wondered if the laughter would ever come back into her relationship. It was the thing she missed the most, those moments shared when nothing seemed impossible as long as they had each other. Back when there was hope inside her husband.

  Lost in her thoughts, she jumped as Iggy spoke nearby.

  ‘Thinking of adding to your brood, little mother?’

  Veronica gave him a look of welcome then shrugged, taking in the new calves suckling on their milk. ‘If only it were that simple. I think we humans have outsmarted ourselves sometimes.’

  ‘How so?’ He came to stand beside her, rolling a cigarette.

  ‘Oh we get caught up in the complications. Too busy being clever, not enough time spent just existing. I think the cows have it.’ She tried to smile but didn’t quite manage it.

  ‘He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man,’ Iggy quoted.

  She let out a short laugh at that. ‘Yes perhaps we do imitate the beasts sometimes, though we do a poor job of it.’ She turned to face him. ‘Who said that? Shakespeare?’

  ‘Yes, good old Bill. Had all the answers but still lived a man’s life after all.’ Iggy glanced at her. ‘He had a son you know, Hamlet, but the poor little mite died. He never recovered, so they say. Too much death…it can make life too hard, even for the most excellent of men.’ He paused, lighting his cigarette.

  ‘And what about you? You’ve faced too much yet here you are…successful, functioning, happy. How is it you have escaped?’

  ‘Oh I wouldn’t say I have, Vera. We all have our secret sorrows.’ He smiled, adding, ‘Except Tom. Now there was a man who seemed to hold all the answers.’

  ‘Yes, the good die young,’ she said. ‘I never thought I’d hear Mick laugh like that again but now…’

  ‘He seems to have finally worked out that the perfect girl is right under his nose. Blind Freddie saw that one years ago.’

  ‘How did I not know about it then?’ she said. ‘Lord I must have my head in the sand half the time. When did you figure it out?’

  ‘A man doesn’t go through a war with another man without learning a few home truths about him,’ he said, dragging on his cigarette. ‘Not too many secrets that you can hide from each other.’

  ‘Did you hide yours?’ she asked, shaking out her hair, which was coming loose in the wind that promised rain, and pinning it back up again.

  ‘Not very successfully,’ he admitted, watching her. ‘Mick knows me well but Jack even better. He knows pretty much everything about me. That I hate sand but I like the sun, that I cried like a baby over my horse, that I was so hungry in the desert I killed and ate a lizard, that I once let a girl dress me up in skirts and a wig so I could win a bet…’

  She giggled at that.

  ‘That I’m in love with his wife.’ Veronica felt the air leave her.

  ‘Always have been,’ he said softly. The wind carried the words and she felt them touch her, bringing tears to her eyes in the afternoon light as the storm clouds rumbled towards them. ‘Everything about you,’ he continued, seeming unable to stop. ‘The way you are with your family, the kind things you do for other people, for your children…and yet you still find time for the orphanage, for God’s sake. What is that? It’s torture,’ his eyes bored into hers, ‘to love someone who is an angel, because no one can ever compare to her. My wife…my wife was a good woman and we were happy enough for that short time but she deserved more than me because I could never give her everything. Not when so much of me belongs to you.’ He moved to stand close.

  ‘I love you, Vera. Every beautiful inch of you; every part. And I…I want you. I know I can never have you and neither of us could ever do that to Jack, despite what he’s done. Besides, I’m just a cripple–’

  ‘Don’t ever say that.’

  ‘
–and I shouldn’t even be telling you: I know that too. But I just need to, before we grow old and it’s dead and buried with us, Vera. Just this once. I love you, Veronica. I love you. And although I can never be with you, I just…had to say it.’

  He held her face as if to kiss her, then dropped his hands as she shook her head, tears falling.

  ‘I…I’m not worthy of this. I’m not this perfect person…’

  ‘Don’t. Don’t tell me who you think you are,’ he whispered. ‘You’re an angel to me.’ She tore her eyes from his handsome, earnest face and looked down, ashamed to realise she actually wanted to kiss him. What perfect angel thinks such thoughts?

  ‘Do me one favour?’ he pleaded. ‘Bring him back to us. It’s bad enough not being able to love you, but it’s worse when he’s doing such a poor job of it.’

  ‘Iggy,’ she cried out as he limped away and he stopped. ‘I…I love you too. I just can’t…love you.’

  ‘I know.’ He didn’t turn, his back hunched against the rain that had started to fall as he left.

  Veronica turned her face to its lashing, her hot tears mingling with the cool. The cattle called to their calves nearby, and she felt keenly the pain of man.

  The sun rose behind a wet and grey world next morning and, parting the curtains, she saw her husband wielding the axe in the rain. She guessed he was venting the shame he felt from the night before, when he had to be half carried home by his father and Mick. What good did it do? She sighed. The shame was never enough to stop him from doing it again.

  Lying back down she thought of Iggy, allowing herself to imagine a different ending to last evening. She pictured him taking her to his bed, kissing her, holding her, unleashing years of longing, his talented fingers stroking her body, his face above hers. Yet, try as she might, she couldn’t bring herself to stay there, feeling disloyal to Jack to be thinking such things, even though she knew he probably didn’t deserve loyalty. She wondered if he was taking women to his bed when he was in town; after all they rarely made love any more, mostly because he was hardly there and then, when he was, because he was too drunk. Or she was too hurt for anything to eventuate. She hated the thought that he might.

  Sighing, she gave up on her fantasising and went out to the kitchen where Eileen had set up breakfast before heading back over to Highview to do the same. Soon the children would be up and the house would be filled with chaos until Millie arrived to help her with James while she got the other two off to school. Hopefully Jack would be gone before then. His temper was always frayed when he was nursing a hangover and she didn’t want to give him any opportunity to take it out on the children. As it was he’d been threatening military school for Pete with greater regularity these past months and the last thing she wanted was for her son to be separated from her right now.

  Pouring the tea, she picked up the local newspaper, reading the headline that Cowpasture Lane was to be renamed. It was to be called Gallipoli Street ‘in acknowledgement of our brave men, who served with honour. Lest we forget’.

  Veronica stood and looked out the window, the rain distorting her view of Jack as he swung the axe, then out to the road beyond. She looked at the homes along the lane, the Dwyers, the Murphys, Highview, and thought of the tears shed by the families who lived there. They hardly needed to bother with the name. Tracing the path of the road on the pane with her fingertips, she mused that it was already their address, carved into every family that lived there. Gallipoli marked the beginning of a road they couldn’t seem to leave as they struggled along, dragging the memories behind them.

  Lest we forget? How about lest we remember? she thought bitterly, for if Jack could only forget, they might stand a chance at happiness.

  Jack wielded the axe, splitting the logs with precision, noting to himself that at least he could say he was good with a blade these days. Too good. It felt freeing somehow to do something physical rather than sit inside his head as he usually did, worrying that he’d get stuck in the room in there where the dark thoughts plagued him. He wished with all his soul that the room could be blown away and his mind cleared of it forever, but the door continually creaked open and he battled with two choices as to how to close it: fix it shut or block it out. Fixing it required facing what was in there, which he couldn’t seem to do, so he blocked it out with work, socialising, his family, even manual labour like now. Inevitably, though, it would require the bottle to lock the doors back in place.

  He had become its slave, trapped in a cycle he could not break, and all because the room held a terrible secret he could not share: he was a killer, a beast, a machine designed to end life. Dozens of men were dead at his hands, hands that were now asked to hold babies and sign cheques, drive a handsome car, make the sign of the cross at mass and hold a pretty wife. But they were killer’s hands.

  People applauded him, threw streamers on Anzac Day and cheered. Captain Jack Murphy, the hero. Glorified remnants lay under the bed in a box, decorations of war; medals from battle and his Captain stripes placed inside the old tin with the bullet dent that saved his life. Often Jack took out that box, laying out the contents that were wrapped in a commemorative silk scarf the Australians had each been given by King George. Trinkets of death, representations of bravery that only caused him shame and self-disgust. Blood traced into the fibres of each one.

  These people around him, in the cheering crowds, in the restaurants, the streets, the church; if they’d seen what he had done, what these hands were capable of…no, he could not face it. The memories of what he had wrought and the realisation of what it made him were too much to bear. He couldn’t sit through the images in his mind and try to accept them. There was no acceptance, no relief to be had. He was a killer. And worse, he had wanted to kill in the end. After what they did to Tom.

  He didn’t deserve to live this life.

  And when his youngest child watched him it was as if this most innocent of all beings knew the truth. They say babies know someone’s true nature. Little James knew what was held only in that room and in his dreams, and the truth reflected in his son’s dark-blue eyes made him wish he was lying under a cross in the desert.

  Why had God spared him only to suffer this unbearable paradox? To live a life that was perfect in every way with the most imperfect of souls. He floated in and out of it, finding himself in places without knowing how he’d arrived. The office, the apartment, home, the car. People had conversations around him and it was all he could do not to scream at them to shut their mouths and end the pointless words that poured from them. The price of an apple, the length of a skirt. Life was about living or dying, not about these inane details. How was it that the world had moved on? Only the other diggers understood, walking ghost lives too. He saw them in the streets, many of them drifting now, unable to work or relate to this strange, irrelevant existence, and he would stop and buy them a meal or, more often than not, a drink. The Anzacs. Such a noble word. But the lives they led now, for all the glorious rhetoric, were empty. Many of those who’d survived were barely alive, fighting their last and greatest battle every day, suicide beckoning them to surrender.

  And so he swung the axe and split the wood and tried not to think too much about the other blades he had swung and the marks they had left. He especially tried not to think about the woman standing at the window, whom he loved so much yet couldn’t seem to stop destroying, nor the sons, one whose resentment was growing each day, the other whose eyes saw straight through him. And he tried not to think of his little daughter, who still believed in her daddy, yet whose faith in him would soon turn to disappointment, just like her mother.

  Thirty-three

  30 October 1929

  Veronica watched the car approach that Wednesday morning and, to her surprise, saw it was Jack. What on earth was he doing back at eleven-thirty? Up until yesterday he’d been coming home every night these past few weeks, admittedly very late, but as yet choosing not to stay in town since the night of Mick’s birthday. Things were the same b
etween them but she knew he was wrestling with himself on a different level now, trying to confront something within but unable to find a way through. He’d apologised that morning when he’d split the wood in the rain, only a few words, but heartfelt, and she knew he was sorry; but sorry didn’t change things. Neither did coming home to sleep, really. What she wanted was for him to let her in to help him fight, but he still chose to struggle alone while she waited on the fringes, loyal, frustrated and ineffectual.

  She checked on the sleeping James before walking out to greet him, guessing he wanted to explain why he hadn’t come home the previous night but becoming worried when he didn’t get out of the car.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ She found his eyes, emptier than she’d ever seen them, and her heart went out to him as he stared at the windscreen, which was spotting with rain.

  ‘There’s been…a problem.’ His voice cracked and she ran around to the other side, sitting herself next to him, holding his hands.

  ‘I know, my darling, but I am here for you, and whatever it takes–’

  ‘No, love.’ He squeezed her palm, a flicker of gratitude there, but then it was gone as the words were uttered that he seemed hardly able to bear. ‘Wall Street…the stock market, it’s crashed. All of our stock is…worthless. I’ve been up all night. It’s just…it’s gone.’ He shrugged in a helpless, disbelieving way and she stared at him in shock.

  ‘But what about…? But we still have the factories…’

  ‘It will all need to be sold. We’ve been through the books again and again. All the workers are being told in Queensland today and I…I suppose I’ll tell our staff this afternoon. We’re closing down, love. There’s nothing else I can do.’ He sat looking at the fields, at the blossom trees in late bloom, as it began to rain in earnest.

  ‘What about Mum and Dad’s stock?’

  He shook his head, fighting tears. ‘It’s all gone. Everyone’s stock. It’s not worth anything. We’ll have to sell off most of the cattle too. And let go of the help.’