by Stephen Orr
He paced for a few moments, thinking, crushing almond shells. Then turned to the shelf of trophies and took the shot-put. Dropped it in the pocket of his overalls and shook it to make sure it wouldn’t fall out.
‘Sam!’
She was coming towards the shed. He panicked, forgetting what step he was up to, where he’d left the stepladder, how he’d position the knot, whether he’d keep his eyes open or closed, or if he had a choice. His head was full of disasters: the beam breaking (although he’d swung on it to test it), Barbara coming in and cutting him down, and him having to look her in the eyes over a thousand cups of tea, guessing she was disgusted at how all the Lancaster men were cowards.
He pulled the rope loose and threw it behind the stripper only seconds before she entered.
‘What are you doing?’ she asked.
‘Thinking.’
She looked around. ‘What’s in your pocket?’
He produced the shot-put.
‘What are you doing with that?’
‘Thinking … remembering.’
She noticed the end of the rope resting on the stripper. ‘Christ.’ Took the shot-put and placed it on the shelf, but it rolled, upsetting trophies and falling to the ground.
‘Come in,’ she said, taking his arm.
He went to pick up the shot-put.
‘Leave it.’
Three days passed, each progressively warmer. Clover and medic breathed nitrogen. The sun sank and swam in its paddle pool. Stubble crackled as Sam crossed his paddocks. He thought he could smell rain, but it was never more than a promise. He was consoled by a cool breeze smelling of sheep, and Barb’s stew. Standing in front of a small garden, he studied his carrots. Struggling, their green tails limp. He watered them from a leaking bucket, but the soil resisted. Picked up his hoe and started chipping the weeds between the vegetables. Stopped, looked up at the sky, and remembered.
Dear Mr and Mrs Lancaster
It is with regret that I write to you regarding your son, Private Thomas Lancaster, 2419387. At evening roll call on Tuesday 21 July 1916 Private Lancaster was found to be missing. Inquiries with his officers and NCOs revealed nothing. Dozens of infantrymen from the 32nd Battalion were interviewed but none had seen him since the previous evening.
Sam had remembered these words too, every one of them—the way they were arranged into paragraphs, how the typewriter (with a fading ribbon) dropped its K, a finger smudge on the bottom right-hand corner of the letter. He still had it in his shed (although he’d told Barb he’d destroyed it). Still in its Department of Defence envelope. He even remembered the sender’s details. ‘Colonel Arthur R. Griffin, 32nd Battalion, Fromelles’.
He returned to his weeds. Made himself fetch more water, and refill the valleys.
The battalion was involved in heavy fighting on the 19th, but a survey was taken of the Fallen, and your son was not among them.
He could remember Barb crying as they sat on the front porch, three years earlier. He could still hear his own voice, and see his hand trembling as he read. Remembered looking at her and saying, ‘At least he’s not dead,’ and Barb replying, ‘Well, where is he then?’
‘Lost.’
Mr and Mrs Lancaster, I must inform you that Tom has been recorded as a deserter. This means that he is presently wanted by the Military Police. I hope that some information comes to hand that disputes this view, but at this time we have no choice but to consider him a Coward.
The day after receiving this letter Sam and Barbara drafted a reply.
Our son is no deserter, they said. He is a school prefect and champion. He lives for his mates and would die for them. We consider your use of the term ‘coward’ an insult. Tom is no coward. Surely what you mean is ‘missing’? Maybe he is dazed, confused, lost? Captured? We don’t like to think of it, but perhaps he is dead, and not found. We read that many bodies are never recovered, properly, we mean.
For weeks after they read about the 32nd Battalion’s defeat at Fromelles. The 718 casualties, and how ninety per cent of their boys, their young men, their heroic sons and fathers, butchers, tailors and schoolteachers, were killed on one day.
A sunny day, with low cloud. Gardening weather, Sam guessed, as he picked up a snail and threw it a few yards.
They read how the boys of the 32nd Battalion had been so full of energy and spirit as they’d trained with the 5th Division in Egypt only a few weeks earlier: tanning themselves beside the Nile; drinking beer that resembled sheep dip; buying big, hessian bags full of strong tobacco and fold-out postcards of women with big bums and legs, untreated moustaches and crooked smiles. They imagined Tom enjoying all of these things. Imagined him happy but anxious, ready for adventure. They knew the statistics (and Tom had read these things too) but there was an acceptance, a resignation.
On the dock at Port Adelaide, Barb had held her son for a minute before she’d let him join his mates.
‘Careful,’ she’d whispered, ‘I’ve only got one son.’
‘I’ll keep my head down.’ Smiling.
Sam sat on the dirt beside his carrots. Dropped his head between his knees. ‘Coward,’ he whispered, playing with the word.
The official version—the version in the letter, and government filing cabinets. The wrong version, he thought, but the official version. The unchangeable version. The version history would remember, as well as their community, friends and maybe even family. The version the stonemasons would consult when it came to making memorials to the Fallen.
And although no one said as much, this is what the official version suggested. That when the shelling started, Tom ran away and found a quiet spot. Sat in a hole, or hid behind a bush. Screamed, and cried, and eventually ran towards a nearby forest. Hid there for days, until the fighting stopped, before wandering off (at night, of course) towards some nearby farm. That he hid in someone’s hayloft. Stole clothes and made his way to the coast. Found a boat heading to England, and posed as a discharged soldier, finding work on some farm: growing wheat and carrots.
They’d written a dozen, maybe fifteen, letters over the years. Asked why, if Tom was still alive, he’d made no attempt to contact them? How had he moved around France and Europe unnoticed, during a war? How would his sense of fair play have allowed him to stay silent for so long?
Instead of condemning our son, they said, you should be helping us find him. If you want to refer to him as a coward you have to prove that he was one.
This was the sense of confusion, of unofficial grief, they had to live with for years. Without rain, in every sense of the word. When asked about their son they would say, ‘Yes, he is missing in action,’ and someone would reply, ‘I’m sure he’ll turn up … directly.’ Eventually the conversation would come around to, ‘So, they never found his body?’ and Barb would reply, ‘They were in the way of heavy artillery.’
And that’s where they’d left Tom: pulverised in some French paddock. That was their official version. But they knew that if he was alive there was a reason he’d fled: a new piece of psychological research, a footnote to a yet-to-be-published article, an idea still forming in some doctor’s head. Barb spent hours thinking it through, remembering: Tom in her arms, crying for attention, or scared, in a corner, as Sam ranted and raved about tax, or his evil aunt from Glen Iris, or the weather. She could still see the look in her son’s eyes—the turn-away-from-the-world fear that gripped him the night before returning to school, or when Sam tried to get him to kill his first sheep; his refusal to deal with bits of the world he disliked. Mulesing, maths and turnips. She could remember, still feel him trembling in her arms, as Sam paced the room mumbling, ‘Don’t baby him, Barb.’
Sam saw a cart travelling along his eastern fence line. He squinted and made out Mr Gall, their agent. He stood and started walking, then running, towards the front gate.
Mr Gall saw him coming and waited. ‘Morning, Sam.’
‘John.’
A box of groceries and a fresh copy of the Northern Argus
. Sam looked up and studied the older man’s face. He was convinced he was holding back. ‘Anything in the paper?’
‘Usual stuff. Hoggets down again.’
Sam nodded. ‘Always down.’
‘Yes.’ He paused, then tried to smile. ‘How’s Barb?’
‘Good … yes, good.’
‘Tell her we can’t get no more dressmaking stuff until next month.’ He slowed. ‘Apparently there’s shortages of that too.’
Sam knew he’d seen the list. Knew in his face, his voice. ‘Something up?’
John couldn’t help himself. ‘What the hell they put Tom on that list for?’
Sam kicked the dirt. ‘It’s there, is it?’
‘What a thing to do after … you losing him.’
‘It’s a mistake,’ Sam said. ‘If they haven’t found any trace, that’s what they do.’
‘Don’t worry, Sam, me and Sue will tell anyone that asks.’
‘Thanks.’
‘He was a nice kid, Sam. What a thing to do. I tell you what, I’ll be writing to that paper and tellin’ them.’
‘No,’ Sam replied. ‘Thanks anyway. Best to let it all blow over.’
‘Well, I’d stop stocking it, if I could, Sam.’
‘I know.’
Sam picked up the box of groceries. ‘See you next week, eh?’
‘Yeah, and throw that rag in the bin. Toilet paper—that’s all it’s good for.’
Sam was livid. He was walking, almost jogging along Ellen Street, Port Pirie, clutching a letter addressed to ‘The Headmaster, Lindisfarne College, Adelaide’. He was dressed in his old suit, newly repaired and ironed. His shoes were polished, but he could feel the hole in his sock opening up again.
‘Sam.’
Nicholas Irving, the Mid North stock agent for Elders, stood in front of him, smiling. He was carrying a bag of wool samples and lanolin was blotting the paper. Producing a tuft of wool, he presented it to Sam. ‘There, feel that.’
Sam wasn’t interested, but he felt it anyway.
‘Stephen Cartwright’s,’ Nick said. ‘I’ve got a buyer from Stafford’s. They want it for suits. Suits!’
‘Good.’
‘How’s your mob going?’
‘Fine. I got to get along, Nick.’
He knows too, Sam guessed.
‘I’ll come see yer,’ Nick said. ‘Next week?’
‘I’ll have to let you know.’ Before walking on.
Sam entered the post office, purchased a stamp and attached it to the letter. Held it in the mouth of the postbox, but stopped short. ‘Why?’ He approached the counter and asked for a line to Adelaide.
‘Where to, Mr Lancaster?’
‘Lindisfarne College.’
He waited, and a few minutes later the attendant directed him to a booth. He closed the door, picked up the handpiece and started speaking slowly and clearly. ‘The Headmaster, please.’
‘Brother Koltun is busy … can I help you?’
‘Who are you?’
‘Brother O’Sullivan. Can I help?’
Sam took his time. His mouth was dry. ‘My name is Sam Lancaster. I’m calling from Port Pirie. My son, Tom …’
‘Yes, I remember Tom.’ A warm, but curt voice.
‘I’ve heard through a friend that his name’s been removed from the Honour Board.’
A long pause.
‘Are you there?’ Sam asked.
‘Yes … from the Honour Board?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why?’
‘That’s what I’d like to know.’
O’Sullivan chose his words carefully. ‘I wouldn’t know, Mr Lancaster. I can’t think why. I’ll have to get Brother Koltun to call you.’
‘I don’t have a telephone.’
‘Can you wait?’
‘He’s not there?’
‘He’s taking a class.’
Sam tried again. ‘What’s your position, Brother?’
‘Deputy Headmaster.’
‘Well, then, if such a thing had happened—’
O’Sullivan had heard enough. ‘Listen, call back at lunch, just after two. Otherwise, I can get him to write to you.’
Sam’s voice echoed around the booth. ‘Listen, that’s enough bullshit. I want to—’
‘Mr Lancaster—’
‘Tom was an old scholar. If this is all about—’
‘I don’t know, Mr Lancaster.’
Sam hung up. Stormed from the booth and posted the letter.
A friend of Barb’s appeared in front of him. He couldn’t remember her name. ‘Good morning,’ he managed.
‘Sam.’ She stared at him, and down at his ill-fitting suit. ‘How are you?’
‘Fine.’
‘Where’s Barb?’
‘Home. She doesn’t like coming to town anymore.’
‘Oh, why?’
You know, you old bitch, he wanted to say. ‘I’m picking up some cotton and thread.’
‘Bet she made your suit.’ She felt his jacket. Met his eyes and smiled. ‘No word on Tom?’
‘No.’
‘Just a matter of waiting.’
‘For what?’
‘News.’
He couldn’t stand her tone. ‘You don’t read the Argus?’
‘What?’
‘You know … it’s Mary, isn’t it?’
‘Yes.’
‘You know, don’t you, Mary?’
‘I know?’
‘The cowards’ list?’
She wiped the tip of her dry nose. ‘The cowards’ list?’ And shook her head. ‘I’m not sure, Sam.’
He stepped towards her and she almost fell back.
‘Give Barb my love,’ she said, turning.
‘Your love?’
She walked off. Sam stood alone, defeated, feeling ridiculous in his suit in the Port Pirie Post Office. He could feel eyes resting on his woollen jacket, and skin.
Heavy artillery, he wanted to say. Or maybe someone took him in.
He made his way back down Ellen Street, and people stopped and watched as he passed.
Go on, say it, he wanted to shout. At least have the courage to say it.
When he got home he gave Barb her material. ‘We’ll get John to fetch that from now on.’
Autumn 1920
The end of a hot day. Northerlies, still, the stone cottage seeking shadow, and the sweetness of dill pickles, brandy custard, kept cool in the safe. Sam and Barbara sat on their front porch, surveying fallow paddocks. There were only a few leaves left on the almond trees. In the corner of the yards a pepper tree flourished.
‘Look, reds,’ Sam said, as a group of kangaroos grazed the stubble.
‘Pests,’ Barbara replied.
‘Better than rabbits.’
There was cloud on the northern horizon. Sam watched as it drifted past, avoiding them by a hundred miles. ‘There’s no rain.’
‘It’s not coming this way.’ As she threaded darn onto a heavy gauge needle.
Sam squinted. ‘Who’s that?’
Barb looked up. There was a man standing at their front gate. They watched as he walked towards them.
‘Recognise him?’ Sam asked.
‘No.’
When the stranger was close enough they could see that he was tall, unshaved, wearing corduroy pants and a brown shirt with half of its buttons missing. He had long, blonde, uncombed hair. Barb noticed his fine eyebrows and blue eyes.
‘Hello,’ he said, coming closer, climbing and stopping on the first step of the porch.
‘G’day,’ Sam replied, standing up.
‘You Sam Lancaster?’
‘Yes.’
The stranger looked at Barbara. ‘Well, you must be Tom’s mum?’
She took a moment to think. ‘You know Tom?’
‘Yes.’
The stranger dropped a hessian bag on the step. Barb stood and moved towards him. ‘You know where he is?’
‘No, no one knows where he is … but I knew him.’
‘You fought with him?’ Sam asked.
‘Yes.’
They took him inside and gave him barley water. Barb retrieved leftover lamb, cabbage and carrots from their bowl of scraps and served them with some of her own tomato sauce. The man shovelled food into his mouth with his fingers. Chewed it three or four times before swallowing. ‘Tom was a top bloke,’ he said, looking up long enough to meet their eyes.
‘You were mates?’ Sam asked.
‘Yeah. He told me to come visit, once we got home.’
There was a long silence. ‘That would’ve been nice,’ Barb finally managed.
‘I’ve always worked on farms. I need a job.’
Sam was massaging his chin. ‘I’d like to help … I don’t even know your name?’
‘Neil. Neil Lindsay.’
‘Neil … but you’ve seen this place. We’re just gettin’ by ourselves.’
‘I don’t want no pay. Just a roof, and a bit of food perhaps. Tom said you’d be good for it.’
Sam studied the man, and felt that something wasn’t quite right. ‘He did, did he?’
‘Yes.’
Barb looked at her husband. ‘Sam?’
The stranger licked his fingers and pushed his plate away. ‘Thanks, Mrs Lancaster.’
‘Barb,’ she said. ‘So, tell us a bit more about Tom.’
‘What would you like to know?’
‘How was he, the last time you saw him?’
Neil sat back, covered his mouth and burped. ‘You want the truth, Barb?’
‘Yes, yes, everything,’ Sam said. ‘We got a lot of questions need answers.’
Neil wiped his mouth again. ‘Well, I suppose you could say … Tom didn’t take to fighting.’
‘How’s that?’ Sam asked.
‘At first, we were back from the front, training. We could hear artillery, and even machine guns, and all day there’d be planes flying over.’ He paused, studying their faces. ‘Well, you know, he was a happy fella, wasn’t he?’
‘Yes,’ Barb said.
‘But the noise started getting to him. He didn’t sleep, and you could see his hands shake.’
