Black Diamonds (16 page)

 

DANIEL

Rule number two: most men are disgusting. Working together is one thing, but living together … should be banned. There are some things you don't want to know about another bloke. And most men talk rubbish, just for the sake of filling the spaces between each other. Strangely enough I'm called Noisy here; after it became apparent that I don't answer to Lanky, Shorty, Stretch or the like. I'm so used to my own ways, I suppose; don't have to wonder where I get that from, but it does set me apart a bit, as usual, except with the hardline Methodists, and I haven't met any of them here. I don't drink, smoke, gamble or whore, and I don't fart or belch or brawl unless there is a need to, and I clean my bloody teeth. Women should have a secret viewing window so they can see what their dearest are really like; I know Francine would be
morbidly fascinated.

Most fascinating, though, is church parade on Sundays: half of those who feel the need to attend wouldn't know God if He spat on them. Neither would I, but at least I have an excuse: I'm hidden from His Sight. Even if it now says I'm RC on the embarkation roll, because I was told I had to put something on the form. You can't put N/A, the clerk said, and he was getting upset about the blank space. Mum and Dad must have had some religion back there somewhere; suppose it might have been Lutheran and I couldn't put that there, could I. Thought I might put down Jew for a second, because I'd overheard some bloke talking about the lack of a rabbi chaplain for him and his like, before I realised I've got no idea what they believe in, apart from circumcision, which could be very embarrassing in the event of being caught out. So I put Catholic, a quiet one for France and a laugh for Dad maybe, and for convenience: no one looks sideways at a Mick who doesn't attend Mass; it's practically standard issue: you get the impression that the majority of Catholics here joined up to avoid it.

Micks or otherwise, not all of them are disgusting, obviously. In fact, most of the Engineers I'm with are respectable neat-and-tidies-church-on-Sundays from Sydney: carpenters, builders, masons, plumbers, even a mathematics teacher from some private school. I'm the youngest of this lot, and mostly we're apart from the rest, tented out the back of the barracks so we're handy for spot examinations to test that we really do know what a right angle is and which way is north. It's the infantry recruits at Kensington sportsground that are the worst offenders with filthy behaviour, and have an average age of eighteen and a mental age of twelve; no, that's not quite true: we had to go out to Casula last week, on foot, for entrenching exercises with a pack of light horse, and one had trained his intelligent friend to backfill on command: ten points for hitting sapper in the face with a good hoof-load of dirt, a hundred with manure. Strange for me: a man with a pony is a peg down from a man with a shovel where I come from, and I wouldn't hit anyone with a shovel, least of all a man with a pony, no matter how much you might want to if he's a smart-arse. But then, part of all that's the boredom of not really doing anything, isn't it, and the other part would be letting off steam. Turkey's dragging on and on and no one says anything outright, but it doesn't look too good. Laughs are harder, but the fun's worn off, and the desire to kick heads has kicked in — each other's as much as the enemy's, whoever that'll be. We've been training to reinforce the 1st Division's failing effort. Can't say I'm thrilled to be here, but it still does seem the right thing to do, most of the time.

Even when Duncan's pulling me up for every little thing in barracks — pays me that much bloody attention I've wondered a few times if he might be a bit queer. Drill sergeant's had it with me for shooting like a girl, but Duncan's telling me later: ‘Pity you've not got a better sense of discipline and respect, Ackerman. I'd like to be able to rely on you to take a bit of charge if necessary when we get to where we're going.' By
discipline and respect
he means this yes-sir no-sir saluting business, I think, since I am disciplined and respectful, ten miles more than most, but I still get stuck on the ‘sir', not just because it's against my religion, but how can you call a man with feet that small ‘sir'? I'm too busy trying not to crack. Anyway, I don't think it makes a blind bit of difference what you call someone, it's what you know and how you act that makes you in charge, and properly in charge should be obvious to everybody at the time, not forced.
If necessary
, I can't see I'd have a problem with the neat-and-tidies, if not the rabble, who wouldn't salute to save themselves; I already know the importance of being certain everyone knows what it is they're supposed to be doing: I started in that particular school quite a while ago. The neat-and-tidies do as they're told anyway. They're all right;
bunch of pleasant chaps
I think you'd call this unit of sappers, not many stand-outs, but I suppose we'll see about that when we get to where we're going.

Which Captain Duncan, sir, tells us now, at long last, is Egypt.

To do what?

Don't know.

We will be told.

To go where afterwards?

We will be told.

Glad we got that sorted out.

Can't sleep tonight and that's not just because Anderson, the pleasant plumber next to me, is snoring to prove he can. I'm thinking about France. And for the first time in weeks I'm having second thoughts. Very big second thoughts. Too late to do anything about that now. And how much of an arse would I feel if I choked and went home at this point? Crawl back to the Wattle? I'll have been replaced by now, and whoever he is, I hope he's not a prick. Not that I could do anything about it if he is, and even if I wanted to. I can't go back, unless I want to sit out this duration in His Majesty's prison. I try to imagine where I'll be and what I'll see, but I can't; so far my world-travelling experience ranges not much beyond Wollongong through to Bathurst and this spell in Sydney. The other blokes, mainly the rabble, were getting excited today, ready to be off on their big head-kicking adventure, but this doesn't feel like an adventure to me right now, and it never did: I'm here for only one reason and that is I couldn't not go. And it feels like betrayal, in so many ways. So I have to focus on her face, her blinking eyes, till I finally pass out.

 

FRANCINE

Will it be Gallipoli or the Western Front, I wonder when he tells me it's destination Egypt, otherwise unknown. There's talk that Britain will pull out of Turkey altogether because the peninsular is unwinnable, but Europe doesn't sound as though it's any more winnable. A victory there seems to entail the loss of a thousand men for every yard's advance upon Fritz, followed by two thousand lost for every yard backwards, to quote a Socialist Party pamphlet I picked up the other day outside the Cosmopolitan Hotel where one of the union leaders was thumping the balcony with fervour while I popped into the butchers. Can't say anything like that, can I. Besides, it's his birthday today. Twenty-one today. Eligible for everything now except clear directions. Be chipper now, Francy. Give him your photograph.

I can't look at his. It's too perfectly him. When I brought the prints home I put his in the bottom drawer of the wardrobe. Then had to take it out again when I realised that's where the picture of my mother lives, has done since, at the age of twelve, I decided that Father might not miss her so much if I hid it there. Didn't work, did it; but there she has stayed, face down over my Certificates of Baptism, Holy Communion and Confirmation, and under the box containing her amethyst rosary beads: wedged between the evidence of my blessedness and hers. I'm too superstitious for my own good. Damn persistent
Mick
that I am. Daniel couldn't live in my forgetting place, not ever. So he sits on my dressing table, with Kookaburra; they look at me, but I don't look at them.

The flesh of him is sprawled across the sofa at present. Very easy to look at. He's wearing a laundered-soft white vest, and every stitch in it is mine, and a pair of old trousers. He's just had a wash and he's half asleep, looking at me. We only got out of bed an hour ago, and already I want him again. Maybe I could make him unfit for service myself with my passion. I've got three days.

And that's fairly much all we do. But it doesn't work. He's fitter than dangerous and has to go. I give him the stupid photo at dawn: it doesn't even look like me. He loves it, though, in its little red leather frame with a cover to keep it safe. Puts it in the top pocket of his tunic. We drive to the station in the trap. One last kiss. No, just one more. Nuther quick one.
Tooot tooot.
He's gone.

And then, as Daniel might say, I lose it like a girl. All the way home. For the rest of the day.

I won't be going to Sydney to wave at the ship. He didn't ask and I didn't offer. I'm sure there'll be bands and streamers and such and I just would not cope. Sarah certainly won't be going. She barely said two words to him yesterday when we walked round for lunch. I didn't dare ask, either of them. But when she hugged him goodbye I could see the devastation on her face, only a glimpse before she pulled away from it and said: ‘Have a good war then.' She speaks so evenly and beautifully it's always a jolt to hear that wryness. I'll have lots of time to get to know her better now, when she's here. She spends so much time in Bathurst, though, or going up to Newcastle since Peter's wife's just had her first baby. Where's my baby? Peter's not going to war: he has a well-paying job doing something on the wharves, and a wife and a child. Why is Daniel going? Wasn't I enough to stay at home for? I know that's not true, but my loneliness is shrinking me already. No one to have to be chipper with here on my bed alone, so I'll let it go and be misery itself. And the Leprechaun can watch me from wherever he's hiding and tell me what there is to laugh about here.

 

 

THREE

OCTOBER 1915–AUGUST 1916

 

DANIEL

Can't say too much about the voyage, spent most of the time chucking my guts up, to the amusement of all and sundry. Noisy takes on another meaning. All the way from Sydney to the Suez Canal. Well, not really, but just about up to the Red Sea, kept me busy, enough that on one alert I would have asked to be the first to be drowned had it come to anything. And I'd like to meet the bloke who invented the hammock and tell him what a shithouse idea that was. Still, for the last thirty-three days it's provided for a decent share of natter over whether Noisy's a champion malingerer or so patriotic he wants his face to match his uniform. Either way, I'm almost looking thin by the time we set foot on land again. Who'd be a sailor anyway; there's nothing to look at out there on the ocean. The emptiness, the grinding on of the engines, only shows how far into nowhere and away from home I am, and the constant smell of coal is not a comfort. I didn't say hooroo to anyone except France and Mum; that was bad enough. Didn't have time to say goodbye to Mim and the kids; sent her note:
See you when I'm looking at you.
I'll say hello to Evan and the rest when I come home. I'm not being an idiot about it, but denial has its purpose.

We're not stopping at Port Suez for long, just to stretch legs, trying not to fall over, among the camels and the locals who are small, brown and scrappy and make us feel ten feet tall, until I notice how the Brits lay into the Gippos they have working for them round the docks: I knew this land had slaves, but I thought that was a few thousand years ago. Don't think about it; find a postcard for France instead. I buy one with a picture of camels on the front and scribble a few lines about unseaworthiness. Then it's back in the tin can again. We stop at Port Said in the middle of the night, where I'm fairly ropeable at not being allowed to get off, and almost follow the few absconders prepared to risk it. Should have; they got away with it. Then we finally arrive in Alexandria, unload everything and take off as much uniform as possible as we go, it's that hot, pile it all onto the train, cram in shoulder to shoulder and it's welcome to Egypt all the way to Cairo, and on to a huge camp at a place called Mena. Where we wait. And wait. We're not where we're going yet. The top brass, our General Birdwood and Blighty's General Haig, don't know what to do with us. And there are an awful lot of us and we keep coming. About fifty thousand here and in another camp at Tel el Kabir, and that's not including those coming back from Turkey. They reckon there'll be a hundred thousand of us by the time everyone's here. That's something to think about. Who's left at home?

There's that many faces, you couldn't count them, and I have to wonder how many good old Aussie Germans there are among us, but we're not likely to put up our hands, are we.
Best not to advertise it, eh?
One bloke by the name of Zwiebelkopf copping a ragging the other day for being a Kraut, says his parents are Belgian. Sure.
Zwiebelkopf
means ‘onion head' in German; but maybe that's embarrassing enough to want to keep it on the shush. Doesn't matter anyway, when we're all having such a marvellous time.

You go and look around the pyramids and say that's impressive, and then you go back to drills and drills and drills, and some more drills, and play endless bloody games of cricket, a sport that's so dead boring I'd rather have a lie-down or put my hand up for latrines fatigue. You can get a pass to go into Cairo, but I don't that often, because the things that go on there are making me begin to question the issue of my nationality, especially when the blokes from Gallipoli start turning up in numbers. They're all fifty years older than me, and more than a bit relieved or badly wanting to be relieved; rough as. Things get a bit silly and for obvious reasons disciplinary measures are not as liberally applied as lectures and inspections for venereal diseases. Anyway, I reckon if I stay put in camp I've less chance of running into anyone I know. The longer this waiting goes on, the more I reckon I prefer it that way; I don't want to meet anyone I'm going to need to have to say hooroo to when we begin our European tour, which seems the only place we can be going, once they've sorted us out: we've not been issued with short pants. And I don't want to know what any of my old mates are like now, or Mim's Roy, or anyone I might recognise, who's been through the mill, or who hasn't come out the other side. That sounds a bit rough, but a dose of reality has its purpose too: we're not going to sit here in the desert forever, are we? Thanks for coming, you can all go home.

I've taken up carving again, whatever I can get my hands on, and sending it back to Francine. But despite the fact that I'm minding my own business, as much as you can with one hundred thousand mates, and despite the fact that everyone's been tossed around in a cavil to sort the veterans among the new arrivals, which sees half of us sent off as attachments in this other field company or that, seems I'm stuck with Duncan like a bee in my ear. This evening he stands over me as I'm sitting here outside the tent carving, alone for a change, and says: ‘Get up, Ackerman.'

I do, slowly. What now? Like I've got something better to do. Well, I do actually.

‘Where's the button on your left-hand top pocket?'

I'm not even wearing my tunic and there's no reason why I should be. ‘In the pocket. Sir.' It keeps falling off, because that's where France's picture is. He must have seen the offending absence of button on parade this morning. Jesus. And why leave it till now? It's hardly his business anyway, and hardly relevant to anything at all. He's having a special private moment with me.

‘Why is it there?' he asks.

I very much want to tell him to fuck off, but I say: ‘Because I haven't sewn it back on yet.'

He lets the ‘sir' go now, there's not much call for it in these parts at the moment. ‘Why not?'

Well, to tell the truth, I couldn't be arsed; the buttonhole's too big for the button anyway and it always slips. Why are we having this conversation? But I say: ‘I forgot to.'

He says: ‘Don't forget. It's the details that count. When we get where we're going I won't care a fig about your buttons, but here, practise concentrating on the details you have, will you?'

I do concentrate. He can't fault me, except with a rifle, and I'm not that bad at it any more; not as bad as some of the blokes just in at Tel el Kabir who'd not even touched a rifle till they set foot in Egypt because the factory back home couldn't keep up with demand — good on you, Lithgow. And that's all good enough for the AIF. What's Duncan's bloody problem? I don't answer him, just look.

He says: ‘And you don't want to lose that photograph either. Do it now.' And he walks off, on his tiny feet. He's a fucking nut.

But I sew it on anyway.

Next morning, here he is again, and I think he's come to check on the button. I am going to tell him to back off, and bugger the consequences.

Except that he says: ‘Get up, Ackerman, and come with me.' Like I'm really in the shit for something. Well, whoever did it, it wasn't me. I don't say anything, just follow, quietly fuming. He says: ‘Don't salute, and let me do the talking.'

And he's got me hauled inside the well-kitted digs of this Tommy major I've never seen before, who's a good foot shorter and still manages to stare down his nose as he looks me over. He's holding a riding crop under his arm, as they do, all polished brass and spotless Royal Engineers red tunic ready for the ball. I don't salute, as if I would, and he doesn't blink; clearly he's been involved with the AIF for a while. He ignores Duncan, whose hand is still falling from his own salute, and says: ‘So, Sapper, you're rather good at blowing things up, are you?'

How to answer that without talking. Well, yes, but whatever's blown up recently, I didn't do it. But I've had a lot of practice. Sir. Strangely enough it's one of the things I am best at, and I would never lark about with it. Best to obey captain and keep my mouth shut, I think.

Duncan says to him: ‘Yes sir, he is indeed, but he doesn't know his arse from his elbow.'

Don't I? Apparently not. I'm looking at Duncan, who's ignoring me.

He says, shaking his head: ‘As I've told you, sir, he's a bit dim.'

Thanks very much. What the fuck is going on?

The major's still looking at me. Best to look dim? I'm certainly confused.

Major looks a little further down that nose and says: ‘Hmmmm. I see. Oh well, off you go then.'

Just try to stop me. Sir.

Outside, Duncan says, quietly: ‘Sorry about that, but I don't want you pinched.'

Meaning?

End of conversation. And off he goes; don't know whether I want to thank him or deck him. One clear lesson here, as if it needed clarity: my opinion, much less my question, does not count.

Still not gone anywhere and I'm not thin any more. I'm practically skinny. There's just not enough to eat, not for me, and I'm sure I sweat it all out before it touches the sides anyway. Mining is hot work, but you do get to go outside afterwards. Here it's not just hot but dry as Tommy's washtub, every day, and it's supposed to be winter, which we get after dark, when it's that freezing I have to wear a jumper and two pairs of socks to get to sleep. Come midday, though, and I don't know what I want more: food or rain. I like the sun, but not this much of it, especially in full kit on parade. At least in the mine you strip off while you're actually working at something, down to your undies when you have to — and you're not marching for miles to dig pointless, endless trenches and fill them back in again like you're going to have trouble remembering how to do it on the day, or getting excited about going out to mend a bit of road or drainage duct. We strip off here, of course, to what's decent, which only gives the Tommy officers another reason to think we're uncouth. Fuck them. They must be skeletons under all their gear. I'm so hungry I get myself on kitchen fatigue whenever it's available, do anything for a sly sausage roll, and I go into Cairo for extras when I can, just straight in and out, and if I eat another date I'll be sick. The AIF should have height restrictions that go the other way.

But today, when I come back with my sack of oranges and my two loaves of bread, there's a letter for me. Francine's first. And what she says spins me round three times and backwards.