The Water Diviner (18 page)

With his divining rods the subterranean water feels like a wave lapping at his subconscious, ebbing and flowing faster and faster until the rods cross. Today he feels like an exposed nerve. He is the rod and his instincts are tuned to a shapeless disquiet in the air that swells into a fitful quivering the further he walks. It turns him left and then right and his breathing quickens. Trance-like he begins moving in familiar, ever-decreasing circles, honing in on the source of the agitation.

Behind Connor, Hasan continues, visibly shaken, his eyes unfocused. ‘As long as Allah grants me breath, let me see nothing like those days again. At night we would hear injured men crying for their mothers and pleading for water. They begged to be shot. Our snipers would finish them so we could sleep.’

Hilton surveys the faces of his men who have now all worked their way within earshot of Hasan. He notes that Connor is absent. Probably just as well, he decides. Could be a bit much to hear it like that. Tucker catches Hilton’s eye, dips his hat brim towards Connor and lifts his eyebrows.

Hilton spins, alarmed, and catches the farmer taking two small steps forwards and another to the right and then pausing with his hands outstretched.

‘What the devil does he think he is doing out there?’ asks Hilton.

‘Not sure, sir. The suicide waltz?’ quips Tucker. ‘Do you want me to bring him back, sir?’

‘No, I’ll go.’ He is furious with himself for ignoring his gut and allowing Connor to accompany them. The man is clearly a loose cannon. Hilton crosses the rope barrier and carefully follows Connor’s footprints out into no-man’s land. As he does, he realises with surprise that the farmer is following a complex and deliberate pattern, not succumbing to the wild meanderings of a father driven mad by grief.

Connor stands still now, his eyes closed as his heart pounds in his ears. His fingers are stinging, a searing heat like a thistle burn piercing his skin. He smells eucalyptus and hears the creaking of a windmill. He feels a hand on his shoulder and opens his eyes. Hilton offers him his canteen.

‘Civilisation can be a bloody thin veneer, Mr Connor. Come back; it’s dangerous out here.’

‘They are here,’ says Connor, his voice raw.

‘Yes, we’re still looking but we –’

‘No, they are
here
.’ Connor looks directly at the ground and marks the dirt with the heel of his boot, digging it in four times – north, south, east and west. ‘I need a shovel.’

He strides purposefully back towards the rope, leaving Hilton in no-man’s land, not sure what he has witnessed and no idea what to believe. One thing is for certain; Connor means to dig with or without their help.

Hilton yells out. ‘No, Mr Connor. We do all the digging here.’

Dawson scrapes back the soil with the end of his entrenching spade and exposes an unmistakable porous ivory line. He has been scratching away the earth beneath Connor’s mark and is barely a foot below the surface. He lets the spade fall beside the shallow pit and drops onto his hands and knees to brush the dirt from around the bone. He chances a furtive look at Tucker, who stands above him supervising with an amateur archaeologist’s eye.

‘No shortage of those out here,’ the sergeant says. ‘Could be anyone.’ He struggles to sound convincing. This is exactly the spot where the farmer said to dig.

‘Give him a hand, Thomas. But be bloody careful.’

‘More careful than usual?’ asks Thomas.

‘A lot more.’

Thomas traces around the bone, taking shallow bites of topsoil with the spade until the blade catches on webbing, decomposing fabric and more bone.

Hilton and Connor are twenty feet away. The area has been checked and the rope line adjusted so that Connor’s marker and footprints now lie within the safety zone. Connor is pushing stones around with his toe when suddenly he stops. As if sensing a shift in mood at the pit, he looks up, but Tucker smiles and shakes his head. He does not want to give the farmer false hope. Tucker knows his own father would never have made the trip to find him.

Hilton shares Tucker’s doubts. A wild goose chase, he thinks to himself. An engineer by trade, his world is ordered by the mathematical formulae and the laws of physics that keep bridges from collapsing, hold domes aloft and, perversely, launch small projectiles from a narrow metal tube at a velocity sufficient to pierce skin. So he does not know what to make of Connor or his strange gift. Finding water in this way is absurd enough, but trying to find dead bodies – not only does it defy logic, but Hilton finds it difficult to think of it as a gift from God. He hopes that by indulging Connor the obstinate father might come to see that the search is futile. He gives the farmer a patronising smile.

Over at the hole, Tucker taps Dawson on the shoulder.

‘What’s that, there?’

Dawson picks through the gritty soil and bone fragments and his fingers settle on a flat round object. If it is a button or a coin they will at least know the soldier’s nationality. Dawson presses the object between his thumb and index finger and breaks off the dry clay. He spits on it and wipes the disc on his sleeve.

‘Shit.’

He passes the A.I.F. identity disc to Tucker. The sergeant has a pretty good idea what it is going to say before he reads it, but he is still stupefied. He pauses, happy that something in the world can still astound him.

Hilton watches Tucker walk towards him, fist clenched shut around something; the tight look around the sergeant’s mouth tells him it must be something important.

‘It’s impossible,’ Hilton catches himself mouthing under his breath. ‘Impossible.’

Tucker presses the disc into the lieutenant colonel’s palm. Incredulous, Hilton looks down and reads the name. Confirming what Connor already knows, Hilton addresses him reverently. ‘It’s your son. It’s Edward.’

Connor is silent; there is nothing to say. His eyes are fixed on Dawson and Thomas, who are carefully lifting spadefuls of fabric and disarticulated bones into a hessian bag. The thought of seeing the ransacked body of his son is almost too much for Connor. But the thought of not witnessing his disinterment is inexplicably worse.

‘I wouldn’t,’ Hilton warns him, but it is too late.

Connor staggers towards his son’s shallow grave. He hovers over Dawson’s shoulder just as the unsuspecting soldier lifts Edward’s skull out of the soil and wipes it with his cuff. Confronted with the hollow remains of his son’s gentle face, he looks into blank sockets where mischievous eyes once flickered and begins to quiver, his knees giving way beneath him. As Dawson wipes away the sticky clay the cause of death emerges: a single gunshot to the forehead. Dawson and Thomas exchange knowing looks. Tucker appears at Connor’s shoulder and takes him by the arm to steady him. Dawson shakes his head, cautioning Tucker not to say anything, but the sergeant is already in his ear.

‘The bastards executed your boy,’ he whispers hoarsely. He points to Hasan. ‘He gave the order not to take prisoners.’

Connor fixes his gaze on the Turkish commander, who has been watching the search for Connor’s sons with keen interest from a respectful distance. White rage builds behind Connor’s eyes and his heart threatens to burst, blood rushing and buzzing in his ears. He can barely think. Connor turns and begins to move towards Hasan, fists clenched together like maces. The farmer’s pace and fury build to a charge as he hurtles towards his son’s murderer.

‘Stop him!’ shouts Hilton, but the soldiers around him are deliberately slow to respond, reluctant to halt Connor’s attack.

‘I said stop him! Now!’

The Australian soldiers are spurred into action by their commander’s order, but it is too little, too late. Thomas tries a rugby tackle and Connor fends him off with his palm. A solid-looking soldier places himself between Connor and Hasan. Connor props and straight-arms the man across the collarbone, knocking him onto his back. Hasan stands unflinching, casually and deliberately unclipping his holster as Connor descends on him. The Australian expels a mournful bellow, that of a bull in a slaughterhouse, and lunges at the major. As he does a fist comes from nowhere and catches him on the side of the jaw. A second punch lands up under his ribs and knocks the wind out of him. As he lies in the dirt on his side, gasping for breath, a well-aimed black boot buries itself deep into his stomach. Dazed and sucking in dust Connor sees the ursine form of Jemal looming over him – Hasan’s last line of defence. Puffing from the exertion, the wild-eyed sergeant places his boot on Connor’s chest and shifts all his weight behind it.

‘You butchered my sons, my beautiful boys,’ Connor roars at Hasan.

‘Perhaps, Mr Connor,’ concedes Hasan. ‘But you sent them. You invaded us.’

Before Connor can reply, Hilton and the Australians are standing over him.

‘Take him away and put him under guard,’ Hilton orders Tucker. His men pick Connor up and escort him back to their camp. A horrified Hilton turns to Hasan, already anticipating the diplomatic fallout and the deluge of reports, in triplicate.

‘I am most terribly sorry.’

‘He has two more sons,’ observes Hasan, surprisingly unruffled by Connor’s outburst. ‘We should keep looking.’

A
guard stands outside a bell-shaped tent, a rifle leaning against his leg while he rolls a cigarette. He lights it inside a cupped hand, protecting it from the warm evening breeze blowing off the sea. A lamp hanging off the central pole makes the tent glow like a paper lantern. Inside a man sits rigidly on his stretcher, casting a hulking shadow on the canvas.

Connor has hardly moved since he was detained. Shell-shocked, his stillness belies the tumult in his head. Just as the artesian springs call to him from beneath the soil, he knew the boys would help him find them. Their bond, thicker than water, drew him like iron filings to a magnet. Of that he is sure.

Finding Edward has tapped a well of grief and blind rage buried deep within him that, till now, he hoped and believed was dry. All the bruises and loose teeth are a small price to pay for his son’s remains. Although he thinks he should now feel some inner peace, a sense of urgency remains; a quavering certainty that the job is not done. Not yet.

He hears the shuffling of feet and the rattle of a rifle as the guard snaps to attention. Hilton pushes back the tent flap and enters.

‘We found Henry too.’ He announces the news quietly.

‘Lying beside Ed,’ says Connor. It is not a question.

‘How on God’s earth did you know they were there?’

‘So you haven’t found Arthur yet?’ Connor asks, his voice a low mumble, head bowed.

‘No. We have combed the area thoroughly, but haven’t –’

‘There’s no way Art would leave his brothers,’ Connor assures him as he looks up. ‘He must be there.’ But as he says it, somehow he knows he’s wrong. Art is not there; he is lost.

‘We will keep looking, but we’ll give Edward and Henry a proper burial tomorrow,’ offers Hilton.

‘I promised their mother I would find them and bring them home.’

Hilton crouches down on his haunches and lowers his voice.

‘Connor, this is their home now; it isn’t enemy ground anymore. They’re amongst friends, probably the closest they ever had. Leave them here and they always will be. Take them back – they’ll be just a couple of dead blokes in the corner of a cemetery.’

Conner pictures the Rainbow churchyard and finds it hard to argue.

‘Lizzie wanted them buried in consecrated ground.’

‘How much blood do you need for it to be consecrated?’ pleads Hilton. ‘Let us bury them here where it means something.’

Connor concedes with a resigned nod. He knows Hilton is right, but the thought of abandoning his sons here on a desolate Turkish hillside makes his heart ache.

As Hilton pushes the tent flap back to leave, he turns.

‘We lost over two thousand men in those four days at Lone Pine. The Turks lost seven . . . We didn’t take too many prisoners either.’

‘So you forgive them?’

Hilton pauses. ‘I don’t know if I forgive any of us.’ He steps out into the night.

Inside the tent Connor takes the photograph of his boys from between the pages of Art’s journal and holds it up to the light. That bastard Brindley was right – this is exactly how he wants to remember them. He knows he should find some solace in locating two of his boys. It is more than anyone could reasonably expect – a small miracle, really. But Edward’s execution will never leave him now. He can only imagine his boy, wounded and bleeding, his tongue swollen for water, waiting expectantly for the stretcher-bearers. Instead a band of Turks moves across the field, collecting boots and weapons and finishing off the wounded. Connor can see the welcoming smile of his son when he hears the approaching footsteps, and then the look of confusion and horror as the gun is raised. The anger wells up in Connor again and he heads for the door. The sentry stands five feet away, his gun raised.

‘There’s nothing to be done out here, Mr Connor.’

Connor nods and backs down.

‘You’re right, son. Nothing at all.’

He lies down on his camp bed and begins a long, sleepless vigil until morning.