Black Diamonds (26 page)

Be good if there was a cure against looking back. At least I'm a lot less gut-knotted, if nothing else, and the only bottle I want is the one that'll convince me to take a punt on myself. How hard can that be? I have a wife who loves me, and I love her; I have a kid I'm busting to see; I have money and a home, the best home in the best part of the best country in the world; I still don't know if I have a hand that works under the lump of cement that I'm told contains more than just the tops of my fingers, but even if it doesn't work I have no excuses. I've been entertaining myself with my attempts to draw a straight line left-handed: the results suggest that I've damaged my brain, but it's improving daily, sort of. And the only ache I have right now is that I didn't have enough of a brain to try to slip someone something to send France a telegram to tell her I want her there at the Quay: those two weeks in London with my arm tied to a five-pound weight have to be recorded as possibly the most blinding of the lot. Thank you, Doctor Myer. Thanks for the attempt anyway. Then it was straight to Southampton: who says women can't drive? The girl behind the wheel of that ambulance was either determined she get her load there on time or that she have us all killed, God bless her.

I don't know what France is going to see when she looks at me, and I separate myself from that thought; all I want to see is her. But if she could see me now, she'd see a bloke sitting outside on the top deck of a hospital ship getting sunburned again as we pass through the equator, and he's shoving a towel in his armpit to try to stop the sweat running down inside the cast. I'm sure I smell like a fish: very dead one. If she could read my mind, she'd see that I'm trying very hard not to think about torpedoes, and concentrating on trying not to look bored with the conversation going on around me.

I'm loafing about with three other sergeants and an infantry corp, all of us in various states of ticket-home disability. The sergeants are talking about who and what they saw in England and where they're from, their connections to Blighty, like a rope between home and the world and every stupid thing they've had to do to get back home. The corp is quiet; he's also been recommended for a Victoria Cross, which suggests he's been particularly, extremely stupid on the job. He's particularly fucked up too: he'll never make a move from the waist down again, that wheelchair's his to keep. And I wish I could job the next bloke I hear congratulating him on the recommendation. What poor form is that? As if it could ever compensate. Maybe that's the saddest streak through all this: permanent rank and honours. There's some poor blokes on this ship that actually call me sir — really, no guns blazing. That's not class confusion, Dunc: that's too bloody stupid for words. The AIF has ruined them for life. No, Blighty has: leave home with a healthy disrespect for authority; come home buried under the weight of it, lost in the fantasy of it. And these sergeants here, nattering on, talk like they
are
Brits. In my angrier moments, if I'd have said anything about it at all it would have been something like: ‘Why don't you do me a favour and shut up.' But, practising being pleasant and civilised as I am, I choose instead to take the towel out of my armpit and fold it over the other way.

As I'm doing this, one of them says to me: ‘So where're you from, Ackerman?'

‘Lithgow,' I tell him. ‘But I'm German really.' The goose in me just can't help himself at the minute. I've been wanting to say that to someone for months.

Silence. But the corp laughs.

I say to the sergeant: ‘Fair dinkum. I'm a Hun. Not a drop of Brit in me.'

I mean it. More silence, except for the corp, who's still laughing. Sergeant says: ‘Well, why'd you join up with the AIF then?' And I can see he's only confused; he doesn't hate Fritz any more, not with any conviction; we've all been round the block, heard the stories of good old Aussie lads finding a sudden ability to speak perfect Deutsch when confronted with the enemy; seen it all in our own special ways.

I say: ‘Tell me and we'll both know.'

Laughs all round; good. But I do know the reason now. While it's true that I didn't want to sit on my arse at home and leave it all up to others, I also had something to prove, and it's proved: I'm Australian and I don't owe anyone anything any more. So there you go, Mum. Not a British subject any more, either; not where it counts. And there you go, Dad. Somehow I can hear even Robby giving me a slow round of applause from oblivion.

A little while later the sergeants have buggered off and it's just me and the corp. His name's Al Cash and he's got a suntan like an Abo. I say to him, and I am just taking the piss out of it: ‘So now you going to tell me you've got a touch of the tar?'

He laughs; what I was after. ‘No. I'm an Abdul.'

What?
‘You're a Turk?'

‘No. My name's Abdul. Abdul Kashir. My Dad's a Gippo from Toowoomba by way of Cairo, though my mum's Aussie.'

‘Well, at least you're an ally,' I say; but there goes the VC probably, though I'm sure he'd rather have calipers instead.

He says: ‘No ally. Just Abdul, mate.'

I'll pay that.

Sydney, for all the jabbering, really is something to see coming in. The heads of the harbour look like arms, wanting to hold you, draw you in, and the light here is like nothing else on earth I've seen. The difference between green and blue is so sharp and so soft at the same time, it's my whole mind. I can't believe I'm here. I know she won't be here, but I'm looking around for France in the crowd on the quay, trying to catch sight of her hair. Can't see her; doesn't matter. I'll catch the first train home and be there soon enough. Give me a few hours to find my legs again anyway. And I need to: I'm that relieved as my feet hit the dock, I'm almost crying.

I'm among the last of the walk-offs, and the place is jammed with wandering, and with a few reunions, most happy, some. I can hear tears, walk through them, I can't look at anyone. Can't look anywhere: there's that many Union Jacks flapping about you'd think we'd just arrived in England. No brass band today, though. I've got to get away from here, catch the tram to the station.

‘Oi,' says some uniform at me. ‘Cars to the hospital, this way.'

I shake my head at him, I'm not docking in with this lot, not even for five minutes; and he nods, smiles. ‘Don't leave it too long or the Jacks'll come looking for you.'

The military police? What for? I hand him my pay book and my papers that say I am officially a cripple. ‘You've got my address. Do me a favour, sort it out, will you?' The AIF can dock my pay for AWL till they work out I've discharged myself.

‘All right, sir,' he says after another quick glance at my rank; but he's seen something else maybe: ‘You do have somewhere in particular to go?'

‘Yep. Thanks.'

I go and wait at the stop behind the quay, and I can't look at anything there either. In front of me, pinned to a telegraph pole, is a poster that says:
Will you fight now or wait for THIS?
showing a picture of Fritz, his helmeted grey men, invading the city, bayoneting women and kids. As if. I'm sure Fritz'd be hard pressed to take New Guinea back right now, and he's not shown an inclination for it either. On the next pole along is another poster, from Billy Hughes's New Beaut National Labor Party saying:
WIN THE WAR!
As if Australia can punch so far above its weight; but it does anyway; read the small print and wonder if it's a Fluent Effluence leg-pull:
Our soldiers have done great things. They have carved for Australia a niche in the Temple of the Immortals. Do your part in this greatest war of all time!
I decide to face the wall behind me, then see an even better one, an old paper poster, glued to the boards: a picture of a hooded woman stabbing an Anzac in the back, with a banner underneath saying:
The crime of those who vote NO!
To conscription, presumably. Evil nay-saying women. I remember telling France before I left that something had to give, and it has: reality, totally. Welcome home.

Suppose I'll have to practise diplomatic insubordination now, won't I, Dunc. Too many hearts hanging on Blighty's line, or being told to.

One heart's hanging particularly hard: there's a bloke not ten yards away, khaki melting against the wall so that I didn't see him straight off; he's holding a little sign that says,
Spare a bob for a blind Anzac down on his luck.
The A on the shoulder of his sleeve shows he was at Gallipoli. Not a lot of jabbering going on around him today. I put five shillings in his hand, ‘Mate,' all I can get to at the minute without giving him my change for the tram, and I go back to waiting. I'd further expand my understanding of disgusting, but it's a bit too much to take in.

It's a real February stinker, and I'm melting too. I put my kit down and frig around trying to shake my tunic off, when I hear: ‘You need a hand, cobber?'

I already know who it is before I turn around and see her. Just can't tell you.

 

FRANCINE

After I've let him go enough to draw breath, he says: ‘Jesus, France, what have you done to your hair?' His hand searching for it, pushing my hat away.

‘Don't you like it? It'll be the height of fashion one day.'

Kiss him again and he's laughing against my cheek: the first time I've heard it in an eon, feeling it.

‘Hello,' he says.

‘Hello.'

Every nerve in me is singing; I have to touch him and touch him, my hands around his too-thin face, on the tips of my toes, my face against his face. Some old Dame Wowser passes us and mutters: ‘Disgraceful.' Pity to think she's referring to us, not the poor fellow against the wall. As I was walking, no, fairly running along the back of the quay, thinking I was too late, having miscalculated how long it would take to drive to Sydney and how quickly they'd all disembark — eleven am sharp I was told yesterday, and I know I got here at five past — I finally found the sense to ask the nearest policeman who said he thought they might have already left for the repatriation hospital in Randwick, which sent me into a sprint. Then a dead stop, when I saw him. Saw him approach Private Down on His Luck: I watched him for a moment as he went back to waiting. I had to take a moment to gather myself, get my bottle up. I'm determined not to be hysterical, but I am; it's coursing through me like electricity.

Tram comes and goes and I still haven't let him go. I have to keep touching him till I calm down. I do, a little. I can look into his eyes now without feeling I'm going to fall over. I can look at him properly and believe it.

He looks terrible. But he's so happy; nothing tight-jawed about him at all.

He shrugs his tunic off his shoulder as he says: ‘Where's the kid?'

‘At home waiting in line with your mum,' I tell him, looking at his poor cast-bound arm: good God, what are you doing at the tram stop on your own? Being Daniel. Who's helping you? Me: take his tunic, Francy.

He laughs again as I do. ‘Sorry about that note. Good to see you didn't pay it too much attention.'

‘Not taking any of that rubbish,' I say, but I would have. He looks a lot more than terrible: ten years older; I don't just look like a five-year-old now, I feel like one. ‘Come on then, take you for a drive in my flash Cadillac.'

I lug his bag up off the ground. ‘What have you got in here?' It's so heavy: what on earth were you thinking making your way home alone? Bet you'd have walked the five or so miles from Lithgow Station too, wouldn't you.

‘Nothing I need any more,' he says. ‘Just souvenirs.'

We start walking up Alfred Street to the corner of Pitt where I've left the car. He walks slowly, and I can see that his gait has changed somehow. I'm not going to cry, not today. I say: ‘I've packed food for the trip home — didn't think you'd want to hang about here.' I also packed four tin cans of petrol and a carryall stuffed with a week's worth of essentials, just in case — I was a wreck heading out just before dawn this morning, as if I were making an expedition to Antarctica.

He just smiles at me. That smile, there it is. Don't cry.

‘So how's no-good elbow?' I ask, not sure if I should but it's hanging there between us as we walk, all twenty-five pounds telegraphed remittance to extortionate London surgeon's worth of it.

‘Don't know,' he says, as if I've just asked him the time of day. ‘Find out in a couple of weeks.' He tells me about ancient Doctor Myer's brutal assault and that his own and Doctor Nichols's part in the war effort is now reduced to elbow's gift to medical science. Then he says: ‘Whatever it is, it's all right, France.'

Something's shifted, and whatever it is, I believe him: it is all right.

Don't bloody cry.

‘Very flash,' he says folding himself into the car, watching me watching him as I start the motor. ‘Whoever made you did a proper job, didn't they.'

Can't respond. Crying now.

He says: ‘Stop that. You won't be able to see the road at all.'

‘Ha! That's what you think,' I tell him, getting out my specs and popping them on my nose.

He really, really belts out a laugh now; says: ‘You look like a bloody bookkeeper.'

He's sprawled on the sofa, dozing, Little Danny asleep on his bare chest, small against his father, though he's eight months old and getting so hefty I'll be glad when he starts walking. All clean, all right. So all right I'm floating somewhere near the ceiling. All souvenirs are shoved in the back of the wardrobe, above the drawer that contains all other things we don't need to find unless we're looking. He's wearing his old trousers again; I told him they'd been very good company while he was away. Lunatic look: he loved that thought. As if he really has only been out for a very long jaunt. I'm happy to imagine that's the case for as long as he wants it that way.

I'm suddenly very tired, from concentrating on the road for the eleven-hour round trip no doubt; the mist at Blackheath and Mount Victoria was a challenge on the way back, and I hate that sweepy end of Bell's Line into Lithgow. He loved it; loved the whole trip home, looking about, taking everything in. Home. Home. Home. And look at my dippy France driving a motor car; every ten minutes he'd turn to me and laugh some more. It only hits me now what a ridiculously long and bumpy drive that was; had to be done, though: I wasn't going to share him with train passengers.

Sarah left a while ago, just before sunset, not long after we got in. The first thing she said to him when she let him go was: ‘You smell like an old fish.' He does too. But then she held him by the face and said: ‘It's finished now, isn't it.' Not a question. He said: ‘Yep. I suppose so.' I don't know what she meant, and I'm not likely to ask at the moment, if ever; whatever, it's finished. As Sarah left, she said to me at the door: ‘Now you can get on with your true life.' Then she held my face and kissed me before turning away and walking home alone through the gully. I think I can guess what she's doing now.

After that, Daniel played with The Kid, peek-a-boo, and let me count your toes, your belly button, and your four and a bit perfect tiny teeth, touch you. Matching pairs of eyes, matching marvel. Matching need for a good wash. Shock at hideous scar on his thigh dealt with here in our kitchen. It's an angry jag-edged backward S, that runs from just above his knee almost to his groin, and the muscle on the inside of his leg pulls slightly towards it; there's another small white dent of a scar above it, near his hip. ‘Very attractive, isn't it,' he said, as if he should apologise for it. I told him, ‘It looks an awful lot like a very fine leg to me,' and I put my hand on it as he was sitting there in the tub. But as I scrubbed his back I had to swallow the weep; not for the scars, but for the glaring pain they shout, and a sharp flare of desire in me to murder whoever caused it, followed by a wash of gratitude for whoever brought him back to me, so deep I will be saying automatic Hail Marys in my sleep tonight for them, decades and decades of them. For all of them: whoever patched you up, cared for you, nursed you, all those months, the cobbler who put the extra leather on the sole of your boot, and whoever tied your laces this morning on the ship.

And I don't need to be told he's still not too well. He's so very thin, and he's eaten so little today. Less than The Kid just now, and I'm impatient to make him well, for him to bulk up, as if that'll mean he's truly, truly back. But he just wanted to lie down with The Kid, who was getting mewly, who then collapsed in a little sprawly heap against his father's heartbeat, his father's voice saying, ‘Settle down, you,' wedging his arm at the back of the sofa to keep it out of the way. And there they are. Partners in crime: unashamed bandits.

Daniel, half-open eyes, says: ‘This is the second best day of my life.'

‘What was the first?'

‘Day I married you.'

Whack. Feet back on the floorboards. It almost hurts to hear that, does hurt, even though I know he loves me; I can feel it humming around the room. I walk over and prise Little Danny off him. Large hand tugs at my skirt: ‘I meant what I said about behaving myself. I won't upset you again. Not like this anyway. Don't think your father would let me get away with it a second time.'

Suppression of urge to say: too damn right, darlingest. You arse. As all those months of wondering shiver through me.

I take Danny, sleeping, floppy, pouting angel, into my room, our room, and put him in his cot. Keeping an eye on gentleness. On the completeness of our union. It's all right, all right. And Daniel is behind me, in the darkness, his hand at my waist.

I close my eyes and see the valley as we came in earlier today; not our valley, but Lithgow, black and seared around the edges, the sleeping women breathing in the poison, and I imagine the valley folding over the ugliness. Not by God's hand; something greater than that.

He whispers: ‘I'm quite a bit more than sorry.'

I can feel it burning through his hand, through my skirt and into the skin at my hip. I believe him.

‘I want to build a room off the back verandah,' he says, and that's what he's going to do. Doctor Nichols has removed smelly Thing and elbow is not exactly tiptop but Daniel is. His whole arm looks frail as glass; he can't straighten it right out, or bring it right in, but he can hold a pencil and roll his wrist. He's thrilled to bits. He says to me, fairly beaming: ‘Don't worry, France; it might look a horror at the minute, but it'll get more meat on it with exercise.'

And now here he is, a month later, exercising on the roof of his creation, bolting on the tin. Resist the urge to say: ‘For pity's sake, get down.' Because this is essential to good behaviour: Daniel's going to teach himself to paint in there.

A solo exercise, unlike the room, which saw Evan and at least half-a-dozen come round to help build it on Sundays. All ‘G'day Danny' as if he'd never been away, except for Evan who, when he came round the morning after Daniel's return, said, right in front of me: ‘You do anything like that again, boyo, and I will belt you.' Daniel said to him: ‘I would have done it regardless. ‘Evan replied: ‘I realise that. It was your sneaking off that cut me.' And for a blink Daniel looked about twelve, and belted. But now the room is finished, it's the only fragile thing about, with all its windows, flanking three sides to catch the north sun. One mustn't refer to it as a
studio
, however, because that might suggest
artistic
endeavour. Oh dear no: Daniel's going to
paint.
I don't know what the distinction is, but he's ordered in a truckload of supplies, so let's leave him to it.

It occurs to me that my darlingest is a very odd man, and possibly the most wonderful man that ever lived. Of course he is: he was hand-picked by the Leprechaun. And there's only one thing I want right now, apart from him to get down off the roof: I want to make love to him. He won't sleep in our bed, though; hasn't done since that first night home, and then he only kissed me before succumbing very thoroughly to unconsciousness. He sleeps in the spare room instead, says he has trouble sleeping and: ‘I have to get some things out of my system first.' No trouble whatsoever kissing me whenever he gets the urge, and no idea of how terrible that makes the craving in me, but I'm not going to pry or push or resist a single kiss. I don't need to be told he's still not too well, regardless that he's bulked up quite a bit. Maybe he has a problem with all that; Dr Nichols did mumble something about
all manner of difficulties
associated with
pelvic trauma
, and if this is one, then that's all right; he can tell me when he's ready, or he can have me when he's ready: he can do whatever he damn well likes.

Evan says to me now: ‘You won't get him down from there by looking at him, love. Why don't you make us a cup of tea?'

At the same moment Little Danny tries to launch himself off the edge of the verandah. I catch him up just in time and I laugh. My whole life is very odd. It's beautiful, just as it is. The world is dying, but you wouldn't know it here in this paradise.

‘So I said to him, as everyone's heading up:
Why shouldn't you pay, maximum, for your loyal support of the war and the fact that we're making a fortune from it? I'm paying it too.
' Daniel's talking about today's confrontation with our business partner. Darlingest has taken to making random raids on the Wattle, having appointed himself Chief Spanner in the Works. The confrontation is over Daniel's suggestion that the men be paid for the time it takes to cavil out each quarter, a day's pay, four times a year, and Drummond has argued that the company can't afford it, not now that Billy the Troll has imposed a Commonwealth business tax to raise war revenue. Which, of course, is utter rot: the tax is negligible, and so's four days' pay.

‘What did he say to that?' I ask him.

‘Not a word, just walked away, drove off. He'll pay up.'

‘How're you going to make him?'

‘By embarrassment. He can't bring himself to say an outright no to me as it is; I'll wear him down.'

Daniel means by bullying, and he's enjoying it. He has a string of
suggestions
that he's going to work his way through methodically: he wants shot provided, he wants an on-site blacksmith and full pay for Christmas and Easter. As leverage he has the war veterans' card, Drummond's past taunts and an ability to appear dangerous despite no-good elbow. Evan's said that Robbenham, the manager, only gets called quickly in-pit for one reason: the sudden arrival of ‘Our Danny' in the office, looking at the books, saying: ‘Awch, manager's salary's a bit sharp, given these tough times, ay?' Our Danny who also only need look sideways to have the men down tools, but he wants to avoid them losing any pay over his game. They at least are finding his efforts entertaining, Evan most of all.