White Feathers (20 page)

He was right. Outside an
estaminet
, much less salubrious than the one in which they’d dined, and overflowing with rowdy Allied soldiers, they encountered three women leaning against the
whitewashed wall chatting easily to each other.

‘You sure they’re tarts?’ said Jock, squinting at them from across the street. ‘What if they’re just waiting for their husbands or something?’

‘Well, there’s only one way to find out,’ declared Trevor. He adjusted his cap to a jauntier angle, slipped his hands into his pockets and stepped into the road. The women perked up and began to preen themselves provocatively.

‘See?’ Trevor said over his shoulder.

He wandered across, had a few words, then turned and beckoned to the others.

‘You game?’ Ian said to Owen.

‘No, I value my health. I’m particular where I stick certain parts of my anatomy. What about you?’

Ian gazed wistfully over at the women, then sighed. ‘Not sure I’m up to it. Had a bit much plonk, I think.’

Reg and Jock looked at each other, then slouched sheepishly across the street to join Trevor.

‘They’ll be sorry,’ observed Owen dryly. ‘Those girls have probably serviced half the New Zealand Division already tonight. Come on, we’ll find ourselves a quiet little pub, shall we?’

They found a small bar not far away, settled into a booth and ordered more wine. The establishment was full and moderately noisy, but comfortable. The patrons were mainly soldiers but here and there were tables occupied by civilians, hunched over their drinks and looking sourly around at every burst of laughter from the interlopers.

‘Wonder if it pisses them off?’ Owen speculated as he rolled a smoke.

‘What?’

‘Us being here, drinking their wine, eating their food, taking their women.’

‘Why should it? We’re helping them out, aren’t we?’ said Ian, pouring himself a glass and spilling a fair proportion of it on the white tablecloth.

‘Well, think about it. We’re only here because they’re losing. Look what happened to them at Verdun, that must be making them feel bloody terrible for a start.’ Owen touched a match to his cigarette, inhaled the smoke deeply then blew it out through his nostrils in a long, continuous stream. ‘And now the Tommies have had to come and bail them out.’

‘We’re not Tommies,’ Ian said pedantically. ‘We’re New Zealanders.’

‘Well, it’s the same thing to them. We’re not
French
. It’s a matter of national honour.’

‘No it isn’t,’ Ian argued. ‘England’s their neighbour. The Germans have to be stopped by someone
somewhere
, don’t they?’

‘Yes, but how would you feel if New Zealand was invaded by some lunatic and you’d just been done like a dog’s dinner defending Napier and now there’s all these rowdy bloody foreign soldiers all over the place pinching your chickens and rooting your sister?’

‘Or pinching my sister and rooting the chickens,’ Ian giggled.

Owen smiled and refilled his glass. They sat in silence for a while, each thinking his own thoughts, which were getting progressively more disjointed as the level in their carafe went down.

‘Did you say your family owns a station?’

Ian nodded. ‘Kenmore, on the Tutaekuri River.’

‘Big?’

‘Quite. ’Specially when it’s flooded.’

‘No, the station.’

‘Oh. Yeah, sort of. Thirty thousand sheep at the last count. Or is it forty? I forget. Da and my Uncle Lachie run it between them, but we’ve got a team of drovers that stay on the station. Well, we had a team, before the war. My brother Joseph’s a drover, ’cept
he’s only got one leg now. He’s my half-brother. You’d like him.’

Owen raised an eyebrow. Ian prattled on, the wine making him even more garrulous than usual. ‘When Mam first came out, she’s from Cornwall, you know, she married some bastard called Peter Montgomery but then she had an affair with this Maori bloke called Kepa and had a baby and that was Joseph.’

‘Hang on a minute,’ interrupted Owen. He waved his cigarette vaguely, then blinked painfully as smoke drifted into his eye. ‘You sure you should be telling me all your family secrets?’

‘Eh? No, it’s not a secret. Any way, she had Joseph and her husband, the first one, not Da, went berserk and she had to run away with her housegirl, Riria. Riria married a friend of Mam’s, John Adams, who was a doctor. He died in the Boer War, but that was much later. Any way they ran away to Riria’s village but Kepa’s Uncle Te Kanene, who was cunning as a shithouse rat but he’s dead now as well, came and got Joseph and took him to the East Coast.’ Ian paused for a slurp of his wine. ‘Peter Montgomery died and Mam went to Auckland and ran a brothel for a couple of years.’

Owen choked on his drink. ‘Pardon?’

‘She ran a brothel. It belonged to this Scotswoman Mam met on the ship out and when she died she left it to my mother. I’m not sure why Mam decided to take it on, but she did. And then she met Da and they got married and he took her back to Napier.’

‘And they lived happily ever after?’

‘So far.’

‘Good. I like a story with a happy ending.’

‘Well, no, that’s not the end because she found Joseph again. And his father.’ Ian pulled an anguished face. ‘God, where do you suppose the dunny is? I’m going to piss myself in a minute.’

While he was outside peeing against a wall behind the
estaminet
, Owen ordered more wine, knowing he would seriously regret doing so in the morning.

Ian returned and sat down heavily, narrowly missing toppling off his seat. ‘Good-oh, more plonk. It’s bloody raining again. Now, what was I up to?’

Owen noted with amusement that Ian was enjoying telling the story. ‘Your mother finding her son, I think.’

‘Oh, right. That was Joseph. Did I say he was my half-brother? Except his name wasn’t Joseph then, it was some great long Maori job he doesn’t use any more that I can never remember. Any way he stayed living with Kepa, or his aunty I think it was, actually — Joseph’s aunty, not Kepa’s — but Mam saw him quite a lot after that and he came to stay at Kenmore all the time so he really is like our real brother.’

‘And your father doesn’t mind this … what did you say his name was? Kepa, is it?’

‘Mmm.’

‘… this Kepa being around?’

‘Not as far as I know, but I wasn’t even born when all this happened. And too bad if he does. Mam’s always done exactly what she wants. But Kepa was married by then any way, to this woman called Parehuia.’

Owen was beginning to lose track of who was who in this garbled, potted history of the Murdoch family, but Ian apparently hadn’t finished.

‘And then James came along, my eldest brother, not counting Joseph, that is. Then Thomas, then Keely, then me. And we had a younger sister too, but she died.’

‘And all of you are over here now?’

‘Yep, and my cousin Erin. She’s Uncle Lachie and Aunt Jeannie’s daughter. She and Joseph are getting married as soon as she goes home. She’s a nurse, like Keely.’

‘Can I ask how Joseph lost his leg?’

‘He was with the Maori Contingent at Gallipoli and a shell
blew up right next to him. He was lucky to survive apparently.’

Owen nodded. He’d had plenty of mates at Gallipoli who hadn’t. ‘And how does he feel about it now?’

‘About losing his leg? Dunno, really. Haven’t asked. I wasn’t there when it happened of course, and I bet it pissed him off a fair bit, but he seems all right about it now. Joseph’s never been the sort to let much get in his way. He got that from Mam, I think.’

‘Sounds like an impressive woman, your mother.’

Ian burped, then swallowed quickly, aware he was fast approaching the outer limits of his capacity for alcohol. ‘She is. I couldn’t have asked for a better one. Or my Da.’ He blinked as his mind conjured an unwelcome image of his parents’ faces after they’d discovered he’d enlisted without telling anyone. ‘I was a bit of a shit running off, really, now that I think about it,’ he reflected.

Yes, you were, thought Owen, his suspicions confirmed, but he didn’t say it. ‘I’m sure they’re proud of you any way.’

‘Proud of all of us, I think. James is career army so we knew he’d be off the minute the balloon went up. Suits him, the army. Always was a bit bossy and he loves things to be in order, our James, but not in a mean way because he really is a decent bloke. Thomas is really decent too, but he’s more quiet and very bright and incredibly …’ Ian searched for the appropriate word. ‘
Earnest
. Thomas really
believes
.’

‘Believes what?

‘Everything he gets involved in. He’s dead against this war but he volunteered any way. He’s a conchie but he still wanted to do his bit so he’s over here as a stretcher bearer. That takes guts,’ said Ian proudly, ‘but then Thomas has always had balls, despite what some people think.’

Owen sensed there was another story here, but he didn’t pursue it.

‘And Keely, well, Keely’s a lot like Mam. She’s beautiful and
clever but she can be utterly bloody-minded sometimes. Mam says it’s her fault because she and Da spoiled her rotten. She reckons Keely’ll have to learn her lessons the hard way like
she
did when
she
was young.’ Ian frowned and thought laboriously for a moment. ‘Although I’m not exactly sure what she means by that.’

He reached for the carafe and was mildly surprised to see they’d finished this one as well. It was fortunate, because he was starting to feel rather sick. He looked blearily over at Owen, feeling uncharacteristically overwhelmed by these sudden and unexpected feelings of love for his family.

‘I miss us all being together.’

Owen suspected that Ian’s family missed him just as much — their vibrant, golden-haired, fun-loving boy.

The furlough ended the next day and the battalion, hungover almost to a man, headed for the Somme valley. It was raining as usual and the weather had turned bitterly cold. Then, as if especially for the division’s march into battle, it suddenly improved as the 3rd Brigade, Ian’s, moved through Le Quesnoy and then Vauxen-Amienois. Still well to the rear, the three brigades met up and practised manoeuvres around the countryside for the next four days until they moved on again, this time passing through the modest villages of the Allonville area, crowded now with refugees, towards Dernancourt and Lavieville and the ever-increasing sound of battle. On the 8th of September the Germans hurled themselves at the length of the Allied line, and that night a corona of constant gun flashes stained the horizon the colour of blood.

The following day the 3rd Brigade set out along the main road to the Moulin du Vivier and then on to Fricourt where many thousands of British troops were already bivouacked on the slopes, the smoke from their cooking fires wreathing the hillsides with a
fine, pungent haze. At nine o’clock on the morning of the 11th, the New Zealanders took over command of the sector between High Wood and Delville Wood, their objective to capture three of the enemy’s major trench systems, the Switch, Gird and Flers Lines.

For Ian and his section, each man weighed down with rifle, gas mask, hand grenades, digging tools, ammunition and rations, the days that followed merged into a chaos of tremendous artillery barrages, fountains of exploding dirt, drifting black smoke, fear, sleeplessness and adrenaline.

On the morning of the 17th, Ian’s company was sent to the immediate rear for a brief eight hours’ rest. They slipped and slid their way back, crouching in muck as artillery shells whistled overhead and exploded on all sides, throwing up great plumes of mud and debris that splattered down on them like hard, sharp rain. After one particularly close blast, Ian heard the piercing, high-pitched sound of an animal screaming and saw that two horses drawing a gun carriage had been blown into a vast shell crater. The carriage had come off but the limber was dragging them under and in their panic they were flailing wildly in the liquid mud, eyes rolling madly and yellow teeth bared. The distraught driver was jumping up and down at the edge of the crater, stepping down into it then scrabbling back up as he began to slide.

‘
Get them out
!’ he screamed. ‘
They’ll drown
!’

Ian ran over. ‘You go that side, I’ll go this! We’ll unharness them, that’ll help!’

‘I can’t swim!’ wailed the soldier, crying now. ‘
Help them
!’

‘Shit,’ said Ian. He unloaded his kit and stepped down into the crater, ignoring Owen and Trevor bellowing at him not to be so fucking stupid.

He waded in, slipped immediately and sank up to his thighs in the glutinous, grasping mud. Reaching for the bridle of the nearest animal he tugged on it to get the horse’s head down then slid his
hand along its neck to the heavy harness collar, murmuring in a low, gentle voice inaudible over the surrounding din. The horse heard, though, and its ears came forward and it seemed to calm a little.

Ian looked up at the lip of the crater and saw a small crowd had gathered, and raised his thumb as someone — Owen, he thought — threw down a coiled rope. The second horse had also ceased to struggle, but both were sinking rapidly and Ian knew they’d panic again at any moment. He himself was submerged up to his chest now, but judged that if he didn’t let go, he’d be all right.

He leant his forehead against the horse’s neck, breathing in the sharp, salty tang of its sweat, and took several deep breaths, all the while still stroking and soothing. He reached back and unclipped all points of the harness from the collar, and attached the rope. Then, still hanging on, he half waded, half paddled around to unharness the second animal. Now that it was no longer attached, the limber fell away and disappeared into the mud. He turned and signalled to the men above him to start pulling.

For a few seconds it looked as if the manouevre might work and there was a spontaneous burst of applause. The horses were halfway up the side of the crater, still harnessed to each other and scrabbling frantically with their hooves to gain better purchase, when another shell crashed into the ground only yards away. The pair reared in fright, jerked the rope free, toppled over and careered back down into the pit. The hindquarters of one animal cannoned into Ian and he was knocked backwards into the mud, then the horse rolled on top of him and he went under.