1915 (36 page)

Instead of relief Walter experienced a kind of numbness about the night's events. Yet how truly alive
he had been ! Angry, envious, sad — with companions who shared in the same emotions. Feeling implicated and helpless they had moved through the night in a state of freedom they were unaware of.

“It's time we thought about sending some money to Mossy,” said Nugget in a low voice, “or those kids'll go back to their natural state.”

“Marjorie's the one who won't have taken the news calmly,” said Mick.

“You don't consider what it does to them, or else a bloke would have thought twice about it.”

Wedged against the uncomfortable angle of the Gun Pits, almost dreaming under a baking sun, Walter recalled how they had felt their way through the night and finally reached the rest area where the remainder of the squadron, gathered in shadowy excited group was speculating on the action they were to be involved in the next day, the day that had opened with Walter's run and would close with his —

He rested half-asleep with his head on an arm, and tried to convince himself that there was something attractive about the inevitability of it all. In his tiredness he found nothing left that he wanted to understand. But his mind ceaselessly tortured him, and suddenly there came upon him a vision of the interlocking hostilities of the world — nation at nation's throat, friend grappling with friend, the grid of hatred descending to impose its heartlessness on the peninsula. Lord, he began … but there he finished. Exhausted, he felt that the walls of the trench were creeping closer, and raised his head in a panicked realization that life had thrown him into the living proof of the stone tomb that had horrified him during his stay in the hospital at Parkes, when the doctor had loomed over him and the
matron or somebody had grabbed from behind when he sat bolt upright in a living nightmare. He had found himself in that place where pain was endless and struggle futile, but to fight against it a compulsion imposed by eternity.

So he raised his head higher, scrabbled to his knees, tensed his throat ready to shout
Here!
in reply to the familiar voice that just now rang out again. Why hadn't he picked it before? He drew himself almost erect in the act of launching himself forward and out of the trench, elated at the discovery that all this time someone really had been out there in the scrub watching over him, and that someone was Billy! Billy's voice the whole time calling … Then a shot crashed against his ears, and hands closed around him from behind, human hands with dust-caked scabs and black hairs. In the shock of seeing them and of finding himself unable to move while his will struggled to be free, Walter wondered if it was all a dream again; and as a second shot rang out a rush of oblivion assured him that it was so.

 

After leaving the dugout the previous night Billy had gone straight to headquarters. Here, hardly speaking, he had collected his orders for the next day and disappeared. Skipper Fagan had chased after him a few minutes later because something new had come up, but by then Billy was over the parapet in the pitch dark and making his way determinedly through the undergrowth, far from human contact.

He had been out on the extreme right since well before dawn. When the sun came up he was lying
among wild thyme that hummed with bees. A clump of low scrub protected him from sight, but did not give complete shade. Had he slept? It was quiet where he lay but from the direction of Cape Helles to the south came the constant rumble of guns, indicating that an attack was in progress in the area held by the British and French. Billy's orders were to watch for changes in the Turkish trenches to his front, for although Cape Helles was miles distant, and the only line of communication between the two armies was the sea, the activities of one invariably had an effect on the other. And Billy was now ready for anything.

He wanted to release the power and pressure he felt barely contained within: he wanted an explosion. He was disgusted with himself for having bargained, on and off, with God. In the past there had been times when he felt an understanding had been reached: God had put Diana in his path, and given him the capacity to see what his life had been like before her arrival. But it had all been to make him look a mug.

As Billy lay on his back with his forearm across his eyes he heard the nearby snap of a twig that set his heart racing, and then a hiss of breath. Slowly he shifted his arm and found himself looking into the snout of a revolver. Kneeling beside him was the scout Freame, steady as a snake.

“That ain't funny.”

“They said you'd be out here.”

“Don't do that. Not ever!”

“You've been asleep.”

“Like hell I have, I've been awake since before first light.”

“It's now twelve o'clock.”

“Bullshit!” But Billy was forced to fumble for his watch.

Freame's face looked cool in the great heat. He was part Japanese, and had the silky unruffled look of someone constantly at the centre of important events. Though he asked for a drink, only the faintest shine of sweat showed on his forehead. He wiped his mouth and said: “There's to be an attack.”

“Ours?”

“At one o'clock the boys will be coming through. Do you think you can get down for a closer look?”

He explained. A feint was required to convince the Turks that a big attack was under way from the Anzac area in support of the one at Cape Helles. He handed Billy his binoculars and pointed obliquely to the rear, back towards Chatham's Post, the position Billy knew was occupied by Walter's regiment. Through the glasses Billy saw bayonets shuttle in a blue chain just above ground, and at one spot a line of men seemed to be leaping from one hole to another: an obvious ruse, but almost immediately earth flew up as the defences came under artillery fire.

This was more like it. Billy was no longer on the outer. This time no-one's will but his own would be responsible for what followed. There would be no throwing away of himself at the crucial moment.

“What do they want me to do?”

The scout wriggled forward and Billy followed until the Balkan Gun Pits became visible about half a mile farther along, in a dip to the left of the scrubby ridge. Across on the right could be caught a glimpse of the sea, a long sweep of bay concluding at the low headland of Gaba Tepe. Through the glasses the Gun Pits looked harmless relics. At some time in the past they had been partly roofed with brushwood. But fifty or a hundred yards farther back from these trenches
were another lot, with sinister fans of freshly dug dirt tossed out in front. Now and again a glimpse of head could be seen as someone jogged along a communication trench. Billy lowered the binoculars.

“Have you sniped down there before?” asked Freame.

“No.”

“The new works are what they call the Echelon. You're to get as far around to the right as you can. Try and line up with the communication trench. Our boys will be attacking the Gun Pits. It'll look serious, and if the opportunity presents they'll go farther on. But when they've livened things up they'll be getting out. If you get into a good spot you'll be able to fire over their heads and never be seen in the fun. All right?”

It took Billy only half an hour to move into position. Although alone, all the way through the scrub he talked, wriggling where there was a chance of being seen, sprinting bent double on the seaward side where there was dead ground — talked not out loud, and not to himself, but to Diana, the companion of his extremity. “I'll lie down here. Take a breather. Now, up we go!” He elbowed his way to the crest of the ridge and sure enough, just as he had guessed, his line of sight lay along the communication trench and revealed the moving heads much clearer now, as if stones were rapidly whizzing to the surface and drifting for a foot or two before burying themselves from sight — Turkish reinforcements, their headgear the dry dirty colour of their country.

Billy unpacked his telescope and spent five minutes marking the ranges. More detailed now, the Turkish heads dropped smoothly from sight, and idly Billy imagined them swinging upside down for a re
appearance, as if the Turks too had their bag of tricks in full play, and only Billy, between the two armies, was seriously dedicated to the proper business of the military. Suddenly he felt lighthearted. Death itself was an ambition, therefore what did he have to fear? He felt Diana to be no longer a separate being.

In the midst of these thoughts he heard a strained voice: “Don't shoot!” and turned to see a scratched, red-headed officer pushing aside the rifle of his sergeant, which was aimed at Billy. They wriggled up the slope and joined him.

A third man arrived to point out a line of Turks at the foot of the next ridge, slightly northeast across the gully and only three hundred yards away. Billy had missed them — they were in the wrong direction, he hastily explained, they had only just popped up.

“I've been watching them for ten minutes,” said the new arrival.

Billy made a quick suggestion to redeem his pride: “Five men, five shots.” Could he do it? Talking rapidly, he described how the moments of surprise and uncertainty after the first shots would freeze the others.

And that is what happened.

When Billy fired the astonished Turks wavered and fell while the officer and the remainder of his men hurtled down the few yards to the empty Gun Pits, and leapt in, huddling together like children.

As soon as the five shots had been loosed Billy slithered out of sight. Sure enough, a ferocious succession of bullets caned the gravely lip of the ridge where he had lain moments before.

He had just killed five men, but the feeling was not the one he wanted: the pressure in his head almost caused him to cry out in rage.

Suddenly there were soldiers everywhere. A second party had arrived on the tail of the first, but half had taken a wrong turning and were now trapped on the slope under fire. Billy's head was pounding. A rabbity corporal in panic grabbed his sleeve: “Jim and Colin are out there, what's to be done?”

“Bugger me — can't you see?”

Billy took six leaping strides over the edge of the ridge and dragged back one of the wounded. Then he dived out again grazing his left cheek and breathing the dust of acrid, pulverized stones whipped up from the nearby bullets while he rolled the second wounded man into the arms of a stretcher bearer.

“That was a Christian act,” said a moustached officer kneeling at Billy's side. “I'll remember it. What's your name?”

For a while the men lay silently under the protection of the crest. The space they occupied was no larger than a ship's life raft: leg intersected leg, elbow rested on knee. Then the officer said to Billy:

“Come with me.”

They crawled through the bushes and stopped about twenty yards farther along from Billy's sniping spot. The officer rolled onto his back, tilted his head causing his neck to stretch as if for slitting, placed two fingers in his mouth, and whistled. An answering call came from the Gun Pits. Then the officer risked a long look towards the Echelon trenches, ducked, and whistled again, this time piercingly and imperatively.

“It's all over,” he said, “we can go home.”

They heard the crash of feet as the party from the Gun Pits came hopping back. This time there was no fire from the Turks because an Australian machine gun had started up, spinning tiny whirlwinds across the face of the Echelon.

“See anything?”

“Not a ripple. I'll try the spyglass.”

“Look, Mackenzie, we can't afford this. We've got to get going.”

“I'm staying,” said Billy, who was already uncapping the telescope.

“You're mad.”

“You'll have to carry me out.” A great plain in Billy's mind was ablaze from end to end. Dark figures dashed everywhere in panic, their silhouettes startling against towering curtains of flame: Billy alone was steady.

“They'll kill you.”

“I'm staying. You wait and see, I'll be on your tail in no time.”

The officer made a last effort. He gripped Billy by the elbow and smiled condescendingly.

“Piss off,” said Billy calmly. “How do you know what my orders are? I've got business out here.”

Then it emerged that the man had all along wanted Billy to stay. He had felt guilty at leaving him, that was all. And the truth was that Billy would be doing the men a service by watching the rear. Already the sergeant had reported a glimpse of what he maintained was a battalion of Turks moving towards the rear of the Echelon. “I won't forget you,” said the officer as he left, tugging a carroty lock with respect.

At last Billy was alone. He blew dust off the sights of his rifle, took out a clean slip of flannel and wiped them. He rattled a small bottle of blacking liquid from the hollowed butt, and there, in a timeless mood of care, fastidiously painted the sights, both fore and rear. He wiped the bolt and breech until not a crumb of dirt remained, then wriggled to a more protected position.
Here he took out his telescope and began setting it up. Even without looking he knew the Turks were for the moment keeping hidden. The odd distant shot rang out, the machine gun from a mile back stuttered. Then a movement caught Billy's eye.

It was a man running, coming from the left, from the Australian lines. His route took him along the gully at the base of the ridge where Billy lay. He fairly streaked, and though he occasionally stumbled on the low undergrowth these accidents seemed merely to serve as an extra source of propulsion. His final stumble turned into a dive, and he crashed into the crumbled brick embrasure forming the near side of the Gun Pits.

Billy excitedly fiddled with the telescope and focused on the trench. He was so close that the eyepiece filled with T-joints of brick where weathered mortar left dark slits. The man must have been cautiously raising himself just then because a sweat-stained shirt intruded, so Billy lifted the telescope by slightly cocking his wrist: and found himself staring not into the face of a stranger, but at the familiar wide eyes of Walter Gilchrist.