Amongst the Dead (12 page)

‘The usual tinned shit, army biscuits, but at least they’ve sent us some medical stuff — iodine, metho, antiseptic powder, razor blades, lucerne tablets, Salvital. No soap, no shaving cream.’

He pulled another box towards him.

‘Aha, comforts. Let’s see what the Comfort Fund thinks will make us happy.’

He began to unpack the items.

‘Socks. Great. Toothpaste. Well, that’s good. It’s better than cold ash. Shaving cream! Boot polish? Are they serious? No cake, no beer. That’s it. What a fucking comfort.’

‘It does seem a bit meagre.’

‘Nothing worthwhile gets past the bloody wharfies in Darwin. We’re supposed to get two bottles of beer per man, per week. As if. We don’t even get beer at Platoon HQ.’

Brian came over to where we were sitting, and offered to set up my bed — a gesture, I suppose, designed to affirm that he hadn’t forgotten we were to look out for each other.

‘I’ll help you,’ I said, and took the opportunity to talk to him about Fulton.

‘I know it’s strange, Brian, but I don’t know very much about Fulton at all. I have no idea what he believes, how he thinks, what he likes, what he loathes. He was so much younger than I was.’

I thought he was about to make a remark to the effect that my ignorance was due more to indifference than age difference, but he checked himself and said something that stunned me.

‘Fulton is very like his father.’

‘Mother always accused
me
of that.’

‘No, Will. Not
your
father. Fulton’s father.’

I stared at him, trying to reconstruct his perfectly simple sentence into something that made sense. Before I could press him to clarify this astonishing assertion, the jingling of bridles and the sound of voices announced the arrival of the reconnaissance party.

Three white men and an Aboriginal man emerged into the informal clearing of the campsite. Behind them, amongst the trees, at least twenty horses snorted or put their heads down to graze on whatever meagre tussocks they could find. Half a dozen of them were loaded with packs; the rest were unencumbered. All were wet with sweat. The Aboriginal man and two of the white men began unpacking the animals. The third made his way towards Brian and me. Unlike Rufus, who wore no clothes at all, each of these men wore long trousers and long-sleeved shirts — I presumed it was inadvisable to walk through the country beyond the camp without some protection against sharp grasses and bushes. The man approaching had his head down, his features obscured by his slouch hat. A few feet from us, he removed his hat and smiled. He sported quite a healthy brown beard, and at first I failed to recognise my own brother. His face was tanned, and filthy with dust and sweat.

‘Gedday, Brian,’ he said, and held out his hand.

‘You remember Will?’ Brian said rather humorously, or so he thought. Fulton obviously found it amusing as well, because he replied, ‘Will? Yes, I have a vague recollection of someone called Will.’ He then held out his hand to me and said, ‘Gedday, Will. Welcome.’

Under other circumstances I might have been won over immediately by his charm, but Brian’s puzzling revelation caused me to search Fulton’s face for evidence of a family resemblance. My stare must have been so intense as to be almost rude.

‘It is me, Will,’ he said, and laughed. ‘It’s the beard, right?’

I agreed that it was indeed the beard, and shook his hand firmly. ‘I’m sorry. It’s just that the last time I saw you, you were a boy — and here you are, not a boy.’

‘It’s good to see the two of you. How’s Mother?’

‘She writes to you every day,’ Brian said. ‘Every day, and posts them off.’

‘I’ve sent a couple, but I’m hopeless at writing, and I suppose she’s waiting for replies. I hardly get her letters, though, and when they do come, they come in a rush. Don’t tell her, but they’re a bit boring.’

‘There’ll be some coming soon that might cheer you up. Very newsy, they’ll be,’ Brian said. ‘We’ll fill you in later.’

‘You’ve met Rufus and Isaiah, obviously. Come and meet the other blokes.’

Glen and Charlie had already made their way over to where the horses were being unpacked, and Glen was walking amongst them with the kind of confidence around animals that I lacked completely. They looked boney and flighty to me, and I hoped I’d never be called upon to ride one of them.

The two remaining Nackeroos were absurdly young, both of them in their early twenties. The taller and darker of the two was ostensibly the officer in charge. His name was Corporal Andrew Battell, and when he shook my hand he looked at me with slightly feverish eyes — the consequence of a bout of dengue fever, I soon learned, to which he was resolutely refusing to surrender.

The Aboriginal man didn’t come forward to meet us, but he was introduced at a distance by Nicholas Ashe, the remaining member of this section, with the words, ‘The nigger over there, he’s Ngulmiri. Me? I’m Nick Ashe. How are ya?’

He had very short brown hair, which would have been tightly curled if he’d let it grow, and he was in robust health. He was one of those nuggety, sinewy types who’d grown up rough, was handy with his fists, and was a good man to have on your side. I found him immediately repellent. I saw right through his larrikin grin and knew how quickly it could slide into a vicious snarl. Nicholas Ashe struck me as a young man for whom violence was the preferred form of self-expression.

‘We’re looking forward to the show,’ he said. ‘I like a good song.’

I said nothing. It wasn’t quite the time to disappoint him with the news that singing wasn’t a strong point in the repertoire.

‘Let’s get these horses watered,’ Andrew Battell said, but without enthusiasm, his fever having drained him of the energy required to fuel that emotion. Isaiah appeared and took the reins of four horses; Ngulmiri did the same, although they didn’t speak to each other or even acknowledge each other in any way that I could see. Nicholas, Fulton, and Glen took the reins of the remaining horses, and we began to walk away from the camp. At a very short distance we broke through the trees onto a trampled path bordered by grass that was as tall as I was. It was a narrow vein that gave way to scrub, beyond which I could see a sluggishly moving stream. When Rufus had said there was a creek nearby, I’d pictured something in the order of a bubbling brook. This was as wide as a river.

When we reached it, Charlie confirmed that it was indeed no more than a creek, swollen by recent rain and likely to become broader and faster as the Wet progressed. Isaiah, Ngulmiri, and Rufus manoeuvred the horses downstream and allowed them to enter the water to the depth of their withers, all the while moving amongst them. On the shore, Andrew Battel stood by with a Thompson submachine-gun at the ready. It was a disconcerting sight, and not one that encouraged me to dive in, despite the heat and the promise of cooling down.

Upstream from the horses, Fulton and Nicholas began what was clearly a routine by which each of them might immerse himself, albeit quickly. Fulton went in first while Charlie stood with a rifle cocked and pointed vaguely at the creek. Nicholas Ashe began throwing bits of branches and stones out beyond Fulton, presumably with the intention of dissuading crocodiles from approaching. This was so far from being a relaxing swim at the end of a long, hard day as to be ludicrous. When Fulton emerged, his legs were studded with leeches, some of them as fat as garden slugs. He brushed them off without concern, and Nicholas performed a perfunctory check on those parts he couldn’t see. He pulled three leeches from Fulton’s buttocks before slipping into the water himself while Fulton created the necessary disturbance. He, too, was festooned with leeches when he returned to the bank. Both Charlie and Glen swam, and were de-leeched afterwards. Brian and I demurred.

Back at the camp, the time-consuming business of hobbling each of the horses was undertaken. We all pitched in, but the exercise made me extremely nervous, and I was more hindrance than help. Bending down amongst the stamping feet of irritated horses is not for the inexperienced, and I was grateful to Ngulmiri, who saw that I was hopeless and came to my aid discreetly. He seemed to instinctively understand that my clumsiness would be seen as contemptible weakness by Nicholas Ashe and the others.

‘All right now, boss,’ he said. He was older than Isaiah. His cheeks were smooth, but he grew a thick goatee, unruly and streaked with grey.

‘All right now,’ I said.

I noticed that the leeches which had attached themselves to the legs of the horses were allowed to gorge themselves and fall off of their own accord. Pulling them off was an extra duty nobody had the energy to undertake. It was tiring enough checking each hoof and digging out small stones or clearing away mud.

By mid-afternoon the heat was almost unbearable, although the sun had been blocked out by gathering clouds. We returned to the camp without Isaiah and Ngulmiri, who remained with the horses.

‘Horse tailing is nigger work,’ Nicholas Ashe said dismissively, indifferent to the fact that both men could hear him.

The information gathered during the two-day reconnaissance needed to be collated, and additions to existing maps needed to be entered so that Charlie Humphries could take them back with him to Darwin. This was the section’s main responsibility — providing topographical details about river courses, water holes, and access routes and, very importantly, determining where emergency aircraft landings might be made, or where airfields might be built. The information needed to be sorted out quickly, because Charlie Humphries’s departure depended on the turning of the tide.

Sitting under the tarpaulin, Andrew Battell drew details on a map while the others retrieved the remaining rations boxes from the ketch. Glen, Brian, and I stayed behind, having decided that we should put on a bit of a show when the men returned. This was, after all, ostensibly the point of our presence. Brian and Glen were to do their magic act, with Brian fully costumed as Glen’s beautiful assistant. I couldn’t do any of the stuff I’d been lumbered with in the concert party shows because I’d been part of a cast, and here there was no cast. Thus I was presented with the perfect opportunity to offer the Nackeroos a preview of my ambitions regarding
Timon of Athens
. Having carried the tails and topper this far, it would have been ridiculous not to wear them.

We told Corporal Battell that we were withdrawing to the bush to prepare for the performance, and that when Fulton, Rufus, Charlie, and Nicholas returned, he should sit them down, along with Ngulmiri and Isaiah, and call out. Glen and Brian would then appear and do their act with a minimum of props, but with a maximum of glamour. I’d stay back until they’d finished, and then come forward and transport them to Shakespeare’s Athens.

Brian didn’t like being watched as he changed into his satin sheath and convincing wig. It wasn’t possible to hide amongst the sparse vegetation, but he took himself some distance away and, with the help of only a small hand-mirror and a few sticks of make-up, transformed himself into the beauty who’d fooled and beguiled audiences in Maryborough and Mt Isa. Glen and I changed into our formal wear and stood in the scrub, acutely aware of how spectacularly out of place it all was.

‘I’d be willing to bet,’ Glen said, ‘that, in the whole history of the world, we’re the first people to wear tails here, in this spot.’

Brian joined us — the illusion of his womanliness slightly compromised by his failure to shave since the previous day. We were something to behold.

‘I’m nervous,’ Brian said. ‘More nervous than I was in Mt Isa.’

I explained that it was frequently the case that smaller audiences were tougher on the nerves than larger ones. The awareness of the individual responding gets lost or muted if the audience is large. If it’s small, one is much more alert to particular eyes and bodies. The judgement of the individual is more daunting than the judgement of the crowd.

Without large props to create large illusions, Glen was obliged to confine his act to sleight-of-hand. This, he said, suited him fine, and he and Brian insisted that I turn my back while they rigged their clothes with various cards, notes, coins, and other magic accoutrements. Brian had been shown the workings of many tricks in order to facilitate their successful prosecution, but I was not afforded this courtesy — an omission which I found galling. I’m not one of those people who wish to preserve the secret of a trick. My immediate desire, having enjoyed an illusion, is to know how it was done.

Andrew Battell coo-eeed, and we approached the camp. I stayed out of sight, and watched as Brian rested his hand on Glen’s arm and walked with him into the clearing. He moved in his heels over the uneven ground and through the thin stringybarks and spreading pandanus with impeccable grace and control. The whistles and whoops that rose through the trees announced that they’d won the approval of their audience before a single trick had been demonstrated.

I paced and, in a low voice, readjusted the emphases in some of the verse I intended to speak. Landing hard on a word instead of gliding over it, or vice versa, might be the difference between making sense or nonsense of a character.

Laughter and applause coming from the camp meant that Brian and Glen were doing well. When I launched into some of
Timon of Athens
’ meatier speeches, the change of pace would take them by surprise, but I knew I could hold them. They were hungry for entertainment, but this didn’t mean they had to be fed only pap.