Amongst the Dead (20 page)

‘I can’t say I’ve ever heard of it.’

‘It’s just a place, but a beautiful place. There was an artist there who was a friend of mine. Walter Spies. He taught me how to paint.’

‘Are you any good?’

He shook his head and stood up to leave.

‘No. No good at all. An amateur, and not a gifted one.’

‘What were you doing in a place like Bali?’

‘Another time, Will. I actually came here to pass on a set of orders to you, Brian, and Glen. I’m afraid it’s a rather awful assignment.’

‘I’m learning all about degrees of awfulness.’

‘This will take you into a sphere of awfulness you couldn’t have imagined. You’re being sent to a place called Gulnare Bluff. You’ll only be there for a few days. The blokes who are there already have been in place for a couple of weeks, and that’s about as much as anyone can stand. The relief platoon will pick you and them up on Monday.’

I was secretly glad to be getting away from Roper Bar for a while. It would allow the embarrassment of the assault on me to recede.

‘Rufus Farrell is going with you. He’s replacing a bloke out there who’s sick as a dog and has to be evacuated. You get along with Rufus all right, don’t you?’

‘Of course. He’s a decent fellow.’

The neutrality of my answer was a response to the unexpectedness of the question — or was I reading something into it that wasn’t there?

‘When do we leave for this … what was it called?’

‘Gulnare Bluff. In about two hours.’

‘More walking, I suppose. Endless, endless walking.’

‘The first bit is a boat trip, but you have to walk in and — I won’t lie to you — it won’t be easy. You’ll need to be down at the dock at fourteen hundred hours.’

He was about to leave, but I raised my hand to stop him. I stood up carefully.

‘Why are we being sent there?’

‘Lieutenant Jenkinson is concerned that the men who are out there are getting jumpy. It’s boredom mainly, but the interminable waiting and watching can shred a man’s nerves. A bit of entertainment might be just the tonic they need.’

‘I don’t think they see Shakespeare as a tonic, unless it’s the cod-liver-oil variety.’

‘Break them in slowly. Do some fluff, and throw in a snippet at the end. They’ll sit still if they know it’s only for a minute or so.’

‘I’ve never really equated Shakespeare with administering a needle to the arse. Just clench the buttocks and it’ll all be over before you know it.’

Archie took a final, deep drag on his kretiek, and dropped the butt into the mud at his feet.

‘Just friendly advice, Will. This time you won’t have to compete with Brian. He won’t be wearing that dress at Gulnare Bluff, believe me.’

He touched his finger to his right eyebrow in farewell, and headed towards the converted police station. I hadn’t got Archie Warmington’s measure. Not by a long shot.

Chapter Eight

gulnare bluff

THE BOAT THAT WAS TO TAKE US
at least part of the way to Gulnare Bluff was called
The Hurricane
, a 35-foot fishing vessel that looked like it had weathered several hurricanes in the course of its life. Brian, Glen, Rufus Farrell, and I came aboard and were confronted by several boxes of supplies — I knew this meant that we’d be carrying them some distance over land. I tested the weight of one and found it alarmingly heavy. There were already several men on board, including an Aboriginal fellow with the ludicrous name of Mordecai — further evidence, if any were needed, of the wretched and deadly touch of the missionary.

We sailed down the Roper River for more than eighty miles until it widened into the estuary that spilled into Limmen Bight. Keeping as close as possible to the dense mangroves that grew along its edge, we chugged around the coast until we reached the Phelp River. Here we turned in and tied up at a jetty that earned the name only because it was a structure that jutted some way into the river. The trip took four hours, and although I tried to engage Rufus Farrell in conversation, he seemed unusually reticent. If he hadn’t assumed the position of prime suspect I would have said that Nicholas Ashe’s death had affected him badly. When I asked him outright how he felt about it, he set his mouth firmly and said, ‘I don’t want to talk about Nick’s death.’

During the trip I jotted down as many lines as I could remember from various bits of poetry, good and bad, that I’d accumulated over the years, including, God help me, almost all the verses of the dreadful ‘The Tay Bridge Disaster’ by William McGonagall, Scotland’s most embarrassing literary gift to the world. It was a cruel irony, but having been appalled to discover just a few months before that it was thought to be high art by a member of my acting troupe in Maryborough, and having privately judged that member to be brainless, I was now reduced to trotting it out for the edification and entertainment of culturally starved troops. If there wasn’t already something in the Geneva Convention about reciting McGonagall to a captive audience, perhaps there ought to have been.

There were three soldiers on the jetty, and each of them was dressed in the now familiar mosquito hat and gloves. It was clear that one of the men was ill. He was sitting with his head between his knees while his companions stood on either side of him. We put on our protective clothing and off-loaded the supplies. The ailing Nackeroo was helped aboard, and both his helpers returned to the jetty. Introductions were made, but they were pointless as no one was recognisable beneath his clothing.

‘The blokes out there’ll be bloody glad to see you,’ one of these fellows said. ‘Anything to break the monotony.’

Although this was an assessment of our potential that skated close to damning with faint praise, we acknowledged it graciously.

‘So where is this Bluff?’ I asked.

‘That’s it over there, mate.’ He pointed into the distance to a dark shape rising on the horizon, barely visible in the gathering gloaming. ‘And between here and there, there’s nothing but mud.’

I’d walked through a lot of mud since arriving in the Northern Territory, but nothing like this. We sank into it up to our knees with every step we took, and the unwieldy ration box on my shoulder, coupled with an inability to move my neck, made me think that I simply didn’t have the physical stamina to reach the Bluff. The foul stink that was released with each footfall weakened both my resolve and my endurance further.

‘If any of you blokes is thinking about quitting, forget it,’ said the Nackeroo who’d done all the talking so far. Clearly, he was speaking from experience. ‘
The Hurricane
’s already left, so you can either stay here for the night or find the energy to keep going. If you want my personal opinion, you’ll be equally comfortable whatever you decide.’

His companion gave a little chortle of approval at his mate’s witticism, and we plodded on. There was no possibility of considering the implications of Nicholas Ashe’s death. Detection and deduction require a clear head. They are not easily managed in a world of stench, exhaustion, pain, and despair. I was glad of the mosquito hat, and not just because it protected my face. It also hid from view an astonishing swelling of tears. These began first as gentle weeping, and escalated into sobs which shook me from head to foot. I’d never experienced anything like it, and I felt as well a terrifying dread of what might lie beyond, of what might happen when the sobbing stopped. Was this a nervous breakdown? I was rescued by the words, ‘We’re here.’

This turned out to be only partly true. ‘Here’ was certainly solid ground, but the observation post was one hundred and forty feet up the Bluff. This part of the walk seemed initially to be a breeze, as our feet weren’t sucked into the earth, but the incline soon became almost as deadly as the mud.

When we finally arrived at the place where the Nackeroos were camped, the air was thick with smoke. There was no wind, so the smoke hung, suspended, providing merciful respite from mosquitoes that were the size of hornets. Having moved a considerable distance beyond the end of my tether, I took in nothing around me, and slipped into my cheesecloth cocoon, indifferent even to the possibility that Rufus Farrell might try to kill me during the night. Eternal sleep began to feel like an attractive option. However, temporal sleep, despite my state of collapse, proved more elusive. I actually prayed for rain, just to silence the incessant and nerve-destroying whine of the super-mosquitoes. I was constrained, too, to sleeping on my back — any attempt to adjust my repose being met with a sharp and painful reminder that the walk across the mudflats had done nothing for my neck.

Dawn broke with a clap of thunder and a downpour. I was miserable. The only aspect of my life that was going even remotely well was the ulcer on my leg. Remarkably, it had almost healed, leaving an unsightly but small depression on my calf. Whether it had responded to Isaiah’s recommended therapy, or whether my generally robust constitution had done the trick, I can’t say. All in all, though, I didn’t think I’d be taking Isaiah’s advice back to Mother as a remedy for her corns.

The rain eased and then stopped altogether. There were six men stationed at Gulnare Bluff, and as soon as I got up and began moving around I could see the advantage of the location. It was a kind of hell, but it offered clear views of Limmen Bight, the estuary, and a good way up the Roper River. If this was where the Japanese intended to land, they wouldn’t do it unnoticed. It was pointed out to me that Gulnare Bluff wouldn’t go unnoticed by the Japanese, either. They would assume it was manned and would subject it to heavy bombardment. The awful fact of the matter was that a posting to the Bluff was potentially a death sentence — a grim truth that played on the nerves as savagely as the sandflies and mosquitoes. The men at Gulnare Bluff scanned the horizon with fierce concentration twenty-four hours a day. It was a strange and debilitating exercise.

Over breakfast that morning, we met three of the Nackeroos. Each lifted his veil briefly and grinned. The two who had brought us across the mudflats were on top of the Bluff, at the signals station, so we had yet to see their faces.

‘Good to see ya,’ one of them said. ‘Ya gunna have a bit of trouble singin’ and dancin’ up here, I reckon.’

It was obvious that we were going to have a lot of trouble doing anything at all. I couldn’t see how Glen could manage his illusions with the impediment of his mosquito gloves; and yet taking them off, even for a short time, was inadvisable. When it was explained that the entertainment planned for them was in the way of magic tricks and recitation, one of them said, ‘No worries. We’ll get a good cloud of smoke going for you.’

Smoke was the Nackeroos’ best friend; if we were to survive at Gulnare Bluff, we’d have to learn how to live with it and in it. Even going to the toilet meant gathering a bundle of green leaves, and generating enough smoke to make it bearable.

‘You don’t want a sandfly bite on your knob,’ one of them said.

After breakfast, we were taken to the top of the Bluff where the signallers sat in a ditch, sheltered from the sun and rain by a tin roof. It was referred to as a ‘hut’. Inside, two men sat with the FS6 radio in a pall of smoke rising from smouldering vegetation in tins. I ducked in for a moment, but the temperature was killing. It was decided that at lunchtime Rufus Farrell, who’d already seen our act, would take over the signalling, and for a brief period only one Nackeroo would maintain the watch while the remaining four Nackeroos had their morale lifted, or merely interfered with, as the late Nicholas Ashe would no doubt have described it. At least with Rufus in the sig hut, no one would be in immediate danger of being murdered.

Glen, Brian, and I discussed what we might do. It was decided that Glen would do a few simple sleights of hand, but nothing that required Brian’s assistance. Brian would revisit the Geebung Polo Club, having made such a success of it with the lepers.

‘And what will you do?’ Glen asked, unable to completely expunge the snideness from his tone. I had no choice but to hand him a small victory.

‘I thought I might do ‘The Tay Bridge Disaster’. It might get a few laughs.’

‘It’s not Shakespeare, is it?’

‘It’s McGonagall,’ Brian said. ‘Are you sure, Will?’

‘Shakespeare is too much for their simple minds, so perhaps his polar opposite will be more acceptable.’

Glen’s tricks went over well, as they always did, and Brian’s rendition of the Paterson poem was greeted with enthusiastic applause from the audience of four. When my turn came, I removed my mosquito hat and, adopting a thick and entirely convincing Scottish accent, introduced myself as Mr William McGonagall, the greatest poet to emerge from the industrial squalor of Dundee.