Black Diamonds (15 page)

‘No, just bits and pieces.'

I can say to myself right now:
Du muβt doch total blödesein
: You must be right out of your mind.

‘Hmm,' he says, ‘could have been useful if you had — though a chap like you will be useful anyway.'

A chap like me: what's he when he's at home? Not sure I like this bloke too much any more; he thinks he has me pegged so easily.

He's still eyeing me, thinking. ‘Why do you want to do this?'

I tell him about Robby and the rest somewhere in Turkey; he says: ‘But you don't want revenge?'

‘No. I just don't want to leave it to the others.'

‘You're not doing this for King and Country either, are you?'

‘No.'

And he laughs again, leans in and says: ‘Neither am I.'

I want to know what his story is, but the interview's over. ‘Unless you'd prefer to wait until you're of age, get a form, and get a new birth certificate. It'd be a good idea to get a new birth certificate anyway, without parents' place of birth and without the extra “n”. A fair few good old Aussie German lads have been fiddling the facts to join up, or not, as they choose, no real law against it, but I'd say it's best not to advertise it, eh. If you want to sign today, come back with your papers and ask for me.'

If I think about it any more, my head's going to fall off my shoulders, so I do sign today, for the duration. It's all done in half an hour: I tell the bloke at the pub up the road that I'll write up the certificate myself thank you and the twenty-fifth of September is changed to the twenty-fifth of April and parents' place of birth, Dresden, Germany, is changed to Lithgow, New South Wales. Too easy all round. It occurs to me that I don't know a thing about Dresden or even really where it is, and I couldn't give a rat's; that's how much it matters to me now, and how much it mattered to Mum and Dad to tell me.

Captain Duncan says as I hand them over: ‘We'll see you on Friday, then, for your physical checks and balances, but I'd say you're well in. Go home and spread the happy word. Good luck.'

Hmn.

‘Where am I going to be sent?' I ask him, for what it's worth; I don't really care above the pounding in my head at what I've just done.

He says, dry as dust: ‘Where you're told to go.' As in: does it matter?

That'd be right. I nod.

‘Welcome to the worst job the army has to offer, Ackerman. And you can start calling me sir.' Yep, and he means it. And he's a nut.

And I think I might be a bit of a fully British subject now.

 

FRANCINE

The casualty figures thus far for the Gallipoli campaign are mysteriously absent from the newspaper reports; call me suspicious but perhaps that means it's likely to be a terrible number. The handful of sad, brief little notices in the local paper telling of sons and husbands lost say more. I didn't miss the one for RT Cullen; I'm sure Daniel knows, he must, and his silence says more than anything at all. Jingo-jangle higher than ever, though, for Our Brave Aussie Tribe of Achilles and his Kiwi-Polished Mates. It's a glorious proof of nationhood, a moral victory for courage and
great manhood
, apparently. Seems it'd have to be, since from the start they were dropped off in rowboats at some impossible place to face immediate fire from a waiting enemy and didn't mutiny. Even I can glean that there must have been some sort of strategic error there. But it hasn't caused a mutiny here at home, either: recruitment is higher than ever, must be well past the quota now; does our Labor Government even have a quota any more? I pray every day for it to stop, as I pray every day for a baby. Prayers are the last resort of the hopeless, though, aren't they.

I cut up the newspapers for the toot, as I've been doing before Daniel comes back every day, though he's not home yet. Lamb and potatoes roasting happily with their sprinkling of the rosemary I've grown myself, and I take my sketchbook and pencil box outside onto the back verandah while I wait, but I don't know what to do with it today. Sick of apples, that's for sure: they're beginning to bobble all over the place. Too busy with hopeless prayer, anyway, and low thoughts of all kinds about sad state of the world and my marriage. Telling myself over again that there's no point me becoming morose too: chipper up, girl. Doesn't matter that he forgot your birthday; you were never overly fond of birthdays anyway. Celebrations are only for the frivolous, aren't they.

Just on sunset I hear the wheels of his bike scrape up the dirt inside the gate. There's a magnificent feathery purple and orange arc above the hill behind the orchard and I stay here to watch it as he clumps through the house, amusing myself with the thought that it might only be the pollution in the valley beyond that makes the sunset appear so beautiful this evening. So said a recent science article in one of the papers, so it must be true: I'm seeing the colours refracting off the smoky fuzz of carbon something or other and other such gases that are no good for you in concentrated doses; just as well they are happily dispersing then: hmn, very chipper.

He comes outside and sits down on the boards next to me, his legs stretched out to the verandah edge. ‘Lovely,' he says.

‘Isn't it.' Though lovely's not a very Daniel sort of a word.

‘I meant you too,' he says, and that makes me turn around.

He has an odd look on his face; I couldn't pick what he was thinking if you gave me the word to describe his expression; I can't ever pick what he's thinking anyway. He takes my book from me and takes a piece of charcoal from my pencil box, and scribbles something on the paper; I can't see it over his knees. He scribbles some more. He's drawing something; I've never seen him do this before.

He hands it back to me. ‘There you are, Francine at nineteen. When exactly is your birthday?'

I think I say, ‘It was on the third,' but I can't be sure of that, because … it is me, a sketch of me, looking out at the orchard, though there's no orchard in the picture. There are only a handful of lines. But it's me all right. The image makes me shiver. I couldn't ever draw anything so plain and clear; and I couldn't ever draw him … not like this. I want to say:
Why are you working at a mine at all? You should be doing
this,
you should be studying somewhere.
But I begin to cry, and it quickly becomes big heaving crying. I can't help it. This is such a tangled mess and I don't know what to do to get us out of it.

He says: ‘Don't cry. Please.' But when I look at him, he is teary too. I have never seen him do this before either.

‘What's happened?' I ask him, hoping we're thinking the same thing, but somehow knowing that we're not.

‘I didn't go to work today.' A droplet slides halfway down his face and stops there but his voice is steady as ever. Blood drains away. ‘I went to Sydney and joined up.'

You what?

Stare.

Stare.

Stare.

He shoves away the tear and says: ‘I have to do this.'

No you don't, not for any reason.
‘I don't believe you.' But I do, terribly.

‘Well, that's what's happened.'

‘No.'

‘Yes.'

He says something about Robby and his wife Cass but I'm not really listening. I say, last grasp of many to come: ‘So Robby decided to jump off a cliff and now you have to follow?'

‘It's not as simple as that, it's —'

‘Yes it is.' Hysteria: thank God we have no neighbours. I am a feral cat on my hands and knees on the verandah. His drawing slides across the boards back at him.

‘It's not.' Fierce.

Don't care: ‘I'll go to the post office and telephone the barracks tomorrow and tell them you're not twenty-one. I'll tell them you're a German spy.'

‘No you won't.'

That's true, wouldn't want him to be carted off to Darlinghurst Gaol for interrogation, but: ‘You've betrayed me. You said
never.
'

‘That was before —'

‘Before what? Before devotion to misguided mates became more important than devotion to wife? You don't even love me any more, do you.' Oh, did I really say that? But I can do a lot better: ‘I'll never forgive you.'

‘I'll talk to you when you've calmed down.' He stands up and starts to walk away inside.

I spring up and grab him by the shoulder, push him hard in the chest. ‘You'll damn well talk to me now! You've barely spoken to me for months and months! You can't do this!'

‘I have and I am.' He's holding me by the wrists, so easily, gently, hands too big for my bones.

‘No!'

‘Yes.'

Stare.

Stare.

Stare.

Still holding my wrists: ‘I'm going on the early train Friday morning.'

Yes. ‘You can let me go now.' He does. I sink back to the boards. Unbridled self-expression complete. Just shock. One whole day left.

‘Not
going
going obviously.' He sits down behind me. It's dark, and cold now.

That's right, I think, you'll have to pass a medical examination and do your short course on how to kill and be killed first, to make sure you fit the mould. Unsocialise yourself and join the greatest union in the land. But I can't say any of that. Most of what I am thinking I can no longer say, maybe even to myself. I want to moan:
Why? Why? Why?
But I do know why.

As his arms encircle me I become so very small. I'm still crying, but quietly, until the tears seem to be doing what they do without my participation.

I can hear myself ask him about Cass Cullen. During my fit he'd said something about helping her out: ‘What do you want me to do?'

‘You can arrange something through the compensation fund, can't you? Those lawyers will do whatever you ask them to, regards that money.'

That's true. There's nothing to say I have to provide any proof of employment or documentation of any kind. I can just tell them to pay out for Robby and no one will be any the wiser. ‘Yes. I'll organise it for her,' I tell the apple shadows, then calculations needle through anguish: if there are too many Robbys from the Wattle, we'll run down the fund; but then the longer the war goes on, the more money we stand to make. I'll have to ask Stanley and Bragg to increase the profit percentage going to the fund, just in case.

It's not like I need the money; I'm swimming in it. No one to spend it on but me soon, or Sarah if she needs anything, and she never does; she says since Peter's been doing so well for himself lately in Newcastle, it's hard enough trying to stop him from sending her money she doesn't want. And now Daniel will be earning a wage again too: a grand six shillings a day, and being fed by the AIF, whether he likes it or not, while English Boys only get one shilling. One shilling? Massive calculations scream at me, and I want to scream back at them:
No!

Instead I say: ‘I've heard army food's appalling.'

He says: ‘Couldn't be worse than yours.'

I turn around and hit him in the chest again, for being back, for five minutes, and now going away.

‘I'm an excellent cook, thank you.'

He squeezes me tighter. ‘You're an excellent everything.'

Don't you dare start the weeping again, Francy.

‘What on earth could the AIF possibly want with the likes of you?' I ask him.

‘Digging holes, by the sounds of it; what else? Engineers, I think. Once I've learned how to shoot and stand to attention. They might decide against me after a week.' They won't. He adds: ‘A bloke who knew of your father recruited me.'

‘Who?'

‘A Captain Duncan, says his father knew him from the track.'

The Leprechaun lives. Never heard of this Captain Duncan but he'll do.

‘Strange bloke,' Daniel clarifies. Strangeness seems apt, while we're shifting realities again.

I have every kind of emotion bursting as I kiss Daniel all over his face. ‘I'm sorry.' For everything. Oh Daniel.

 

DANIEL

‘One day you'll do something surprising, Daniel.'

Mum's not angry when I ride round in the morning and tell her. She's beyond disappointment with me, and she's been talking to Evan. They were expecting it. Good thing everyone else knows what I'm about. She tells me: ‘Roy's with the Engineers too, he's just arrived in Turkey. He says it's wonderful weather.'

My mother can put on sarcasm far too well. There's nothing
wonderful
about any of this. And I'm scared already, but who wouldn't be? Those that aren't must be idiots. I don't know the first thing about it yet, but I write that down as rule number one from today.

Mum says: ‘Your father would agree with this commitment to your country.'

I nearly lose it.

But she adds: ‘And he would agree with me that you're an idiot.
Ein totaler Idiot.
'

She goes to fill the kettle and when she turns back round to me she says: ‘You don't owe anyone anything. If there is one thing I want you to get through your thick head before you die, it is that.'

She's taking cups from the cupboard, but I can't stay long. France wants a baby, and I'm not sure when I'll get another chance. I'm not going to die. Thanks a lot, Mum.

 

FRANCINE

He's being let out from imperial death practice for a whole day. I'll meet him at the station tomorrow morning, me and Hayseed, come for Our Boy in Our Drab Khaki. I've never been so excited in my life. It's been six long weeks and Miss Frankston at the library is sick of seeing my face: I've read every rubbishy novel in the place, and half of a compendium of Henry Lawson's stories: I stopped at ‘The Drover's Wife' after it gave me dreams of snakes under the bed; I've read
Bituminous Coal in the Western and Illawarra Fields
, and the equally obscure
Expressionism: Continental Art or Arrogance?
, neither of which I understood much of, and I'm now working my way through
A Critical Study of the Iliad & the Odyssey
, and I can recommend that it is vastly more tedious than Homer himself. I'll give it away, after it puts me to sleep tonight. I've given all our apples away too, a sack for every man and boy at the Wattle; it was snowing a bit, Christmassy, sort of, seemed appropriate. Mr McNally had dropped in with some more feed for Hayseed and agreed to help me bag them, after Sarah and Miriam and the seven imps had come round the day before to help in the emergency of picking them and eating some of them, but he wouldn't take anything for it, or for carting them for me. Said: ‘Fact of 'em all's too entertaining,' whatever that means; he's a very odd man: he has wrinkles so deep they look like blue tattoos, etching a scowl over his kindness, and his gruff, grumbly: ‘Good girl, Missus.' My goodness wasn't much more than a small thought: the orchard is so small, you couldn't make a living from its twenty-nine trees yielding approximately two thousand seven hundred and forty-two fruits so far, give or take an apple. But dear God, has it been insurance in its provision of a little time-consumption.

Can't read, can't sleep, can't count apples now, though; convinced that the trains won't be running, so I arrive at the station an hour early, to check with the stationmaster. Yes, it's coming, barring a blizzard or a bushfire; as if anything short of Armageddon would stop the coal trains steaming up and back. Wait, wait, wait. Avoid pacing, stop jiggling. But have I got the right day? I didn't bring his note with me to check. It said the fifth, didn't it; or could it have been the sixth? His handwriting is so scrawly, maybe I have got it wrong. Oh stop it, Francy! What am I going to be like when he goes
away
away? When we'll have only notes. Not even the stupid telephone: a couple of weeks ago we said a few words to each other down the line at the post office after Mr Symes sent a boy around to tell me Daniel had booked a call. Daniel said, ‘Hello'; I said, ‘Hello'; he said, ‘I just wanted to hear your voice.'; I said, ‘What did you say?'; he said, ‘Can you hear me?'; yes I could, but it didn't even sound like him, and then the line went off, or whatever it does when it stops connecting. Everyone who's anyone is getting a telephone installed these days. Not me. I want Daniel. Here.

Oh heavens, I can hear the train coming now. Here it is. And I run along the platform when I see him, he's not hard to spot, I run with everything. And I kiss him all over his face, and I don't care if that's indecorous. I can't say anything, I just kiss him.

We don't even make it home, only so far as Calypso's window on the rise along the track. The fresh dusting of snow crunches against the heels of my boots as we melt together.

When we've fallen back into the ferns on the embankment, he says: ‘Hello.'

I'm just so terrified, even through this pulsing delirium, with him, within me.

I look at him properly now. His hat chucked back in the trap, my hands on the shoulders of the wool of his tunic, his eyes greener for its dry gum-leaf hue. He's cut his hair so short round the back and sides it's like sandpaper under my fingers. He says it's just too hot against the collar; it'll grow back. Collar: pinned with two spiky brass rising suns containing tiny crowns and even tinier Australias.

I want to weep, but there's no way in the world I'm going to.

‘And I still can't shoot straight,' he says. ‘The only thing of sense I
have
learned so far is that I'm six feet six and a half inches tall and that's just shy of two metres metric — which means my feet overshoot an army issue cot by about twenty centimetres. Which is roughly ten per cent of fifteen stone not accounted for, which is nearly ten kilograms if you're a Frenchman.'

‘You overshoot this bed too,' I say, looking at his feet. We've just made love again, barely in the front door and I didn't think we'd even make it to the bedroom.

‘True.' He wriggles his toes. ‘But this bed isn't nearly so comfortable.'

And it is funny after every shambles he's described about the barracks and the camp on the sportsground and the training drills. The lot he's with are not really much chop as soldiers, he says. But that's what they are and I want him to shoot straight. I want him to hew coal instead. No I don't. I just want the angel to come to still the lions' mouths.

Sarah's back in Bathurst again, so we don't stop by her house, but we do have to go and have some photographs taken in town. We don't even have a wedding picture, but it seems we need something now. Daniel says he'll be back on proper leave sometime before their ship departs. Whack. So I can give him his photograph of me then.

I don't make a show, of anything, on the platform as I wave goodbye to Sapper Ackerman. Who'll be going off to war to dig holes somewhere, sometime. Who can clean a rifle in his sleep but can't use it with any confidence. Who's so fit he's dangerous. Who has difficulty with the word ‘sir' but whose captain is trying to help him with his attitude by the judicious application of full pack drill and a lap or several around Moore Park. I still have difficulty believing all this, but it's real. All around me, as Lithgow gives up its rocks, and metals, and rifles from the factory across town, its acres of khaki wool and Daniel.

Who has no idea at all where his ship will take him.