Black Diamonds (24 page)

‘Yes, Doctor,' she says, but you should see the look she shoots him behind his back as she walks away: she hates his guts. Who'd be a nurse? None of this is her fault.

He's about to walk away too, but he stops and says to me: ‘How you bearing up, generally?'

How do you reckon? Happy as Larry. ‘All right, I suppose.'

He says again: ‘Won't be long now, we'll get you down from the traction. You'll feel better with your legs on the bed.'

No I won't. I'm not going to feel better until I leave here. This afternoon I watch a very unlucky bloke dying of septicaemia across the other side of the room. All doctors too busy with a full load of new casualties, too many holes to patch and amputations to do today; and nothing you can do for blood poisoning anyway, apart from a shot of too much morphia, which is in short supply at the moment and can't be wasted on him. Please, someone shoot him. But nurses don't carry guns; there's probably a very good reason for that.

I go for days at a time without really speaking now. I am lucky, I am lucky, I am lucky. Doesn't help.

Bloke in the bed next to mine, congratulating himself at only losing three fingers on his trigger hand, says to me today: ‘What's the thing you want the most right now, ay?' Leery, cheery, sliding his eyes over the backside of my main nurse. Her name's Sister Taylor, or Pam to me, and she's got enough to put up with herself.

I say to him: ‘To piss standing up, without her assistance.' Fuck off.

And the rest. I want to go home, to be with France, to see my child. I want to stop having the dreams every night, and sometimes any time while I'm just staring at the ceiling, not looking at my stupid legs, up through the bars of my own very special little cage, or out the window over the other side of the room, and I only glance at that to see that it's still daylight, because every time I do I think I can see the flash of mortar fire under the rain clouds. Lovejoy wants me to have some brew or other to help me sleep, while I'm still waiting to be
got down
, but I'm not having it. Dad would agree: you have to work these things out yourself. You can't fight fear with anything except yourself. It's just fear and horror and not understanding why I am so bloody lucky that is giving me the joes. I'm smart enough to know that. It's only come on because I'm not in so much pain any more, and I don't have anything better to do. It'll pass.

Someone else starts nattering on about Our Little Aussie Digger, Billy Hughes, and how he saw him when he passed through the front, on prime-ministerial tour, saying the whole country was behind us, more Aussie troops on the way. I'm not impressed; but I'd like to have a word with Hughes right now and let him know all about the big parade in here. I remember reading something ages ago, before I left home, about his objections to Australia sending troops to that Boer War, once upon a time, when he was a New South Wales Solidarity Labor Party MP and president of the Waterside Workers' Union, before he was anywhere near the top job; doesn't have any objection now, does he. Little Brit Shit when it suits. Have to try to keep that opinion to myself around here, though: everyone thinks he's marvellous, putting Australia on the map, like it wasn't a whole fucking continent before he lobbed in it.

Mouth firmly shut, all I can do is read, which is something that I've not been known to do at great length. I now have far too good an understanding of the hundred per cent arsewipe that entertains people: fantasies of triumph and tragedy and love and chums forever, and sometimes just plain boring words strung along for no clear purpose. There's a boom in that industry in London, because they just keep coming. Stuff to get people to sleep by nine pm; doesn't work here. I can get stuck on a word like ‘cupboard', like I've got chats come in my ear to get at my brain, and it'll keep me awake for hours wishing I couldn't read at all; wishing I could do a fucking tapestry cushion cover like the bloke on the other side of me; no I don't. Pam gets hold of copies of the magazines the Tommies are printing at the front — there's a few laughs in there; seems the officers of the BEF do a good line in sick humour on Shit River's Fluent Effluence and Serious Pointlessness when they are not being arseholes, better than
Aussie's
We're A Lot of Larrikins Aren't We anyway, but that's only five minutes' worth and for obvious reasons there isn't a constant boom in that magazine industry. I want to draw. I know that I could get the pictures out of my nightmares and away into the light if I could draw. Or carve. Which only makes me think of Fucked Elbow, and the fact that I still can't move the fingers on my right hand very much: possible spanner in my plans for permanent good behaviour and doing what I should be doing, whenever I get out of here.

Which won't be soon. Full cast finally arrives for my lower half, and it is more comfortable too, sort of. It's an indescribable relief at first to not feel the stretch, like I just don't exist from the middle of my chest down. I'm floating in cotton wool for a day, on the biggest and best bed in the ward, before I can't believe I'm going to spend weeks like this. Six of them, at least. Not tied to the bed now, but cemented to it, with a pole holding my ankles a good two feet apart, and another holding my knees bent, reminding me not to get any ideas about going anywhere. Not in any pain at all, but already insane. I can hear Stratho laughing:
Got you good and plastered now.
Fuck off. How can it take that long? Lovejoy says, checking my toes: ‘It can take as long as six months for a pelvic fracture such as yours to heal.'
What?
But I don't need telling again: smash up your hip and the top end of your leg by means of flying metal and things'll be grim, won't they. By all counts I should really be dead. ‘But you're doing well, and your leg is in far better shape than expected. Count yourself lucky. I do think you should consider taking the sedative, though.'

No. It'll only be opium and brandy and I'm not spending weeks swallowing some rubbish dope old women have to take for their nerves. Pam has a go: ‘There's no harm in trying it, is there?' But I'm not talking today.

She says: ‘Well, let's get the covers up over you then.'

‘No. Leave it.'

‘It's chilly this morning.'

‘Not inside this thing it's not.'

‘Right.' She pulls the sheet up between my legs, to make me decent where I need to be, and says as she folds the blanket away: ‘You know, you're a much more pleasant lad when you're not talking.'

She doesn't mean that, though; she's a good sort. She does whatever I ask her to do, but not on account of Lovejoy. A few weeks ago when the ward was cleared for cleaning, she tried to get me chatting, picked up my photos of Francine and said she looked far too sensible to belong to me, and I dropped my bundle right on her. I even told her how scared I was about what would happen if I couldn't walk. She told me not to be silly: Lieutenant Joyful might be an arrogant piece of work but he doesn't give false hope — wouldn't bother with me if I wasn't worth bothering; wouldn't have kept me here. I knew that, but still, he's also been careful not to say I will be able to walk, and after so long tied to the bed with your legs wasting away, you wonder. Wonder about an awful lot. She also said France was a lucky girl; don't know about that.
Glücklich, glücklich, glücklich.
Fuck that word.

She leaves me to my maggoty self now; I'm not the only prick she has to look after.

I get back to my letter from France. It arrived yesterday, and it's enormous. Thirty-seven pages filled with every detail of her and Little Danny: that she's sure he smiles when she says Daddy, that she's sure his eyes are going to be green, that he kicks and punches like he was born to it, that already he's nearly too big for his basket and all the clothes she made him; what Mum said about him, what Mim said when she came to visit, what the kids said, what Evan said. She describes the rolls of fat on him for half a page. On and on, and I could read it forever, except that she tells me she does this transport thing for injured veterans with her friend Louise, which sounds like it might come in handy for me if hopes are false and permanent damage is badly permanent, and that she thinks Mum has forgiven me for leaving now I'm safely out of action. Yep, hilarious. Almost as hilarious as the thought of Francine driving a motor car: she must be joking. She can't see two feet in front of her. She says nothing matters more than that I be well, and that not too well doesn't matter. She doesn't mention how she's really got on while I've been buggerising around for nothing and getting crippled. It's all cheery, cheery, cheery, and somehow not all of her. I want her to call me an arse, I want her to punch me in the chest and then kiss me. I want to touch her. I want her here. No I don't; I don't want her to see me like this. Instead, I've read her letter fifty-eight times since lunch yesterday, rationing myself.

Now this young woman appears over the top of the twenty-second page. I've been ignoring her the whole time she's been in here; she's not a nurse, lucky her, she's an odd little thing, a Red Cross volunteer, who's come in to help write letters for the incapable or the illiterate, cut hair, have a chat. She's a widow, I've overheard that. And she's here in the middle of nowhere not too far from the front lines in France, doing her bit for a spell. She's not frightened of diggers she's said; her husband was the hardest case; she got a round of laughs at that. She's upper crust, and there's a spill of Irish in her voice,
good heavens, absolutely
, laughing, laughing. It's too much.

She says to me: ‘Oh dear, aren't you in a bother.'

Fuck off. At least she looks nothing like France: France is all slim, smooth lines and perfect red and white and blue, while this woman is blonde and plump, soft colours fading into each other, but she really is sweet. She has grey eyes, smiling at me.

I say: ‘Hmn.'

She says: ‘D'you want anything? Haircut, letter, bag of oranges for the show?'

I really do want to smile back but my face doesn't work.

‘There's a band coming this afternoon, tea on the lawn et cetera. D'you want to see if we can get you outside?'

‘No.' I nearly laugh. Do I really look fit for travel? More to the point, do I really look as if I'd like to be lifted onto a spine-bed and wheeled outside to listen to some shithouse military band that I'll be able to survive perfectly well from here? It's humiliating enough to have to have two strong orderlies lift me while the nurses change my bedding, and turn me over for a bit every other day.

‘You could do with a haircut,' she says.

‘No.' I can't help the Fuck Off in that. It's the last thing I want; I've just grown it back. My only achievement since I've been here. I'll get it trimmed another time, thank you.

She shrugs and floats away.

But she must have been a spy sent to inform a higher authority. Duncan's back the next day during a short leave, which for Australians means hanging about a very, very, very long way from home, playing endless games of two-up, drinking, praying, hunting down a chaplain of any denomination, or trying to talk to French girls, well not in Dunc's case, but all of them just waiting to go back to hell. He's not hanging about, though. He's come all the way here, as my CO, since I'm still in the army, to have a word with me.

Which is, first off, taking in the sight: ‘God, you poor bastard. Won't bother asking.' Then he tells me he's mates with some mate of Lovejoy's and they've been chatting. He's also my mate and he needs to tell me: ‘I'm sure you have your reasons, incomprehensible as they may be, but it's disturbing for others. Just take the sedative, to go to sleep at the appropriate time and not wake others up while you're at it.'

Apparently I am now at my most vocal when I am asleep. He adds: ‘And your mutterings in German might be particularly upsetting for some. Note the sensitivity shown to you on this.'

Jesus; I had no idea and no one's said anything about it. All right.

‘If you don't take it voluntarily, you'll get it in a needle.'

‘All right.'

He looks at me like he'd rather be cleaning his toenails. ‘I'm sorry.'

‘What for?'

‘Recruiting you, everything since.'

‘I would have done it anyway.'

‘Yes, you did do it anyway.' I can hear what It he's referring to, but we won't talk about that part of my behaviour; I don't ever want to remember some of my acts of stupidity, and there were quite a few of them. So he only says: ‘You couldn't help yourself. In that regard, I'm glad you're hobbled now.'

‘I'm glad you're glad.' Fuck off.

He laughs. ‘Is there anything I can try to scrounge for you? Anything you're interested in that'll take your mind off it?'

No. But I say, half to get the reaction I'm after: ‘I want something better to read, something highbrow to help the sedative along — politics, art, whatever. You know what I'm like.'

There it is: he rolls his eyes and gives me that chuckle. ‘I'll see what I can do.'

Doesn't get around to it, though. Two weeks later I'm told he's dead. Shell right on target this time for Captain Richard Gregor Duncan. You really don't want to know what I'm like after that. Stratho's favourite term and I don't care who hears it.

Lots of sedative required. But not enough opium in it to cover the very serious pointlessness. Of the animals winning a piece of cracked dirt that used to be someone's home, of Fritz trying to take it back again now and flooding this place with Canadians. Of me, of hoping, anything. The world is still ending. The world needs a quick, clean bullet in the head and so do I. Hooroo.

 

FRANCINE

‘Heard any more from him?' Evan asks me, but he's looking at Danny, leaning over his basket on the sofa in the parlour, tickling his toes.

‘No,' I say and try for chipper, although I feel quite ill. ‘I'm sure he's still getting through my last letter.' Which was about sixty pages or so, full of more inane twittering than the one before that, and I only posted it the day before yesterday.

It's mid-November, and I should have heard something more by now, from him, or of him. No pink telegram, no FURTHER ADVICE; nothing but a
bit bunged up, don't expect dancing, however it goes I'll compensate
and
look out.
The only thing I can work out for myself in that is the dancing bit: we've never been dancing so I wouldn't know if he could or not, but he's heavy-footed and slightly bow-legged so I don't imagine he'd have been much chop anyway. I've asked Doctor Nichols about bunged up and he suggested that the inventory of injuries was indeed fairly well bunged and that I was quite right to prepare for some sort of worst, but that Daniel's resilience should not be underestimated. As an illustration, he told me that when Daniel was seventeen he walked all the way from the Wattle, across town and up to the hospital with a huge deep burn to the inside of his leg that would have had most bellowing for mercy, and said to Mrs Moran: ‘We've run out of iodine at the mine. Can I get some on this?' Mrs Moran said: ‘Danny, what were you thinking walking such a distance with this?' And he replied: ‘It hurt too much to ride my bike.' She took him straight to Doctor Nichols to have it properly cleaned and dressed, then he went back to work the next day, and it didn't even scar him. This was meant to help me rally? He's a tough one is our Daniel. But, so Sarah said, not as tough as his father. One thing I worked out quickly: we're not going to run out of iodine at the Wattle again.

Evan looks up at me now and says: ‘He'll be all right, love. Too much to hurry home for.'

‘Yes,' I say but it's a wispy weak sound that comes out of me. Doctor Nichols is the only one I've told about bunged up. I haven't had the heart to tell anyone else, especially not Sarah. I've only parroted the line: ‘He says not to worry, just a few broken bones.' The look of utter relief on Sarah's face was enough to warn me off saying another thing, apart from: ‘He sounds in very good spirits.'

‘What is it, love? You don't look well,' says Evan. ‘I can come back another time.'

‘No,' I say. ‘I'm fine, thank you. Just a little tired.' And tired is true: I'm trying to wean my little Danny some because he's wanting to be fed too much. Sarah said, from experience, that I'd better start putting him off sooner rather than later, unless I want to disappear; but it's hard to resist him, he's so lovely. I can lose hours and hours feeding him every day, imagining I'm sending off magic as I do. That's not why I feel so ill, though.

‘Well, you could put down that tea tray, might help.' Evan's crinkled face smiles at me. He looks the toughest of the tough, till he smiles like that. And that only makes me feel worse. I haven't seen Daniel's smile for so long and now it even seems to have disappeared from my imagination. I've always been able to conjure it, even if only to give myself a fit, but now I can't find it except in his photograph. But I suppose that would be a feature of being heartsick, worried and preparing for the worst, wouldn't it. So put down the tray, Francy, before Evan thinks you really are ill.

And get your mind out of your own small world for five minutes to think of others. I'm not the only serviceman's wife left wondering, and, more immediately, there are coalminer's wives out there at the moment in a spot of bother.

I say, because Evan's not just come here to tickle Little Danny's toes: ‘How much do you think would tide most over? Give me a total and I'll draw it out of the bank tomorrow.' We're in the midst of a coal strike, two weeks into it, and it's not looking like stopping soon. The dispute is over hours, over the owners wanting to increase shift times to increase their profits; thinly disguised avarice in the name of the war effort, if you ask me. There's no problem with hours at the Wattle, of course, but the men have to strike for solidarity, and every miner in New South Wales, Queensland and Victoria is on strike. Drummond is scarce with me, has been since I sent him packing over a year ago, but I've heard he's in Sydney right now lending his support to the capitalist cause: to force a relaxation of the regulations through parliament.

Evan says, aghast: ‘Not taking your money, lass.'

‘Why on earth not?' I can't take it out of the company account without Drummond's approval, and I doubt very much he's going to return from Sydney a converted philanthropist.

‘That's Danny's money too,' Evan says, ‘and you don't know if you might need it one day.'

Whack: if Daniel can't work when he comes home is what he means. Evan Lewis is not silly: he's a miner, he can guess at bunged up without my saying it; he's seen the fear of it written all over my face this afternoon anyway. And his consideration and love for his Danny makes me thankful I am sitting down now. But he is also not entirely aware of just how much money Daniel and I have: buckets and buckets, thousands of them. As I'm thinking how I might tactfully put that to him, he adds: ‘You can't support more than a hundred and their families without asking him; I won't allow you to do that.'

Whack, whack: without my husband's approval. I want a fair bit more than my husband's approval. I want him to walk in here right now, call me dippy, and tell me what's what. Tell me he's all right.

I say: ‘Well, what can I do then?' Hold a cake stall outside the trades hall? Bang some pots on the balcony of the Cosmopolitan Hotel?

‘All I would like you to do is to see if you can't draw money from that compensation fund. Our money. But not for now, mind, just to see if it's possible, in case the strike goes on too long. We have our own funds for shortfalls, for those who need it, but inflation being as it is, I'm concerned we'll break the bank within the month.'

Inflation, yes, madness. Everyone everywhere is earning boom wages, but the cost of living is outrunning any gain. The price of coal could quadruple tomorrow and it'll only make me, and Daniel, richer: if the price of flour went up ten-fold it would make little difference to me, who's feeding two young women, me and Louise, and a baby, who's not up to bread yet; a fair few of the miners have six or more mouths to feed. As for
our money
, well, what's the difference? It all comes out of my share of the profits. I want to argue with Evan, but I say: ‘All right.' I won't bother Messrs Stanley and Bragg with a request to find a loophole, though: if need be I'll just lie when I write to them and tell them someone else has died at the mine. I've done that four times now, for war widows; I'm sure my legal angels will think something is amiss, so many deaths and no official enquiries as to what might be killing the miners of Wattle Dell Colliery, but they haven't queried me. I'll make up a miner, kill him off, and ask for five hundred quid from the fund, then top up the kitty with my own money. Dippy.

Everything is. Whole country's gone mad and Billy the Troll PM is the maddest hatter at the party. He's got a new party, called the National Labor Party, after wrecking the old one over the conscription referendum, which failed, apparently because of our lack of patriotism. He's got a new best friend too, that
liberal, Free Trader, capitalist arse
Joe Cook, whom he's appointed Minister for the Navy. He's also got a War Precautions Act and he's not shy about using it: Billy and Joe have got government-contracted labour inside our coal mine right now, taking what coal is necessary for The National Interest, and the miners will bash up any
scab
they catch in town. Meanwhile, Billy is determined that we give more than our all for Blighty, who is still failing to free us from the evil scourge of Fritz, but has managed to this last Easter murder several Irish rebels in Dublin for wanting freedom for themselves. Really, is there a shred of sense in any of this? Coalminers are going for broke to protect what they should have by rights anyway; the Wobblies are resorting to random acts of arson and inciting riots against the imperialists; and ‘socialism' is just about the most treasonous word around, not including ‘trade union', ‘Catholic' and the very worst: ‘pacifist'.

And My Boy has sacrificed God only knows what for this madhouse?

I'm going to start hyperventilating now.

‘Are you sure you're all right, love?'

No. A terrible, deep stab of dread drives into that soft centre of me. My heart is banging, belting in my chest and the room is spinning. But it passes just as quickly and I say: ‘Yes, I'm all right.'

Evan says: ‘No, I don't think you are. But you'll not do anyone any good if you let the worry make you sick.'

‘How can I stop worrying?'

‘Tell yourself that it'll be all right. You'll be all right and so will he. No point thinking otherwise.'

There's a circle, but it's true: keep believing that my wishes make a difference. A difference against this feeling that feels like knowledge that something is very, very wrong.

Evan winks: ‘Prayers don't go astray either. Danny'll never know what chats we've been having with The Boss on his behalf.'

And that gets a feeble laugh from me: I'm sure Evan's entreaties to Our Lord have been a little less fanciful than mine.

Two more weeks sees the strike end. Miners win, for the preservation of their eight-hour shifts. Which I've since learned Billy the Troll, as a state parliamentarian, was instrumental in achieving in the first place. And I haven't had to lie and fiddle about with the accounts to take money from the company compensation fund, which no other mines have; I'm sure every other hole in the ground across the eastern states has worn down their own mutual funds to nothing too. Raise the fist. What a victory for the workers of Australia.

And I couldn't care less.

I've just received another slow white letter from Victoria Barracks, this one informing me that the award of Sgt D Ackerman's Distinguished Conduct Medal appears in the
London Gazette
at such and such a date.

I am livid.

I don't read the citation; can't. What I would like to know, all I would like to know, is very simple: how is my Sgt's health?

I leave Danny with Louise and let my fury take me all the way to the post office, not gathering any sense of obedience to AIF
IT BEING UNDERSTOOD
s along the way. Mr Symes is startled by my air of urgency but most helpful in putting me through. The line is very clear and the cretin on the other end tells me in the most officious tone: ‘You must understand, Madam, that if no further report has been received, then it must be assumed your husband's progress is satisfactory. Please do not call again.' There's a click, then nothing.

I keep hold of my angry, preparing-for-the-worst tears long enough to pay for the call, and get out to the car.
Satisfactory?
What does that mean? Satisfactorily grave? Satisfactorily bunged up? Satisfactorily gazetted but otherwise vanished?

Not even in the front door and I unravel completely at Louise, and the only thing that stops my incoherent tirade is Danny's tears. Oh, this won't do, Francy. Won't do at all. Keep yourself in check, girl. If no further report is received you must assume that you're to keep wishing and not upset your child while you're at it.

Louise says, so simply: ‘It's not a sin to be angry, Francine. It's probably a good thing to let it go once in a while.'

‘You never do,' I tell her, and she's got more reason for anger than I do.

‘Maybe I'm just more quiet about it,' she says, then smiles with the gentlest tisky glint: ‘Maybe I won't be quiet about it if I miss my train.'

Oh good heavens! She's got to be on the afternoon train to be in Sydney first thing tomorrow for an interview: she's determined to become a nurse and has applied for a training position. Then shame stings: Louise has every reason to rage at the world, but instead she's decided to rejoin it, alone. About time for me to do that too, or I will make myself sick.

First opportunity comes a few days later driving out to Bathurst with a Mr and Mrs Henderson and they are just the motor start I need, and also provide, according to my sage mother-in-law, the perfect excuse to spend a day away from Danny so I stop indulging his appetite at the expense of my own flesh, which really is diminishing alarmingly.

The Hendersons are cards, chipper to the enth, and have me in stitches from the first, despite myself. Stan Henderson is twenty-five, wickedly handsome as they come; he's lost a leg and the hearing in one ear and when he has a bit of difficulty negotiating his way around the car door he says: ‘Don't worry about me, love, never had a great sense of balance to begin with.' His wife Lilly says: ‘Don't listen to him — the only great thing he's ever had in his life is me, and I'm the fool who married him — and that was
after
he came home.'

We're just jaunting, going to the Big Shops so that Lilly can look at the wider selection of dress fabrics, wants to make herself a new skirt for Christmas, and we'll have lunch in a teashop while Stan meets up with some cobbers at the pub to do some further work on his balance. I've met them not through Father Hurley this time, but through the district's veterans' league, which exists now that enough of Those Who Help Themselves have returned to help each other in lieu of what they're owed: help, housing, jobs.

But betrayal is the furthest thing from their minds and mine, and Lilly is giggling away at something Stan has just said about the cows by the roadside as we near Bathurst, when all of a sudden I'm washed over by dread again. Head spinning, heart pounding, I have to pull the car up. In my mind I can see Little Danny in his basket at Sarah's and I have to get home to be with him. I'm utterly terrified, but have no reason to be. I wasn't even thinking of Daniel, for once, but something is wronger than wrong with him, with me.