Jack's Island (4 page)

The noise from outside grew louder and people went out to see what was happening. Down at the gate, two men were arguing and pushing each other.

‘I'm not a bloody Nazi, I'm Danish,' one of them yelled. It had to be Christian, Red Eric's younger son.

‘And I'm a Swahili princess,' a soldier yelled back. ‘And why aren't you in the army? Nazis wouldn't have you? Or are you too scared? You're yella. Yella. Yella. You're a yella-bellied galoot.'

Christian said something else but I couldn't make it out.

‘Wanna have a go, do ya? Wanna have a go?' shouted the soldier. ‘Just try it.'

Christian did try it. Without warning he swung his fist at the soldier's face. It connected and sounded like a .303 going off. Blood splattered from the soldier's nose. He didn't cry out or say a word. He fell back rigid, like a broomstick, hit the ground and lay still. I hadn't noticed until that moment that Christian had muscles like a heavyweight boxer. It must've been all the years of throwing the boat cables.

And then it was on for young and old. Another soldier leapt at Christian and grabbed him in a headlock. Christian punched the man in the stomach several times. The soldier yelled in pain and they both collapsed to the ground and rolled over and over, swearing and grunting and tearing at each other.

Little Eric jumped from the verandah and sprinted to the gate. No-one was going to beat up his brother, that was for sure. He started laying into the others. I'd seen fights at the pictures but this was real—wild and brutal.

Two military policemen wearing red armbands rushed from the guardhouse to break it up but they too were soon rolling on the ground, caught up in the brawl.

‘Jack, flaming well get inside and get the flaming sergeant major,' said Mr Carter as he jumped from the verandah and headed for the flaming battle.

I raced inside. ‘Sir?' I said. Sergeant Major McGregor stood with a beer in his hand, talking to Captain Williamson, the new army chaplain.

‘What is it, son?'

‘Sir, there's a right old donnybrook going on down by the gate,' I said, trying to sound calm but failing miserably.

The sergeant major stiffened and seemed to grow several inches taller. ‘Leave this to me, sir,' he said to the captain and turned for the door. ‘No need to concern yourself, sir. No need to turn it into an incident.'

I quickly followed after him, not wanting to miss the action.

‘It's McGregor!' shouted a voice from the middle of the fighting.

It stopped instantly. The men got to their feet and brushed the sand from their clothes. They turned to face Sergeant Major McGregor as he strode towards them.

‘Corporal Bennett,' he said.

‘Sergeant Major.' Corporal Bennett ran his fingers through his hair. His knuckles were bleeding and blood dripped from his nose.

‘Be a good lad, now. Get back to your barracks and take this lot of galahs with you. I'll say no more about this little...' he paused ‘...misunderstanding.' He cleared his throat and waited a moment for the soldiers to realise how lucky they were he was in a good mood.

‘And you, Mr Jansen,' he said, looking at Christian. ‘Perhaps you and your friends might like to make an early night of it. Captain Williamson will be expecting to see you in church tomorrow morning.'

The sergeant major smiled, but only slightly, and winked at Christian who rubbed his knuckles with his other hand. I wasn't surprised his knuckles hurt. It had been some punch. The soldier was still spread-eagled on the ground at his feet. Sergeant Major McGregor didn't seem that mad with Eric or Christian. I think he knew the hard time they got sometimes because their father was a New Australian.

‘Help get this layabout back to his bunk,' the sergeant major ordered, and with the toe of his shiny black boot tapped the unconscious soldier in the ribs a little harder than necessary.

‘What the...' I heard my dad exclaim. We were walking to the little white church behind the bakery the next morning to hear Captain Williamson, the new chaplain, give his first sermon.

Dad, Patricia and me, and Mum pushing Bette in her pram had just reached the church fence when we heard Mr Carter's truck appear at the end of the street. I thought that was strange because Mr and Mrs Carter, as well as their whole cricket team of little Carters, stood at the church door right in front of us. The truck turned into the street and rolled down the hill toward us, quickly gathering speed.

‘It's Dafty,' I yelled. ‘Look!'

‘It can't be. He's too little to reach the pedals,' said Mum.

‘Out of the way, quick!' yelled Dad. ‘Get behind the fence.'

Mr Carter ran up the hill, waving his arms about like a fullback. The truck careered wildly down the road, weaving back and forward across the street. With a loud bang it collided with a wall on one side, scattering bits of brick and render. Dafty gripped the steering wheel, his face filled with terror. The truck bounced in a large pothole and several pans catapulted off the back. They hit the road with a clatter, splattering their evil stinking loads against the nearest white house. The truck rolled nearer, heading straight for Mr Carter. He jumped aside at the very last moment.

‘Oh God!' Mrs Carter cried out. ‘Oh God! Oh God!' She was standing at the wrong angle and thought Mr Carter had been run down.

The smelly old truck thundered past us and knocked a fence post flying. It raced past the bakery and down the slope towards the jetty. Behind me, over the roar of the engine, someone screamed.

The truck slammed into some curbing and the rear wheels jolted into the air. More pans flew up and crashed back down again, splashing muck everywhere. Then the truck bounced off the curb and hit a low brick wall. With a screech of tearing metal it jerked to a halt, the engine still roaring and the wheels spinning in the sand. After a few minutes it stalled into silence. The stink! Foul-smelling rivers poured from the pans, ran down the street and formed into huge revolting puddles.

‘That boy. That poor boy,' said Captain Williamson, the first to speak.

But Banjo was the first to move. I'd never seen him run so fast. He jumped over a puddle, leapt onto the running board and peered into the truck. Dafty's head popped up like a jack-in-the-box. He wasn't dead, and in fact he looked quite cheerful. A small trickle of blood ran from a cut over his eye.

‘Dafty! You half scared me to death.' Banjo reached to help Dafty out of the cabin. ‘What are you
doing?
'

‘See, Banjo. I can drive.'

‘Drive, Dafty? You were nearly killed,' Banjo shouted. And you nearly killed all of us.'

‘Where's Bess? Did she see?' Dafty asked, ignoring Banjo's shouting. ‘Did she see me drive? Where is she? Did she?'

‘No, I haven't seen her this morning. I don't think she's here.' Dafty looked crushed and a look of sympathy came over Banjo's face. ‘I'll take you home,' he said.

Banjo put a hand on Dafty's shoulder, lifted up his own head and walked tall and straight right at the gawking people. The crowd parted as he led Dafty back up the street. No-one said a word. Maybe they were all too shocked. Or maybe it was the look of defiance on Banjo's face, daring anyone to stop them.

Banjo and I were on lookout patrol near North Point when we heard the noise. At first it sounded a bit like a seagull but then became deeper and more urgent.

After we'd found the Jap helmet, Colonel Hurley, the army commander, said we should be official army scouts. He gave us each a pair of old field glasses and a whistle, and an army survey map of the island in a leather folder. On weekends and after school we were supposed to watch out to sea and report anything we saw. Most of all we had to watch for the invasion fleet.

Colonel Hurley had also given us slouch hats with emu feathers, just like the 10th Light Horse Regiment. Mine was far too big but Mum had padded the rim with newspaper. We called ourselves the First Light Bike Regiment and attached small flags to our handlebars. The flag design was a drawing of two circles, like the view through binoculars, and inside the circles a Jap battleship being blown up. Underneath we'd printed in red: 1st LBR. We'd also made ourselves majors in the regiment. Whenever we came across the soldiers from the barracks—the artillery regiment—they ribbed us about being Light Horsemen and made rude jokes, but we knew they were just jealous because they were only infantrymen with ordinary slouch hats and no emu feathers.

‘There it is again, Major Paterson,' I said to Banjo. ‘That noise.'

‘Hello? Is there someone there?' a voice cried. It came from way down below the cliff, on the beach.

Then I saw Mr Palmer's walking stick by the edge of the rocks and his bird-watching log lying by the edge of the path. ‘It's old man Palmer. He's fallen down there.' I peered over the rock overhang to the beach way below. Mr Palmer lay propped up against a driftwood log. He saw me and immediately waved up at me, the relief on his face obvious.

Suddenly I heard a noise behind us and Dafty stepped out from behind a bush. For once he wasn't grinning.

‘Hello, Banjo. Hello, Jack,' he said. He stood guiltily kicking the sand with his big toe.

‘Dafty, what've you done?' asked Banjo.

‘The teacher shouldn't have hurt you, Banjo.'

From below the cliff we heard Mr Palmer groaning again.

‘We have to help him,' I said. ‘Quickly.'

‘I learnt him. With this.' Dafty pointed to a large branch about three feet long. ‘To learn him not to hit you. And he fell off the rock. He shouldn't have hit you, Banjo. That's not right. You're my bestest friend.' Dafty smiled slightly. ‘That sure learnt him though.'

‘Oh, Dafty.' Banjo's shoulders slumped. He knew Dafty was in real trouble this time.

First there was the grenade, then the dunny truck and now this. Dafty would face attempted murder, at the very least. What if Palmer died? Then it'd be full-blown, premeditated murder. Dafty might hang. Did they still hang kids? They did once. We saw a plaque at the old Roundhouse Prison in Fremantle about a kid who got hanged back in the convict days for murdering his boss.

‘You get down there, Jack,' Banjo said. ‘See if you can do anything. I'll ride for help. I'm quicker than you are.'

‘You are not!' I protested but he was already running for his bike. Even at times like this he knew how to wind me up.

I made my way carefully down the crumbling cliff face, stepping cautiously to avoid slipping on the loose sandstone rocks.

‘Jack. Thank God you came.' It was the first time Mr Palmer had ever called me Jack. It was usually Jones. Or
Mr
Jones if he was mad at me. He hauled himself up against the washed-up tree stump. The marks in the sand were dark with blood.

‘Mr Palmer, are you hurt?' I ran across the sand to him.

‘Nothing fatal, I don't think,' he said quietly. He looked terrible. One side of his face and both hands were grazed, and blood had soaked his torn trousers near both knees. ‘But my leg's given out, I think. Young Dafty might finally have done for it where the bloody Boche couldn't. Can't seem to walk.'

It was the first time I'd ever heard him swear.

‘I was lying here thinking how ironic, the whole might of the Kaiser's army couldn't quite cripple me but ... a simple boy with a branch of tea-tree...' He leaned back, obviously exhausted. ‘Poetic justice, I suppose.'

‘Banjo's gone to get help, Mr Palmer. He shouldn't be long,' I said, trying to make him feel better. I sat down beside him to wait.

After a while he spoke again. ‘Jack, you know Banjo's father. What's he like?'

‘Oh, he's a bit like all our dads, Mr Palmer. Always at work. Always grumpy. Always tired. Bit too keen on the razor strop,' I answered too quickly before I remembered Mr Palmer's own keenness for his cane.

‘And his mother? I've not met his mother.' He didn't seem to notice my comment. ‘She's back on the mainland?'

‘No, she shot through when he was little. I don't think he remembers her very well.'

‘So there's just the two of them?'

I nodded.

‘I see,' he said quietly. I wondered what was going through his mind.

I went down to the water's edge and wet my hanky to clean his face up. Little bits of sand were stuck to the blood. He winced in pain as I dabbed at his cheek.

‘You'd better rest, Mr Palmer. They won't be long, I'm sure.'

And Banjo must've ridden back like fury to get help because within minutes we heard the far-off wail of the army ambulance's siren.

A couple of weeks later we had the day off school and Dafty and I were waiting for Banjo on the cliff above the army jetty. It was sort of out of bounds but only just inside the barbed wire fence. A circle of huge sandstone boulders surrounded by thick tea-trees lay back from the cliff directly above the jetty. We called it Shangri-la after the hidden valley in
Lost Horizon,
the Ronald Colman movie we'd seen a while back.

We were sitting up on the largest boulder watching the workers unload bag after bag of cement from an army barge. There must've been thousands of the grey dusty bags. It seemed to go on for hours. The men had stripped off their shirts but in spite of the cool wind they all sweated like racehorses. Their bodies glistened in the sun and soon clouds of cement dust rose into the air and stuck to them, making them all look like grey ants in felt hats. Backwards and forwards they trudged, each time swinging a cement bag up onto their shoulders and staggering along the jetty to a waiting truck.

‘Where've you been?' I asked Banjo when he reached the top of the hill.

Banjo propped his bike against a tree. ‘Palmer came round to my house. He had a letter.'

‘Jeez, are you all right?' I asked. Anything after hours with Palmer usually meant six of the best, or twelve if he was in one of his black, eye-twitching, moods.

‘Yeah, I'm all right. He still doesn't look too good though. He had real trouble walking.' Banjo nodded at Dafty. ‘No thanks to you, sunshine.'

‘Well, what did he want?' I asked.

‘I don't understand,' continued Banjo. ‘He reckons I've got a chance at a scholarship.'

‘A what?'

‘A scholarship to Perth Mod. Perth Modern School. He reckons if I can improve my English then maybe. All my other marks are good enough. He said he'd give me extra tutoring. An hour after school every day.'

‘No-one goes to Perth Mod. You have to be a genius,' I said, hardly believing him. Banjo at Perth Mod? What a laugh that would be, seeing him in a blazer and a school cap and ‘Jolly well done, old chap', and all that sort of twaddle.

‘What'd your dad say?' I asked.

‘I haven't told him yet. I came straight here. But last week he said I'd soon be strong enough to get a job at the aerodrome. Earn some proper money.' Banjo sat down on the rock next to me.

I nodded down at the grey ants below. ‘What? Doing that?'

‘Palmer said he'd talk to my dad about it. The scholarship.'

‘Do you want to go?' I asked.

‘Course I do. Wouldn't you? I don't want to spend the rest of my life humping cement bags like those poor blighters,' he said, also nodding towards the jetty.

‘Do you reckon your dad will listen to Palmer?' I asked again.

‘You know my dad. He doesn't go much for books and learning. Doesn't trust teachers. Can't work them out. He thinks they're all weird. But he might listen to Palmer because he served in France in the war and got a Military Cross and all those other medals.'

‘Military Cross? Palmer's got an MC?' I couldn't believe it.

‘Didn't you see him at the Anzac parade?' said Banjo. ‘His chest was covered in medals.'

‘No, I was home with the measles. Remember?'

‘
I
saw him,' said Dafty, ‘Lots of medals on pretty ribbons.'

So it really was true. Palmer's limp was caused by the Germans. Grumpy old Palmer the Harmer was a full-blown hero.

We sat quietly for a while until Dafty spoke. ‘What is a mod?' he asked.