The Long Green Shore (18 page)

The school was in some dead ground over at the back of the island. The ring was a canvas square lit with globes powered from truck batteries. There were thirty or forty at the game and the ringie, a short, villainous-looking character, was skipping around the canvas in his stockinged feet and bellowing hoarsely: ‘Come on! We want another quid in the guts to see him go—just one more fiddly from you tailies—come on, he's done 'em five—I want a tailie for a quid to see him go!'

‘Why, I guess I'll accommodate you for that,' said Hank.

The ringie looked up at the accent as though his favourite and long-lost brother had just walked in. He took Hank's pound and tossed it to the boxer, who was crouched on a kerosene case at the edge of the ring, with the centre money laid out in little heaps of individual bets in front of him. The boxer covered Hank's pound and the ringie shouted with renewed enthusiasm, ‘Come on, get set on the side—any more bets on the side—he's done five already—any money for a head, any money for a tail. Right! Set in the centre, set on the side—it's a fair go—come in spinner!'

The ringie eased to the side of the ring and muttered to the boxer out of the corner of his mouth, ‘Did you cop the septic tank just walked in? We might make wages yet tonight.'

The spinner weighed the pennies carefully on the kip and looked up to measure his objective or seek help from God…

‘Ring out!' bellowed the ringie hoarsely. ‘Ring out, he's a high spinner.'

‘Whart the garddamned hell does he warnt now?' demanded Hank.

‘Give him room, he throws them high,' said Pez.

The spinner tossed the pennies up high and back over his head, giving a little hop for luck as he did so. The coins rang together in the air and the ringie shouted with unconvincing playfulness: ‘Jingles for joy! Ring back—I'll call them!' The coins slapped and rolled on the canvas—heads craned—the Lady glared up in two places. ‘He's micked 'em,' announced the ringie morosely. ‘Pay the tails—and what about a bit of a sling from you headies!'

‘Man,' said Hank as he got his two pounds back. ‘This here's a game! I can work out a system.'

A quarter of an hour later, and twenty pounds lighter, he and Pez trudged back across the island. ‘Jesse James,' said Hank, ‘Dillinger, Capone—we've had them back in the States—but never nothin' like that game.'

Hank poked his head into the tent as Pez was packing to go back to the mainland. ‘Here, Pez,' he said, ‘I gart you two cartons uv cigarettes. Couldn't get you any garddarmned Luckies—these here are made out uv shag shit—but they burn.'

Pez dragged a Nip flag out of his pack. ‘I got you the flag, Hank. She's genu-wine—my mate finished making her this morning. I shot the holes in it myself and when the tomato sauce dries you won't be able to tell it from blood.'

‘Thanks Pez,' said Hank.

‘And apart from that, I got you a story to go with it,' said Pez. He struck a pose. ‘This here flag, my friends, was captured in the bloody fighting before we took the Nip headquarters at Booma Ridge. Defended it was by a company of Nip Royal Marines—all six feet high and fighting fools who had sworn a Shinto, Banzai, Kamikaze oath that the flag would not fall into the hands of the enemy while one of them remained alive.'

With an expression of awe, Hank sat down on the bed.

‘For two days and two nights we were locked in mortal combat on that hill, friends—it was tough, mighty tough—until the only man of the Nip guard remaining alive was Captain Sake Sake. He draped the flag around his body, drew his sword and charged down the hill, till he fell in the face of withering fire. Here are the holes, you see, my friends—these same holes are where the bullets pierced the flag and struck mortally into the body of Major Sake Sake.'

‘He gart quick promotion,' said Hank.

‘And these same ominous stains, friends, are where his lifeblood flowed as he died to honour his oath!'

‘Jee-sus Christ!' said Hank reverently. ‘That's hart, man. That sure is the hartest kind uv cark!'

‘I'd have got his sword for you too,' apologised Pez, ‘but my mate over at workshops hasn't quite finished making it. She'll be right, though—made out of the best quality jeep spring and with Colonel Sake Sake's family history tastefully engraved on the blade—gen-u-wine Samurai. He'll bring it over the day after tomorrow.'

‘That'll be fine, Pez,' said Hank. ‘I'll trade it to some uv these new cark sarkers that are comin' out. They admire to get somethin' with bullet holes and blood so they can tell the folks back home how they waded knee deep in it—and just what fightin'est sons uv bitches they really are. I'll sock 'em plenty.'

They walked to the barge together.

‘Say, Pez,' said Hank. ‘If you happen to be in Noo Yark after the war, remember two thousan' one hunnerd and thirty-five on Thirty-Fifth Street. You'll find it easy—anyone'll tell you.'

‘Yeah,' said Pez. ‘Well, don't forget what I told you: the back bar at the Imperial at the Cross, any time after five. Ask Eileen.'

As the barge drew out from the jetty, Hank leaned over the rail, ‘See you after the war, man. Don't forget.' He was calling across the water: ‘Two thousan' one hunnerd and thirty-five on Thirty-Fifth Street—Noo Yark.' A thought struck him, he bellowed: ‘City!'

There were only a handful of men at the base camp, but rations were still light on and the main source of supply was still the Yank rubbish dumps.

Pez struck the Log at the camp and they met the blokes left behind when we went up the long green shore, and caught up on all the gossip. Sergeant Buney, the Vickers sergeant, who had developed bad feet mysteriously just before we moved, had been making a pretty penny selling stuff belonging to blokes who had been killed—stuff left behind in their kitbags in the battalion store. There were a few mutterings among the boys about it, but nothing was ever done about him—no complaint was made. The dead can't complain.

On their way down to the mess, Minnie the Mouse stuck his head out of a tent. He seemed surprised and grateful when Pez hailed him.

‘Coming down to eat?' asked Pez.

‘No, thanks,' said Minnie. He seemed shy of something. ‘No—as a matter of fact I'm writing a letter.'

Pez glanced into the tent. There was a small deal table set for the light, a writing pad, pen and ink, and an inch-thick pile of what looked like manuscript. ‘Looks like some letter,' Pez said. ‘You nearly finished it?'

‘Well, no,' said Minnie. He seemed a bit embarrassed, but pleased to talk to someone. ‘As a matter of fact, it's a very difficult letter to write.'

It appears Minnie had been hanging around the base camp for some time. They were going to board him south with some honourable and comfortable neurosis of the type reserved for officers. Then he got a letter from his girl—the one he'd wooed respectably for going on nine years.

It wasn't a very long letter. In fact, pretty near everyone around the base knew it by heart. It was just two lines, announcing that Dorothy was going to marry a British commando named Bruce. It was signed, with rather unhappy formality, ‘Yours faithfully'.

A couple of nights after he received the letter, Minnie attended the open-air picture show down at the hospital area. While a faithless lady on the screen was entertaining her lover, he rose babbling incoherently and emptied his revolver into the screen.

They took his revolver off him, but decided later that he was not really dangerous and let him go back to the unit base camp to wait for a plane south.

Now he sat in his tent all day and wrote. He wouldn't attend the normal mess parade, but it was suspected that he used to sneak down to the kitchen at night and get tinned stuff.

All day long he would sit writing. There was a great wad of manuscript when Pez last saw it. He asked Minnie if he'd like it posted, but Minnie said it wasn't finished yet.

Pez's mail finally caught up with him. There were half-a-dozen letters from Helen—the last ones written after the war in Europe ended. ‘Come home,' she said. ‘Be careful and come home to me.'

He felt warm and benevolent on the strength of it and went to talk to Minnie for a while to try and cheer him up. Then later he got to thinking about it.

‘Come home,' she said. Sure, she said that—but he had to go home to the problem—that still stood—there were still three where only two could go.

A woman might write a thing like that—and mean it for the moment—but when he did get home…

The last night at the camp, Pez got very drunk on home-distilled gin and sat very late in his tent writing to Helen.

My Darling, My Dearest, My Honey,

I'm on my way back to the unit after Con Camp. Your letters caught up with me today. I've read them all through many times and I feel there's something tremendously important I've got to say. The only trouble is, I don't know what it is—I've sat here for hours trying to think what it is I want to say.

Possibly this is complicated by the fact that I'm drunk on gin made fresh this afternoon by Bill Abdou (you remember him) from Workshops. In fact, I am as drunk as Chloe—full as a bull—or a boot, or a goog—molo—pissed as a newt or (if you prefer it) to the eyebrows.

Or maybe it's the thought—the impossible, fantastic thought that the war might some time, soon now, be over. What that will mean to us, I don't know.

I suppose that is what troubles me, really—I am looking for a meaning. That's it—the wonder of the world. The meaning of living—the meaning of death—the meaning of love. Is living being alive and death ceasing to be alive and loving tumbling on a bed? I ask this question without notice of the Honourable Minister for Human Affairs.

Helen, my dearest, I am drunk and I love you. I am coming back—and to you. I don't care what arguments there are against it—I am coming back to take you. I am drunk and I love you. I love you even more, sober, but not so poetical. Goodnight my love, my dearest. You are the Song of Songs, which is Solomon's, and if your belly is not quite a heap of wheat set about with lilies, it will do until a heap of wheat set about with lilies comes along.

I am drunk and biblical and bedevilled and damned… and I want a meaning. I look up at the sky and wonder—and I look down at the earth and wonder—and I dream on you and wonder. The wonder of the world.

I am drunk—and Christ I miss you and I need you.

The word came suddenly. Everyone except base personnel to move that evening.

‘I don't like the look of this, Pez,' grumbled the Log. ‘Why do they want everyone in such a damn hurry?'

They tumbled onto a barge just before dark and after a beaten-iron voyage, the monstrous, clanging, stinking creature flopped its jaw up on the sand next morning and they stumbled from its crowded throat.

The doover tents were knocked down in the battalion area and the packs loaded for the track.

Janos grinned when he saw Pez slogging up the hill. ‘How are you, boy? Ready for the track? The bastards have pulled us in again.'

It seemed the Second had struck a bit of trouble down the shore and we were to cut inland and come in on the Nips' flank.

It was a hell of a thing to have to do. To start over again when we thought we were finished—when we thought the war might have ended for us.

A couple of the older blokes are left behind—ones who have been in it since practically the first day. The Log is one and the Laird another. But old Whispering John comes. ‘The old soldier'll see it through,' he cackles.

The Log and the Laird stand by the side of the track and wave to us as we go—they look kind of naked and lonely standing there in just shirts and slacks while we slog down the track armoured in webbing equipment and packs.

Harry Drew had been supposed to stay. Regan had said goodbye to him: ‘You're not coming, Harry, I'll see you when she's all over.'

But Harry came with us.

Young Regan walked behind him as he led us down the track.

We struck into the hills—savage tracks that scrambled up and slithered down. It is the old story—patrolling, probing, killing. We are all apprehensive about it, I think—we are all afraid of it this time—we had been so near the end.

There are frequent clashes with Connell over the native boys who come with us into the hills. We talk to them and give them an occasional cigarette, they're good boys—but Connell objects.

‘You don't understand them,' he says, ‘they're just like children. Planters have got to work these boys again after the war's finished and you're ruining them.'

‘Yeah, we're ruining them,' snarls Harry Drew later. ‘They'll want an extra bob a day after the war—we're ruining them—cutting down the profits.'

There was that day in the hills that Harry Drew came up laughing like hell. He'd just heard the best story of the year—Watson, that Angau bloke had told him.

It seemed this happened before the First World War. One of the mission stations along the coast had a fine coconut plantation. The missionaries had done a splendid job of the joss and had so impressed the natives with their hellfire that they one and all became devout Christians.

The missionaries had been very careful to explain to the converted heathen that they were working for the Lord now—everything belonged to the Big Pfella Jesus and the copra had to be carefully gathered and shipped away to the same Big Pfella Jesus.

Well, one time when the missionaries were away on tour, leaving the mission to their head boy, a trader calls in and tries to buy some copra. But the head and all the other boys explain to him that they can't sell any copra, that it all belongs to the Big Pfella Jesus, and they bring out little coloured Sunday School cards of Jesus to show just who the big boss is.