Peter Corris - Burn and Other Stories

‘He’s got this fuckin’ photo up in the pub. “A” Company piss-up. My mate, the bloke you helped out, recognised your ugly mug.’

I didn’t recall a photograph being taken, but I could visualise the picture-all cockeyed smiles and glassy eyes. All except Barraclough, who could drink all night and not get a hair out of place. ‘I can’t imagine Ken Barraclough running a pub,’ I said. ‘He’s not exactly the sociable type.’

‘You’re telling me. I went to see him, friendly like, and asked him to tone down the Digger stuff. He’d have tossed me out on my ear if he could have.’

I looked Bean over again. An unimpressive physical specimen to start with, he’d done further damage with tobacco and booze. The Ken Barraclough I knew could’ve thrown him from one side of Darlinghurst Road to the other. Bean saw me looking and read my mind.

‘Poor bugger’s got no fuckin’ legs,’ he said.

I agreed to talk to Barraclough, although I was already suspecting that something strange was going on. I took some money from Lawrie and got rid of him before Astrid got home with her manuscripts that we laughed at and attempted one of her laughable meals that usually ended up in the kitchen tidy. Mostly we drank wine and ate bread and cheese and eggs. Great fun. The next day I went off to perform the chores I got paid for. The alarm system, installed in the house of a very nervous bookie in Double Bay, was adequate; the solicitor, who’d tried to pay his premiums with a bad cheque, was argumentative. I threatened him with cancellation and penalty fees and he became more reasonable. Which brought me to 6.30 p.m. in Homebush. The end of a long, warm day with my private work on the south side of the harbour still to do. I rang Astrid and told her I wouldn’t be back to eat.

‘Why not?’ she said.

‘I’ve got this job to do, at the Cross.’

That produced a silence. You have to understand that this was 1967 and Astrid, for all her liberation, was still a North Shore girl. Kings Cross meant only one thing to her-commercial sex.

‘Oh?’

I tried to explain something of it to her, but that only made things worse. The conversation ended coolly-upsetting when you’ve only been together a few weeks. I drove to Darlinghurst, ate something in an Italian restaurant and drank some red wine. About nine o’clock I wandered through the Cross and turned into the street that accommodated the Macquarie Hotel and the Rocky Mountain Bar. It was Friday night and the Cross was busy-girls on the street, pubs noisy and plenty of punters about. A few in uniform. Australia didn’t have a lot of hippies in those days, but what we had were mostly to be found in places like the Cross. The cops eyed the longhaired men and the bare-footed women in long skirts with more suspicion than the whores and bikies.

The pub and the bar across the street were doing business, although both bore signs of renovation still going on. The neon Stars and Stripes outside the Rocky Mountain wasn’t lit, and the Macquarie’s Digger Bar featured a backlit, giant-sized rising sun badge that was flickering faintly. Some bugs still in the electrics. I went down a set of steps under the badge into a space that smelled of beer and tobacco. But the smells were fresh, warring with the odours of new carpet and fresh paint.

The place was a cross between an army mess and a conventional Australian pub. There was a fair bit of military insignia scattered around- crossed. 303s mounted over the bar, a big reproduction of Dyson’s portrait of Simpson and his donkey, regimental flags. Lots of photographs. There was a light fug in the bar and I had to squint to make out the details of the photo on the wall beside the Gents. The faces were all familiar-WO Ron Herbert, Frank Harper, Alby Abbott, the RSM. Ken Barraclough was in the middle of the group, scowling, glass in hand, looking as if he wished he were on parade. I was on his left, lighting a cigarette. I rolled one now as I gazed at a piece of my own history.

A flame flared inches from my face. ‘Light, Hardy?’

I looked down. Barraclough had run his wheelchair up silently, the way he used to move in the jungle. He held up the long flame of a gas lighter. I dipped the cigarette down and puffed.

‘Thanks, Ken.’

A click and the lighter disappeared. ‘Tell me I’m looking well and I’ll run this thing over your foot. It’s heavy. It’ll hurt.’

I said nothing. In fact, he didn’t look good. He was pale and bloated in the face and flesh had built up on his torso. There was grey in his hair and moustache, and his eyes had sunk into puffy pouches. He wore an army shirt with no badges of rank. I couldn’t help it; my eyes dropped to where his legs should have been. There was nothing. He’d been lopped off somewhere around mid-thigh.

‘What happened, Ken?’ I said.

He let out a short, barking sound that could have been a laugh, the way the twist of his mouth could have been a smile. ‘That’d be right,’ he said. ‘Direct. No bullshit, eh, Hardy?’

‘That’s right.’

A man wearing an army shirt and trousers appeared with two schooners, handed one to Barraclough and one to me and disappeared into the crowd that was building up. Barraclough sank about half the schooner in a long gulp. ‘Vietnam,’ he said. ‘Chance of a lifetime.’

I drank some of the beer. ‘Mine?’

‘Yeah. American mine.’

And that was the heart of the problem, right there. Barraclough told me that he’d been leading a patrol which had entered an area the Americans had mined without properly informing the Australian command. ‘Bastards, lousy soldiers, gutless wonders. Could’ve done with you there, Hardy. But you’d had enough, right?’

‘Right,’ I said. I was leaning back against the wall, almost pinned there by the wheelchair. Barraclough’s eyes glittered in their deep, soft sockets and his hands twitched nervously. Those hands, which I’d seen moving faster than the eye could follow-loading, firing, signalling-now seemed to have a neurotic, uncoordinated life of their own. He clenched his glass, emptied it. Another appeared.

‘So what brings you here?’ Barraclough said. ‘Now that you’re a prosperous civilian.’

‘Lawrie Bean asked me to have a word with you.’

‘That little shit! Why would you be having anything to do with him?’

‘I’m an insurance investigator these days, Ken. But I also do a bit of this and that to make ends meet. I’m working for Bean, sort of.’

The wheelchair spun away. ‘Then you can get the fuck out! Eddie!’

I took two steps towards the retreating wheelchair before the man who’d been supplying Barraclough with beer stopped me. He grabbed my shoulder and his grip told me everything I needed ‘to know about him. He was strong, balanced and ready for action. A professional. He was also big and on his own turf. I knew how to get out of a grip like that and I did it. I finished my beer and tossed the schooner to him. The gesture took him by surprise. He caught the glass and I feinted the punch that would’ve flattened him.

I said, ‘Thanks for the drink, Ken,’ stepped around Eddie and left the bar.

Driving back to North Sydney, I discovered that I was in an evil mood. Barraclough had been an artist in his way, and what had happened to him was wrong. He should have survived intact, or gone out clean, instead of being so badly damaged in mind and body. I was convinced of the mind damage. The Digger Bar and the pseudo-uniforms were grotesque, a sick joke.

I took it out on Astrid. I was morose and drank too much that night and was unresponsive in bed. I tried to make amends in the morning, but only partly succeeded. She asked me what was wrong and I told her a little about it, but she didn’t understand. I didn’t understand it myself, but somehow I didn’t want to see Barraclough running a bloodhouse masquerading as an army mess. It seemed a denial of everything he’d done in the past out of sense of duty and commitment. I rang Bean and told him I’d need a little time.