Stella Duffy - Money in the Morgue

It was quite dark when she finally reached the bridge. Her small car bumped over the rattling, uneven planks. At the far end, the road divided. It turned sharply to the left through a patch of dense native bush making a wide angle with a track that ran uphill ending at the Bridge Hotel one way or straight ahead to Mount Seager. As Rosamund drove on to the hospital, her dipped headlamps picked up six white objects that moved alongside the road, stopped, and darted back again. She pulled up short and switched on the beam.

The white objects were resolved into pyjama-clad shins, cut off at the bottom by socks and boots and at the top by army great-coats, the poor fellows must have been sweltering in them. Rosamund leaned out of the driving window.

‘And what the hell do you think you’re up to?’ she asked pleasantly.

‘That’s all right, Miss,’ said a sheepish voice. ‘On your way.’

‘Turn them lights off for Gawsake,’ cried a second voice.

Rosamund switched off the lights and produced a torch which she turned on the owner of the sheepish voice, revealing a long sallow face with a disgruntled expression and a pair of watchful eyes.

‘Private Pawcett, I see.’

‘How’re you doing, Rosie? You haven’t seen a thing now, have you?’

‘Who knows?’ said Rosamund. ‘You’re taking a chance, aren’t you? This is the third time. You’ll catch a packet this trip, Bob.’

‘Cut it out, Rosie, be a sport.’

‘We’ll see. Who are your friends?’

The circle of light shifted. A second face, darker than the first, with smart, bright eyes, blinked nervously.

‘Hul-lo!’ said Rosamund. ‘The pride of Military 1 on the razzle. What’s come over our Corporal Brayling? You don’t usually let yourself get mixed up in your mates’ antics, Cuth.’

An unsteady hand moved across his face.

‘He’s fed up,’ Private Pawcett explained. ‘Poor old Cuth’s fed up. Look, his missus is going to have a kid and they won’t let him off to go and see her. He’s feeling that crook about it all he had to do something. Hadn’t you, Cuth?’

‘I wouldn’t of gone to the house,’ Corporal Brayling protested. ‘I told them I wouldn’t go near her. I could’ve just sent a message. I don’t want to give her the fever. I’m OK now anyway, none of us are infectious and we’ll get discharged soon enough. Ah, it’s all no good.’

‘Tough luck,’ said Rosamund lightly.

‘We brought ’im along for a drink,’ Private Pawcett said. ‘He needed it.’

‘“We”?’ Rosamund repeated. ‘That reminds me. I haven’t met the third gentleman.’

The light dodged about a little, momentarily revealing a bank covered in wild thyme and a thicket of dark leafy scrub, before it found the third figure, coming to a stop upon the back of a sleek dark head.

‘Turn round,’ Rosamund said breathlessly.

He turned slowly.

The silence was broken by Corporal Brayling digging Private Pawcett in the ribs. ‘Come on, Bob, reckon we’d better get a move on,’ he said.

‘You’re right there, mate. OK Cheerio, Rosie!’

‘Hooray, Rosie!’

They moved away, their heavy boots crunching up the loose shingle.

‘Had a good day, Roz?’ Maurice Sanders cried.

Private Pawcett and Corporal Brayling picked up their pace a little, the better to be away from whatever their mate was about to say to the Farquharson girl. No doubt about it, she knew she had a face on her and a fair shift of a shape at that, but Sanders couldn’t half push his luck at times.

‘He needs to go easy on her, can’t play around with a girl like that and not come unstuck in the end,’ said Corporal Brayling.

‘As if you’d know,’ sniggered Private Pawcett.

‘I wouldn’t want to know, would I? Not with my Ngaire hapū and the baby coming soon enough. I’m not like you blokes.’

‘Nah sport, sure you’re not.’

‘I’m not,’ Brayling insisted, his step slowing, his voice dangerously low.

Pawcett laughed unkindly, the extra pint he’d downed before they left the pub meant he didn’t notice the change in Brayling’s tone, ‘You mean her old man’d drag you off back to the pā and go old-style Māori on you if you cheated his girl?’

Brayling stopped in his tracks and Pawcett realized he’d gone too far. In the faint spill of light from the porch of Civilian 1, the solid and strong Māori man looked as fierce as ever he’d seen him. Pawcett kicked himself, his mother had always said his mouth would get him hung one of these days.

‘Mate, I’m sorry,’ Pawcett said. ‘I didn’t mean it, not like that, but you’ve got to admit, your Ngaire’s old man is one hell of a—’

‘ Rangatira ? Chief? Too right he is,’ Cuthbert Brayling answered his own question. ‘And his iwi and mine go back a long way, all the way “back to the pā ”, if you like. I’d never muck around with these girls like you lot. My Ngaire, she’s a queen, she’s everything to me.’

‘Cuth, mate, play the—,’ Pawcett stopped himself just in time, ‘Play the game.’

Their voices faded in the darkness. They’d served together now for almost two years, alongside their reckless mate Sanders, trusting each other with their lives, comrades and brothers, and it was only back in New Zealand that the differences between them became bigger than the bonds forged in action. They were both relieved to be alongside the hospital offices now, it meant they had to hush, it meant they had to work together. If there was one thing they’d learned in the army it was how to work together.

Brayling doubled over and started moaning, Pawcett held him up, they stumbled towards the door of Military 1, making as much noise as they could, no sneaking in, no pretending they hadn’t been out playing the wag.

Pawcett called out as they crossed the threshold, ‘Hey Nurse, Nursey! Cuth’s only been and gone sleepwalking again, we told you what a palaver it was with him over in Africa, give us a hand girlie, will you?’

The little nurse started up at his words and hurried to the porch door, shushing him as she went.

Pawcett kept up his loud recitation, well aware that none of the men in the ward would be sleeping yet and they’d enjoy the scene he was about to give them.

‘Problem is, Nurse, you lot insist we have an afternoon kip every day, but where’s the rest when we’ve to keep an eye out for Cuth? A caution he is for sleepwalking, honest. And Gawd knows where Sanders has got to. He was worried about Cuth heading over to the river, stone me if we’re not in for a flood the minute that storm hits, or worse, what if he’d got into one of those tunnels under here? The place is riddled with them. Be a love and help us out, will you?’

Sanders meanwhile, was offering Rosamund his best self-satisfied grin. Faced with his cheery good looks, his twinkling eyes and the dark curl that fell over his left eye, no matter how often he combed it back, not to mention the knowing smile that Rosamund had promised herself she would ignore, she felt her resolve melting away. The tough carapace of a girl who cared nought for his charms, a girl who was as easily distracted by other young men as Sanders was by Sukie Johnson, faded all too swiftly into that old yearning. It was a wanting made still more painful because Rosamund knew Maurice would have spent his stolen hour at the pub carrying on with Sukie over the bar, hoping that her old man was as daft as he looked. Still, she had rehearsed her lines and she knew her new yellow dress looked pretty darn good, so she gave it her best shot.

‘Oh, it’s you Maurice, I might have known you’d be out carousing with the boys.’

Sanders smiled his lop-sided grin, ‘You should have come along, Rosie, plenty of honest blokes in the saloon bar, a lovely girl like you’d have no trouble picking up a beau, ’specially not in a frock like that, showing it off for all you’re worth.’