David Malouf - The Complete Stories

On their first camp three months later he was assigned to the Intelligence Unit and shared a hut with the other baby of the squadron, a country boy from Harrisville, Cam Brierly They were so much the youngest that they took it in turns on official mess nights, when all the officers of the station were assembled, to be Mister Vice: that is, to reply to toasts and initiate the passing of the port. It was a role in which you appeared to be the centre of the occasion, but only in the clownish sense of being a king of fools.

They stuck together, he and Cam. Not because they had anything in common but to conceal from others their appalling innocence.

Their task by day was to catalogue and reshelve the station library, under the eye of the Chief Education Officer, Dave Kitchener, a cynical fellow who did nothing himself but lounge behind his desk and was by turns a bully and a tease. He resented having them fobbed off on him.

At night, after dinner, while other fellows got drunk, played darts or snooker, or sang round the piano in true wartime style, they tried, one after another, a series of exotic liqueurs of lurid colour and with enticing names: Cu raa o, Crme de Menthe, Parfait d'Amour. They were sickly, every one.

The mess late at night got rowdy, then out of hand. Understanding, though they never admitted it, that if they hung around too long they would very likely become butts, for their youth was in itself ridiculous, they slipped away before eleven and were soon asleep.

One of the wildest figures at these nightly gatherings was Dave Kitchener, the officer who gave them such a hard time by day. A bit of an outsider with his fellow officers, he was always looking for trouble. When he got a few drinks under his belt he turned sarcastic, then aggressive, and went on the prowl; they had, more than once, caught him glaring in their direction. If he once got up, they thought, and came across, it would be to lash them with his tongue. They knew him by now. He couldn't be trusted to keep to the rules. He might pass muster in the office, and on official parade, but in the mess at night his uniform was loosened at the neck, and his hair, which was longer than permitted, fell uncombed over his brow. He had a sodden look.

Six or seven years back — Greg had the story from a fellow who had known him at Charters Towers when he was a geography master at All Souls — he had been caught climbing into the room of a woman from the sister school, Blackheath, and after a scandal that was quickly hushed up, they were both dismissed. One night when there were women in the mess, air force nurses, Dave Kitchener went up to one of them and threw a glass of beer in her face.

They had been in camp for two weeks when he appeared for the first time in their hut.

It must have been between one and two in the morning. Greg stirred, aware of a presence in the room that registered itself first as a slight pressure on his consciousness, then on the mattress beside him. He woke and there he was, sitting on the edge of the bed. Just sitting. Quietly absorbed, as if he had come in, tired, to his own room and was too sleepy to undress.

He's made a mistake, Greg thought.

His cap was off, his tie loose, and there was a bottle in his hand.

Greg lay quiet. Nothing like this had ever happened to him before. He didn't know what to do. When the man realised at last that he was being watched, he turned, fixed his eyes on Greg, made a contemptuous sound deep in his throat, and laughed. He lifted the bottle in ironic salute. Then, reaching for his cap, which he had tossed carelessly on to the bed, he set it on his head, got to his feet, and took a stance.

“All right, cadet,” he said. “Get out of there.”

Greg was astonished.

“Didn't you hear? That was an order.” His nails flicked the stripes on his sleeve. “Get your mate up. I said, get up!”

Greg rolled out of bed. He was out before he properly realised it. This must be a dream, he thought, till the cold air struck him. Skirting the officer, who stood in a patch of moonlight in the centre of the room, he crossed to Cam's bed and hung there in a kind of limbo, looking down at his friend. He still couldn't believe this was happening.

“Go on,” the man told him.

Cam was sound asleep, and Greg, still touched by a state that seems commonplace till you are unnaturally hauled out of it, was struck by something he had never felt till now: the mystery, a light but awesome barrier, that surrounds a sleeping man. Which is meant to be his protection, and which another, for reasons too deep to be experienced as more than a slight tingling at the hair roots, is unwilling to violate.

Cam's head rested on the upper part of his arm, which was thrust out over the edge of the mattress. Under the covers his legs were moving, as if he were slowly running from something, or burrowing deeper into the dark.

Greg glanced across his shoulder at the officer, hoping, before this new breach was made, that he would reconsider and go away. But the man only nodded and made an impatient sound. Greg put his hand out. Gingerly, with just the tips of his fingers, he touched Cam's shoulder, then clasped it and shook.

But Cam was difficult. He put up a floppy arm and pushed Greg off. Even when Greg had got him at last into a sitting position he wasn't fully awake. Sleep was like a membrane he was wrapped in that would not break. It made everything about him hazy yet bright: his cheeks, his eyes when they jerked open. Greg began to be impatient. “Come on, Cam, get up,” he whispered. “Stop mucking about.”

The man, standing with the cap at a rakish angle, laughed and took a swig from his bottle.

“Wasser matter?” Cam muttered. The words were bubbly. “ ‘S middle o’ the night.”

Greg hauled him up, cursing, and propped him there: he kept giggling like a child and going loose. “Cut it out,” Greg hissed, staggering a little in the attempt to hold him. He hadn't realised before what a spindly, overgrown fellow he was. But at least he was on his feet, if not yet fully present. Greg turned to the officer.

Dave Kitchener had been watching his struggles with a mixture of amusement and contempt. He seated himself, as before, on the edge of Greg's bunk, his legs apart, the cap pushed now to the back of his head, his feet firmly planted. He was enjoying himself.

“Right,” he said. “Now. Get stripped.”

Greg was outraged. After all his exertions with Cam, it still wasn't finished. This is wrong, he told himself as he started on the buttons of his pyjama jacket. He shouldn't be wearing his cap that way. He shouldn't be sitting on my bed. He wrenched at the buttons in a hopeless rage, the rage a child feels at being unjustly punished, feeling it prickle in his throat. Tears, that meant. If he wasn't careful he would burst into tears. His concern now was to save himself from that last indignity. He lifted his singlet over his head, undid the cord of his pants. They were in winter flannels. In the mornings here, when you skipped out barefoot to take a piss, the ground was crunchy with frost.

Cam was still dazed. He stood but was reeling. Greg looked towards the officer; then, with deliberate roughness, began to undo the buttons on Cam's jacket.

“We've got to take them off,” he explained as to a three-year-old. When they were naked Dave Kitchener had them drill, using a couple of ink-stained rulers. He kept them at it for nearly an hour.

He did not come every night. Three or four might pass and they would be left undisturbed, then Greg would be aware again of that change of pressure in the room.

After the first occasion there was no need for commands. As soon as Greg was awake, Dave Kitchener would rise, stand aside for him to pass, and Greg would go obediently to Cam's bed and begin the difficult exercise of getting him to his feet. It was always the same. Cam had to be dragged to the occasion. He resisted, he pushed Greg off. Laughing in his sleep in a silly manner and muttering sentences or syllables from a dialogue of which only the one side could be heard, he reeled and clung on.