David Malouf - The Great World

The unit was scattered, They had started off in good order, but men had kept falling behind, some to bargain with one another or with the natives who ran alongside, grinning, pointing to things that had caught their eye and shouting offers, others because they had gone sick or lame, or been poleaxed by the sun. Many of them were still straggling in, and on all sides the company sergeants were at work, shouting roll calls of their men.

Twelve days ago Mac had been wounded, not too badly, in the thigh. For most of the march, Digger on one side, Doug on the other, they had half-carried him. He lay now with one arm across his eyes, as white as chalk. Digger worried and fussed.

Doug, who could never sit still for more than two minutes at a time, was out scavenging. That was the excuse. What he was really doing was walking up and down in jubilation at the scene.

He was in his element. The sanctified irregularity and disorder of it, the mixing in of Australians and British and Dutch and native troops, the great braying noise they made far off into the night, all this was tonic to him. He danced up and down among the various groups — he was a big fellow but very light on his feet — chiacking, greeting acquaintances, dipping down every now and again to share a word or two with this one or that, and to draw out the bullshit artists among them who were already sketching glorious futures for themselves among the guerrillas, or boasting of what they would have done if they’d been given the chance. He came back with a packet of Ardaths and a swag of gleeful tales to tell.

‘I tellya,’ he told them, ‘this is gunna be a little Chicago, you mark my word. You’ll see now what human nature is.’

This last was a crack at Mac. Human nature was a term Mac was strong on; he and Doug did not see eye to eye on it, or on much else, really. Their affection was based on passionate difference. He threw it out now in the hope that it might stir Mac up.

Like most men who have never had a day off work, Doug was uncomfortable with illness. His belief was that if he could only stir Mac up a bit, and lift his spirits, he would be himself again.

‘Word is,’ he told them, ‘that we’re gunna give in our gear. Wouldn’ you know? So that the bloody officers can be turned out like gentlemen and impress the Nips. Walkin’ shoes for all officers, two pairs apiece. Commandeered if fellers aren’t willing to give ’em up. Shoes are goin’ pretty cheap out there. Blokes are gettin’ rid of ’em fer anything they can get, smokes, watches, silk stockin’s. Silk stockin’s are pretty safe.’ He laughed. ‘I’d settle fer smokes, meself. You watch. Smokes, bully, condensed milk, that’ll be the currency. A good pair a’ boots. It always comes down to the same things in the long run, belly, dick or feet. There won’t be too much dick in it this time, I reckon. It’ll be bellies, you watch, an’ feet.’

He shook out the pack of Ardaths, offered one to Digger, then passed it across to Mac. He raised his head and looked out over the great mob of them that was scattered over the flat ground. All the nonsense had gone out of him.

‘They’re mugs, most a’ these blokes,’ he said sorrowfully. ‘Wouldn’ know their arseholes from the back end of a rabbit warren. It’s pathetic. Half of ’em are still puking up their mother’s milk.’

Mac had lighted up and had his head back, drawing in smoke.

‘How’s it going, chief?’ Doug said, settling beside him. ‘A bit rugged, eh?’ He looked quickly at Digger, then away.

They were spread out over a low area without definition, except that somewhere, away in the darkness, you could smell the sea. No fences, no wire, no sign of Nips. There was movement, a kind of restlessness as of a huge animal stretched out on the ground there, the sound of its breathing, a muffled roar. But everything, their movements, their voices when they spoke, had a subdued air, as if they were under surveillance and the Nips were there after all, but out of sight.

They were in the open, without protection, contained only by the gentlemen’s agreement some Englishman had made in their name. It was eerie, that.

‘What’s up, Dig?’

Mac, who often knew what Digger was thinking, looked back over his shoulder. His expression was quizzical.

‘Nothin’,’ Digger said. ‘Just thinkin’.’

‘Farewell the plumed troop, eh? And the big wars that make ambition virtue.’ Mac’s voice was hoarse and full of weariness, but there was some of his old humour in it. He could see they were concerned about him and was making an effort.

Doug, who got embarrassed when things took a literary turn, drew on the last of his fag and sent it in a fiery arc across the dark.

‘Farewell the neighing steed,’ Digger recited, taking up where Mac had left off, and in a voice that had none of the roughness of his ordinary speech, ‘and the shrill trump, the spirit-stirring drum, the ear-piercing fife, the royal banner, and all quality, pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war.’

He came to an end, and looked up, a little shy but not at all self-conscious. They often played this game.

Mac was grinning, genuinely delighted.

He was an older fellow, thirty-eight. Back home he was on the trams. He lived at Bondi Junction with his sister-in-law, Iris, who worked in a cake shop (he had told Digger all this), and was what Doug called a black-stump philosopher, full of all sorts of wild arguments and theories and extravagant optimisms that wouldn’t have worked in Paradise, let alone where they were now. His pack was crammed with books, and every week at home he bought at least a dozen of them from barrows or second-hand bookshops down George Street. His room at home was stacked to the ceiling with them.

‘He never fails, this boy,’ he said now, inviting Doug to admire the phenomenon. ‘Amazing, eh?’

Digger shook his head. It was nothing, a trick, that’s all.

Doug was about to offer his own ironical comment when another voice broke in: ‘Hey, I know that.’

It was Doug’s mate, if you could call him that, Vic.

‘Good fer you, son,’ Doug said drily. The others, Digger and Mac, exchanged glances.

He was a big, solidly-built fellow, not yet twenty, who had recently attached himself to them and was proving hard to shake off. Originally, like Doug, from a mining village up Newcastle way, he saw this as a bond between them and made a good deal of it. He was just out of school and had, so far as Digger could see, no experience of any kind. He tried to hide it by speaking rough and making a big man of himself. Digger couldn’t stand him. Mac didn’t think much of him either.

It was Doug he had set his sights on, but for some reason it was the others he played up to, and this made them like him even less. But when they complained about him, Doug, who was all generosity, would shrug his shoulders and say: ‘Oh, Vic’s all right.’ Still, this didn’t prevent him from teasing the fellow.

‘Go on,’ he’d say with mock astonishment when Vic came out with some bit of self-promotion by which he hoped they might be impressed.

He did, too, regularly, and sank himself.

‘Here,’ he said now, ‘I brought you something.’ It was a little tin of Ideal milk.

Doug took it and turned it over in his hand. ‘What’s this for?’ he said. ‘Somebody got a birthday?’

Vic’s neck burned. It wasn’t for anything. It was something he had picked up for them, that’s all. He waited for Doug to accept the thing and get it out of the way.

‘Ta,’ Doug said at last, and set the tin down, a bit too prominently, on his pack. Vic took this as an invitation to settle on the grass among them.

‘So,’ he said, ‘here we are, eh? How long d’ya reckon this’ll last?’