David Malouf - Fly Away Peter

They were the local people whose farms had been where the war now was. They hadn’t all left and they weren’t all grateful that their land was being defended against invaders. Mostly they just wanted the war to move away. They were grim, wooden-faced people in clothes as muddy and ragged as the soldiers’, their feet sometimes in clogs but more often in bundles of rags. They stood about on the doorsteps of shattered houses, defending their property — a few chickens, a cow, a cellar full of dusty bottles — against the defenders, who were always on the lookout for something to eat or steal, or for a woman who could be induced into one of the dirty barns, or for any sort of mischief that would kill boredom and take their minds off what lay ahead.

There were several wars going on here, and different areas of hostility, not all of them official.

As for the townspeople, they were like townspeople everywhere. The war was good business. The girls who sold cakes outside the cotton factory were pretty. Their mothers kept bars. Their younger brothers, in the afternoon, went up through the support lines to sell papers.

On the last night before they went into the line (they were to go up on December 23rd and spend Christmas there) Clancy prevailed on Jim to break bounds and go to a village just out of town. It was two miles off over the snow. It wasn’t much of a place now, and probably never had been, but a woman kept a good estaminet there, in the shell of a bombed out farm-house, with eggs and sometimes cognac, and Clancy was on close terms with her. Though they had only been here a couple of weeks she was already on the List. Her name was Monique.

‘Come on, mate, be a devil,’ Clancy urged. ‘We might all be dead by Christmas.’

Teasing Jim amused him. After all these months of raw camp life Jim still existed in a world of his own, not withdrawn exactly but impenetrably private. He did everything with meticulous care and according to the strict order of the book as if there were some peculiar safety in it, cleaning and swaddling his rifle, polishing his boots, laying out his kit. The odd thing was that Clancy respected this. It was what he saw in Jim that was most likeable and attractive. His drawing him out was a way of having Jim dig his heels in and be most earnestly himself.

‘I tell yer, mate, in this world you’ve got t’ work round the edge of things, the law, the rules. Creep up from behind. The straight way through never got a man nowhere.’

Jim dug in. ‘No, Clancy. I reckon I’ll stay.’

‘Well Monique’ll be disappointed. I promised ’er you’d be along. My mate Jim, I said. Next time up I’ll bring my mate Jim.’

‘The Captain —’

‘Aw, bugger the Captain. D’y’ think he cares? He makes the rules with ’is tongue in ’is cheek, the way he expects us t’ keep ’em. Grow up mate! This is the real world. We’re not the only ones, y’ know. Half the battalion’ll be there.’

Jim relented. It was, after all, their last night and the immediate future was unpredictable. They set out; but hadn’t gone more than a hundred yards when there was a call behind them.

‘Hey Jim, Clancy, where yous goin’?’

It was Eric Sawney, a pale, sad youth who from their very first day in Thompson’s Paddock had latched on to Clancy and whose doglike devotion was a company joke. Clancy had found no way of discouraging the boy. Short of downright brutality Eric was not to be put off.

‘Shit!’ he said now, ‘it’s bloody Eric. I thought we’d lost ’im. They ought t’ make that kid a police-dog.’

‘Were yous goin’?’ Eric repeated.

Clancy stood tugging his ear. ‘Nowhere much, mate. We’re just walkin’ down our meal.’

‘You’re goin’ into town,’ the boy said, ‘yous can’t fool me. Can’t I come?’

‘Now Eric. Town is out of bounds at this hour. You know that. What’d y’ mother say?’

‘I havn’ got a mother.’

‘Well yer auntie then.’

Eric stuck. His drawn face, always pale, assumed a hard white look. He set his jaw somewhere between stubbornness and the sulks. Snow was falling.

‘You’re underage,’ Clancy said desperately. ‘I bet you’re not sixteen.’

‘I am so too. I’m eighteen.’

‘Oh Jesus,’ Clancy moaned. ‘Come on then. But try not t’ start a box on, eh mate? Keep that fierce temper a’ yours under a bit of control.’

Clancy winked at Jim and Eric fell in beside them. Other groups, muffled against the cold, were up ahead, trudging on through the mud. There were more behind.

Monique was so unlike what Jim might have predicted that he wondered later about Muriel from the Passage and Phyllis, and Betty and Irene. She was a heavy blond woman of maybe fifty, sadly voluptuous, with bruised lips. She welcomed them all, let Clancy pinch her, and spent the rest of the evening resting her comfortable bosom on the counter or pouring slow drinks. Before long there were twenty or thirty of them, and later as many again from the 43rd. Two younger women, just girls really, came in to help fetch and carry and an old grannie with no teeth handled a big black pan, cooking omelettes and pommes frites. Clancy drank spirits, Jim and Eric vin blanc with syrup.

‘Jesus,’ Clancy protested, ‘what is this? A kiddies’ birthday do?’

But Jim craved the sweetness. For some reason, up here, he couldn’t get enough of it. He blushed now to be in the same boat as Eric, who was always childishly whining for cakes and buns and whose pockets were full of squares of half-melted chocolate in silver paper for which he traded even his tobacco ration.

It was warm after a while, what with the crowd and the grog and the smoke from the pan. A Frenchman played a squeezebox. Jim got mildly drunk and Clancy got very drunk. Eric, wrapped up in his greatcoat and with his babyish mouth ajar, fell peacefully asleep.

‘There mate, doesn’t that feel good now? — a nice crowd, a woman leanin’ on the bar.’ Clancy had a talent for creating minor festivals out of almost nothing at all. Jim felt a great affection for him. ‘I mean it’s somethin’ to remember isn’ it, when we’re up there freezin’ our balls off all through Christmas. I remember last Christmas, I —’ and Clancy was off on one of his stories. As usual Jim was soon lost in it. The wonders of Clancy Parkett’s life. Only suddenly it turned in a direction he hadn’t expected.

‘Knocked me back,’ Clancy was saying of some girl Jim had never been told about before and who didn’t figure in the List. She had slipped into this particular story by stealth. Jim wondered if he hadn’t, under the effects of the wine and the heat and Clancy’s familiar voice, dozed off for a minute and missed her entry, till he saw that she had been in Clancy’s sights all along, over there at the edge of what he was telling. He had, in his roundabout way, been leading up to her, but at the same time ignoring her presence, while he occupied himself with other things: the car he had driven last year, the places he went. He gave up at last and confronted her. ‘Margaret,’ he said, as if calling her in. ‘Margaret she was called,’ and immediately reddened all the way to the roots of his hair. Jim was astonished. The story had become a confession. ‘So there you are. I joined up the next day.’

Jim didn’t know what to say. He wasn’t used to this sort of thing. He took another long swig of the sickly drink, then pushed it away from him; he’d had enough. Clancy gave Eric a shove and the boy started awake, grinning, then slept again.

‘C’mon tiger,’ Clancy said, hauling him upwards. Eric’s eyes were closed and he was smiling blissfully. ‘At least,’ Clancy said, regarding the boy, ‘if he’s goin’ t’ get killed f’ Christmas he’ll ’v been pissed once in his life. Y’ reckon you can walk, mate?’