Black Diamonds (27 page)

Whatever happened to him
over there
must have given him this confidence in his own authority, but so has the way he's been treated by his old union, I think: he wanted his membership reinstated, to give him some sort of official menace to flaunt at our partner and simply because he earned it and wanted it back, but they refused. Due to his conflict of interest as an employer, citing some objection from the eastern states federation. How truly gaga is that? He says they can go to blazes; he's only interested in the Wattle anyway and he'll take his own industrial action as it suits him.

My twenty-first birthday has come and gone, and I didn't bother asking Daniel if he wanted to sell our share to resolve his conflict of interest. He carved me a tiny jarrah key, so polished it looks like carnelian agate, and he said to me: ‘Congratulations, France, you've earned your freedom; but unfortunately you still have to live with me. Forever.' Trillion times forever.

He's having too much of a lark. Mostly. We share a good laugh when the Troll declares the Wobblies illegal,
about bloody time, and as if that'll shut them up
, but it's not amusing a few weeks later when the state government tries its hand at tyranny. The railways commissioner tries to impose timecards on workers, which seems such a silly quibble, but virtually the whole of New South Wales goes out on strike in response: the whole state shuts down: hardly any food in the shops and we do live on a lot of potatoes and apples. It's not about timecards, though, it's about relentless inflation and pressure from bosses to work longer for less, for the war effort of course. Trade unionists are called the enemies of Britain and her Allies, and the outcry against these
revolutionaries
makes me think that unions are a breath away from being outlawed too. No talk of the facts: that people have simply had enough. Not a difficult two-and-two by any understanding. But this time the workers don't win; miners might be able to support each other through strikes, at the Wattle especially, after Daniel's fat cheque for mutual protection, and in Lithgow with the co-op store and Bracey's emporium doing everything to get what they can and give it cheaply, but most workers can't prepare at all: they're starved and cowed within a month. It's not so much the scabs under police guard in our mine that upset Daniel, or that a few hundred miners in the Illawarra will not get their jobs back, it's that some poor fellow, a striker, in Sydney was shot dead by a ‘volunteer' truck driver during a riot. He said, more to himself than me: ‘Only been through a couple of big strikes, and no one died. The one my first year in, it was better than school holidays. Me and Jimmy … we had a good time,' and he stopped there, then he barely spoke, about anything, for two days.

It's things like this that tell me he's still not too well. And the fact he rides his bike or walks wherever he goes, avoiding the car and its tendency to backfire at the bottom of a hill. No prizes for guessing why, no need to pry. Just as I didn't when we had to miss our vote in the general election in May: Daniel just didn't happen to want to go into town that day: ‘No point.' Hughes decreed that German Australians could not vote: they are behind union unrest and they are all spies, regardless of place of birth or citizenship, vague as that notion is. Held my tongue from quipping that it's bluster over nothing — after all, our most treacherous Hun
enemy disloyalist
Mr Edmund Resch, the infamous brewer of
Sydney's best
, is still safely interned at Liverpool ‘concentration' camp,
concentrating
no doubt on the reinvigoration of Tooth & Co's KB lager as the state's ale of choice. Sarah defied the decree and voted
per worthless usual
, no one in town was going to stop her, but the Nationals were always going to win against the old Labor anyway. So said the papers. And thus it came to pass. And thus it all hurts My Boy and makes him silent sometimes.

It's times like these that make me want to tell him with my body that I love him, that nothing else matters but us and our paradise. It's mid-September now and he's been home nearly six months, and still he hasn't come to bed, and hasn't mentioned it at all. Sometimes he sleeps in the spare room, but more often he sleeps out in the
room
off the verandah. I can hear him rattling around out there at all hours, the light from the kerosene lamps reaching up the hall; I'm sure sometimes he doesn't sleep at all. I'm fairly bursting to know what he's up to, but he's told me, firmly, that he'll show me when he's finished. When I walk past, out to the orchard, I can see paper roll pinned up against the windowless wall and pencilled shapes strewn across it. Can't tell what it is. I can see some canvas on the floor, looks like he's been experimenting with colours; oils. I don't know what's making my skin ache more: waiting for him to come to bed, or waiting to see what this will be.

 

DANIEL

I worked out quickly that bullshit is the new religion of Australia, the fastest growing national movement, everywhere, and maybe strongest with those who should know better, do know better: answer the call, get yourself ruined, come home, to nothing, but still you're all for King and Country. Hand on your heart for the fallen in God's great war against evil. Evil what? Evil capitalism? Evil imperialism? Evil fucking flying metal? No: evil bloody Fritz. Who the fuck is Fritz when he's at home? No one knows, and no one gives a rat's. Neither do I, really, but Jesus. I understand it's important for these blokes to believe that they're suffering for something reasonable, but the truth would get them what they need quicker. And I can't criticise: I've got my own difficulties with the truth.

Which is why I've only been to one servicemen's get-together, for the medically unfit. Thought I'd see if I could help, even though I didn't want to go. I got a good earful about how marvellous my missus is, but that was followed by an hour or so of rubbish about the lack of heart in new recruits. While I was away, there was some mutiny by troops in Sydney over training hours or something, which got so out of hand that coppers had to bring in a few hundred returned men to help hose them down. Apparently they all walked off the job, rushed on the pubs and got very, very pissed; thousands of them: wrecked half the city, looting grog shops and even pulled apart Sydney Station. One recruit killed, six wounded. The blokes who were telling me this were all pissed, probably have been fairly solidly since they returned. Then they said what a good thing this new six o'clock closing of the pubs is, put a brake on bad behaviour, as they sank back several more ales before the bar shut. Then they said that conscription would sort out the chokers: make them all go. I had to pull back very hard from saying: ‘What? So if they make it home alive they can come here and sit on their arses needing to get as pissed as you?' Then they were so pissed they started talking about it: the things that happened that'll make them want to be pissed for life. Publican took pity and kept the bar open illegally. And I couldn't get away from them fast enough. Told them if they know anyone needing a job to come see me, if they remember tomorrow. I'm not going back for seconds. And no one's shown up at the Wattle asking for work so far, which is unsurprising in a way. I've realised one truth, as if I didn't know it: coalmining's not exactly at the top of most people's list of desired occupations, unless you're stupid, desperate, or born into it. You also need to be fit.

Just as well France is so marvellous, with her
jaunting
and helping them write letters lobbying the government. Lobbying Hughes, the soldiers' best mate, so long as you're not asking for anything. Without people like her that bother, these blokes would be completely buggered. She actually asked my permission to keep going with it; that winded me. After all the grief I've caused her, she doesn't want to do anything to upset me. She couldn't if she tried, and I'm a living miracle of bullshit in myself as I keep it all away from her. The truth is, I'm struggling with it, just about all the time.
How hard can it be?
I asked myself coming home. More than a bit hard. I have everything, plus too much I can't say, and can't do.

Despite my many conflicts of interest, back in April I did want to go to the Anzac service at the town hall, for my pretend birthday, and because I thought it might do me some good, to let a bit of it go, where it's expected. But I spent the night before doing nothing but remembering, so that by the time dawn came around I was too much of a headcase to go anywhere: spent the day in the cage. I couldn't have put that uniform back on anyway, and I couldn't have gone without it on either, not without being disrespectful. I can't even look in the bloody wardrobe at my kit. I've thought about burning the lot of it, but I can't do that either, because that would be the final act of bullshit: it didn't happen. Same reason I could never get rid of that ridiculous DCM: as much as I don't want to see it, and don't want to think about the reason for it, it was Dunc's last little word in my ear, received well after he choofed off for good. A gem of a piece of bullshit, if ever there was one. Still hobbled, couldn't have stood up without the calipers if you paid me, and I think it was the first time I'd laughed in a hundred million years, maybe since he brought me France's apple card with Danny's picture in it. Thanks, Dunc. For everything, and for allowing me to be one of possibly a very, very few to crack silly during a medal ceremony; I'm sure it was put down to my sedative consumption, but that wouldn't be the whole story, would it. Of course not. And how could I ever burn Fritz-Johan's little note?
I'm going to die today, and I want to be killed by an Australian.
That's a piece of national history, and it might well be the last written record of that kid's. And how could I ever burn my photos of France, and all her letters, and the jumper she made me that I never wore because I didn't want to get it dirty? I'd rather set fire to myself. But how could I ever say any of this, without lighting a fuse and blowing it all open?

That's exactly what I am trying to do out here in my cage off the verandah, though. Sorting out how to show what I can't say. I've never had a tooth pulled, but I think I can see where the term
like drawing teeth
comes from. Can't stop it, can't help myself. The further I go, the more I've got to drag out. Had thought at first I might just have a quiet go at this for a while and maybe try to convince myself to make an application to the Sydney Art School, I know France'd be thrilled if I did something like that, but things aren't working out that way. Of course not. And I'm not talking to anyone about any of the dippy rubbish going on in here. It's not the painting that's difficult; that comes so naturally it'd make you wonder what took me so long to catch on: it's … just get on with it.

Get on with it, and get back to what I should be doing. Being a proper husband to Francine, and a proper father to my son. Can't do that till I get rid of this: plain violent undiplomatic insubordination. Then I can leave it there and paint Francine for the rest of my life. Maybe one day even get a whole night's sleep. It's not just that I can't sleep, sometimes I don't want to, because I'm sure I'll carry on while I'm at it. It's better to pass out from the lack of it: then I don't dream. And I'm too buggered to go round to the Wattle, which is a good thing: the state I'm in at the minute I might have to be a very good boss and show Drummond what a prick I can be, rather than bother with breaking him down by slow degrees. It's probably a good thing Mum's out of town at the moment too: one less face asking me the question:
What
are
you doing, Daniel?
Mum's off in Bathurst, with Mim, who's having a fit because Roy's been injured. Not badly by the sounds of it, he's written to her, but my sister, as much as I love her, is hysterical, always, in a hundred different ways. When she came round straight after I got home, she said, ‘Well, you look like you've been in the wars, don't you,' then she fussed all over me, ‘hopeless little brother', telling the kids to shoo all day as if they might have broken my other arm from twenty yards if they weren't careful; I can see her fussing round her house now in a silly panic before there's a need to have one.

Francine doesn't fuss and she doesn't ask. She's peaceful and steady and she does bloody well everything, while I'm out here buggerising around. She's a legend, deserving recommendation. All women should get a prize for the amount of bullshit they're putting up with. Except for those like that Nellie Melba, blowing in to sing us all an
international
aria about how frightfully shoddy Australian women are for not making their men to go — I'd like to tar and feather her as Queen of the League of Bullshit. But I'm too busy, aren't I. Very busy trying to get the purple I'm after.

Knock on the door of my cage. ‘Daniel?' I just about jump out of my skin. I'd very much like to stop doing that one day, since I know it's Francine. I look out the window and there she is, but with Nichols in tow.

I come outside, wondering what he wants on a Wednesday.

‘How's the elbow then, Danny?' he says; wish he'd stop calling me that. Only Evan calls me Danny now; I don't mind feeling like a kid with him. But Nichols is very chuffed with himself these days, having taken instructions from eminent
orthopaedic
surgeon in London. God bless him.

‘Good,' I tell him. And it is; I'm not about to throw a football or a grenade with any accuracy, or start hewing again, but it's a marvel of medical science as far as I'm concerned. It does the job.

He says, looking especially pleased: ‘I've had a letter from Mr Myer in London.' He says the
Mr
and the
London
as if it's a scandal. ‘He was very pleased with the way things went and my report on your progress.' Nichols took to exercising my hand with even more enthusiasm than I did, and made enough notes to write a book on The Elbow, even bought a brand-new X-ray machine to celebrate. And I couldn't be more grateful; grateful too that he sorted out my formal discharge from the army, after confirming with them that I am both physically disabled and neurasthenic, which means officially out of my mind, so they wouldn't come looking; they didn't, just sent the paperwork, and a classical piece of arsewipe called Certificate of Service, thank you very much
CANCELLED
Sergeant D Ackerman, DCM. So my favourite quack's just come round to skite about my progress; that's all right, can't blame him.

No he hasn't. ‘Mr Myer has suggested a surgeon in Sydney to do the further correction. And I've arranged it for you, for next month on the —'

‘No,' I tell him. France shoots me a look to say I've just been
exceptionally
rude. I say: ‘Thanks, but not now.'

He actually looks hurt as well as stunned. I add: ‘Maybe later.'

‘Later? You don't say
later
to a specialist surgeon in Sydney who's agreed to look at you. In the middle of a war, when he's got plenty of other things to do.'

‘Sorry, but I am saying no.' I can't tell him why. Sorry, but I want to paint my nightmares and that might take a while; and sorry, but to be very truthful, I just don't want to have the mallet and chisel again. Not when there won't be a written guarantee that it won't turn out worse than it is now; and not since I've found out that chloroform and ether can kill you — I've heard X-rays can kill you too. Teeth pulling aside, I've come to appreciate the fact of my life and the function of my hand very much. I do owe the medical profession buckets, but no, someone else can play specimen for
everyone's elbow.
Besides, it's nearly summer, and I'm not going to spend a day of it wearing cement. Not wearing cement ever again.

France steps in with her better manners. ‘Doctor Nichols, you've been so very kind, but I think we need to give it some consideration. Daniel will let you know soon.'

That the answer is no: not later, not maybe, but no.

He sighs: ‘Well, you might have missed the boat by then, I'm afraid, Danny. The longer you leave it …'

So what.

He's off, shaking his head bemused. Too bad.

France says: ‘Don't do anything you don't want to do.'

Don't worry, I won't. Not going to let you down now, France.

Second of November. Roy's dead. Mum's sent us a telegram from Bathurst. He'd said to Mim that it was just a nick to the back of his wrist. But it was obviously one nasty enough to go septic and kill him, slowly. He was somewhere in Zonnebeke and took the bullet sometime in early September. Just one of thousands on the Flanders Line doing a marvellous job of getting killed right now. I made the mistake of opening a paper last week: they reckon it's another Somme, already a quarter of a million Tommies gone; and it sounds like the AIF is having another Pozieres at some place called Passchendaele. Except, according to the report, it's really pissing down like there's no tomorrow. Anzacs expected to enjoy the challenge even more.

France is crying, holding the telegram, just quietly. She's crying because it's Mim's Roy, even though she'd only met him the once. She's crying because it's all too much, and it keeps going on and on. She's also crying because she had no choice but to come out and tell me this, even though I haven't been past the kitchen or spoken to her beyond the necessaries for the last five days. I've been busy being angry. I haven't been outright angry for a very long time, but I am very angry now. She's been giving me a wide berth and keeping Danny away from me, keeping anyone and everyone away. I wish I could tell her that this is the very last time I will ever be angry, that's a promise, that I'm just doing a very proper job of it.

I should go and see Mim, but I can't, not in this state. I doubt she'd recognise me anyway: I haven't slept and I haven't shaved or had a decent wash for the last five days either.

There's someone banging at the front door; France is wiping away her tears before she goes to answer it. Doesn't get a chance, though.

And into all this, right now, lobs Drummond. Here, in my backyard. He's obviously furious about something, and I just look at him as he says: ‘This has gone beyond a joke, Ackerman.'

Couldn't agree more, but I've got no idea what he's talking about.

‘You can't pretend you don't know anything about this.'

Why don't you tell me?

‘Lewis has downed tools for your cavil-out pay for September, as if I need to tell you that.'

Has he? Good for Evan. I laugh at Drummond, not nicely. Evan wants the pay, of course, but I've an idea that he also wants me down at the Wattle, to resolve the issue and to get me out of myself. This is what's called poor timing. Or maybe perfect timing.