Where the Line Breaks Read online

  ‘Time. Gravity.’ She thinks for a second. ‘Death.’ A smile.

  She laughs at his look of shock.

  ‘Love?’ he asks.

  ‘Stories.’

  At university, he’d studied the classics, pulling apart Aeschylus and Euripides, sniggering at Oedipus, reciting Homer in cramped makeshift rooms while his classmates slumbered in the seats. Here, those stories came alive. He fancied the air smelt older, and his breathing grew easier, until one day the cough which had stalked him with irksome persistence throughout Gallipoli failed to materialise. The landmarks looked bigger too, the sunsets brighter, the water bluer even than the beaches back home. The familiar sound of seagulls, and the smell of salt and fresh fish, would steal their way up from the tiny fishing village in the bay, throwing up memories of Fremantle Harbour and baking hot summers on the beach that he thought belonged to someone else.

  Some afternoons, dozing on his cot, he imagined the Greek heroes, in full armour, burnished metal and red plumed helms, sneaking their way down through the rocks alongside the water nymphs and Gods-made-mortal, to swim and laugh in the shallows, creating history as they went, frolicking in the azure waters.

  The days hobble by like the wounded – waiting for night before dragging their torn bodies to the line – punctuated by check-ups and meetings, visits from friends and colleagues, performances by the infantry brass band and, once, a moustachioed villager, his fingers a blur on the bouzouki cradled in his lap. He receives a parcel from Rose, with two new books, a fresh razor, and a fruitcake for the new year, packed in with thick socks for protection. Stuck between the pages of a copy of their local paper, amid the sporting news and an advertisement for the local fete, he pulls forth a banksia candle, its bright red flowers disintegrating beneath his fingers.

  Somewhere along the way, the image of Rose he kept safe in his mind wavers and darkens; black hair and white stockings, Nancy’s cold touch rather than Rose’s sun-warmed fingers, the military sound of heels on wooden floors. He is horrified to find he can’t remember what Rose looks like. He pulls her photograph from the bottom of his bundle to ponder the stranger glaring back. He is worried that he should feel guilty, and terrified that he doesn’t. The island, the hospital and the men inside it, the way the temporary canvas walls of the corridors sway in the slightest breeze, makes him feel like he’s sleepwalking. Like his actions here won’t have any effect in the real world.

  No-one can see what he does down in the pale blue waters. He feels like he has stepped out of time, out of the war and out of his life, on the white beaches of Lemnos. Like nothing he does here will have repercussions. But he stops mentioning the nurses in his letters home. He tells Rose and his family about the books and the garden and the fishermen on the pier, and keeps the truth for himself.

  He writes that he is sure Robbie will be found safe. Robbie can look after himself, he says, the pencil smudging under his fingers. He doesn’t believe his own words.

  I love you, he finishes.

  The jetty and surrounding dock are deserted, the fishing boats long since cast off for the morning. She strolls to the end of the wooden pier and settles on a weather-beaten tender, light blue paint flaking off its prow, bobbing in the water.

  ‘This one,’ she says.

  He glances up at the windows around the harbour, wonders how many eyes are watching him, how many potential witnesses. She grabs his hand, her face bright in the morning darkness, and pulls him down the pier.

  ‘You promised.’

  And he had promised, before he realised what the journey would entail, before he understood they’d be AWOL for a day, before he could stop himself by overthinking it. He’s worrying about what Red or Nugget might think if they found out. He should tell Nancy about Rose. He has a fiancée back home, wherever that is, and a life waiting for him to return, and she needs to know. But he can’t break his promise to her, so here they are.

  At the end of the jetty she turns back to him and pulls her shoes off, throws them onto the deck of their boat. Their boat, like they purchased it together. She lowers herself down the rungs of the ladder. He unwinds the rope and throws it to her, and then turns around, three rungs down and the hospital up on the hill before him, where they’ll all still be asleep. His foot on the edge of the boat sends him lurching forward. He leans backwards too far to compensate and lands on the deck with a clatter. She arches an eyebrow. Around her his feet are huge and ungainly, his limbs gangly, his voice croaks like he’s the young boy fielding in the outfield again.

  ‘You know how to run it?’ She glances across at the wheelhouse, and he nods slowly, unconvinced. She notices, gives a little smile. ‘We’re only borrowing it, I promise.’

  She pulls her scarlet coat closer about her shoulders. The engine starts up with a roar, loud enough to wake the entire hospital and send someone running down the hill to stop them, but soon enough they’re puttering away from the harbour, out in the direction of the little island. He’s not sure of what he’s doing, but the way she chatters puts him at ease. About the weather, and the journey, about how pleasant it is not to be cleaning up vomit, how beautiful the day is going to be. The constant stream of words, the gentle lull of her accent. Soon Lemnos is fading in their wake.

  She’s right, of course, and the sun soon arrives in full force, blaring down on their little vessel. The skin on his nose burns, and he’s grateful for the occasional blast of swell that sprinkles him with water. Nancy lies on the deck near the prow, her dress pulled up high on her waist, her legs bright white in the sunshine. She laughs, says her legs are so white she’s translucent. A ghost. He can’t look away.

  He should tell her about Rose, but he doesn’t.

  Skyros is a miniature, doll’s house island; half the size of Lemnos with its bustling port and the constant loading and unloading of soldiers, supplies and the wounded. The dock where they tie up the boat is manned by a tanned villager, who gives a slow nod from under heavy-lidded eyes and doesn’t ask questions.

  Back out across the water, the black outline of a troopship passes slowly, but otherwise the island seems untouched by war. The streets leading up towards the village are steep, bright white steps winding towards the outline of a church on the peak. The click of her heels on the stone. The heavy tread of his boots. Soon they’re heading downhill, leaving the village behind, past individual houses and farms. They see no-one. A black cat peers from atop a white wall, and further along, a goat approaches the wooden fence as they pass.

  ‘How long did you say?’ He’s breathless trying to keep up, too proud to ask her to slow down. What path there is, meandering and worn, is rough earth, divots and exposed roots. She picks through it with ease, leaving him trailing, sticky with sweat. He offers her a hand up the short incline of a wooden bridge over a stream surging with spring waters, but she ignores him, her skirt held in one hand, stepping her way through the puddles.

  She pulls ahead, walking faster than he can manage. The air is cold in his chest and there’s a throbbing in his knee he tries to ignore. He drops so far behind he loses sight of her. Five minutes down the track he finds her perched against the trunk of a tree waiting for him. Two and a half hours in, he’s ready to give up, alone on a stretch of track surrounded by white rock and hemmed in by cypress trees. He rounds the corner to find Nancy waiting at the bottom of a hill, and together they peer up the tiny path that snakes its way to the top. They exchange looks.

  ‘You’ll be alright?’

  She scoffs, and looks him up and down. ‘I’m not the worry, Lewis. You’re the fool who caught a back of shrapnel.’

  He sizes up the cliff.

  ‘If the Tommies can make it up with a day-old stiff, poet or not, I’ll be sweet.’ He is rewarded with a tightening of her jaw, but no response. She gestures him forward, but he shakes his head. ‘No, after you.’ And she sets off in front of him, her hands outstretched on each side, the rocks beneath her feet uneven and loose. ‘I wouldn’t want to miss the view.’ />
  They first heard of the English poet in Mena, in the heat of the afternoon, reading snatches of a week-old Times as they waited to ship out to Gallipoli. Nugget had turned to him and asked, straight-faced, curious.

  ‘What’s this mean then, Al? “Magnificently unprepared/for the long littleness of life.” Some Tommy poet carked it off Lemnos.’

  And he shook his head, unsure.

  ‘Not something they taught you at university?’ Red teased. He delighted in discovering facts Alan didn’t know, and lording them over him.

  ‘When we get back,’ Nugget said, ‘I think I’d quite like to go to university.’

  Red laughed. ‘And study what? You know they can’t teach you how to be an insufferable know-it-all – Al was just born that way.’

  Alan punched Red on the shoulder, but felt secretly proud. He took the newspaper from Nugget.

  ‘You could go to university if you wanted, Nug, it’s not that hard.’ Nugget smiled. ‘But first you’d have to learn to read.’

  Nugget swore at him. Red laughed.

  He read the article. The words continued to rattle around in his mind for days afterward, and he never forgot the name.

  ‘Brooke. The young Apollo.’

  Sitting in a grove at the top of the hill, surrounded by olive trees thick with powdery green leaves, they find the cemetery. A cluster of wooden crosses and cairns of stacked pebbles. They look out across the blue water, where Lemnos would be, and beyond that to the stretch of rocky coastline littered with the bodies of his mates. Right about now the orderlies at the hospital will be delivering lunch, and the men will scoff it down, loud and raucous. And soon the ambulance truck will meander its way up from the dock to collect another batch of men too injured to return to action, and ready for the long trip back to Perth.

  ‘Wasn’t your friend leaving today?’ Nancy’s question trails off.

  Soon they’ll be wheeling Red through the corridors. He’ll drift in and out of consciousness, no knowledge of his whereabouts. Probably doesn’t remember who he is, poor bastard. No way Alan could have brought himself to watch while they packaged him up like that and sent him home, another parcel stuffed in with socks to keep from rattling.

  He grunts, spins around, approaches the graves, peering down to read the names of long-dead villagers.

  ‘One hundred and fourteen years old. Christ.’

  Some of the names are illegible, carved in Greek letters from the same white limestone as the cliffs, faded away by the salty air, worn smooth by the breeze. On a small patch of ground at the back of the clearing, three or four fresh wooden crosses stand out like Nancy’s accent in the ward of Australians, the grass around their bases sparse, thin fingers clawing at the clean wood. Nancy walks over to the grave they have come to see, a jumble of flowers piled high around its base, and small offerings, scraps of paper held down by rocks, or tied to the arms of the cross like the last winter leaves on the naked branches of trees.

  None of the other graves have offerings. He stops at each one all the same, to spend a moment reading the inscription.

  ‘Do you write?’ he says, three graves away from her. She looks at him, across the bodies of the men rotting away in the ground. Her eyes bore into him; he tenses the muscles in his neck and stares forward.

  ‘I did,’ she’s kneeling by Brooke’s grave, ‘when I was studying.’

  He can hear the smile in her voice, and whips his head up to meet her steady gaze.

  ‘And no. You may not.’ She leaves him grinning, turns to the grave, her skirt swinging around her hips. She’s taken her coat off and draped it over one arm, her bare skin creamy in the afternoon light.

  ‘Where did you study?’

  He approaches from behind, the sun a white orb in the ink of her hair, shimmering as he walks forward.

  ‘Went to lectures at Oxford. Left after the first year. I was allowed to sit the exams, but not to matriculate.’ She pokes her tongue out in mock disgust. ‘Bit of a boys’ club is an understatement.’

  ‘I can imagine.’

  ‘Can you?’ she snorts.

  He moves by her side, tries to quieten the wheeze and splutter of his loud breathing. Neither one of them speaks. He tried to read the book of poems, but none of them spoke to him – all beauty and polish, but missing the truth, the petrifying fear, of the war.

  ‘I was engaged,’ she says; a tumble of words.

  ‘I’m so sorry.’

  ‘For what?’ She doesn’t turn her face away from the grave, picking at an invisible spot on the back of her hand.

  ‘I assume. Your fiancé. He died?’

  She smiles. ‘No, he’s very much alive.’

  He doesn’t understand. ‘You broke off the engagement?’

  A laugh. ‘I suppose, technically, we’re still engaged. I never thought to check.’

  While they’ve been speaking, she’s taken his hand, as if it’s the most natural action in the world. He hadn’t realised until she started playing with his fingers, winding hers clumsily through his. Her fingers are larger than Rose’s. His palm is slick with sweat. She lets his hand fall, pulls hers to her side.

  ‘Should we say something?’ He wonders what she wants to hear, what importance this sad little cemetery has to her.

  She looks at him, her eyes dancing. ‘You think he can hear us?’

  ‘No, but –’

  ‘I’m teasing.’ She kicks her shoes off, runs her toes through the grass. He doesn’t know where to look.

  ‘So, the fiancé?’

  ‘It was arranged. He was older. I thought it might be more fun to be a nurse.’

  ‘You left him?’

  ‘And it is. I meet so many agreeable young men.’ She’s grinning. He turns away, moves to the stone wall that marks the end of the cemetery, looking out over the blue. He doesn’t know why it matters, but it does.

  ‘Was that hard? Leaving?’

  She’s by his ear, her body pushed against him.

  ‘Does it matter?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he turns, and her face is in his, eye to eye, his hands wrapped in hers. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then no, it wasn’t hard.’ Her lashes fluttering, she closes her eyes for a second. When she stares back at him, they are heavy and wet. He crumbles and pulls her closer. ‘It was simple.’

  She kisses him first, with a ferocity he isn’t expecting, biting his lip and pulling him forward, meeting his tongue with hers. She takes his hands and winds them around her own body, educating him, leading him. He follows blindly.

  They break apart, and her feet are bare in the dirt of Brooke’s grave, and she’s smiling, like she’s won a cheap toy at a travelling funfair.

  ‘Let’s make some poetry.’

  ‘Is that a line, Nurse Taylor?’

  She doesn’t answer. She pulls him against her, her legs rosy pink as her skirt twists up around her hips. Her hand is on the front of his trousers.

  From back the way they came, there comes a scream of laughter, the patter of voices rising. There are more tourists, khaki-uniformed, making their way up the hill, with the same idea, eager to pay their respects, moving like tiny black ants crawling up the wall of the house back home, that constant thin stream edging along the kitchen window and out into the sun. Soon the grove will be humming with activity, crowded with bodies in the afternoon sun. Nancy catches his eye and scowls.

  She walks back to the low wall and stops.

  ‘Down there.’

  She’s pointing down the other side of the hill, the opposite way to the one they came.

  The water lies calm and flat for a few hundred yards, too shallow for boats, but there’s a tiny stretch of white sand scrawled among the rocks, and before he knows it he’s following her down through the scrub. They make their own pathway. He reaches for a hand that keeps pulling, leading him on and calling him forward.

  My love, my apologies.

  I have found it difficult to write. The news about Robbie has utterly demoralised me.
Please look after Ma for me. I know you will.

  I hope you have heard the good news that Red is on his way home. It will be a shock, I’m sure, both for his family and for him. And for you. I saw him off from the hospital, and he seemed in good enough spirits, though he hardly knew I was there. The journey is long and arduous and I pray for his safe arrival. I hope you will look after him in my stead.

  I leave for Suez in a week, back to Kelly, who I must admit I have missed, and the saddle, which I have not, and the boys, who continue to give the Turks hell on a daily basis. It will be good to get back into it. I feel like I have grown soft here, with no-one to talk to, and nothing to do. Thank you for your letters, which have kept me sane. Without you, I would have drowned in boredom.

  Do not fret, I have had my taste of hospital life, and decided it is not for me.

  Yours, lonelily.

  Bluer than blue, and bracing cold against his chest, clearing his head with a sharp blast, cloaking him and holding him tight. Floating under the surface, he opens his eyes and watches her approach, the hazy wet sheen of her petticoat stuck to her legs, her toes trailing sandbursts in the shallows. He would stay down here forever.

  He pushes off the bottom, kicking towards the surface and breaking out into the afternoon sunshine, throwing his head back, arcing water. He runs a hand over his face and through his long hair, wiping away the water from his eyes. Back up the hill, in among the cypress trees, he hears laughter, screams of delight, low male voices egging each other on.

  ‘They can’t see us.’ Her teeth are chattering, goosebumps rising along her naked arms, her petticoat soaked through and translucent against her skin. He can make out the dark circles of her nipples through the material, the curves of her hips, the tight scrub of her hair through the slip, like a pencil drawing, a field sketch before battle.

  He kicks his way over to her, diving under the water a few feet away and approaching her legs like a predator, circling her left foot. He wraps his arms around her body and pulls her under. Her face is before him, laughing, tiny bubbles streaming toward the light. They surface and he coughs, seawater running from his nose. Nancy is already swimming away from him, out further into the bay, into the deeper waters.