Where the Line Breaks Read online

  ‘Wait.’ He tries to whisper and shout at the same time, afraid of getting caught, afraid of stepping out of the moment. Afraid of waking up.

  Nancy turns back to him, a lock of hair plastered to her face, a dark ivy tendril.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Nothing.’ He coughs. ‘It’s a bit cold.’

  She turns, takes a few half-hearted strokes back towards him.

  ‘It’s not good for your recovery,’ she kicks, advances slowly, keeping her head above the water until she’s a body length away from him. ‘Maybe we should call it a day?’

  He takes a stroke back, retreating towards the safety of the beach, the warmth of the sand. She swims forward, keeping the distance between them, extending her body, her legs long and slippery.

  ‘We could lie in the sun?’

  She frowns, a flash of teeth, a shark’s toothy grin crossing her face. A glimpse of pink tongue, and then she tucks her head down, powering towards him with heavy kicks. He backs up, trips over the sandbar, pushes off the ground and kicks, feebly, looking up into the blue.

  Her hand wraps around his ankle, pulls him toward her. He’s under the water and her body is on top of his, their faces close. She kisses him, the air rushing out of his mouth, tasting saltwater and her lips. He can’t tell which way is up.

  They surface, smiling.

  The pain in his leg has disappeared. His skin is leather tight and his head is clear. But his chest feels waterlogged. She takes his hand and pulls him through the shallows onto the beach. He follows, unquestioning, falling into step behind her. Waiting for orders. He’s on his back, the sand hard and warm. She leans over, drips water from her mouth into his, her hair thick cold tentacles that snake along his shoulders.

  Her petticoat has ridden up around her waist. He reaches forward, pulling the hem up and over her head hungrily, until she gets caught in the wet material and asks him to stop, chuckling as she removes the shift herself. She leans forward and plants her cold lips on his, reaching down between her legs and removing his shorts with practised ease. There is an awkward moment, but she laughs, says it’s the cold, and shuffles down between his legs, grazing her lips across his chest, drawing her nails down the side of his ribs. Her tongue is warm and his body tenses, sand between his clenched cheeks. She murmurs but he can’t reply. High above, a huge white bird circles. He grabs hold of the sand on either side, wet grains squeezed through his fingers.

  She sits up, licks her lips, the schoolmarm look she gives him when she discovers the packet of cigarettes hidden under the mattress. She falls onto the sand next to him. She guides him on top and tells him to hold her legs.

  ‘Start slowly. Be gentle.’ She teaches him. A tremor ripples through her body, and he stops what he’s doing, looking down at her. ‘It’s a shiver,’ she says and pulls him forward, urging him deeper.

  She’s moaning, loud animal noises he’s never heard before, and he’s certain the others in the cemetery will hear, so he kisses her, fills her mouth with his tongue. He pulls his head up, tries to wipe away the seawater dripping from his nose, but she doesn’t care and kisses him back.

  The sand is sharp on his knees, each thrust digging him deeper into the beach. Nancy groans by his ear, digging her fingers into his back. He opens himself up and falls alongside her, into the cresting and surging waves. The saltspray. The dark water where he can’t reach the bottom.

  Driftwood, spelt out in

  black and white upon the shore

  lines written by waves

  He doesn’t remember biting her, but they are his teeth marks on her neck. He apologises, but she says all’s fair in love and war. They jump back into the sea to get the sand off, but the sun has lost its warmth, and when they walk back up the beach they’re both shivering. He gives her his coat and for once she doesn’t say don’t play the hero. He puts his own trousers and shirt back on without drying, and the material sticks to his skin. The day has passed them by, and they walk back to the village in silence. His wet pants chafe against his thighs. The shadows on the ground grow darker, the steps back down to the dock are steeper than they were. He suggests staying for a night, sharing a bed, playing husband and wife, but Nancy says she’s tired, says they’ve already lost a day, says she needs to get back.

  She’s asleep in the prow by the time they leave the harbour, and he’s left alone in the cold, keeping the boat steady, watching for the dark silhouettes of invisible destroyers to emerge from the ink and crush them. Knuckles white on the wheel, they steam back into Lemnos late at night.

  She stumbles back up to the hospital in sullen silence, ignoring him. They separate by the main entrance, where she leaves him for the nurses quarters. She gives him back his coat, and walks away without a backward glance, untouched except for the teeth marks on her neck, and the tangled knot of hair down her back. He stands in the entrance for a minute, hoping for the sound of her heels to return, but they fade into the darkness, and he walks back to his ward, alone.

  A week before he ships out, he is moved down to the barracks by the dock, away from the hospital and the smell of formaldehyde and its bleached white sheets. Away from her. He receives a new uniform, pressed and laundered, and orders to meet up with his regiment outside Suez. He is given a haircut and a proper shave from a barber who wraps his face up in hot towels and flings flaming wands at his ears. He dreams of her. The men are ordered to parade each morning, and his muscles ache each night when he throws himself down on his cot. He doesn’t have a single chance to meet with her, or write, or think.

  The night before he leaves, he makes the walk back up to the hospital one last time. There are flowers opening in the hospital courtyard, bursts of colour where they first laid his stretcher. He wishes he hadn’t worn his full uniform, but the men in his old ward don’t take the piss, they wish him luck or pat him on the back. He leaves a pack of cigarettes by the window. Nancy isn’t there.

  She isn’t in any of the wards, isn’t anywhere in the hospital. When he reaches the nurses quarters, a young nurse tells him she is gone for the day, maybe down to the beach, if he wanted to look, or maybe it was one of the other islands. He asks if she left anything for him, and waits while she walks off to check, blocking the way. A second nurse taps him on the shoulder and politely asks him to move.

  After five minutes the young nurse hasn’t returned. He pushes open the door and heads inside. His boots squeak on the concrete floor. Long silent corridors stretch out left and right. He hears voices, and follows them. The young nurse is at an open door, arguing with someone inside. She turns when she hears him coming.

  ‘You can’t be in here,’ she says, her voice rising.

  ‘I need to see her,’ he holds his hands up in front of him, like calming a frantic horse, ‘one more time.’

  ‘Get out!’ the nurse shrieks, and then Nancy appears in the doorway, and lays a hand on her shoulder.

  ‘It’s alright,’ she says, ‘I’ll take it from here.’

  The nurse walks away down the corridor, tutting.

  ‘I leave tomorrow,’ he says.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I had to see you.’

  ‘Had to? Or what?’

  He doesn’t know what to say. ‘You don’t feel the same way?’

  ‘I’m not sure that I do.’

  ‘I’ve never felt this way about anyone before,’ he lies.

  She tilts her head. ‘You don’t remember, do you?’

  ‘Don’t remember what?’ He remembers the sea, the saltwater. He remembers sand and sun.

  She shakes her head. ‘Rose.’ She laughs, but it’s a cold laugh, empty and mocking. ‘You called me Rose.’

  ‘Rose.’ The name stalls on his tongue.

  ‘Your little sister?’

  He reaches for her hand, but she pulls it away.

  ‘My fiancée.’

  She stares through him, until he disappears.

  The next morning they set sail, and he crowds against the prow wit
h the other men, another soldier in a group of soldiers, indistinguishable from the men around him. He watches the village grow small behind them, hoping for Nancy to materialise out of the laneways, searching for the scarlet stain of her coat against the white walls. The water around the boat is dirty white, chopped foam writhing under the engines.

  58 Trooper G. Roberton in conversation with Curtin-Kneeling, in From Busso to the Holy Land, p. 44.

  59 I can also personally recommend J. Buckley’s Heroes of the Cross: Australian Recipients of the Victoria Cross (Penguin, Sydney, 1984), which was one of the first books to delve into Lewis’s past in an attempt to understand him, and L.L. Hereford’s original postwar study of the Victoria Cross recipients in They Walk Amongst Us, which, though published in the early thirties and somewhat dated, provides the best overview of Lewis’s storied career.

  60 The Regimental Scrapbook of the 10th Light Horse Regiment.

  61 The Regimental Scrapbook of the 10th Light Horse Regiment.

  62 Pyke, The Annotated Letters, p. 81. Rarely does Lewis reveal his feelings of abject depression and lack of confidence as candidly as he does in this startling letter, which Curtin-Kneeling refers to several times as evidence of the great man’s human decency and continued heroic devotion to his duty. And yet he refuses to accept that Alan might be the Unknown Digger.

  63 Pyke, The Annotated Letters, p. 83. One of six instances of censorship to occur in the entirety of Lewis’s penmanship. As an officer, his correspondence was rarely edited by his superiors – as a gentleman, he was expected to abide by the clearly defined rules of his position. But sometimes the only thing you can do is write it all down.

  64 She specifically asked me not to say anything. Not to tell anyone. Not to worry about it – it was nothing, she says, he was drunk, she was drunk, he would never – she stops what she’s doing and looks me dead in the eye – NEVER, she says, do anything like that if he was sober.

  Like that’s an excuse.

  I lie in bed and argue with myself. Being drunk isn’t an excuse. Except we’ve all done things when we were drunk that we’ve regretted later. Throwing up in a best mate’s parents’ car as they drive you home. Buying that fifth round of tequila shots. Trying to backflip. But the things we regret aren’t things that hurt others, except maybe the tequila shots.

  Em is taking a little time to herself. That’s for the best. I toss and turn in sweaty sheets.

  When I can sleep, I dream about the night, like I had been there. Is it too much to ask for happy dreams? Ones where I wait in the dark until he finishes work, and then, as he walks to his car, I jump out with a baseball bat and smash his kneecaps until they resemble jagged shrapnel pieces through the yellowing skin, and, as he begs for mercy, I drag him over to the side of the carpark, turn him over, tell him to bite the sidewalk, and then kerb-stomp the twat? A little wish fulfilment?

  I’ve not been sleeping well. I don’t know what to do.

  I need to buy a baseball bat.

  65 ‘Thoughts on Rising’ is one of the Unknown Digger’s more philosophical – one might even argue upbeat – poems, before the tone goes dark, as it inevitably must. Four thirty in the morning when Em called. I was finishing the previous chapter. She was crying. What’s wrong? I said.

  The wretched sniff of wet snot in her nose. Somewhere, on her side or mine, the wail of an ambulance retreating.

  Em? What happened?

  Sloane Square. Her voice quavered, she took a huge gulp of air, trying to steady herself, and I sat in the dark silence, waiting for the wave to crash down over my head. Meet me outside the station?

  What happened? I raised my voice. In the flat below, someone grunted. Em had vanished altogether, silence on her side, just the occasional roar of a passing car. Where are you?

  Walking to Sloane Square.

  I’ll be there.

  66 See Chapter 4. She rang again in the taxi. I’m coming, I said, as soon as I answered.

  She’d stopped crying. Her voice was a cold monotone. Outside the station.

  Are you ok? What happened? I wanted to scream. I could see the driver, in my peripheral, staring straight ahead, trying not to eavesdrop. I turned towards the window, the streets of Holborn flashing by. Are you safe?

  How long?

  Back to the driver, trying to gauge in his look, the way he glanced at his map. Ten minutes.

  Hurry. She hung up.

  The driver slowed and stopped at a red light. No other cars were near us, no-one passed in front, all of London frozen in time. He turned his head, his eyes wide. Is your girlfriend?

  Please hurry.

  67 I keep replaying it, over and over in my head, like a scene from a movie, removed from my body, hovering above the square and watching as the cab approached. The blonde of her hair before anything else, tiny and distant across the road. Shouting at the driver. The door open and my feet on the pavement before the car had stopped. The run across the cobblestones, the orchestral score, the slow-motion thud of my steps. I crashed down next to her, pulled her into my lap and rocked her, back and forth. Long purple stains down her cheeks, her eyes wild. She buried her face into my shoulder and her body convulsed, and I pulled her tighter, squeezing her, trying to absorb the heavy shudder, trying to pull her deeper into safety.

  It’s ok. It’s ok. It’s ok.

  It was all I could think to say, the only words that felt appropriate. It’s ok. The square was starting to show signs of life, morning workers glancing across at us, where we slumped. It’s ok.

  68 The shuddering slowed, until we were breathing together, letting my chest rise and fall with hers. She raised her head, a gleaming trail of snot bridging the gap between us. She wiped it on my sleeve.

  I held her, the ground cold where we sat, her hair in my eyes. I didn’t want to move, afraid of breaking the spell.

  It’s ok.

  69 T. Shuckman, ‘Literary Allusions in the Poems of the Unknown Digger’, London Journal of Poetry, Issue 15, Volume 12, December 2011, p. 69.

  70 See From Busso to the Holy Land: Alan Lewis and the 10th Light Horse, Chapter 4: ‘The Man, The Legend’. The ride home was a million times worse. Em was broken.

  Back to Turnpike? The driver turned in his seat, glancing at the huddled form next to me.

  Yes, please.

  No, back to mine. Make him go to mine. Em’s voice, low and lazy, from my lap.

  You sure?

  She didn’t answer.

  Back to hers, then, driving in silence.

  I stroked Em’s hair, running my fingers through the gold strands, trying to find a pattern, a routine, comfort in the constant motion. Past her ear, down her shoulders, back up, repeat as necessary. Try not to notice the chipped nail polish. Past her ear, down her shoulders, back up. Try not to imagine her cries. Past her ear, down her shoulders, back up. Try not to imagine the jagged edge of her breathing as anything other than exhaustion. Watching the streets get dirtier, the houses smaller, the graffiti more pronounced. Thinking, I’ll kill him.

  71 Pyke, The Annotated Letters, p. 155. Lewis is fond of recounting McRae’s various pearls of Irish wisdom, and who could blame him – ‘Nugget’ McRae was invariably the regiment’s prankster, class clown, and source of hope. One can imagine how vital the ability to laugh at one’s troubles must have been in the trenches, how important it was to have a Nugget around to lighten the load. You need to laugh, or you’ll scream.

  72 Around Camden she raised her head. Bleary eyes. Where are we?

  Camden. I’ll wake you when we get there.

  She lowered her head back into my lap. The bottoms of her feet were filthy, her thongs discarded on the cab floor. At some stage between me leaving the party and her call she’d changed out of her party dress and into jeans and a strappy top. The last traces of purple dye remained in the depths of her hair.

  73 The trench gossip, or ‘furphy’, as it was known, that passed between the lines, was often the subject of intense dissection and many letters
home. The most famous, and longstanding, furphy was that the war would be over by Christmas, and the men would be back home with their families sometime in the new year. As examined in L. Trin’s How the War Was Wondered, University of Illinois, Chicago, 2007, the ‘home by Christmas’ rumour was one shared by every nation and every fighting force. As the war raged on, it refused to dissipate, spurred on by the men who refused to let it die.

  Em stirred again around Green Lanes, and spoke. I had to lean down to hear, my ear by her mouth.

  Please don’t tell.

  I threw my arms around her, wrapping her in the protective cage formed by my chest and arms. It was the easiest promise I’ve ever made.

  Anyone. Promise?

  I promise. In a whisper, in a cab, driving through the grimy streets of north London at six in the morning. It’ll be ok.

  74 We got to hers, and I paid the cabbie, and we staggered to the front door when she remembered her keys were in the other bag, the one she’d left behind, slamming his door and running off into the night.

  We should have gone back to mine.

  Call Dan. He has the spare.

  I think I could climb in through the back window, if you left it open a crack.

  Call Dan.

  Or wake one of your neighbours. They won’t mind.

  Call Dan.

  Absolutely the last person I wanted to talk to at half-six in the morning on one of the longest nights of my life. He picked up on the fourth or fifth ring, half asleep, his words toffee. Em? Whatchawant?

  It’s Matt. Em’s had, uh, a rough night.

  Chilli eggs.

  Sorry?

  Chilli eggs for a hangover.

  No. She needs the spare key.

  I sat down next to her on the step, threw an arm around her shoulder. She sniffed, loud enough for Dan to hear on the other side. We need the spare key.

  Is she ok?

  She’s fine. She got a little drunk. I had to go pick her up. She’s fine.

  I’ll get there as soon as I can. I could hear him throwing his legs over the side of the bed, rummaging for jeans.