Anglo-Saxon island, as a being from another planet. And certainly we were both in love with Burma.
When he wasn’t reading in the sleepout, Mike would listen to a green portable radio on the chest of drawers next to his bed. He liked Country and Western music, and nevvscasts. At such times, his face deeply shadowed in the candlelight, he appeared older than fifteen: his heavy white eyelids were like seashells, exaggerated in a way that made him unfamiliar. He lived an interior life that he didn’t talk about, and I guessed that some of it had to do with the Second World War, as well as with Terry and the Pirates. He still admired his brother Ken without reserve, and greatly regretted that the War had ended before he could go too.
It’d be good to serve your country, he said, and stared into the candle, lying with his hands behind his head.
Even at fifteen, I privately found the direct expression of such a sentiment quaint and old-fashioned; and I glimpsed for a moment the degree to which the books in the wardrobe must be influencing him, as well as Wags. No doubt his hero worship of Ken played a part too—a!though Ken’s personal influence on him wasn’t calculated to make war desirable; rather the reverse, as I’d seen long ago over the guns.
When we were younger, we’d played a silly game with .22 rifles. Ken used to take us rabbiting and wallaby-shooting, and had lent us each a .22 for our personal use. Without his knowledge, at Mike’s suggestion, we began a stalking game with them: a version of our juvenile games of cowboys and Indians to which an element of realism was added. Recalling this now, I’m half appalled.
There were rules. We fired over each other’s heads, or well to the side. And knowing the alarm it would have caused had we been found out, we played the game well away from the farmyard, on the steep, grassy hill behind the pickers’ huts, on the other side of the wire fence that marked the boundary of the Langford property. There, among yellow tussocks and gray boulders coated with lichen, on the edge of a forest of gums, we stalked each other. And it was there, I often think, as well as on the football field, that Michael first began to develop the uncanny skills that would stand him in such good stead on the battlefields of Indochina.
We took turns at being the hunter and the hunted. Given a short start, and limited to an agreed area of bush, you had to try to evade discovery. If you were spotted, a shot was fired directly over your head, and you then had to freeze and surrender. I was good enough at the game to keep Mike interested; but I was never as good as he was. When I hunted him, crawling or stumbling along through the prickly undergrowth between the gum trees and black wattle, it was like hunting something gone insubstantial. If his bright blond head hadn’t given me a small advantage in spotting him, I might have had to give up altogether.
When Mike hunted me, I would wriggle on my belly along the bush’s floor, breathing in the sharp, papery smells of eucalyptus, fallen bark and ants: waiting for his shot to ring out. Once, the bullet thudded into the trunk of a blue-gum six inches above my head, and I laughed hysterically, raising my arms in surrender.
It was on that afternoon that we suddenly heard Ken’s mighty shout. It came from down the hill: his tall figure was toiling up towards us through the grass, and soon he stood over us, hands on hips. He still wore the Digger hat, stained and bent and faded so that it was just an old hat, now. His eyes seemed darker blue and more wide open than usual.
You stupid young buggers, he said. For once, his big grin was missing.
Just firing a few potshots, Mike said.
Ken held out his hand. Give us those twenty-twos, he said.
We knew better than to argue, and handed them to him. He sat down on a small boulder a few feet away, the rifles across his knees.
Mike looked contrite. We’re sorry, Ken, he said. We won’t do it
When he wasn’t reading in the sleepout, Mike would listen to a green portable radio on the chest of drawers next to his bed. He liked Country and Western music, and nevvscasts. At such times, his face deeply shadowed in the candlelight, he appeared older than fifteen: his heavy white eyelids were like seashells, exaggerated in a way that made him unfamiliar. He lived an interior life that he didn’t talk about, and I guessed that some of it had to do with the Second World War, as well as with Terry and the Pirates. He still admired his brother Ken without reserve, and greatly regretted that the War had ended before he could go too.
It’d be good to serve your country, he said, and stared into the candle, lying with his hands behind his head.
Even at fifteen, I privately found the direct expression of such a sentiment quaint and old-fashioned; and I glimpsed for a moment the degree to which the books in the wardrobe must be influencing him, as well as Wags. No doubt his hero worship of Ken played a part too—a!though Ken’s personal influence on him wasn’t calculated to make war desirable; rather the reverse, as I’d seen long ago over the guns.
When we were younger, we’d played a silly game with .22 rifles. Ken used to take us rabbiting and wallaby-shooting, and had lent us each a .22 for our personal use. Without his knowledge, at Mike’s suggestion, we began a stalking game with them: a version of our juvenile games of cowboys and Indians to which an element of realism was added. Recalling this now, I’m half appalled.
There were rules. We fired over each other’s heads, or well to the side. And knowing the alarm it would have caused had we been found out, we played the game well away from the farmyard, on the steep, grassy hill behind the pickers’ huts, on the other side of the wire fence that marked the boundary of the Langford property. There, among yellow tussocks and gray boulders coated with lichen, on the edge of a forest of gums, we stalked each other. And it was there, I often think, as well as on the football field, that Michael first began to develop the uncanny skills that would stand him in such good stead on the battlefields of Indochina.
We took turns at being the hunter and the hunted. Given a short start, and limited to an agreed area of bush, you had to try to evade discovery. If you were spotted, a shot was fired directly over your head, and you then had to freeze and surrender. I was good enough at the game to keep Mike interested; but I was never as good as he was. When I hunted him, crawling or stumbling along through the prickly undergrowth between the gum trees and black wattle, it was like hunting something gone insubstantial. If his bright blond head hadn’t given me a small advantage in spotting him, I might have had to give up altogether.
When Mike hunted me, I would wriggle on my belly along the bush’s floor, breathing in the sharp, papery smells of eucalyptus, fallen bark and ants: waiting for his shot to ring out. Once, the bullet thudded into the trunk of a blue-gum six inches above my head, and I laughed hysterically, raising my arms in surrender.
It was on that afternoon that we suddenly heard Ken’s mighty shout. It came from down the hill: his tall figure was toiling up towards us through the grass, and soon he stood over us, hands on hips. He still wore the Digger hat, stained and bent and faded so that it was just an old hat, now. His eyes seemed darker blue and more wide open than usual.
You stupid young buggers, he said. For once, his big grin was missing.
Just firing a few potshots, Mike said.
Ken held out his hand. Give us those twenty-twos, he said.
We knew better than to argue, and handed them to him. He sat down on a small boulder a few feet away, the rifles across his knees.
Mike looked contrite. We’re sorry, Ken, he said. We won’t do it
Similar Books
