The Long Green Shore by John Hepworth Page A

at the gurgling bowl of his pipe: ‘Yes. We struck that last time in the Owen Stanleys—about Templeton’s Crossing—up above the Crossing I think it was. We found the bodies with the flesh cut off the backsides and we found fresh meat in the dixies round their cook-fires later on. But whether they were eating it themselves or feeding it to their dogs—they had a lot of dogs with them—we never really found out.’
    â€˜I don’t think I’d fancy being eaten,’ says Janos. ‘Not that it matters when a man’s dead—but somehow I don’t think I’d fancy it.’
    â€˜No,’ grinned Pez. ‘It’s sort of undignified.’
    Deacon, lounging back on his bed, head propped up on his webbing pack, flicked a cigarette butt through the flap of the tent with careful concentration before he spoke: ‘That’s a question—how hungry would you have to be before you’d eat human flesh? A question. Myself, I reckon I came pretty close to it that last time. They say it tastes like pork.’
    â€˜How would Selby go?’ asked Pez. Selby was the fat cook. ‘Old long-pig Selby—the man I’d sooner be shipwrecked with.’
    â€˜That bookie from the Fourth had a wife and kid, didn’t he?’ rumbled the Laird from the corner.
    â€˜Yeah,’ said Pez. ‘Two kids.’
    The mail finally caught up with us and most had two or three letters. Some of the literary boys had as many as a dozen, but most of us didn’t have the stamina to write to that extent.
    Janos had two letters—one from his mother and one from Mary. The one from Mary was quite short. He had opened it first. He read it and then put it aside while he opened his mother’s letter and read that slowly.
    Things were not good at home. His younger brother had been staying out at night. The landlord had been trying to get them out of the house. There was not much money, but his allotment was helping greatly. Where was he? Was there anything he needed? When would he be home? When would the dreadful war finish?
    His mother—she was a woman whom he felt he only vaguely knew. Older than she should have been. Sick and broken and defeated. Always on the verge of tears and infuriating in her ineffectual passion to be possessive of her children. They had never known her. They had been alien to her all their lives, although they kissed her goodbye and fled her tears when they went to the wars, and bothered to half-lie to her when they had been out all night.
    Janos turned back to Mary’s letter and read it through twice more.
    Pez looked up from Helen’s letter on the other bed: ‘Get one from the Queensland?’
    â€˜Yeah, I got one,’ admitted Janos.
    â€˜I’ll get the sporting page off you later,’ said Pez.
    â€˜Ain’t gonna be no sporting page,’ said Janos. He tossed the letter across to Pez. ‘A Yankee marine—she wants to live in Idaho—she sends her love and hopes I’ll understand.’
    â€˜You understand?’ asked Pez.
    â€˜Sure! Elementary, dear Watson! A Yankee marine—she wants to live in Idaho—she sends her love—sure, I understand!’
    â€˜Snap out of it,’ says Pez. ‘Helen sends her love.’
    â€˜Tell her thanks,’ said Janos. ‘But the phrase is distasteful to me just this once.’
    Helen knew Janos though she had never seen him. Our wives and sweethearts knew our comrades whom they never saw—sometimes they knew them better than we did.
    â€˜You weren’t banking on her, were you?’ Pez asked after a while.
    â€˜No,’ said Janos. ‘I don’t bank on anything.’
    â€˜There’ll be time to look around when we get back—you can do better. To hell with her.’
    â€˜It’s a long way to go just to look around,’ said Janos. ‘Even when you know nothing will come of it, it’s good, while