The Long Green Shore by John Hepworth Page B

you’re away, to know that there’s a door that you can knock on first when you get home. So long as you’ve got a contact you can feel you’re not all soldier—you can be half a man still.’
    Janos was still carrying this black mood around with him when he ran foul of Connell in a dirty temper.
    Connell hauled Janos out in front of the section and abused him: ‘You’re not even a soldier’s bootlace,’ he told him.
    Janos was standing very stiff and straight and he answered Connell back though his voice was so low we could hardly hear him: ‘We’ll see about that after we’ve been up the track a bit,’ he told Connell.
    We thought Janos was a moral to go along for answering back but Connell just sneered at him: ‘We’ll see,’ he said.
    Janos was still taut with anger when he fell in again beside Pez: ‘I’ll show him—I’ll show the rotten bastard.’
    â€˜Take it easy, boy,’ muttered Pez.
    Later, they lay on the beach, baking in the sun.
    â€˜You won’t show anyone anything unless you relax and watch where you’re going,’ said Pez. He was worried. It’s bad for a man to be caught up in anger with one idea. He doesn’t watch where he’s going or what he’s doing—he walks into things on the track.
    â€˜Sure, I know,’ grinned Janos. ‘I’m having a tough trot. I’m feeling sorry for myself. In the words of the classics: “Dear Bill—What a bastard!” ’
    He lay for a moment and then he said quietly and earnestly: ‘I will show him though—and to hell with her.’
    The natives were coming back from the hills now, where they had fled when the Nips struck this coast. The poorest refugees in the world—refugees in the jungle.
    Pez and Janos watched them come down the wide dusty road that curved round the bay.
    A tribe moving camp, or on the march, moves in order—the women, bowed against their loads, laughing and chattering—that shrill island laughter—the men striding out and the children running and laughing beside them. Going to work in the mornings or coming home in the evenings, there is laughter and chatter and they will sing—they are together, there is community among them as they move.
    But these people moved silently and slowly. Pez and Janos stood on the side of the road and watched them come.
    There were about forty of them strung out down the road—incredible skeletons, their black skins tinged grey with sickness and starvation. They were naked except for strings round their middles holding a piece of rough bark or rough-woven grasses to hide their genitals. They carried nothing but sticks to help their walking and a few clutched leaf-wrapped fragments of food.
    They were not moving together. Each one walked as he could and the few children, their bellies swollen with hunger, kept close beside their parents and their heads hung down. There was no talk and no laughter.
    â€˜The poor bastards,’ said Pez. Janos was silent.
    At the end of the line was a man. As bone-thin as the rest, he yet walked with a stubborn, savage strength about him and his sunken eyes burned in the hawk-like skull of his face. He carried a thick hollow bamboo stick. He looked up, straight at them, as he came abreast.
    â€˜What have you got there, mate?’ said Janos.
    The native stopped and tapped the bamboo enquiringly, as he looked at them. Janos nodded.
    The man squatted in the dust, keeping at a distance from them. He up-ended the bamboo and shook it, watching them all the while. A tight bundle of gold and white feathers shook out. He caught it in one hand and held it up to them, expressionless.
    â€˜Bird of paradise,’ said Pez. They came closer to see it. ‘And Christ, she stinks.’
    The skin had not been properly cleaned and was rotten—putrid flesh and long, slender, gold and white feathers.
    â€˜How much do