The Art of Preserving Love

the muck, in exchange for raisins but right now he would even eat Maconochie, he would even eat it cold, which once would have made him vomit. He would eat it right now straight out of the tin with his fingers if he could get some and the Turks would have to go without. He could feel the sides of his wrinkled stomach chafing against each other. He could put his fingers around his arm and they met. Using his bowels made him cry out with pain because everything inside him was so hard and dry. There was jam to eat but the moment he opened the tin millions of flies descended into it and he ate them as well and they buzzed around his mouth in a panic at suddenly being caged, crashing into his gums, the roof of his mouth and stinging as they collided with his tongue.

Theo reached into his pocket for the tin of strawberry jam. It was runny, you’d have to look hard to find any fruit in it. His mother would have tossed it out saying, ‘That’ll never win me any prizes at the Ballarat Show.’ He stood up and hurled the jam to the Turks then he quickly squatted down and waited and sure enough a few minutes later they threw back a brown paper bag. It landed in the mud and he dived on it before it sank or drifted away in the muddy river. He tore open the soggy paper and inside found four small parcels wrapped in greaseproof paper. He peeled the paper away from the first to find something, he didn’t know what, but he put it in his mouth, and then the others one after the other and let the sickly sweet taste trickle down his throat. He didn’t notice that he was eating some of the paper as well. All too soon the memory of it was gone and all he could think about was the hunger and dream of what would end it. Apricots. He hadn’t seen a tin of apricots in months. What he would give for a tin of apricots. Sometimes the Turks threw apricots stuffed with some creamy white substance, he thought maybe it was sweet cheese or milk. He wished they had thrown some of those.

Theo wiped his sticky hands on his greatcoat, which only glued the fibres of his coat to the stickiness. Dobson stumbled past him, splashing mud and knocking into him then banging against the rock and timber walls of the trench, groaning pitifully and holding his stomach, so Theo staggered to his feet, put his arm around Dobson and helped him to the latrine.

‘Tell me a joke, Dobson,’ he said, trying to make taking another man to the lav seem normal. Dobson always had a joke. Theo could never remember them when he wanted to tell them himself. In one ear and out the other.

‘Did I tell you the one about Dad and Dave?’ mumbled Dobson. Theo could barely hear him.

‘Nope,’ said Theo.

‘I’ll tell ya when I’ve dumped a brick,’ said Dobson.

Theo helped him unbuckle his pants and left him to it. But Dobson took so long that Theo forgot him and wandered off until an hour later when he went to use the same latrine.

‘You still here, Dobson!’ he cried, seeing Dobson still sitting over the pail. But Dobson didn’t answer. His vacant eyes looked past Theo to some other world. He was stone dead. Theo walked away and left Dobson to his peace.

Later in the day Theo watched as Dwyer, who reckoned he was nineteen but looked not a day over fourteen if he was lucky, ran past him screaming.

‘I really am nineteen,’ Dwyer had said when he first arrived.

‘Yeah? What year were you born?’ They’d laughed as they watched him stumbling over the math in his head and they laughed so hard they fell over.

‘Fourteen,’ someone suggested.

‘Nah, give him the benefit of the doubt.’

‘Yeah, maybe he looks young for his age. Maybe he’s fourteen and a half.’

But now Dwyer ran past Theo with bits of him missing. ‘Hey Dwyer, you’ve misplaced your arms,’ Theo screamed at him.

But it was a silent scream.

Theo looked up as the skies opened fire on him. It raged and pelted down around him mercilessly.

God had thrown his lot in with the Turks. Theo was sure of it.

Saturday, 18 December 1915, when nowhere in Australia gets as cold as here.

It was so cold his clothes froze onto his skin and the trenches filled with rain, while he slept fitfully and dreamt of his mum’s apple upside-down cake. When Theo woke in the morning there was a thick layer of ice sealing bodies in chilly, watery tombs.

Theo watched as the ice melted in the midday sun and bodies silently floated past him like the wooden sailing ships he’d played with as a boy.

Theo survived it all. He was a survivor, and he knew how to wait. If he waited long enough this would all be over. A bit of icy cold water wasn’t going to get him. The Poms hated soap and water — not that there was any soap to be had. But Theo didn’t mind water. The word among the ranks was that they were all going to be evacuated soon, might be weeks, might be days, might be only hours. They said some had gone already. No one had come for Theo — they knew he could survive.

‘Take the young boys,’ he said to the bodies floating by. ‘They need their mothers.’

It was supposed to be a secret that they were going, though everyone knew. Theo didn’t want to go anywhere with the taint of this wretched place still on him. He peeled off the soggy greatcoat and ripped off his torn, dirt-encrusted shirt. He leant against the timber and rock wall of the trench and tried to pull off his boots, but he couldn’t. They were caked on with mud and filled with water. He tugged several