‘What’s your name?’ he asked gently.
The man didn’t answer so Reuben carefully lifted off his dog tag and saw T Hooley etched into the metal. ‘What’s the T for?’
‘Oh, her smile,’ whispered the man, barely alive.
‘Whose smile? Have you got a message you want me to pass on to your wife?’ He yelled at the men rushing back and forth through the mud, ‘What’s his wife’s name, for God’s sake?’ There was no time for the dying. Reuben shouldn’t really be bothering, either. There was too much to be done and it all had to be done quietly. They didn’t want the Turks to know they were leaving. Soon it would be Reuben’s turn to go back up and distract the Turks in the seaplane while men filed silently onto ships like ghosts.
The dying man reached out and grabbed his hand.
‘Whose smile can you see?’ asked Reuben.
‘It’ll be his mother,’ said a passing soldier. ‘We all see our mothers. We all cry out for our mothers. Thank God they can’t see us. They’d put us to bed with a good spanking for getting in this much strife!’
Reuben looked at the dying soldier. He was older than him, maybe by twenty years or so. He felt a tug in his gut; a feeling that he and this soldier could have been friends in different circumstances. From what he could tell the man had a genuine face. He tried to imagine the face fatter, with colour, smiling. He tried to imagine sitting at the club with the man, raising their whisky glasses together and toasting the King; the King and to the King’s wife and the King’s good health and the King’s good victory and all the King’s soldiers.
The dying Aussie smiled, but not at Reuben, and said, ‘Edie.’
‘Edie. Is that your wife?’ Reuben asked.
Suddenly, Theo grabbed Reuben by the collar with his two bony hands that were thin like a skeleton, and he drew him close. He whispered in Reuben’s ear, ‘If you find Edie tell her I’m sorry and if you see little Gracie — well, if you see little Gracie ask her to smile and you’ll never want anything else.’
The foul smell of the man made Reuben want to vomit.
‘Leave him alone. He’s deluded. It’s just as well; better not to know you’re dying uselessly in a God-forgotten battleground,’ someone yelled.
Reuben was still leaning close as the dying man whispered, ‘Edie,’ again.
‘But I thought it was Gracie,’ said Reuben and gave up asking questions and just cradled the dying man, who obviously wasn’t even going to make it to the hospital ship. He sat in the dirt and the caked blood and stroked the dying Aussie’s matted hair. The poor blighter was seeing the secrets of life that you only saw in death. Finally the ambulance cart arrived. No one saw the wheels roll over Theo’s dog tag, burying it beneath the red dirt.
‘Here, try and give him this and we’ll be back in a moment,’ said the stretcher-bearer, who had a boy’s face, round and fresh. Reuben watched as the boy took a dessertspoon of Bovril from a jar and put it in an enamel tin mug.
‘The label is smudged,’ said Reuben.
The kid looked at the jar. ‘Won’t change the flavour none,’ he said and poured hot water into the mug from a thermos. He stirred it three times with a dirty teaspoon and handed it to Reuben.
‘What’s your name, lad?’ called Reuben, but the stretcher-bearer and the medics were gone so he held the mug to Theo’s lips and tried to feed him some of the liquid without spilling too much down the man’s front. At first Theo spluttered and coughed and sprayed the stuff everywhere and Reuben had to dodge the spittle so he didn’t catch the man’s germs.
Then there was silence everywhere apart from the muffled comings and goings of the men.
‘The Turks have stopped firing,’ said Reuben. ‘They’re letting us leave.’
Part Four
Thirty
The Grave
Saturday, 22 January 1916, in Ballarat, when Milton Blackmarsh has given Lilly a rabbit.
Beth knew that she needed the preserving jars. She needed them so her heart wouldn’t disappear. She could feel her heart dissolving inside her. If it dissolved she would become hard, she would be a sheet of glass and everyone would see everything inside her. They would see she had no heart and they would see all her guilt. They would see she had caused two deaths. She got up from the bed and looked through the curtains at the trees and she wondered how many times Theo had stood in this spot, looking through this window at the same trees. Had they whispered to him? Because she was sure she could hear them whispering over and over, a polyphonic chant. She saw the sun just breaking as it entered the day, its light dappled and soft through the leaves. The sun was deceitful and would turn on them, scorching everything it touched by afternoon. She quietly dressed, pulling on the clothes that were nearest, her black skirt that she had worn a week ago at Theo’s memorial, her white shirt. She held her boots in her hands and made her way down the hallway to the kitchen door and stood in the hallway before peering carefully into the kitchen like a child playing peek-a-boo. She had hoped Lilly would still be asleep, but no such luck. Lilly was already up and dressed and whipping batter in a bowl. Beth stayed out of sight, peeping occasionally into the kitchen to check what Lilly was doing, and when Lilly was distracted by the whistling kettle Beth took her chance and snuck past the kitchen, then quietly opened and shut the back door. She sat on the back
