‘But that’s not possible. I saw him a few minutes ago when I got up. He looked better. He even smiled at me.’
Hudd just stared at me. There was nothing either malevolent or friendly in his stare. Eventually he said, ‘Maybe you’ve been outside longer than you think.’
‘No.’
‘Well, maybe you were still asleep, and dreamed it. That happens. ’
There was no point in arguing. ‘Yes, Hudd: I’m sorry. He was a friend of yours. I didn’t even know his name until you just said it.’
‘He didn’t use it all that often,’ was all Hudd said. ‘He was secretive.’
We buried Hudd’s man under the shadow of the other wing, using our small entrenching tools to dig and scrape him a decent grave. The soil was stony, but very loose, so we managed a decent depth: probably four feet. Hudd made us dig another then, because it had always been his intention to get the guy out of the rear turret before we left . . . and the two graves took us the best part of half a day.
Hudd didn’t seem in any hurry now. I figured out why: we probably had plenty of stores – by his definition – now that there were only two of us. We examined Hudd’s man’s bad arm before we tied him into his sleeping sack. From the fingertips to the shoulder it was twice the normal size, and a mottled deep red and black. At his shoulder, major veins stood out a steely blue. He must have been in agony, and kept his trap shut all that time.
‘Lesson learned,’ Hudd said.
‘What?’
‘First one of us that gets snake-bit, the other one shoots him.’
I’ve never been a brave man, but looking at that terrible arm convinced me for the time being. ‘Agreed. Do you want a marker on the grave?’
‘No, we never do that sort o’ thing in my mob. I’d say a prayer if I could. I’ve seen Fred pray for others: he always had the words. I can’t seem to remember any.’
‘I know the words of a slow jazz number they used to do at funerals in New Orleans. I think it was a hymn. I can speak them if you like?’
‘Yes, please, Charlie. That would do.’
I started to give Hudd’s man the words of ‘Just a closer walk with thee’, but somehow they didn’t seem to come out right, so I ended up singing them for him. I’ve never had much of a voice – kind of harsh and tuneless – but maybe hearing a human voice at all up on that awful plateau was something, though. The noise was lost in the vast basin.
Hudd said, ‘That was good, Charlie; let’s find a coupla big stones to put on him, an’ make a cuppa char.’
The Aussies are as bad as us: the only other race in the world which attacks overwhelming sadness with cups of tea.
There was a big cotter pin behind the bomb-door release up in the Stirling’s office. Hudd walked forward to join me after he had become bored with the floor plates, and pointed at it. ‘What’s that do?’
‘Don’t know. Could be something to do with the bomb-door locks. I haven’t looked at it yet.’
He reached over my shoulder with a pair of pliers, and yanked it out. The result was immediate: a rumbling sound somewhere beneath us, and several dull thuds one after the other.
‘Let’s go outside and look,’ he ordered.
The bloody doors under the fuselage were gaping open of course. Long, narrow parallel doors which had covered the cells in the narrow bomb bays. Dust was still filtering down in the sunlight. A number of gold coins, which hadn’t been there the day before, glinted at our feet close to the remains of a wooden box.
‘About a dozen each,’ Hudd said. ‘That should get us a few beers.’
‘It’s not ours, Hudd. The Treasury will get very humpy if we nick it.’
‘No they won’t: Watson said we could keep the coin. It was the paper money he was after, and that’s not bloody here, is it?’
‘Apparently not; so what do we do next?’
‘Tell Watson, and find out what his plan B is. He always has a plan B. Then set off north, I guess. The first village is over the foothills; it will take us all day.’
‘What about the thing in the back turret?’
‘Oh yeah. Forgot about him. Eat first, then stick ’im in the ground.’
‘I don’t want to be walking in the dark with all those snakes around.’
‘If it’s cold they’ll be coiled up; they won’t move.’
‘That’s what I mean. They’ll get our big feet all over them, and start getting mad.’
Hudd sucked on a piece of grass he had cut. ‘See what you mean; let me think about it.’
When we were sitting and eating I asked him what was in the stew: it was growing on me.
‘Roo meat. Kangaroo. Pound for pound, the most nutritious meat in the world. We carry it dried in strips like jerky. It worry you, mate?’
‘Meat’s meat, Hudd. We ate whales in the war.’
‘Never did that. What’s it taste like?’
‘Whale.’ I remembered the flavour of that fishy meat. ‘Disgusting. Only morons or Japs would eat it unless they had to.’
When I lit my pipe he said, ‘Wish you wouldn’t do that, Charlie. It’s not good for you.’
‘How?’
‘Gives you lung diseases. Smokers die early.’
‘That so, Hudd? I suppose drinking’s not good for you either.’
‘That’s right. Drinkers die early, too. Look what happened to Fred.’
‘That was nothing to do with drinking. It was because a snake bit him.’
‘How do we know that?’ Hudd asked me. ‘All I know is that Fred drank too much all his life, an’ he died early. The statistics speak for themselves.’
I got my pipe stoked up and going well, before I asked him, ‘Who doesn’t die early,
