Barbed Wire and Roses Read online

  ‘Between us and the New Zealanders we came here with sixty thousand men and have lost a third of them,’ he pointed out. ‘Field Marshal Haig claims a great victory. Well, too many more victories like that and we’ll have no troops left for him to squander.’

  ‘It was tactically essential,’ Colonel Bridges argued. ‘We had to regain Pozieres to keep the Huns from that high ground. You can tell its importance by the way they fought so hard to hold it.’

  The two were friends, and despite the disparity in rank, Norton felt free to air his dissent.

  ‘Maybe, but you can’t convince me a few kilometres was worth all those lives. It’s his whole battle plan that’s wrong. The same sort of catastrophic balls-up we had at the Dardanelles. In my opinion Haig’s a deluded old bugger, and the British should get rid of him.’

  ‘And in my opinion, Harry, you better shut up before you get into hot water. Even if some of us…’ he shrugged and did not continue. ‘Never mind that. Have you found Sergeant Conway?’

  ‘No sign of him. Christ, why are we chasing one bloke about a lousy little misdemeanour when we should be giving him a medal, from what I’ve been told?’

  ‘Because I have a Pommy major hard on my hammer, and the way the charge is phrased doesn’t sound the least bit like a ‘little misdemeanour’. I’ve got no choice. I need to clear this up.’

  ‘Maybe Conway’s dead?’

  ‘If he is, that would certainly clear it up. If not, Sergeant Conway is in a certain amount of shit.’

  Stephen kept thinking about the kiss. It was surely just a gesture of friendship. An impulsive act because in this war they were on the same side. The French, after all, were known to be impulsive. And from what he’d heard they often kissed — even the men kissed each other — so it surely couldn’t mean anything that special. Or else she was sorry for him because he was so exhausted. But that didn’t seem right, because it had actually felt quite special, that kiss, and he could still taste her lips and feel the unexpected warm softness of them.

  He lay on a bed in what appeared to be the only undamaged room of the farmhouse as Marie-Louise brought a basin of hot water from the wood stove and began to wash him. She had undressed him. The mud and blood encrusted on the uniform she’d removed was ingrained in his skin. He had a livid rash from the infectious lice that pervaded the trenches, and painfully swollen feet. Added to this he had not been able to bathe for over a week, and knew that he stank.

  Memory had begun to return as disorientation from the five days of continuous bombardment started to recede from his mind.

  Instead of chaotic thoughts there was a gradual recollection of the place they had won, a village without any houses or streets, where not even the rubble of shattered buildings was visible any longer. In fields around it where wheat had once grown and cattle grazed, nothing remained except a gruesome moonscape.

  Now he could visualise the scene in shocking detail. A mass of enemy dead and almost as many of his own comrades. There had been no time to mourn or bury them as the artillery were brought in to secure the position, the heavy guns being towed by teams of horses and mules. The animals had floundered in the mud, sinking helplessly as the weight of the cannon dragged them to their deaths while taking human corpses with them. To add to the horror came a squadron of ungainly mechanised tanks that slithered without traction, crushing bodies and proving futile in the rain that had turned the land into a quagmire.

  But other recollection was slow in returning. While he could recall these images, he had difficulty working out what he was doing at the field hospital. And why was Bluey there with him?

  ‘Vous sentez-vous mieux?’ Marie-Louise asked.

  He smiled and nodded. He was now aware it meant ‘do you feel better’. Indeed he did feel better! Someone taking care of him like this… his mates would never believe it. Stark-bollock naked, being washed by a French girl who’d even helped remove his stained clothes and the warm water lulling him into a gentle contentment. Marie-Louise softly hummed a song as she worked, her hands as tender as a nurse’s.

  The hospital? His mind became clearer about the hospital as he relaxed. Bluey had copped a bullet in the leg sometime during their ferocious charge at dawn on the last day, but typically had not said a single word about it until their relief took over. Stubborn as hell, Stephen thought fondly; claiming it was just a scratch and he hadn’t wanted to go to the field hospital. Stephen had insisted, had gone with him, waiting there until an orderly told him not to hang about getting in the way, it was only a simple flesh wound — told him in fact to push off because they were busy, his mate would be treated when it was his turn, and then sent back to the unit later in the day.

  And the dispatch rider? He remembered him now, and the lucky moment the motorcycle had pulled up alongside him. It was just after he left Bluey at the hospital, heading in the vague direction of where he thought he might find the remains of the division. He was limping badly; hoping it wasn’t a renewal of the trench foot he’d suffered a month ago. Bloody awful pain; he knew feet could become so swollen it was impossible to get a boot on, and a bad enough case could get a man invalided back to England. While this was everyone’s idea of a good result, a really serious case could mean amputation. Which was a result no one would welcome.

  ‘Where do you want to go, sport?’ the rider had shouted over the noise of his engine.

  ‘Anywhere,’ Stephen yelled in reply. ‘How about London?’

  The courier had pushed back his goggles and grinned. How about somewhere local, was his reply. He had some messages in his bag for a signals’ group a few miles away at Mont St Quentin. No fighting around there at the moment, as far as he knew.

  ‘Beaut,’ Stephen had agreed. Even a short distance from Pozieres might mean a few hours of serenity. He felt an urgent need to be alone for a while, to find somewhere peaceful and away from this bloody war. He had only been on a motorcycle once before, the morning of his wedding day with his dad, who had driven slowly because he was a novice, whereas the dispatch rider was an expert who drove at a frightening speed. Stephen clung tightly as they bumped alarmingly across rough fields and down rutted tracks. Soon there were stretches of open land — now and then the bleak remnants of a shelled house as they sped by. The fighting had been here and left its scars, but after what he had been through this seemed like a much kinder part of France.

  It was then the impact of so many sleepless days caught up with him, and he experienced such weariness that he’d almost fallen off the back of the machine. Glimpsing a shed in a field, he’d urgently tapped the shoulder in front of him until they halted.

  ‘You want to stop for a pee?’ The dispatch rider switched off his engine to ask this.

  ‘No, this is far enough. Right here is fine.’ Stephen slid off the pillion and steadied himself, feeling dizzy after the vibration.

  ‘You sure?’ The other was uncertain about leaving him here in such an isolated place; he seemed to be trying to assess if this was a prelude to desertion.

  ‘Positive. Thanks for the ride.’

  ‘Suit y’self.’ He shrugged and rode away: the clatter of his engine dwindled and the silence was sublime. Even the sun was warm on Stephen’s back as he walked across the empty field. It appeared to be an abandoned farm. He could see a damaged house with most of the roof smashed and broken slates lying on the ground. There were rusty farm implements, an old ploughshare, and some distance away stood a drinking trough. There was little else apart from the derelict cow shed, in which there were no cows. Only a bale of scattered hay, and it was on this he’d gratefully fallen asleep until Marie-Louise had discovered him there and helped him walk across to the farmhouse.

  He had thought her just a girl, but she was twenty-three, two years older than him. She was surprised to find he was so young. They managed to learn something about each other, his fractured French supplementing her modicum of English words, and when both these failed, their gestures helped bridge the gap. Her father who
owned the farm was a prisoner of war, held somewhere in Germany, she thought; her mother who had never liked country living had moved to Paris. Marie-Louise was engaged to be married, her fiancé had fought at Verdun, and she had not seen or heard from him since then. It was lonely on the farm, she conveyed to Stephen, but if she left here neither her father nor her fiancé would know where to look for her.

  There was less discussion now. Having washed his back, his arms and the upper part of his body, she was now heating another basin of clean water. He lay in her bed, realising it was the only room that still had its roof and windows intact. He thought about his clothes that she had left soaking in a tub, and he wondered if there’d be anything to wear until they were dry.

  Most of all, he kept thinking about the kiss.

  Major Carmody made it abundantly clear he did not intend to let the matter rest. He had already complained to his brigade colonel that a serious charge against an Australian non-commissioned officer, a highly defamatory story about General Birdwood as well as blatant insubordination, was not being seriously dealt with by the staff people of the AIF headquarters at the chateau.

  ‘Australians,’ he told his senior officer, ‘are not like our army. There’s no respect between the ranks. The officers tend to unite in a most indiscreet way with their lower-class countrymen, no matter what difference in status. It seems inconceivable, but it’s embedded in their way of life. Well, I don’t think we should allow it, and if the man’s alive I insist he be charged. I’m not being unreasonable about this; it’s a matter of obedience and authority.’

  ‘Quite so,’ the colonel agreed, ‘but we should remember the chap has apparently done rather well. I’ll have a word to their staff. Can’t believe they’d deliberately mislead you. After all, old man, we are on the same side.’

  Carmody retorted that sometimes he was unsure about that.

  It was not until Marie-Louise returned with the basin of warm water, and her attention shifted from Stephen’s torso to what lay below the waist, that everything began to change.

  Her hands, wet with soap, carefully lathered his upper legs and buttocks, then moved to gently wash more intimate areas. When she fondled his scrotum — at least it seemed to him she fondled it — all senses instantaneously responded to her touch. What had been surprisingly flaccid was suddenly firmly erect. He heard her intake of breath, then her fingers covered in foam wrapped around this and began to stroke and fondle it. This time there was no mistake, it was an undoubted fondle.

  His hand reached out and encountered a slim leg, then slid slowly up beneath her dress. To his surprise she was not wearing underwear. She leant down and kissed his chest as she let the dress fall to the floor while climbing in beside him. When she began to kiss him again, this time her tongue probed deep while her hand held him and guided him inside her.

  Stephen had almost forgotten what it was like. Three nights of love two years ago had not prepared him for this much delight.

  ‘Australien heroique,’ she kept whispering while her hands roamed sensitive parts of his body titillating him, her own slim form pushing against him to match his urgent thrusts. Australian hero, he supposed it must mean, but had no time for translation. Amid her whispers were tiny grunts, a sound so sexually erotic he found himself losing all restraint. It was too intense to last, but just as he felt on the verge of everything it was Marie-Louise, breathless and wildly impassioned, who climaxed first.

  ‘Mon dieu, darling chert,’ she gasped, ‘now I come!’

  ‘Soon,’ he urged, ‘both of us together, like a great big tidal wave.’

  ‘Oui,’ she cried loudly and happily, ‘Oui! Like la grand tidal wave, I am come!’

  ‘Jesus Christ, me too,’ he said, responding to her riotous orgasm in a torrid release unlike anything he had known.

  In the depth of night they made love again, this time with soft endearments, slowly and tenderly, as if to prolong the act forever. He lay awake for a long time afterwards, his mind swirling with thoughts; guilty thoughts of Jane that competed with images of the farm girl who slept soundly in his arms, her nakedness so warm and inviting. He tried not to be disloyal, but she was so acutely real in a day when everything else was surreal; their meeting unbelievable. It felt miraculous after all the months of soggy trenches, the rats, the filth and the constant fear. Especially the fear.

  He found himself trying to imagine what it would be like not to go back there, his mind tempting him with visions of remaining in this isolated farmhouse, in this room, this bed, with this girl for the rest of the war. Escaping. It felt almost possible. With so many casualties he’d be another of the nameless ones, blown to pieces, listed as missing, believed dead.

  He could help her restore the farm and… he knew it was just a foolish dream, but at the age of twenty-one nothing in his young life had prepared him for this. Marie-Louise. He mouthed the name silently, savouring it. He’d never forget her. Perhaps he could record fragments — coded in case something happened to him — in the diary he kept so faithfully. In years to come it would be a nostalgic and very private memory.

  Outside it was almost dawn now. He tried to be realistic. In all truth he must not stay another day here; if he was not back soon he would be in great trouble, officially absent without leave. Even now it was dangerous. A few more hours, his mates might be able to cover for him — he knew Bluey could and would gladly do it. Good old Blue, he’d be back from the field hospital by now, and he was smart enough to bamboozle anyone looking for him. But noon today was as long as he dared risk.

  When he tried to explain this to Marie-Louise her response was a fond smile at the possibility of a hero like her Stephen being in trouble, and she proceeded to provoke him to such heights of passion that nothing outside their room seemed to matter.

  ‘One more night,’ he said while she caressed his body, her tongue exploring it, arousing him until all control vanished. He lost any desire to go back to the war. He could no longer even feel guilt for his infidelity to Jane. He knew staying here was perilous and insane, but could not bear to think of leaving.

  He promised himself a few more days here.

  Just a few more. Bluey would help cover for him.

  He had no idea as yet that Bluey was dead.

  PART TWO

  Patrick

  SEVEN

  Patrick Conway found it difficult to concentrate on the glittering ceremony at the baroque State Theatre. The occasion was the National Film Awards; the elite crowd, both decorative and charismatic, contained a mass of famous faces, the most celebrated of whom occupied the best front stalls where the cameras could easily find them. Patrick and his wife Joanna were in the next and less exalted section of the house, but still in prominent seats because she was considered an outside chance for an award. It was the only reason he was here, and while the ceremony progressed slowly and, it seemed, endlessly, his mind kept straying to the events of the past month few months. In particular, to the discovery of his grandfather’s diary.

  The millennium year that would see the long-awaited Olympic Games take place in Sydney had begun with a family loss. The sudden death of Patrick’s father, a heart attack at the age of eighty-four, had come as a shock despite his age, for Richard Conway had always enjoyed good health. He and his wife Katherine were a year from celebrating their fortieth anniversary. He had married late; Katherine was ten years younger, but it had been the happiest of relationships, creating a deeply affectionate family environment for Patrick and his sister Sally.

  Sorting through the mass of material in the rambling family home at Northbridge had been a tedious process for Patrick. His father was a careful man, successful in business. On the assumption it might be required some day, he had never thrown any paperwork away; as a consequence there was a glut of letters, bank statements, envelopes of tax returns that went back many years, and even gas and electricity bills from other houses they’d lived in when Patrick was a child. He was astonished at the abundance of debris.


  ‘Good God! I knew he kept a lot of stuff, but look at this,’ he said to his mother, who began to recall the different homes and her memories of them. Patrick had heard many such reminiscences lately which troubled him, for this preoccupation with the past was unlike her.

  ‘Ma,’ he was patient, knowing she was still in a state of grief, ‘do I have your permission to hire a skip, and move this lot to the council tip?’

  ‘Of course, darling. I’ve been telling him for years it’s silly to keep everything. But he had it all so neatly filed in boxes that moved with us whenever we changed houses, which in those days was quite often. I did try to point out it cost us for the extra time the removalists took,’ she added, ‘but you know what your father’s like. He can be awfully deaf when he wants to be.’

  ‘He could,’ Patrick said, conscious of her sporadic switches of tense into the past and back again. She can’t let him go, he thought, any more than Dad could relinquish any of this disorder. He hugged her with affection, and began the long task of disposing of a life-time’s clutter. It was during this time, covering weeks — for he was forced to check each storage box to ensure he was not throwing away anything of value — that he found the diary.

  On the fly leaf, in a neat copperplate handwriting it said: With my fondest love, Jane. It looked expensive, leather bound. His grand-father’s name, Stephen Patrick Conway, gilt-lettered on the cover, was almost worn away. Time had wrought other deterioration: frayed leather, the spine of the book crumbling, the edges of the paper browning with age, although the writing inside — at times in ink but mostly in pencil — was relatively clear. On some pages there was a trace of mud; another was smeared by what he felt might be blood.

  The words were sharp and concise; terse phrases as if there had been little time to jot them down, or Stephen Conway had been too exhausted to write more than notes. There was an abrupt entry for an August day in 1916, under the name Pozieres.