CHRISTMAS LEAVE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 16, Issue 391, 20 December 1946, Page 28

CHRISTMAS LEAVE

} Written for "The Listener" i

by

BARBARA

DENT

had shinned up the pole and stolen the light bulb out of pure, impotent frustration. Once he had it, he hadn’t known what to do with it, and had dropped it over the little bridge into the stream on his way back to the tent. That was the way he felt about it all -destructive. He wanted to smash things. He wanted to destroy, as if to ruin materiel things, the huts, tents, crockery, uniforms, trucks-any of the gear about him, would somehow smash the horrible system and achieve freedom for them all. It had been too much for Blue. Blue had gone over the fence-taken to the hills a month ago. Of course they’d found him-he hadn’t enough bush craft to look after himself in that waste of tussocky, volcanic desert and bush-thick ranges. He’d come out to steal food and they'd caught him. Now he was behind bars. No one knew what was going to happen to him, but everything was rumoured. Well-he could understand Blue. He could understand anyone going berserk. No sort of mutiny or violent revolt would have amazed him, no extreme measure that a man might take to recapture freedom-but what did con- stantly perplex him was the sheep-like docility of nearly all of them. They cursed and grumbled, they scowled and groused-but they never did anything. And he knew that in a crisis the majority of them would line up obediently on the side of law and order, while fellows like Blue, and himself (yes, he would be on Bluejs side) received the judgment. It was so intangible. He felt he was being slowly strangled, yet he couldn’t name the killer. On this barren, bitterly windswept plateau, gales roared down the camp streets and round the huts and tents continually, yet he felt he never drew a breath of fresh air. Only when they went out on the hills for manoeuvres did he really feel in some measure free, and that his body and soul were his own. Yet even then the clothes he wore were a convict’s, and the whole game of war they played was the system of his bondage. ) Hi remembered-the night he bag * E knew his feelings were beyond reason. There was a war. Men had to fight. The Japs might come-some-thing had to be done about it. Oh yes, he knew it all. Duty and patriotism and the only honourable thing to do-all that. Who didn’t know it off pat? But he still hated the uniform. He still felt a convict in it, he still felt the camp was a prison, and that never again would he breathe free air and do as he wished when and how he wished. It was as if the whole atmosphere was poisoned, and, fighting the slow strangulation of it, he must hit out wildly all about him, or else-and this was, he knew, the wisest way-become so cunningly ‘clever that he could play their own game better than they. But Jim darling, she’d said, they'd put you in prison, and that would be even worse. Yes-that would be worse. And he knew that that alone was what kept him from making a final dash for it. He couldn’t make up a whole string of

ee elf ee clever-sounding arguments like some of those intellectual chaps he’d heard talking before and at the beginning of the war. He didn’t know any statistics, or mutch about international affairs, or exactly where a man’s duty lay, or even what was finally right and finally wrong. He only knew that to put him in this uniform and subject him to this routine, to confine him in this particular area and order his whole day from rising to going to bed again, to try to fit him into one particular mould together with these thousands of others, was to him iniquitous. He didn’t know the rights

and wrongs for all those others. He didn’t know the whys and wherefores of the whole business itself-he only know that for him to subject himself to it was a sin against himself: It was making him wither away inside, making a sawdust man of him, a dummy, dead in the most vital place. : # * ex E felt life-he didn’t think it. In his simple, untutored way he had a poet’s response. He loved to lie out alone on a tussock hilltop with all the grandeur of mountain and desert about him and the larks above. He loved to lie there in the sun under the broad sky, and dream away hours, What passed through his mind he never examined or knew--he was siinply being, close to some lifegiving essence whose nature he never questioned, and whose presence he didn’t even know of. So to him freedom was essential. It was not an abstract theory, an intellectual argument, a balanced thesis-no-it was just the way he felt in the garden on a Saturday afternoon in old trousers and a torn shirt, or how it was to watch Peg dive into the river and then swoop after her, or to say, Let’s go to the pictures to-night, or, Where’ll we spend Christmas? It was in the way he felt, not in any thoughts or aspirations.

It was to twine Peg’s thick, short, brown hair in his fingers, to hear her pad barefoot down the passage in the mornings, or say, Have some more salad, Jim? on a Sunday evening. Bo a Bo HEY had only been married three months when he had been called up, but already his life had settled into a pattern that was so wordlessly satisfying that he never wanted it to change until he died. >. But the pattérn had been shattered, and he had been unable to piece it together again on the too rare week-end leaves. He was as perplexed and truculent as a caged animal. And now all Christmas leave had been cancelled.

Of course anyone could see the logic of it-the Jap scare, the whole country on the alert--but somehow it didn’t matter in the face of this shattering disappointment. Somehow one’s personal frustration was of far greater concern than any Jap scare or any alert. The whole camp seethed. Mutiny was as near as it could be without actually breaking out. There were threats and sullen faces. Every order was obeyed truculently, and hatred smouldered in nearly every eye. Leave had been rare enough already from this isolated, windblasted prison-and all had counted on the Christmas break, counted with a painful hunger on the renewal of those contacts that would make life seem a human, sensible affair again, counted on all the foolish fun of the day itself, on the family reunion, on the clandestine lovers’ meeting, on the rowdy party or the desperate drinking bout-counted ultimately on leaving behind this barrack of omdered road and square, of neatly ranked lines of tents, of bitter wind and barren landscape, of endless and unnatural male company. God-makes you wonder if. skirts still exist, Shorty had said. And now it was all cancelled. For weeks they had lain in the tents at night, listening to the trains, imitating the whistles like kids, chanting,

Diddle-de-da, diddle-de-da, in rhythmic unison with the wheels. As the time had come closer the talk had been of nothing else. Their eyes had shone like kids before a party, their tongues wagged as incessantly. My old girl’s got a turkey ordered. Always had a turkey every year since we've been married — sort of custom. Wouldn’t be Christmas without it. And let me tell you the way my old girl’ll cook that turkey’ll be.... Christ, when the boys and I get together again. . . . Got my little tabby waiting for me. Last leave she... .: But Jim didn’t talk about how it would be for him. Somehow he couldn’t tell about Peg and the pattern of life that had become so deeply a part of him in that brief time. They’d never spent a Christmas alone together, so it was all to be new. He couldn’t talk about it. He couldn’t even think about it clearly to himself. He could only be it. He simply drew breath all day and each night so that that time would come closer. Even this life that he hated became tolerable, for in a way it ceased to exist-he went through it like a sleepwalker, his true presence in the future, at that precise moment when he would put his arms about her again-nothing before that, nothing after it. Just that. Completion, freedom, life’ s meaning once more, And then all leave was cancelled. a * * -[E couldn’t realise it at first. And then, by the time that deeper substrata had registered this shock, his upper mind had already started to plan cautiously and cunningly. It was some days before he even realised himself exactly what he had decided-and by that time the plan was there, formulated and settled upon. All he had to do was act. But they were expecting this sort of thing. They had been given a special lecture on duty and responsibility at this time, and a special warning for possible malefactors. Pickets were doubled at all exits, and all round the camp. It was rumoured they were thick as flies at the station, and had been posted at further stations down the line. Trains were to be searched. The police had been authorised to question suspects-and so on. No one knew anything for certain, but everyone was sure of the latest rumour, Jim talked to no one. When the others in the tent cursed and grumbled, he was silent. Hit you hard, has it, son? asked Shorty, and he nodded, refusing to be drawn out. By the time Christmas Eve came they had got over the worst of the shock, They were still mutinous, but sullenly so. They had started to talk about the extra rations that had been promised for Christmas Day, and the concert party that was coming up in the evening... No one thought anyone else would be crazy enough to jump the fence-it was a certainty one would be caught. Pickets were thick as flies-not worth the candlethat was the general opinion. Jim had told no one. He had made his preparations furtively. He got ready when the others were out of the tent, and no one saw him slip cautiously from shadow to shadow till he was clear of the lines and could strike out into the open country. It was quite easy to leave the caimp, he simply kept clear of the gates and found his way through the mass of slit trenches that bordered the lines. He

was glad of the storm, of the noise of the wind and rain, and of the darkness, grey rather than black, because the moon was hidden somewhere behind the clouds. The country was rough. He tumbled over mounds of.earth, and clumps of tussock, slipped into pools and slit trenches, and was soon soaked and muddy. But at least he was alone. He was on his way to freedom. He struck the seldom used desert road, and now everything was easier, except that. here all his senses were strained, expecting the sudden challenge, the unfriendly presence. He passed the P.W.D. camp,. and the watchman at the gate flashed. his torch, shouting a cheery Good-night, mate. ES * a SUDDENLY he realised the stupidity of it all, The natural, cheerful hail showed him’ that he was no criminal, not one of the hunted and condemned after all. He was a free man whom another free man hailed in a friendly way. All men were not his enemies. Fear and hatred and imprisonment were not everywhere. A voice in the night need not be a signal for flight and terror -it could be a blessing amd a godspeed. He felt grateful to the watchman, but by the time he had calmed himself enough to answer, he was too far down the road. Raindrops bulleted onto his head and shoulders as he passed under a group of macrocapas. Them coming round’a bend in the road he saw lights and heard the roar of a diesel engine. What could it be? The grader at this time of night? In the glow of the lights he saw three figures silhouetted and coming towards him. He. flung himself*in the shallow clay ditch, crouching lower and lower, holding his breath. But for the grader "he would never have seen them. He would have been caught. The grader passed. The clatter of the men’s boots on the bitumen came nearer. They were flashing a torch round. Had:they seen him too in the lights? i He knew now a rabbit felt-rab-bits that he had seen crouching, ears flattened, eyes staring, paralysed with fear, in the grass. He swore that never again would he go hunting rabbits. Then the footsteps passed. And he was safe again. He had scarcely gone another hundred yards when there were more lights. Hidden behind some bushes he saw a small army. truck pass, probably carrying pickets. They were certainly keeping a watch. He’d have to-go the rest of the way across country again. The road was too dangerous. He crept up through the scrub on the offside of the station. A row of trucks separated him from the dimly lit platform where he could see more pickets grouped. The express was almost due. He moved cautiously nearer. He could see now that the. pickets had torches. As he watched they scattered and began to search the yards and trucks, flashing their lights as they went. He silently drew back, hiding in the shelter of some stunted heather. They were evidently well prepared for train jumpers, but he knew nothing could stop him now. He’d do his best, and if .... The ground vibrated with the oncoming train-a whistle, then the headlight glimmering on the lines. It ground to a stop and the pickets lined up on both sides, each man guarding about twenty yards, and flashing his torch about him. (continued on next page)

CHRISTMAS LEAVE

(continued from previous page) EHIND the shadow of the trucks Jim crept up till he was almost opposite the front carriage. The nearest picket was about the same distance as he from the carriage door, and quite ignorant of his presence. The train gave a low whistle and began to move. It was now or never. He leapt across the truck couplings and raced for the moving carriage. The picket yelled and raced too. The train was gathering speed. Hi! Stop! Hi! yelled the picket. Jim made a last tremendous spurt and grabbed the rail, hauling himself up on the carriage step and opening the door just as the picket’s hands slid down his back as he too leapt on the step. Jim slammed the door behind him and held the handle. The picket shouted and banged. The train gathered speed. If the picket didn’t drop off soon he wouldn’t be able to, and passengers would be out to see what all the clamour was about. As if he realised his own danger, he gave a last shout and bang and disappeared. Jim sat limply on the floor. He was shaking all over. Pull yourself together man-it’s not over yet. ;

He took off his boots and wrung out his socks and trouser legs and packed away his waterproof. The picket might notify others at the next stop and there might be a search for him. He had to find a hiding place. In the first carriage lights were on, and curious eyes watched him as he walked through. He went on to the second carriage where the tumult of his arrival had not been heard, and, finding two seats back to back, threw his greatcoat on the floor and ctawled in on it. Blessed relief to lie down! But he could not relax for fear of pickets at the next station. He looked out the window as the train drew in, and sure enough, there were the uniformed figures pacing the platform and peering in windows. He was out the offside door before the train stopped, and the enginedriver and fireman didn’t seem to think it queer that he should show such an interest in the, engine at that time of night, and cheerily explained this and that to him while they went a few chains up the line for water. He stood outside on the carriage step till the train gathered speed after the station. It was unlikely that, if there were pickets at any other station, they

would bother to search the train, so he curled up under the seats and slept unbrokenly. % % * HE sun was up when he left the train at his own station. Remembering the rumours that police had been asked to pick up stray soldiers, he went out across the sidings, dodging among trucks and carriages. Then he was jn a taxi, and he was safe. It wasn’t seven o’clock yet. The town was still half asleep. He looked at the peaceful, flower-filled gardens, at the trees lining the streets, at the neat houses, and at the early churchgoers walking peacefully along, and he was amazed. It all seemed beautiful as a story told in childhood. It was so peaceful and beautiful, so colourful and green, that he wanted to laugh for joy. After the isolation of the camp in its desert waste, its nearest township thirty miles away, its only beauty that of abandonment and barrenness, this cultivation, these peopled gardens, were like the voice of a loved one. | He stopped the taxi at the corner. He wanted to walk up the well-known street alone. She would not be expecting him. He wanted to walk in the gate quietly and naturally as if he did it every day as he once had done.

He wanted to savour the whole ritual of this homecoming fully and slowly as if it were to be the final one, and must last forever. As he turned up the street. the Christmas church bells were pealing. Peace on earth, goodwill towards men, they chanted. But the beautiful irony of it was lost on Jim, for as he put his hand on the little back gate that he himself had made, as he paused there, filthy and achingly weary, in the still, sunsteeped, early morning, he thought, She’s got the garden in good trim, and there was nothing but peace. and goodwill in his heart. The camp on the bitter, isolated plateau was another life away. He was home. This air he breathed was free. Temporarily his soul was his own.