The Serpent's Sting by Robert Gott

Author:Robert Gott
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FIC050000, FIC014000
Publisher: Scribe Publications
Published: 2016-07-31T16:00:00+00:00

Cloris arrived at Mother’s house early. It was Wednesday 30 December. I don’t usually remember dates. I’m hopeless with birthdays, but Wednesday 30 December, 1942 is seared into my memory like an ugly, psychic brand. In the world beyond the one I inhabited, this is what was happening. The Russians were having some success in pushing the Germans back from Stalingrad; the Japanese thrust near Buna had been halted; and the eighth army was just 190 miles from Tripoli.

I’d had more than a glimpse in the Northern Territory of the hardships endured by soldiers, so newspaper headlines struck me forcefully, and I always imagined the individual suffering disguised by a bland banner such as ‘New Trap Closing Round Enemy’. This actually came down to poor bastards freezing and starving to death. I tried to keep the war at a distance, and I tried to limit its effect on me to the minor inconveniences of rationing and shortages. However, I’d endured the suffocating, enervating heat of Gulnare Bluff; its humidity was sufficient to drown in, and its great clouds of mosquitoes harried remorselessly. The young men, placed there secretly, their clothes falling off them with mould and rot, suffered with no hope of recognition or even of relief. I knew that war meant more than powdered egg, ersatz coffee, and female tram conductors.

I did not, I hope, take my job as an actor for granted. That day’s paper, which I’d glanced through before Cloris’s arrival, reminded me that there were other, more difficult ways of negotiating civilian life than the path I’d chosen. In Ballarat, two conscientious objectors had been jailed for six weeks for refusing to take the oath of service in the Citizen Forces. One of these men, a gardener, offered as his defence that he had to ‘obey God or lose my salvation. Anybody who disobeys God is eternally damned.’ The other, a driver, and the father of four children, offered the court as an explanation for his flouting the law that, ‘Once you have definitely experienced salvation you cannot do otherwise than obey God. You have your duty, sir, the same as I have to the law of God. I feel very sorry for you.’

These were men of courage, I suppose, although I had no sympathy for their God bothering. They’d be dull dinner guests; humourless, dim-witted, and self-righteous. Martyrs are tedious people. This thought had just formed when there was a knock on the front door. I answered it because Brian hadn’t yet come down, and Mother was back at Drummond Street. The morning sky was heavy with cloud cover, and quite cool. Cloris wasn’t crying, but her face was set in a way that suggested it wouldn’t take much to release tears.

‘I’m sorry it’s so early,’ she said.

‘Not at all. I’ll rustle up Brian for you.’

‘No, Will. It’s not Brian I’ve come to see. It’s you.’

‘Really?’ I hadn’t meant to sound so surprised.

‘May I come in?’

‘Heavens. My manners. Please.’

I took Cloris into the front room. The blackouts were still up.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.