Young Angus

“Leo! Leo! Leo, is that you?”

He held the telephone at a distance from his ear. Venie, his sister spoke loudly as a matter of course, several decibels over any one else. Some attributed this to her chronic non-use of hearing aid, but Leo knew she always had been loud, since a kid. Nobody ever understood why.

“Yes, it’s me,” he answered.

“Have you read the paper?”

“What paper?”

“What paper? The bloody local paper – The Leader?”

He scanned the surrounds of his armchair, and scattered amongst the magazines and medications he saw the front page. “Ah, the one with the St. George player on the front page? Tuesdays?”

There was a rustling of paper on the other end of the phone.

“Yes, that’s it. The death notices, did you read the death notices?”

`Death Notices.’ He never read them. Not only was there the prospect that some poor bugger he knew had bought his ticket, but he hated the schmaltzy pap, that passed for condolences. Love and respect offered too late and too little.

“There’s a Notice for Angus.”

“Angus?” Young Angus, his brother.

“Yes, Angus…”

“Aww God, Angus.’ Teeth clenched, eyes closed tightly, he tilted his head to the side and every muscle in his body froze.

Angus first came to mind as a flaming red-haired boy, face full of freckles and incomplete teeth, jumping up and down at his side, his green eyes beaming as he tried to gain his adolescent attention. This image flitted out to be replaced with the Angus he met on his return from the war. Bent and hobbling with frostbite to his feet, hair bleached white by the African sun, Angus came down the gangplank, and collapsed in his arms crying uncontrollably. A month later, Angus was sent to fight in the jungles of New Guinea.

“Leo, are you there? Leo?” He could hear Venie’s strident voice through the handset on the arm rest.

“Yep, I’m here. Just reading the notice.”

“Why didn’t Grace tell us? How dare she? He was my brother. She has no right to bury him without letting me know.”

“Oh,” said Leo, himself mystified, “she may have forgotten.”

“Forgotten! How could she bloody well forget?”

“We’re all getting old, Venie.”

“That’s no excuse. God, I’m ropeable. Wait ‘til I see that bitch.”

“Now, now Venie, take it easy. She’s just lost her husband for Christ’s sake. There is probably a good reason. I’ll ring her. It says here, the funeral is tomorrow.”

“Yes, tomorrow. Thanks for the warning, Grace. Now I’ve got to dig out my old black dress, probably smells of dust and I’ll have to wash it and get it dry in time.”

“Okay, well I guess I’ll see you there.”

“Clary will drive me. After, we can drop you home if you like.”

“Thanks Venie, I’ll see if Jim can take me.”

After ringing his son, Jim, to arrange a lift to the funeral, he decided to ring Grace.

He needed to look up the number, and as he dialled he wondered how long it had been since he spoke to Angus’ wife. She was the one who suffered most of Angus’s condition. He had always felt so sorry for her.

“Hello,” said a frail voice on the other end of the phone.

“Hello, Grace. It’s Leo here.”

“Hello Leo.” The voice was soft and constrained. “Fancy hearing from you.”

“Ah, yes. I read the notice in the paper. I’m very sorry, Grace.”

“Not as sorry as I am. I still can’t believe he is gone. But it is a relief in a way, he was in a lot of pain in the end.”

“I’m sorry, Grace.”

“Are you? You never visited him, you never called. How long since I talked to you – four, five years? You didn’t care about Angus. He gave his life for you.”

Leo couldn’t think of what to say. Anything would sound like a weak excuse, and he didn’t have the heart to argue. Angus was gone, and she was right. As Angus’s condition became chronic, and his life and interaction limited, each visit was a depressing, frustrating ordeal in which acknowledgement was sporadic and memory nonexistent. He did care about Angus. He couldn’t bear to see him that way. “Venie called -”

“Her too.”

“We’ll be at the funeral, tomorrow, okay.”

There was silence at the other end.

“Grace.” He could hear whimpering. “Grace we’ll be there tomorrow. I’ll see you then, okay. Look after yourself.” He put the phone down regretting his usual pat sign-off. `Look after yourself,’ he cringed, ‘who else?’

`He gave his life for you.’ Grace’s words resonated in his mind. It was true, Angus did. Leo had been too young for the First World War, and too old for the Second. Angus at seventeen lied about his age and joined up. Angus was the youngest of the eight children, and because Leo was the oldest, it often fell to him to supervise and look after the younger ones in the frequent absence of Dad or his step-mother with airs. He recalled a day, Angus must have been seven or so - he found the sweet-faced, little bugger hiding in the gully at the end of the street, throwing stones at people walking over the bridge. “They didn’t know it was me,” he offered as a reasonable explanation. He pulled him out of the bush by the pants, and up the street home, but he never told Dad, who would have whipped him for sure.

`Angus, always a tear-a-way,’ he recalled fondly. `Always in strife.’ A tear started in the corner of his right eye and ran down his cheek. `Bloody Angus.’ 

Soon after his return from war they lost Angus again. Debilitated, in constant pain from his numerous wounds or his compromised lungs, and beset with incomprehensible fears he sought solace in the bottle. Angus never talked about his experiences, but everyone knew. Everyone knew what the Rats of Tobruk suffered. The constant bombardment, living in a desert hole for months without relief, little water or food and surrounded by sand and death. Angus was their Rat.          

The chapel was near half full. People he did not know approached recognizing Angus’s features in him.

“You related to Angus?” asked a rotund woman with a purple hat finished with floral veil.

“His older brother, Leo.”

“Rosemary Sinclair. I’m a nurse at Veterans Affairs Home. He was a lovely man. It’s a shame . . . but he was so tormented . . .”

“Well, he’s at peace now.”

“Yes, finally peace.”

Leo saw Grace, with Venie and her husband, Clary. Although Venie was speaking quietly, her words could be heard several feet away. Unlike the previous day on the phone, today she was all softness and light. Leo knew, she had taken one look at Grace and seen the poor woman was heart-broken.

“`She’s an angel, Venie’, that’s what he said to me, `I’ve met an angel, and her name is Grace’. He loved you very much. If it hadn’t been . . .”

Grace put a hand on Venie’s arm to still her. 

The Minister began the service with a potted history of Angus’s young life, progressing to his war service and the events that changed his life for ever. Watching Grace weeping on her sister’s shoulder in the front row, Leo felt a thickening in his throat and his eyes watering. Hot tears breeched the barricade and coursed down the crevasses of his face. He pulled out a hankie, removed his glasses, dabbed the corner of his eyes and wiped the moisture from his face.

As Grace passed by she saw him standing at the end of the pew.

“Grace . . . I . . .”

Her streaming eyes beneath the veil shimmered, and she took him in her arms and they hugged. “We loved him,” she whispered in his ear.

They broke their embrace and he gave her a nod as she moved on, and her sister behind her who gave him a strange look.

Leaving the chapel, coming down the stone stairs he looked out across the grounds of Woniora Cemetery. Being mid-Winter, the sun was already low in the sky and casting long shadows from gravestones and statues. They flowed across the ground from the graves as if reaching beyond eternal rest. Leo recalled Laurence Binyon’s words:

`At the going down of the sun,
And in the morning,
We will remember them.
Lest we forget.’

I never will again,’ he promised.