James Stack
Alexandra Redoubt
Tuakau, New Zealand, 1863
Ten years, and still James couldn’t settle. New Zealand resisted him, he was sure, with its lulling bird calls in a landscape that shook beneath his feet. A bad omen. He’d never known a land that grumbled like an empty belly.
For the first few years, the regiments were shipped from Wellington to New Plymouth, to Hawke’s Bay, then up to Auckland and Otahuhu as a warning signal. The light of the Queen’s forces shining in bright, bold numbers. It wasn’t until the building of the Great South Road and the Alexandra Redoubt that things really got going. And James was glad of it. The sooner they expelled the natives from the Waikato, the sooner he could take his leave and buy his own plot of land inside the new territory. What he hadn’t figured on was the trickiness of the natives. Though they’d lost three battles against the Queen’s forces, they remained stubborn, and not easy to disperse. Wanderers, for sure, but they were cunning; there was no sneaking up on them, and no fear in their eyes at the moment of death. With every thrust of the regimental bayonet into the depths of the Waikato, the Maoris fought back, stood their ground as if they had a chance. Then they scattered. The dead disappeared in the night as though they had got up and walked away on their own. But they weren’t gone, they were never gone. From within the carnivorous bush they snuck in and out, watching like animals.
The redoubt became an industry of cleaning after leave was issued to James’s company. One day was all they had to prepare, so James was not surprised to find Abel up early, leaning over a bucket, lathering his trousers.
‘What you think?’ James said, turning his head from side to side.
‘You call them whiskers? Me cat has more than that.’
‘Thom’s a barber. Did you know that?’
‘No. Did he do that?’
‘The trimming thickens it, you know.’
‘He said that, did he?’
James stroked the pride of hair on his chin. His straggly youth was long gone. He fitted in. Other regiments shaved their beards off, but the 65ths were bushmen. No way were they going clean – unless they were the unlucky ones who’d gone ashore with Abel in Portsmouth. The scabs on their faces healed all right, but they left behind a patchwork of scars. Footprints, Abel called them, from the fairies that dance in the night.
‘How much did he charge?’ Abel asked.
‘Halfpenny.’
‘Halfpenny? I could’ve done it for free.’
‘Could’ve done it meself if I had a mirror.’
‘Do mine.’
‘I don’t have a razor.’
‘You still have that knife, don’t you?’
‘Needs a sharpen.’
‘Go sharpen it and pass me that bucket on your way.’
James pulled a bucket of clean water closer but not close enough, and left Abel to his cleaning.
Soon James returned, dipping under lines of wind-flapped washing. Every now and then a sopping piece flew up and slapped him as he passed. Abel was busy hanging out his clothes. His regimental jacket looked comical worn over long-johns, but the men were like it all over camp, waiting for trousers to dry.
‘Like being slapped by me ma,’ James said.
‘Did you get them?’ Abel asked.
It surprised James that Abel knew what he had done. There was no discussion about stealing scissors before he left, but there they were, bulging inside his vest.
‘Quick, before he comes,’ Abel said.
‘And how would he know I took them?’
‘You’re Irish, aren’t you?’
Abel tipped the bucket of soapy water out and sat on it. ‘Come on, get me tidied up.’
Patch by patch James pulled at the hair and trimmed as close as he could with the scissors. Then he ordered Abel to lather his face.
Abel’s face lit up. ‘Ah, you got the razor too.’
‘Irish, aren’t I?’
James tilted Abel’s head back. His friend’s throat stretched before him, but James thought better of teasing Abel with a blade in his hand.
The razor slid easily up Abel’s pale neck, though once over the ridge of his jaw it was difficult terrain. James couldn’t help nicking the edges of Abel’s scars.
‘God damn it,’ he said as Abel flinched.
‘Fine for you. I’m being attacked by a madman.’
‘Want me to slip, do you?’
‘I’d come back and haunt you, me and that sister of yours. We’d spook your dreams till you went mad and pissed yourself.’
‘Piss meself laughing more like.’
James stopped to wipe the blade. Aileen. She did still haunt him, but not as a ghost, not as a memory, more a gnawing expectancy that she could turn up one day beautifully alive. As though she had been there the whole time, with him, only he couldn’t see her.
Abel leaned back for James to continue.
‘Going in to Otahuhu to see that brick-faced mistress of yours?’ Abel asked.
‘She ain’t no mistress.’
‘Well, you’re missing all the fun again.’
‘Fun enough on our own.’
Abel pulled a face as if repulsed. James waved the blade in front of him to remind him who had the power.
‘Yes Ma.’ Abel sighed and settled back so James could finish. ‘You’re no fun no more, boyo,’ he said expectantly, but James just ignored him.
The men always stopped in Drury for leave. Three days of glorious indulgence at Farmer’s Hotel. Molly Cummings and the promise of her smile, luscious breasts teasing from behind a tight bodice, making a man greedy enough to pay for one of her girls. But James didn’t stop at Drury any more. Not since Mary-Jane. Otahuhu was where he’d set his sights, that narrow isthmus between Auckland and Waikato, the in-between place that pulled at his groin, her resistance, the wrestle against her Catholic guilt. But she always lost, and he would return to camp satisfied that she was his.
James scraped around the side of Abel’s ears, leaving short side whiskers that were better than nothing.
‘There, best a man can do.’ James gave Abel a kick to make him move.
Abel went to the closest water barrel and rinsed his face. ‘Couple of nicks?’ he said after drying himself on a shirt that hung on the line. Small spots of blood bloomed on his cheeks.
‘What you expect with that ugly face?’
‘Ugly, am I?’
‘English, aren’t you?’