From our classroom, if we looked through the windows towards the air-raid trenches—the ones we had to dig at the edge of the playground the first summer we arrived on the island—we could just see the sea. It made it hard to concentrate. All we wanted to do was get down to the ocean. With Palmer droning on and on about some sorry Greek bloke wandering all over the miserable Mediterranean, it became impossible.
Banjo, my best mate, decided he needed to get outside. His real name is Andrew, Andrew Paterson, just like Banjo Paterson the poet. He reckoned he was related. I reckoned he had more chance of being related to King Kong.
‘Sir?’ Banjo put his hand in the air.
‘Paterson?’
‘Sir, can I go to the dunny?’
He shouldn’t have grinned when he said it. You would’ve thought he’d announced Admiral Yamamoto was his all-time hero and he was off to enlist in the Jap navy. All hell broke loose. Palmer, the rotten old maggot, instantly went berserk. His eye twitched and he lurched across the room, knocking into the desks and swinging his cane like a Viking battleaxe.
‘Don’t you talk to me in that tone of voice, Paterson. I’ll teach you to show some respect, boy.’ He drew back his cane and let fly, catching Banjo across the back. He lashed out two more times. The third blow struck Banjo’s face as he turned away, hitting his nose. Blood gushed out. Banjo tripped over, his legs caught in his upturned seat. He couldn’t get away. He pulled himself into a ball and covered his head, but he didn’t cry out. He didn’t make a sound.
Palmer stopped as suddenly as he’d started, as if he’d just realised what he was doing. He seemed slightly confused.
He put his hand to his temple. ‘Yes, you can go outside. Go to the tank and clean up your face. Jones, you go with him.’ Then he turned to the class, ignoring us. ‘Class, the twelve times table.’
Banjo wouldn’t cry, not in front of the rest of the kids. Not in front of anybody. I only ever saw him cry once. But he must’ve hurt like hell. Two thin red stripes had appeared on the back of his white shirt. We sat in the shade of the water tank and I took out my hanky, wet it and cleaned him up as best I could. The class was droning away inside.
‘Six twelves are seventy-two, seven twelves are...’
Then we saw Dafty. Dressed as usual in his ragged clothes and with hair like mouldy hay, he looked just like I imagined Tim, the ostler in ‘The Highwayman’—which is funny because Dafty’s real name is Tim, Timothy Small. He sat under the shade of the Moreton Bay Fig tree at the edge of the schoolyard playing with his chook. Lassie, he called it, as if it were a collie dog and not a scraggy, mangy, bantam rooster.
Dafty sang the same four lines of the song he always sang over and over whenever he saw Banjo. ‘Waltzing Matilda, waltzing Matilda, you’ll come a waltzing Matilda with me...’ I don’t think he knew any more words.
Dafty wasn’t bright enough to go to school, even though he really wanted to. I think he would’ve given anything to be allowed in the classroom with the other kids. Instead he’d wander all over the island with Lassie, exploring or swimming until home time, and then he’d rush back to meet us at school. He’d collect lizards and little snakes and bird feathers and eggs and strange-shaped rocks, and things washed up by the sea, and brightly coloured wildflowers. He hardly kept anything for himself but gave his treasures away to anyone he liked that day.
He stood up and wandered over. ‘Hello, Banjo. Hello, Jack,’ he said in the slow and careful way he always spoke. ‘What’s a happened to you? Why you bleeding, Banjo? Did he hurt you, Banjo? Did the teacher hurt you? Why did the teacher hurt you, Banjo?’ He didn’t wait for an answer. ‘I’ve got for you a Christmas present.’ He always called them that, even in July. ‘It’s a army bomb for you, Banjo. Look.’ He opened up a bit of dirty cloth and held out a real live hand grenade. ‘I got it for you specially. My bestest friend.’
‘Holy hell!’ I cried. ‘Dafty, do you know what that is? It’s dangerous. It’s a bloody grenade.’
‘Don’t you want it then, Banjo?’ asked Dafty. He frowned at me, genuinely hurt at my reaction.
Banjo instantly forgot his pain. ‘Yes, Dafty, I do want your Christmas present. Don’t listen to Jack. I want it very much. Thank you.’ He reached out for the grenade. ‘You mustn’t tell anyone about this, you hear, Dafty? It’s got to be our secret. Not where you got it from or anything. Do you understand? It’s a special secret.’
‘Yes, Banjo, but Lassie knows. Why did he hurt you, Banjo?’
Simple kids usually get bullied, but there was something so childlike and trusting about Dafty that people hardly ever teased him. Just about every kid in the school looked out for him. When a new kid called Nobby laughed at Dafty once, Banjo beat the living daylights out of him. Nobby never laughed at Dafty again. In fact, he was pretty careful what he laughed at all from then on.
Kids always swapped their sandwiches for one of Dafty’s Christmas presents. The night I told my dad I’d swapped a beetroot sandwich for one of Dafty’s funny-shaped rocks, he laughed so hard he nearly choked. Even Patricia laughed, my little sister who was too young to go to school and hardly understood.
‘Who’s the daft one? Jack or Dafty?’ Dad had cackled like a broody chook. ‘You wait till I tell Merv Purvis tomorrow. He’ll think it’s such a good joke he’ll probably give himself a hernia.’ Dad shook his head in disbelief.