Neville the Less

By Robert Nicholls

Six year old Neville the Less is lord of the small things in a safe and familiar Australian neighbourhood. He knows the ‘countries’ of which it’s comprised, he knows the people who conduct its business and the places from which to observe its doings. He knows it to be a place in which all the roles are established, all the problems are small and all the solutions the responsibility of adults.
When his father returns, heroically, from military service in the Afghan war zone, however, Neville finds himself confronted by a man he no longer knows. Withdrawn, uncommunicative and subject to horrifying nightmares, the father has become a Quiet Man in whom, Neville fears, a dreadful secret may lie hidden. What that secret could be is a question that draws Neville to ponder what it takes to ‘make’ both a hero and a war.
“Nothing for you to worry about,” his mother tells him. “War could never happen here and you will never be a soldier.”
The half-memories of Neville’s best friend and back-door neighbour say otherwise. Afsoon is the only surviving child of Hazaran refugees, newly resettled in Australia. Like the Quiet Man, she displays full-blown symptoms of post traumatic stress, in her case, presenting as a consuming obsession with the threat of violence. Imagining that her family’s persecutors have followed them to Australia and are masquerading as ordinary neighbours (one of whom may be the Quiet Man), she develops a fixated need to expose those who are enemies and, if need be, eliminate them. Neville finds himself torn. Should he believe his determinedly hopeful mother or his much abused friend? And which of those is most likely to rescue his almost catatonic father from whatever nightmare assails him?
‘Neville the Less’ is firstly a tale about the pervasiveness of casual prejudice, obstinate insensitivity and the initiatives that arise from fear. It’s also about the alacrity with which violence is introduced into our society and it is a reminder that post traumatic stress is a condition that can claim victims far beyond its primary sufferers. It’s also an entertaining glimpse into the ways children might imagine themselves the protectors of their adults.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Robert Nicholls
• Release date: Sep 19, 2015
• ISBN: 9781310281532

Robert Nicholls

Robert is a Canadian born Aussie, having emigrated with his wife from the cold shores of British Columbia to the warm tropical coast of North Queensland in 1975. With a degree in Education from Canada's University of Victoria, he took up the teaching of English, History and Legal Studies in a Whitsunday high school until, forty-two years later, with retirement and an expanding family in Victoria, he and his wife relocated to windy Ballarat. He has written three novels set in rural Queensland, a YA novel set in 15th Century England and a book of short stories.

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Neville the Less

By Robert Nicholls

Copyright 2015 Robert Nicholls

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Table of Contents

1. Home Country

2. A Journey

3. Troubles Multiply

4. The Making of Plans

5. Alone at Sea

6. Sharing the Lesson

7. A Penny for your Medal

8. Phase Two

9. Interregnum

10. Plans

11. D-Day

12. Where it Ends

1. Home Country

Neville

Something is happening in Under. Every night I hear creaking and bumping - and the sound of sand being moved, as though the dead forest is coming to life. Which I know can’t be true. I know because I asked Mum and she said definitely not. It’s a dream, she said. Give yourself a pinch when it happens, she said, and you’ll see.

But what is it then? Last night I pinched very hard and it didn’t stop. And then Ava started to growl. I would’ve pinched her as well but I worried that if she started barking, Mum would have to come and she’s already got her hands pretty full with the Quiet Man. I heard him last night too, shouting out again. I think he hears the noises in Under too. Things are not very good just now.

Nightmares

The Quiet Man lay on the couch as he had every day of every week, for the whole of the month and a half that he’d been home, staring into the ceiling.

He doesn’t see us anymore, Neville said to his mother.

Nevertheless, he knows we’re here, Sweet.

Why doesn’t he talk to us then?

He can’t, Nev’. Not yet. He’s got a jumble in his mind and he needs to sort that out before he can talk to us.

A jungle in his mind, thought Neville. Snakes and lions and monkeys and tall, tall trees. Or maybe it’s a dead forest, like the one in Under, with things that dig and groan.

Does he know who I am?

Yes, of course he does! He knows you’re his son! Nevertheless, he can’t talk to you or to me or to anyone - not properly. Not until he finds his way through the jumble. He’s got to do that first. I know it’s hard, but we just have to try to be patient and understanding. Okay?

Okay, said Neville, thinking, He knows I am his son, Neville the Less. He knows but his mind is lost in a jungle and until he finds it, he can’t talk.

How come, if he can’t talk, I hear him at night, hollering and shouting? And I hear you shouting back? And I wonder if he’s hurting you?

Oh, Sweet! He can talk! He just . . . can’t decide what things to tell us! And he’s never hurting me! He wouldn’t hurt me, or you! He loves us both. It’s just . . . he has awful dreams sometimes. Dreams that frighten him and that he can’t wake up from. Not without help. So I call out to help him; to show him a way to go, to get back to us. That’s all it is.

Nightmares?

Yes, nightmares.

From the jungle?

From the jumble, yes. But you mustn’t be frightened. Because you and I know that nightmares are just scary shadows, don’t we. Shadows that can pretend to be real when there’s darkness all around. That’s why I keep the light on in the hall all night, see? And that’s why he watches so carefully from the couch all day. So that, if those nightmares try to creep up on him, he’ll be able to see them for the shadows they are. That’s what he needs most of all, Nev’. Just to know he’s safe. And when the time comes that he knows his fears are nothing but shadows, he’ll be able to chase them away for good. And then he’ll come back to us. Understand?

So he’s watching for them in the ceiling?

Yes. I guess so. In the ceiling.

It would make more sense, Neville thought, if he was watching the floor, to catch them coming up from Under. But who was he to question?

"You always tell me to think happy thoughts when I have nightmares. Or to pinch myself. Why don’t you tell him to think happy thoughts? Or pinch him?"

Nev’, I know this is hard for you. But look. It’s true that nightmares shrivel up like little raisins when happy thoughts are around. But your father . . . he doesn’t have many happy thoughts just now. Not just now. He’s trying! He’s trying his best. And he’s strong. He’s very strong and brave. But . . .! And he knew she was about to give up on him; . . . there’s just a Bigger Picture happening, Nev’. One that . . . it wouldn’t be fair for you to have to think about.

Is it the war? he whispered and his mother, suddenly sobbing into her hands, fled from him into the kitchen.

Or is it us then? he asked the room, which was empty of anyone who could think what to say.

Later though, when they met in the kitchen, he tried a different tack.

What is a war, anyhow? How do you get one?

Oh Nev’! You don’t have to worry. It’s a thing that couldn’t happen here! But where it does happen, it’s because people get frightened and confused by one another - by things they don’t understand about one another. And then they get mad because stuff just isn’t how they want it to be or wish it was. And they decide to hit out because hitting out’s easier than . . . thinking. Hitting and hitting and being more and more frightened. That’s what war is.

But why couldn’t it happen here? Don’t people get frightened and confused here?

Yes, of course they do. It’s just that . . . we don’t hit here.

The Quiet Man does! He’s a soldier!

Yes. And soldiers are made to do things, sometimes, that they hate to do. And suddenly she was angry, bending to him, clasping his shoulders roughly and staring into his eyes. But you see where that’s got him? The tear tracks were there on her cheeks again and a drop of something clear waggled at the end of her nose.

Promise me you’ll never be a soldier! she demanded, shaking him so hard the drop fell from her nose and splashed on the floor. Right now and for all time! Promise me that when you grow up, you’ll never fight or hurt or kill or hate or . . . be the kind of person who . . . sees hitting out as the only way!

Before he could answer, she pulled his face against her breasts, holding him tightly there where he most loved to be, even though the sweet baby powder scent of her always made his head swim. Then, with another drop at the tip of her nose, she pushed him away and went instead to the sink, to splash water on her face. Afterwards, she dried off on the tea towel (which was strictly against the rules) and, as though she’d forgotten him entirely, fell into a reverie, gazing out across the neighbouring yards. Neville waited, wishing she’d come back to him and hold him again. She didn’t. But eventually she drew a deep breath and let his name slip slowly, pleadingly out.

Nevertheless.

Neville wasn’t certain why she, and others in her wake, had begun referring to him as Neville the Less. He reasoned, though, that it was probably fair enough since his father, who’d been away at the war and had become, first The Hero and then The Quiet Man, had also once been a Neville. Neville the More, supposedly.

Neville the More, who went to war and left his mind in a jungle.

Mum

I can’t believe I did that! Obvious that Nev’ would’ve been hearing his father’s nightmares and fretting over them, but me? I completely overlooked it! He put me on the spot about them today and I managed a half-baked, off-putting explanation that really . . . well, if he took anything from it at all, it’d be a miracle! Then he asked me, ‘What’s a war! How do you get one?’ How do you get one? I mean, like you’d order one made up at the shops or something! I don’t know; who knows? There’s no explaining it! Not even to a smart kid like him; even one with his sensitivity and imagination! Where would you begin?

I don’t know where he got that – the imagination, I mean. Must be nice. If I’d been able to imagine, for example, a person’s character being stomped flat by a job they loved and believed in - that would’ve been helpful wouldn’t it? To say the least? Or to imagine what the army psych’s really meant when they said, ‘Expect some loss of interest. Maybe some nightmares.’

If they’d just said, ‘Expect a husk’, that would’ve at least prepared me a bit. Even the treatment! ‘Talk to him,’ was what they said. ‘Let him know you need him in your lives.’ This to a man who has no memory of what ‘being needed’ means, let alone of what our lives are about!

So now I’m trying to imagine a way to explain to a six year old that his big, brave soldier of a father went to war and came home . . . empty. Not empty of everything, mind! Mostly just empty of his son! I mean, he does talk to me - in grunts and whispers admittedly, but he at least acknowledges me. And he’s certainly loud enough in his nightmares! But when Neville’s around . . . nothing! I doubt he’s spoken a word to Neville in the whole six weeks he’s been home! Doesn’t look at him, refuses to see him! And despite all Nev’s determined patience, I don’t see any hint of change. I don’t know what to do. Not for him, not for myself, not for any of us. All I can say is, thank God we’ve got Ava. She’s our one reliable anchor in a world gone totally stupid!

* * *

I promise, Neville the Less said to the back of his mother whose name was Mum but was also Bettina or sometimes Betts and sometimes Tina. Once, when Neville was sitting very quietly high up in the mango tree, he’d heard Mister Shoomba tell the Duke of Daisley that she was ‘a criminal waste of hormones’. But that hadn’t seemed like a real name at all.

I promise not to be a soldier.

Good, she answered, coming back from her reverie. That’s good. Thank you. Now what about you and Ava go outside for a while. Get some fresh air. Throw a stick or something. You could both use some exercise, I bet.

Okay.

And Nev’?

Mmhm?

Try not to worry, okay? We just have to stay strong and healthy and brave, you and me. That’s what I believe. Be as brave as he is. And be the best people we can be, every minute of the day. He wants that for us, I know he does. And one day we’ll get him back, just like he used to be. Okay? That’s my promise to you. She smiled her old soft smile. In exchange for you not becoming a soldier.

Ava

Ava was a grey terrier with the soft, curly hair of a sneaky poodle ancestor. Most times, her name was Ava but sometimes, like when she caught a rat in the hen yard on Rahimi Island and brought it limp and bloody into the house, she was called ‘Bloody Horrible Mutt’! And other times, like when Mister Shoomba found her in Shoomba Territory or discovered her leavings on the soles of his shoes she was called ‘Stinkin’ Shaggy Little Bitch’.

Names. Everything, Neville had learned, and everyone, had lots of names. Names were the glue of meaning, even though they were as changeable as the weather.

This day, Ava was laying on the floor beside the couch that held The Quiet Man who had once been Dad and Neville the More. She’d lain there pretty much every day of all the weeks since he’d come home. And if The Quiet Man seldom seemed to sleep, watching ever so carefully for his nightmares to appear in the ceiling, for Ava, sleep was a calling and nightmares, it seemed, gave her a wide berth; presumably because she was, at heart, a Terrier-of-Death. Not with her own family, of course. She was gentle with all of them. Whenever The Quiet Man moved, especially in those rare moments when his hand fell near her, she would rouse right up, nose the fingers carefully and lick them as though to say, ‘See? I’m here and on the job. Nothing to worry about.’

Ava, Neville whispered as he slid onto his bum beside her. Wanna come outside?

In answer, she rolled on her back and showed him her belly; pale skin through the fine covering of hair. He gave her a rub and rolled onto his back beside her. So now they were three, staring up into the ceiling.

Nightmares’re up there, Ava, he whispered. Up there in the ceiling. From the war. From the jungle. Nightmares so bad, you ‘n’ me’d just be killed by ‘em.

Ava wriggled her back against the floor, stretched luxuriously and yawned. And in the voice of the yawn, Neville distinctly heard her say, I don’ sink so.

Neville was surprised. Not that she was expressing an opinion - she did that more and more frequently these days - but that her opinion differed from that of Mum whose wisdom practically never missed the mark. He rolled to his side to ask Ava why she didn’t think so, but his mother’s finger snaps from the kitchen doorway and the mouthed Outside! distracted them both. Ava bounded to her feet and, in the midst of a clear steady look, flicked her eyes doorwards. As if to say, I’ll tell you outside. And then, without waiting for him, she trotted from the room.

* * *

Neville was only seconds behind, but by the time he got outside, she’d already disappeared. It would take him five minutes to find her, though admittedly, four and half of those minutes would be taken up by Mister Shoomba who was, as he often was these days, standing at the end of the row of paper barks that separated Shoomba Territory from Home Country. He was studying the Lightning Bug - the derelict boat that had been sinking into the weeds in that corner of his yard for all the time that Neville could remember.

Used ta be a great little boat, the Bug! he said when Neville accidentally made eye contact with him. Take ye to Silly ‘n’back, on nothin’ but a fart an’ a hiccup! Know what I mean? Tell ‘er where ye wanna go an’ she’d be off like a bloodhound! Bloody pirates down the boat ramp offered me a truckload o’ cash for ‘er once. They wanted ‘er alright! Shoulda flogged ‘er off, I s’pose, but who knew she’d wind up land lubbered, eh? Now lookit ‘er! Couldn’ get a dead mackeral out’ve a Lower Slobovian fisherman for ‘er! How’s yer ma?

She’s got a cold maybe, I think, Mister Shoomba. Drippy nose ‘n’ stuff.

Yeh? Might bring ‘er some lemons later on then, eh! Bit o’ hot lemonade’s magic fer the chest. She ever tell ye that, mate? Drink it down or rub it on, either one. What about yer ol’ man? Still down wi’ the wobblies?

His mind’s in the jungle, mum says. Because of the war. But he’s very brave.

Course he is! Course he is! Came home a Hero, didn’ he? Always a cost though. Tell you what, I could tell you Hero-stories, kid. Make your hair stand on end.

You been to the war, Mister Shoomba?

Not literally speakin’, no. But in me own fashion, mate, I been everywhere there is to be an’ seen everythin’ there is to see. Includin’ a fair bit a man’s eyeball ought not to be subjected to. Know what I mean?

No sir. Were there really pirates at the boat ramp?

Mate! Were there what! An’ still are, no doubt about it! Ol’Bluebeard an’ Cap’m Hook got nothin’ on that mob down the ramp! Steal the scales off a fish, they would! Steal the freckles off a barnacle. Be wearin’ your buttons in their ears if yer not awake-up to ‘em an’ that’s the God’s honest truth. Know why? ‘Cause most folks’re too chicken-liveried to stand up for what’s theirs, ‘at’s why! Too cock-a-doodle-don’t to see the bad uns off, that’s what most folks are! Me, I’d wrestle a Taswegian tiger ‘f it was gettin’ amongst me stuff! Ownership, see? Countryside! Lifestyle! ‘At’s what it’s all about. See that?

As though it would clarify his point, he waved his hand at the expansive piles of detritus around his yard and house. That house? That gear? Shoomba belongin’s, mate! On Shoomba Territory - of which I’m king. The king ye gotta get up way before crow fart to get anythin’ over! ‘Cause ‘at’s exactly what hard experience taught me, see? Take hold an’ hang on! ‘Cause sure as Hell’s a-poppin’, someone’s gonna come along an’ wanna change things up on ya.

Yes sir. You seen Ava? She came out just a minute ago an’ I’m s’posed to throw a stick for her.

That Stinkin’ Shaggy Little Bitch! Tell ye what, I’ll throw a stick right up her arse, I catch ‘er over here again! Should be tied up an’ you can tell your ma I said so! Bloody dog mess all over Hell’s Half Acre over here!

Okay. Thanks Mister Shoomba.

Sure, sure. Listen, you tell yer ma she needs anything, ol’ Dennis the Menace Shoomba’s her man, eh?

Okay. Thanks Mister Shoomba.

No worries. An’ mate? Yer ol’ man? Jus’ gotta accept it, see. War burns a man up, that’s what. Hero or no, it cooks ‘im from the inside out! Medical fact, that; straight from the war books. Never be the same again. Ye can write them words down, matey, an’ they’ll be as true in a year as they are today. So ye may’s well just start workin’ around him, ‘at’s my advice. Be the responsible male in your family, eh? Lord o’ your manor, like I’m lord o’ mine, right? Lookin’ out for your ma’ ‘n’ all. Eh? Hm? Yessir, young Neville! King o’ that there castle, you, whether you like it or not! You up for it?

I don’t need to be up for it, thought Neville the Less. Because no jungle will ever hold Neville the More. You wait and see! But all he said was, Yep. Thanks Mister Shoomba.

* * *

After that, he gave up looking for Ava and headed for the cubby he’d hollowed out under the lilly-pilly at the back of the house. Years of pruning had left the bush with a solid outer skin of leaves, tight as the feathers on a chicken. But behind that skin, against the house, Neville had snapped away the dead twigs and made a clear space big enough to sit in or stand up in or even lie down in, if he didn’t mind the bed of dry leaves, which he didn’t. It was one of several secret places in his and the surrounding territories to which Neville retreated when he needed space and privacy for thought.

As it turned out, however, it wasn’t to be private this day, because seated right in the middle, in the best, roomiest part of the cubby, with her back against the house stump and Ava’s head cradled in her lap, was Afsoon Rahimi.

What a stupid man! she harrumphed as he crowded in beside. Why do you listen to him?

Mister Shoomba? Why? Whaddya mean?

Saying your father will never be the same again! What does such a fat lazy man know of Heroes, or anything? She gripped a friendly handful of Ava’s ruff and gave it a shake. Ava and me - we say, if anything has been cooked from the inside out, it is Mister Shoomba’s brain!

Well, said Neville, even though he knew how the topic would provoke her, He knows about pirates! He says there’re pirates at the boat ramp!

Hah! If pirates were at the boat ramp, they’d’ve cut open Mister Shoomba’s gizzard and put his big ears on a hook for fishing!

Neville had learned the hard way that it was not always wise to repeat ‘Soon’s most colourful language. Though tiny, she was nearly two years older than he - almost eight - and possessed of a deep and ready cynicism about life. If you want to speak like that, Mum had said, go out to the garage and talk to the lizards!

If you want to know about pirates, ‘Soon was now saying, there is only one way. You must talk to Riff and Raff. Once, they fought a whole shipload of pirates, with their bare hands! When they came to take our Anosh, Riff drowned a hundred of them in the middle of the ocean! And caused the others to sail off in a terror.

Her brow furrowed and she hugged Ava close, burying her face in the little dog’s ruff.

So they can’t be here can they, Ava! she murmured. And to Neville, Anyhow, why would they come? They have Anosh and many others! What else would they want? No. This Shoomba is a liar-man! And I tell you, Ava, you must poop in his yard every day! I will join you. And Neville will join you also. Even if Terrible Bill catches us and scratches our bums to pieces!

The Neighbourhood

The neighbourhood which comprised Neville the Less’s domain looked like this.

First, there was Home Country, which was the block on which stood the house in which Neville the Less, Mum, The Quiet Man and Ava lived. It had been bought years ago, when Mum was still Bettina and The Quiet Man was still Neville the More and neither Ava nor Neville the Less had been born.

The house was a ‘Queenslander’ which meant it perched four feet off the ground on wooden stumps, had wide verandas and, in summer with the doors open, could harvest even the slightest breezes, drawing them right through from south to north or east to west. Not through Neville’s room, though, because it was an add-on; a little out-of-the-way almost-secret one in a back corner, behind the pantry - part of the changes that had accompanied the arrival of Neville himself.

Neville didn’t mind the tininess or the seclusion of his room. Being next to the pantry meant he could help himself to lollies and biscuits to store up as snacks for himself and Ava. It also meant he could creep on hands and knees through the kitchen and the sleep-out to see unseen what Mum and Dad were watching on television. Or listen to conversations on the western veranda which, coincidentally, also overlooked the leafy skin of the lilly-pilly cubby. Then there was the thrilling possibility, already well into the serious consideration stage, of secretly coming and going from the house via the little window that scooped in the summer northerlies. And the best - his long-term plan - (though it had definitely been set back by the arrival of the Things) was the trap door which one day, when he’d gotten up the nerve to make it, would grant him the unimaginably satisfying option of simply dropping out of sight like a magician’s rabbit.

‘Out of sight’, of course, meant into ‘Under’ - the space beneath the floor joists where the dark-loving Things had recently taken to gathering in the night. It was a space just high enough, maybe for one more year, for Neville to stand without bumping his head. Whether the Things could also stand there, or whether they had to crouch on all fours with their shaggy backs against the floorboards, was a question too awful to consider.

In its favour, even in the depths of the tropical summer, Under was cool and quiet during the day - a space with packed, bare earth and a dead forest of stumps - fifty remnants of once gigantic trees. It was those stumps on which the house rested and to which it was anchored by thumb-thick bolts of iron. Once during a cyclone, according to Mister Shoomba, the house had lifted right into the air and would have blown away entirely but for one heroically unyielding cyclone bolt.

House swung on that bolt for half an hour! he swore, eyes ablaze with the memory. Stretched ‘er out to twice ‘er length, but she never let go! Durin’ the clean-up your ol’ man wanted to throw that bolt away but I says, give it to me, I says. ‘Cause iron’s got the magic in it, see? ‘N’ ‘at piece’s got more’n its natural share I reckon! Still got it somewhere here, under the house. Show it to you one day ‘f ye like. Crap strewn all over Hell’s Half Acre after that blow, I can tell you!

During wet-season storms and for days after, Under would stream with water - oodles of water - on which Neville could sail stick boats, sending them curling and swirling around the massive columns of wood. And all year round, in both wet and dry times, since the perimeter of the house was lined with shrubs, Under had been one of the places from which Neville could watch the world’s unfoldings without being seen. What had begun unfolding there after dark in recent times, however, had been enough to bring Neville’s visits there to an abrupt and permanent halt.

The front yard of Home Country looked boringly out onto Station Street, but the back yard into which the wet season rivers drained was the true heart of Home Country. Straight across it, to the west, it was edged by a dense forest of banana palms and the end of Rahimi’s animal house.

In the northwest corner stood the stockade, made of old railway sleepers, where papers were sometimes burned. In the southwest corner stood a dilapidated garage over which hung the mighty branches of an ancient Poinciana. Major branches of that tree hung down low enough for Neville to grasp, creating for him a highway onto the flat roof of the garage and into the Duke of Daisley’s mango tree; the very one from which he’d overheard Mister Shoomba’s ‘criminal waste of hormones’ comment. From various lookouts in that immense old tree, Neville could spy out the doings in Home Country, Shoomba Territory, the Island of Rahimi and even a little of what happened behind the high fences of the Duchy of Daisley.

* * *

To take them one by one, Shoomba Territory (also sometimes called ‘Hell’s Half Acre’ or ‘The Shambles’) was to the south, across the driveway from Home Country, through a narrow but dark grove of solemn paperbarks. Beyond the paperbarks, Shoomba Territory was mostly a sea of knee deep grass; a waving expanse where no bush, tree or shrub had ever been allowed to take root and where no child or animal, apart from Terrible Bill, had ever managed to linger unobserved. Nevertheless, the yard had islands of interest, not the least of which was the mouldering little ship known as Lightning Bug.

Neville liked to imagine her as she must once have been - new and fresh and proud. Before she was caught up by the great cyclone. He sometimes saw her in his dreams, twisting and floundering desperately, past the paperbarks blown nearly to horizontal, even while the house in Home Country hung like a kite from its magic iron bolt. A single enormous wave, it would have taken, to toss her to her final resting place in the back yard of Shoomba Territory.

Not far from the Lightning Bug was Holden Rock which, in its former life, might’ve been an actual car. In its present life it was a dead, weed-raddled lump of rusting metal which had settled so deeply into itself and the grass that its roof reminded Neville of an ancient boulder. And not much further along was Apollo Dungeon, a mildewed van whose dank and rotting interior Neville had only dared to peek at once, through a blackened window. Inside there, Mister Shoomba had