Furey's War

By T W Lawless and Kay Bell

A decent man in an indecent time ...

When Jack Furey has his 100th birthday celebrations forced upon him, his mind turns to his experience of WWII as a police sergeant in 1942 in Far North Queensland.

 

As Sergeant Furey of the Wangamba Police, he welcomed the arrival of the Americans to

• Language: English
• Publisher: Campanile Publishing
• Release date: Feb 24, 2021
• ISBN: 9780645099188

T W Lawless

TW Lawless is the author of seven thrillers, six in the Peter Clancy series.

Book preview

Furey’s War

T.W. Lawless

& Kay Bell

Campanile logo – belltower stylised to look like a book

Published by Campanile Publishing

www.twlawless.com

© 2021 T.W. Lawless and Kay Bell.

The moral rights of the authors have been asserted.

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

This book is a work of fiction. All characters in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

The views of the characters and terms used in this book do not reflect those of the authors. They are, however, consistent with the time in which this book is set.

A National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry has been created for this title.

ISBN 978-0-6450991-9-5 (pbk)

ISBN 978-0-6450991-8-8 (ebook)

Cover design by Golden Orb Creative: www.goldenorbcreative.com

Cover image by Vladm used under licence from Shutterstock.com (photo ID: 1878120166).

Text design and production (print and ebook) by Golden Orb Creative.

Edited by Linda Nix AE of Golden Orb Creative.

Contents

Publishing information

Prologue – 1942

Chapter One – Nursing Home, 1993

Chapter Two – Wangamba, 1942

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Chapter Forty

Chapter Forty-One – Nursing Home, 1993

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Prologue

1942

The fresh blood next to the chinky apple tree attracts a pair of crows.

They perch in a tall paperbark and caw at the dawn. Once the creek mist settles, a mound of leaves catches their attention. Now, there’s nothing strange about such a mound in the bush, but this one’s out of place: it’s a little too neat, with too little foliage around it and too much heaped over it.

The first bird glides down and follows the blood with a string of hops. It climbs on top of the leaves, tosses them off and scrapes away the soil with its beak. It uncovers a bundle no bigger than a rabbit, but it’s wedged under a rock, so the bird pecks and tears at it for a while, and then flutters off.

The second bird spots something entirely different in the discarded vegetation, and swoops down. In the end it too flies away, but the fine silver chain with its swinging locket slides from its grip; the necklace rides the breeze back to the ground, and is lost in the undergrowth.

Chapter One

Nursing Home, 1993

She sits on the arm of my recliner, yelling into my ear until I turn my head and look. There’s boredom in her eyes; she’s imagining herself somewhere else and I’m the only thing stopping her from getting there.

She twists around and starts up again. She’s shaking me too, though I barely feel it.

‘Mr Furey… Mr Furey…’

I know who I bloody well am, and I’m not deaf. Read the bloody care plan.

Any moment now she’ll make my ear wax pop out.

She’s not my usual girl; I get the feeling that she doesn’t know a thing about me. From the look of her, she’s a lazy bugger. She’s all a bit crumpled, like she picked her uniform up off the floor this morning, put it on and came to work.

‘Mr Furey,’ she continues, ‘you were having a terrible nightmare.’

I admit a moment ago there were pictures in my head I’d sooner not see: flashbacks, I suppose you’d call them. Like autumn mists they come, and then they go again once the morning sun breaks through. If it were up to me, there’d be no more autumns and no more mornings, and the nightmares would be gone for good.

Until she woke me, I didn’t even realise I was asleep. I try to explain it to her and she frowns.

The problem is, whenever I try to speak these days, all that happens is my tongue scrapes across my dentures. My mouth wobbles, but no words come out and when I do make a sound, well, to be honest, it’s a bit like a fart. All those years of talking without a second thought, and now the best that I can do, after a big effort, is pass wind and dribble. And it’s been like that for the last five years.

So, I put my hand on hers and squeeze.

She flinches. ‘Not so hard, Mr Furey!’ She tries to pull her hand away.

Her face is suddenly as cloudy as a stormy day, and it makes her look stupid. I think about giving her hand another little squeeze, but I change my mind and slowly release her hand. I bang my fist on the bedside table instead. Then I point to my mouth. There I am, caught in the mirror opposite me, my crooked finger raised up to my crooked mouth, which these days is located somewhere near the bottom of my crooked face. It’s enough to frighten the birds. Did I mention that I was handsome once? I was so handsome that I caught the eye of the prettiest girl in town. What a dapper couple we made, Grace and me.

And now I can’t bear to look at my face in the mirror: I’d spit at the mirror, if I could.

Hard to spit when you’ve had a stroke.

I shouldn’t complain, it’s really not as bad as all that. Except that I can’t walk or talk, I’m pretty good. And I can’t control the waterworks as well as I used to. But I’m still right in the head, you know. So what, if I pee myself from time to time? There’s nothing wrong with my mind. In my head, I’m still as sharp as a stockman’s pocket knife.

I can tell I’ve broken through to the girl at last. She softens and puts her arm around me. I try to tell her it’s all right, but the effort makes me cry. I know that, because I can feel the tears running down my face. I’d give all of my tomorrows and everything I own just to be able to walk and talk again. Then I realise I don’t have much of anything left to give, anyway.

‘I’m sorry, I know you can’t talk properly, Mr Furey,’ she says sympathetically as she grabs a tissue to wipe away my tears. ‘It must be hard for you.’

So, I instantly feel sad for her. I read her name tag and try to mouth her name. Tanya. It comes out like Bhah ba.

Suddenly, her face lights up. ‘Since you’re awake, I want to be the first to tell you what the boss has planned for you.’

Now she’s beaming like a headlight. What is she talking about? They’re going to send me home to die? That’d be a little hard to do, since my mongrel family sold my home after they dropped me off here. Reckon the ink on the contract was still wet when they slammed the door behind me. I can still feel the breeze on my back. The bastards. Sold my property and now they hardly ever visit me.

‘It’s about your…’

Before she can finish, there’s a knock at my door. We both look over. It’s the boss of the nursing home, Ben Harrison, although I prefer to call him Shifty. Shifty Harrison. I’d call him that to his polished face, if I could only say the bloody words. He’s a bloody show-pony. I’ve seen his kind before. He’s a flashy bastard, just like a politician. Thinks he’s a corporate boss.

Shifty Harrison dresses in expensive suits and drives one of those German BMW cars. He parades around like a bloody peacock whenever he’s out of his office. Which isn’t often. I reckon he’s in there most of the time with the door shut, giving the secretary a good old-fashioned love-up on his desk.

Shifty pretends to like all us old buggers, but all he sees are dollars signs hanging over our heads. And then he’s always thinking about how he can skim more of that his way. As sure as a morning piss, he’s diddling the books. I can tell. Just because I had a stroke doesn’t mean I’ve lost my bloody marbles. And I certainly haven’t lost my copper’s intuition. Yep, I’m still as sharp as a master mason’s chisel. The thing is, I never wanted to stop being a copper, and I’d still be a copper now, except that the big-wigs in the city forced me to retire. But at least I managed to hang in there until I was sixty-five.

I’ve seen and heard enough around here to fuel an investigation. The home’s been going downhill big time since he’s been the boss: the food isn’t fit for a cattle dog, and the carers are untrained and overworked. Shifty Harrison is all about that holy dollar. I could have cooked his goose well and truly, if only I could have gotten out of this chair and had a good snoop around.

So, Shifty’s now standing in the middle of my room and the only thing going through my mind is how to get him to leave.

‘Mr Furey,’ he says, ‘how good to see you,’ his voice as oily as a car salesman’s.

I know the bastard couldn’t care less if I died. I’m surprised he even knows my name. Given half a chance, he’d have this room rented out before my still-warm body was loaded into the hearse.

He comes closer and bends over me, his eyes glued on me in the same way that a vet with a syringe in one hand might look at a sick dog. If he goes to pat me on the bloody head, I’ll throw my cup of tea at him. Or I’ll grab his balls and squeeze the life out of them. Still got strength in my fingers, thank the Lord.

He drags a chair and sits so close to me that I can smell his aftershave. He smells like a bloody woman. He places his hand on mine and holds it. Soft. Not a man’s hand. His hands haven’t seen any hard work. I try to pull back but he hangs on.

‘We have a big party planned for you tomorrow,’ Shifty says.

Even with my twisted face, I must still look confused. I grunt as loudly as I can.

‘Did you forget, Mr Furey?’ He grins at me and then looks over at the carer for support.

‘When I walked into his room, he was having another of those nightmares the RN warned me about. At the handover this morning, the nurse said Mr Furey seemed more confused than normal. He forgot where he was yesterday. Tried to go into Myra Little’s room.’

The girl’s an idiot. Tanya relates this as if I’m not really here, but I’m used to that. When you’re old, you become deaf and invisible. Either they yell at you, or it’s like you’re not in the room.

But I am here.

What do you bloody mean, I’m more confused? Aren’t you allowed to forget anything when you get to my age? Is it a bloody crime?

I can remember pretty much everything about my life, and that’s ninety-nine percent of the problem. So what if I’ve forgotten what I ate or when I last had a shit, or where my room is? Of course I forget where I am. I want to forget this place. I try very hard to forget I’m here, because I don’t want to be here. I want to go home. I always thought I’d die at home, in my warm bed, next to Gracie. I never figured on ending my days in a lifeless, money-sucking shithole.

‘Do you know how old you are tomorrow, Mr Furey?’ Shifty asks brightly.

It’s like he’s talking to a child. He’s just as much an idiot as Tanya.

There’s no chance for sarcasm, so the best I can do is nod, as I roll my eyes for the umpteenth time today.

‘So you know it’s your birthday tomorrow?’

I nod again. I grab a pen and paper and write my birth date on it. I add where I was born for good measure.

‘So you know it’s your one hundredth birthday, Mr Furey?’

I grunt again and write. I’m so pissed off that my hand shakes. I give the sheet to Shifty, but he can’t read my scrawl. He hands it to Tanya, who reads it to herself, mouthing every syllable. Finally, she makes sense of what I have written. I snigger. Her hand flies up to cover her mouth. She can’t stop giggling. I begin to like her better.

My kind of sheila.

Shifty wants in on the joke. ‘Tell me what he’s written.’

‘What…do…you…think…I…am? A…flicking…idiot?’ Tanya reads out my words slowly.

It’s clear that she’s struggling to read my plain English, but Shifty gets the gist. He turns crimson, fishing for a response he simply can’t seem to hook. At last, he’s lost for words. I’ve managed to shut the smartarse bastard up.

‘Well, Mr Furey,’ he stammers at last. ‘I came here to tell you in good faith that we are putting on a celebration for your birthday in the dining room at twelve tomorrow. It’s a big deal and we’ve spared no expense. You’re the star of the show, so you have to be there.’

I wish he’d run it by me first. I’d have much preferred to have gone to the pub with a few mates. But then again, maybe not. Truth is, most of them are already dead.

‘The mayor, his wife, the president of the RSL and the local Member of Parliament are coming just to see you. The mayor will be reading out a message from the Queen. How great is that?’

They’re not coming to see me, you fool, they’re coming to be seen with me. There’s a big difference.

I like the Queen, but as for the rest of them… That Chinless Charlie is about as switched on as blown light bulb. I respect and admire the Queen, right enough. I must do; after all, I fought for her grandfather, the King and the Empire, in the First World War.

‘Your family will be here. Val Burgess and her husband will entertain everyone. How lovely is that? The television will be here, too. You’ll be on the news, Mr Furey. The cook has baked a cake, of course, big enough for all one hundred candles. How do you like that?’

I roll my eyes. How did I get to be this old and still have to put up with so much crap? As for the cook making a cake… I call him the dingo baiter. He can’t cook a sausage.

I mumble disapprovingly. It’s wonderful to know that no one cares about what I want. I’ve lived the hundred years, so why the heck would anyone let me have a say as to who I want to have at my birthday? Well, I don’t even want to celebrate it. And if I did, I wouldn’t invite any of those so-called dignitaries. They’re all useless, arrogant bastards, as far as I can see.

So, why would I want to celebrate another bloody birthday, let alone the fact that I’ve lived through a hundred of them? The only thing they’ll be celebrating tomorrow is my successful inability to die. Birthdays are just an annual reminder that I’m still alive, and everyone I loved isn’t. Look at me. There’s not much to crow over, and most of the people who are still here with me are in even worse shape. But you know, I’ve got to be getting close, by now. Can’t be too many bloody birthdays left. I sigh and Shifty looks pretty happy, like he realises that he’s worn me down.

Let’s just get it over and done with.

I’d give anything to see my wife again. I know I’ll meet up with Gracie in the great beyond, and won’t that be wonderful? I know she’ll be waiting for me on the other side. Probably with a hot cup of tea and a nice corned beef sandwich.

After Shifty and Tanya leave my room, I’ve only just stretched out on my bed when I get another visitor. The door creaks open and I’m thinking that Shifty Harrison’s come back for round two and to check if I’m still breathing, when, blow me down, if it isn’t my old mate Vivian Morley! He limps in and sits in the spare armchair next to me, smiling so hard that his dentures nearly fall out. I’m pleased to see him. He’s a breath of fresh air in this stale old place.

I ask him what he’s doing here and he doesn’t answer straight­away. Last time I saw Viv was at the Wangamba RSL, Remembrance Day, 1978. I was remembering sixty years since the end of the Great War, and after his fifth round of drinks, he wasn’t remembering much of anything.

So, Viv pulls up a chair and asks me about the war. I’m thinking about the trenches when he says that he means to ask me about the other war: the Second World War. I’m about to ask him why, when he leaves the room to take a piss. His interest in the subject’s got me thinking, though, about the first day of the ‘friendly’ invasion.

By the time he returns, it’s 1942 and I’m already back home.

Chapter Two

Wangamba, 1942

I reckon the