Free The Long Green Shore by John Hepworth

He tripped, as he always did, over the fly rope of the tent, and his good-natured curses faded down the line.
    Dick the Barber looked up for a moment from the poker hand he was studying in the corner of the poker game: ‘I’ve got the supper: tinned snags from the Yanks and Selby gave me a loaf of bread—you’ll just have to cut the mildew away from the edges.’
    â€˜I’ll get the water,’ said Regan. He laid down a letter he had been writing, crouched over a stump of candle on a box in the middle of the tent. ‘Where’s the billy?’
    â€˜The william can,’ directed the Laird from his relaxed position on the bed, ‘is under Pez’s bed. There’s no water here, but there’s a bucketful under the flap of the first Mortar tent at this end—if you go up quietly they’ll never know you took it.
    â€˜And now,’ said the Laird. ‘We want someone to make the toast and heat the snags—a reliable man we want. What about you, Cairo?’
    Cairo left the card game he was watching in the corner: ‘Yeah, I’ll make it,’ he said. ‘Where’s the stuff?’
    â€˜Outside in the box the bread and snags,’ the Laird issued his communiqué. ‘And there’s some margarine in the tent next door—ask Ocker for it if you can’t get it without him seeing you.’
    Cairo paused at the flap of the tent and looked at the Laird: ‘What the hell are you doing in all this?’ he asked.
    â€˜Me?’ boomed the Laird. ‘Good God, if it wasn’t for me there wouldn’t be any supper—I organised it.’ He settled back on his pillow.
    The card game went on. The table was a blanket spread on two cases of .303 ammunition. The lamps were two empty jam tins filled with rifle oil scrounged from the Q store, with pieces of tent rope threaded through the centre of the lids for wicks. They had been made under the Laird’s directions and gave a fitful yellow light and a thick curling tongue of black smoke. All the card players spat black for a month after they got rid of those lanterns of the Laird’s.
    Notes and silver were scattered on the blanket in front of the players and they sat crouched on boxes and buckets. Dick the Barber shuffled the cards with swift, neat flicking movements of his well-kept fingers so that they whispered and rippled as he ran them. It was a smooth shuffle, of long practice—a gambler’s shuffle, a cardsharp shuffle—and pretty to watch.
    Not that Dick the Barber ever cheated at cards, but he’d learned the art when he was a young bloke and used to play with the crowd from Clancy’s gym out in the old back room behind the stadium. Banker Orville taught him, and Banker knew more about shuffling cards, but Banker never took money from a sucker—unless the sucker thought he was smart, and then he took it off him just for the good of his soul and to teach him a lesson.
    Old John had left the game once already tonight after being beaten three good hands running by young Griffo. He had taken himself for a walk up around the orderly room. His stomach and back were aching from the discomfort of his box seat and his mouth was stale and bitter with nicotine from the constant, nervous smoking.
    He had felt an impotent fury at himself, for losing the bets and for showing his anger. Old John wanted to be liked—he had a great hunger for friendship and affection. But his small soul could only ape the words and gestures of it.
    They were probably talking about him now. ‘Old John always squeals when he loses,’ they’d be saying.
    Young Griffo would be counting his winnings and saying in that calmly sarcastic voice of his: ‘Hell! If I’d known he was going to whinge so much I’d have given him a quid to stop the game from breaking up. I’ve a good mind not to play with him again. I don’t like a man that can’t lose.’
    Old