Camouflage by Murray Bail Page B

waited.
    â€˜Put out that cigarette!’—meaning the light receding.
    Banerjee didn’t even smile. After it could no longer be seen the train could still be heard; but what remained was soon enough replaced by the immense silence. To clear a throat out there would be deafening, worse than a concert hall.
    Banerjee was probably the first to pick up the sound, a smaller engine. Another ten minutes must have passed before the truck stopped before them, tall and vibrating. It took some trouble climbing into the back. They sat facing each other under a tarpaulin roof; and the truck turned, climbing over bushes, and made its way back along the same track, over low bush and rocks, and what appeared to be creek beds, pale stones there, while the dust funnelled out behind them, obliterating the stars.
    After two hours of this—bumping about, grabbing at arms, crashing of gears—the truck slowed, the path became smoother.
    Someone nudged, ‘Stick your head out and see where we are.’
    To no one in particular Banerjee said, ‘I’ve never been in this part of the world before.’
    Leaning forward he saw a large silver shed and other buildings in the moonlight.
    They were shown into a long hut.
    Banerjee lay down in his uniform and slept.
    At first light the desolate composition of the aerodrome was revealed. A runway had been cut into the mulga by a team of crack Americans. Here then were the nation’s forward defences. And not a cloud in the sky. Already it was warm. Everything spanking new in the morning light. There were two large hangars, sheds and a long water tank. Down the far end were smaller buildings and men moving about.
    A man wearing an officer’s cap and khaki shorts stood before them. Eric could have sworn he used to see him at the recitals at the Town Hall, although there he wore a beard.
    Clearing his throat he spoke casually, but firmly. He didn’t expect much in the way of formality, he said. He did however expect their full attention. ‘It would make our job a darned sight easier.’ The enemy, he explained, was not far away and coming closer ‘as we speak’. The aerodrome was one of a number along the top of the Northern Territory. Their task was to paint—every inch of the place. ‘At the moment it is a sitting duck,’ was how he put it. The slightest patch of bare metal, he explained, could flash a signal to the enemy in the sky. To demonstrate he fished around in a pocket and held up a threepence— ‘like so’.
    The camouflage officer then squinted at the new roofs shining in the sun. ‘The art in all this is deception,’ he said thoughtfully, as if the whole thing was a game. He spoke of the ‘science of appearances’, of fooling the oriental eye. It was a matter of applying the right colours in certain combinations and patterns.
    Banerjee was handed a bucket of ochre paint, a wide brush, and assigned the roof of the main hangar. It took a while to get used to the height. And the roof itself was slippery. Close up it didn’t seem possible that his hand, which produced a strip of rapidly drying colour, would make any difference to the larger situation, the advance of mechanised armies across islands and continents. Further along other men were slapping on industrial grey.
    As the day progressed the huge expanse of corrugated iron warmed up, almost too hot to touch, and glittered more, straining the eyes.
    The others had taken off their shirts and the sign writer nearby knotted his handkerchief at the corners and put it on his head. Now and then the officer in shorts appeared below and studied their progress through the reverse end of binoculars. Pointing with a long stick he shouted up to Banerjee to give more curve there to the red ochre. He made a parallel flowing movement with his hands. ‘Like a woman’s hips. Think of her hips!’ Which allowed Banerjee in unpromising surroundings to wander