1915 Read online

  2

  Hotel Albion

  Billy saw small grey shapes moving, stopping, edging along the strip where the cut of the plough ended and the native grasses began. From his seat on the dunny he raised an arm and fired an imaginary rifle. The shapes wriggled on the blurred green horizon like tiny water creatures in a fish tank. He tore a rectangle from the Western Champion and hastily splashed a half-dipper of ash in the pit. Rising, trouserless, he lifted his arm and again squeezed the trigger. “Crack,” he said in a whisper, “crack, crack.” Although the wallabies were a mile or more distant, and would not have noticed even if Billy had leapt outside with a shout, he hung back, listening to his heartbeat and watching, poised in an emotion that belonged not to work, nor to play either, but to another function of himself, nameless, that brooded over and was greater than both.

  He fetched his rifle from the house and set off in a northerly direction in order to circle round, moving in a diagonal line across furrows. Here he stumbled, causing the rifle barrel to jab for a second into the soil, so that when he reached the grass under the mountain he squatted for a few minutes to clean it.

  When he raised his head he found a huge kangaroo, a Blue Flyer, staring at him across the tall grass.

  Without standing he brought the rifle round and slipped the safety catch. Then, while the animal stared and Billy whistled, he fired, keeping the shot low so that it lashed through the hundreds of intervening grass stalks towards the kangaroo’s hidden chest. Hardly anything happened. The animal lifted her head, sniffed, then slumped as if inside an overcoat of fur, yet remained upright.

  Billy giggled because he wanted to go up and shake a paw (he would have in company), and might have even so, only he saw blood pump from the chest. The sporting chance he offered (go! under his breath) was not to be taken. The wet nose, the wet eyes, the beautiful set-back ears that twitched: a lovely face that Billy wanted to nuzzle, as often he had nuzzled Yabbie, dog and man-dog growling in the clean-swept ring under the peppercorn tree.

  “What do you want, ’roo?”

  In the ring of grey silence, the sun gone, his own voice startled him. Then a thought rattled through him; he wished to erase that lovely face for ever — this gaze of his, that gaze of hers, the trembling mirage of contact between them. The joining of thought to action was everything to Billy; finger on metal, thought thus cracking into life: a harsh word to bark out and settle something.

  In the yard the dogs threw bodiless yelps through the blackness as they leapt on their chains. Though it was still early the darkness was complete, and because he could not be bothered fixing a lamp, Billy did everything by feel. The back door swung open, his mother called “Is that you?” and from the old meat safe, head surrounded by hessian flaps, hands placing the slippery kangaroo meat on trays, he shouted a reply that mixed in with the animal yelps and satisfied her. More and more these days his mother disliked being left alone, especially on Saturday nights when travellers, drunk or sober, sometimes wandered in from the road with terrible thirsts. Later tonight, in the midst of these fears, her husband would arrive home reeking of whisky and cheerful, scorning his wife’s timidity. As he washed at the tankstand Billy glanced up at the stars and around the dark line of hills and bush. At night even cleared land seemed inhabited by trees, with hunched forms wavering and creeping forward, putting the land back the way it was before the plough came.

  Over dinner Billy said, “I might ride across and say hello to Wal tonight.” It was the first week of the school holidays, Walter Gilchrist’s last before he finished school at the end of the year.

  “You be careful in the dark.” But Billy knew that his mother thought of the Gilchrists as a civilizing influence: the whisky decanter on their sideboard barely sank over the space of a year. Still, she had to be gloomy: “Just remember Arnold Scott.”

  “Arnie was a mug.”

  Arnie! — his horse had tripped, falling on top of him while he was out rabbiting, crushing his stomach and injuring his spine.

  “And Walter,” she warned, recalling his accident of three years before, “his arm still gives him trouble in winter.”

  “Soon be summer,” said Billy. And to celebrate his joke he splashed a thick crust of bread into his gravy. Three years! It was just like Walter to complain about something for a lifetime.

  “You’re all we’ve got, me and Dad.” Her hand rested on Billy’s as they drank their tea.

  “Don’t I know it.”

  On the way to the Gilchrists’ the cleared land narrowed to a track and wound to the top of the ridge through boulders and thickening pines. Up there Billy dismounted and led Ginger at a slow walk, though usually he liked to take the track at a gallop. After rain, on frosty nights, water froze here in great sheets. Dawdling, smoking his pipe, he thought about his mother, her unhappiness a twisted burden, a sheet poled wearily from the copper. The track was stony now, dropping steeply, the Gilchrists’ house a smudged brass fragment that signalled from the distance and then went black. “Who ain’t unhappy?” Billy asked the stars. His father could wander miles and come home late, sometimes days late, with a head battered from whisky; his mother could sit at home staring at the fire; and Billy himself could head off on his own expeditions through the district. But when you fitted it all together, there they were, all three proud of each other. They kept their chins up.

  He set Ginger free in the yard near the gate and walked whistling to the house. Firelight flickered through the living room windows, so he crept up and peered in. Mrs Gilchrist was knitting, the boss reading the paper, Walter and Douggie sitting cross-legged on the floor playing draughts. They weren’t even talking. They might have been dead. Then Billy reached over and with tight knuckles rapped three times on the glass, at the same time laughing a hair-raising laugh in the cold garden. Walter and Douggie rushed out to tackle him and pummel his back while he rolled roaring in the icy grass.

  When the others had gone to bed Billy and Walter sat deep in armchairs watching a new log being swallowed in flames. A piece of burning wood popped, a cinder flew in an arc to ding the kettle on the hearth.

  Finally Billy asked, “How’s school?”

  “I feel like Methuselah.”

  “Me too, sometimes. The smelly old bugger,” said Billy, recalling a dog of that name that had lolled for years around the house.

  “I’ll be coming back here after, for good.” The decision had not been finally taken, but Walter read his father’s mood.

  “I’ll show you a time. But listen,” Billy blew a whistle of breath as he looked around to see if any of the family had sneaked back, “you haven’t, I s’pose, I mean you haven’t been gettin’ yourself into trouble.”

  “Me?”

  “Girls and that, down there in the city.” The leather of Billy’s tobacco pouch, like his hands, was supple and work-worn, already old. “Want the makings?”

  “Talk,” pronounced Billy, when the cigarettes were aglow, “that’s the way to get ’em.” He poured two mugs of tea from the warming pot, conjuring with a black column of liquid that spat wads of leaves. “Let me give you some advice. Find a widow, a new widow who ain’t so old, and call on her when you can.”

  “A schoolboy?” asked Walter, though he and Billy were the same age.

  “Where there’s a will,” said Billy, running a hand around his clean-shaven chin. A thought occurred to Walter:

  “Mrs Scott!” he breathed in astonishment, and Billy almost sent his tea flying.

  “How did you know?”

  “It just added up.” Walter needed a second to overtake his own lightning calculation: a widow who wasn’t so old, who might see Billy now and again, who was fair game — Arnie Scott’s wife who now ran the post office at Cookamidgera.

  “But only me and her know.”

  Walter swirled his tea around the bottom of his mug and stared at it.

  “All right,” said Billy with a sigh, “you’d better swear to that one. If Arnie’s brothers find out I’m
a goner. They’ve all got their eyes on her.” He sank deep in his chair. “What a life, eh?” Then he laughed. “Swear?”

  When Billy left at midnight it was frosty. At the stockyards he formed a giant cut-out against the stars. Ginger had been frightened by something, and shuffled nervously, rattling the bit. Then, at a word, horse and rider flung themselves through into blackness with a hoofbeat-studded voice flinging back, “See you Saturday!”

  Billy took the long way home. He rode at a canter, making a song out of the night and the regular pounding underfoot. The song had no sensible words, though Billy thought it did, for while he mumbled or let fly with torn rags of sound his mind was clear about the story it told itself, with the accompanying drumbeat of the horse keeping perfect time. Horse, horse, horse, went the song: night, frost: if I die my mum will be sad and so will my dad and so will I! But I’ll ride like mad till Ginger gets me home. Horse! And as he sang, his thoughts about Mrs Scott and the pestering Scott brothers, and his thoughts about the Parkes show the following Saturday worked their way in. After the ring events he wanted to take Walter into the town to meet the Reid boys and Eddie Harkness, and let him taste the atmosphere of the Royal just before dark on a Saturday night. Horse! he’d had some times there.

  But when Billy saw Walter at the show he had his doubts. There he was with his father, tall rakes both of them, but Walter with an unfinished look about him: knobbly wrists like the sap-bumps on gum trees, and his hair, frizzy and overlong, flying out where it had been wetted and fiercely combed. Father and son were leaning over a sheep pen parting the depth of fleece of an indolent ram. Bent like this, Walter’s trouser cuffs came above the tops of his high laced boots. He looked every inch the boarding school son, and Billy hung back for a moment, picking a burr from his coat. But when they turned, he could see how the differences between them dissolved, with Walter foreshadowing the work-cured depth of his father. Billy hailed them.

  Together they toured the pigs and the produce. The Mackenzies had won second prize for their wheaten hay, so Billy stood for a while beside a tagged sheaf with his hands behind his back chatting about the achievement to all comers. When his father arrived Walter and Billy went off towards the sideshows. On the way they were captured by Billy’s Aunt Bea and her two girls.

  “Have you seen the boy with the dog’s head?” asked Lottie.

  “Why bother now we’ve seen you?” said Billy, and the skinny fifteen-year-old punched him in the stomach. In a crush near the entrance to the exhibits Walter felt Ethel leaning against his shoulder. He stepped from the flow and absorbed himself in the display of horseshoes and tanned leatherwork. Billy always said that the eighteen-year-old Ethel was a “good sport”, and here she was making Walter nervous.

  “Billy’s coming to the Bindogundra hop. Are you?”

  “Oh, sure,” said Walter, knowing he’d be back at school.

  When Billy put his arms round Ethel’s waist from behind she shrieked. All four went to hear the man from the Titanic, and emerged blinking in the arctic white light of noon.

  “I think Ethel likes me,” said Walter later.

  “She’d like a tree if it wore trousers,” said Billy. “But you should try kissing her some time.” He might have been recommending a brand of tobacco.

  “I’d like to,” concluded Walter, “I definitely will.” He spoke with such force, yet so disdainfully, that Billy laughed.

  “You’d better have a hot bath first to loosen up.”

  It was then that Mrs Fox the minister’s wife came running from group to group dragging her whimpering daughter, asking in a voice dried raucous from tears if anyone had seen her husband.

  “He’s down yonder,” said Billy, pointing past a striped tent awning, and as Mrs Fox scuttled away he lifted his finger to point at the sky: “Up yonder, with his boss,” but by then she had gone, “no, around the bend,” he finished, circling a finger around his ear and raising his eyebrows at Walter to give an opinion.

  “Don’t forget about later. You’ll like Blacky and Ned.”

  Walter drowsed, sitting motionless on Peapod during the interminable judging of dairy cattle. Voices drifted from the crowd at the railings, and when someone said, “Walter?” he missed the connection to himself until, lazily turning, he saw Mr Fox. A veined hand strayed to Peapod’s mane and stroked it. “One of the breed of Diomedes, no doubt,” said Mr Fox through gingery lips. Walter said, “Pardon?” As the minister spoke he brushed the side of the mare’s head (with his lips!) and laughed alarmingly: “Thou shalt not have me.” Peapod wrenched her head as Mr Fox fought to hold it steady.

  “Is that from the Bible?” The dairy men were staring.

  “No,” said the minister flatly. “Earlier trouble than that.” And he strode back into the crowd. No wonder Mrs Fox had been worried. For the rest of the afternoon, clipped remotely high on the mare as he walked and trotted among shining horses, Walter felt irritatingly at fault. He felt guilty for withholding himself from the pain that had swirled momentarily at his feet. The show seemed a luxury after that, a ceremony for the fit. Thoroughbred stallions and mares followed the cows, then an army of draught horses with their owners swathed in hygienic white coats. They seemed invincible, but so had the Titanic, which had fallen to something as simple as frozen water. The minister’s unstable rushing about was not just a rebuke to the organized display of the district’s achievements, it was a threat, weaving in and out of the tents, ducking under the railings, being sighted, confronted, then sliding off again, dominated overwhelmingly by the weight of produce, by the dreadnought power of Suffolk Punch, Clydesdale and Percheron — yet persisting.

  “What was biting old Foxy?” asked Billy as they left for town. Walter shrugged, then tapped his forehead: but felt cowardly for doing so.

  Billy found his mates in the back bar wedged tight among a show crowd that had long since abandoned the show.

  “Who’s the young ’un?” asked the elder Reid. He extended a forge-hammered hand. “Blacky and Ned,” explained Billy as one and then the other took delight in crushing Walter’s fingers. Blacky was aged thirty, with a face of intense black stubble and caterpillar-like eyebrows. His younger brother was also black-haired, but somehow the shade was unremarkable.

  “Drink up,” said Blacky. He raised his glass in a toast to nothing in particular and tipped back his head.

  After the third beer Walter felt that he understood a great many things. The back bar with its cream-painted walls and its grey kangaroo dog asleep in the corner under a Beck’s Beer placard (“With horse in check, They called for Beck’s …”), this seemed the pleasantest place in the world.

  Soon after five Blacky drained his beer. “I’ll see you fellows back here in half an hour.”

  “Have one for me,” sniggered Ned.

  “Where’s he going?” asked Walter, surprised that anyone would want to let this pleasant occasion slide. Blacky jammed a wide hat on his head and winked at the barmaid.

  “Off for some horizontal refreshment,” said Ned as his brother shouldered his way out.

  “We’ll smoke out Eddie and then head for home,” Billy nodded to Walter. “I don’t want to be blamed by your dad.”

  “Still a nipper, eh?” said Ned, dragging a damp belch from his hidden chest. Walter pumped his hand in the rediscovered glow of the last beer. “Very pleased to have met you,” he gushed, “you and your brother. Two of the nicest blokes I’ve ever met.”

  “We’re all right, I s’pose,” Ned responded. With a barely nodded “Good-on-you, mate,” to Billy he switched to another group of drinkers.

  Walter stood in the grass at the rear of the hotel, his head tipped back. Looking at the stars he thought: Yes, the universe is one complete whole, and I’m part of it. He sniffed dust in the frosty air and laughed companionably to himself as pleasant thoughts spread through the cold night. Friends! That was one thought. And women! He remembered the barmaid’s eyes.

  “What do you think of the Reids?” he
called to Billy.

  “What did you think of ’em?” They were passing the gloomy stand of pines near the racecourse where a swagman had recently been murdered.

  “They’re all right.”

  “Ned?”

  “I liked his brother better.”

  “Blacky won’t take nonsense from no-one.” A light flickered far back in the pines, though each pretended not to notice. “He’s showed me a thing or two.”

  “About where he went tonight?”

  “The brothel?”

  “Yes,” Walter shaped the word for himself, “the brothel.”

  “Nah,” but that was a lie.

  Road and railway ran together, and a goods train drew alongside, chuffing and clattering, making the horses restless. At the rise above the creek they looked back on the faint lights of town: a column of smoke at the railway yards suddenly lit by sparks, a lantern faint as a star on a hillside. Then the road took another turn and they were in their own country. Walter climbed down several times to relieve himself, the reins looped over his arm. Once Peapod took off into the darkness without him, and Billy galloped away to fetch her back. Overhead the stars seemed thicker than anywhere.

  They parted at the ten-mile.

  “See you sometime,” said Billy. “I’ve got to go down to Forbes next week for sheep.”

  “November at the latest, eh?” Walter thrust out a hand. They shook. It seemed the thing to do, now they were men.

  Parkes was Billy’s town, but he liked going to Forbes. When he reached the Eugowra road and entered the big river gums of the Lachlan he knew he was on foreign soil. Forbes hung together, it was solid, with its numerous hotels saluting each other across corners. Billy’s place by contrast was barely a town at all, more a collection of small settlements with shops and hotels grown up somewhere in the middle. Away from home Billy was a complete stranger, anonymous as a stray dog, and like a stray dog on the lookout for pleasure.