“A boy?” Tim asked.
“That face however,” Bandy murmured. “The very chin. The very forehead. Europeans are so distinct to me, one at a time.”
In a fever, Tim hauled his horse’s head out of Kelty’s slimy water and turned it to the river which the day had turned turgid and browner than manure. Bandy obligingly followed.
“You’re telling me it’s the very girl, are you?”
“Certainly,” said Bandy. “A memorable child.”
“A child,” said Tim. Bandy had the same word Tim had harboured within himself so long. “That’s right. A child.”
Her name wheeled above him in the air, at the margin of sight. It cast the day’s sole shadow.
Eleven
SAVOURING BLACK TEA at last from a big mug in a respite in the living room, the deepest, most shadowy room of the house, Tim in his crazed exhausted wakefulness turned to the Argus. Ellen Burke had bought it that morning in between kindly making up the orders in the storeroom and scratching clients’ names on them with indelible pencil. What he sought, for relief from all the wakeful tangles of the day, was the normal mismatched bags of bones newspapers, the restful oddments of fiction and items off the wire and cattle sales and distant murders.
He did not get it. He turned a page and at once encountered a startling letter. This was a document so outright that it seemed to Tim to be incised into the great furriness of the heat and the burning air by the sharpness of its tone, its zest for its own argument.
“Sir,” it began.
In connection with the incidents in the Transvaal, one poetic phrase worthy of a closer look is the one which we hear everywhere now, “When the Empire calls …” I haven’t particularly heard the Empire calling, yet I seem to be surrounded by people who hear it all the time. Perhaps they know that the Continental press, together with the American journals, have universally condemned the British adventure in South Africa, and these citizens of the Macleay are, therefore, all the more willing volunteers to share in and absorb some of the Empire’s shame.
Whether our Empire calls or not however, and asks us poor Colonials to bear its poor name, we have no say in its counsels regarding the making of these wars. Our government in New South Wales will contribute thousands of pounds to help force a road across the Drakensberg mountains to relieve the British garrisons at Mafeking, Kimberley and Ladysmith, yet cannot spare a mere thousand pounds to push a road into the rich timber resources of the Upper Macleay. It seems that when the Empire calls, it is calling for large quantities of lucre, and not merely for the blood of our poor boys.
Are we really so servile that we fear that unless we engage in all Mother’s follies, she might interfere in the Commonwealth Bill by which we will federate in the new year?
I urge all my fellow inhabitants of the Macleay to take a more independent and demanding line on all these matters. For the Empire may be saved—with or without shame—and there would still be no roads in the Macleay, and perhaps no Federation according to our desire. We should all think hard on this.
Yours etc.,
Australis,
Central Kempsey
Tim looked up from the paper and lifted his ear, as if even in this torpid air, the cries of outrage could be heard in Belgrave Street. Australis was out to cause an outcry and the most stir he could, by writing to the more staid Argus instead of the jauntier Chronicle.
Nothing though to be heard. Nothing. The Empire of Billy Thurmond, M. M. Chance, Mr. Malcolm went maligned, and no single protest pierced the walls of heat, the circle of fire, the shower of vegetable ash. In Pompeii-on-the-Macleay, the sentinels had gone to sleep.
In the shade of the peppermint tree outside, Ellen Burke and Annie lay together on a rug, wearing shifts which had been dipped in water. He went out to them and smiled. He approved of this stratagem and thought it a clever thing. The whole bloody town should be doing it. He would dearly love to dampen himself and lie there with them. But he needed to lead Pee Dee out and place him in the traces. Pee Dee, of course, in a much higher spirit of protest than Bandy’s horses. Dragging his head from side to side. Alarmed by the torrid wind.
Loading the cart at the front of the store, a very slow matter. With one or two people drifting by, one or two broiled ladies of the Macleay entering the store to interrupt his loading, to rant about the criminal day it was and buy some item—lard or flour—their households had run out of.
And then, dear merciful God, finding that amongst what must be loaded there were five butter boxes full of the plenty of the earth and the manufactures of Sydney destined for the Sisters of Mercy. Nothing for the Malcolms, though. Ernie true to his threat!
He put the feed bag on Pee Dee to distract him from the day. Some orders from East could wait till tomorrow. He was not crossing the river. He’d already crossed twice to his peril in less than a day.
At last ready, nearly fainting, to bring people their supplies. Lead Pee Dee, deprived of his feed bag and tossing his head in a way which said, “Not me, not me. And not today.” Up for a last water fill-up at the trough outside Savage’s. For himself, a fill-up with Sharp’s lemonade. The whole bottle down him as quick as half a cup of tea.
And now off! Struggle forth into mid-street, mid-heat. In Belgrave Street, no one doing business, but Pee Dee heading now—with sudden, touching uncomplaint—for West. What must it be like in the camp? But Kitty and Mamie would be lying in moistened white shifts beneath a tree, he hoped, and the sea breeze which would end this madness would reach them first.
Yet Mamie must be repenting of her emigration. Australia presenting her with all its disadvantages on the one day or in the one week. Plague and fire, heat that withered the Celtic skin.
In the haze, the Offhand came loping diagonally from the door of the Chronicle office. He wore a suit coat and a vest as always. He might have thought he was running across the street somewhere else, not in a valley in a furious old continent you knew could fry you in a second if it was not so casual.
“Tim, Tim,” said the Offhand. The normal stewed face. The temporary tan of whiskied veins either side of the delicate nose. The pink lips enriched with the thinnest blood. The Reverend Offhand.
“Did you, Tim, happen to see that letter in the Argus? Can you imagine them actually publishing such a thing?”
“What is it?… Australis.”
“That one. A robust, Australian bloody letter, wouldn’t you agree, Tim?”
His eyes were dancing away. Even today, it was all excitement and passionate opinion to him. Of course, he didn’t have to deliver groceries to West.
“I read it. The argument had a certain virtue.”
“Tim, I do not ask you as a correspondent. I am speaking about literary matters as any man speaks in the streets to a friend.”
“My mind is rather distracted. My wife is up the river in that plague or quarantine camp or whatever it is.”
“Oh, that place is a formality now, Tim.” The Offhand shook his head, but his eyes glittered still. “But tell me, don’t you hope this Australis will write again? A fresh voice in a backward place is always most, most welcome! I found it so. A bloody minor miracle, Tim.”
“The fires and the heat are likely to take people’s minds more,” Tim warned. “Do you have any news from the Upper Macleay?”
“Oh,” said the Offhand. Offhandedly. “Hickey’s Creek is ablaze, and the Nulla.”
“The wife’s sister’s at Pee Dee.” Square miles of blaze distant.
“There are no reports of death, Tim. People place their homesteads in clearings for that reason, you might remember.”
“Exactly right,” said Tim. “But the gum trees explode like bombs.”
“Will you come into the Commercial with me and toast Signor Australis?”
“Is he Italian then? Or Spanish?”
“I use the Signor loosely, Tim,” said the Offhand.
“I hope you won’t be offended, Offhand. I have all this to deliver.”
; He swept his hand towards the crammed tray of the cart. “I have a fifteen pounds fine to pay off.”
“How is that so, Tim? What did you do?”
“I am reluctant to say.”
“Again, please, as a friend.”
Tim told his tale of the smooth-faced inspector from the Colonial Secretary’s.
“This is outrageous in a democracy,” said the Offhand when Tim had finished. It was a true sentiment, but how would it hold up against a magistrate’s? And what would be its place amongst the other grievances—Ernie Malcolm, the suggestions of Constable Hanney. The Offhand was taken by the surface glitter of injustices. That was the great fault of writers. Injustice never penetrated their skins too deeply, put them off a meal, or the next drink which waited for them in the bar of the Commercial.
“For God’s sake, don’t put it in your column. I am in deep enough trouble.”
The Offhand held his hands up. They weren’t much bigger than Bandy’s.
“But you can be sure that that brute of an inspector checked with the powers of the town to ensure he made no example of one of theirs. Hence the injustice which cannot be defined, but which is everywhere in our community!”
“I shouldn’t have sold him the bloody sugar to start with.”
“And he should not have been a provocateur,” the Offhand insisted. “Is the coming Commonwealth of Australia to operate by such principles? By spying and provocation? If it is, we might as well be in Europe!”
“Except that the climate is better,” said Tim, laughing, and to spite the blaze and black grit of the air.
“I shall toast Australis on my own then,” said the Offhand. “I still cannot get over the Argus actually putting ink to them. It’s bloody rich, Tim. Not you, by any chance?”
“Never,” said Tim.
And the Offhand laughed and passed on his way.
Tim and Pee Dee straggled on a mile and into Kemp Street.
“Tiptoe past the bloody police station,” Tim urged Pee Dee. Everything dormant. Birds vanished from the trees. The trees themselves, between gusts of fiery wind, looking like they were considering the desirability of themselves blossoming into flame.
And yet there was undue movement at St. Joseph’s Convent. Nuns were running by the wooden scaffolding tower from which the Angelus bell hung. Children were moving, and piercing the white heat with excited cries. My God, the poor little savages will faint if they don’t stop! Mad Johnny would run till he dropped. Unless mercifully stopped.
The Angelus tower in front of the convent. It was made of yellow painted struts of hardwood bolted together. Yellow diagonals of timbers rose to the little, corrugated iron roof, beneath which was slung the great crossbeam from which hung the bell. Rung at six o’clock in the morning, twelve noon, six o’clock in the evening. The Angel of the Lord declared unto Mary, everyone in the convent prayed as the bell rang out, inviting even the godless New South Wales police down the road to celebrate the Annunciation. Three Hail Marys, one Glory Be. Bandy the Muslim would understand these impulses, these summonses from a tower, better than Constable Hanney. And Missy in her motherless fluid at the cop shop—did redemption call to her thus? Was someone in the town moved secretly to name her, in a bathroom or at the corner of a bar, muttering into his lapel? Daphne or Winnie or Constance. Ellen or Hilda or Dorothea. Naming her on an impulse at hearing the far-off, familiar three-times-a-day bell of the Tykes.
Methodists and the good Wesleyans of South Kempsey didn’t go for any of it, yet shared the town with the mystery for which that tower stood in its plain Macleay timbers.
Where was the sense in paying Imelda a bob a week for a full-time boarder? If they were permitted to run themselves mad under a sun and in an air like this one? Drawing nearer, he saw Imelda striking the uprights of the tower with her cane, and then standing back, pointing the cane to the apex where the seemingly white bell stood.
This white bell at the peak of the structure was not the real gun-metal bell at all. Rather it was Lucy. And in brown pants and a blue shirt, with the dirty bandage on his head awaiting removal by Dr. Erson, Johnny. Somehow they had climbed the tower to the highest side beam together. He could envisage too clearly Johnny going up with his long, pliable feet, Lucy with her crazy suppleness.
Tim drew up Pee Dee and the cart and ran into the convent garden. Someone’s redheaded brat was imitating with hooting sounds the spread-armed balancing pose Johnny took as he walked a little way along his beam and grabbed a corner upright. Tim reached Imelda, who was still whacking the corner of one of the tower’s uprights with her cane.
“Come down, you two ruffians!” she yelled. But the diagonals which someone with climbing skills might well shinny up were too steep to shinny down.
Two girls about Lucy’s age—in pinafores, strolling together, an arm around each other’s shoulder—chattered away, engrossed. To them, time out of the classroom was a gift to amity. Didn’t matter to them that there were two pupils who had got themselves to an impossible point in today’s bloody murderous sky.
Imelda panted from punishing the tower, but would not give up the practice.
“Don’t do that,” Tim called to her. “Could make them jump.”
Imelda did at least soften and decrease the tempo of her blows. Her face broiling under the black cloth, under the white band which covered her forehead for Christ’s sake. No man shall see thy brow …
“Tea,” she called to one of the younger nuns, who was standing by, clutching the huge black beads hanging at her waist from the Order’s thick black belt. “Could you ever get me tea, sister? I’m dying of parchment.”
And before the young nun runs off to do it, Tim mentally complained that parchment was something you wrote on, an animal skin. Parched was thirsty. Was he paying out all this money to a headmistress who didn’t know the difference?
Imelda stopped caning the tower altogether.
“I’ve sent a child for the fire brigade,” she told Tim. “Mr. Crane, you know. And their extension ladder. But God knows, they could be in the bush somewhere battling flames.”
To look directly up the thwarts at the two figures at the apex of the tower was too terrifying a view. He stepped away many paces and tried it from a slightly kinder angle. “Don’t jump!” he yelled. “We have some men coming. Sit still. Wait for the ladder!”
It was Lucy who looked so light up there, as if she might step out and float to ground on the searing westerly. Johnny looked solider, in possession of himself and the tower, and so more endangered.
“I will see if I can come up,” Tim yelled, pronouncing each word.
He wrenched off his elastic-sided boots.
“Oh, dear Jesus,” he said to himself, looking up again and assessing the task. Johnny always putting him up for awful trials for heroism.
He lifted himself into the angle where a diagonal beam came down and bolted itself to one of the uprights of the tower. This diagonal would take him up to a cross bar perhaps twenty feet from the earth, and then another diagonal would begin. No other way up existed. You had to admire and abhor the little buggers for having managed it in such blazing air!
He forced himself to begin climbing the diagonal. Splayed-out feet. Hauling himself on the harsh, barely-planed, yellow-painted timber. Bowed over like a bloody ape. Everything aching. And bent like this, the idea about not casting your eyes to the earth utterly impossible! He knew to all the nuns and all the children he looked graceless, scrambling and frightened. There were bloody convent urchins mimicking him. Swinging one foot out, as he had to to bypass the one which held him to his previously highest point. Up to the first cross bar. Haul yourself up on it and award yourself a breath, grasping the diagonal which might take you up to the tower’s next stage. The thing built in three sections, like the prayers of the Angelus itself. Father, Son, Holy Spirit. Three Hail Marys for your sins and the repose of souls. Some bloody repose up here in a sky abandoned even by the magpies!
“Careful, Mr. Shea,”
cried a nun from below. Waterford accent.
“Listen to me,” he called to Johnny, who had the grace to stare down, to Lucy who was looking off into the unscannable haze. “Stay there. The ladder’s coming. Papa’s coming.”
How would he stand up there though, looking out at the seared heavens and the valley full of smoke?
His breath as good as terror would let it be, he began the next diagonal. He found he had a way with it all now. Sailors he had so admired, up in the top mast, feet on one of those ratlines. It can be learned. Ascent. He’d learned to rescue Johnny from the stern of Terara. Now in the topmost! Watch below on deck!
Shinnying on further, diagonally to the sky, calling in a voice in which people could hear the quavers. “Stay there! Stay there!” Since history showed that if she jumped for whatever reason of her own, Johnny would step out too, falling like a willing stone and getting joy from it for the instant it lasted.
There was further flutter of activity below. Horses were mixed up in it, and stupid Imelda cried, “Mr. Shea. Save yourself!” Smoky air passed in front of his eyes. Had the tower itself caught alight? One of his feet had slithered away from the diagonal. An awful shin-whack pain in that leg! He fell now and was full of terror for the instant that lasted. The thunder of the ground, punishing him on the soles of the feet. The bastinado punishment, up through the soles.
“Oh Mother,” he said, lying on his side and gulping with pain. Nuns were touching his legs in a spirit of medical experiment.
It turned out it had been another of Imelda’s inexact meanings, like parchment. In calling, “Save yourself!” she had meant Save yourself the trouble. When he could make sense of things again, he could see she had been informing him that Mr. Crane and his big boy Arnold had ridden up to the gate on the fire engine behind its two old draught horses. He had heard it as a warning though, and it had knocked one of his legs from beneath him.