“He knows about Mary, does he?”
“Aye. He doesn’t mind about the colour.”
I said, “I should do that, Jock. You oughtn’t to ask your wife to go on droving with you with another baby on the way. It’s not fair to a woman, that. If Jimmie Beeman wants you at Tavistock, I should go there. He’s got a house, hasn’t he?”
He nodded. “I’ll think on it, Brother. He’s got a two roomed house out past his stockyard.”
“He’d probably build on another room if he knew that you’d stay a year or two,” I said. “I’ll have a talk with him next time I’m round that way, if it’ld help.” I paused, and we sat smoking, looking out across the waterhole in the still moonlight. “You know that girl he married?” I said presently. “Nan Fowler, daughter of old Jim Fowler on the railway at Julia Creek?” He nodded. “She was a school mistress at Charters Towers,” I reminded him. “They’ll be having their family along with yours, and she might start a bit of a school. You want to think about these things, now you’re a father.”
“Aye,” he said slowly, “that’s a fact. I dunno that schooling’ll be much use to him, though, with the colour.” He paused. “He’s a fine bairn,” he said presently. “As fine a bairn as I ever saw. He’ll be a big fellow when he grows up. He’ll make a good stockman, or a drover maybe.”
“You can’t tell,” I said quietly. “You ought to give him a good schooling. You never know what people will turn into. He might rise to be anything before he dies.”
We knocked our pipes out and turned in soon after that. I lay in my swag for a long time before sleep came watching the brilliant Queensland stars through the fine tracery of the gum leaves. I knew then that a corner of the veil had been lifted a little for me by Stevie Figgins under the hand of God, and I am still puzzled to know why this thing was done. Because it means that I have been honoured in a way beyond my station in life; I am an obscure and unimportant man, a man like a million others doing the job each day that comes to hand, and not doing it very well. Who am I that God should pick me to reveal His wonders to?
And who was Stevie, to whom the full revelation had been made? But here I feel I am on firmer ground, because it is the way of God to deal with poor and humble men. If the Scriptures teach us anything, it is that God speaks seldom to the wise men or to the great statesmen. For His messages he speaks to poor and humble men, to outcasts, to the people we despise.
So there it is, and I can add no more to this account. I have written down what happened, and it has eased my mind to do so, and I shall now lock these exercise books away, put the whole thing out of my mind, and go on with my job here in this scattered parish. All that this strange experience has taught me has gone to confirm what I think I already knew, secretly, perhaps, and deep down in my heart. If what I think I have been told is true it means that we make our own Heaven and our own Hell in our own daily lives, and the Kingdom of Heaven is here within us, now, for those who have gone before.
Nevil Shute, In the Wet
(Series: # )
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