1915 (4 page)

But why was Yabbie howling endlessly at the far reach of everything?

Damn!

He rolled out of bed and stood naked in the cold room, wide awake, his erection standing out like a stick. The municipal gaslamps threw planks of artificial moonlight on the wall. Yabbie now yap-yapped, holding at bay whatever she'd howled at earlier. As he dressed he heard the rattle of a distant window and a male voice cutting through the angry bark.

In the corridor the polished boards shone like water below the night lamps at either end. Someone coughed in the bowels of the hotel — the old German. And light flickered from under the door of the bar, though it
must have been two in the morning. At the foot of the stairs Billy paused and heard a muffled conversation. “A thousand pounds,” it was Reilly's voice; and another laughed: “That's between the four of us.” Then Billy went outside to find Yabbie circling excitedly at the end of her chain.

“What is it, girl?”

The woman in the yellow dress was crouched against the wall of the stable.

“That's a mean dog, she wouldn't let me past.”

“What are you doing here anyway?”

“Waitin'.”

Billy knelt and stroked Yabbie's muzzle until she quietened, then walked across to where the woman squatted. She was barefooted and slightly built, just a girl. He could see she was terrified.

“Who're you waitin' for?” he softly asked.

“A friend.”

“Any friend, eh?”

“You've got me wrong.” She was close enough for Billy to see her eyes defiantly holding his in the cold starlight. “Peter Crane's in there doing business with Mr Reilly.”

“Peter Crane?” said Billy in a bullying tone. “There ain't no such person.” But he knew him by sight — a middle aged dairy farmer who lived alone on the flats near the river. The girl was very young, perhaps only fourteen, and pretty enough too. Billy tried to touch her but she drew back.

“Come in the grass with me.”

“You don't understand. I'm just waitin'.”

“Then wait along with me,” Billy fiercely told her. He reached out and touched her breast, which was like re-entering the dream of minutes before. Everything
that had then seemed possible now came to life.

“Don't do it, boss.” Though she threatened to call out he twisted her arm and forced her down a grassy corridor between two outbuildings. The grass was long, thickly matted as a nest. When they reached a deep pool of shadow against the fence Billy put his arm around her neck, pushed himself hard against her, and forced her down into the icy grass. She gave a breathless whimper as she fell, landing on all fours. Billy dropped with her.

Now there was her blanket caught up in things, sometimes shifting under an elbow and sometimes not there at all, and a strangely wordless struggle which at first was with the yellow dress, then with bones and hard lumps of earth that gradually acquired flesh, and finally, rising above the cold smell of ashes from a nearby rubbish pile, a soft darkness that seemed to spread across the entire landscape, muffling the frost, the town, the entire continent underneath him as Billy pushed and the girl hissed with hatred through clenched teeth.

Then it was very cold.

Billy stood and pulled up his trousers at the same time. He found a half-crown piece folded in his ten shilling note. He wanted to obliterate her.

“
Thanks
, mister.” She tossed the coin back.

Billy looked away and spat. The girl followed him into the open. A window rattled shut, a tin roof thumped in the cold, and far away a catfight erupted and as suddenly ceased.

“You go home.” But the girl started to move in the direction of the hotel. “Not that way.” He pushed her towards the back lane, but she objected.

“My place is through there.”

“Not tonight it ain't.” Again he pushed her and again she stepped sullenly forward.

So he punched her on the mouth.

“Do what I say.”

A smudge of blood widened on her lower lip. She sat down in a heap and lowered her head to the ground. Yabbie, who all this time had been quiet, jangled her chain and Billy walked over to pat her. When he looked up, the girl was trotting down the drive and out the back gate.

Billy climbed the stairs carrying his boots. When he reached the first landing the door of the bar opened and he saw Reilly stare up at him through the gloom.

“A man can't help feeling attached to a place,” Mr Gilchrist began, and spoke to the rhythm of the sulky's lurching, “with all the work I've put into it, and grandpa too. Y'see that old box tree? There was a swarm of bees there last spring.” Walter saw six trees at once, but Douggie piped a muffled “I can” from his pile of blankets. “Wally, when Pa started it was just for the stock. Then me. I was part of the place. We knew the blacks here for a bit. They camped on this corner. Now how come you feel like you do, and want to get off what we've made? The bank owns a lot of the places around here. But not us. They'd need a hundred bullocks to root me out.”

Walter grasped at the similarity: “It's the same for me.”

“Then what's all the carry on?”

“Dad,” and he risked the truth, silly as it sounded: “The difference is I could go away, and still be like you.”

“I can't spot that. No sir.” His father turned to him in the dark, bitter tobacco and the warm stink of spittle forcing Walter to gulp a quiet breath and hold it. “The point is you've got to go on a bit. How old are you now? Ideas are all right, but work,” he concluded, “it brands something in that wasn't there. Or brands it deeper if it was. You have to find out for sure. What do
you say? Your mother says yes to the university, y'know. But not yet. We want to give Douggie a couple more years away at school. Two or three, then if you're still in the same frame of mind you can go off. That's fair.”

At the station Douggie called: “Hey! There's Billy.”

Under the station lamps Walter felt exposed: he had none of the grit of his old man.

“I won't wait. I know you'll do well. Behave yourself on the train, boy.”

Well, that's ended, Walter thought. He thudded the cases to the ground, the sulky grated off into darkness, and Billy whistled him over.

“Back to school with the kid, I see.”

“He's on his own from now on,” said Walter, thrusting his brother's case into his hand and giving him a push past Ozzie Deep at the ticket barrier.

Billy's riding boots were polished like apples. He wore a dark jacket and freshly-laundered moleskins.

“I thought you were fetching sheep?”

“Got 'em. I've only just cleaned up.” Billy extended white scrubbed hands, which were trembling.

Ozzie Deep the porter punched Walter's ticket with scrupulous slowness, saying “Oi” and sparring with his ticket punch at the ready when Walter tipped his cap over his eyes — an exchange carried through ritually at the end of every holiday. Away from Ozzie, Billy suddenly became agitated, guiding Walter past the crowd and nudging him into a cul-de-sac of wicker baskets.

“Wally,” he looked around for eavesdroppers, “there's a Mick girl on the train going back to school. Will you do something for me? Willya? When the bloody train gets in I'll introduce you.” He cleared his
throat. “This is the drill: when you get on the train ask her if she likes me.”

“Who says she'll even talk to me?”

Suddenly the train hissed and clanked along the platform. Billy shouted: “When you get to Sydney write me a bloody letter. If she don't shape up, I won't care!”

The fireman on the footplate stared at him. A carpet of steam rose from the platform, warming them, clinging like cotton to their clothes, leaving them damp and chilled.

Walter saw her first, from behind. How did he know for sure? He
knew
.

“That's her,” said Billy.

The train was still moving, but the girl stepped to the platform and ran a couple of feet before slowing to a walk. When she turned around Walter wondered why Billy was so interested in her.

She seemed quite ordinary. Her eyes were very dark, her hair black and unshining. Her nose was rather big.

She saw Billy and raised a hand.

“There she is,” said Billy again, as though the two views of the girl had been aspects of different people. He set off along the platform and Walter followed.

“Isn't it cold.” When she hugged herself Walter could see her body outlined under the overlarge St. Catherine's jacket and skirt.

Billy launched into introductions. As he spoke, Walter felt amusement dart from the girl: amusement at Billy, at the cold air, at being a castaway on the next town's station platform, alone and so young.

She was more attractive than Walter had at first thought, though he could not see in what way. Her nose seemed even bigger from the side. When she laughed she finished by drawing in her lower lip in a
half-nervous, half-irrepressible way.

“I'd better climb back or they'll leave me behind. We couldn't have that,” she said to Billy, holding his eye for a sober second. Then she swung herself up the two steps in a movement that left Billy stranded. Too late he whipped his hands from his pockets, then jammed them away again in frustration, for he had intended not merely to help her up, but also to squeeze her elbow and watch her face for a sign.

“Don't forget,” hissed Billy. Walter found himself propelled aloft, with his suitcase skidding in behind.

“Half a mo', where's Douggie?”

“I saw him further back.
Hey Douggie!
” shouted Billy, and gave a thumbs up. “He's safe.”

As Walter hoisted his suitcase overhead the compartment's other occupant spoke: “What a racket!”

“Oh, Mrs Stinson,” apologized Frances. Walter scooped up a black-gloved hand.

“We're in for a cold trip,” said the old lady, who sat almost submerged in blankets and cushions presided over by several chins the colour of orange cake. “Give the heater a shake, like a good boy.” Her pearl-studded slippers, flashing green under the gaslamps, slipped from the footwarmer which Walter then rolled and waddled around the floor to agitate the chemicals.

Frances withdrew while the guard shouted “stand back” and thick wood — broad as the door of a coldroom — shut them in. But all the coldness was outside.

Billy was being left behind. He paced the carriage for a few feet and then slowed and stopped. He raised his hand — a dignified salute — looking glum. He slid backwards with all the other bits and pieces on the platform — the wicker baskets in their untidy stacks, empty luggage trolleys, milk cans, the black and silver
platform scales, the dirty moon of the station clock. He was overtaken by two railway clerks with thumbs in waistcoat pockets, by a signalman lowering his lamp from an arm-high position to place it at his feet, by half-lit bushes at the end of the platform, by the blackness beyond.

 

As they turned from the window Walter and Frances caught each other's eye. The glance lasted half a second before Walter fell-to brushing soot from his knees and straightening his tie.

Mrs Stinson sighed and hummed: “I was a bride in Melbourne and a bride in Forbes, and widow in both places too.” She spoke these words to Frances while addressing something like a cackle to Walter. “Us Victorians — but goodness, it's forty years since I left Ballarat. We outlast the men. We leave 'em behind: remember that —”

“I've got plenty of time,” Walter spoke directly to the old lady, raising his voice, “though I'm going on for nineteen.”

“When it's too late you'll want to spend it. My cushion, dear boy. Up a little. Across. Push it
down
.” He almost fell, grabbing the luggage rack, when with a fleeting upward dart she bestowed a powdery kiss.

“She likes you.” The old lady was instantly asleep, but her octogenarian authority prevailed. “I feel sorry for men,” Frances relaxed in her seat, “there's so much duty for them.”

“Look,” Walter said, “Billy asked me — if I'd keep you company.”

“Really?” She shifted away from Mrs Stinson,
leaning a shoulder on the glass, confronting Walter with unsmiling directness. “I don't know him all that well. We only met once. Did he really say that? I wish people wouldn't try to run my life for me.”

It was then, right at that moment, that his idea of her changed. This was when it started, the murmur of sensation that was to accompany him all night, then for months, years — it began with her manner, then her voice, her withheld opinions, then the opinions themselves opening out, then his hunger for everything about her — open-mouthed.

“I shouldn't have done what he said. I shouldn't have joined you, eh?”

“Oh, no. I didn't mean you. How could I? I meant — everyone else.” She was suddenly amused again. “Except Mrs Stinson. She's so old nothing bothers her. There's nothing she doesn't know — about people, that is. Do you like people?”

He had never considered it.

“I sometimes think people and art are all that matters.”

“Art?”

“I mean the theatre. Bernard Shaw. Shakespeare.” She had never seen any, but
Twelfth Night
was coming up. “Adeline Genée.” She described the “wheatsheaf” adagio, in which the star pirouetted within the embrace of her partner's arms, yet so exactly on the one spot that he never really touched her.

“That's art all right.”

“Mrs Stinson was on the stage,” Frances whispered, suggesting an intensely important past which the old lady confirmed by her physical attitude, nodding monumentally under the rugs which descended in a dark masonry of lumps and folds. “She sings beauti
fully.” Walter stared respectfully at the sleeping figure. Such achievements alarmed his Presbyterian soul a little, but if Frances saw her as grand so would he.

Now Frances was preoccupied, searching for a handkerchief, wetting her lips with a curved tongue, blinking. Her half turned face revealed a shining corner of eye, a clear curve of cheekbone, a mouth poised to speak lucidly — Walter thought — for an entire self.

“I've got a coal in my eye,” she mumbled.

She twisted a corner of handkerchief and used the window as a mirror. “Nearly …”, tugging her lower lid to reveal a reddened hollow, running the handkerchief along a blood-coloured edge. Walter, reclining on an elbow, could see Mrs Stinson's reflection past Frances's doubled head. The old lady seemed to be sitting far outside the train.

“There.”

Frances held out the rolled up handkerchief like a wand, with a black speck visible on the wet tip of cloth.

“Billy told Dad he was a Catholic, but I knew better.” Frances settled back in her seat and smiled a level somehow mocking smile.

“Did you like him?”

After hurling the question at Frances he peered out the window, cupping a hand over his eyes to disown any but the mildest interest in her reply. “He's a bit of a —”, he paused, looking from the window to Frances and back again, blowing mist on the glass, attempting to smear Billy out of favour. “I don't know —”

“I'm not sure I like him. He's very direct.” She shot a glance at the slumped heap that was Mrs Stinson, and whispered: “He tried to kiss me.”

“Oh.”

“He only tried. Beery men have tried before.”

Walter felt impossibly clean and young in his newly pressed and odourless school outfit. “We were at school together,” he caught Frances's view of Billy and tried to worsen it, “primary school. He left early.”

But Frances talked on: “Something else happened.” Now she peered out the window herself, blowing an oval of mist, erasing it line by line with a gloved finger. The train slowed through a long curve before entering a tunnel. “He and Dad were friendly enough at dinner, but the next morning Dad was angry with him.” Her voice trailed. “Something horrible happened. I don't know what.”

With a gulp the compartment filled with noise and they were in the tunnel. Frances prepared to shout the beginnings of an explanation and then thought better of it. She unfolded her travelling rug and arranged it on her lap. The overhead lamps wasted away as blue licks of flame guttered in the mantles. She dropped her shoes to the floor and tucked her feet under the rug. Walter fetched his own rug from the luggage rack, in the process leaning over her. Sleepily she readjusted her position and bumped him on the knee. “Sorry,” she mouthed. Goose-bumps climbed the inside of his leg. Deep ahead the engine puffed breathlessly through constricted space. The wheels ground and squeaked, the air swirled and peppered them with soot. Frances huddled into herself, the blanket crept higher. Walter gazed at dark lashes on pale skin, at hands in an oddly formal clasp peering from a gap of blanket, at a hump formed by swaying knees.

Abruptly they slid from stuffy darkness onto a frosted upland. The silence after the underground roar was almost complete: a faint click-click of wheels, a
murmur of movement — that was all. The effect was of bodiless gliding across vast sheets of phosphorescent water. The women slept and Walter sat guarding them — he was happy. Whenever he opened his eyes — Frances. Billy receded to a tiny dot under a remote pool of light on Parkes station, which then sank below the horizon.

At a late, indeterminate hour Walter woke again. He listened for a while to the knock of steel on steel. The figures of Frances and the old lady were like exhibits of exhausted life in a museum, making the same repeated movements — the tremble of a chin, the sway of a loose strand of hair — over and over as though controlled by a system of rods and wires.

 

When Walter woke at five in the morning clusters of houses, mysterious candleflame, dived at the train and drifted back into obscurity. Occasionally a light flashed in the distance keeping pace for a few minutes before looping behind. With a premonitory rattle of windows and then a loud bang a dark goods train rushed past. The cold of the outside world had now completely taken over from the airless cold of the compartment. Icy air slipped through hidden crevices in the floor. Walter stood and stamped his feet, rubbed his hands and hitched his blanket more securely around his shoulders. As he did so he noticed that Frances's blanket had slipped, so he slowly drew it up again, daring her not to wake. He stayed looking at her face: and suddenly she woke. Her black shining eyes stared as though she had been awake all along behind carved lids.