Beyond the Black Stump (16 page)

“Ye’d think they’d sit a while, and drink a cup of tea or else a drop of rum,” her mother said.

“I don’t believe they drink at all,” the girl said.

“They’d be better to relax a little now and then,” her mother observed. It had not escaped the notice of the ex-barmaid that the American camp was dry except on Saturday nights, when beer flowed. No hard liquor was allowed in camp at all. “It makes for accidents,” Stanton Laird told them. “The casualty rate is very much higher if hard liquor is allowed in camp.”

“And the dithers is much higher if it isn’t,” Mrs. Regan retorted. “I’ve been watching that wee laddie over there. Watch him twitch—now.”

Stanton watched him, flushing a little. “Maybe he needs a spell.”

“Maybe he needs a rum,” the barmaid retorted.

“I guess we’ll have to disagree on that,” said the geologist. He hesitated for a moment, and then said, “Mind if I ask you something, Mrs. Regan?”

“Go ahead.”

“We run this camp the American way, without hard liquor, and that gives us the results we want,” he said. “I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t give hard liquor to the boys if they come to see you at the homestead.”

The ex-barmaid thought for a moment. “All right,” she said. “I’ll see they don’t get served.”

Mollie said, “It’s going to be a bit difficult if they come back with Uncle Tom or Daddy, Stan.”

“I’ll see they don’t get served,” her mother repeated.

In all these new interests and excitements Mollie found that she was seeing a good deal less of David Cope than in the months before the Americans had come to Laragh. Before their arrival he had called for her nearly every week to take her to the movie show at Mannahill, but after they arrived the Americans had taken to going over in a body, welcoming Mollie and David and anybody else to join them in going to the party in one of their big trucks, which from David’s point of view wasn’t the same thing at all. Now with the growth of the American camp beside the drilling rig they had instituted their own movie show in the recreation room on two evenings a week, with better films than Clem Rogerson could produce and a much shorter distance to drive; moreover, the oil drillers welcomed visitors to meals at any time. Mrs. Regan and Mollie fell into the habit of going to the movies there at least once a week; the men seldom came with them, preferring the slow discussion of things that they were well acquainted with to the complexities of thought induced by movies of a foreign land.

Mollie met David Cope at these American shows, and often sat with him to see the film, but the old community born of the long drives to Mannahill in his jeep had been broken. He seldom saw the girl now to speak to alone, and he was very conscious that she was seeing a good deal more of the American geologist than she was of him. The old days when he had shyly asked her for her photograph and she had shyly given it to him now seemed a long way away; with the coming of the Americans they had drifted apart, and his life was the emptier for it.

Early in February she came to the movie show alone, driving in the jeep. There was now no danger of getting lost when driving by night between the oil site and Laragh homestead, for the constant passage of big trailer trucks and the complaints of the truckers had galvanised the State of West Australia to send a couple of graders to the district to smooth out the worst potholes, so that a graded road, un-metalled but a road in very truth, now led back to the homestead. Civilisation, disturbing in its impact and its implications, was advancing on the outback in the wake of the oil search.

Stanton Laird had gone to Perth for a conference, or she would hardly have been free to talk with David Cope after the movie. She bade her hosts good-bye and thanked them for their hospitality, and walked with David to where their jeeps were parked side by side in the bright moonlight. She felt guilty about David and a little self-conscious; she did not much want to be alone with him, but there was no escaping it.

As they went, she asked him, “How’s the rain been on Lucinda?” The district was on the edge of the monsoon country and normally they got an inch or two of summer rain in January, though the bulk of their ten or twelve inches of rain fell in June.

“Not too good,” he said. “We got about ninety points at the homestead.” He meant nine-tenths of an inch. “I think it was a bit better at the far end.”

“We did better than that,” she said. “I think we got about three inches. Uncle Tom says we won’t get any more now.”

“You always get more than I do,” he remarked. “It’s better country.”

“It doesn’t do us any good,” she said, seeking to ease the subject for him. “It goes straight down into the ground. You never see it lying in a pool, however hard it rains. All the water that we’ve got comes from the bores.”

“I suppose in America,” he said a little bitterly, “it falls straight into the sheep’s mouth.”

She laughed because it seemed the best thing to do, but the implication annoyed her. “It doesn’t really,” she said. “So far as I can make out, they run their grazing properties, their ranches, very much the same as we do. Only they seem to have a lot more water than we have, and much smaller stations.”

“Better land, in fact,” he said. “Everything’s better in America, isn’t it?”

“If it is,” she said hotly, “it’s because they’ve worked to make it so. I’ve never seen men work so hard as these people, and you haven’t either. They’ve got a lot of things against them in their country that we haven’t got—snow and ice in winter. If they’ve got better land than we have, it’s probably because they work harder.”

He nodded. “That’s right. I just sit on my arse and smoke a pipe all day.”

She softened suddenly. “I didn’t mean that personally, David. You work harder than anybody in the Lunatic. You know I didn’t mean that for you.”

“That’s all right,” he said. “But I must say I get a bit tired of these Supermen.”

“Don’t you admire them, though?” she asked, a little wistfully. They seemed to be drawing very far apart.

“What for?”

“I don’t know—everything,” she replied. “They
achieve
so much. Here we’ve been living with oil underneath our feet, all these years.
We
could have found it, but we didn’t ever think of it.
We
could have done all that they’re doing here, but we just aren’t up to it. Then they come along and show us how Australia should be developed, and we hate their guts.”

“You don’t, anyway,” he remarked.

“No, I don’t,” she retorted. “I think they’re fine people. They don’t drink on the job and a lot of them don’t drink at all. Lots of them don’t even smoke. They work hard, and they read the Bible. The only thing that people have against them is that they show us up.”

“That’s not what I’ve got against them,” he replied. “I don’t mind them showing us up over oil, because that’s not what I do. When some American comes here and shows me how to run four thousand sheep on two dud bores and does it better than I can, then I’ll sit up and take notice. But that’s not what they do.”

“What
have
you got against them, David?” she asked. “Why don’t you like them?”

He paused for a moment in thought. “I think it’s because they’re so
ignorant,”
he said. “Ignorant of everything outside their job. I’m no great shakes myself because I left school when I was sixteen, but I do take an interest in other things besides sheep, besides my job.”

She was silent for a moment. “I think they do, too,” she said, but a little doubtfully. “It’s just that we don’t know them well enough.”

“How many books do you think they’ve got in their camp?” he asked scornfully. “Outside the Bible? A few paper-bound crime stories, perhaps, and a lot of glossy magazines. But how many real books, bound books, books that you’d want to read again in ten years time?”

“I don’t think they’d bring books to a camp like this in a
strange country,” she said slowly. “They may have them at home.”

“I bet they haven’t.”

“Books aren’t everything, anyway,” she said.

“That’s exactly what they are, so far as I can see,” he retorted. “If you want to learn anything, you’ve got to turn to books—unless you like to take it from the radio. And even the Americans can’t get much joy out of the reception here.” He paused. “That one—the manager—Spencer Rasmussen—he was round at my place last week looking at that book of modern French art. You know—the one I got from home last year with all the oil paintings, in colours.” She nodded. “I said something about Matisse. He thought I said mattress. God knows, I don’t know much about oil paintings, but I do take an interest.”

“It’s probably not his line, David,” she said.

“What
is
his line?” he asked. “The live Theatre? Poetry? Sculpture? World Politics? Music?”

“Music,” she said. “He plays the accordion.”

“I’ll give you that one,” he said slowly. “He does like music. Dance music. He goes all classical and highbrow sometimes and plays
South Pacific
—that’s about the top end of his range. But he does like music, and he makes it for himself. I’ll give you that one.”

“He’s probably got a lot of other interests that you don’t know about, David,” she said. “Be fair.”

“He pitches horseshoes,” he remarked. “A lot of them do that. They brought the horseshoes with them from America.”

She smiled. “How do you pitch horseshoes?” she enquired. “How’s it played?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Hit them with a baseball bat, for all I know.”

“Anyway,” she said, “Spencer Rasmussen
is
keen on music.”

“That’s right. Ask him to play a bit of Beethoven on his accordion and see what happens.”

She was suddenly angry with him. “I’m going home,” she said. “You’re just looking for any excuse to pick on them, to run them down. I think they’re straight, decent people. They’ve brought a bit of America into the Lunatic and it’s done us all good. We’ve even got a road because of
them. If they find this oil there’ll be a town here some day—a real town, with shops and hairdressers and cafés and picture theatres and a church or two. That’s what they’re doing for us in the Lunatic, and we ought to be grateful. But all we do is to sneer at them, and run them down.”

“I don’t run them down,” he said. “I never say a word to anyone about them. I’m very glad they’re here and doing what they are. It’s very good for all the rest of us. It’s only when you start to run them up and talk of them as Supermen that I get a bit riled.”

“I never talk of them as Supermen,” she said hotly.

“Yes, you do.”

“No, I don’t. You’re just making that up in order to be nasty about them.”

He grinned at her. “I think perhaps we’d better change the subject.”

“I think we had.”

“Mind if I ask something? About something quite different.”

“What is it?”

He folded his arms and leaned back against the mudguard of the jeep. “Will you marry me?”

She stared at him, astonished and deflated. “Of course not. If that’s a joke, David, it’s a pretty poor one.”

“It’s not a joke,” he said. “I’m serious.”

“But, David—you can’t be!” Where was the soft music, the gentle touch that she had read about in books and seen so often on the movies? David must know the drill; he too had read the books and seen the movies. He couldn’t really be serious, but if he was, he wasn’t going to get away with that.

“I’m quite serious,” he said quietly. “I’d have asked you six months ago, but for the fact I thought I’d probably be going broke this year. Lucinda’s not the best property in Australia, or even in the Lunatic. I’ve been in love with you for a long time, as well you know.”

She dropped her eyes. He had never tried to kiss her, or spoken the soft words of love that she had thrilled to read about; their conversation, when it touched on sex, had been of ewes with twins or impotence in rams. He hadn’t played the game according to the book for reasons of his own that seemed to her of trivial importance, yet he was quite right: she had known that he had been in love with her.

To gain time she asked, “What made you ask me now, then? Is Lucinda looking up?”

“I don’t think it is,” he said. “In fact, at the moment it’s looking down. If we’d had another sixty points last month it would have made a difference.”

“Then what made you ask me now, David?”

He grinned at her. “Just to remind you I’m still here.”

“Because I’ve been going about with the Americans?”

“I suppose so.”

“Oh, David!” She felt at a loss, not knowing what to do. She valued David Cope, but wider horizons were opening before her, horizons that led across the Pacific to the countries of the glossy Kodachromes in the big magazines she had been reading. She knew from her half-brother Michael that money was no barrier to a Regan if she wished to travel half across the world, and it was understood that she would go to England, France, and Italy before very long. A daring notion had occurred to her which she had not mentioned to anybody yet, that on her way home from England she might visit the United States and see with her own eyes the country of the
Saturday Evening Post
and
Cosmopolitan
. She had friends and contacts in America now, the families of Hank and Ted and Tex, and, most of all, of Stanton Laird. She valued David Cope and she respected him for his achievement, but all this had to be balanced against life at Lucinda with sheep dying all around beside the waterholes for lack of feed, and myriads of blowflies, and a rusty kerosene refrigerator that smoked and smelt of hot oil.

“I’m not marrying anybody yet,” she said. “I suppose some day I’ll want to get married and settle down, but that’s not now. I don’t know why you asked me this now, David, and I’m rather sorry that you did. Because the answer’s going to be No.”

He had expected nothing else, but her words gave him pain. “I thought you’d say that,” he replied, a little bitterly. “Well, let’s forget it.”

“Why
did
you ask me now, then?” she enquired. “Whatever made you do it, if you thought I’d say no?”

“Because I thought I’d have even a worse chance if I waited till next month,” he replied.