Beyond the Black Stump (26 page)

“Nice of you,” he said. “It
is
Stan Laird, isn’t it?”

She nodded.

“When’s it to be?”

“Not for some time,” she said. “Ma’s being a bit awkward.”

His interest was aroused. “Why? Doesn’t she like him?”

“Of course she does,” she replied, a little annoyed. “Everyone likes him. It’s not that. But she thinks I ought to meet his people in America before we even announce an engagement. So we’re not engaged, but we’re going to be married. That’s how it is.”

“Well,” he said, “that puts it on a par with everything else in the Lunatic, anyway.”

She glanced at him, and laughed uncertainly. “You
are
a fool,” she said. “David, you’re looking like death. Are things bad over at Lucinda?”

“They’re not good,” he said. “We’ll probably get about half of them through to the rains. Just enough to keep from going broke, and to encourage us to go on till it happens again.”

She nodded, because this was what she had expected from the gossip of the station. “Come on over and have a drink,” she said.

“I think I will,” he replied.

Most of the Laragh party were on the verandah examining the mail. Mr. Pat Regan turned to greet him, the kangaroo mouse on his shoulder. “God bless ye, Mr. Cope,” he said. “Will ye take a drop of rum?”

“I’d rather have whisky, Mr. Regan, if you’ve got any.”

“We have nothing but the Scotch,” the grazier said. “The
Irish lies softer on the stomach but ye’d walk your heart out before ye’d find that in Australia. If ye’ll heed me, ye’d do better on the rum.”

“I’d rather have the Scotch.”

Her father turned to Mollie. “Go on and get a bottle of the Scotch, girl, and a bowl of ice.”

When she brought them, David filled a glass half full of whisky with a little water and a lump of ice on top. He raised his glass. “Here’s to the happy pair,” he said. “Here’s to one couple that’s escaping from the Lunatic.” He drank.

Mollie laughed, a little self-consciously. Mrs. Regan said quietly, “Sit ye down, Mr. Cope, an’ take a look through your letters. There’s three here came last week for you, that I saved till ye came over.”

He sat drinking his whisky and looking through the letters. There was nothing much for him to stay for now, and he was urgently required for half a dozen jobs on his own property. The truck that was his lifeline now had a flat tyre and a dubious magneto; he had spare tyres and spare points and condensers, but the work had to be done, and done in the heat of the day before carting water began again at three o’clock. With the whisky, however, he could relax and feel the fatigue soaking out of him; the nervous tension that had gripped him for a month was easing up. It would not hurt to sit a few minutes longer.

Presently the Judge said, “I think if that is a bottle of Scotch whisky I would like to try a little for a change. I find sometimes that I grow tired of rum.”

Pat Regan said, “Sure, it’ll eat holes in your entrails the way they put holes in a colander. But take the whisky, Judge, an’ the Lord have mercy on ye.”

The Judge rose and poured himself half a tumbler. He said to David courteously, “May I refill your glass, Mr. Cope?”

It was urgent for him to get back to Lucinda, but for the first time in weeks he felt rested and at ease. He said, “Thanks.”

The Judge poured him a very generous glass, adding the ice and a little water, and sat down beside him. “You said something just now about escaping from the Lunatic,” he observed. “I find it a most peculiar thing, but now I do not want to leave the Lunatic. I remember when I first came
here I used to make plans to get away and seek other employment, in an Australian school, perhaps. But now I feel at home here, and I would not wish to go away. Perhaps it is that each and every one of us discovers in the end his own place of fulfilment.” He swallowed half his whisky.

“That’s all right for you,” muttered David, swallowing his. “You aren’t going broke.”

“But I
am
broke,” said the Judge placidly. “I went broke a great many years ago because whenever I found myself in a hotel I spent my money, all the money that I had. So now I don’t have any. It makes life very much simpler.”

David said thickly, “Is it going broke that hurts? When you’re down and out it doesn’t hurt any more?”

The Judge said, “The pain comes from losing what once you had. When there is no more to lose, I find that one can live quite happily.”

David sat in silence for a minute. Then he jerked himself awake; he was getting sleepy and there was a truck tyre to be changed at Lucinda. “Roll on the next three months,” he said genially. “No more pain after that.” He got unsteadily to his feet, with the best part of half a bottle of whisky inside him. “I must be going on.” He tripped down the steps of the verandah, miraculously stable, and found his way round the diesel semi-trailer to his jeep. The engine roared into life, tearing its heart out as he revved it up, and he drove off erratically on the track that led up to the oil rig and Lucinda. From the verandah they watched him go in silence.

“Yon laddie’s got his skinful,” Mrs. Regan observed quietly.

Mollie flushed. “I’ve never seen him like that before,” she said.

“Ye’ve never seen him facing ruin before,” her mother retorted. “From what they tell me there’ll not be a sheep alive upon Lucinda come the rains.”

Pat Regan said, “Sure, and the drink will do him good. He’s destroyed altogether with the troubles that he’s after having, and he’ll be the better now with a drop taken.”

His wife said, “Ye should help him, Pat.”

“Why would I be after helping him?” the old man demanded, “the way he’d go on like a man with gold coins in the bank itself until next time the rains come light as morning dew and I’d be after helping him again? No man
can run four thousand sheep upon Lucinda Station, not the Holy Father himself.”

Tom Regan made one of his rare utterances. “That’s a true word,” he said, and added lugubriously, “It’s all a part of it.”

“I think ye should help him, all the same,” their wife repeated quietly.

“In the name of the Almighty God,” declared the old man crossly, “what for would I be after helping him, and he the son of a dastardly murdering Englishman that fought against Ireland in the Black and Tans? That sort would creep into your house in the dark night to slit your throat with the cold steel, and you sleeping like a babe in innocence, dreaming of the blessed saints in Heaven. Didn’t they murder Jack Mullavy so, and he sleeping upon sentry in the glen with the rifle and the bottle at his side? What for would I be after helping a heretic the like of him, with the Holy Mother looking down to see what I was doing, and Satan himself looking up and laughing?”

“Please yeself,” his wife repeated, “but I think ye ought to help him.” The old man stumped off angrily down the verandah, well aware of the action of water dripping on a stone.

That afternoon Pat Regan was down at his stockyard breaking a new horse, or rather, sitting on a rail and supervising while James Connolly did so. The half-caste had it on a long rope to the halter and tapped it with a long bamboo from time to time to make it trot steadily around the arena, while his father kept up a running commentary. He was so engaged when Mollie came to him.

“Dad,” she said, “may I speak to you?”

“And why not?” he replied. He made room for her, and she climbed up on to the stockyard rail beside him.

“It’s about David Cope,” she said. “Could we do anything to help him, do you think?”

“Well, Glory be to God!” her father said. “Why would we be after helping him against a normal sort of summer drought, girl? If it was 1939 itself, the like of which you’d go for fifty years and never seen another the way no drop of rain came down for nineteen months, then I’d say help a neighbour if ye’ve help to give. But the like of this, sure, if we help him this time he’ll be coming to us and expecting help every third year when the rain comes short.”

“I know, Dad,” the girl said. “I would like to help him this time, though.” She hesitated. “You see, I had to be rather unkind to him. It’s not the time to be unkind to anyone when all his sheep are dying off like flies.”

“Was he wanting to wed you?”

“That’s right,” she said. “I had to tell him I was marrying Stan Laird.”

“The blessed saints preserve us! Is that a reason why we’d take four thousand sheep upon the property, and they so starved they’d eat as much as bullocks?”

“It is, if we can do it,” she said stubbornly. “I’ve been unkind to him when he’s having a bad time already. If somebody from here was kind to him for a change, it’ld even things up. How many sheep would we be running now?”

The old man sucked his lip. “Thirty-three—thirty-four thousand. It’s hard to say.”

“Could
we take his sheep and not get into trouble ourselves?” She paused. “It’s not four thousand, Dad—he’s lost about a thousand. It’s more like three thousand now.”

He glanced at her from under his bushy red eyebrows.

“Are ye still thinking of him, girl?”

She flushed a little. “Of course not. I’m going to marry Stan. But I feel as if I’ve kicked him when he’s down.
Could
we help him, Dad?”

He sat in silence for a time. It was hard to refuse her, for she was the first white child that he had ever had, to the best of his knowledge, and so he had taken more interest in her than in any of the others. His wife’s insistence that the children should be well educated and go to good schools had seemed irrational to him at one time, a Scotswoman’s whim that had to be indulged for peace and quiet in the house. Yet as this child grew up he had taken pride in her as quite a little lady. It was a disappointment to him that she meant to make her life nine thousand miles away, that he would seldom see her again.

He called to his half-caste son, “James Connolly! Let the mare rest, and come on out of it.”

The stockman tied the rope to the rail and walked over and stood below them as they sat on the high rail in the hot sun. “Listen to me, James Connolly,” the old man said. “How much feed would we be after having up at the top end, around old Number Nine bore, and way over by Fourteen and beyond?”

“Pretty good, boss. Missa Tom was saying maybe move the mob around Six bore to old Number Nine next week.”

“How would it be round Number Ten?”

“Bit of feed there, Missa Pat. Not much.”

The old man sat in thought for a minute. “Listen now,” he said at last. “We’ll drive up there tomorrow, the way I’ll see what’s going on. Get the horse truck filled up tonight, with a drum of petrol and a drum of water. Start and load my roan horse at four o’clock, with a horse for you. I’ll be after bringing tucker from the house.”

The half-caste nodded, and went back to the young mare. The girl turned to her father. “Thank you, Dad.”

Her father grumbled, “Ye’ll be bringing bankrupt ruin on the lot of us.”

Three days later he drove out in the jeep alone. He passed the cemetery that housed the dead Chinaman, passed the graded road that led off to the oil rig, and went through the Bloody Gate on to Lucinda. He saw no people and no sheep as he drove on to homestead, because there was no water on that portion of the property. It was evening when he got to the homestead and David had already left wearily for the unending job of moving sheep and troughs on to fresh ground, in the stench of rotting corpses. Pat Regan got directions from one of the gins, and drove on.

He came to men working just before sunset. David left the trough that he was loading in the truck and came across to him. He was already exhausted, with the night’s work before him.

The old man sat at the steering wheel of his jeep, and David stood before him. “God save ye,” said Mr. Regan. “I drove across to see if ye’d spare me a few minutes.”

“Spare you any time you like, Mr. Regan. I’m afraid I’ve nothing to offer you here, though.”

“Ah, be easy.” The old man glanced around, at the truck, the troughs, the weary men, the emaciated sheep, the swollen, stinking corpses. One glance was sufficient, for he knew it all from his younger days before hard work and careful management had brought Laragh Station to its present state. “Ye’ll be after having strife, I’m thinking.”

The young man flushed. He hated to have a neighbour on his land to see his sheep, his business in this state. “We’ll be all right,” he said defensively.

“We’d all be right and have great times if we’d no sheep,”
Mr. Regan said. “Would it help ye, now, to put them over on to Laragh on agistment for a while? There’s feed around our Number Fourteen bore at the top end would hold them till the rains.”

David stared at him, incredulous, his tired brain unable to take in the offer. “How many could you take, Mr. Regan?”

“How many would ye be after having?”

“I think we’ve got about three thousand altogether.”

“We could take that many.”

David blinked uncertainly. “I don’t know what to say, Mr. Regan. It’s a very kind offer, and I’d like to take you up on it at once.”

“Ah, be easy. Ye’ve the women folk to thank, and they tormenting me each day till I’m destroyed entirely. Ye’d better pick a mob out of the strongest and start moving them over to my Number Two tonight. Ye can hold them there a day or two, and then on to my Number Seventeen, and then to Fourteen.” He ran his eye over the sheep. “Ye’ll be after needing trucks?”

Dazed, David said, “It would be a help.”

“I’ll be sending Joseph Plunkett over with our big truck in the morning, and James Connolly with the five-tonner. Ye’ll have to use your own men to tend them. Ye can make an out-station at Fourteen bore.”

“I don’t know what to say,” David repeated. “I don’t know why you should do this for me.”

“Sure, I don’t either,” said the grazier affably. “It’s crazy that I must be getting in my later years, and you the son of a black-hearted, murdering Englishman that fought old Ireland in the troubles. I told herself, it’s crazy I must be.”

David laughed. “Crazy or not, it’s very kind of you. Tell me, what shall I owe you for the agistment, Mr. Regan?”

“It’s hard to set a figure on it,” said the grazier, “and the women will be tormenting me again over the money. Let you give me a case of overproof rum, and leave the rest be.”