Beyond the Black Stump (8 page)

“Is Mike one of your brothers?”

“Well—sort of. He’s Uncle Tom’s son, when Ma was married to him. Mike and Charlie and Bridget—they’re all Uncle Tom’s. Mike’s a chartered accountant, with Gordon and Bottomley, in Perth.”

He wrinkled his brows. “Well, who’s Stanley?”

“Stanley and Phyllis,” she explained, “—they’re Fosters. You see, Ma was a Mrs. Foster and she had two children. Then Foster got killed in a car smash and Ma hadn’t any money, so she worked in a bar in the Unicorn Hotel in Perth. Uncle Tom went down to Perth for a holiday and met Ma in the bar and married her, and brought her and Stanley and Phyllis back here to the Lunatic. Before that, of course, they only had the gins.”

His head was swimming. “It all sounds a bit complicated,” he said.

“It isn’t really. It’s just that there are rather a lot of us. Ma had eleven children, and then of course there were all the others.”

“Quite a lot of kids to send to school.”

She laughed. “The schools round Perth just live on us. Stanley and Phyllis went to Church of England schools, of course, but all the rest of us are Micks. We girls all went to Loreto and all the boys to Aquinas, and the half-castes to Alvan House and MacDonald House.”

“Are you going to be here for long?” he asked.

“I don’t know. I want to be a teacher, but Ma’s not getting any younger. I think I’ll stay here for a year till Elspeth leaves college and then let her come home and take a turn. Ma wants me to go home to Scotland then, and to France and Italy. I’d like to do that before I settle down and take a job.”

“That’ld be a grand trip. You could come back through America.”

“I never thought of that,” she said. “I say, won’t it be beaut having Americans here?”

“Your father doesn’t seem to think so.”

She laughed. “Do you think they’ll be like people on the movies?”

“I shouldn’t think so,” he replied. “If you think they live in penthouses on the top of skyscrapers or in old Southern mansions you’ve probably got another think coming.”

“They don’t live in places like our shearers’ quarters, anyway,” she said.

“No, I don’t suppose they do that. Talking of the movies, are you going to Mannahill on Saturday?” Mr. Clem Rogerson of Mannahill Station fifty-six miles over the bush tracks had a sixteen-millimetre talkie outfit, and gave a show in his garden each Saturday night, on films flown up from Perth.

“I don’t know. Are you going?”

“I usually go over. Makes a change.”

“I don’t know if they’re going over this time or not. Ma sometimes likes to go.”

“Tell me on the air tomorrow night, in the natter session.
I’ll call in here and pick you up if no one else wants to go.”

She smiled at him. “All right.”

He drove off in the jeep, and she turned back to the homestead. James Connolly and Joseph Plunkett had finished unloading the drums from the semi-trailer, and had gone back to the stockyard with their father, to go on with the horses. Their mother, the Countess Markievicz, came out of the laundry with a great basket of damp clothes and began to hang them on the wires strung between the laundry and the store, a shapeless, coal-black woman, very ugly, who had been slim and even good-looking in an aboriginal way thirty years before. By the time she had finished hanging out the last garments in the basket the first ones would be ready to take down to iron, which she would do in the verandah of the laundry. That was her daily work for all the days of the year; it did not seem to her monotonous.

The Judge came out with the letters he had written and showed them to Uncle Tom and Mrs. Regan, who approved them. The letters were sealed up and stamped, and given to Spinifex Joe, now waiting for them at his truck. He dropped them in the mail bag, said good-bye, and got into the cab. The starter groaned, the diesel belched black smoke, the blacks got up on to the tray, and the vehicle moved off upon the next stage of its week-long journey. Life at Laragh Station sank back into its normal, quiet routine. The women cooked and mended, the aboriginal women moved languidly about the housework. Outside, Pat Regan and his half-caste sons broke horses in slow time and rode out quietly to the water-holes to move the sheep around, generally in the cool of the early morning. In the heat of the day they worked in the shade, maintaining the cars and trucks and pumps and lighting system. The Judge taught school in the morning and took a siesta in the afternoon, dreaming perhaps of Waynflete’s chapel or of the cloisters of Dunchester Cathedral, or merely of the incredible and ever increasing current account in the Commonwealth Bank in Perth. Mrs. Regan wrote letters every afternoon in the verandah, rather illiterate letters to each of her children; her main interests lay with them. Nobody at Laragh Station worked very hard; they bred a great many children, drank a good deal of rum, and made a good deal of money that
they seemed to be unable to dispose of and that was rapidly becoming a responsibility to them, and a nuisance.

Mr. Bruce and his party arrived in the district a few days later. They came with two closed vans full of electrical recording gear, and a big four-wheel-drive truck containing all their other equipment. These were brand new American vehicles that attracted a good deal of interest at the places they had stopped at on their route. Donald Bruce was the only Australian in the party, and the only one who had taken part in the previous geological survey of the district. He was a public servant from the Bureau of Mineral Resources. The other six members of the party were American employees of the Topeka Exploration Company Inc., headed by a Mr. Stanton Laird. When Mr. Bruce had introduced his party to the pastoralists upon whose properties they were to work he would retire to his office in Melbourne and leave them to their job.

They had hoped to arrive at Laragh Station on a Saturday afternoon. In fact, they took a wrong track between Malvern Downs and Mannahill which took them fifteen miles out of their way and landed them on the edge of a dry creek that Mr. Bruce could not recognise and knew to be wrong. They stopped and rigged their radio and made contact with the Flying Doctor service on the midday schedule, and spoke to Mr. Rogerson at Mannahill Station, who told them where they had gone astray. By the time they had got going again and had retraced their steps they had lost three hours, arriving at Mannahill at about five in the afternoon.

It was too late for them to go on to Laragh that night, over strange bush tracks in the dark; the chances of getting lost again were too great. They stayed that night as guests of the Rogersons at Mannahill, and found that they had come in for the big social event of the district, the weekly picture show. There were several Land Rovers and Jeeps from the adjoining stations, one of which had come over a hundred miles. Amongst the visitors Stanton was quick to notice a remarkably pretty girl, red-headed and white-skinned, who had come in a jeep with a young man called David Cope from Lucinda Station.

Mr. Bruce knew her well. “Hullo, Mollie,” he said. “How are you today?”

“Good,” she replied.

“Are your father and mother here?”

“They didn’t come. They were expecting you with the Americans. Ma said they’d better stay at home in case you came. David brought me over.”

“We got held up upon the road,” he said. “Look, let me introduce you to Mr. Laird. He’s the one who’ll be in charge of the party on your father’s land.” He called out down the verandah. “Hey—Stan! Come over here a minute. I want you to meet Miss Mollie Regan, from Laragh.”

Stanton held out his hand. “Why, hello, Miss Regan, I’m certainly glad to know you,” he said. “I hoped we’d get on to your property today, but Don will have told you that we’re running late.”

“I know,” she said. “What happened?”

“I guess we just naturally got lost,” he said. “It’s kind of easy to go off on the wrong trail in this country.”

“You got lost between here and Malvern Downs?”

“That’s right.”

“But didn’t you follow the tracks that the mail truck makes?”

“One wheel rut’s just like another wheel rut to me, Miss Regan. I reckon when you’ve lived in Australia for a time you get so you can tell them apart.”

She laughed. “Mollie’s the name, Mr. Laird. We use Christian names in this country unless you’re trying to be very formal.”

“Fine,” he said. “I’m Stanton.”

She turned, for David was behind her. “David,” she said, “this is Stanton Laird. They got lost between here and Malvern!”

He laughed. “I got lost all along the road when I came up here first.”

She wrinkled her brows. “It doesn’t seem possible. I mean, you just turn left at the burnt Mulga tree and go straight on.”

He laughed again. “You’ll get a lot of this, Mr. Laird. When an Australian says you can’t mistake the road, that’s the time to get out your compass and start navigating.”

The girl flushed and laughed. “I suppose it
is
a bit difficult for strangers.”

“I’d agree with that,” said Stanton. He turned to David. “You aren’t Australian?”

The other shook his head. “I’m English. They call us Pommies here. I’ve got Lucinda Station, next to Laragh.”

The geologist nodded slowly, his mind running over the maps that he had studied. “That’s to the west of Laragh,” he said. “I guess we’ll be operating pretty near your boundary.”

“That’s right,” said David. “If I can give you any help I hope you’ll come and tell me.”

“That’s mighty nice of you.”

Mr. Rogerson turned the corner of the verandah and came to the little group. “Drinks just outside the dining-room,” he said cheerfully. “Mr. Laird, what can I get you? Gin, whisky, or rum?”

Stanton had travelled far, but Hazel still held him very close. “Thank you,” he said a little awkwardly, “but I don’t believe I’ll take anything right now.”

“Nothing at all? Everybody’s drinking like so many fishes just around the corner.”

It was getting a little more awkward, and Stanton became aware that they were all looking at him curiously. Moreover, he was very thirsty. “Maybe something soft,” he suggested.

“Why—yes. What would you like?”

“You wouldn’t have a coke?”

“What’s that?”

“Coca cola.” There had always been a coke at Abu Quaiyah, but there Americans had run the commissariat.

“No—I’m sorry, we haven’t got that. Lime juice, or lemon squash?”

“Lime juice—a long one.”

“Sure you won’t have a drop of gin in it?” asked Mr. Rogerson hospitably. “Liven it up?”

“Thank you—I’d prefer just the lime.”

It was Mollie who asked what they all wanted to know. “Don’t you drink, Stanton?” she asked kindly.

“Not alcohol,” he said. “Not many people do back home, where I come from. I never got the habit.”

“I thought all Americans drank terrifically,” she said. “I suppose I’m going by the movies.”

“Some of the boys drink,” he said, referring to his crew of five. “Bob and Hank, they’ll drink anything they can get hold of. Ted’s a light drinker. Dwight and Tex—they’re like me, don’t drink alcohol at all.” He smiled at her. “I’d say the movies aren’t a very safe guide to America.”

“I suppose not,” she replied.

Clem Rogerson came back with a very large glass of lime
juice and soda, with ice tinkling at the brim. The geologist took it from him gratefully. “Let’s all move round the corner to the drinks,” the grazier said. “Mollie, what can I get you?”

“I’ll have a gin and lime, a long one,” she said. “Just a very little gin, Mr. Rogerson—really a little. About half an inch.”

“All right.” As they moved round the corner of the verandah he said to the geologist, “I’m sorry we couldn’t fix you up in the house, Mr. Laird. The shearers’ quarters aren’t too bad, though. We had to rebuild them all two years ago, to bring them up to the award conditions.”

“They’re mighty comfortable, Mr. Rogerson,” the geologist said. “I never reckoned that we’d find accommodation so good as that. We brought along a whole truck-load of stuff for camping, so as not to be a nuisance to anyone. It’s mighty good of you to let us use your shearers’ quarters.”

“Oh, that’s all right. They’re empty for eleven months of the year, you know.”

He went off to the table to get Mollie her drink, and she turned to the American. “Do you really camp out, when you’re working in a place like this?” she asked.

“Sure,” he said. “We’ve got everything in the truck, food for about three months, tents, sleeping bags, stretchers—everything. Ted’s the camp cook. The other four and myself—we’re technical. Ted runs the camp.”

“Can you do your work, living like that?” she asked.

“Why, yes. We’ve got one tent we rig up as a drafting office. We always live that way when we’re on survey work. Later on, if it comes to setting up a drilling rig, then we have to make a better camp, of course, with a power station and portable buildings with air-conditioning, and everything like that. But on a survey we just live in tents.”

She was relieved. “We didn’t realise that you’d be used to that,” she said. “We’ve got shearers’ quarters at Laragh, of course. You’d be welcome to use those. I was afraid they might not be the sort of thing that you were used to.”

David Cope said mischievously, “Too many movies again, Stan. She thought that you all lived in penthouses on top of skyscrapers in New York.”

She said indignantly, “I didn’t Stan! At least, not all Americans.”

He said, “America’s a pretty big place, Miss Regan. Some Americans do live that way or they couldn’t make movies about them. At least,” he said, “I guess they can do anything in Hollywood.” They all laughed. “But I come from the West, where we don’t live that way at all. It’s still kind of frontier where I come from—ranching and riding horseback over the trails.”

She asked in wonder, “Do you still use horses in your part of America?”

“Why, certainly,” he said. “Where I live there’s nearly three hundred square miles right close in to town where you can only go on a horse. No roads at all. It’s frontier still, the part of the United States I come from.”

“What part of the United States is that?” she asked. “Where is your home?”

“Oregon,” he said. “In back of the state, close to Idaho.”