Jacko (40 page)

—Too bloody right. I socialized the little black tart out of here soon enough, and I wasn't going to let a good girl like Delia go. You know what the gene pool is up here? Jesus, Delia's like the arrival of a bloody genetic freight train. Raise the average bloody IQ of the miserable bloody Emptors, tell you that!

We drank more tea, and Sunny wandered to the limits of the garden. She seemed to be discussing matters in a low voice with the palms and ferns.

—Does Jacko keep in touch with Lucy?

—Oh God, you tell me. Bastard's called a few times on the radio-telephone. But the radio telephone's so bloody complicated it's an excuse for not saying anything eh. I tell her to put the word on him. Tell him what's happened. But she's not that sort of girl.
She
's no bloody social engineer. So I respect her wishes. I suppose you'll have to too.

—What wishes do you mean?

—You'll find out at tea-time.

By which she meant dinner-time.

So we sat and talked about Frank Emptor. We both found ourselves laughing over him. He had been a thief of some style.

—You know, he's really got genuine criminal tendencies, said Chloe like a boast. Everyone forgives him. Even Bickham. All the people he ripped off in Sydney, the Mulcahys and so on, he's their main dinner table story. His lawyer told me that the poor little bugger got an extra six months for that, for being bloody likeable, you know. Nothing frightens a judge like a rogue with imagination eh.

Sunny came back up the stairs from the garden to pour even more tea. It was exquisite to me since I was still dry to the core.

—Have another yourself, Sunny, Chloe offered.

—No, that's okay, said Sunny. And she hung her arm around one of the verandah posts and looked out through the garden at the land which trumped California and so clearly soothed her heart, though it did not take away her manic edge. Then she wandered off again, hatless under the sun.

I saw Stammer Jack come through the gate. He wore his Akubra with its history of sweat. Overalls covered his body and ended in his ankle boots. He came up the pathway as if he was intending to skirt past us and go straight into the house, heading for some secret business, perhaps a sip of Bundaberg rum.

—Come and say hello to our guest, you miserable bastard, Chloe told him with genuine, venomous affection. She was a woman whose marriage was mended.

—D-don't want the tea, t-thanks.

Chloe stated as a matter of fact that Stammer Jack knew me.

—Yeah, t-that's right. Last t-t-time you were here. You seen m-my son over there?

—Three weeks ago. The future's pretty bright for Jacko.

—Yeah, see. But what about poor b-bloody Lucy?

—Well, Chloe argued. He's not to tell the mongrel about Lucy. Unless Lucy gives the okay.

—That little b-bastard, said Stammer Jack. Needs his b-brains brushed. I m-might just go over there with you and get the bugger sorted out! On the one hand, l-life's not a b-bloody rehearsal, but on the other, you can have too big a c-cast!

This was the longest speech I had heard Stammer Jack make, and true as it was, I felt it was time to acquaint them with their son's virtues.

—Were you aware who brought Delia and Sunny here? Who paid their fares and so on?

—Sutherland, said Chloe. That's what they tell us. What's it called? Vixen Six. What a name! Jacko's pack of bloody clowns eh. Vixen bloody Six. What's that character's name, Durkin? Jesus!

—Vixen Six didn't pay for them. Jacko did. Roughly ten or eleven thousand dollars – because you can't buy a single ticket to Australia. Paid for the tickets out of his own pocket. And the same week another ticket for Lucy. Which was only right, of course. But the same week he was dumping Lucy, or Lucy was dumping him, he was saving Sunny.

The parents considered this together in silence. Stammer Jack was the first one to speak.

—Well, he was always generous to a b-bloody fault.

—His bloody generosity is about to be tested, said Chloe.

Chloe then called into the garden.

—Sunny, why don't you go and tell Lucy her playmate's here?

—Okay, called Sunny, putting her cup down under a fern for collection later. But I won't want to interrupt her if she's painting.

We watched Sunny dawdle off once more through the garden and out of the gate into Emptorville's full blaze of light. I felt like standing and calling a warning to her.
Careful of the light!

—She's still under a heap of medication you know, Chloe thunderously whispered. Boomer flies her off to the psychiatrist in Darwin every two weeks. But it's a pretty good recovery, isn't it? Of course, out here, people expect you to recover and get on with bloody things. It's a therapeutic atmosphere eh. You know, she doesn't wake screaming in the night or anything. Sleeps well, eats well, works well. You'd never think …

—Jacko's creative idea, I said.

—Yeah, there you go, said Stammer Jack. His instincts are ok-kay. But his f-f-fucking wires are crossed.

She reached out for Stammer Jack's enormous hand, so creased, so mapped with mysterious scars, and slotted her fingers into the maw of his slack fist.

I wish Larson had been there to photograph them.

The sun, which an hour and a half before had bludgeoned me by the side of my rented Holden, had begun dropping fast now. It always sets quickly above the Tropic of Capricorn. At this kindly hour, the Emptors' stubbornly retained acreage and square mileages were turning from mauve to violet, and the huge space of pounded dirt amongst the buildings – the stockyards, the homestead and the sales ring – turned violet too, as if from some internal chemistry. Across the violet I saw Lucy stiffly walking with Sunny. Sunny reached the homestead gate first and opened it for her. It was easy now to see the reason for Lucy's stiff gait. She was pregnant.

As she drew near I beheld her enormous smile, which reminded me of how she danced in the Odeon.

—Gidday, she cried.

She made it to the verandah and sat with a sigh.

—Well, she said, breathing heavily. A bun in the oven eh?

I found it hard to answer her.

Dinner came later than I would have wanted. We had to wait until after the stockmen had eaten and gone off to watch television. We ate in their dining room, which was located by the kitchen, between the quarters which Lucy, myself and – more permanently – the unmarried white stockmen occupied and the school. The table was set for eight. Chloe sat at one end, and I felt honoured to be on her right side. Lucy sat on her left. And then down the table Delia and hulking Petie, Sunny and Boomer sitting side by side, one couple (if that was a way to describe them) facing the other. And at the foot of the table but to the side, not in the spousal position, sat the ageing stockman called Merv.

I remembered the night, while Larson was still alive, that Chloe had boasted to us in mime of Merv's sexual capacity. I was encouraged to remember it because of the fact that shy Stammer Jack must have eaten a reclusive meal somewhere else. Perhaps he was now doing the books, settling to his evening drinking, or watching the
7:30 Report
and being mutely appalled at the opinions of people who lived in cities in New South Wales and Victoria, in urban nests of liberalism where the name of the Territory cut no ice.

Everyone at the table spoke about my misadventure, which I had to recount. Boomer and Sunny ate quietly without mentioning the corkscrew. Delia, who was wearing a long sleeved shirt, complained pleasantly about the impact of the sun upon her complexion. And for her sake, Chloe said what she seemed to say to all newcomers.

—Well, no bugger sunbathes up here. It would be a sign of bloody madness. You look at the old timers. Merv, hold your arm up. See that! See that eh? Buttoned to the bloody wrist!

—I love living here, said Delia.

Like Sunny, she had the blush of this country on her. Delia continued her argument.

—If we were in New York now, we'd be stewing in humidity. I put up with it because I didn't know better things were available. Australians think they've got a bad climate. But they don't know what a bad climate is.

Chloe said, Well that's how buggered up America is eh. Americans come to a bloody hole like this and think it's paradise. Let me tell you, Delia love, if that old bastard in the homestead could be trusted, I'd swap New York with you right now. The cattle industry's rooted, and Australia's gone to the dogs.

—What would you do in New York, Chloe?

—What would I do? I'd start going to the literary bars. And I'd start writing some fiction of my own. I could write in a city like New York. I've seen it through Saul Bellow's eyes, and they're pretty good bloody eyes to see it through. Nobel Laureate, like someone else I could mention.

—You're mad, Chloe, said Boomer. The Ayatollah was right. America's the great Satan.

He was one of those disenchanted by Vietnam. Jacko told me he may have deserted during Rest and Recreation in Sydney.

—I think you're mad too, Chloe, said Lucy quietly, winking across the table at me. You can write just as well here I reckon. I'm doing more work here than I ever found possible in New York.

Now I was surprised to hear Petie chime in.

He said, Well, what Chloe's saying is the Territory's not like it was. Maybe so. But it'll do me eh. Our abattoir in town's really starting to do good business with the Saudis. If we could just sell a bit more beef to the Americans and the Indonesians, we'd be laughing.

—They've got these Arab abattoir supervisors in Hector, said Chloe. To make sure the cattle are slaughtered right. If your bloody sister was still around, she'd probably fall for one of them and go Muslim just to bloody spite me.

There was, of course, enough steak on the table to suggest the Emptors had plenty for export.

Sunny had finished working at her own lump of meat and rose with her plate in her hands. She looked around for others who had finished. Lucy was one of them.

—Pass over your plate, Mrs Emptor Junior, she told her. I'll get the dessert.

Chloe said, No, listen. You'll end up a bloody slavey like me.

But Sunny was already gone.

—Well, while you're out there, called Chloe, get the useless bloody cook to make up another pot of tea.

Petie looked at me and winked.

—We're getting all these bloody Yanks used to tea, he mildly boasted.

Delia was mopping her lips and quenching a small burp. All her movements were those of a woman who knew and had confidence in her company, a woman at her own hearth. She smiled at me.

—You couldn't drink coffee, anyhow, in this sort of climate, she said. Except recreationally. It'd dehydrate you.

At the bottom of the table, Merv had lit a cigarette and was quietly drinking, a vigilant look in his eye, as if he expected this particular company to say something really clever. Chloe watched him closely through narrowed eyes. It all seemed so easeful to me. I too almost felt as if I'd come home.

Lucy leaned over the table towards me.

—Would you like to take a preggers woman for a walk after dinner?

I said that that would be an honour.

—That's the go then eh, said Lucy. You can approve of my paintings too if you like.

Under the three-quarter moon, the earth had softened and could be believed to be velvet. Just as when I was last here, stockmen were drinking beneath a big brush shelter, and watching a big television set.

Even from the way she walked – and discounting for the moment her pregnancy – you could tell Lucy had not had a good time of it. I noticed how her long neck was stringy, little Jacko – I presumed it was Jacko's child, but I had not heard this asserted by anyone – already plundering his mother of the minerals of her youth. Her pregnancy in its way emphasized her thinness which was of a different order from what I thought of as her New York lankiness.

—I suppose you think I'm pretty damn silly, she said.

—Why?

—Well, I'm up here, swearing everyone to bloody secrecy. You'd think if I wanted to keep it secret, I'd clear out.

—You ought to consider telling Jacko.

—I'm sort of disappointed you think it's Jacko's?

—Well, let me say, I wouldn't blame you if it wasn't.

—Well, it's bloody Jacko's. But women who get pregnant to stop things busting up are a bit of a cliché, aren't they?

—Anything that works, in my opinion.

—As soon as I found out, I came up here. It wasn't visible then. I said that as soon as it began to look visible I'd go back to Sydney eh. But the thought of
that
fills me with horror. In Sydney I'm an angry woman, and I don't know what to make of myself. So you won't report back to him, will you?

This was a gentler form of Chloe's accusation that I was a spy.

—I ask you to imagine what my life would be like if my wife and your friend, Maureen, found out I had leaked embargoed information to Jacko.

She laughed at that, remembering Maureen.

—If I stay here, she said, and he turns up, I won't be able to tell whether he's here to see Chloe or me. I really ought to go somewhere else. But … Chloe's a bit of an addiction with me. And Sunny … at least I can look at Sunny. She doesn't need me here of course. But I think I need to see her around the place. Because … believe me!… she's not nearly as well as she looks. Walking wounded eh.

—Does Jacko talk as if a reconciliation's still on?

—Well, that's what he tells me, every time he calls on the radio-telephone.

—I wouldn't give him too long, I advised her.

It was as near as I could come to telling her what I knew of Jacko. If she could have somehow seen a video clip from the dinner at which Jacko had made his unwise moves on Hubert Greenspan's mistress, she could hardly have been surprised, though she would have been enlightened.