The Ballad of Desmond Kale (25 page)

BRINGING UP YOUNG MATCHLESS, KALE gathered the flock behind him, forded the sheep through a braided cold torrent, counted them over and lost none.

They spread along a way as Biddy watched them. So many white rustling daisies advanced all at once in a field of moving wonder.

There were hardly ever any pastoral scenes recollecting Kale's earlier life in this country but this was one of them. The woman on the hillside shading her brow with her forearm. The flocks nibbling along in their serene flow made up of rips, startles, thrusts and jabs. How many lives, in one life, was a man to be granted?

Kale went to a hill, cleared a view of saplings with his short-handled axe, watched and was sure they were not followed. It was away in country so changed from the places where they began it was past all civilised knowledge.

In New South Wales despite the many dangers and now with a hanging crime on his head, Kale felt better placed than he had in Ireland. It was certainly better to have nothing, than to have something and see it reduced to nothing. Sometimes Kale knuckled a fist
to his forehead and worked it all out. Other times his life was a tumble of fragments, and how one piece fitted to another beat him. He mostly felt he was not getting any younger, yet in all his capacities felt fit as he did at thirty. Since the arrival of Biddy his stricken back was entirely healed.

Kale rode on ahead. Biddy rode along behind. Young Matchless waddled rather than walked, but did so at a good pace, with womback stalwartness, hooves like little boxes, and when his wide horns bothered him by getting caught in a bush, he backed and sidestepped, stamped and shook, and stubbornly worked his way free of the tangle.

‘He is like you, Desmond Kale, a truly square individual' — which Kale liked very much, being compared with a sheep, though anything Biddy said quite charmed him.

The next way along was a natural limestone ramp leading halfway up a higher wooded hill. The path narrowly admitted two sheep at a time between overhanging rocks before a coarse reedy meadow unfolded on the other side and the sky opened again. They could not get a single sheep through that passage until the leaders were persuaded to go on, and so the rest followed with every single one of them leaping in the same place as if there was a gate to jump over. The horses needed to lower their necks and be urged under the overhanging rock while their riders crouched before them and tugged at the reins swearing. Boulders dislodged and crashed into the stream far below, striking sparks and gunpowder smoke as they fell. It was all wondrous new to Biddy Magee with many fears to be overcome thanks to Kale, who told her of the impossibility of being followed, past a certain point, by anyone in authority save the one in authority in league with them. She believed him, having no choice because the alternatives gave out no hope. They would
move along, breeding up the sheep, stopping here and there, until Rankine caught up with them. They would make an alliance with natives, if they could, otherwise their flock's survival was in question. Kale cursed for not seeking his man living in the bush camp, whose name was Mun'mow. If they had him with them it would be easier up ahead getting themselves understood, although Kale had no doubt he'd be remembered by one or two of those natives who never forgot a face.

‘That is your fame for you again,' said Biddy.

With the ram running in the flock they moved up and over to more open country, dropping through tangled forests of tall trees, ferns, prickly shrubs, jumbled rocks and rubble landslips. High open country was a vision before them. The sheep spilling forward went like fish in the sea, their backs shining foamy curved as they leapt. How they crashed and bolted along! From the flanks of long ridges it was possible to view out many miles over dappled grasslands where lines of trees followed watercourses into the far distance. West now and westwards the way ran. Cloud shadows passed like columns of armies on the move. Native fires burned, sending up smoke, and it was reckoned their arrival was noted and might be opposed. Kale fingered his musket and Biddy the pistol he gave her. She knew how to shoot, he found, from her protection among grenadiers since the age of fifteen. Kale checked their powder. Kale went along felling saplings and Biddy raised hurdles against the bare bank of streams where they forced the sheep tight and lit fires at either end against dogs. The sun set with blazing heat but in the hills behind them the shadows were long and cool. Biddy trusted herself absolutely to Kale — her heart and her hand together.

Judging by the clean smell of water in a rushing river Kale declared it was descended from snows. He declared it was the bidgee sort of a river found by Marsh and his black man. So they made a camp. Kale said it would do for a while. In the last light Kale took out his maps, that he had not let Rankine see but showed Biddy. They were hand drawn from Marsh's old maps, showing landmarks of a high-domed hill, a narrow-sided stream, and a wide sandy flat. And this was only the first unfolding of the concertina package Kale carried.

They sat around the fire smoking their clay pipes. Kale loved seeing Biddy puffing away satisfied. She was a keen little kitty-cat woman with cheeks red from the brisk weather. She had lovely refracting green eyes and a contented way of wrapping her sheepskin around her, and refusing to go to bed until Kale yawned and said it was time.

Kale talked of right and wrong in the animals. There was a reddish hue in the wool of some of the sheep that Kale disliked and wanted bred out of them now that he had them. It was a mark of the breed seeing how the first brown moor,
moreno
, or
benimerine
had carried the first of them into Grenada. It was a red or fawn, buff or satiny feature visible in the wool in good lights. Kale said it had to go. ‘It was put there by the scoundrel, Moreno,' he said.

Moreno insisted it belonged with the breed as of right. Because of this, Rankine, whose eye for a sheep was good enough, had seen ruin coming and that was the first reason he gave the sheep over to Kale.

‘Moreno's feelings were justly hurt,' said Biddy.

‘Agreed, and he is no longer trustworthy,' said Kale. ‘Has he ever touched you, Biddy?'

‘No.'

‘And you knew him from Spain?'

‘I did. We weren't bad friends either, me and Payolo. But he doesn't like white hens. From his first day of coming ashore he dwelled in the bush more than anyone except the natives that were already there. While away shepherding he found himself a black woman bought by craving of drink from the husband of one. Smoke of their fires was rubbed in his skin, ash and charcoal pitted. Boy, did he reek! When washing he bared his arse and splashed his fork in muddy water, streaked his beard with clay, pulled back his hair with fingers greased from wool oils. Burning sun bronzed him black as them poor souls. Nobody knew who he was. He is a free man of beaten pride and bound to Rankine through love and the promise of sheep. But it will be like Payolo has agreed to have his limbs torn off from love. He won't do what Rankine wants now. He will be raising some money for himself, to start again. He will want to come after you, to get his flock returned.'

‘There's nothing to be done about that, but to make the flock better. Moreno wishes he was back in his own country, but Spain is a smoking ruin. He would be wrapped in his cloak by a fire at this hour, if he could be found there, listening to the wolves, and starving.'

‘You are making me shiver. I never liked it. Rankine would be sitting in the door of his thatch waiting for Clumpsy to boil the water for his shave. Clumpsy would strop the razor, swipe it through the boiling water, soap the brush, lather Rankine's cheeks, and shave him. Then they would have their breakfast which Clumpsy would cook, scrampled eggs with onions. You have no idea, with the stink of death over everything. Out here's the only place where I feel I am rid of it.'

‘What was the name of your soldier?'

‘Donal Conroy, can we not speak of him?'

‘Come over here, then.'

Kale sat propped with his back to a tree. Biddy tucked herself into his warmth. She fitted between his legs. They were exactly snug. He put his arm around her. The night was chilly on their noses and there was not a breath of wind. If Kale could have died then, he would have been content, except he had no wish to abandon her, and so his life would have to be very long.

 

What Biddy told Kale about sheep as their days went by surprised him into discovering that while at his head of the flock he saw plenty, it was at their rear, and coming around their sides, that she gathered much knowledge.

‘They are quiet with you,' he said.

‘They are very amiable grooming each other. It is all in their licking spittle, what they like — as they nibble, lick, and when they rub. They rub and they carry on. The next one along gets a feel of it, and all stay together. When we first come to somewhere new they circle around and explore. They go in single tracks following each other.'

‘Have you never watched sheep as close before, sweetheart?'

‘Never at all. We was so poor, at home, that if we caught a rabbit, we were kings over a spoon of its stew. All we wanted was our own goat, and a little cart to follow. I could not live there, so I left.'

‘Following your grenadier?'

‘Leave that alone, I said.'

‘All right, my dear.'

‘Why do their tracks make a weaving pattern, not a straight line?'

‘Can you tell?'

‘I think it may be the result of the lead animal trying to see the animals behind, and having to turn around to see behind their heads, like we do.'

‘You'll begin to notice some sheep are more alert and wary than others. They are the ones to watch.'

‘That would be Molly, Evelyn, and Bonnie.'

‘How now, ewes have names?'

‘They are the flock leaders, so why not? Is only a ram to be christened? I hear them when they cry out, Molly calls to the younger one telling her where she is. The younger one bleats when she wants to be found. It is a stronger sort of bleat, as clear as a word. I have seen them with a snake, going all rigid and freezing before I come up to them, so I am not as afraid of snakes as I was. I have new friends. As we watch them, they tell us what we want to know.'

‘That is the way of shepherding. It is never the same with dogs.' Kale looked at her through his sheep man's eyes. ‘Sheep are peaceful, not like people. They have their conflicts but they carry on. They don't like showing pain. The dominance of one sheep over another is not absolute.'

‘They say that Parson Stanton makes your life a misery, Desmond Kale.'

‘It is hard for anyone to make my life a misery, dearie. After my first experience of tyrants, no more. You see, I won't allow them. No matter if I face the solitary dungeon, feel the lash, nor when I wear the iron collar and a great heavy log on my toes.'

‘You are free of weights anyhow.'

‘Their punishments are my reply. The harder they come the louder is my answer. They cannot tolerate how their worst punish
ments come back at them. For they hand me my best answer, which is defiance.'

‘Rankine stood up for you.'

‘With Rankine, it's all changed,' agreed Kale.

‘As for your daughter, you will have to forgive her as I have tried.'

‘Must I do everything you ask me?'

Biddy remembered his reputation for enlarging slights and felt her power over him.

‘Yes, that's the way,' she said.

He grumbled and swore. ‘It's the officer corps, they had her when they wanted. They turned her proud among them. God knows what it's done to my grandson, a boy with wool up his nose.'

‘You must mind it a lot, having him apprenticed so.'

‘What he learns there, he'll take away. He'll keep a tally book in his brain bringing Stanton forward or pushing him back according to how he stands among sheep.'

‘In Parramatta they say the parson never shuts up about you. But I have never once heard you speak his name, until now.'

‘I don't even think about him.'

‘Except you would like him defeated in his wools.'

She had him there. ‘I would,' he said.

Over his rum that evening Kale recited lines famed for their sadness:

 

The harp that once through Tara's halls the soul of music shed, now hangs as mute on Tara's walls as if that soul were fled
.