‘Of the species homo sapiens.’
‘How can you accept them as fellow creatures?’
He looked at her. Her eyes were wide, face flushed and troubled. Turning away he asked, ‘Who speaks thus . . . the patrician or the Fascist?’
She snapped: ‘I think you regard them much as you do those crippled animals of yours.’
‘And how’s that?’
She said fiercely. ‘As some sort of escape from the realities of life.’
‘What are they?’
‘Civilised things . . . world politics . . .’
‘They seem to me quite unreal!’
‘Then love . . . you’ve dodged love!’
‘What do you know about love?’ He met her staring eyes. Turning away, he added, ‘Except as a form of blood-transfusion?’
They were silent until he turned into a track running towards the Plateau, when she said, ‘Go on with the story about Rhoda.’
He said, ‘I was thinking about my mother just then . . . and how she loved my father . . . if she really did love him and not just fear him. I never had a chance to ask her. She died while I was at the war.’
Jeremy was silent for a moment, then went on: ‘Mother was just a little mouse of a thing. She was the daughter of Welsh parents. Her father was a miner . . . worked in the copper mines of Moonta. South Australia was founded largely on Welsh and Cornish mining stock . . . so much for the aristocrat in me! She was a music teacher when Da met her. God knows what the attraction was. There was even the barrier of religion. She was Bible-thumping Baptist, and he Catholic . . . and being Catholic in those days was something black . . . Black Irish. This land of liberty has a beautiful history of bigotry, believe me. The religious bigotry’s largely gone . . . but I’m sure the bigot is still in us. Anyway, she became a Catholic to marry Da. Her parents wiped her for it. I never met them . . . I’m glad to say. I suppose it was all Da’s doing . . . the big walk-you-down talk-you-down Irish policeman. What he wanted must have been a wife who simply wouldn’t interfere with what he wanted to do . . .’
‘Not a Rhoda type?’
‘Exactly . . . yet he and Rhoda got on famously . . . and it was really through him that I came to marry her.’
‘Your father chose your wife for you?’ She was staring again.
He grimaced: ‘More or less. There was something of your blood-transfusion business about it. You see, we grew up with the idea of marrying well, as Da used to put it . . . and Ma echoed him. Of course with the idea of becoming Landed Gentry. Rhoda was squattocracy, but without acres. She was the daughter of the local Administrator of the day, Colonel Johns, a Boer War veteran and scion of southern squattocracy with more scions than square miles to share. Her mother was connected with your Macarthur-Onslows, no less. Da as Police Inspector gave us some social status to begin with. People tend to forget that inspectors were originally only common coppers. I suppose it stems from the old days when those who ran the police were military men. The Administrator here is also Commissioner of Police and a retired military man. You’ve met old Bullco, of course. He started as a mounted trooper, just like Da. He’s always one of the elite at Race Time. Well, there was Rhoda, brought up to look for a young man to marry who had the means to make her a true member of the class she was born into and who also had the need of that connexion of hers to accept it as her dowry. She was a handsome girl . . .’
‘She’s still very handsome.’
‘She was nineteen when I met her . . . I twenty-three. We had a fine town house, originally belonging to a Chinese tycoon of the Caroline Gold Rush days, acquired by Da through his power as a policeman over the Chinese community. We were guests at Government House. We were already Delacys and the makings of squatters. Jack and I had taken our holdings in that name. Da didn’t come into it officially till he’d retired from the police. Then we were Delacy and Sons. An important thing to remember of what I’m telling you is that I personally held the Lu-lalla-goon, or Knowles Creek, bit of country on a mining lease. Da wasn’t concerned about it, because he foresaw the building of the railway on down to the Beatrice, and planned eventual setting up of our homestead and headquarters there. What we first had on Knowles Creek was only a sapling and antbed and corrugated iron affair.’ He concentrated for a while on negotiating a washed-out creek crossing, saying that this track was very little used. The country was becoming rough.
He resumed his story: ‘Rhoda and I became engaged . . . and my preoccupation to build the finest homestead in the land. Don’t forget I was taking my bride out of the grandest household, Government House. Da raised little objection to my insistence on remaining at Lu-lalla-goon. After all, I was the means to our end as squattocracy. Rhoda wasn’t concerned about the location. She’d heard my enthusiastic descriptions of my choice, and my plans for building . . . installation of the first electricity and cold storage outside of Port Palmeston. Besides, like all squatters’ ladies she would be spending at least half her time in Town. Da had his Chinese minions build it for me. Although there’s no worse jerry-builder than a Chinaman, there’s also no tradesman like him, either, when he wants to be. That house is dowelled from top to bottom, and not a stick of it but what’s proof against rot and termites. They milled their timber on the spot, all of it the best of local stuff, and pit-sawn by hand. They even built into it a Chinese blessing. As soon as it was finished I married my bride. But I didn’t take her straight there. That would’ve been too much like the selector, the cocky farmer as he’s called down South, taking his wife bush after the wedding to the bark humpy he’s built for her on his newly cleared selection. We were squatters. We had to have our honeymoon abroad . . . and going abroad in these parts meant what was called ‘going East’. It would be laughable but for the danger of our future as a nation . . . but, believe it or not, what we called The East, and still do, actually lies northwest of us mainly . . . such being our orientation, our bearings taken eternally from our spiritual centre, the British Isles! It was the done thing to go East. It still is. It gives you the Tuan touch. You learn to clap your hands to summon your coloured servants, instead of yelling . . . to drink stengahs, instead of plain whisky, to speak of lunch as tiffin . . . God help us!’ He chuckled deeply.
Then he sighed: ‘But the honeymoon could not have been more pleasant. I considered myself very much in love . . . I was! I believed myself the luckiest man in the world. In fact, the only unpleasantness I can recall in all our years of being actually together was the occasion I mentioned . . . when she objected to my weakness, as she called it, for succouring maimed and sick creatures. Even that didn’t make a lot of difference. I called her hard. I think she even liked to be told so. She was hard on the blacks, our servants . . . not cruel . . . just strict to the point of never permitting a smile to pass between them and herself, or a laugh or giggle between themselves in her presence. She declared it was the proper way to treat them to get the best service . . . and, on results, she was right. I insisted on indulging that so-called weakness of mine, but had to keep my creatures, including sick blacks, out of her sight. I set up a kind of hospital-cum-menagerie well away from the Big House. The fact that I was a Veterinary Surgeon . . . through Da’s pull I’d been registered as such . . . was something even to my discredit with her. Having scientific knowledge of animal husbandry was perhaps permissible in a squatter . . . but the Vet was the fellow you called in to attend some beast you considered too valuable to shoot.’
They were now in a great bight of the escarpment through the tumbled wilderness of trees and rock of which the bright cliffs could be glimpsed from three sides. She remarked on the colourfulness: ‘Those reds! Is that why it’s called the Painted Caves?’
‘No . . . the caves are literally galleries of Aboriginal paintings . . . not really caves at all, but overhangs of the cliff-faces . . . there wouldn’t be much sense in painting in caves, where there was no sunlight . . . although it is done in cases of deep secrecy . . . or was, rather. No one paints here an
y more, except that old fellow I was telling you about, and that’s only in special galleries. His galleries are over that way.’ He jerked his chin northward. ‘Ours are in there.’ This time the indication was westward. There was a glimpse of the galvanised iron shed ahead. ‘Our dinner camp,’ he said. In a moment they emerged onto the little flat where the shed and small stockyard stood beside the waterhole.
Alighting and taking hold of the tucker-box behind, Jeremy said to Prindy, ‘Get some firewood . . . pipey stuff, because I want to grill some meat . . . and look-about track . . . that old-man, mate belong o’ you, might be round here.’
Carrying the tucker box to the shelter, he said to Lydia, already out and looking about, ‘We’re trespassing really. This shed belongs to His Lordship. But I guess he’d rather you ate here than with the ants.’
She smiled: ‘As I feel about him at the moment I’d as soon eat with the ants.’
‘Ah . . . but what about the ants? They might object. It’s only the transplanted things of this land that’d love you for your blue blood. Others might find it even objectionable.’
‘What are you getting at?’
‘The boy there . . . did you notice he wrinkled his nose as he passed you just now?’
Her eyes widened. He added, ‘No offence meant . . . maybe it was your perfume he didn’t like.’
She snapped: ‘I don’t use perfume . . . except on occasions.’
‘Then it must have been your body odour.’
She opened her mouth, shut it. He went on: ‘I told you no offence meant. He’s not used to the smell of whitewomen, that’s all.’
She snapped: ‘I hope I don’t smell like one of those old black women!’
‘You couldn’t . . . no matter how dirty you were . . . nor they like you, no matter how clean. Body odour’s a matter of race. The awful truth is we stink a bit to them as they to us. Just thought you’d like to know . . . along with other things that seem like the realities of life to me.’ He turned to Prindy, bringing wood: ‘You see any track?’
‘Dat old-man can’t leave him track.’
‘Hum . . . you’re right . . . I forgot. We’ll make a smoke for him, anyway. He’s sure to see it . . . or smell it.’ Jeremy turned back to Lydia: ‘I’m going to grill some steak. Hope you like grills?’
‘Love ’em.’
‘This one’ll be in real bush fashion . . . bush meat, eaten the bushman’s way.’
‘What . . . is it native food?’
‘No . . . not native in the least. The only difference from the ordinary steak you get round here is it doesn’t belong either to Boss Vaisey or Bos Taurus . . . if you follow me.’
‘I don’t. Is the latter another of your black beasts?’
He chuckled: ‘No . . . but the late owner of this steak was rather that . . . Bos Bubalus.’
‘You’re talking in riddles.’
‘Rather . . . but I hope you’ll enjoy it as no other meat you’ve ever tasted.’ He proceeded to start the fire.
‘Go on with the story of your wife.’
‘My first wife. I’d quite forgotten her.’
‘She hasn’t forgotten you.’
‘How would you know?’
‘Women know these things.’
Now cutting green twigs with a clasp knife, sharpening some of them, Jeremy resumed his story: ‘Well . . . I’d got the Delacy dynasty established for Da. He remained the virtual head of it as long as it lasted . . . was spared the grief it certainly would’ve cost him to see it brought down. He and Jack . . . and Rhoda, who showed increasing interest in the management . . . ran the place. My part became more and more in the laboratory. We have some bad poisonous plants round here. They had to be identified, located, eradicated if possible or else made inaccessible to stock. Bad seasons’ll drive ’em to eat all kinds of things. Then there were diseases . . . swamp-cancer, fly-fevers . . . the pleuro, black-leg, red-water . . . everything bad from outside the country was brought in to add to what was bad inside it, of course. What had looked easy at first . . . wide fertile land got for the asking, good stock acquired for a song . . . proved to be something very different. They were inclined to think I made too much of the scientific side, having their own troubles. We’d started in a period of boom. We had to learn about markets . . . or they did, anyway. We were all preoccupied in our way. Rhoda had the additional preoccupation of the two children and her precious social position. We didn’t know it . . . but we were drifting apart from the start. It happens to most couples, of course. Statistics, which can be very useful things, despite the dishonesty that can be worked with ’em, show that the average marriage becomes a sort of compromise, from the disillusionments following the honeymoon period to a point between the fifth and eighth year, when either something like true mateship’s established, or the thing goes to pieces. Meantime the thing hangs together through the habit of sexual congress . . .’
‘Habit?’
‘It’s largely habit in marriage.’
‘Was she frigid?’
‘No . . . quite the contrary.’
‘I shouldn’t have thought so . . . with a man like you.’
He turned from her quickly to attend the fire.
‘She’s frigid now,’ she added.
He answered as if absently, ‘That’s her business, I guess.’ He went on: ‘The fire’s about right. Now . . . you’ve got to do your own grilling. Just watch us. Take these.’ He handed her an enamel plate on which was a thick slice of bread and an opened clasp knife. The steak, already salted, stood ready in a dish. ‘Right, boy . . . you show Missus.’
Prindy cleared away ashes from the coals with a brush of leaves, then dropped green twigs on them. Then, taking up a piece of steak on one of the sharpened sticks, he dropped it onto the others smoking on the coals.
‘Smells good,’ said Lydia.
Prindy turned the meat. It was quickly done. He lifted it onto his slice of bread, wrapped the bread round it, was lifting the combination to his mouth, when Jeremy said sharply, ‘No-more . . . whitefeller ringer fashion . . . use the knife.’
Prindy reached for the clasp knife, when, holding the folded bread and beef in his left hand, with thumb sticking up, and gripped the knife similarly in the right, bringing the whole level with his mouth, he proceeded to slice off a chunk, collecting it with fingers freeing themselves somewhat from the knife handle, and with the knife brought almost to his nose, stuffed the morsel in his mouth. Juice oozed from his lips to his vigorous chewing.
Jeremy did the same, while Lydia watched. He looked at her after despatching his portion, saying, ‘The knife work’ll be too much for you. Likely to cut yourself. Just wanted to show you how it’s done. Bush etiquette. Just chuck yours onto the bread and gorge it.’
She said, ‘I’ll try the knife . . . since it’s etiquette.’
But her attempt was useless and dangerous. He took the knife, saying, ‘Go on . . . eat it like what a good bushman would call a pig.’
She bit into the folded piece, chewed, with juice exuding. She swallowed it, wiped the juice from her chin with a white hand, said, ‘Delicious!’
‘Nice to see you enjoying it . . . although a bit disgusting to one used to good manners round a camp-fire.’
She choked over the next bite, then laughing said, ‘You’re really bent on cutting me down to size, aren’t you!’
‘Not really . . . only trying to show you there’re other ways of living than by the code you think’s holy because it’s yours.’
‘I don’t think anything of the sort. But aren’t you eating any more yourself?’
‘I’ve trained myself in the habit of only two meals a day. You carry on. I’ll just sip beer and go on with the story. Where was I?’
‘You were talking of the critical period in marriage . . . the fifth to the eighth year . . . and the habit of sexual congress, as you called it. I understood it was children kept married people together after love had flown out the window . . .’
‘No . . . habit. Habit’s one of the strongest forces in nature. You can’t make habits of children. They largely bewilder you by their constant changing . . . But let me get on with it. In our eighth and most critical year we were parted by the War . . .’
‘That War parted a lot of people . . . including my own parents. You put the blame on Vaiseys.’
‘Madam, you’re speaking with your mouth full, which while perfectly good bush etiquette, isn’t good for the digestion. You’ve a long walk and a stiff climb. Besides, if you don’t stop eating you won’t be able to walk at all . . . By the way, the steak was buffalo . . . Bos Bubalus to a Vet.’
A look of alarm seized her. He said quickly, ‘Don’t tell me that after finding it so delicious learning what it is is going to turn you up?’
She swallowed: ‘No . . . but they’re such horrible-looking things.
‘Where’d you see buffalo?’
‘From the plane. We flew low over some in a swamp. They came out . . . hundreds of them . . . hideous, slimy things.’ She shuddered.
‘I don’t like the look of ’em myself . . . and I shoot ’em on sight as imported pests . . . but surely they’re no worse than a pig . . . and you eat pork?’ She nodded, wiping her greasy mouth with her hand. ‘There you are again . . . prejudice against the unknown . . . habit. Now go and wash up.’
Lydia came back from the waterhole smiling: ‘I wasn’t sick. I was just surprised. I really did enjoy it.’
‘Good girl!’ Jeremy turned to Prindy: ‘Sonny, we go now. You stop here. Might be old man come. You tell him wait for me, eh?’
Jeremy led the way along a rough track, instructing her to take it easy and to call on him to stop whenever she felt the pace too hard; and as they went he resumed his story: ‘My brother Jack was off to the War like a shot. He’d badly wanted to drop his apprenticeship and go to the Boer War . . . but Da had prevented it, calling it a British War of Oppression . . . behind closed doors, of course, because he was a loyal officer of the Queen outside. But I think Da was mainly concerned for those plans of his. This time was different. In fact it was the squatter thing to do, to get into khaki and a hat with emu’s feathers . . . and, of course, pips on your shoulders. Our democratic system’s against the officer and gentleman business of the British Army. You don’t automatically become an officer because you’re well placed. You’ve got to enlist as a private soldier like everybody else. You can’t expect a commission till you’ve had your uniforms tailored. Have a blow, eh?’
Poor Fellow My Country Page 23
