Poor Fellow My Country

by Xavier Herbert

  Bridie went out, to be heard soon inside the hotel shutting doors, When at length she returned she was carrying a handbag. ‘Feeling better?’ she asked.

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘Like something to eat?’

  ‘No thanks.’

  ‘Sorry I won’t be able to leave you in here. I’ll have to lock up everything . . . because of the blacks.’

  ‘The blacks?’

  ‘Yes . . . there’s a mob of desert blacks camped back in the bush there . . . waiting for the miners to come in . . . to get booze off ’em. Knowing I wasn’t here and the boys out to it, they’d help themselves . . . and then, God help us!’

  Lydia stared with blue eyes wide: ‘You’re going away somewhere?’

  ‘Yes . . . I have to go to Boulder Creek to get some things we need. Can’t let Con go like he is. And most likely tomorrow we’ll have some miners in. Sorry to leave you. You’d best stay in your room. Our own blacks can’t be trusted. Well, I must be off. Won’t be long. Only about three hours. The boys should be right again by then. Coming out to the car with me?’ Bridie’s face was flushed, her eyes shining, her actions quick and nervous. Lydia kept staring at her.

  Bridie dowsed the light, shut the wooden door of the kitchen and locked it. They went round the hotel in shadow, with all the world elsewhere ablaze. Away to the West a mournful sound. Lydia looked towards it. ‘Dingoes,’ said Bridie. ‘There’re mobs round here . . . although it might be blacks. They use animal sounds as signals.’

  They went to Jeremy’s utility. Opening the door on the driving side, Bridie said, ‘I’ll fill her up in town for you.’ She flopped into the seat. From staring at her, Lydia looked back at the still and silent hotel, all silver-white and jet. Bridie asked, rather breathlessly: ‘You wouldn’t like to come for the run, would you?’

  Lydia hesitated, then muttered, ‘All right,’ and went round to the other side. Bridie reached to open the door for her. Her lips moved as she started up. Lydia asked, ‘What’d you say?’

  Bridie turned with a smile: ‘I was just praying.’

  ‘Praying . . . why?’

  ‘Oh . . . safe, successful journey. Brought up religious.’

  ‘Oh!’

  The car was moving, gathering speed. In top gear and settled down, Bridie said, ‘I suppose you went to some swell ladies’ college. My school was only the little old convent in Palmeston.’

  ‘No. I had governesses . . . and my grandfather taught me a lot.’

  ‘Your grandfather’s a Duke, isn’t he?’

  Lydia sighed: ‘Yes.’

  ‘Tell me about it?’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘Being a Duchess, and all that.’

  ‘I’m not a Duchess . . . and I’d rather you told me about yourself.’

  ‘What’s to tell about poor me. Just a barmaid married to a barman . . . running a blood-house in the desert.’

  ‘What’s a blood-house?’

  ‘Don’t know exactly. Name for a bush pub. Where they suck men’s blood, I suppose it means . . . rob ’em while they’re drunk.’

  Lydia looked at her: ‘You wouldn’t do anything like that?’

  Bridie shrugged: ‘You don’t know me.’

  ‘Jeremy likes you.’

  Now Bridie glanced at the dim white face: ‘What’s that mean?’

  ‘Well . . . he wouldn’t like anyone unless there was something special about them’.

  Their eyes clung for an instant, causing the car to skid in bulldust. Bridie concentrated on her driving. Lydia leaned back. They were silent for a long while, as the car sped on.

  At length Lydia asked, ‘How far is it to . . . this place you’re going?’

  ‘Boulder Creek? About fifty miles. It’s a bit slow here, ’cause of the bulldust . . . but the other side of the range is gravel, and you can make it up on there. Like to stop and pee or something?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘I always stop for a pee on top of the range. So does everybody. Piss Ridge they call it. I suppose Jeremy told you about it.’

  ‘No. Why should he?’

  ‘Well . . . he’s supposed to be showing you the country, isn’t he?’

  ‘He is showing me the country.’

  ‘He naturally would. It’s his first love . . . Terra Australis. I suppose he’s talked about it all the time to you?’

  ‘Not all the time.’

  Another long silence, broken this time by Bridie: ‘Jeremy once told me this . . . we were talking about love . . . he said: “A man’s only happy when he’s pursuing a mad idea or a bad woman!”’

  Lydia was slow in asking: ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘What I says, I guess.’

  ‘I mean . . . what’s your telling me supposed to mean?’

  ‘Oh, nothing. I just thought of it . . . ’cause we were talking about Jeremy and love.’

  ‘We were talking about Jeremy and Australia, weren’t we?’

  ‘Well, that’s the same thing to Jeremy. That’s his mad idea, like.’

  Another silence, till Bridie said, ‘If it’s right a man’s happy only when he’s pursuing a mad idea or a bad woman . . . a bad woman would be happy only pursuing a man with a mad idea, eh?’

  Lydia replied, ‘I’m afraid I’m not up to riddles at the moment.’

  ‘Poor dear . . . all that brandy, and hock. We’ll have a snort when we get up the hill. Jeremy’s always got a bottle of brandy aboard.’

  ‘You know a lot about him, don’t you.’

  ‘Known him all my life.’

  After a moment Lydia asked, ‘Do you love him?’

  Bridie started visibly, but didn’t turn, and when she answered it was with a shrug: ‘What’s the good of loving a man with a mad idea?’

  ‘Perhaps it’s men with mad ideas that women really do love.’

  Bridie glanced then: ‘You could be right at that.’ After a while she added, ‘But, of course, there’s love and love, isn’t there.’

  ‘How’d’you mean?’

  ‘Well . . . if a woman loved a man with a mad idea so’s to help him with it, her love would be different from that of a woman who only wanted to take it off of him . . . Look, there’s the ridge. See, it’s like a wall. It’s quite steep.’

  Soon they were running in coarse gravelly stuff that caused Bridie to slow down. A couple of dark wallabies dashed into the light, which she dowsed to let them get away, remarking, ‘Rock wallabies. What they live on here, God knows . . . no grass, no water.’

  Then they were climbing the ridge. It took them up some three hundred feet, with engine roaring and fenders clangorous with the pounding of upflung stones. Neither spoke. At last they were on top, on a little stretch of flat, along which Bridie ran for a hundred yards or so before stopping. Moonlight revealed heaps of rock on either side. ‘Pee,’ she said, and alighted. Lydia did likewise. Bridie began to move away to the right. Lydia came hurrying round the car in pursuit of her. Bridie said, ‘Better stay here. Pretty rough over these rocks. I’m only going to try my luck . . . What’s the matter, you scared?’ She stood, regarding Lydia for a moment, then said, ‘Oh, this’ll do. I can try my luck any time.’ She hitched up her dress, pulled down her drawers, squatted, piddled voluminously as a mare. Lydia, longer on the job by reason of her outfit, was still at it when Bridie rose, and putting herself to rights, said, ‘You showed no curiosity about why they call it Piss Ridge . . . but I’d better tell you, seeing no one else’s likely to, and you’re supposed to be getting to know the country.’

  Lydia, up now, was staring at her. Bridie continued: ‘This’s a fairly new road. The old one was the camel pad following the OTL through bad sand over that way.’ She nodded eastward. ‘Well, when the motor vehicles started coming this way, there was a man named Noble, who got out here to have a pee . . . and what’d he see in the rock he pee’d on but gold. It started a bit of a rush. That’s what led ’em to the gold over West there. They still find prospects here. So everybody pees
here . . . hence the name . . . which they changed on the map to Pisgah.’ She chuckled, adding, ‘Aren’t you interested to see if you’ve had any luck yourself?’ When Lydia merely glanced at the dark patch she’d left, Bridie said, ‘But a bit of gold wouldn’t interest you, eh . . . with the Vaisey millions?’

  Lydia looked up sharply. Bridie headed back to the car, but stopped short of it, to turn back to Lydia at her heels and say in a different voice, vibrant and somewhat breathless, ‘Want to talk to Your Ladyship, before we go on . . . if we’re going on.’

  Lydia looked scared, but asked in a haughty tone, ‘What is it you want with me?’

  ‘To make a kind of bargain.’

  Lydia swallowed: ‘Is this some kind of trick?’

  ‘No trick. You came of your own free will.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Well, you see . . . while you were snoring off with the boys . . . by the way, they didn’t really have another session . . . I drugged ’em . . .’

  ‘You . . .’

  ‘Wait. While you were asleep I phoned through to the Boulder and arranged accommodation for you . . . best hotel, of course . . . not anything like so grand as you’re used to . . . but they’ll give you the red carpet treatment. Then I got onto the Post Office there and sent a wire for you to Lord Vaisey . . .’

  ‘How dare you!’

  ‘Yes . . . it’s a cheek, isn’t it. But they’re used to me sending wires for drunks. I said in the wire that you’d be waiting for him in his plane at Boulder Creek. That was the arrangement, I understand, that he was to pick you up somewhere when you’d finished with Jeremy, wasn’t it? At least that’s what they’ve been saying on the phone from Palmeston to the Centre since yesterday morning. And seeing that you’ve now finished with Jeremy . . .’

  ‘Who says I’m finished with him?’

  ‘I do . . . now wait, listen. I’ve worked this all out carefully. Unless you agree to go quietly into that hotel and take the room I’ve booked for you, and stop there till your sugar-daddy comes to pick you up, you won’t only be finished with Jeremy, but with everybody and everything . . .’cause, lady, I’m going to leave you right here. Now, you haven’t met anyone along the road, I mean travelling, in five hundred miles, have you ? Shows you what this road’s like this time of the year. Droving’s finished. People from the Boulder don’t go to the Beatrice Races. So your luck’d be dead in if anyone came along here within a week . . . and you’d be well and truly dead long before that. It’s only twenty-five mile to the Boulder, or back to our place . . . but twenty-five mile’s a long long walk for anyone not used to it, with no hat, no water, laughin’-side boots, and the murderous Sun . . . to say nothing of adders, dingoes, and wild blacks. You wouldn’t do five mile before you lay down and perished, like so many who’ve tried to do it a lot better equipped than you. I’d have it on my soul. But it wouldn’t be as bad as having on it the crime of letting you ruin that lovely man . . .’

  ‘What d’you mean ruin him?’

  ‘Don’t tell me you don’t think everybody in the country, except the poor silly man himself, doesn’t know what your game is?’

  ‘My game . . . what game?’

  ‘To get him in your clutches so’s he won’t be able to fight Vaiseys.’

  Lydia’s voice was strangled as she said, ‘If you think that, you’re mad . . . I love him!’

  ‘Ahhh . . . don’t give me that!’ Bridie’s breathlessness was quite gone.

  Lydia was heaving for breath now: ‘I do . . . I do! I never felt for any other man what I do for him.’

  ‘That’s no proof you love him. Anyway . . . do you agree to what I say?’

  Lydia shrugged: ‘Oh, I agree. But has it occurred to you that I can hire somebody to drive me straight back here?’

  ‘You can try . . . but I doubt if you’ll get anybody after what I told ’em.’

  ‘What did you tell them?’

  ‘It’ll keep . . . but the chief thing is Lord Vaisey coming to pick you up.’

  ‘I don’t give a damn about Lord Vaisey. It’s Jeremy Delacy I want.’

  ‘And if you had him, what’d you do with him?’

  ‘That’s my business.’ Lydia was haughty again.

  ‘I’ll bet it is. It wouldn’t be his.’

  ‘What d’you mean by that?’

  ‘That bad woman with the good man with the mad idea.’

  ‘He’s as he is only because he’s been disappointed in love.’

  ‘You reckon?’

  ‘I know. He told me his life story.’

  ‘I’ve watched his life story being told since I was a baby. It didn’t make me want to steal his ideals from him.’

  ‘I don’t want to steal anything from him. I want to give to him.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘A child, for a start. He’s a natural aristocrat . . .’

  ‘Don’t make me laugh!’ Bridie actually giggled.

  ‘You haven’t any cause to laugh.’

  ‘Haven’t I? Shows you how much you understand Jeremy Delacy . . . him with a son an English duke or something . . . ha, ha, ha!’ The mirth was genuine.

  Lydia snapped, ‘You couldn’t have children by him at all!’

  Bridie stiffened: ‘Where’d you get that?’

  ‘Your own husband told me.’

  ‘My own husband?’

  ‘Yes . . . I’m sorry to be cruel . . . but you’ve asked for it.’

  Bridie stared at her for a moment, then said shortly, ‘Go on . . . get in.’

  As Lydia took her seat she said to Bridie starting up, ‘You can’t win, you know.’

  ‘We’ll see about that.’ Bridie’s lips were moving again.

  Lydia sneered: ‘Praying again? Praying to God to strike me or something?’

  ‘Praying to the Virgin Mary for something you wouldn’t understand.

  ‘Why wouldn’t I understand . . . because I didn’t go to school in a convent?’

  ‘Just because you’re what you are.’

  Lydia shrugged. They were running on. From the southern edge of the ridge could be seen a faint glow on the horizon just under the low-hung Cross, which Bridie remarked on as being from the lights of the township of Boulder Creek. Lydia made no reply. Nor was there any exchange between them for the best part of half an hour, during which they sped, as Bridie had predicted, at a great bat, along a dead straight road of hard red gravel. The silence was broken as they were coming so close to the township that its glow had become individual pricks of light. Bridie said, ‘If you’re thinking of rushing back to Jeremy and get the chance, which I very much doubt, you’ll be wasting your time, because he’ll be out to it for quite a while. If you’re also thinking of ringing him up tomorrow, you can forget that, too, ’cause the phone’ll be off the hook.’

  Lydia answered now, calmly, ‘Don’t you realise the risk you’ve taken drugging us? What if I were to inform the police?’

  ‘I didn’t drug you, duckey . . . you just keeled over on your own. As for informing on me . . . it’s old-established practice in these parts to drug drunks. It isn’t called drugging, by the way, but knockin’ ’em . . . giving them the knock-out-drops. We often have to do it to stop men from drinking themselves crazy . . . for their own sakes as much as our own.’

  ‘And to rob them more easily too, eh what? You did mention robbing them, you know.’

  ‘You mustn’t forget, Your Ladyship, that we’re the descendants of criminal types.’

  ‘I was beginning to remember it, as a matter of fact.’

  ‘I guess it was your mob made ’em criminals.’

  ‘My mob?’

  ‘Your bloomin’ ancestors!’ After a moment Bridie added, ‘But don’t be scared of ’em drugging and robbing you in the Boulder. The pub you’re going to’s run by a Greek. Now, they do know how to treat a lady, these Greeks. Ever since that royal princess of theirs married that English prince of yours . . . I forget their names . . . they’ve acted like they’d all marrie
d into the British Royal Family. No dinky-di Aussie boy would dream of marrying a Greek girl, of course. Must be different with the English. But then, a dinky-di Aussie’d think twice about marrying a Pommy, too . . .’

  ‘Didn’t you?’

  ‘He’s Irish. It’s only the English are Poms.’

  Lydia said nothing. Now tin shacks in ragged gardens appeared beside the road. There were electric lights slung on wires across a main street wide enough to drove a fair-sized cattle station’s whole year’s turn-off through. A few shops, with windows barred to save them from reeling drunks. A few of the latter, and the little low-roofed iron blood-houses they’d come out of, places with names like Imperial Hotel, Royal Arms, The Grand. Then the most dignified structure of all, two-storeyed, with railed balcony above, and below not just a couple of scratched frosted windows painted with the word bar, but a blaze of lighted fluted glass with blinds and curtains, bars labelled Public, Private, Saloon, and a wide doorway giving entrance to a hall carpeted in red and ornamented with ebony stands carved to represent blackboys holding aloft brass bowls filled with artificial flowers — the Princess Marina.

  As Bridie halted the car before the hallway, Lydia asked coldly, ‘What was it you told them here about my coming?’

  ‘I was just going to tell you for your own sake. I said the boys got on the booze, and you thought it no place for a lady to spend the night. They know what it’s like when the miners get in there . . . and they’re not to know there aren’t any there now. They also know that Con gets on it pretty bad. You’ve got your name up large enough in these parts already, lady, for hooking onto Jeremy like you did. You’ll do it altogether by asking to be driven back there . . . But here’s your host.’

  A plump and swarthy little man, surely dressed up for the occasion, in the black and starched-white of the true maître d’hôtel, was coming bouncing from the hall. Bridie got out, and saying, ‘Hello, Nicko,’ went to get Lydia’s suitcase from the rear.

  Nicko had Lydia’s door open in a flash, and bent double as she stepped out. There was a sudden explosion of faces out of doors and windows behind him. Bridie handed the case to Nicko, who took it without looking at her. Then she said, ‘The Duchess of Lyndhaven.’