Poor Fellow My Country

by Xavier Herbert

  Nicko bowed even lower, mumbling, ‘Your Gryce!’

  Bridie leapt back behind the wheel, slipped into gear, grinned at the blank-faced Lydia, calling, ‘Cheeri-ho, old bean . . . pip, pip!’ and shot away, laughing . . . but only to be crying within fifty yards. She pulled up before a store, sat dabbing her eyes, till a man roused her.

  ‘Hello, Bride . . . where’s your royal passenger? What, you been cryin’? Wha’ wen’ wrong?’

  ‘Nothing wrong, Sam. Only sad to lose her. She was such a dear. Got the groceries ready? I’ll go and get ’em while you fill the tank . . . and the drum in the back there, too.’

  She got out of talking to inquisitive people in the shop first by going to the lavatory, and then by saying she was in a hurry to get back home. With the car loaded, she swung it round, heading for home, with just a glance at the Princess Marina Hotel as she passed on the other side. Then in no time she was out on the long red road again, and speeding so that the flying gravel roared in the fenders like ore in a ball-mill, and praying most of the time, by the moving of her lips, voicing the prayer at last as she came to the ridge again and began to climb it: ‘Hail Bridie, full of Grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women at last, and blessed will be the fruit of thy womb. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for me now, and in my hour of conception . . . and forgive me my sin, if it is one . . . but I’ve got to do it, or my heart will die . . . Amen.’

  At the top she halted where they had before, and got out, saying, ‘Yes . . . I’ll pee on top of where she did, for luck.’

  Then on down the hill, with the Moon now well down the sky on her left and with tree-shadows making the dusty road still more hazardous to travel, but by no means reducing her speed. Twice she almost slewed the car right round, gasping, ‘Mother of God!’

  As she drew up to the Prospector’s Alms her headlights revealed a figure seated in a cane chair on the verandah. It rose — a grey-haired man in pearl grey shirt and trousers. He came out to meet her as she stopped at the step. He opened the door for her. She didn’t move, but staring at him, asked, ‘Well?’

  He countered quietly: ‘Well what?’

  ‘Aren’t you going to ask me what I did?’

  He regarded her for a moment, then said, ‘I presume you didn’t do anything cruel or mean.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Right . . . forget it. But what about opening the joint and getting me a drink. I’m doing a perish.’

  She came sliding out, and getting her feet on the ground, flung herself upon him, kissing him quickly on the mouth, then, still clinging, dropped her dark head on his breast. He held her lightly, murmuring, ‘What’s this in aid of?’

  She didn’t answer, but clung a little longer, then let go, reached for the handbag on the seat and asked him would he get the box of groceries from the back, and started towards the verandah. She opened up, the bar as well, and by the slanting moonlight in the hall got a bottle of brandy and a couple of soda waters, saying to Jeremy as he came into the hall, ‘Let’s go to the kitchen.’

  Settled in the kitchen, over their first drink, she asked, ‘When’d you wake?’

  ‘When I heard you start the ute. But I was a bit too dopey to get up for a while. What’d you give me . . . Hexobarbitone?’

  ‘Yes. I left you strong coffee in a Thermos to help you get over it quickly. Did you find it?’

  ‘Yes . . . but I could’ve done with a hair of the dog as well.’

  ‘You told me never to let Con have a drink too soon after it, or it’d knock him again.’

  ‘That was for the long-acting stuff, Barbitone. But what’s the idea of giving a man who wasn’t really drunk knock-drops, and at the same time coffee to get over it quickly?’

  She ignored the question, asked another, ‘Are you hungry?’

  ‘Starving.’

  ‘I brought some fresh bread. We’ll have venison sandwiches, with mustard, eh? And brandy . . . lashings of brandy.’

  ‘What . . . are we going to have another party?’

  She looked at him frankly: ‘I hope so.’ She had risen, was going to get the food. She paused beside him, pressed her belly against his arm, and stroked his wavy grey hair. Flushing, he looked up, saying, ‘I did ask you what the show of affection was in aid of.’

  ‘Well, you’ve lost your girlfriend . . . so I thought you’d like to . . . to replace what you’ve lost.’

  He murmured, ‘Lost, stolen, or strayed.’

  She asked quickly, ‘Are you sorry to lose her?’

  ‘Not really. She was a bit of an embarrassment.’

  ‘Oh, go on! You were just goofy about her when you arrived.’

  ‘You imagined it.’

  ‘I was watching.’

  ‘For just that. Just because you’d heard who I was with. I’ve been through here with other females . . . and you didn’t have to go and lose ’em.’

  ‘I could have shot ’em, though!’

  He chuckled. She bent and kissed his hair. Then she went to get the food. He sliced the meat, while she cut bread and buttered it. While they were eating and drinking she said, ‘It’s an awful long while since we were alone together . . . for more than a few minutes, I mean.’

  He nodded. She said, ‘I still feel the same about you.’

  ‘You should have grown up in that time. What’s it . . . sixteen years?’

  ‘Yes. But you can’t say now you’re twice my age.’

  ‘Pretty near it.’

  ‘A long way off it. You’d have to be ten years older than you are. Besides, you were twice her age . . . and more!’

  ‘What’s that got to do with it?’

  ‘You’d have gone to bed with her, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘You’re speaking about a lady I know.’

  ‘A high-class trollop, you mean!’

  He shook his head as if sadly, but with a smile about his lips and in his grey eyes. They finished eating in silence. When she had cleared away, she came and poured more drinks and knelt beside him to drink hers, looking up at him with face burning, eyes aglow: ‘You said that time I came into your room and tried to get into bed with you that you’d love to have me . . . only I was too young, and under my father’s roof . . . Remember?’

  ‘Could I ever forget?’

  ‘I’m not too young now, Jeremy . . . and I’m not under my father’s roof.’

  ‘Try telling your old man this isn’t his roof!’

  ‘Be serious . . . ’cause I’m being serious . . . more serious than ever in my life.’

  He met the glowing black eyes. She went on: ‘You saw the letter and you know it’s true. Con only wants me when he’s drunk . . .’

  ‘Oh, go on! He adores you.’

  ‘I mean he only wants to . . . to have it, when he’s drunk. It’s ’cause he’s frightened . . . afraid he can’t do it. So he gets himself rotten . . . and tries and tries . . . and’s so drunk he thinks he does. It’s my fault. I’ve always kidded him he does, to pacify him.’

  He stared at her: ‘You mean he’s never done it?’

  ‘No . . . he’s managed it a couple of times . . . but always at the wrong time.’

  ‘What d’you mean the wrong time?’

  ‘Out of my fertile period.’

  ‘What do you know about fertile periods?’

  ‘Aren’t I a good Catholic, with a little prayer-wheel thing to stop me going to hell for using contraceptives?’

  ‘You’re not sterile, then?’

  ‘No. I’ve had myself examined. They said there’s nothing to prevent me having babies.’

  ‘Why did you ask me that time to give you something?’

  She lowered her eyes: ‘I . . . I was really asking you to give me a baby, Jeremy.’

  ‘Oh!’ He blinked, swallowed.

  She stroked his thigh, went on, murmuring, eyes still downcast, ‘I’m at my fertile period now. I always get desperate when I am. Poor Con can feel it. He’ll get drunk and try again, and . . .
oh, it’ll be just the same old thing. When I heard you were with her . . . up there at Beatrice, and then coming down here, I . . . I got so mad jealous . . .’

  He put his arm about her drooped shoulders. She straightened up quickly, seizing his fingers, squeezing them. She went on: ‘I’ve often thought of doing it with another man . . . some fair man, so’s Con wouldn’t know. But it felt too sinful . . . even if it’d be good for Con, as I’m sure it would be . . . and might even cure him of his fear.’ She paused, and looked at him earnestly: ‘But it wouldn’t be sinful with you, I’m sure . . . not with you, Jeremy.’ She dropped her dark curly head again and shoved it against his belly, murmuring, ‘’Cause I love you . . . have always loved you.’

  He bent and kissed her burning cheek. She raised her face quickly, seized his lips with her own, while he, with face as burning as hers, put both arms about her and drew at her drawing mouth.

  They broke away panting. She drew back a little and looked at him, the strain gone from her face, laughter lighting it. She said softly, quickly, ‘Let’s go to the bedroom.’

  He nodded, rose with her. She reached for the brandy bottle, saying, ‘You’ll want that.’

  He took it from her, put it back on the table, said huskily, ‘All I want is you, sweetheart.’

  She flung herself into his arms.

  The Moon went down. The kweeluks found a baby spirit wandering, danced around it in the starlight, calling, calling ‘Kweeluk . . . kweeluk . . . kweeluk-kweeluk . . . kweeeeeluk!’

  3

  I

  The Lily Lagoons household was in turmoil owing to the intrusion of Nelyerri Ah Loy in search of her son. Having forced Willy to divulge what he knew of the matter of Prindy’s escapade, she had him and Darcy take her to the Plateau, where she spent a whole day calling the boy and forcing her reluctant companions to add their voices to hers, punctuating appeals with threats to his alleged abductor, till the voices of all gave out. The search extended from the point of Prindy’s disappearance, up the escarpment, and round from Painted Caves to Snake Caves, although without looking into either of these wakji localities. Not a sound or a sign of those sought. Because Nell would not give up even after their voices had failed, it looked as if the hunt might go on into the night, the Moon being as it was and the sky clear. The Sun went down ruddy into Lord Vaisey’s dust. The dust was flaming like a bushfire, when the first sound of the long hard day was heard — ‘Mooboo!’ A single call to begin with, faint and far away in the waste of rock. They stopped to listen. Again — ‘Mooboo!’ But now it came from the rim of the escarpment. It could be a pair of goguls, or mopokes, beginning their night rounds.

  If it were goguls calling, there could be nothing sinister round about here, neither moomboos, nor such as they were familiar with, koornungs. Willy was explaining the significance of this, when there came another call from so close at hand as to make them start — ‘Mooboo!’ Darcy whispered that mopokes are never to be found within calling distance in more than pairs. Then another call from another point. Another. Suddenly the purpling rocks all round were ringing — ‘Mooboo, mooboo, mooboo, mooboo!’ Igulgul, that other old harrier of scary mortals, peering through the ragged bush, seemed to be laughing — ‘Hoo, hoo, hoo, hoo, hoo!’

  The party fled to the glowing edge of the escarpment, soon found a place to descend, went crashing down in such haste as to rouse the roosting birds for half a mile around and scatter the rock wallabies at their evening play. Down below, recovering her breath and a thread of her torn voice, Nell looked back up the wall and screeched, ‘All right, you bloody ol’ koornung bastard . . . I gitchim Targen Coon-Coon!’

  Back at the homestead, Nell refused to take the dose of Barbitone with which Nanago had been keeping the peace of nights since Sunday, accusing her now of being party to the abduction and of giving her poison. Worn out with the howling and the threatening, Nanago took the dose herself — and so failed in the vigil she had kept the past two nights, with Nell sleeping with her in the Big House. She woke unusually late on Wednesday to find her charge gone. Sharp eyes soon discovered that Nelyerri had set out at piccaninny daylight, which would be as early as she would have dared to venture forth alone, and that she was headed not back to the Plateau, but for Beatrice — to carry out her threat to get Sergeant Cahoon! Nanago ordered out the big truck, and along with Willy and Darcy, followed.

  It was one thing to catch up with Nell, but quite another to catch her. She had got almost to the turn-off to the Rainbow Pool, when, evidently hearing them coming, she went bush. There was no sense in trying to follow her through the scrub. They dawdled down the road a bit, yelling to her to have sense, and back, and down again, but only to the annoyance of the cockatoos and butcher birds. They even offered to take her into the township, without getting a reply. They kept it up till noon, then decided to go on in and report the matter to the police as they themselves understood it.

  The Police Station, like all other institutions of its kind in the land, was a dun-coloured wooden bungalow raised on stilts, the space beneath, partitioned, being for official use, that above, with verandahs latticed all round, the residence. It was fenced, with a tidy garden in front. Behind was the cell-block, looking like a row of privies. There were some sheds, and a tumbledown shack that was the tracker’s residence.

  Constable Stunke was in his office, doing what he would call ‘paperwork’, the bane of all policemen’s lives and perhaps the cause of his surly reception of his callers from Lily Lagoons, expressed by his keeping them a full hour before even acknowledging their presence and the scant attention he gave them subsequently. However, there was the fact that he still had Dinny Cahoon sick and sorry on his hands, and the prospect of having to suffer Dinny’s sisters, Kit and Tess, due in on this afternoon’s train and not due out before the train’s return to Town on Friday. He grunted: ‘If it’s true that the old bugger promised your boss he’d bring the kid back, what’re yo wasting my times for?’ He scarcely listened to what they said about Nelyerri’s mad coming. He only grunted again: ‘Nobody’s seeing Sergeant Cahoon. Now get . . . I got work to do before the train comes in.’

  As they left, Tracker Jinbul assailed them and tried to pump them, but without success. They went on to see the train come in.

  The Cahoon sisters were an odd pair: Kit tall and gaunt like Dinny, and probably ginger in her day, Tess comparatively short and plump, with a bloated veiny face and popping eyes. But that they were alike in disposition was evident even before they alighted and were seen to be crazily gathering their luggage while squawking like a couple of wet hens. Part of their baggage was a case containing special foods and drugs for their darlint, who it would seem from their babbling they beliaed was down wit’ the fever.

  Straight after seeing the train in, Nanago and Darcy set out for home, taking Willy along in the hope of meeting Nell within reasonable distance. They came on Nell’s tracks about eight miles out. Again they called, but without getting an answer. Willy dropped off, letting the others go on. After walking back about a mile he found her on the road again, ran to join her. Her greeting was: ‘Don’ you talk me, Chinee bastard!’ She was soaked with sweat and smothered in flies and limping. Still she kept on at full belt. He fell in behind her, silent.

  At last, there through the river trees were the white roofs of Beatrice homestead, lolly-pink in the sunset. She turned towards it, dropping down diagonally to the private causeway. It was no shorter to go that way than to keep straight on; but she may have wanted, in her misery, to get near that tardy lover of hers. Perhaps it was down on the grassy bank here where she stopped to drink and bathe her bruised feet and stand for a while looking wistfully about, that the tardy one first took her and in joy of it was conceived the cause of all this madness. They didn’t go any nearer the Big House than would be proper for their kind, and were seen by no one at the station but the blacks in the camp, who came out to stare, perhaps wondering at the odd sight of an Aboriginal woman’s walking in front of her
man, not behind.

  It was only a little more than a mile from Beatrice homestead to the township; yet by the time they had completed their journey, it was dark enough for lights to be shining in windows. The upstairs part of the Police Station was lit as for a party and as noisy with the claque of women’s tongues. Nelyerri flung open the garden gate and marched boldly in. Willy stopped outside.

  Nell’s precipitousness took her only to the foot of the steep steps leading up to the front door of the residence. She stopped with a hand on a rail, staring up. She turned swiftly when a shadowy figure appeared from out the office section. A male Aboriginal voice, labial-nasal in tone, asked, ‘Wha’ nam’ you want him?’

  It was Jinbul. She stared at him for a moment, before answering, ‘I talk Targen Coon-Coon.’

  ‘Can’t talk Targen. Him sick. Wha’ you want?’

  She turned away from him, began to ascend the stairs. He grabbed her arm. She flung off his hand, went bounding up, to yell through the open doorway, ‘Targen Coon-Coon!’

  The vocal din within fell silent. Jinbul was leaping up the stairs. As he grabbed her again, Nell screeched, ‘Targen Coon-Coon!’

  Thump of booted feet. There was Stunke, roaring, ‘What the hell you think you’re doing?’

  Her breast was heaving, face jerking. She gasped, ‘Wan’ talk Targen . . .’

  ‘Sergeant Cahoon’s sick.’

  ‘Dat old blackfeller steal him my boy . . .’

  ‘I heard all about it’s afternoon. Now get!’

  Her voice rose, ragged, ‘Targen Coon-Coon!’

  Stunke snapped at Jinbul, ‘Chuck her out’ and shut the door.

  Jinbul locked her arm behind her, put a hand over her mouth when she screamed, knee’d her in the behind when she bit him, propelled her to the bottom. Still keeping his hold on her arm, but releasing her mouth, he demanded, ‘Whaffor you want him Coon-Coon?’

  She panted, ‘Dat Cock-Eye Bob been steal him my lil boy . . . I want Targen gitchim.’

  ‘Targen can’t do nutching. I gitchim for you.’

  ‘Le’ me go!’