Alfie said swiftly, ‘Take us along with you and try us out.’
Jeremy made a pretended grimace of being shocked, murmuring, ‘Oh, dear!’
She said in the same swift tone, ‘We heard about your taking Lord Vaisey’s girlfriend off to do it last time.’
Jeremy’s face stiffened. He asked shortly, ‘What’s this?’
Frank shot his wife another of those looks; but again she ignored it. ‘Everybody’s talked about it. Most of them thought it a great joke.’
Jeremy said in the same tone, ‘Looks like another apology’s pending?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Talking of a lady friend of mine . . .’
Alfie cried, ‘Oh, go on . . . we know what really happened . . . she forced herself on you and Bridie Cullity shanghaied her away.’
‘Where’d you get that?’
‘Bridie Cullity’s been telling everybody.’
‘Indeed . . . I’ll have to have a word with Bridie.’
Alfie almost snapped, ‘That won’t be hard. She’s been looking for you. She’s even put it round that you’re going to be godfather to her baby at the Christening . . .’
Jeremy went very red.
Alfie evidently had had just a little too much. ‘People say you were lovers before she married.’
Jeremy could only stare.
Frank took Alfie’s hand, saying gently, ‘That’s enough, sweetheart . . . an apology is pending now.’
Alfie’s black eyes swam. She drooped her head, sniffed, then muttered, ‘I’m sorry . . . but . . . but you do sound . . . sanctimonious at times . . . I’m sorry, really.’
Jeremy drew a deep breath: ‘I guess I deserved it. You’re right about my attitude, Mrs Candlemas . . .’
‘Please call me Alfie.’
He drew another deep breath: ‘Alfie.’
‘Thank you’, she breathed.
‘Well, I think we’ll be getting along, eh?’ said Frank.
As they shook hands, with Nan first, Alfie kissed her, saying, ‘They told me you’re very sweet . . . you are.’ Nan smiled easily. Taking Jerry’s hand, Alfie said, ‘May I come to your stable tomorrow?’
‘Of course. Everybody’s welcome . . . except likely nobblers.’
‘What are nobblers?’
‘People who interfere with horses to affect their performance.’
‘I’m hardly likely to do that, do you think?’ She laughed.
He didn’t respond to the laugh, but added: ‘To nobble also means to play any underhand sort of game.’
She bridled: ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
Jeremy smiled: ‘Only what the word means. You did ask me. Goodnight. See you tomorrow.’
They went off arm in arm, silent until Alfie muttered, ‘Why did he say that?’
‘I’m sure I haven’t a clue, my love. He’s a strange man. That’s the kind of thing he does, so they say . . . says provocative things.’
‘Did he mean I was trying to nobble him?’
Frank chuckled, drawing her close, ‘Could be. I’ve seen you put a lot of likely lads off their performance.’
‘Oh, don’t be silly.’
‘I’m not the silly one. It’s the other fellows.’
‘I’ve a good mind not to go near him tomorrow.’
‘What . . . with that pretty blue dress and hat?’
She said bitterly, ‘He’d probably prefer a woman in a stockman’s hat and no shoes.’
‘Now, now . . . this is where we came in! When somebody else said that . . .’
‘I wasn’t referring to his halfcaste wife . . . although how such a man came to marry a halfcaste beats me.’
‘For the same reason, I guess, as you said he’d prefer a woman who wore a stockman’s hat and no shoes.’
‘Why is that?’
‘It was you who said it, darling. I presume you meant he wants just a bushwoman for a wife. They do say, you know, that the trouble between him and his ex-wife was that she wanted to be the lady, and he wouldn’t be in it.’
‘But a man with intelligence like that, having a woman like that! That’s probably most of his trouble, why he goes on the booze like that. If he had an intelligent woman beside him . . .’
‘He did have one . . . You can’t say Lady Rhoda isn’t intelligent. What she did was quite smart, actually . . .’
‘I mean with his own kind of intelligence. He’s a brilliant man. Look what Charlie Bishoff says about his scientific research. You can see it in his face. Hence the way he spoke of Australia. What he said is the exact truth. I hadn’t seen it before. We mustn’t let the old world drag us down with it. Here is the chance of the Brave New World . . . as Daddy used to say . . .’
He squeezed her close: ‘My daddy’s girl. Do you want to go back into the pub?’
‘No, for heaven’s sake! Let’s go for a long walk . . . out along the road.’
Passing Barbu’s, above the din of the Dance Hall down the road a little, they heard faint music. Alfie took it up, humming it: the Melody in F. She said, ‘Puts me in mind of the Compound kids. Poor little things . . . I wonder where they all are now . . . particularly that little boy of his?’
‘His grandson, you mean?’
‘Yes. That’s what I can’t understand about him . . . how he could reject that beautiful child, neglect him so that he’s had to run away and live with the blacks.’
‘But isn’t that what his idea is, that the boy’s better off growing up as a bush black than as a low-class crossbred?’
‘He wouldn’t be low class if he looked after him.’
‘But would McCusky let him look after him?’
‘If he fought. That’s the trouble with the man. Everything’s negative with him. Even winning races with fine horses he’s bred. He has to run away and booze. I tell you, it’s because he hasn’t a woman beside him to make his life positive.’
‘What are you going to do . . . try and get him one?’
‘I’ll try something. I’m not going to give up about that boy, McCusky or no.’
Speak of the Devil: there was Eddy himself, outside the Dance Hall, watching the common herd dancing, under the MC-ship of his rival, Pat Hannaford. The herd was much augmented this time with foreign road-workers, who seemed, in their innocence of or indifference to the conventions of the locality, to be doing so well with coloured girls, that more particular gentry, like the Knowles brothers and Oz Burrows, had been crowded out. The Knowleses, evidently friends again by their easy manner with each other, were talking with McCusky when the Candlemases came to take a peep at how the other half live. McCusky promptly dropped them for the newcomers. Asked why he had deserted his post at Finnucane’s, Eddy replied that things were easing up there, because people were saving themselves for tomorrow’s big things, himself included. He told them about the Cup Ball to be held here tomorrow night, in which, of course, Alfie would be playing an official part, at least to the extent of standing by the barrel out of which the winning numbers for the Golden Horseshoe prizes would be drawn and checking them with the names on her list of sales. First Prize this time was to be a handsome little chestnut colt named Golden Bobby, donated by the Eastern Pastoral Company, a British-owned rival of Vaiseys, and supposed to be a very likely laddy in future racing, being of the blood of Jeremy Delacy’s famous stallion, Elektron. Speaking of this other devil, (Jeremy, that is, not his horse) started a lively discussion of him that was taken away from the Dance Hall by the trio and out along the southern road, Alfie evidently wanting to talk only of that subject, despite the rancour she had been expressing concerning it just lately and her inclusion of McCusky in it, surely glad now of the fellow’s company since it silenced that tendency of her husband’s to jest about her eagerness.
The discussion dealt largely with that school out at Lily Lagoons. Alfie wanted to know whether McCusky would permit its continued functioning under a properly qualified teacher. He at once demanded, ‘Not thinking of taking it on are you
?’
‘Well, I hadn’t thought of it till now . . . but if he’d agree . . .’
‘You know what his theory is . . . let the kids learn themselves, and for preference to live in the old style.’
‘He might be talked out of it.’
‘Him talked out of anything! Look, I told you all about the Euraustralia League business. Jumbo himself told you about it . . . reconstruct the ravaged country, get back to bloomin’ nature . . . while there’s a fortune to be dug out of the ground. If he were genuine about wanting to help those halfcastes, there was the opportunity if ever there was . . . to form a co-operative. They’d’ve learnt what they’re most lacking in for assimilation into civilised life . . . economic sense. He complains they only wanted money for booze. Maybe they did. But they did want money. The first step was to let them earn it by their own self-directed efforts. They’d have adjusted subsequently. Instead, what’s he do? When they won’t help him put the country back as it was as a gesture to the Old People, who they’re trying like hell to forget, he calls them bloody mongrels. He claims he didn’t mean it about their race, but about the type of people they were. The great Jeremy Delacy tact! The champion of champions for the dispossessed and downtrodden Aborigine . . . and when he has a row with a mob of halfcastes he’s offering what he called dignity to, he calls them mongrels!’
Alfie sighed, ‘He’s a strange man.’
‘He certainly is . . . round the bend, if you ask me.’
Alfie said hotly, ‘That’s not so . . he’s a brilliant man . . . his only trouble is . . . is . . .’
She faltered. Eddy asked rudely, ‘What?’
She bit her finger, answered, ‘I don’t know, really . . . but listening to him talk . . .’ Again she was at a loss.
Eddy chuckled, ‘You want to look out for him. You know they say he’s got a way with the ladies. He even pinched Lord Vaisey’s fiancée.’
Alfie snapped, ‘From what I understand, she chucked herself at him.’
Eddy guffawed, ‘They all do!’
Frank came to the rescue with a sharp question, ‘Have you any more news about the missing boy and his mother?’
Eddy, evidently brought up short by reminder of something that troubled him greatly, exhaled heavily: ‘Not a squeak. Seems to be only one conclusion, that they tried getting away in a canoe from the Old Compound, and got drowned, like the police reckoned from the start. But I didn’t believe it. The kid might’ve been a bit dim . . . but not Nelly. She was smart, wilful. She’d made up her mind to get back here, and hell and high-water wouldn’t’ve stopped her once she got a start on . . . all those trucks running up and down the road.’ He sighed. ‘But if she had, she’d’ve turned up at the Races. They both would’ve. The kid had been coming here every year of his life, she most of the years of hers. That’s the blackfeller way. The sentiment of the old familiar places . . . Poor Feller My Country . . . even if they know that gettin’ caught means goin’ to jail for life, they just got to go back. But there isn’t a trace of ’em. Cahoon and his Man Friday’ve been out to Catfish, Lily Lagoons, up and down the river. If there was the slightest trace, a single track, Jinbul would find it.’
‘Poor things!’ murmured Alfie. ‘I feel responsible for it all . . .’
‘What about me? I am responsible for it all. Any moment I expect your girlfriend, Fay, to come out with some sob-story that I hounded them to their death.’
They went on talking about Prindy and Jeremy and the strangeness of Jeremy’s failure to do something for the boy, if only out of perverse desire to embarrass the Big House Delacys. Still on the subject, they returned to Finnucane’s, to find it strangely quiet, silent almost, save for the clink of money in the den of Old Shame-on-us and the measured piping of divers drunks from the bedrooms. They parted.
As Alfie and Frank Candlemas undressed in their dark little box of a room, Frank gave a hand to his spouse, a hand that lingered lovingly in unhooking brassière and pulling down pants, without any demur from the owner of the dainties he fondled; but when they were in bed and he rolled over to her and proceeded to unbutton the pyjama jacket he had buttoned up with such care, she shrugged him away, murmuring, ‘Don’t.’
‘Not in the moodies?’ he asked gently.
‘No.
‘Okay,’ he sighed, and kissed her cheek and withdrew to his own pillow. For a while both lay awake in silence. He was first to fall asleep, rolling towards her, flinging an arm over her belly. Gently she removed the arm, lay for a long while staring into the dark.
III
Cup Day, dressing-up day for the ladies, if they had anything worthwhile to dress up in, as at least most of the white ones did. Alfie Candlemas certainly had something worthwhile in that blue dress of hers, specially made for the occasion, a thing in blue and white with the colour and delicacy of design of willow-pattern china, with appurtenances to match. There it hung on its hanger as since unpacking and touching up with the iron, while with a degree of evident affection she regarded it, when after showering in preparation for the dressing-up at somewhere round nine-thirty, she slipped into fresh bra and pants, watched by her smiling husband. Yet it was not for the lovely thing she reached when ready for dressing, but for the stockrider’s outfit hanging beside it, the white corduroy thing that had been such a success yesterday. But you don’t have the same success with the same audience two days running; besides, this was dressing-up day for Ladies. Hence Frank’s sudden change of expression as she cast the masculine rigout on the bed and proceeded to pull the pants off the horizontal bar of the hanger, and his question, ‘Hey . . . what’s this?’
She answered simply, ‘I’m going to wear it instead.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I feel like it.’
She put the shirt on first, was buttoning it, when he said, ‘You’re going to look a bit odd in the grandstand with all the other dames done up to the nines.’
She waited till she was pulling on the pants to answer, ‘I’m not going in the grandstand today.’
He only slightly frowned, and surely more in puzzlement than annoyance. He lit a cigarette. When she was ready to put on the riding boots, he rose and got them from the rack under the little wash-stand, gave them an unnecessary brush-over, brought them to her, and knelt to help her on with them as she sat on the bed. Concentrating on his task he asked, ‘On account of Delacy?’ When she didn’t answer, but shoved her slim socked foot at him for the second boot, he looked up, met the black eyes, looked deep into them for a moment she allowed before dropping them to her foot. He dropped his to his task.
When the boot was on and she had her feet on the floor, she said, ‘He told me I could come to his stable, didn’t he?’
He backed away as she stood: ‘Does that mean you have to dress up for it?’
She went to the little dressing-table: ‘I want to spend the day there.’
Their eyes met in the poxy little mirror. He asked, ‘Will he let you?’
Fiddling with her dark curls she said, ‘Why shouldn’t he . . . if I make myself useful.’
He smiled, somewhat wryly: ‘He might regard it as an attempt at nobbling.’
She avoided his quizzing eyes. ‘I’d like to have the experience of spending a day like that at a country race-meeting . . . I mean with the people who’re racing the horses, not the snobs in the grandstand. His horse’s sure to win the Cup, they say. I’d like to be sort of part of the whole thing. Don’t you think it’s a good idea . . . for the book, eventually, of course?’
He sighed slightly. ‘So long as my darling doesn’t get hurt?’
Her voice was a little sharp: ‘How can I get hurt? I’m not going to ride the horse.’
‘You heard what happened to that Lady Lydia.’
‘She threw herself at him.’
He responded a little dryly, ‘Yes.’ Their eyes met again as she was rouging her lips. He said, ‘You won’t be wanting me, I suppose.’
‘You’ll be all right . . . from al
l the ogling I saw you getting yesterday behind my back.’
‘May I ask one little concession?’
‘What?’
‘That I take you there?’
She shrugged: ‘What do I care what any of those snobs say?’
‘It isn’t the snobs I’m thinking of . . . it’s Jeremy Delacy.’
‘I can look after myself, thank you.’
‘I know . . . but I like looking after you, too. Seems to me the best way to do it, for your sake, too, is for me to go along with you.’
‘What d’you mean?’
‘If you go alone, it will look like you’re running after him . . .’
She swung on him with black eyes wide: ‘Do you think I am?’
He blinked: ‘If you are, it’s for a special purpose . . . and you know I won’t interfere. I only want to see he doesn’t offend you . . . as I think he’s quite likely to do. But if I sort of deliver you into his hands . . .’
She blazed: ‘What do you mean deliver . . . as if I were some property of yours or something?’
He smiled that amiable smile. ‘Sweetheart, you know me better than that . . . but you don’t know this man . . . who’s renowned for his provocativeness . . . no, listen! I’m insisting on this . . . not as your husband, but as your closest friend. You also are a provocative little lady. Just let me take you along, as if I’m interested in the stable too . . . then I vanish . . . into the arms of that pretty blonde from Brisbane. Okay?’
She nodded slightly.
The Bishoffs, waiting to go with them to the Racecourse in the big old Rolls, were much surprised by Alfie’s choice of dress. Betty seemed to be inclined to argue the propriety of it; but Frank amiably stopped it by bringing up the subject of the book. ‘Material,’ he said. ‘The artistic temperament’s got no respect for respectability at all. But it’s my guess she’s saving the blue thing for the Ball tonight.’ They were soon laughing.
Poor Fellow My Country Page 86
