Poor Fellow My Country

by Xavier Herbert

  Never had physical contact between Jeremy and the girl been so close as tonight, when he humped her on his back to the railway to save her feet, with her thighs about him and his hands on the bare flesh of them at the knees, her arms about his neck, belly and breasts pressed against him; yet so far from being the Rifkah who had clung to him and kissed him so recklessly in the past was she now that she scarcely responded to his trying to jolly her by reference to their ridiculous posture, even giving a buck or two. She seemed even relieved to be taken in Clancy’s ready arms and placed on the waiting pump-car.

  Clancy reported that he had taken a peep from the bridge and seen what he took to be lights flickering in the vicinity of the Police Station. Jeremy went to look for himself. It was hard to see anything through the lashing curtain of rain. Even Finnucane’s appeared as a faint luminescence. But unmistakably there was another hint of light, now moving about the railway yards. He returned to say that evidently the police were out, and that it would be best for him to stay behind to deal with them and leave it to Clancy to get Rifkah to Granite Springs alone. In any circumstances it would be a tough job for one man to handle a cumbersome vehicle like that, designed for operation by the co-ordinated efforts of two, but in such as prevailed it was positively formidable. Yet Clancy leapt to it with eagerness that was even indecent, almost ignoring his father when enjoined to make the trip up and back as soon as possible and himself scarce when he got back. With barely a nod, bending to his task like an argonaut, he shot away. Jeremy was left standing, staring into the roaring darkness that almost on the instant had swallowed his love. He hadn’t been given the chance even to touch her hand in farewell. Heaving a great sigh, he turned, headed towards the bridge.

  A white-painted cat-walk ran between the rails on the bridge. In the utter blackness made by the walls of latticed steel it seemed to float like a magic carpet. Already the steel was beginning to hum with the pressure gathering below.

  Indeed the police were out and in the mood of angry hornets — worse, as hornets probably would be, from being disturbed on such a night. Jeremy went to them, to be pounced on at once and accused of engineering the escapade. When he was able to give his version, telling them that he had just come from finding fresh tracks up at the Racecourse, they yelled at him for not having reported to them before he went there. He growled, ‘How the hell did I know she wasn’t with you? I was only thinking of the boy, clearing off back home with a broken heart.’

  ‘That little black bastard,’ snarled Stunke. ‘I’ll see he pays for this.’

  Jeremy said, ‘D’you know, Stunke . . . the other night when I called you a German Pig I could’ve bitten my tongue off. I don’t like prejudice against people for their breed. Germans are just as good as anybody else . . . and as bad. It was only this Gestapo business that made me say it. I was going to apologise to you some time. But I won’t now . . . after what you’ve just said about that sorrowing little boy, whose real mother you had a part in depriving him of . . . Wait . . . I do have an apology to make . . . to the Germans . . . and the pigs, for classing you with ’em.’

  ‘Ahhh!’ exploded Stunke, and swung away towards the utility, standing with lights staring like watery eyes. He told one of the trackers to stay behind and search and, ‘Watch that man!’ Inspector Ballywick also told his sergeant to remain.

  Stunke started up, swung for the road down to the causeway. Jeremy watched the lights till they went out. After a while Stunke and his mates came up the hill again, tramping now, and getting onto the railway, headed off towards the bridge.

  Jeremy turned and headed through the yards towards Toohey’s. There was a crowd in the shelters of the lighted station. Some called to Jeremy. He ignored them. Then one came after him. It was Pat Hannaford, wanting to know, when they were out of hearing, how things had gone. When he heard that Clancy was handling the pump-car alone, he railed, ‘That lily-white handed bastard! He’ll knock-up in the first mile.’

  ‘I think he’ll be all right.’

  ‘You ever pulled one o’ them things on your own?’

  Jeremy answered dryly, ‘Yes. So has Clancy. You’ve forgotten the time you got derailed in the big flood of ’34? We had to take the pump-cars out single-handed to leave room to bring you mob back . . . and the water was two feet deep in places.’

  When Pat fell silent, Jeremy said, ‘Best you’re not seen with me too much, I reckon. See you in the morning.’

  ‘Okay,’ muttered Pat, and turned about.

  Apparently, Pat didn’t know the super-power of a man in love, perhaps, being an idealist, didn’t know that love — love of man for woman — is a power at all.

  What, to Clancy, meant those back-breaking, muscle-cracking, hand-skinning miles to Granite Springs, that heaving to the limit of strength upgrade against the eternal resistance of gravity, the hair-raising rushing with it down into what looked like nothingness, the drag of the howling bind of steel on steel on the curves, the bellowing counter-blasting of the wind in narrow cuttings, the lash of the wild wet wind on the inky plains, the menacing roar of unseen waters, while a beloved object, so black in the blackness as to be utterly invisible, yet oh so vividly there, crouched beside him? He even had the breath to sing at times: ‘She’ll be comin’ round the mountain when she comes — Along the road to Gundagai.’

  ‘Vy don’t you rest?’ Rifkah called up several times, not knowing, even from his laugh in answer, that she was calling to a superman.

  But his love was not left just for guessing. When the long miles of his conquest lay behind like the coils of a slain dragon, and at Granite Springs he had borne his beloved in his arms to the shed beside the water-tank and laid her on the heap of old tarps used by loafing fettlers, and she, looking at him by the light of the torch lying where he had dropped it on the streaming ground, thanked him for all the trouble he had taken for her sake, telling it with lips against his ear because of the din of falling waters, he laughed, and shouted above the uproar, ‘How can it be a trouble when I love you?’

  He would have kissed her, had she not caught his face in her hands, and holding it, cried wildly, ‘No, dear Clancy . . . it is not goot you loff me!’

  He must have misunderstood, because he bawled back, ‘Yes . . . I love you!’

  Then his lips would not be denied, and drank of them — raindrops, tears, the essence that is woman, and perhaps an added sweetness no other man would ever savour — till suffocation broke the bond.

  She gasped, ‘You must go.’

  ‘Yes . . . my darling . . . but only till the morning.’

  He would have kissed her again. She pushed him away. He rose laughing, gave her the light, the directed beam of which he followed to the door. He turned, kissed his hand, shouted, ‘Goodnight!’ shut the door on her, drew a great breath, and climbed back aboard the pump-car.

  Proof of a man’s love is not what he says to his beloved, but what he finds himself saying, sighing, singing as he leaves her. Clancy sang love-songs now as he slugged homeward: ‘I love you, I love you, that’s all that I can say.’ Now he had the wind on his quarter astern, and fairly bowled along.

  What time he got back to the bridge was of no moment in the circumstances, save to Eternity. At any rate, no sign of life was to be seen in the township, or sound of life when he had crossed the bridge and was making his way through it towards his home. He went whistling under his breath. He did not let it go till he reached the first gate: ‘Love me, and the world is mine!’

  The cattle-dogs heard him when he reached the homestead, and challenged him till they caught his scent. He went straight to his quarters, hung his oilskins out on the verandah, stripped to undershorts and singlet, dried face and hands, dropped on his narrow bed, was asleep immediately.

  It was breaking day when he woke. He leapt up, went to shower and shave, all in haste. Back in his room he added a couple of things to a small suitcase already packed. The rain had eased considerably. Still, to cross to the Big House, he donned the oils
kins again. Tramping along the side verandah of the detached kitchen, he signalled to those at work inside who looked out at him. Then into the house and to the dining-room.

  He was just finishing his steak and eggs, when his brother entered. They grunted at each other. Then Martin, unrolling his napkin, asked, ‘Off to Town?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘What for . . . this weather?’

  ‘Business.’

  ‘What business?’

  ‘Mine.’

  Martin’s ruddy face darkened. ‘Happens to be my business what staff does in the Company’s time.’

  ‘You don’t say?’

  ‘I do say. As soon’s the rain stops, the stock at Catfish’ll have to be checked.’

  Clancy, rolling his napkin, answered shortly, ‘Nice job for you.’ As he rose he added: ‘Take some of the fat off your arse to get back in the saddle.’

  His brother stared at him, not in anger, but in evident surprise, perhaps because of the easy insolence compared with the usual bluster in such circumstances. As Clancy headed for the door, Martin called after him, ‘You’re not mixed up in this Jew-girl business, are you?’

  Now Clancy looked belligerent as he swung back. ‘What d’you mean?’

  ‘Police here last night looking for her . . . asked where you were. Where were you?’

  Clancy’s breast heaved. ‘Minding my own bloody business!’

  ‘It’s my business what you drag the family name into while the Mater’s away . . .’

  ‘Balls!’

  ‘Now, listen, Clancy . . . you were seeing too much of that girl before . . . and Mater didn’t like it . . .’

  Clancy snapped, ‘What a bloody pity!’ With that he turned and stalked out.

  Martin’s blue eyes were wide as he stared at the empty doorway. Surely such words had never been uttered under that roof before!

  Clancy was driven to the railway by the Second Bookkeeper, who also told him of the visit by police, and when pressed, added with a little cough of apology that Martin had told them he supposed that he, Clancy, would be at Ah Loy’s, as usual. Evidently the police were satisfied with the word of a Vaisey Manager, because there they were at the station, all eyes, but giving no more attention to Clancy than to anyone else.

  Jeremy was waiting. After Clancy had bought his ticket and was going with his case to a coach, his father elbowed him out of the crowd and asked him how things had gone. Clancy answered as if the question sounded unnecessary, ‘Okay.’

  Dryly Jeremy added: ‘Well, let’s hope the rest of it goes the same.’ Then when Clancy moved towards the coach, he caught his arm, murmuring, ‘Just a minute.’ Clancy looked, to see the face changed, the broad face redder, the grey eyes strangely fixed in expression. Jeremy glanced away. Pat Hannaford, no doubt bent on waylaying Clancy, too, was examining a journal box of the coach. Jeremy kept his eyes on Pat, while he said quickly, ‘I told her she wouldn’t have to leave the country. She doesn’t want to. But Hannaford’s hell-bent on getting her away to the Comms down South. When you get that Special Licence . . . why not use it properly?’

  Now he looked at Clancy, whose blue eyes had widened. Jeremy swallowed, looked away again, went on, his voice now throaty: ‘You can always get a divorce if it doesn’t work out. Old Maryzic would marry you without asking too many questions. Even if he knows, he’s got no time for the police . . . and he’d know Jews, and sympathise with ’em.’ He looked back again at Clancy, swallowed again, ‘It’d solve the whole problem.’

  Now Clancy swallowed, looked down, murmuring, ‘Yeah . . . I have thought about it.’

  Pat was approaching. ‘How yo’ doin’?’ he said casually. Then after a glance around, he asked Clancy, ‘How’d it go?’

  Clancy answered in that same indifferent tone he had used in reply to his father’s question, ‘Okay.’

  Pat’s green eyes quizzed him, then he took another look around, muttering as he did so, ‘Well, you know the drill . . . any suspicious movement towards the injin when we’re stopped and you don’t see one of us lookin’ out . . . you come beltin’ up the other side the train to tip us off.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘See you later, then.’

  When Clancy turned to the coach again, Jeremy went with him. Casting a glance towards the police, Clancy murmured, ‘What’re they doing here?’

  ‘Just killing time, by the look of it. They’ve searched through everything. They’re waiting for the trackers to catch the police horses. I’ll go back with ’em.’

  That was the end of private discussion. Oz Burrows was ringing the bell for All Aboard. Father and son parted with slight gestures.

  Chas Chase blew his whistle. Pat responded with his. The engine let out a blast as she slipped in too-hurried starting that made the wheels spin. Then they were away. Clancy glanced again at his father, who nodded. Then he saw Lucy Ah Loy, pantalooned and standing under a huge umbrella, looking very pretty in a wooden Chinese way. She waved to him slightly. He replied.

  Out of the railway yards with a clatter of points, and onto the bridge, and over the now raging yellow snake of river. The police trackers were over the other side, having trouble with a dozen fractious horses near the little shed that housed the pump-car. Whereas other passengers watched the equine mêlée Clancy had eyes only for the innocent-looking vehicle standing on its twin lengths of rail. He smirked as he drew back inside to settle down. Everybody else looked amused as they settled down, because one of the trackers had been throw from his horse. As one of them chuckled, ‘There’s nothing so funny as seein’ a boong pelted . . . all bloody skinny arms and legs flyin’, like a spider with a hornet onto him . . . aheeee!’

  V

  The abduction of Rifkah went almost perfectly according to plan, from the plucking of her out of the mist of rain and spray at Granite Springs, to setting her down in what seemed like a deliberately discreet moment of darkness given by the Moon at the planned destination, the Ten-Mile Lagoons, outside of Port Palmeston. For abduction virtually it was, seeing that she would have been elsewhere but for the interference of those presuming they knew what was best for her. Also, it was rather like one abducted that she behaved, than one being whisked away to the wonderful things Pat Hannaford brayed about through the journey, blind to her obvious misery, and Clancy, just as blind, yawped of in innuendoes the couple of times he was able to talk to her.

  Pat was frank about her going to join the ranks of those he called their Comrades, in the South, to help establish the Workers’ Paradise he declared he saw Australia as within five years now that Fascism and Capitalism were bound to go to war and destroy each other. She just sat in the lurching cab, staring great-eyed, the haggard bubbeh’s stare, as mile after mile they cleft the wilderness ahead, surely all too fast for her who believed it was her refuge; while above the roar of fire and steam and the clamour of whirling rods and wheels, Pat vociferated in her ear.

  Clancy, during his couple of visits to the engine, while Pat was oiling her up and Porky Jones watering her, hinted at the advantages of being a Vaisey Delacy, with a town house and a beach house, a huge launch that would even take them for a trip to the East, where he wouldn’t mind going if he had someone nice as his companion. He was too much in love to see the bubbeh’s lines round the lovely jewels of eyes.

  The weather improved with every mile; until beyond the Caroline, out of the area of the cyclonic influence, the conditions were those of normal Wet Season, with the Sun popping in and out of fat cloud-masses, so that the verdant landscape varied in hue between vivid malachite and hazy cobalt, sometimes backed by silver curtains of rain, occasionally obliterated when the train passed through such a curtain.

  There were only three untoward incidents throughout the journey. The first occurred at Helena Springs, while the engine was watering and most of the passengers boozing in the pub and Clancy was paying his second visit to his beloved. His first visit was made back at the Caroline, while his fellow passengers were having dinner al
ong with their booze, and he had strolled up to report to Pat at his oiling that all was well, that there was a lot of talk going on about the Jew-girl, but nothing in it to suggest that anyone knew anything like the facts or had the slightest suspicion that she was travelling with them. He had then gone round to the far side of the engine and climbed aboard, to find Rifkah eating sandwiches and drinking tea, beside the tarpaulin draped over the tender for instant use as concealment. When he came up again at Helena Springs, he didn’t trouble to report to Pat, but climbed straight up into the cab. He was deep in talk about that trip through the Isles of Spice, when Pat, oil-can in hand, came up from the other side. The green eyes in the smudged freckled face snapped at Clancy with hostility. Pat demanded, ‘Anything wrong?’

  Clancy answered easily, ‘No . . . she’s right.’

  ‘Then wha’ yo’ doin’ ’ere?’

  Clancy flamed at the tone, snapped back, ‘Just came to see how things’re going.’

  ‘You don’ ’ave to see ’ow things are ’ere, mate, Your job’s keepin’ an eye on things back there.’ Pat jerked his thumb in a manner clearly ordering Clancy off.

  Clancy blazed: ‘Who d’you think you’re talking to?’

  ‘I’ll stop talkin’ and swing into action, you don’t get crackin’.’

  Rifkah got between them, crying, ‘Pliss . . . oh, pliss!’

  Porky, hearing the voices above the gushing of the hydrant, came leaping over the coal, dropped onto the foot-plate. ‘For crissake, you blokes . . . wha’s wrong’t yo’?’

  The belligerents looked at Rifkah, who laid a hand on an arm of each, smiled a wobbly smile. Then they looked at each other, narrow-eyed. Pat grunted, ‘Got ’o keep your eye skinned all the time.’

  Clancy grunted back, ‘Okay.’ Backing to the steps, he winked at Rifkah, stepped down, vanished.

  The next incident was at the Forty-Mile, where they stopped for water. The Sun had just gone down, leaving the cloudy West looking like the burning breast of a phoenix. The East, however, was clear almost to the zenith, as if Igulgul, just popping, almost in his fullness, from the trees, had blown away the clouds the easier to see and gloat over Wrong side Business. Porky Jones, up on the tender with the hydrant, called to Pat who was oiling in between his driving wheels, that Chas Chase was coming. Pat came back to the step and called a warning to Rifkah. As Chase came up, he asked, ‘Well, wha’s wrong?’