Poor Fellow My Country

by Xavier Herbert

  She returned to him in moon-silvered dusk, looking like a lovely thing belonging to it, fluorescent in semi-evening-dress, dark of face and curly hair. ‘Like me?’ she demanded, pirouetting on silver heels. Then, without waiting for answer, which perhaps was in his eyes, she said, ‘How smart and citified you are!’ Actually he was looking as uncomfortable as any Northerner does when first trussed up in the trappings of the South. He wore a dark serge suit, with white shirt and blood-dark tie, and shiny shoes. She went round him, brushing proprietorially. She wanted a drink, accepted his limitation to one, took his hand and led him up the terrazzo stairs into the violet and silver and the fragrance of local high-class cooking. Hanging on his arm, making stride for stride with him, she guided him, showing him this and that. She pulled the Moon down to them, as if it were something belonging to them, properly located at Lily Lagoons but as properly following them about. She sighed: ‘Those moonlit nights at Lily Lagoons . . . the Rainbow Pool . . . the Caves!’ Had she been there in moonlight? Did it matter with such a one, who could so easily create the pleasant and forget the rest?

  She told him that after dinner they would be joined by two important members of the Free Australia Movement, who would prove to him the worthwhileness about which he seemed dubious. One was a practising Economist, the other a retired Banker. She said that if she could get up in time she would join him on his run in the morning, but snuggled up to him to show how much she liked bed and someone in with her to make it snugger.

  Frank Candlemas was warm in greeting, taking Jeremy’s hand in both of his, putting an arm about his shoulder, proving his sincerity by turning from smiles to gravity when Alfie went off to the kitchen, and from saying how glad he was to see him again to how necessary it was to have him there: ‘I know you’ll fix things with the Movement . . . one way or another. If it’s only a lunatic thing, you’ll expose it. If it’s what I hope it is, you’ll inspire us to make it better. But it isn’t only of the Movement I’m thinking. It’s Alfie mainly. She’s terribly involved. If it’s a flop, she’ll be heartbroken. But better that than being destroyed . . . as I’m afraid she might be. You’d help her over it. Yes, Jeremy . . . I was never more pleased to see anyone in my life.’

  Alfie came back, with cocktails borne for her on a tray by one she introduced as Mrs March, her helper, a plump, jolly, middle-aged female, wearing an apron, but also smart clothes and an expensive hair-do. It wasn’t as mere servant that Mrs March came, but to meet the guest. ‘’Erd lot ’bout yo’,’ she said. ‘Real bushman from the wild bush, eh? My old dad was one of ’em . . . a bullocky . . . and swear! ’Ow you on swearin’, Mr Delacy?’

  ‘Only in front of bullocks,’ said Jeremy gravely.

  ‘Aw-eeee! You’s a wag, too . . . jes like my old dad. I like a man with a sense of humour . . . and a big appetite. Got a lovely dinner for yo’ . . . not goanna, course . . . eeee-ow!’ She had a drink with them, returned to the kitchen.

  ‘That’s Australia for you,’ said Alfie proudly.

  ‘What d’you mean, exactly?’ asked Jeremy.

  ‘The democracy. A servant’s as good as her mistress. You’d never get old Dolly to truckle to any boss.’

  ‘Then why the need for Free Australia, if we’re already so bold and free?’

  Alfie laughed. ‘Trust Jeremy to chuck a spanner in! Still, that’s what you’re wanted for. We are bold and free . . . but only in our estimation of ourselves. We’ve got to make it a reality.’

  It was a large and tasty meal — casseroled lamb with a fruit pie — to which Jeremy did justice such as to have Dolly bending over him, leering even lasciviously, as she cleared away.

  The trio were just settled down to their brandy when the expected visitors arrived. They also greeted Jeremy with enthusiasm, the Banker, an oldish man, quite frankly saying that the bushman with intelligence was the ideal Australian. Jeremy laughed. ‘The catch is there aren’t that many bushmen with intelligence.’

  The Banker, for all his look of the shrewd old business man and evidence of that shrewdness in his talk, yet had about him an air of innocent eagerness, like a Boy Scout rearing to do his good deed, which somehow cancelled out respect for his mature judgment. Likewise there seemed something wrong with the young Economist, suave and factual though he was — just too much so. The Banker’s denunciation of control of Australian finance by foreigners, although expertly substantiated, sounded like hysterical declaiming against a bunch of caddish outsiders rather than exposure of a nation of nitwits being exploited by people much smarter than themselves. The Economist was similarly critical of the fiscal racket, but talked nationalism as if a nation were not a band of brothers bound by the mystery of earth-kinship but a limited company — The Commonwealth of Australia Inc.

  Evidently Jeremy was very interested, having little to say himself, except in questioning. Alfie, most of the while hovering about the arm and back of his chair, plying him with brandy, tried often to rouse him to something like patriotic fervour, but without success. He answered her simply, ‘I want to hear facts.’

  The visitors, although obviously strongly enough bound together in service to the ideal, also differed widely in their opinions of those controlling the Movement, the pair they called, as everybody did, apparently, the Chief and the Bloke. The Chief, a very wealthy man, was instigator of the Movement, an admirer of that strong man in the midst of national diffidence, dishonesty, moral dissolution, as some believed him to be, Benito Mussolini. Jeremy asked, why the instigation? Not for personal glory. That was for his chosen mouthpiece, the Bloke, if he could make it — the Bloke, reputed to be a genius. In what? Whereas the Banker sounded as if he even worshipped the Chief, for his astuteness, forthrightness, purposefulness, financial wizardry, he made no bones about his choice, the Bloke — an opportunist, renegade Communist as likely to revert as not if it suited him to the Communist Party, an erudite wrangler who pandered to the same weakness in the Chief, flattered him, was likely to lead him into a morass of verbosity, then by some act of treachery bring him down. Thus the Banker. On the other hand the Economist dismissed both as madmen. The Chief was a plutomaniac. He had so much money he believed he was a sort of god with divine right to sport with mortals. The Bloke was a born paranoiac, whose only real talent was his capacity to believe that he could rule the world. ‘This man’s no brilliant opportunist, like Mussolini or Hitler,’ the Economist said. ‘If he were, he wouldn’t have to plagiarise from them. He hasn’t got a single original idea of his own. And as for economics . . . the way he talks, when he’s the Great Dictator, gnomes will mint money for him in the basement.’ At least the pair, the Banker and the Economist, were at one in believing that control of the Movement must be wrested from these two runaway forces as soon as possible in order to save it from disaster.

  The party broke up at eleven, with all seeing Jeremy to his flat. Tomorrow, Saturday, Alfie would be taking Jeremy to visit the Banker at his home at a seaside resort, to spend the day not merely in idleness, but in study of ample evidence the man had of Australia’s enslavement to overseas financiers, and more, of the lack of any attempt on the part of any Australian Government of any sort to discourage it; in fact the reverse. It seemed that there had been a move to have Jeremy presented to the Chief and the Bloke tomorrow, but which had fallen through because of the former’s preoccupation with his racehorses of Saturdays, and the latter’s habit of spending weekends in seclusion somewhere. When Jeremy asked if it might not be taken as a rebuff, Frank answered, saying that city people lived so much by rote that it cost mighty effort to break it. Alfie said the great ones otherwise had been most enthusiastic about meeting him — Monday.

  Having parted from the others, Jeremy, at the foot of the stairs, before entering his flat went out onto the strip of lawn. He was just in time to hear the others talking as they walked along the road above. The Banker was saying, with boyish enthusiasm, ‘Our man . . . our man, all right. Strong silent bushman. He’ll save the Movement.’


  Alfie’s little voice sounded like the alto of a flute: ‘He’ll save the Nation.’

  ‘What I like about him,’ said the Economist, ’is his appreciation of the economic facts of nationalism, as against silly emotionalism.’

  That brought Alfie’s fluting up higher in protest and Frank’s bass into it evidently to stop an argument. But they were out of clear hearing now.

  With a sigh, Jeremy turned to look at the strange skyline: ragged black bulk of city and twinkling towering arch of bridge, against the gilt of the setting Moon. Igulgul would still be well above the timber at Lily Lagoons, peeping in at western windows. At Leopold Mission he would be casting long shadows across the single street of poor little buildings, perhaps peeping into the one now called the Synagogue to reveal a glint of copper, a sheen of gold. He sighed again, turned to go in.

  Alfie’s sole possession of Jeremy for the trip to the Banker’s next morning was not due simply to her wanting it, as, more or less, she confessed as she drove him. It seemed that Frank could not stand the dyspeptic consequences of the Banker’s hospitality, or more truly his wife’s, since she ran the show. ‘Poor old Dickey’s a chronic dyspeptic himself,’ laughed Alfie. ‘She ruined his insides in the first year of marriage. Doesn’t mean her food’s bad. Just the opposite. She lives for cooking . . . and eating . . . she’s immense! Like old Dolly, she likes a man with a bit of appetite, she says. You can live for a week on one of her dinners.’

  It was a region of the rich they went to. Alfie pointed out the mansions of people even Jeremy had heard of for their achievements in commerce: great drapers, grocers, butchers, one famed for a couple of generations as makers of WC china. No names of writers or artists, as Alfie remarked with bitterness. The biggest stood on a peninsula, from the backbone of which were millionaires’ views, of rolling blue ocean on one side, on the other a deeply-indented silver inlet backed by timbered hills. The Banker’s house was right on top. It was of Spanish-American style, blue-tile-roofed, somewhat incongruous amidst bloodwoods and wattles, perhaps, but the anomaly somewhat rectified with a cactus garden.

  Old Dickey’s massive spouse looked Jeremy over in shaking hands with him like a man, saying in a great voice, ‘Hope you’ve got a bushman’s appetite. I’ve prepared a big dinner for you. I was brought up in the country, don’t y’know . . . sheep station . . . used to big-eating men. Like to see a man act big, eat big . . . like my father and brothers. How I came to get mixed up with banking I don’t know.’ This she said before Dickey, as if he didn’t exist. No doubt it was mortgage that had brought her down; that being the general way of the squattocracy. Anyway, she went on booming about the superior ways of the bush to those of the city, which included that of having dinner in the middle of the day, as they would be doing today out of consideration for their bushman guest. Jeremy had little to say to her, nor much chance of a say if he’d wanted it. Snatching Alfie away to assist her in the kitchen, which by the sound of it meant hounding servants, she left him alone with Dickey to sip beer and take the views.

  Jeremy, much interested in the surroundings, remarked on the preservation of so much that was pristine so near a great city. Dickey told him it was owing to local private policy: ‘Land values are kept far too high for Tom, Dick, and Harry to get in and spoil it.’ He went on to describe how the bush abounded with koalas, lyre-birds, possums, the sea with marine life. ‘There’d be nothing if the herd got in.’

  Jeremy went on to say that it must have been a rich preserve of local Aborigines, and asked if any were still about. Dickey shook his head. ‘No . . . the only Aborigines in the Sydney area would be those living on the La Perouse Reserve.’

  ‘That’s near the airport, isn’t it? Pretty poor country, by the look of it from the air.’

  ‘Oh, they only live on Government hand-outs these days. No hunters left. They only make spears and boomerangs to sell ’em to whites.’

  ‘Wouldn’t it be more correct to say there aren’t any hunting grounds left?’

  Dickey looked at Jeremy. ‘They wouldn’t hunt while they get a hand-out, would they?’

  ‘Pretty lousy hand-out, I understand . . . mere subsistence.’

  Dickey picked his nose nervously, as he had when his wife had talked over him. ‘I understand how you feel about Aborigines . . . but isn’t it a fact that they booze everything more than sheer subsistence?’

  ‘Do you know much about them?’

  ‘Can’t say I do. They’re more a problem for you people of the North.’

  ‘Not for the Nation as a whole?’

  Dickey picked harder, frowned. Jeremy went on: ‘You say you understand how I feel about the Aborigines. My articles in Australia Free did stress the point that the first thing we’ve got to do to become a nation of any worth is to realise our responsibility for the people we stole the country from. Wasn’t it taken seriously?’

  Dickey reddened, docked some hair from his nose. ‘Well . . . yes . . . but the consensus of opinion was . . . well, it’s impractical.’

  ‘How impractical?’

  ‘Well . . . you wrote that there should be a tax put on all property owners, according to property owned, and a percentage taken from transfer fees and such . . . to keep the Abos.’

  ‘What’s wrong with that?’

  ‘Well . . . they wouldn’t work, would they . . . sort of live on their investments?’

  ‘Why should they work? Do people round here work? Don’t they live on their investments?’

  Dickey drooped his head, much as he had when his wife had run down city folk. After a little silence, Jeremy asked, ‘I don’t want to be rude . . . but could you give me a rough estimate of the worth of this property of yours here?’

  ‘Oh, round about fifty thousand.’

  ‘A lot of money. Have you any more?’

  ‘A bit here and there.’

  ‘How did you come by it?’

  Dickey sat up straight, answered rather shortly, ‘I worked for it. I started in banking as a common office boy.’

  ‘I mean, from whom did you acquire it?’

  ‘Former owners of a large area here.’

  ‘Blacks?’

  Dickey’s pale eyes widened as they looked into the intense demanding grey. He swallowed, mumbled, ‘The blacks’d been gone a hundred years.’

  ‘Still, it was theirs originally . . . and not paid for when taken over.’

  Dickey drooped again. Jeremy continued: ‘Buying something that’s been stolen makes one accessory . . . no matter how long ago the theft took place.’

  Dickey went red, but roused up again. ‘You’ve got property yourself!’

  ‘Not land. I have a leasehold . . . but hold it really in trust for the blacks who aren’t, by law, allowed to hold it. They can use it as they like, make any demands on me that are within my capacity . . .’

  ‘Yes . . . but you live where there’re a lot of blacks. Ours are all gone . . .’

  ‘To the La Perouse Reserve . . . to all the other mean reserves in the country.’

  Dickey pulled so hard at the hair in his nose that he winced.

  Jeremy’s voice was even, slow: ‘You see what I mean. Nothing personal. I’m speaking of the Nation. To be an honest people we must absolve ourselves of that primary guilt. We don’t object to paying tax to the Crown for the right to possess property. Why should we object to an infinitely smaller tax to square our conscience? The Crown was the original thief, I know. It tries to square off with the reserve and the hand-out. But each of us compounds a felony with the Crown so long as we don’t make personal restitution.’

  Dickey stared at him. Then suddenly he burst out with the Boy Scout enthusiasm: ‘By God, man . . . you’re right, you know!’ He smote a pink palm with a pinker fist. ‘We must make it the first plank in our platform. You must . . . for you’re our man . . . Our Man, Delacy!’ He shot the pink hand out to grasp the brown one. Jeremy shook with him gravely.

  Dickey, breathless now, asked how they could go about
fixing this Guilt Tax, as he called it. They must lobby for it; but in which Parliament, State or Federal? Jeremy quieted him down, saying that there was much first to be done to rouse people to awareness of the lousy thing the Commonwealth of Australia really was. The financial racket was the one that would rouse most interest. The mass of the people still recalled that the Great Depression was the result of the machinations of International Finance: ‘Let’s see those figures of yours. From what you’ve told me, they’ll reveal the truth of our bondage like flashes of lightning.’

  Dickey whooped like a Boy Scout: ‘Flashes of lightning . . . yes, yes, yes!’

  Although in a tone much more subdued, at the dinner table, he kept on whooping similarly. His wife growled at him through the handles of her carvers, as she dealt with a huge muscovy duck: ‘What on earth are you talking about, Dickey? Lightning at this time of year! Why . . . it’s Winter.’

  Dickey was too excited to shut up. He told Alfie about their their primary responsibility to the Aborigines. His wife, intent upon estimating Jeremy’s stowage capacity, took no notice at first; but satisfied that she had a Man to feed, she fixed her pop eyes on her spouse and raised her voice: ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Dickey! Taxes to keep dirty blacks . . . what next? Aren’t we taxed already to keep them in idleness and booze they aren’t supposed to have? Out on the station we knew how to deal with ’em . . . no work, no tucker. If they got cheeky and reckoned they’d go back to bush tucker . . . all we had to do was organise a district kangaroo and emu shoot . . . and poison the carcasses . . . for, of course, the filthy creatures’ll eat meat rotten. They’d soon be back begging . . . “Give it lil bits tucker, Boss.” You know how to deal with ’em, I’ll be bound, Mister Delacy.’

  Jeremy winked his off-side eye at choking, blazing Alfie. Her ladyship, ringing for the crêpe suzette, continued, addressing the somewhat puffy duck-stuffed Jeremy: ‘Don’t let this crackpot Free Australia thing of Dickey’s take you in, Mister Delacy. What’s wrong with the country, anyhow? The Depression’s over. Once we’d kicked the Labor Party out, everything was all right again. Dickey’s the last person who should talk about financial rackets. He got some good cheap property through others’ going bankrupt and committing suicide and things while the Depression was on. Ah . . . you certainly are a true bush eater, Mister Delacy. I only hope you won’t think my crêpe too sissy. ‘I’d’ve given you a good steamed pudding . . . ah, those good old suet puds! . . . only I’m very proud of my crêpe suzette!’