Poor Fellow My Country

by Xavier Herbert

  The Chief grinned broadly. ‘It was largely a joke . . . but I’ll admit that it was somewhat unfortunate.’

  ‘As I see it, it was even fatal. It might cruel any chance we have of winning a Free Australia.’

  ‘At the time I never thought we had any hope of winning a Free Australia . . . not till I met you. Saying the things that infuriated doctrinaire fat-heads like Communists and clever people like Jews, simply amused me. Give me credit for publishing your objections to our Anti-Semitism.’

  ‘Why did you persist in it after publishing my objections . . . which meant tacitly admitting you were wrong?’

  ‘I’ve told you . . . for fun. I found it amusing as well as instructive that such clever people as Jews should take on so. Don’t forget, we attacked the Catholic Church at first, and then the Anglicans, and the Salvation Army. Judaism is primarily a religion. One must be fair. As people, I admire Jews, for their generally superior intelligence, and for their courage in standing against the world throughout history, as you yourself wrote. I never expected them to throw bricks through my windows and yell abuse at me in the streets.’

  ‘Not when their kith and kin are being murdered according to law by what purports to be a civilised country? Not when they might have escaped with their lives themselves?’

  ‘The Jews have survived plenty of this . . . will survive plenty more. But, listen . . . I’ll drop all this sort of thing to support you.’

  ‘What about your Little Hitler?’

  ‘I’ll drop him, too.’

  ‘Just like that! And I take his place?’

  ‘So I would hope. You have everything that man lacks to be a true leader of this country. But, of course, you have your own lackings to rectify.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Your Democracy. Mob rule is what it means. That’s a fallacy for a start . . . because a mob can’t rule themselves . . . never have, never will. The Superman, even if only a bonehead, always takes over. Your Socialism is tommy-rot. Bureaucracy controls all so-called socialised concerns . . . and bureaucracy breeds hierarchy . . . and hierarchy means a Big Boss at the top. A man with your intelligence and experience can’t believe that men are equal!’

  ‘I believe they could be, in a well-ordered society.’

  ‘In a dream!’

  ‘Call me a dreamer, then . . . and let me go my way.’

  The old man suddenly became haggard, swallowed, said almost breathlessly, ‘I would like to come with you.’

  ‘Why . . . when we have such different views? Do you imagine you can convert me, make me a creature of yours as it seems to me you’ve made that poor mad bastard they call the Bloke?’

  Again the Chief swallowed, said huskily, ‘I’m an old man, Delacy . . . and far from well, despite my appearance. But I love life. I want to live out my last days with vigour. I can see all sorts of troubles ahead for Australia, as for the rest of the world. We’re about to enter the Forties. My love of my country and my love of life make me want to take a hand in shaping the destiny of this country . . . which I’m sure is going to be decided, for better or worse, in the next two or three years.’

  ‘I’m not a Man of Destiny, as they say. I came here just to see the reality of things.’

  ‘Ah . . . as I thought! You will see through the airy-fairy dream. You will be snatched up to serve the destiny of the Nation . . . you are already. And I want to be with you. Will you have me?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I will keep in the background so as not to embarrass you.’

  ‘No, Sir . . . no! I’m dreaming of national dignity . . . while all you want, really, is to use the power you have in your money. Why not let your madman free to form an SS or SA private army, like Hitler, and burn down the Federal Parliament and blame it on the Communists and Jews, and murder them for it? I want nothing to do with you.’ Jeremy rose. ‘Goodday to you, Sir!’

  The Chief, ruddy and heaving somewhat for breath, rose, too, somewhat falteringly followed as Jeremy led the way to the door. He muttered, ‘National dignity? Man . . . go out into the working-class suburbs and see the material you’ve got to work on. Go to the races on Saturday, the Stadium on Saturday night . . . the pubs any time they’re open.’

  Jeremy opened the door. The old man had regained his composure. He grinned. ‘No ill feelings, eh?’ He held out his hand. Jeremy hesitated, then took it.

  The Chief shook it heartily, saying, ‘Nothing will please me better than if you succeed. I’ll be watching you all the while. Au revoir!’ He was gone.

  Jeremy heaved a great sigh as he went back to his chair, saying aloud, ‘Mad . . . mad with money!’ He swigged his brandy, went on musing, ‘Are the people behind Hitler like that? Is it madness . . . or a form of badness . . . rising out of frustration . . . having everything, yet nothing?’

  Later he talked it over with Alfie, who again showed she had a sneaking regard for the Chief, and more, that she was not above their making the use of him that he had offered. She argued that his declared Nationalistic Bug might well outweigh his rich man’s oligarchic arrogance eventually and make him a true patron of democracy in that Well-ordered Society of Jeremy’s dreams. Jeremy remained of the opinion that all the man wanted was power of a perverse kind, adding that the like of him were probably by no means rare and need not be wealthy but able to wield their power by other means, and that these might be their chief opponents. Still, far from depressing him, the incident with the Chief seemed even to have stimulated him to action, at least by the interest he showed when Alfie told him that the Leader of the Opposition of the Federal Parliament was in Sydney and had expressed a wish to meet him. Alfie arranged the meeting, and went along with him, being well known to the Leader, as the old warrior Silas Tripconny’s girl.

  As the meeting was at the Federal Members’ Rooms, Jeremy met other members of the Labor Party than their leader, men whose names had been on everybody’s lips a few years back, either in praise as the Nation’s saviours, or in execration for bringing it to the brink of ruin. All told him they would welcome him, if he were elected to join them in the Gas House, but insisted that his ideas were also theirs. Still, they said, fresh voices were useful for making old ideas sound new. When he told them he had no political aspirations himself they looked incredulous.

  Alfie, bred amongst them, became one of them. Hence later, when they went off together to the Hotel Australia to talk over the experience and he expressed anything but enthusiasm, she was disappointed. He said he thought the leader had the mind of an adolescent, filled with Nineteenth Century Parlour Social Reform stuff: ‘He talks as if he’s practising elocution for a Young Labor rally . . . with the emphasis not on what you say but how you say it . . . sort of Storm the Barricades, Brothers! when he’s talking of a thing like reform of the treatment of Aborigines. God help us if he ever becomes Prime Minister! The others struck me as just con-men turned respectable through having pulled the great trick.’

  She got hot about it, especially his decrying the Leader of the Opposition: ‘He’s been a tremendous fighter for freedom. He went to jail during the Anti-Conscription campaign.’

  ‘For Ireland . . . not Australia. It was Irish hatred of England behind that . . . not Australian love of Australia.’

  ‘Of course it was Australian love! You weren’t here to see it.’

  ‘And how old were you to be able to take in the truth of it . . . three or four, eh?’

  ‘Harping on my age again! First I’m too young to have a right to love you. Now I’m too young to have any brains. Don’t you think I’ve been listening to talk about the realities of the Conscription Issue most of my life? Everything’s going so beautifully . . . but you’ve always got to knock it!’ There were tears in her eyes.

  ‘Too much brandy, again,’ he said. ‘Come on. Let’s go for a ride on a ferry and get some fresh air . . . and you tell me about these things you’ve got lined up for me. I’m seeing it all through. I’m enormously interested. But I reserve the right t
o my own opinion, which, by the way, you always ask me for.’

  ‘Oh, darling!’ she sighed tearfully, grabbing for his hand.

  It was a fact that Jeremy was doing all that was required of him readily enough, even if he would not show exuberance. Alfie arranged that he should meet all local Labor Party potentates. Only from the Labor Party could they expect even sympathy, since no other was inclined to true Australian Nationalism. He was asked to show himself at several important metropolitan branches, to listen to formal executive meetings then have a few beers and a chat afterwards. There were other such invitations from the industrial centres of the North and South Coasts of the State. ‘Getting my guts’, was how Jeremy cynically described the interest shown in his ideas. Alfie countered the cynicism by saying that what they got obviously did them good, and in turn would benefit themselves when it came to political support. Here again he always found incredulity in response to his saying that personally he was not interested in election.

  Alfie’s father, bedridden at home in Melbourne, stricken with cancer, all the while kept up a steady flow of advice by letter. As Frank Candlemas said, there was nothing the old man did not know about politics. It was understood that they were to go down to meet him as soon as possible. Then suddenly he was demanding that they come down immediately, not merely to visit him, but because the regional Labor hierarchy had become interested, and that meant insistence on Jeremy’s presenting himself. Melbourne was the headquarters of the Labor force of the land, he wrote. To ignore the hierarchy would destroy all hope of the new Party’s being recognised as anything but a Sydney racket.

  Jeremy took convincing that the well-known rivalry between the States of Victoria and New South Wales (what woeful names for perpetuation, as he remarked!) and especially between their capital cities, was anything more than a national joke. Frank Candlemas enlightened him. Frank said that the difference was based on the historical fact that Melbourne, having been established by men who were free, even if most of them ought not to have been, considered itself as the National Capital of Worthiness, while Sydney still remained the Sydney Town of the Lags and Lashers. Even a Melbourne criminal had class compared with the up-jumped pickpockets of Sydney Town, Frank said. If Ned Kelly had not operated in territory that eventually became the State of Victoria (God Save the Queen!) and been hanged in Melbourne, he would have gone down in history simply as an executed criminal like the far wilder Colonial Wild Boys who finished on the Sydney gallows, instead of risen to become the National Hero: ‘It’s serious, Jeremy . . . particularly in politics, where all the Parties had their origins, or at least are claimed to have had them by the Victorians. The old fellow’s right. He’s always got his ear to the political ground, even if these days he has to listen-in through his pillow.’

  So one morning, from the wide windows of the train the Victorians proudly called the Spirit of Progress and with which passengers from Sydney were picked up at the Border emerging grubby and rumpled and half-asleep from the dowdy dirty clangorous turn-out that had dragged them through the night, Jeremy saw the compact spired Queen City of the South, as the tourists’ brochures called it, rise out of the violet mists of plain and inland sea, very much like a queen, wearing a jewelled crown of winking glass. Jeremy remarked to Alfie, snuggled at his side, ‘Doesn’t look like Australia, does it, eh?’ He would be referring to the English-type hedges, the English trees, which had replaced the leagues of familiar post-and-rail fencing and eucalypts. The nearer you got to it the more English it became. Even the shops had the bare facades of those where the Sun shines meekly.

  Delegates of old Si’s met them. They were supposed both to go to stay at Si’s. Jeremy declined, went to put up at a hotel, said he’d be along to meet the old man as soon as possible.

  Silas Tripconny received Jeremy with an embrace that put the Sydney Hug to shame. But it was sincere, as Si explained when he saw that Jeremy was much embarrassed and learnt the reason. Jeremy was frank, saying that bushmen, for all the tradition of open-handedness attached to them, are slow to make friends and suspicious of those in a hurry about it. Silas replied that Melbourne people weren’t like the Sydney-siders in that respect, and that he himself already knew him well through the Enchanted One, as he called her: ‘As well as if you were my chosen son-in-law,’ he added, in front of Alfie, and much to increase Jeremy’s embarrassment, but only to tickle the old fellow this time and cause Alfie to giggle.

  Later on, after several remarks of Si’s plainly suggesting that he considered Jeremy and his Enchanted One more than good friends and heartily approved of the relationship, Jeremy tackled him in private forthrightly: ‘Now, listen, Si . . . your daughter’s a married woman . . . and I’m a married man . . . and what’s more, for chrissake, I’m pretty well as old as you, her father!’

  Si, a yellow-skinned skeleton under his blankets, was no less forthright: ‘Aw . . . come off it, man. You were made for one another . . . my little girl and you. You are what she would’ve liked me to be. But I’ve been too smart. Si the Sly, they used to call me. I liked it. I’ve never had your masculine strength and integrity. That’s what she loves in you. That’s what she wants to give her the completeness to make her great . . . for she’s talented, my Enchanted One . . . never forget that . . . and that we’re all bound to serve true talent, because it’s the only proof we have of human worth. As to your age . . . age is a relative thing. You’re only a boy compared with me. I’m a wreck. I wrecked myself years ago . . . while you were building yourself for your destiny. I’m a wreck . . . and quickly breaking up and going down.’

  It wasn’t sympathy Si sought. He waved it away when it was offered. Mostly he was jesting, even when his face twitched with pain.

  Certainly politics was Si’s first concern in his dealings with Jeremy. But weren’t the politics rather for Alfie’s fulfilment? He said, ‘You’ll establish your Party all right . . . but not Australia Felix. Only someone who can share the dream of it with the mass of Australians can do that . . . and that one’s our Enchanted One, Aelfrieda. The Pen is ever Mightier Than the Sword, Jeremy.’

  He would talk politics, and then Aelfrieda: ‘The great thing that happened to her was finding you. That released her talent. I always knew she had it, urged her . . . but she said she had nothing to write about. You gave it to her. That was the great thing. Now comes the greatest thing, in your reunion.’

  Jeremy argued that it was Frank Candlemas who’d seen her through her now famous book, that he himself had actually driven her away.

  ‘After you’d inspired her, my boy. Your honesty, your integrity . . . and your fear of women!’

  Si broke away from politics on one occasion to say, ‘Do you realise the desperation women feel in striving to fulfil themselves? It’s different with us . . . simply a fight for power and the love of women, as Freud says. That’s where you’re lacking. You hide from these things. There’s no hiding from them and truly living too. But whereas we accept the love of women as merely reward for achievement, women need the love of a man to achieve.’ Jeremy argued that Alfie had the love of Frank. Si dismissed Frank with a shrug: ‘A nice chap. But what she wants, needs to desperation, is mature strength. In so many ways she’s a little girl. If she weren’t she wouldn’t have that beautiful thing, her talent. The little girl must be fathered . . . not simply indulged, but disciplined, led. Her love will give you a new lease of life and add to your strength.’

  Jeremy’s protesting, always argued down, at last was silenced when Si, in the midst of telling him of the involvement of the Labor Party with the Catholic Church and having to suffer more protesting over this for insisting that Jeremy must also seek The Blessing, as he called it, suddenly seized one of his hands in his own skeleton claws, and clinging, cried brokenly, ‘Don’t squib, Jeremy, son . . . don’t squib! You must see this thing right through for the sake of my little girl. Don’t abandon her. Swear to me you’ll never abandon my darling in her need!’ The hollow eyes were swimming.

&
nbsp; What does one say to a dying man, Si the Sly though he may have been called? Does one answer a last request by saying: Man, you’re on the brink of hell already . . . what about getting along and stop dragging me with you? Jeremy bent over the death’s head and let the withered lips seal the one-sided contract with a kiss on his brow.

  Then as quickly as he had swung from politics, Si swung back: ‘Yes . . . you must get The Blessing without delay. You were brought up a Mick. You ought to be able to cope with the old boy. Personally I, brought up Cousin-Jack-Methodist, always found it hard. But the Archbishop holds the trumps, man. You’ve said it’s illogical that a man with his heart in Ireland should dictate the destiny of Australia to Australians. How much more illogical it is for the present Prime Minister, an Australian born, elected to guide that destiny, to say, as he has, that his heart is in Old England ? Logic or no logic . . . if the Archbishop vetoes your party, he vetoes all we’ve dreamt of from the beginning who are capable of dreaming . . . Australia Felix.’

  Preparing Jeremy for the meeting with the Archbishop that had been arranged for him, Si said, ‘It’s Socialism the Church is afraid of. They and their rich parishioners still think they’ll be able to get their moneybags through the eye of that camel or needle or whatever it is they prate of from their pulpits. As the majority of Catholics vote Labor by tradition, because it’s voting against British Imperialism and our Catholicism’s based on Irishism, the Church wants an alternative popular party to curb our growing Left Wing element. His Grace, cunning old Jesuit fox, sees it in your idea, I guess. I know you’re truly socialist. What man worthy of the name isn’t? But don’t talk socialism when he quizzes you. Stick to the things you know and feel most strongly about . . . the country, its magic and richness . . . the ruthless exploitation of it, especially by outsiders . . . the Aborigines.’

  Jeremy duly arrived, alone, at the Episcopal Palace, to find His Grace awaiting him outside, seated on the northern side verandah in the slanting scarcely warming winter sunshine, a rug about his long thin legs. He extended the ringed hand. Jeremy bent over it as if to bestow the kiss of orthodoxy, but stopped short of it.