‘I’m not koolah. I’m thinking of the complications.’
‘Is vot?’
‘You’re going back to the Mission with them?’
‘Yes.’
‘I gave Glascock an assurance I’d send the Barbu women away.’
‘I vill take care of zat.’
‘What about his Aboriginal status? You want him to go bush with you to help you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, this will deeply complicate the Initiation he’ll have to go through to have proper blackfellow status.’
‘You tell me yourself nobody stop Aboriginal children from any kind of play, only might-be zey hurt zemself.’
‘Children, yes. But these aren’t children any more. They’re sexually mature . . . otherwise they wouldn’t behave like you’re saying. It’s not just play. The blacks judge puberty as the time for strict sexual restraint . . . in a man . . . and for proper behaviour in a woman, because it’s then she’s allotted to a husband. A boy becomes a man then. He’s taught, most harshly, to withstand the temptation of women. He can’t have a wife till he’s fully spiritually developed as a man . . . and then it isn’t one of his own choosing. See what I mean?’
‘Yes . . . but, maybe zis pass soon . . . like mating of leetle bird. Pliss not to spoil it, Jeremy. I zink true loff moost belong to children. Nuzzing greedy . . . nuzzing cruel. Pliss to gammon you not see . . . like I do.’
Jeremy sighed. ‘Okay. Maybe you’re right and puberty’s the proper time for love.’ He sipped his tea. He mused about it: ‘Romeo and Juliet were only kids . . . and theirs is the great classic of love. Maybe if sex were got over before it can become a neurosis . . . maybe . . . maybe that would stop the sickness of the world.’
Sound of horses — hobbled horses in their clumsy driven gallop. They burst through the grass and scrub, half a dozen of them. On their tail was an unhobbled beast, ridden by those two slight figures, the golden-brown and chocolate, but clothed now. Their saddle was a sack. The chocolate one rode behind, with slim arms about the other’s waist, lizard-like sharp head peeping bright-eyed round his arm. By comparison, Prindy’s usually alert gaze was blank, like a little boy dreaming. Savitra, child of a week ago, had become a shrewd-eyed woman. Prindy responded gravely to Jeremy’s smile of greeting, and as gravely answered him, in a man’s voice, ‘Goodday, Grandfather.’
The children slid off their horse, to separate at once, to take the tea and cake Rifkah gave them and sit separately eating it each as if the other didn’t now exist.
While they ate, Jeremy, as matter of fact as everyday, told how they would head straight across country eastward of the river, to make camp in the Limestone. They would need shelter tonight for sure, by the look of the northern sky.
Within half an hour they set out. The bridal pair found each other again, got back on their sack saddle and took the rear to tail the packs. Jeremy and Rifkah rode ahead, going back over Jeremy’s tracks. Already there was traffic on the road and the dust rising; so that they had to wait a little to cross without exposing themselves. Then they were on their way, with no road to cross again till they reached the vicinity of Corella Bore.
It was a hot dry ride, with a squadron of marsh flies to make them keep the pace and not prolong their spelling. Round about noon they camped for crib on the only water on the way so far, a bit of a clay-hole in a creek. A great thunderhead was building up over where Catfish Homestead would lie, but with no hint of storming yet; while the air hung dead. Horses and riders ran with sweat. At least it made things harder for the marsh flies, which wanted blood, not salt water, and a good grip while drawing their portion. Even sundown brought small relief. Mosquitoes, now that they were in the vicinity of the limestone swamps, took over from the marsh flies. As the Sun went down they crossed the Catfish road. Rain would surely wash out their tracks before many hours. Still, they’d heard a motor vehicle going out there, and it well might be coming back before the storm broke. Prindy dismounted to erase their tracks with his magic brush-tail.
Igulgul rose over Catfish, under the thunderhead, the bottom of which he set on fire. He was at the Full tonight. There would be fireworks for sure when he got aloft and joined his old mate Tchamala in harrying the Waianga. The Old One stayed in the clear long enough to light them through the labyrinth of the Limestone and to reunion with the Lily Lagoons horses, which would have picked up their scent and the Mullaka’s whistling on the breeze now blowing from the East. They had to dismount at once and unhobble their own horses and get rid of the strangers that had brought them, because their own objected to these. The stallions sent the strangers galloping for home. They saddled up their own horses, and went on to the caves, their way now lit with almost continuous lightning.
Prindy found a cave for them. They made a meal, then tired out, dropped to their swags. Prindy and his bride shared the one swag in a corner. The riot in the East had begun. The wind was roaring from the West to join it. Nearer and nearer came the storm, but without disturbing them, so snug were they. It struck about midnight. No one could sleep through that. They rose and made tea. Then it was over. Igulgul blazed above triumphant with his Mate streaked across the sky as the Milky Way. The air was cool. The frogs were in full Hallelujah. The campers went back to sleep.
In cool bright dawn the butcher birds came to call them. The horses, by Lily Lagoons custom, ought to have been along for pickings too, but were otherwise occupied, as stamping and whinnying somewhere just out of sight of the camp betrayed. Jeremy reckoned that one of the mares must be in season. In that event, he said, they would have to be a bit hard and break up the fun to get them moving: ‘A bit of the stockwhip for a start, and then the rough going through the gorge should quiet them down. Elektron’ll take charge of things as soon as he knows what we want to do. Despite his age, he’s still the Boss. I think the others regard him as sort of my deputy.’
‘Vot vonderful animals horses are,’ Rifkah remarked.
‘I suppose all things are . . . if you can get to know them.’
Prindy, who had gone to bring in the horses that were to be saddled and packed, came back without any, to report that the mare was a stranger, and no mere brumby, he reckoned, but that chestnut filly won by Knobby Knowles at the very last Race Meeting. They all went to see.
It was the same mare, Knobby’s Luck, as poor Knobby had named her before going to his doom. ‘Nice bit of horseflesh, too,’ said Jeremy. ‘Poor old Knobby might have done all he wanted with her.’ He cracked his whip to stop the horseplay.
Old Elektron was playing the gallant, prancing about, challenging the other stallions, while the filly showed all the signs of her kind in season, ruffled sweating coat, the nervousness, wild eyes and hard breathing, yet snapping and kicking at the gallant whenever he came too near. The other stallions seemed to be making only a show of accepting the challenge. The rest were watching with interest.
At the crack of the whip the filly kicked up her heels and did a short bolt away. Elecktron arched his neck and shook his great black head and snorted at his master, in a show of challenging him, too. Then he reared, swung after the lady. Jeremy called him. He only flung back an ear. But when Jeremy cracked the whip again, he wheeled to face him. Jeremy approached him, saying, ‘You’re hurt. Let’s have a look at you.’ The horses stood.
The stallion’s breast and front legs were caked with blood and flies. Examining the wounds, Jeremy remarked, ‘You busted in to get her, eh? How many times have I told you not to do that till you’ve learnt to use wire-cutters?’ The horse flicked ears and whickered, as if he understood, thrust his nose out for fondling. Jeremy turned to Rifkah. ‘Get the Sulpha and Benz. Co. He could get a bad infection this time of year.’ To the horse he said, ‘You old fool, you’ve messed things up properly this time. About time you acted your age. The brumby bucks over on the coast aren’t going to be as nice to you as our own mob, you know. Or would you rather stop here and be king of the castle for Vaiseys . . . or Knowleses . . .
till they’ve got what they want from you, and shoot you like a brumby?’ The horse snorted.
Rifkah came back with drugs and dressing. Jeremy looped the whip round Elektron’s neck and gave it to Rifkah to hold. Attending the wounds, he said, ‘If only the dressing’ll last three days. The biggest hazard would be if she bit him on the breast . . . a favourite place . . . but the Benz. Co. might discourage her. She won’t have him on for at least three days. But she might lead him a dance through timber that’ll tear him.’
Rifkah asked, ‘You are going to leave him?’
‘He won’t leave her till she’s finished with him.’
‘But you say you can hold till ve get ozzer side.’
‘We couldn’t take her with us. Nugget’ll be sure to come looking for her. They’ll find shod tracks and know the stallion wasn’t a brumby. Even with rain we’ll leave some trace. You can’t clean up every heap of dung. If they find him round here with her, they shouldn’t bother to follow us to the gorge. They’ll probably think he’s come home from wherever I was supposed to have taken him . . . as stallions often do . . . and probably only too pleased to see her mated with the best blood in the country.’ As he varnished the Sulpha-packed wounds with the balsam and the horse winced to the sting, he said, ‘Serve you right, you old bugger . . . doing us out of your standing fee . . . and giving a champion to the Knowleses, of all people!’
Knobby’s Luck stamped and shrilled with impatience. Finished the dressing, Jeremy said, ‘Off you go, you old fool . . . this might be your last chance. I’ll come back for you after the Wet . . . all being well.’ The horse rubbed his head against him, then turned to the filly, to go prancing with tail high. Jeremy remarked: ‘He’s still got his faculties about him. He must have picked up her scent on that bit of an easterly we had after sundown . . . at a good seven miles.’
Rifkah giggled: ‘Might-be she sing him Charada.’
‘Might-be. Let’s get out of here . . . before someone else gets sung.’
‘Who zat somevun else?’
Jeremy glanced at her. ‘You never know. You were saying the kids had made you think of love. Suppose Nugget Knowles were to turn up looking for the mare. You said one time you liked him. His missus is away . . .’
‘G’on you!’ she cried in a lubra’s voice.
V
The trip through the gorge took the best part of two hard days, with a dry night camp spent almost shelterless and sleepless battered by a hot wind ripping through it from the North: the breath of Tchamala, according to Prindy, who told how the Old One had gouged out the gorge following the Booroolooloogun Bijnitch, the mica that winked about them like a myriad eyes being his shed skin. Here the rock was quartzite, the result of some vast compression in a fault between the sandstone masses, the first outcropping of the mineralised mass that appeared again at the old-time tin-field near the Lagoons. There was no rain during the trip nor any residual water, so that drinking had to be rationed from the pack-canteens. The only waterhole was at the extreme end, where the climb up to the Plateau had to be made, a secret and sacred place, according to Prindy, through which access could be had directly to the head of the Leopold River far below — but only for Tchineke Men, naturally. It was up that way the Old One had come from directing his Pythons in their Bijnitch. Certainly it was a secret place, hidden amongst a tumble of sandstone and a tangle of banyans that took their substance from it. Prindy went alone to fill the canteens.
They had their midday meal up there. They were about to start the climb to the top of the Plateau, when Savitra, who had been whingeing all the way about the heat, asked why they couldn’t go down to the river through that hole. When no one answered, she screeched at Prindy, ‘I not going over no more hot rock. You take me down through dat hole.’
He answered mildly, ‘Can’t do it.’
‘Wha’s matter can’t do it? I you wife. You take me now.’
‘Only Tchineke Man can go that way.’
The screech rose: ‘Tchineke Man rubbitch!’
The grey eyes widened, became intense as he looked at her. Still she went on, like a beserk lubra, even with arms stiff at sides, fists clenched and outthrust: ‘Bloody blackfeller gammon!’
His hand shot out. She gasped. The tears welled, blood burst. That sharp Indian nose was not adapted to take an Aboriginal wife’s traditional putting in her place easily. Jeremy checked Rifkah when she would have gone to commiserate the girl. Prindy simply turned away, took the halter rope of his horse to lead the way.
Savitra snuffled and sulked for the rest of the afternoon. However, when in the evening they made camp on the northern edge of the Plateau, with a purple view of what might be taken for the sea, she was ready enough to pop into her lord’s swag as usual.
But there was the white shrew as well as the docile Indian and the slave-rebel lubra in the little lady. Hence there was more domestic trouble next day even when the going was lovely compared with what it had been. They descended the escarpment during the morning, made the head of the Leopold by midday. Savitra wanted at once to bogey in the big hole they made camp on, despite Prindy’s saying he wanted to fish it first, and stripped off. As she moved to dive in, he back-handed her. This time she was smart enough to take it on the cheek and skip out of reach. Letting her go, he set about his fishing. Watching him stalking with fish-spear poised and lips moving in incantation, she laughed shrilly. He signed to her for silence, only to get louder derision and an opinion: ‘Silly bugger blackfeller!’ In a flash he reversed the bamboo spear and sent it flying butt-end, to catch her in the naked belly. She fell with a shriek. She grabbed at the spear as he bounded round to retrieve it. He snatched it from her, raised it to lash her with the flat of it. For a moment she stared at him terrified. Then, rolling over onto hands and knees, bare-bottomed she scuttled away into the scrub, and stayed there till the fishing was over. Jeremy remarked to Rifkah: ‘Whatever the blacks are going to think of his having a wife, they won’t be able to object to the way he treats her . . . strictly according to the rules.’
Savitra was beside her man to eat the tasty supper Rifkah prepared with the fish: steamed in the camp-oven with onions and canned butter — a Jewish way of cooking, even if the fish was treife, catfish. They had to sleep that night under nets again. But, as Rifkah remarked there was something specially cosy about that hum outside, so long as you didn’t shove your feet up against the end of the net in your sleep and suffer the bastinado of a thousand stings.
By rights the horses should have been spelled for a couple of days before being pushed further, hard as the going had been of late and the beasts unused to hardship. So said Jeremy. At the same time, he said, there wasn’t time to spare for such consideration. By the look of the mountain range of cloud far away to sea, the rain would set in in earnest within a week, to render the trip of the others to the Mission most uncomfortable and even impossible, if it caught them. They could not go at once, because he needed the help of Prindy (apprentice to Ex-Sigs Sims and assistant to Coast-Watch Radio-Operator Glascock) in rigging his own radio at the base camp he would set up.
Therefore, straight after early breakfast next day, they set out eastward for that point at the foot of the Plateau to which the blacks engaged by Jeremy a week ago should have packed the stores by now. It had been arranged that the spot be marked with a strip of red calico hung in a conspicuous tree, in case Jeremy should not be able to contact the blacks immediately on return. As it was, smoke seen away to eastward, a distance of about twenty miles according to Jeremy’s estimate, was well to northward of the Plateau. Probably that marked the location of the blacks. Anyway, they did not head for it, but kept going parallel to the escarpment. Sure enough, in late afternoon there was the red rag fluttering against blue sky high in a dead leichhardt pine that reared above a growth of banyans. Undoubtedly banyans had killed the great tree, because substantial little ones were growing in the interstices of the great bare horizontal branches.
It was a pleasant spo
t for a camp, with a ferny waterhole fed from a spring above, and with a plentiful supply of easily gotten food, to judge by the evidence of recent blackfellow feasting on banyan figs and flying foxes. The stores were found up in a weather-proof overhang easily reached, neatly packed and apparently intact. Swags were carried up to give the place a housewarming, because Jeremy declared he would make it his home.
The flying foxes arrived at sundown, in a veritable Churchillian Vengeance-on-the-Hun flight, darkening the sky. When Prindy brought a couple down for cooking on the coals, using a mere stick as weapon, Rifkah declared that she’d like to try cooking them in more civilised fashion, deciding that, singed and gutted and dewinged, they might go nicely as a sort of casserole with the figs and butter and seasoning, done in the camp-oven. They did indeed go nicely. As Jeremy said, it was just as well the blacks weren’t there, or having tried that dish, there would be no getting rid of them. Instead of giving the usual musical recital after supper, Prindy cut his grandfather a couple of throwing sticks of approved shape from banyan roots, to ensure him easy flying fox felling for the future.
It was good sleeping in the cave, cool because at this season the Sun’s track was South of the wall of rock, and without mosquitoes. Bats popped in to take a look at them. A mopoke stationed himself in the pine tree, dead white in the moonlight, to call the watch. A python had been here at some fairly recent time, as Prindy pointed out. Twice in the night Savitra woke squealing and clinging to her man with the illusion that the creature was come back. As if the wife of a Tchineke Man should need to fear snakes! Or might she not fear them all the more?
The radio rigging began straight after early breakfast next morning. The dead leichhardt made a perfect mast. Prindy shinned to within ten feet of the towering top of it to fix block and halyard for hauling the aerial aloft. Then he went up the escarpment, with a roll of wire, pliers, insulators, and made the fixture up on top in a stout ghost gum near the edge. Then the business of getting the right tension for aerial and lead-in. While this last was going on, Rifkah suggested fixing the True Commonwealth Flag to the halyard. It was acted on when they ran the aerial up for the last time. There on the breeze floated the flag so naturally, like a patch of the sky itself in which stars were shining in daylight, as scarcely to be noticeable — so unlike John Bull’s garish Waistcoat, which might well suit a Royal Palace or a Barrack Square, or Uncle Sam’s Stars and Bars that look like the trappings of a circus, or Joe Stalin’s semi-European adoption of the bilious phallic symbol of Islam, or most of the other over-spectacular others — so naturally part of the land as to put them in no mood for ceremonial, but simply to look up at it and say it looked good.
Poor Fellow My Country Page 226
