‘Next time I hope I have nasal catarrh. Or at least that they ain’t shearing-shed dogs, anyway.’
‘Thank Christ they’re tied up short; if their heads had as much freedom as their fannies a man wouldn’t be in the race.’
‘Well, you can’t say you haven’t kissed a dog’s backside, that’s one thing,’ Macauley said. ‘Neither can I.’
The three men went on enjoying their castigation, all agreeing that the damn dogs spoilt the trip for them.
They slid and slipped their way with further pushing until they came within sight of Moree. Then they started to sing, loudly and exuberantly:
‘Strike up the band,
Here comes Slippery Dick the drover,
Dogs on his hands,
Every inch a rover;
Stand in the rain,
Don’t give him pain,
He’s every inch a dro–o–ver.’
It was six o’clock in the morning when the truck pulled up at the hotel. And what men they looked! The first round the pub were the cook and the yardman, and when they got over their fright, Macauley, who knew the ropes, took the initiative and got busy with the yardman, putting the acid on him to help him clean up a bit. Macauley knew the shearers were well heeled. They had just finished a short shearing yesterday afternoon and were fresh from the cut-out: in between pay-off, after which they piled in with Slippery Dick, and their arrival here, there had been no time for them to do more than cash their cheques and down a few drinks in Boomi.
Macauley intimated all this to the yardman, handed him a ten-shilling note. When they saw this the shearers dipped into their pockets and followed suit. They were generous. They handed out a greenskin all round, and told the yardman to keep the change. He was a sick-looking little man with spaniel eyes and a scraggy neck. He stuttered excitedly, pleased with his good day’s pay before the day had even started.
He led them to a bathroom. They took all their baggage. Macauley had to wake Buster. She was stupefied with fatigue; her face was dirty and unusually pale. She tottered beside him, head askew, eyes closed. In the bathroom the naked men with warm water, an old blunt table knife, and a scrubbing brush were removing the corroded, hard-caked black soil from their flesh. One of them, the one they called Darky, was a very hairy-legged fellow: he was grimacing with pain as he tenderly set about removing the tucked-up folds of his trousers. The trousers when unfolding pulled the soil from his legs abruptly and all the hairs on his calves were pulled at the one time, causing him to show his teeth and wince with anguish.
Buster looked at him with big-eyed pity, unconsciously baring her own teeth.
Macauley undressed her and scrubbed her and told her to take over while he went to work on himself. She looked peaky and worn, and it worried him a bit, and the worry annoyed him. He told her not to fiddle about; to hurry up. She wasn’t curious. She went on lathering herself. Everybody was doing the same.
Having cleaned themselves the men set about cleaning the outsides of their suitcases. They made a separate bundle of their muddy clothes, tied it up in paper and packed it away in their ports. With Macauley, it was different. His swag was wet. He unstrapped it and raked out a new change of clothes for himself and Buster – dungarees for him and a khaki shirt and clean socks and his best sports-coat; for her fresh socks, a pair of sandals, blue drill overalls, a grey linen shirt and a pullover. They were all damp, for the moisture had penetrated even to the centre of the swag. But there was nothing he could do about it.
It was an hour before the bath house was clear. There was dirty water, scummy water, mud and silt everywhere, and when the yardman saw it he seemed to doubt his good sense, but he put on a brave front and told them with a gesture of good-fellowship to leave it to him.
Their clean-up completed, the men chyacked each other and dragged in the pure air in great lungfuls; it was wonderful now to be brand-new again and feel so well and none the worse for their night’s ordeal, although Darky demurred, saying he still smelt a bit of dog about him.
Slippery Dick was still hanging about the pub near his truck, and although quite at home in his dirty state he looked a bit sheepish when he saw his charges standing there clean and well dressed. His hat was so encrusted with mud it looked a beehive with a brim. He took it off, and in a habit peculiar to himself brought it round the group asking them if they would kindly settle their debts as he was anxious to get on his way. He knocked a shilling off each man’s fare for the help they had given him along the road. When he came to Macauley he took the money out of his hat, replaced it on his head and shook it. ‘You wasn’t a passenger. You didn’t hire me. I give you a lift. Get me?’
‘I get you,’ Macauley said, knowing that Slippery Dick was making the concession of one battler to another. ‘But, here, buy yourself a drink anyway.’ He flicked a coin, and Slippery snatched it out of the air like a bird closing its beak on a gnat.
They watched him get into his mud-trap. He leant out as hell-on-wheels shook all over and the miserable covey of dogs vibrated with the rumpus. His face was a plaster cast between hat and drawn-up coat collar; only the eyes were alive. He pulled his lips back over his discoloured teeth in a stiff grin, and said, ‘You blokes look as if youse see the silver lining. I seen it all night,’ he said. And he rattled away.
The men were going to sink a brandy or two and then have breakfast in the pub. Macauley let them drift off. He didn’t need the brandy. And he didn’t want to give the impression of being a hanger-on. But he thought breakfast was a good idea. It was time he lined his tubes again.
He ordered steak and eggs, and a smaller version of the same for Buster. But she only picked at the food.
‘Eat up,’ he said.
‘I’m not hungry.’
‘You’ve got to get something into you.’
He relished the meal and pushed his plate away, feeling he could do it again. He turned to Buster. Her food was growing glazy with cold. He looked round him briefly. The shearers from Boomi were in a far corner. A thin, prim spinsterly woman manoeuvred an artistic fork three tables away. There was no one else as yet in the cool dining room.
Macauley took up Buster’s fork, speared a piece of meat and held it to her mouth. She shook her head. He transferred the morsel to Gooby’s stitchy lips. ‘Look, he’ll eat.’
But Gooby shook his head, too, and turned his face haughtily aside.
‘Gooby’s sick, too,’ Buster said.
‘Sick – you’re not sick. Don’t go getting sick on a man, for God’s sake.’
He looked at her pinched face and the faint warm colour in the cheeks; at the eyes, dull, watery and heavy-lidded. It looked like a cold coming on. She probably needed a good sleep more than anything. That would put the sting back in her. But he felt a weariness in his spirit.
Outside on the kerb he stood thinking, trying to sort himself out. Where to from here? What next?
It was fine but dull now. Life was drifting into the town. A fresh-faced baker jogged by in a painted cart. Two blackfellows hunched up with their hands in their coat pockets dawdled along the street. With them was a dog with a visible backbone and ribs like a tin shed. A cherry-faced butcher in a striped apron came round the corner with a tray of meat on his shoulder and went into the pub.
Macauley rubbed his stubbled chin, looked down at his boots, caught Buster sitting on the kerb silently bent forward with her chin cupped in her hands. He looked away again in thought. He had friends in this town and he thought of them: his mind turned them over as the plough turns over the furrow: there was Arch Morley out there on the highway near Telleraga; old Mrs Crouse, who used to run the tearooms at Pilliga, down the other end of the town; Chuck Piercey, the broken-down publican from Come-by-Chance, living over on the east side; Miss Towsey, who played the church organ and had a brother in the priesthood, on her own out there towards the blacks’ camp; and Beauty Kelly, the best mate a man ever had, in the same direction.
Of them all his pick was Kelly, but it was unlik
ely he would still be there. It was two years since Macaulay had seen him, and he could remember the day: Kelly with his grand ideas for getting into the grape country round Mildura and Swan Hill and pegging out a claim. He could start from a tent and go to a house, maybe with burlap walls and a flat-iron chimney, but still a house; and in time, with the grace of God and a bloody lot of sweat, he’d have a mansion with rugs on the floor and a built-in nightcart, and a great window of quartz glass so you could look out over the spreading vineyards and go green with envy or cock your hat on your head according to who you were and how you felt about a friend of yours that made good off his own bat. That was Kelly, and that was his talk with the big day coming up. He had the money saved then for the new start. And he was putting things in order. He would be gone now.
So Macauley settled for Miss Towsey, the next best by reason of human type and geographical distance.
‘Come on,’ he said to Buster. ‘We’re going for a stroll.’
Buster stood up obediently. There was a faint excitement in her hazel eyes. ‘Where to?’
‘Not far. If you walk fast you’ll walk that cold off.’
‘All right,’ she said.
‘How do you feel?’
‘Not very good.’
‘Walk as fast as you can.’
‘All right.’
Macauley went up by the park, walking round the puddles in the footpath, and out past the post office. There was no lift in the grey gloom. Children passed on their way to school. He heard the sound of their voices long after they had passed. He heard the high whine of a circular saw. The noise carried a long way in that still air.
He was thinking of Miss Towsey. Funny, he had never known her as anything else. Just Miss Towsey. Even Barney never let on. He called her Sis. Maybe it was Eileen, or Adela, or Theresa, or Monica, one of these by the look of her; and maybe she took it off like a pair of beads and put it away in mothballs with the trousseau and all the little knick-knacks she had been getting together for her wedding day and after. Not that she went all cross-grained and lantern-jawed when the fellow jilted her. What was his name – that bloke with the bubble eyes and the manners of a curate and the Vaseline on his hair and the topaz watch-fob. Walter something. He got in tow with some rich bitch from the States, and it was all over for Miss Towsey. No, it didn’t put her off balance. She accepted it as the will of God and nursed it as a secret sorrow, keeping it to enjoy on rainy days by the fire and when the cold lamb looked forlorn on Mondays.
He could see clearly: a bright horsy-faced woman, with a quick sweet voice and kind brown eyes; always giving a little tilt of the head and saying, ‘Oh!’ in a sympathetic way. Even her figure, in some way, displayed benevolence. She walked with quick short steps, clasping her handbag in front of her, and she wore hats that could pass for cut-down sewing baskets.
Barney Towsey was shearing sheep at twenty. At twenty-one he was prowling round with a Bible in a seminary. Then he was ordained. He got the call to China, and that was where he was now, pushing Chows around or the other way about.
Macauley stopped by the side of the road. Fifty yards through the trees in a clearing stood Kelly’s old house. It didn’t look a scrap different. Still the same old weatherboard with the high-pitched roof and its verandah roof pulled down over its eyes: still the same galvanised-iron tank beside the lone orange tree in the yard: with a few fence posts that stood leaning in all directions and the wire stands looped and broken.
But there was a bike against one of the posts, and it looked familiar. He squinted his eyes thoughtfully, and looked down the road, sighting the brown-painted roof of Miss Towsey’s house ten chains farther on. He seemed to be tossing up a decision. It came down heads. He sauntered across the flat towards the bike, turned down the path bordered with up-ended jam tins and a few shamrocks, and knocked on the snail-grey door.
A man opened it and filled the doorway. Neither man spoke. Their eyes were locked, poised in stares of dawning recognition. Then the expressions changed. Kelly’s mouth fell open. Macauley’s face squinched and cracked.
‘God strike me fat! Look who’s here!’
‘Beauty!’
‘You old bastard! Where’d you spring — ’
‘Hell, I didn’t expect — ’
They were all over each other like jubilant dogs: wringing hands and pats on the back, arms round shoulders, laughing, pushing faces, slapping, giving out backhanders on chests and stomachs, shaping up and feinting and falling together and laughing and stumbling through the doorway and into the house.
Kelly stood back grinning joyfully. ‘Aah, Mac, it’s good to see you again.’
‘Good to see you, too, boy.’
‘And who might this little fairy be?’ Kelly cried, bouncing down to his knees before Buster and spanning her waist with his big hands. ‘Where’d you blow in from, Snooker?’
‘I’m not Snooker,’ Buster said gravely. ‘I’m Buster.’ She tried to wriggle free. Kelly gave a roar of delighted laughter.
‘Okay, Buster!’ he chuckled and gave her a smacking kiss on the cheek. ‘God love me, Mac, I can’t get over it. Fancy you turning up.’ He was exuberant. ‘I’ll swing the billy. Had your breakfast?’
Macauley told him they had, but he said he’d be in a mug of tea just to celebrate the occasion. Kelly said he had something better than that, and produced a bottle of gin. Macauley shook his head with a smile. It was too early in the morning for him. He’d stick to the tea.
‘Well, take off your hat. Put your feet up. Make yourself at home. What’s mine is yours. You know that.’
Kelly was humming gaily as he filled the kettle and stoked the dying fire in the stove.
Macauley found it hard to credit the change in the man. He remembered the Beauty Kelly of fifteen years ago. And he remembered him through the years. He remembered him the last time he had seen him. And there hadn’t been much difference: he was still Beauty Kelly and worthy of the name. And men were not looking at just one aspect of him when they labelled him with that name. They were looking at him all over. He was a man six feet tall and built in proportion. He had the shoulders of a Peter Jackson, broad and powerful, tapering down to a slim waist. In his clothes he was arresting; stripped he was a spectacle. His hair was black as tar with a blue sheen on it like the sheen on a wild duck. His face was clean-cut and flawless. The features were perfectly symmetrical. He had a complexion that would have been the pride, the vanity, the joy of any woman. The skin was as soft as a doeskin glove; the flesh creamy with a bloom of rose on the cheeks. His mouth with its full lips had a carven appearance; the large warm brown eyes glowed and flashed. The eyelashes were long and clotted like a doll’s. And with all these attributes he was blessed with the stamp of ruggedness and virility. He was a marvel of masculinity, and wherever he was he excited gasps of wonder and admiration and envy.
Two years ago, Macauley remembered, he had lost almost none of it, though time was at work but in a process of slow-fading, as slow as the growth of a tree.
‘And what have you been doing with yourself, Mac? What’s new?’
‘Ah, just poking about. What about you? I’d thought you’d have a wine distillery going by this time.’
‘The grapes. No, I gave that away. I’m down at Warner’s, you know, the skin buyer’s.’ He brought the teapot over to the small table. ‘It would be my bloody luck, too, to have to go to work today of all days, but — ’
‘Hell, you go through … ’ Macauley gestured.
‘You can put the time in here, do what you like; you’ve got the run of the place, and we’ll have a good old get-together tonight.’
‘I’ll be right,’ Macauley said. ‘Got a few things to dry out, kid needs a sleep, and a rest won’t hurt me either.’ He broke off suddenly, the import of Kelly’s words just striking him, and looked across the table. ‘Where’s Ruby? Out, is she?’
‘Ruby’s dead, Mac.’
‘What!’
‘Yeah.’
; ‘No! God! When?’
‘She’s been dead a year.’
‘God Almighty!’
Macauley frowned in disbelief. She had been so alive: there was so much laughter in her. He watched in stunned silence while Kelly keeping his head down lifted the hot mug of tea to his lips and sipped. He set the mug down and pulled out a tin of tobacco and started to roll a smoke.
‘Seems funny, don’t it?’ he said quietly, looking up.
Macauley nodded. ‘How? What happened?’
‘Well, you know when you were here last?’ He drew hard on the cigarette. ‘She seemed as good as gold, didn’t she? Three weeks later she blacked out. Doing the washing, she was. We didn’t think anything of it, just passed it off. In fact she made a joke about it. Said she was going to throw a joey at last. But it happened not long after, and this time I took her to the quack. He told her to go to bed for a month. It didn’t do much good. She went back to him, and came home laughing, saying if she did all the things he wanted her to do she’d be living the life of an invalid. Well, you knew Ruby. She had all the go in the world in her, and she kept things quiet. She was sick off and on, and sometimes she couldn’t hide it. But I don’t suppose I’ll ever know how crook she really was.’ He drew again on the cigarette and looked across the room in objective reflection. ‘Anyway, I’m just having my tea one night when suddenly she keels over. Just fell sideways off the chair without a sound. When I picked her up she was dead.’
His eyes glittered. His teeth were tight together. He grimaced, but caught the grimace and straightened his threatening face. Macauley didn’t say anything. He thought it better not to. Kelly didn’t have to be told how sorry he was.
‘Well, look at that,’ Kelly grinned, pointing to Buster curled up in the folds of his unmade bed, hugging her fetish.
Macauley swung himself out of his chair. ‘Hullo, she’s out to it already.’ He covered her over with a blanket.
‘Bonzer kid, Mac.’
‘She’s a bit heavy with the cold. Sleep’ll do her good.’
The Shiralee Page 8
